Lie Yukou
Illustration — Zhang Lu's painting of Liezi, early 16th century Lie Yukou was a Chinese philosopher who is considered the author of the Daoist book Liezi, which uses his honorific name Liezi.
Lie Yukou
Zhang Lu · ‘Master Lie’. Telling Images of China (2010 exhibit). Dublin: Chester Beatty Library. (direct link to image) (web archive link for work) (web archive link for exhibit) · Public domain
- Born
- 449 · Zhengzhou.
- Died
- 500
- Nationality
- China
- Occupation
- writer · philosopher · poet
- Fields
- philosophy · Taoism
- Languages
- Chinese
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Documentary basis
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wikidata · Q2984064 · wikipedia · Lie Yukou
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The documentary record
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Institutions cited
Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
Complete reading chain (JSON)In this article
Early life
Early life
Lie Yukou was born in the State of Zheng, near today's Zhengzhou, Henan Province.
Documentary record
Lie Yukou appears in the authority records of the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek as a philosopher.
History
History
There is little historical evidence of Lie Yukou as a Hundred Schools of Thought philosopher during the Warring States period. This could be due to the burning of books and burying of scholars which occurred during the reign of Qin Shi Huang. However, some scholars believe that the Zhuangzi invented him as a Daoist exemplar. Frederic H. Balfour, who translated several Taoist texts, called Liezi "a philosopher who never lived" (1887:?) Lionel Giles expresses doubt in his Introduction: Very little is known of our author beyond what he tells us himself. His full name was Lieh Yü-k'ou, and it appears that he was living in the Chêng State not long before the year 398 BC, when the Prime Minister Tzu Yang was killed in a revolution. He figures prominently in the pages of Chuang Tzu, from whom we learn that he could 'ride upon the wind'. On the insufficient ground that he is not mentioned by the historian Ssu-ma Ch'ien, a certain critic of the Sung dynasty was led to declare that Lieh Tzu was only a fictitious personage invented by Chuang Tzu, and that the treatise which passes under his name was a forgery of later times. This theory is rejected by the compilers of the great Catalogue of Ch‘ien Lung's Library, who represent the cream of Chinese scholarship in the eighteenth century. In the above quote Mr. Lionel Giles may have been refuting his father Herbert Allen Giles, who wrote of Lie Yukou or Lieh-Tzu in his translation of Chuang Tzu. Here is his quote which runs as follows: The extent of the actual mischief done by this " Burning of the Books " has been greatly exaggerated. Still, the mere attempt at such a holocaust gave a fine chance to the scholars of the later Han dynasty (A.D. 25-221), who seem to have enjoyed nothing so much as forging, if not the whole, at any rate portions, of the works of ancient authors. Some one even produced a treatise under the name of Lieh Tzu, a philosopher mentioned by Chuang Tzu, not seeing that the individual in question was a creation of Chuang Tzu's brain!
Life and career
Dated record
Life and career
The full dated record · 2 entries
449
Lie Yukou born at Zhengzhou.
500
Lie Yukou died.
Primary material
Documents and archives
reference work
- Wikidata, structured authority record Q2984064: Lie Yukou
Reputable secondary · Wikimedia Foundation
- “Lie Yukou”, English Wikipedia, consulted as further reading
Reputable secondary · Wikipedia
authority file
- VIAF cluster 222338217 for Lie Yukou, aggregating national library name authorities.
General reference · OCLC
Literature
Scholarly footprint
A count of publications is evidence of attention, not of standing, and is given here only as a measure.
Text attribution
Licensing
Text attribution
Part of the biographical narrative on this page reuses licensed material. Its origin, revision and licence are recorded here.
The biographical narrative on this page is based on the Wikipedia article Lie Yukou, revision 1356120071 (EN edition), by its contributors. VALÉORINE has edited that text and built its own documentary record around it. The reused material is available under CC BY-SA 4.0, and this page's reuse of it is offered under the same licence. Everything else on this page — the chronology, the holdings, the evidence, the plates and the connections — is VALÉORINE's own record. Sources and licences.
