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101 C H A P T E R F I V E Genuineness (真) I. INTRODUCTION In The Ethics of Authenticity, Charles Taylor writes, “I believe that in articulating the ideal [of authenticity] over the last two centuries, Western culture has identified one of the important potentialities of human life.”1 While our study of Li Zhi has shown that we may wish to augment Taylor’s insights by including the contributions of late-Ming Chinese thinkers, what I wish to focus on in this concluding chapter is the central thesis Taylor so convincingly puts forward and defends: “authenticity ,” or what I will here most often refer to as “genuineness,”2 is indeed one of the most potent ideals we, as a society, have imagined for guiding us to a life well lived. In the following pages I argue Li Zhi really ought to be studied by philosophers for, within Chinese philosophical discourse on the genuine , he is a significant thinker who insightfully explores and articulates what in our time are too often overlooked insights into the subject of genuineness; Li Zhi is a powerful resource for formulating an ethics of genuineness that seeks for middle, or more accurately, higher ground between important, fervent, and on-going philosophical debates, such as those between individualism and communitarianism, between freedom severed from any prior moral obligations and a stringent view of objective morality, and between an ethics founded on our spontaneous intuitions prior to language and one that conceives of our feelings and thoughts as wholly shaped by language and culture. It is this last debate to which I would like to turn, albeit briefly, in our concluding chapter. Taylor and Li are similar in that both articulate a productive way out of these dichotomies and a higher ground, and yet the two are different and complementary in their respective visions. Taylor addresses what 102 Li Zhi, Confucianism and the Virtue Of Desire is underdeveloped in Li: an attention to the power of language and culture in shaping our authentic lives. Li’s strength is what is at times neglected in Taylor’s writings: a deep appreciation of the elements of our human nature that are in fact pure and untainted, existing fully, or at least largely, formed prior to our mastery of language. Li argues genuine feelings and thoughts are in many ways fully formed within our hearts and minds; our task is to attend to these sensibilities, to nourish and preserve what is given, to uncover these gems deep within ourselves as we spontaneously pour forth, “spew” and “spit” out the metaphorical jade and pearls fully formed within.3 Let us first review the analysis of Li’s philosophy that I have presented in the course of this work. II. REVIEW OF CHAPTERS I have argued throughout my study of Li Zhi that the ideal of genuineness —an ethics of the expression of genuine feelings—centrally animates his writings. I began by placing Li and his works within the context of late-Ming China and specifically a particular exuberant and passionate discourse, the “cult of feelings” (qing 情), of which Li was one of the most celebrated voices. In this way I described his ties to significant interlocutors—such as the Yuan brothers, the Geng brothers and especially Geng Dingxiang, and Tang Xianzu—and his understanding and use of shared concepts—such as “genuineness” (zhen 真), “feelings” (qing 情), and “desire” (yu 欲). While I consistently have argued against reductionist accounts of Li’s thought, which hold that Li can be thoroughly understood or was mired in the sentiments of his historical time and place, at the same time, underlying my study of Li is the firm belief that his writings are by far most illuminatingly read by situating them within his particular historical world. He is in no way merely a product of his age, but his historical context certainly is critical to understanding the powerful nuances of his writings and ideas. In Chapter Two “Life Stories (傳),” I turned to a close study of a complex and widely studied essay of Li’s “A Sketch of Zhuowu.”4 The aim of the chapter was three-fold: one, to introduce Li’s life and works; second, through a close textual study to give one example of just how deeply playful, adroit, and subtly complex his writings can be and often are; and third, to begin the work of arguing that genuineness is at the heart of Li’s ethical vision...

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