Li Zhi’s Relativism and Skepticism in the Multicultural Late Ming

This paper investigates the skeptical and relativistic strategies evident in the writings of the late Ming thinker Li Zhi (李贄; 1527-1602). I argue that although skepticism and relativism are discrete if not incompatible philosophical positions, Li employs both to combat what he perceives as the entrenched dogmatism of his contemporaries. Li’s skepticism and relativism stem largely from his close encounters with a wide range of cultural “others” including the tribal peoples of Yunnan over whom he governed, Muslims in his own family, international merchants, and the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci. For Li, whose own family background and life experience was in so many ways multicultural, the plurality and irreconcilability of these various worldviews produced a leveling or nullifying effect: each particular dogma cancelled out the others until no proposition was exempt from relativistic scrutiny and skeptical doubt.