This word has two pronunciations, one is Ku and the other is lǐ. They also have different meanings. Ku: It means to laugh and be humorous. For example, "The palace killed Mu Gong" means to satirize Mu Gong in a humorous way. Lǐ means sad, for example, "How can a cloud be sad?" In other words, how can the cloud be so sad? The radical of this word is "Yu", next to the word "heart", indicating that it is related to mood and emotion.
In Shuo Wen Jie Zi, Mao is interpreted as Zhao Ye. From the heart, in the voice. "It means to laugh. Li Kui (455 BC-395 BC) was a statesman and jurist of Wei State in the Warring States Period (now Yuncheng area in the south of Shanxi Province), an important representative of legalism, and a minister from Wei Wenhou to Wuhou.
He was born in the Li family, and there are two versions of his name, one is Ji and the other is Ke. When he was young, he studied under Xia Zi's disciple Zeng Shen, and later served as Guo Xiang and guarding city in Zhongshan State and Wei State. He is good at fighting and has fought Qin many times. Huan Tan called him Wei Wenhou's mentor. Later, he gained the trust and reuse of Wei Wenhou and started the famous political reform movement in history-Li Kui Reform.
(Li Kui Reform)
Li Kui's political reform mainly involves politics, economy and law. On the political front, Li Kui advocated abolishing hereditary aristocratic privileges, appointing people according to their abilities and strictly rewarding and punishing them.
He put forward the famous saying that "if you eat hard, you will get credit, and if you have the ability, you will be rewarded and punished". On the economic front, Li Kui mainly adopts the methods of "doing our best" and "peace". Giving full play to soil fertility is to distribute farmers' cultivated land evenly and encourage farmers to work hard to increase production. Grain-leveling law means that the state buys stored grain at a fair price in a good year and sells it to farmers at a fair price in a bad year to prevent food price fluctuations. In terms of law, Li Kui compiled the first relatively complete code in ancient China-Jurisprudence.
The Classic of Law is divided into six parts: theft law, thief law, net law, arrest law, miscellaneous law and equipment law, which mainly expounds how to maintain public order, arrest thieves, prevent people from rebelling and sentence criminals. Unfortunately, this code has been lost, and we can only understand its content and characteristics through some remaining materials.
Among them, there are two most important materials, one is New Theory written by Huan Tan in the Western Han Dynasty, and the other is Jin Shu Xing Zhi in the Eastern Jin Dynasty. These two materials briefly introduce the six contents of the Classic of Law, which gives us a general understanding of the structure and theme of the Classic of Law.
However, the new theory has also been lost, and only one record about the Fa Jing was included in Dong Shuo's Seven National Examinations in the Ming Dynasty, which is an important basis for our study of the Fa Jing.
In the Qing Dynasty, Ma Guohan compiled a Canon of Law in Han Yushan's Book Collection, but it was mixed with some contents unrelated to the law, such as Buddha statues and Buddha statues, which obviously misquoted the contents of other books and could not be used as a reliable reference.
Li Kui's political reform strengthened Wei's national strength and became one of the great powers in the early Warring States period. His thoughts and techniques also had a far-reaching impact on later legalists such as Shang Yang and Han Fei. He is regarded as one of the founders of Legalism. Unfortunately, Li Kui eventually killed innocent people because of misjudgment, so he chose to write a suicide note to commit suicide.