By reconstructing his lecture activities, I found and discussed the conflicts and debates Li had with other philosophical schools of his times. In so doing, I also discussed the interaction between Li's learning and the philosophical traditions of places where he taught, for example, his difference with the traditions of the Zhu Xi school in Fujian. What emerged is that Li was a strong and unyielding philosopher who was able to give theoretical coherence to his disciples but failed to spread his teachings into established schools of thought. / From the case of Li Cai, this dissertation finds that three elements were common and crucial to the founding of a new philosophical school in middle and late Ming times---a doctrine couched in some terse expressions, expressions deriving from the Great Learning as key terms of the doctrine, and organized lecture activities. The dissertation also argues that it was the fundamental notions of achieving learning by oneself (zide) and transmission of the orthodox Way (daotong) that drove the creation of original arguments and "discussion of learning" activities in the late Ming. Li Cai worked himself to distinction amid this practice of the time by formulating his own doctrine on ethics. His emphasis on "cultivation of the person" is a deliberate counteraction to the "extension of innate knowledge" of Wang Yangming, whose school by Li's time had much indulged in the liberation of the individual to the neglect of social norms. Engaging himself as a teacher, Li Cai also cast himself as a rival to Wang Yangming. He considered his endeavor as an act of transmitting the Way and his doctrine as providing true insights into the teaching of Confucianism. More precisely, he considered his zhixiu doctrine a loyal representation of the teachings of Confucius and his great disciple Zeng Shen. / Li talked about his zhi-xiu doctrine everywhere he went. He advanced this doctrine by means of establishing academies (shuyuan), publishing his own works, organizing discussions and debates, lecturing to large audiences, and engaging in philosophical exchanges through correspondence with his discussants. He engaged himself in activities like these when he was director of a bureau in the minister of War, an assistant surveillance commissioner in Guangdong, and an administrative vice commissioner in charge of military affairs in the southwestern border region of the Ming empire. He lost no enthusiasm in championing his doctrine even when he was an exile in Fujian province for more than ten years. / The study begins with an analysis of the Daxue (Great Learning) , the most important Neo-Confucian classic in late imperial times, which exists in a large number of versions since Northern Song times. I first analyze the most cited versions, identifying especially the differences between Zhu Xi's orthodox version and the so-called Old Text derived from the classic Record of Rites. The latter version gained ascendance from the late fifteenth century when Wang Yangming's school strongly advocated it. / This dissertation studies a well-known, but not yet well studied, statesman and philosopher of the sixteenth century, Li Cai, and his relationship to the building of philosophical schools in the world of Ming Confucianism. It hopes to throw lights on the study of Ming intellectual communities as well as on the general intellectual history of late imperial China. / To distinguish himself from both Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming, Li Cai provided a new version of the Great Learning by rearranging the texts of the Old Text and Zhu Xi's version as well as the text in the Shijing daxue (Stone Classics Great Learning), which is a forgery but acclaimed by many scholars of the time. Li Cai formulated his own philosophical doctrine from this new version and summed it up with the term zhixiu, which stands for the word zhi and the word xiu, respectively, which in turn are abbreviations of the phrases zhi yu zhishan (abiding by the supreme good) and xiushen (cultivation of the person), phrases that denote key notions in the Great Learning. He theorized that zhi refers to the substance and xiu refers to the practice of his doctrine. In actuality, he takes zhi to mean focusing on nourishing the mind and xiu to mean self-examination and watchfulness in the cultivation of the self. / 劉勇. / Adviser: Chu Hung-Lam. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-06, Section: A, page: 2187. / Thesis (doctoral)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 362-389). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in Chinese and English. / School code: 1307. / Liu Yong.