Li Gou

Biography

Family Background and Early Life Li Gou was intelligent and studious from childhood. At six or seven he began learning written characters, and by twelve he could compose essays. His father died when he was fourteen. Li later wrote that his mother worked the fields by day and did women's textile work by night, enabling the family to avoid cold and hunger. After three years of mourning he began traveling for study at seventeen. His literary reputation grew after his twentieth year. Other accounts emphasize his precocity, saying that he could write at seven and compose verse and couplets at nine. His father took him to live around Mount Magu, where a large Daoist sanctuary stood and two monks resided. Li often visited the temple, discussed scriptures and doctrine with the monks, and displayed unusual intelligence. ### Seeking Office and Repeated Setbacks During the Jingyou era Li walked to Bianliang, present-day Kaifeng, seeking an official career but returned without result. The following year he failed a local examination. In 1041, the first year of Qingli, he responded to a special examination for exceptional talent and was summoned to the capital, but again was not selected. He remained in the capital “sorrowful for a full year,” depressed and reluctant to return home. After these disappointments he lost interest in seeking office and turned to private scholarship and writing. He established a school in Nancheng and was invited to teach at the prefectural academy. ### Founding a School and Teaching In 1043, the third year of Qingli, Li founded Xujiang Academy. At the request of the prefect he opened classes, and hundreds sometimes came to study under him. He was described as the foremost Confucian teacher of Xujiang in his time and became known as Master Xujiang. Zeng Gong and Deng Runfu, who later held senior censorial office, were among his notable students. Teaching remained Li's main occupation, and his lectures supported his livelihood. He taught at Xujiang Academy for more than twenty years, trained many students, and helped turn the institution into one of the important intellectual centers of the mid-Northern Song south. ### Official Service and Final Years In 1049 Fan Zhongyan submitted a memorial praising Li as a scholar who “discusses the Six Classics, is learned and lucid in debate, and clearly sees the meaning of the sages; in writing books and establishing arguments he has the manner of Meng Ke and Yang Xiong.” After repeated recommendations by Fan, Yu Jing, and others, Li was appointed assistant instructor at the National University. He later served as expounder at the university, registrar of Haimen in present-day Jiangsu, and university lecturer. In 1057, on recommendation of the Directorate of Education, he was again summoned as an expounder. In 1059 he temporarily shared administrative responsibility for the National University. He took leave to return home for the reburial of his grandmother and died there in the eighth month, aged fifty-one by traditional reckoning. He was buried at the foot of Phoenix Mountain.

Li Gou was bright and fond of learning from childhood, beginning his letters at six or seven and writing essays at twelve. His father died when he was fourteen, and his mother kept the household by farming in the day and weaving at night. After three years of mourning he went out to study at seventeen, and from twenty his writing became known. In the Jingyou years he walked to the capital, Bianliang, to present his works to officials in hope of recommendation, without success.

He was an important thinker of the middle Northern Song, leaving the collection of Master Li the Lecturer, in which the essays on ritual, on the Changes and on enriching the state, strengthening the army and settling the people set out his views. He held ritual to be the root of social order and held that government must begin with sufficient food and arms, opposing empty talk of mind and nature; his criticism of land engrossment and unequal taxes and corvée influenced Wang Anshi's reforms. He also proposed a land reform on the ancient well-field model, impracticable perhaps but holding a place in Song statecraft thought.

He never attained high office, teaching long in his native district and the prefectures, several of his pupils afterward entering office. He died in 1059 at fifty-one. His scholarship, marked by practical statecraft, is named with that of Hu Yuan and Sun Fu as an important part of the transformation of Song Confucian learning.

