Full Description
A wide-ranging exploration of traditional Chinese views of mortality.
Mortality in Traditional China is the definitive exploration of a complex and fascinating but little-understood subject. Arguably, death as a concept has not been nearly as central a preoccupation in Chinese culture as it has been in the West. However, even in a society that seems to understand death as a part of life, responses to mortality are revealing and indicate much about what is valued and what is feared. This edited volume fills the lacuna on this subject, presenting an array of philosophical, artistic, historical, and religious perspectives on death during a variety of historical periods. Contributors look at material culture, including findings now available from the Mawangdui tomb excavations; consider death in Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist traditions; and discuss death and the history and philosophy of war.
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
INTRODUCTION
1. Preparation for the Afterlife in Ancient China
Mu-chou Poo
2. 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
Eugene Yuejin Wang
3. Concepts of Death and the Afterlife Refl ected in Newly Discovered Tomb Objects and Texts from Han China
Jue Guo
4. War, Death, and Ancient Chinese Cosmology: Thinking through the Thickness of Culture
Roger T. Ames
5. Death and Dying in the Analects
Philip J. Ivanhoe
6. I Know Not "Seems": Grief for Parents in the Analects
Amy Olberding
7. Allotment and Death in Early China
Mark Csikszentmihalyi
8. Death in the Zhuangzi: Mind, Nature, and the Art of Forgetting
Mark Berkson
9. Sages, the Past, and the Dead: Death in the Huainanzi
Michael Puett
10. Linji and William James on Mortality: Two Visions of Pragmatism
Tao Jiang
11. Death as the Ultimate Concern in Neo-Confucian Tradition: Wang Yangming's Followers as an Example
Guoxiang Peng
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
INDEX
