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Lie Yukou (Chinese:列圄寇/列禦寇;pinyin:Liè Yǔkòu;Wade–Giles:Lieh4 Yü4-k‘ou4;Jyutping:Lit6 Jyu6 Kau3;fl. c. 400 BCE) was a Chinese philosopher who is considered the author of theDaoist bookLiezi, which uses his honorific nameLiezi (Chinese:列子;pinyin:Lièzǐ;Wade–Giles:Lieh4-tzŭ3;lit. 'Master Lie').
Lie Yukou was born in theState of Zheng, near today'sZhengzhou,Henan Province.
There is little historical evidence of Lie Yukou as aHundred Schools of Thought philosopher during theWarring States period. This could be due to theburning of books and burying of scholars which occurred during the reign ofQin Shi Huang. However, some scholars believe that theZhuangzi invented him as a Daoist exemplar.Frederic H. Balfour, who translated several Taoist texts, called Liezi "a philosopher who never lived" (1887:?)Lionel Giles expresses doubt in his Introduction:
Very little is known of our author beyond what he tells us himself. His full name was Lieh Yü-k'ou, and it appears that he was living in theChêng State not long before the year 398 BC, when the Prime Minister Tzu Yang was killed in a revolution. He figures prominently in the pages ofChuang Tzu, from whom we learn that he could 'ride upon the wind'. On the insufficient ground that he is not mentioned by the historianSsu-ma Ch'ien, a certain critic of theSung dynasty was led to declare that Lieh Tzu was only a fictitious personage invented by Chuang Tzu, and that the treatise which passes under his name was a forgery of later times. This theory is rejected by the compilers of the greatCatalogue ofCh‘ien Lung's Library, who represent the cream of Chinese scholarship in the eighteenth century.
In the above quote Mr. Lionel Giles may have been refuting his fatherHerbert Allen Giles, who wrote of Lie Yukou or Lieh-Tzu in his translation of Chuang Tzu. Here is his quote which runs as follows:
The extent of the actual mischief done by this " Burning of the Books " has been greatly exaggerated. Still, the mere attempt at such a holocaust gave a fine chance to the scholars of the laterHan dynasty (A.D. 25-221), who seem to have enjoyed nothing so much as forging, if not the whole, at any rate portions, of the works of ancient authors. Some one even produced a treatise under the name of Lieh Tzu, a philosopher mentioned by Chuang Tzu, not seeing that the individual in question was a creation of Chuang Tzu's brain!
