Liezi c. 450 BC – c. 375 BC

Liezi, also known as Lie Yukou, was a Chinese Taoist philosopher of the fifth century BC, traditionally regarded as one of the three foundational thinkers of philosophical Taoism alongside Lao Tzu and Zhuangzi. The text that bears his name, the Liezi, is a collection of Taoist parables, anecdotes, and short philosophical dialogues, surviving in a redaction probably compiled in the third or fourth century AD. The text develops Taoist themes of spontaneity, the limits of knowledge, the relativity of moral and conventional categories, and the cultivation of stillness. The historicity of Liezi as an individual figure is debated; modern scholars treat him as either a partly legendary figure or as a composite name for a school of Taoist thought. His influence on later Chinese philosophy, religion, and literature has been substantial.

Liezi — Lie Yukou — is a semi-legendary figure of early Chinese Daoism traditionally placed in the late Spring and Autumn or early Warring States period, around 450 to 375 BC. He is mentioned in the Zhuangzi, the Lushi Chunqiu, and the Huainanzi as a master who could ride the wind, and the historical reality behind these stories is impossible to disentangle from later Daoist hagiography.

The book that bears his name, the Liezi (or Liehzi), is one of the Three Classics of philosophical Daoism alongside the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi. The received text in eight chapters was compiled around the third or fourth century AD from older materials, some evidently going back to the Warring States, others reflecting Buddhist and Han-era influences. The 'Yang Zhu' chapter preserves the views of the radical egoist Yang Zhu and stands somewhat apart from the rest.

The Liezi is celebrated for its parables on the relativity of values, its skeptical reflections on perception and dreaming, its explorations of fate and effortless action, and its meditations on death. It exerted lasting influence on later Daoism, on Chan Buddhist literature, and on Chinese poetic and aesthetic sensibility, and it remains one of the most readable classical Chinese philosophical texts.