The summer school is jointly organized by theĭepartment of Asian Studies, University of Ljubljana Therefore, Li Zehou's thinking can undoubtedly contribute to a better understanding of his Chinese homeland, its society, and culture. These two ideals are still at the forefront of the intellectual and sensual aspirations of many young people around the world. We can probably attribute this influence to two main reasons: Li's openly professed love of beauty, and his appreciation of freedom. His enormous influence and appeal were felt by a whole generation of Chinese youth, who saw him as an inspiring intellectual leader comparable to Jean-Paul Sartre or Herbert Marcuse in Western culture. His books almost always sold out within a few days of publication, and there was hardly a dorm room that did not have at least one volume of his Critique of Critical Philosophy, even though the book was extremely complex and difficult to read. Li's popularity reached truly stupendous proportions. Li launched many new perspectives that had a great impact not only on Chinese but also on global theories of ethics, humanism, aesthetics, and philosophical anthropology. In addition to his attempts to bridge various social dichotomies – individual freedom and social or historical necessity, alienation and progress, subjective emotions and objective laws – Li was seen primarily as a bridge between the older and younger generations of Chinese intellectuals.ĭespite the complexity and wide range of his works, which cannot be reduced to prevailing philosophical categories or currents, he is undoubtedly one of the most important modern scholars of Chinese history and culture, especially considering that his work was central to the Chinese Enlightenment of the 1980s. In various intellectual, artistic, and cultural circles, his ideas were extensively cited as authoritative, and he became the intellectual icon or guru of many university students. Countless debates on aesthetics, epistemology, ethics, or traditional Chinese thought have been inspired by Li Zehou's theories. Li was also one of the first Chinese scholars to openly advocate a "rehabilitation" of Confucius as a representative symbol of Chinese intellectual heritage, and to call for a critical revival of Confucian thought. Moreover, his theory of anthropohistorical ontology led several Chinese theorists to critically rethink the conformist version of Marxist epistemology and aesthetics. In the creative urgency of that time, when aesthetics seemed to offer the most effective redemption from the difficult experiences of the Cultural Revolution, Li offered young Chinese new, extraordinarily creative interpretations of art, philosophy, and literature. He became famous in the 1980s with his works on Chinese aesthetics.
Indeed, an insight into Li's intellectual system can help us understand the specific fusion of Western and traditional Chinese discourses that has shaped contemporary Chinese society on the threshold of the third millennium. Therefore, the main aim of this summer school is to introduce his important work to the youngest generation of European scholars in the field of Chinese studies and/or philosophy, and to provide them with a valuable insight into the structure of his thought and its main contents.
His ideas had a tremendous impact on various areas of contemporary Chinese thought.
In the last two decades of the 20th century, he was a hero of Chinese youth and a role model for many Chinese intellectuals. Li Zehou was undoubtedly one of the most significant, important and influential Chinese philosophers and experts on Chinese culture of our time, and one of the few Chinese intellectuals whose works found a wide readership outside China. I n early November 2021, Li Zehou, one of the giants of contemporary Chinese thought, passed away.
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