Major Activities

Intellectual Thought Li Gou was an important Northern Song thinker. He wrote extensively and argued for intellectual innovation. In philosophy, he adopted a monistic account centered on qi and regarded contradiction as universally present in things. In epistemology, he held that subjective knowledge derived from objective reality. Later accounts therefore treat him as an important precursor in the development of Song philosophy. He also advanced an explicitly practical social and historical outlook. He defended the legitimacy of material benefit and desire against moralizing positions that treated discussion of “profit” and “desire” as improper. Starting from the proposition that material interests are fundamental to social life, he interpreted political and historical problems through economic conditions. In the first of his “Strategies for Enriching the State” he wrote that “the substance of governing a state must be rooted in finances and resources.” Accordingly, he opposed setting material benefit and moral principle—“profit” and “righteousness”—in absolute opposition. Li considered unequal landholding a major cause of unequal wealth. In the On the Equalization of Land, he proposed policies of equalizing fields and land, using historical precedents to provide rulers with models for addressing land concentration. To strengthen a Northern Song state he regarded as weak and to reduce social tensions, he advocated enriching the state, strengthening the military, and securing the people. He wrote ten essays each under the headings “Strategies for Enriching the State”, “Strategies for Strengthening the Military”, and “Strategies for Pacifying the People”. His philosophical and political reform ideas were distinctive in his time and are often described as part of the intellectual preparation for the later New Policies of Wang Anshi. ### Ritual Learning and Classical Studies Because Li emphasized practical statecraft, ritual learning occupied a central place in his classical scholarship. His fifty-one essays Zhouli Zhi Taiping Lun represented his program of applying classical learning to government and may have influenced Wang Anshi's later New Meanings of the Rituals of Zhou. Li's practical orientation also led him to criticize Mencius. In Changyu he argued against what he saw as an excessive opposition between righteousness and profit and asked in effect whether benevolence and righteousness could truly be separated from benefit. This made him a precursor of anti-Mencian currents in Song learning. Although firmly rooted in Confucianism, he opposed Buddhism and Daoism and became one representative of the anti-Buddhist and anti-Daoist trend around the Qingli era. ### Criticism of Buddhism and Daoism Drawing on his cosmology, ritual theory, and political-economic ideas, Li strongly criticized Buddhism and Daoism. He used Confucian arguments to challenge their doctrines, urged the replacement of Buddhist and Daoist religious practices with Confucian ritual, and attacked what he considered their political and economic harms. He argued that religious withdrawal from family life violated fundamental human relations because monks and recluses left parents, spouses, and children and no longer fulfilled ordinary obligations. He also criticized belief in ghosts, rebirth, and karmic retribution, describing such doctrines as irrational deceptions that encouraged ignorance. ### Literary Contributions Li held that literature should serve statecraft and practical use, and his prose is therefore generally substantive and politically engaged. Even works of classical interpretation frequently used the past to address contemporary issues. The fifteen essays of Qianshu were written, according to the author's preface, out of anger at contemporary affairs and concern for the state, with the stated aim of strengthening the country and helping the people. The thirty essays of Qingli Minyan were described as admonitory pieces speaking on behalf of ordinary people. These political essays directly criticized current problems, advanced Li's own arguments, and were strongly engaged with contemporary realities. His letters, epitaphs, stelae, and records were likewise regarded as lucid and logically organized. His Yuanzhou Zhouxue Ji became particularly famous for its unconventional opening, sharp argument, strict structure, and controlled prose style. Li also wrote poetry. Wang Shizhen, in Juyi Lu, praised five of Li's quatrains—“Wang Fangping,” “Bi Yue,” “Emperor Yuan of Liang,” “A Monk from Guan Returning to Mount Lu,” and “Remembering the Qiantang River”—as having a manner resembling Li Shangyin. The General Catalogue of the Siku Quanshu similarly judged that apart from “Emperor Yuan of Liang,” which it criticized as somewhat coarse, the other poems deserved the praise they had received. His poetry was influenced by Han Yu, Pi Rixiu, Lu Guimeng, and others. Its language could be unusual, but many poems contained substantial social criticism. “Letter of Remembrance” emphasizes moral principle over rank; “Seeing Off Assistant Magistrate Zhang” criticizes official selection; “Village Journey” and “Moved by Events” condemn repeated levies and increasing poverty; and “Lament for an Old Woman” depicts a woman with sons and grandsons forced to remarry because corvée and taxation had exhausted her household. ### Military Thought Li regarded armies and warfare as essential to the survival of the state and gave substantial attention to military organization. He advocated maintaining strong forces and adequate military preparedness but did not support reckless expansion or exhausting the people for war. Instead he called for an army guided by humane and righteous goals and intended to protect the good and suppress violence. From his doctrine of balancing fundamental and secondary matters, he proposed military policies that linked sound government, national wealth, and strong armed forces. He argued that a state seeking to secure its territory and protect and enrich its people needed a powerful army. At the same time, he placed particular emphasis on the human element in military organization. He repeatedly stressed the selection of capable generals and the training and maintenance of good soldiers. One of his arguments held that a state survives because it can choose generals, and a general succeeds because he can sustain his troops: people naturally value their lives, yet under good leadership they will face arrows and stones and die in defense of the state. ### Relations with Contemporaries Li Gou interacted with major Northern Song figures including Fan Zhongyan, Yu Jing, Wang Anshi, Zeng Gong, and Deng Runfu. Fan recommended him in 1049 and praised his learning and writings in very high terms. Wang Anshi also knew his work; in one letter Wang mentioned having adopted an opinion advanced by Li. Zeng Gong and Deng Runfu studied under him, and Deng later took an active part in the New Policies of Wang Anshi. Many of Li's ideas offered intellectual support for Fan Zhongyan's Qingli Reforms and later became part of the intellectual background to Wang Anshi's reform program.

