41. “人能弘道，非道弘人” (Lunyu, Wei Ling Gong 衛靈公, 29). Its basis can be found in another famous sentence attributed to Confucius (Lunyu, Wei Zheng 為政, 12): “The Master said: ‘The gentleman is not a utensil’” (子曰：「君子不器。」).

42. Li Zhi, Ming Deng Dao Gu Lu 明燈道古錄, Part Two, in Li Wenling Ji 李温陵集, 19: 575.

43. Li Zhi, Fenshu, Lun Zheng Pian, 3: 87. The Dao in Li Zhi is not a neo-Confucian moral system; it is neither a political institution nor the sovereign, but an open-empty notion that lets the individual mind be free from common moralities or social contracts, and it is open to the spontaneousness of every individual.

44. Lunyu, Zilu, 6 and Wei Ling Gong 衛靈公, 33: “When [the lord] behaves correctly, his government is effective without issuing orders” (其身正，不令而行) and “[a]lthough he governs with dignity, yet if he does not lead his subjects to the rules of propriety, then he did not reach excellence” (莊以涖之。動之不以禮，未善也).

45. Li Zhi, Fenshu, Song Zheng Da Yao Xu 送鄭大姚序, 3: 113.

46. Huang Ray, 1587, A Year of No Significance, 208, quoting Xu Fenshu, Fu Jinchuan Weng Shu 復晉川翁書, 2: 73; letter in reply to Liu Dongxing 劉東星 (zi Ming 明, hao Jinchuan 晋川, 1538–1601).

47. In Fenshu (Lunzheng Pian 論政篇, 3: 87), Li Zhi stresses the ferociousness and moralism (貪暴者，仁者) of Chinese rulers who restrain their subjects’ life by means of strict laws and hypocritical moral norms.

48. Li Zhi, Cangshu, Waichen Zhuan 外臣傳, Feng Dao 馮道, 68: 1141–1142. Feng Dao (882-954) was blamed by historians for his opportunism, as he accepted to be high official under successive dynasties, infringing the principle of loyalty to only one ruler. Li, on the contrary, presents Feng as a great recluse (yinzhe 隱者), keeping his freedom and refusing to be concerned with reputation.

49. Li Zhi, Fenshu, Song Zheng Dayao Xu 送鄭大姚序, 3: 113.

50. Li Zhi, Xu Fenshu, Sanjiao Gui Ru Shuo, 2: 75. This stance differs from that of “the truth of insubstantiality” (jia zhong you zhen 假中有真) found in Honglou Meng, which combines Buddhist ontology with the discourse of aesthetics.

51. I am grateful to the anonymous reader for reminding me Li Zhi’s Muslim family background.

52. Munro, Ethics in Action and “Unequal Human Worth.”

53. de Sousa, The Rationality of Emotion