Hán Yù 韓愈 (768–824)
Zì Tuìzhī 退之; native of Nányáng 南陽 (some sources Héyáng 河陽 or Chánglí 昌黎; he himself styled his lineage Chánglí 昌黎, hence Hán Chānglí). Posthumously Wén 文 — Hán Wéngōng 韓文公.
The pre-eminent Táng prose stylist and the founding figure of the gǔwén 古文 movement; a leading early figure of the late-Táng Confucian revival, identified by Wilkinson (§28.7.3) — alongside Lǐ Áo 李翱 and Liǔ Zōngyuán 柳宗元 — as one of the intellectual sources of Sòng Neo-Confucianism. Jìnshì of Zhēnyuán 8 (792). His career as a court official was repeatedly disrupted by the political events of mid-Táng: most famously, his memorial against Xiànzōng’s reception of a Buddha-relic (819) earned him exile to Cháozhōu 潮州 in Guǎngdōng. His final office was lǐbù shìláng 吏部侍郎; he died in office in 824.
Surviving works in Kanripo include the Lúnyǔ bǐjiě 論語筆解 (KR1h0008), the Hán Chānglí jí 韓昌黎集 (KR4d0001 in Kanripo), and many smaller pieces. The principal Confucian works conventionally attributed to him are the Yuándào 原道 (“On the Origin of the Way”) and Yuánxìng 原性 (“On the Origin of Human Nature”) — landmark essays that articulated a Confucian dàotǒng 道統 (transmission of the Way) running from Yáo and Shùn through the Duke of Zhōu and Confucius to Mèngzǐ, and emphatically excluded Buddhism and Daoism. This essay-genealogy was later picked up and elaborated by the Sòng Lǐxué school (especially Zhū Xī).
In the Lúnyǔ bǐjiě — composed in dialogue with 李翱 (Lǐ Áo, his disciple) — Hán Yù offers a series of short critical readings of selected Lúnyǔ passages, often departing sharply from Hé Yàn’s jíjiě and pre-empting Sòng Neo-Confucian yìlǐ 義理 readings. The Sìkù tíyào (preserved at KR1h0008) treats it as a posthumous collection of marginal notes by Hán and Lǐ, gathered after Hán’s death from his draft Lúnyǔ commentary.
(Birth/death conventionally 768–824; CBDB gives 768–825 — the discrepancy concerns the precise interpretation of his death-month in the Chánghé 長慶 / Bǎolì 寶歷 transition. Standard scholarship follows 824.)