Personal Relations

• Mother: maintained the household through farm work and textile labor
• Grandmother: reburied in 1059, prompting Li to take leave and return home ### Mentors and Associates - Fan Zhongyan: recommender who praised Li's mastery of the classics and argument
• Yu Jing: recommender
• Zeng Gong: prominent student
• Deng Runfu: prominent student who later participated in the New Policies of Wang Anshi
• Wang Anshi: intellectual associate; Li's ideas influenced him directly ### Ruler–Subject Relations - Emperor Renzong of Song: Li received appointments at the National University during his reign ### Intellectual Lineage - Mencius: Li criticized aspects of Mencian thought and wrote Changyu against them
• Han Yu, Pi Rixiu, and Lu Guimeng: influences on his poetry

Historical Assessment

Northern Song / Contemporary Period - Fan Zhongyan praised Li as learned and lucid in discussing the Six Classics and compared his style of authorship with Meng Ke and Yang Xiong.

• The History of Song describes him as “eloquent and capable in writing.”
• Later Song scholarship said that in the age of Ouyang Xiu, Zeng Gong, and Wang Anshi, Li formed a school of his own and repeated the comparison of his writings to those of Mencius and Yang Xiong. ### Southern Song and Yuan Periods - During the Shaoxing era, Nancheng built the Tower of Ten Worthies and Hall of Four Worthies; Li Gou was jointly enshrined with Chen Pengnian and others, and his portrait was placed in the Dacheng Hall of the prefectural school as an example for later students.
• In 1254, the second year of Baoyou, Xingwen Hall was established to honor him.
• A later poem praised him as a great Confucian scholar called Taibo, celebrated the force of his language, his mastery of the classics, and his opposition to Buddhist and Daoist teachings. ### Ming and Qing Periods - Wang Shizhen, in Juyi Lu, praised five of Li's quatrains as stylistically similar to Li Shangyin.
• The General Catalogue of the Siku Quanshu judged that, apart from one poem it considered coarse, the other works deserved the praise they had received.
• Ming local writer Wang Cai composed a poem recalling Li's life of classical study and teaching. ### Modern Period - Hu Shi, in “Notes on the Thought of Li Gou”, called Li “a major thinker of the Northern Song,” “a precursor of Wang Anshi,” and “a Wang Anshi who never obtained the ruler's support to put his Way into practice,” describing him as an important predecessor in the eyes of the New Policies group.
• Modern scholarship generally regards Li Gou as an early representative of utilitarian or statecraft-oriented thought in the Song and emphasizes his direct influence on the New Policies of Wang Anshi.