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Es wäre sehr angenehm, wenn wir in dem Werk des Liä Dsi eine authentische Schrift aus dem 5. oder 4. Jahrhundert v.Chr. vor uns hätten. Allein das ist nicht der Fall. Wir dürfen für die Redaktion des Buchs wohl nicht über das 4. nachchristliche Jahrhundert zurückgehen. Dennoch liegt dem Buch natürlich älteres Material zugrunde. Richard Wilhelm, Die Lehren des Laotse, VI. Der Taoismus nach Laotse, in: Laotse. Tao te king. Das Buch vom Weg des Lebens. 2. Auflage. Bastei Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 2003, ISBN 3-404-70141-0
- 2.Im Kommentar zu diesem Abschnitt erläutert Richard Wilhelm: “Die Ermordung des Ministers Dsï Yang von Dscheng, der hier erwähnt ist, fällt in das dritte Jahr des Königs An von der Dschou-Dynastie (399). Daraus würde folgen, daß Liä Dsï ungefähr um 450 v. Chr. geboren sein muß, wenn man die Zeitangaben von I, 1 mit heranzieht.” Im letzten Absatz dieses Abschnitts scheint eine Stelle zu fehlen, warum Liä Dsï das Geschenk abgelehnt hat. Man kann die Unklarheit beseitigen, wenn man dem wiederholten Satz “... das noch dazu auf anderer Leute Reden hin!” eine Ergänzung voranstellt wie z. B. “Denn wenn es sich um eine Sache der Bestrafung gehandelt hätte, dann ...”.
- 3.Liä Dsi auf www.zeno.org.
- 4.If my spirit returns through the gates whence it came, and my bones go back to the source from which they sprang, where does the Ego continue to exist? (Wenn mein Geist durch die Tore, woher er gekommen ist, heimkehrt, und meine Knochen, woher sie gekommen sind, zurückkehren, wie soll das Ich da weiter existieren?) (Lionel Giles, „Book of Lieh-Tzü“, S. 23–24, 1912, freie Kopie im Internet: https://www.sacred-texts.com/tao/tt/tt04.htm)
- 5.„Stille Betrachtung beginnt im Geist. Wenn ein Gedanke aufsteigt, musst du ihn sofort aufhalten, damit du deine Stille aufrechterhalten kannst. Dann entledige dich aller Illusionen, Wünsche und umherschweifender Gedanken.... Konzentriere dich auf den leeren Geist,... Wenn du in deiner Meditation Stille erlangst, solltest du dich bei alltäglichen Aktivitäten wie Laufen, Stehen, Sitzen und Schlafen in diesem Geisteszustand üben. Sei inmitten von Ereignissen und Aufregung entspannt und gelassen. Ob Dinge eintreten oder nicht, dein Geist sollte leer sein.“ (Eva Wong, „Die Lehren des Tao“, Abschnitt „Die Schrift des Heiligen Geistes der Geheimnisvollen Grotte über Konzentrierte Betrachtung (Tung-hsüan ling-pao ting-kuan ching)“, S. 132, Ullstein Verlag, Berlin 1998.)
- 6.Richard Wilhelm (Übersetzung u. Kommentare): „Liä Dsi. Das wahre Buch vom quellenden Urgrund“, Buch I, Abschnitte 4, 7 u. 8, Eugen Diederichs Verlag, Düsseldorf/Köln 1967 (Orig. 1911) (Freie Kopie im Internet: http://www.zeno.org/Philosophie/M/Liezi+%28Li%C3%A4+Dsi%29/Das+wahre+Buch+vom+quellenden+Urgrund)
- 7.Richard Wilhelm (Übersetzung u. Kommentare): „Liä Dsi. Das wahre Buch vom quellenden Urgrund“, Buch V, Abschnitte 1 u. 2, Eugen Diederichs Verlag, Düsseldorf/Köln 1967 (Orig. 1911) (Freie Kopie im Internet: http://www.zeno.org/Philosophie/M/Liezi+%28Li%C3%A4+Dsi%29/Das+wahre+Buch+vom+quellenden+Urgrund)
- 8.Richard Wilhelm: '„Laotse – Tao Te King“, Abschnitt 47, Eugen Diederichs Verlag, Köln-Düsseldorf 1957.
- 9., Buch I, Abschnitt 1 u. Buch II, Abschnitt 1, in der deutschen Übersetzung von Richard Wilhelm
- 10.„Der höchste Mensch ist Geist.“ Dschuang Dsi, Das wahre Buch vom südlichen Blütenland, Buch II, Abschnitt 8, S. 60, Anaconda Verlag GmbH, Köln, 2011, Originalausgabe im Eugen Diederichs Verlag, Jena, 1912, Übersetzung von Richard Wilhelm (Freie Kopie im Internet: http://www.zeno.org/Philosophie/M/Zhuang+Zi+%28Dschuang+Dsi%29/Das+wahre+Buch+vom+s%C3%BCdlichen+Bl%C3%BCtenland/1.+Esoterisches/Buch+II/8.+Wer+hat+Recht)
References
Citations
References
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authority file
Secondary witnessreference work
Wikidata, structured authority record Q2984064: Lie YukouWikimedia Foundation
Secondary witnessreference work
Secondary witness
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 14 August 2026.
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