James D. SELLMANN
Yang Zhu is believed to have been a hermit philosopher who advocated the importance of self-esteem and self-protection. Because his teachings countered the common call for self-sacrifice, his ideas were misrepresented and criticized by others, especially the Confucian scholar, Mencius.
Discerning who Yang Zhu was or what his philosophy advocated is difficult because no documents that he authored have survived. Scholars date Yang Zhu’s life based on a passage in the
