A Multidimensional Study Of The Theoretical Basis Of Li Zhi’s "Child’s Mind"

LI Zhi,who lived in late Ming Dynasty, influenced by many different Chinesetraditional thoughts throughout a lifetime of frustrations. As one of his important writings,“Theory of Child’s Mind” derives a lot from the thinking of Confucianism, Buddhismand Taoism. For example, the “Intuitive knowledge” and the theory of “Pureness andweight” in Confucianism,“Conscience” in Buddhism, the idea of Lao Zi’s “Govern bynon-interference”,Zuang Zi’s “Trueness” and “Levelling All Things”,all these ideaswere merged together into the “Theory of Child’s Mind” by LI Zhi. They have internalconnection in thought.However, these influences cannot be viewed equally. Due to the illusion of LiZhi’s "Arrogance" and decay of the original Confucian spirit, it makes many scholarsbelieve that Li Zhi was "anti-Confucianism", or that he was not a"Confucian". This paperargues that Li Zhi was not only non-Confucian and anti-Confucius, but just theopposition. LI Zhi respect Confucius and he didn’t get out of the frame of Confucianism.Actually, he was a Confucianist, pure and simple, thus his “Theory of Child’s Mind”doesn’t either break through the theoretical frame of Confucianism.