Li (Confucianism)

Li
Li
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese	禮
Simplified Chinese	礼
Hanyu Pinyin
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu Pinyin	lǐ
Wade–Giles	li3
IPA	[lì]
Yue: Cantonese
Yale Romanization	láih
Jyutping	lai5
IPA	[lɐj˩˧]
Southern Min
Tâi-lô	lè
Middle Chinese
Middle Chinese	leiX
Old Chinese
Baxter–Sagart (2014)	*[r]ˤijʔ
Vietnamese name
Vietnamese	lễ
Chữ Hán	禮
Korean name
Hangul	예
Hanja	禮
Revised Romanization
Transcriptions
Revised Romanization	Ye
Japanese name
Kanji	礼
Romanization
Transcriptions
Romanization	rei

In traditional Confucian philosophy, li is an ethical concept broadly translatable as 'rite'. According to Wing-tsit Chan, li originally referred to religious sacrifices, but has come to mean 'ritual' in a broad sense, with possible translations including 'ceremony', 'ritual', 'decorum', 'propriety', and 'good form'. Chan notes that li has "even been equated with natural law."^[1] In Chinese cosmology, li refers to rites through which human agency participates in the larger order of the universe. One of the most common definitions of 'rite' is a performance transforming the invisible into the visible: through the performance of rites at appropriate occasions, humans make the underlying order visible. Correct ritual practice focuses and orders the social world in correspondence with the terrestrial and celestial worlds, keeping all three in harmony.

Throughout the Sinosphere, li was thought of as the abstract force that made government possible—along with the Mandate of Heaven it metaphysically combined with—and it ensured "worldly authority" would bestow itself onto competent rulers.^[2] The effect of ritual has been described as "centering", and was among the duties of the emperor, who was called the 'Son of Heaven'. However, rites were performed by all those involved in the affairs of state. Rites also involve ancestral and life-cycle dimensions. Daoists who conducted the rites of local gods as a centering of the forces of exemplary history, of liturgical service, of the correct conduct of human relations, and of the arts of divination such as the earliest of all Chinese classics—the I Ching—joining textual learning to bodily practices for harmonization of exogenous and endogenous origins of energy qi for a longer healthier life.^[3]

^ Chan, Wing-tsit (1963). A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy. Princeton University Press. pp. 790.
^ A Handbook of Korea (9th ed.). Seoul: Korean Culture and Information Service. December 1993. p. 270. ISBN 978-1-56591-022-5.
^ Feuchtwang, Stephan (2016). Religions in the Modern World: Traditions and Transformations. New York: Routledge. p. 151. ISBN 9780415858816.

[1] Chan, Wing-tsit (1963). A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy. Princeton University Press. pp. 790.

[:19-2] A Handbook of Korea (9th ed.). Seoul: Korean Culture and Information Service. December 1993. p. 270. ISBN 978-1-56591-022-5.

[3] Feuchtwang, Stephan (2016). Religions in the Modern World: Traditions and Transformations. New York: Routledge. p. 151. ISBN 9780415858816.

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