Deeply troubled by the social, political, and intellectual conditions of his time, the Confucian philosopher and teacher Li Yong (1627-1705) was committed to establishing and defending the ‘proper’ content of Confucian philosophy. This study has three separate but interrelated aims: to offer a methodological approach for comparative philosophy on the level of the philosophical system; to examine Confucian philosophy as a philosophical system, with emphasis on its epistemological dimensions; and to use the thought of a particular thinker as an example of how the Confucian tradition was appropriated by individual thinkers. Throughout, the author employs insights from anthropological theory and draws on Western philosophy to illuminate Confucian ideas and assumptions and to provide cross-cultural comparisons and contrasts.