Soul and Body
Edward Slingerland
Mind and Body in Early China February 28, 2019 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190842307.003.0003 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Qualitative Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that traditional archaeological and textual evidence contradicts the strong soul-body holist claim that the early Chinese lacked a qualitative distinction between an immaterial soul and a physical body. The author contends that early Chinese sources distinguish a relatively corporeal body, peripheral to personal identity, from a relatively incorporeal soul linked to ancestor cults and an invisible, numinous world, and that soul-body dualism is ultimately parasitic on basic mind-body dualism. |
Abstract
This chapter presents traditional archaeological and textual evidence against the strong soul-body holist position—that is, the claim that the early Chinese lacked any sense of a qualitative distinction between an immaterial soul and a physical body. This evidence includes afterlife beliefs as gleaned from mortuary practices and textual evidence drawn from both the received corpus and archaeologically recovered texts. The early Chinese appear to have distinguished between a relatively corporeal, physical body and a relatively incorporeal soul (or set of souls). The former was part of a material, visible world and was viewed ultimately as peripheral to the essence of one’s personal identity. The latter was the focus of ancestor cults, sacrifices, and oracles, and partook of an invisible, numinous world, qualitatively distinct from our own. The “specialness” of the next world and the beings that inhabited it lent to them, and to items and practices associated with them, a degree of numinosity that is not at all alien to conceptions of the holy or sacred in Judeo-Christian traditions. The chapter concludes with the argument that soul-body dualism is ultimately parasitic on basic mind-body dualism, which sees mental states or consciousness as somehow qualitatively distinct from the material world of things.