Obituary | Star of 1980s ‘Chinese enlightenment’ dies in the US at 91
- Li Zehou passed away at home in Colorado on Wednesday
- Noted philosopher famous for ‘The Path of Beauty’ was purged over support for Tiananmen movement but remained highly regarded in his home country
Li Zehou, one of China’s most influential contemporary philosophers and a leading scholar of the “Chinese enlightenment”, died on Wednesday in the United States, his adoptive country for nearly 30 years. He was 91.
He set up home in the city of Boulder, Colorado, and taught at a number of US universities, including Colorado College and the University of Michigan.
For over four decades, Li had been China’s most prominent theorist, with prolific work spanning aesthetics, epistemology, ethics and anthropology.
He gained fame as the leading scholar of the “Chinese enlightenment” of the 1980s, a stalwart of the “aesthetics fever” that gripped a nation still reeling from the chaos of the Cultural Revolution.
Li’s books on aesthetics were widely read among Chinese university students eager for something other than political slogans as food for thought.