Li Zhi and the Project of Confucian Democracy

• In Event: Practicing Democracy, Training Citizens

Abstract

This paper explores the relevance of the thought of Li Zhi (李贄, 1527-1602) for the contemporary project of constructing a Confucian understanding of democracy. Li, who considered himself a Confucian, is perhaps best known today for his critique of the idea that women were morally and intellectually incapable of understanding the Way and his defense of authenticity in his essay “On the Childlike Mind” (童心說). This paper focuses instead on Li’s self-description as a “Sojourner-Traveler” (流寓客子), and the potential implications it might have for a conception of political authority. In reflecting on his tumultuous political career, and his ultimate decision to adopt the Buddhist tonsure, Li emphasizes his desire not to be controlled by others. Situating this self-assessment alongside his broader project of cultivating individual judgment (in both himself and his readers) suggests an understanding of political authority that not only allows for, but requires, the presence of social criticism.

This argument is developed by focusing on Li’s “Readings of History” (讀史) from his A Book to Burn (焚書) and Another Book to Burn (續焚書). In these sections, Li offers re-interpretations of historical figures and events that directly challenge standard Confucian judgments. Though these historical re-assessments often appear to reject core Confucian values, they reveal a deeper pedagogical concern with how readers develop such judgments, one that serves as an indirect challenge to the rote memorization of classic texts that constituted the core of Confucian education during his time. His intellectual movements through Chinese history thus mirror his physical movements as a “Sojourner-Traveler” insofar as they resist having his judgments controlled by others. This reading of Li’s strategies for cultivating judgment emphasizes how they should be understood as a development of the Lu-Wang school of Neo-Confucianism, and in particular, how they reflect the pedagogical concerns raised in the preface to Wang Yangming’s A Record for Practice (傳習錄).

The paper concludes by placing Li Zhi’s idea of the “Sojourner-Traveler” within the context of contemporary attempts to develop a Confucian conception of democracy. In particular, it suggests that his unorthodox readings of history illustrate the important role social criticism can serve within the Confucian project of ethical self-cultivation.

Author

• John T. Lombardini, College of William & Mary