Editor’s Note: This story originally published in 2016.

CNN  — 

Bruce Lee, the martial arts icon, was being interviewed by a Hong Kong talk show host when the man asked Lee if he saw himself as Chinese or an American.

“Neither,” Lee said. “I think of myself as a human being.”

Forty-three years after his sudden death in July of 1973, more people are starting to think of Lee as something else: A profound thinker whose mind was as supple as his body.

That may seem like an odd claim. Lee was a fighter, not a philosopher, according to popular perception. He left behind some of the most exhilarating fight scenes ever captured on film in movies such as “Enter the Dragon” and “The “Chinese Connection.”