Mortality in Traditional Chinese Thought

Mortality in Traditional Chinese Thought

Download PDF (195.9 KB)
 

Title Page

Download PDF (69.1 KB)
 

Contents

Download PDF (58.6 KB)
 

Acknowledgments

Download PDF (61.2 KB)
p. ix-ix

A work of this sort is always the product of many hands. The editors would like to acknowledge those who have helped us along the way. Kate Lawn performed an initial copyedit and provided an eye for detail that has served all of us well. Nancy Ellegate, our editor at SUNY Press, provided valuable assistance throughout the process of bringing the book to print...

Introduction

Download PDF (98.7 KB)
pp. 1-12

Death is universal, the common fate of all human beings. Yet while all people die and the mortal condition is a foundational feature of human experience, these mere brute facts can elide the rich variety of responses to death found among individuals and societies. In responses to mortality we can see the complexity and creativity of human beings. The effort to ...

One: Preparation for the Afterlife in Ancient China

Download PDF (266.1 KB)
pp. 13-36

How people imagine life in the hereafter, or even consider whether there is a life after death, necessarily implies a complex mechanism that seeks to balance various fundamental notions regarding the origin and nature of life, the existence of souls and deities, and the structure of the world. The interplay of these notions with the attachment to life on earth, the fear of...

Two: Ascend to Heaven or Stay in the Tomb?: Paintings in Mawangdui Tomb 1 and the Virtual Ritual of Revival in Second-Century B.C.E. China

Download PDF (16.8 MB)
pp. 37-84

Archaeological discoveries constantly fuel historical revisionism. The standard expositions of death culture in ancient China could no longer remain the same after the excavation of the second-century B.C.E. tombs at Mawangdui in the early 1970s. The astounding riches of the well-preserved burial site showcase, with material integrity and visual vivacity, an entire world of...

Three: Concepts of Death and the Afterlife Reflected in Newly Discovered Tomb Objects and Texts from Han China

Download PDF (1.3 MB)
pp. 85-116

Historical studies of death and the afterlife in China agree that the entrance of Buddhism at the end of the Eastern Han (25–220 C.E.) significantly changed the picture of the afterlife in early China. Buddhism’s introduction of the concepts of heavens and hells, as rewards or punishments for earthly conduct, resulted in a shift in Chinese worldviews in the first few centuries...

Four: War, Death, and Ancient Chinese Cosmology: Thinking through the Thickness of Culture

Download PDF (186.1 KB)
pp. 117-136

During the several centuries leading up to the state of Qin’s consolidation of power on the central plains of present-day China, the ferocity and horror of internecine warfare rose exponentially. Indeed, death itself had become a way of life. What, then, did the infantryman on the killing field and his mother think about and feel when they reflected on the former’s...

Five: Death and Dying in the Analects

Download PDF (124.8 KB)
pp. 137-152

Human reactions to death play a prominent, diverse, and complex role in motivating, guiding, and shaping religious and philosophical thought throughout the world’s cultures. Even if we restrict this claim to straightforward cases, wherein the theme of death is explicit, its range is quite impressive. If we include cases where the infl uence is more indirect and...

Six: I Know Not “Seems”: Grief for Parents in the Analects

Download PDF (160.1 KB)
pp. 153-176

Today, in the contemporary western world at least, the death of a child is counted a special sorrow. The parent who loses a child is judged to have been dealt a blow of greater force than that produced by other species of loss. We imagine the grief of the bereft parent to be sorrow at its most severe, and mourning to be correspondingly prolonged. This assessment, however...

Seven: Allotment and Death in Early China

Download PDF (254.2 KB)
pp. 177-190

Different kinds of deaths resonate in different ways. Questions such as “Why did a person die?” often arise when a death is unusual—accidental, earlier than usual, or particularly prolonged or painful. Behind these questions is an implication or expectation that there is a “typical” death: a normal life span and process of dying. A grieving person might ask about divergences...

Eight: Death in the Zhuangzi: Mind, Nature, and the Art of Forgetting

Download PDF (219.3 KB)
pp. 191-224

It is no exaggeration to say that Zhuangzi, the fourth-century B.C.E. Chinese thinker, possessed one of the most distinctive voices of any writer in history and was one of those rare individuals whose radical, provocative vision causes us to reevaluate our most fundamental beliefs and values. Indeed, certain elements of his thought, especially those regarding death, test the limits of...

Nine: Sages, The Past, and the Dead: Death in the Huainanzi

Download PDF (163.0 KB)
pp. 225-248

Early China was a haunted world. Ghosts were pervasive and dangerous, and the living regularly performed sacrifices in an attempt to control or mollify Within this context, the Huainanzi offers a unique and powerful argument concerning death. The focus of the discussion here will be the text’s presentation of sages—how they deal with death and teach nonsages to...

Ten: Linji and William James on Mortality: Two Visions of Pragmatism

Download PDF (153.5 KB)
pp. 249-270

Buddhist teachings have often been interpreted as pragmatic, and there seems to be a prima facie similarity between certain strands of Buddhism and American pragmatism in that both seek to address the world as it is experienced and both advocate a nonfoundationalist philosophy geared toward results. Such similarities make potential cross-cultural fertilization...

Eleven: Death as the Ultimate Concern in the Neo-Confucian Tradition: Wang Yangming’s Followers as an Example

Download PDF (463.7 KB)
pp. 271-296

A prevalent view of Confucianism is that Confucian scholars have paid great attention to the value and signifi cance of life while overlooking the question of death, which has been treated as a very important issue in Buddhism, Daoism, and the Western philosophical tradition. Confucian scholars are widely seen as responding to death by ritualizing living people’s sorrow toward...

Contributors

Download PDF (73.5 KB)
pp. 297-300

Index

Download PDF (330.7 KB)
pp. 301-318