Passion for Friends: Li Zhi’s Tragedy and His Pursuit of Friendship

Martin Huang, University of California, Irvine 

          This paper looks at how the late Ming controversial thinker Li Zhi’s passionate pursuit of friendship foregrounds the tensions within the important Confucian ethic concept of wulun (the five cardinal human relationships) as it was being revalorized during an age when friendship was being celebrated with unprecedented enthusiasm among many literati. If there was indeed a cult of friendship during that time, Li Zhi was one of those who pursued friendship almost with a religious enthusiasm. He gained a lot from friendship and, probably more significantly, he also paid dearly for it. Part of his tragedy may lie in his inability or refusal to fully appreciate the gap between his ideal of friendship and the reality he was confronting.

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