On November 3, the Beijing News sent a message saying that the famous philosopher Li Zehou passed away today at the age of 91. Since then, a large number of memorial reminiscence articles have quickly appeared on major domestic online platforms. As a scholar, it is extremely rare to receive such a high level of attention on new media platforms.
In fact, the first time Li Zehou attracted internet attention was after the death of the martial arts novelist Jin Yong 3 years ago. At that time, he was invited to write a short memorial article for Hong Kong's Ming Pao Monthly, because it said that Jin Yong was "stingy", which made many people think that he was narrow-minded and unkind, and there was no small controversy on the Internet. I believe that most young netizens also learned the name Li Zehou at that time.
An excerpt from Li Zehou's original words in the article is as follows:
"In the early nineties, I went abroad, single-handedly, hit the world with my bare hands, got an American guest seat, although I tried to teach, but it was not stable, when I passed through Hong Kong, he (referring to Jin Yong - the author's note) knew about my situation, so he invited me to his home and gave me six thousand US dollars. Of course, this was a good intention, but I thought to myself, why was I so stingy, and at that time I was receiving three thousand dollars from my cousin in china, and since I had come to visit by appointment, how could I be treated as a beggar for six thousand yuan, so I politely and resolutely refused. He was surprised. After the chat, when I said goodbye, he had been very polite to take me outside the gate of his mountain villa. ”
This made many Jin Yong fans very unhappy, so they frantically accused Li Zehou of not making such a disrespectful remark on the occasion of Jin Yong's death. Some netizens also said that three thousand DOLLARs was equivalent to tens of thousands of yuan at that time, for ordinary people is not a small amount, you Li Zehou is a celebrity can not be, but also can not be grumpy, said that people are "stingy", at that time refused, can, now turn over the old account, a little unkind. At the same time, many scholars came out to defend Li Zehou, saying that he spoke freely and "showed the dashingness of living out his true self." I personally did not participate in the controversy, but privately I thought that since ancient times Chinese stressed "emergency not poverty", Li Zehou should not be "urgent", so Jin Daxia was more restrained, so Li Zehou could "refuse".
In the "aesthetic fever" of the 1980s, Li Zehou was revered as a "spiritual teacher" by young people and was extremely influential in intellectual circles. He is mainly engaged in the history of modern Chinese thought and the study of philosophy and aesthetics, and his representative works include "The History of Modern Chinese Thought", "Aesthetics Collection", "The Course of Beauty", "Criticism of Critical Philosophy" and so on. Among them, the most widely influential is "The Course of Beauty". However, when I was a junior in the early 1980s, the teacher talked about aesthetics, talking about Zhu Guangqian's "Aesthetics", and at that time, Li Zehou's book had not yet been published!
After moving to the United States in the 1990s, although Li Zehou returned to China almost every year, his scope of activities was limited to the academic community and left the public's vision, and if it were not for the controversy caused by his writing articles in tribute to Jin Yong, I am afraid that not many people would know about him.