李贄是晚明毀譽兩極的思想家。歷來皆視其為反傳統之代表，但回顧晚明其時，推崇者卻盛讚其學術為「孔孟心傳」。此截然兩端之評價，實值得詳加探究。李贄「為下下人說法」之主張，對比傳統儒學之「唯士為能」，可說即二者之重要差異所在；然而，若就儒者「人皆可以為堯舜」的核心價值來看，則李贄正視「下下人」之用心，無疑是繼王陽明之「成色分兩」說後，對儒者聖人之學如何進一步落實之思考。雖然，客觀而言，李贄學術破多於立，在實踐中不免有其流弊；然而，究其學術之宗旨所在，在儒學發展上實有積極之意義，應予以肯定。

Li Zhi (李贄) was a celebrated thinker in the Late-Ming Dynasty. He was considered an iconoclast and anti-traditionalism throughout the history. Therefore, the majority scholars neglected that Li Zhi claimed himself to be a ”true Confucian”. If we inspect carefully Li Zhi's theory, then we can discover that his theory succeeded to Wang Yang-ming's philosophy of mind. He believed that everyone could be the ancient saintly king, and he was concerned about the featureless multitudes specially. For this reason, his theory was very different to compare with traditional Confucianism. The traditional Confucianism was certainly to belong to intellectual. But Li Zhi evidently have the intent to originate the popular philosophy of Confucianism. This study re-observes Li Zhi's theory and re- examines its meaning. And we are of the opinion that the popular philosophy of Confucianism of Li Zhi may be called Wang Yang-ming's philosophy of mind to go a step further. Notwithstanding Li Zhi's theory still existed shortcomings, but it had the constructive significance to expand on Confucianism.