Combining Marx with Kant: The Philosophical Anthropology of Li Zehou

Abstract

Among those interested in contemporary Chinese thought, Li Zehou Fj$) hardly needs any introduction. The basic facts of his long and eventful career are well known. Born in Changsha in 1930, he has devoted his life's work to the study of Chinese thought and aesthetics.' Already as a young man, he made a name for himself when he joined the aesthetics debate in the 1950s, putting forward a view of beauty that differed both from Zhu Guangqian Yjtf, a disciple of Croce and the founder of modern Chinese aesthetics, and Cai Yi ,y, who defended a MarxistLeninist position.2 One of the earliest critics of dogmatic Marxism-Leninism in China, Li became a paramount figure of the post-Mao Enlightenment, and his contribution to the intellectual ferment in the 1980s known as culture fever has