- Lived:
- 1724–1777 · Xiuning (Huizhou, Anhui province) and Beijing, Qing-dynasty China
- Tradition:
- Evidential-scholarship (kaozheng) Confucianism; the great Qing critique of Neo-Confucian metaphysics
- The Big Idea:
- The orthodox philosophy of "heavenly principle versus human desire" rests on a misreading of the classics — provable character by character — and a "principle" set above human desires becomes a weapon for the strong to kill the weak.
- In their words:
- "A man who dies under the law is still pitied. But a man who dies under principle — who pities him?"
- If you remember one thing:
- The son of a poor cloth-peddler, who failed the empire's highest examination six times, used the humblest tools in scholarship — dictionaries, rhymes, ancient pronunciations — to indict a six-hundred-year orthodoxy for cruelty, and to argue that desire, rightly ordered, is the Way.