E-Books →A Tripartite Self Mind, Body, and Spirit in Early China

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.