Body and Mind in Early China and Greece

Authors

  • Lisa Raphals University of California, Riverside

Keywords:

China, conceptual metaphor analysis, Greece, metaphors, mind-body dualism, self

Abstract

This article surveys several early Chinese and Greek representations of the self, with particular interest in relations between body and mind. I begin with Edward Slingerland’s application of recent research in conceptual metaphor analysis to early Chinese texts, his arguments on early Chinese root metaphors for self and an important study of mind-body dualism in early China. Next I introduce metaphors of mind and body in texts from technical expertise traditions that Slingerland’s survey does not cover. The last section introduces three apparently comparable sets of early Chinese and Greek metaphors: (1) analogies between mind and body and ruler and subordinates; (2) metaphors of the body as a container in which the mind is somehow contained; and (3) the notion that a person is a set of balances between constituent elements.

Author Biography

  • Lisa Raphals, University of California, Riverside

    Professor (full), Department of Comparative Literature and Foreign Languages, cooperating faculty, Philosophy Department Visiting Professor, Philosophy Department, National University of Singapore

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Published

2017-06-05

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Journal of Cognitive Historiography

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