Li Zehou

Li Zehou (Chinese: 李泽厚; 13 June 1930 – 2 November 2021) was a Chinese scholar of philosophy and intellectual history. He is considered an influential modern scholar of Chinese history and culture whose work was central to the period known as the Chinese New Enlightenment in the 1980s. Li served as a long-term vice president of the Chinese Society for Aesthetics (1980–1998). His works on aesthetics, such as The Path of Beauty: A Study of Chinese Aesthetics, triggered an "aesthetics fever (美学热)" in mainland China in the 1980s. Soon after the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989, Li was severely criticized by the Chinese authorities for "poisoning a whole young generation" and his works were forbidden for several years. In 1992, he emigrated to the United States and held visiting or chair professorships at numerous universities, including Colorado College, University of Michigan, University of Wisconsin, Swarthmore College, and University of Colorado Boulder.