Liè Yùkòu 列禦寇 (better known as Lièzǐ 列子) is the semi-legendary Warring-States-period philosopher, traditionally a native of Zhèng 鄭 who “dwelt at Zhèng Pǔ for forty years and no one recognised him” (Lièzǐ 1.1). He is named repeatedly in the Zhuāngzǐ 莊子 (chs. 1, 7, 14, 18, 21, 28, 32) where his practice of “riding the wind” (yù fēng ér xíng 御風而行) is held up as a stage of attainment superior to common worldly mastery but inferior to the supreme zhēnrén 真人 who “rides the transformations of the six qì” without reliance on the wind. In Táng official canonisation (742) he was elevated to Chōngxū zhēnrén 沖虛真人 (Perfected of the Void-and-Emptiness), and his book was styled Chōngxū zhēn jīng 沖虛真經 (from 1007 Chōngxū zhìdé zhēn jīng 沖虛至德真經). Historical lifedates cannot be established; the traditional placement is in the mid- to late 5th century BCE, but this rests on indirect evidence only.
A. C. Graham’s classical philological work (“The Date and Composition of the Liehtzyy,” Asia Major NS 8 [1961]: 139–98; The Book of Lieh-tzu [London: John Murray, 1960]) has shown that the received Lièzǐ is a 4th-century-CE forgery, probably composed by the grandfather or father of Zhāng Zhàn 張湛 (fl. 370), who produced the first commentary on it. The text matches the description of a Lièzǐ in eight piān preserved in Liú Xiàng’s 劉向 (c. 77–6 BCE) Hàn shū yìwén zhì 漢書藝文志 30.1730 but is not the same text as the Hàn original (which was lost early). The historical Liè Yùkòu may have composed an Eastern-Zhōu work that Liú Xiàng catalogued, but this is lost; the received Lièzǐ is early-medieval.
For works in the Kanripo corpus attributed to Liè Yùkòu, see KR5c0049 (Chōngxū zhìdé zhēn jīng, received text c. 4th cent. CE, pseudepigraphic).