A Tripartite Self

Mind, Body, and Spirit in Early China
Erscheinungsjahr 2023
ISBN: 978-0-19-763087-7
Verlag: Oxford University Press

Buch, Englisch, 280 Seiten, Format (B × H): 164 mm x 236 mm, Gewicht: 549 g

Chinese philosophy has long recognized the importance of the body and emotions in extensive and diverse self-cultivation traditions. Philosophical debates about the relationship between mind and body are often described in terms of mind-body dualism and its opposite, monism or some kind of "holism." Monist or holist views agree on the unity of mind and body, whereas mind-body dualists take body and mind as essentially different. Debates about mind-body dualism have become important in Chinese and comparative philosophy because of claims that there was no mind-body dualism in early China, in contrast to Western traditions.

This book argues that there was an important divergence in early China between two views of the self. In one, mind and spirit are closely aligned, and are understood to rule the body as a ruler rules a state. But in the other, the person is tripartite, and mind and spirit are independent entities that cannot be reduced to a material-non-material binary. In some cases, body and spirit are even aligned in opposition to mind. A Tripartite Self addresses both philosophical and technical literatures (including evidence from Chinese excavated texts) to broaden a type of inquiry that frequently is applied only to philosophical texts. Lisa Raphals surveys this divergence and argues for the importance of a tripartite model of the person or self in early Chinese texts through the Han dynasty. The book will shed light on not only important contemporary debates of mind-body dualism within Chinese philosophy but also within East-West comparative approaches to understanding the self.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Raphals, Lisa

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Alte Geschichte & Archäologie Geschichte der klassischen Antike
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Nicht-Westliche Philosophie Indische & Asiatische Philosophie
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Geschichte der Westlichen Philosophie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Acknowledgments

- Dedication

- Notes on Conventions, Editions and Transcriptions

- Introduction

- Intersecting Perspectives

- Mind-body and Spirit-Body Dualism

- A Tripartite Self

- Plan of the Book

- 1 Semantic Fields of Body, Mind, and Spirit

- Bodies

- Minds

- Spirit(s)

- 2 Virtue, Body, and Mind in the Shijing

- Bodies in the Shijing

- Xin

- Spirits

- More on Embodied Virtue

- Conclusion

- 3 Mind and Spirit Govern the Body

- Body, Mind, and Spirits in the Analects

- The Mozi

- the Emergence of Internal Spirit in the Guanzi

- Heart-Mind as Ruler in the Mencius

- Xunzi and the Hegemony of the Heart-Mind

- Rulers and Slaves in the Guodian texts

- The Mind Is Called the Center (Xin shi wei zhong)

- Heart-Mind and Spirit in the Huainanzi and Wenzi

- Conclusion

- 4 Body, Mind and Spirit: A Tripartite View

- Yang Zhu's Discovery of the Body

- Mind and spirit in the Guanzi

- The Zhuangzi

- Spirit and Body in the Shiwen

- The Huainanzi

- Conclusion

- 5 Body, Mind and Spirit in the Guodian Manuscripts

- Body, Emotion and Heart-mind in Humans and Animals

- Heart-mind and Body in the Xingzi Mingchu

- Heart-Mind and Body in the Wuxing

- Conclusions

- 6 Body, Mind and Spirit in Early Chinese Medicine

- Mind-Body Dualism and Medical Texts

- Shén and Xin in the Huangdi Neijing

- Conclusion

- 7 Conclusions

- Inner and Outer Reconsidered

- Personal Identity and Persistence

- Embodied Cognition

- 8 Glossary

- 9 Appendices

- Time Lines

- Semantic Fields of Body, Mind, Soul, and Spirit

- The Brain in the Huangdi Neijing

- 10 References

- 11 Index

Über Autor(innen)

Lisa Raphals is Director of the Classics Program and the Program in Comparative Ancient Civilizations at the University of California, Riverside. Her previous books include Divination and Prediction in Early China and Ancient Greece; Sharing the Light: Representations of Women and Virtue in Early China; Knowing Words: Wisdom and Cunning in the Classical Traditions of China and Greece; and, as coeditor with Tom Angier, Skill in Ancient Ethics: The Legacy of China, Greece and Rome.