A confucian perspective on embodiment

Tu Wei-Ming

pp. 87-100

in: Drew Leder (ed), The body in medical thought and practice, Berlin, Springer, 1992

Abstract

In a "Note on Confucian Self-Cultivation," I explored the theme of "embodying the universe" as a defining characteristic of the Chinese world-view [15]. A major difficulty I encountered in approaching the subject was the inadequacy of the conceptual apparatuses in modern Western discourse. They cannot fully convey the Chinese sense of organismic unity and dynamic process, the non-dualistic thinking which a sinologist interprets as "complementary bipolarity and multiple periodicity" ([8], pp. 43–53). We, children of the Enlightenment, seasoned in Cartesian dualism, are ill-equipped to develop a sympathetic understanding of the Chinese world-view in general, and the seminal idea of "embodying the universe" in particular. It is one thing to appropriate some of the "disembodied" notions in Chinese thought to enrich the repertory of modern or postmodern pluralistic thinking, but it is an entirely different matter to understand "embodying the universe" not only as a culturally specific vision, but as a penetrating insight into the body as a central Problematik for philosophical reflection. For Chinese thought, the body is never merely material and mechanical, but an open and flowing system of vital energy.