2. Literature Review
2.1. The Concept of Body
2.1.2. Body Concepts in Eastern Philosophy
國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
outer appearance. Taiwanese society is in the midst of an individualization process, so the concept of shaping one’s body is becoming more represented in young Taiwanese attitudes.
Traditional Taiwanese perception of body has been for long shaped by Confucian values, however, which still play a role today but slowly seem to be replaced with new concepts.
2.1.2. Body Concepts in Eastern Philosophy
Until this day, there’s been a strong ‘neo-Orientalist’ notion amongst Western philosophers and scientists when it comes to Chinese thought. The ‘Chinese’ thought, that is primarily represented by the thoughts of Confucianism and Daoism, which have strongly influenced East-Asian societies until today, is continuously portrayed as “radically different”
from Western thought (Slingerland, 2013:6). This finds special argumentation in the aspect that early Chinese hold a ‘holistic’ position, that lacked any concept of mind-body dualism as we know it from the Cartesian concept mentioned in the chapter before. The notion that ‘Western’
thought is dualistic in nature and ‘Chinese’ thought can be contrasted as profoundly holistic is an “almost universally accepted truism” and can be traced back to the earliest reception of Chinese thought in Europe, where second-hand accounts of Confucian thought written by Jesuit priests caused thinkers such as Leibniz and Voltaire to see Chinese mind-body holism (Slingerland, 2013:6).
Strong views on this holism are also common in contemporary Chinese scholarship. Zhang Zailin, for instance, observes that there is no dichotomy of mind and physical body in early Chinese thought (Zhang, 2008). Slingerland (2013), however, believes that Chinese thought is, in fact, characterized by an at least “weak” mind-body dualism that is particularly found in texts about death and the human spirit freeing itself from the physical body (Slingerland:8-14).
The myth that early Chinese focus on a mind-body holism is primarily due to the character xin 心, usually translated as ‘heart’, ‘heart-mind’ or ‘mind’ (Slingerland, 2013:8). Xin “can refer to the physical organ itself, or, more abstractly, to a locus of both the sort of higher cognition typically associated with mind in Western cultures and emotions or feelings, which tend to be associated more with body” (Slingerland, 2013:15). Xin is in fact the only organ to be singled out and contrasted with the body as a whole. The qualitative “otherness” of the xin typically passes unnoticed in literature, precisely because of the shared innate dualism (Slingerland, 2013:16). The xin’s authority to rule is not at random: it is the ruler of the self because it
‧
possesses special, qualitative unique powers and alone the xin is able to think, reflect, and make free decisions (Slingerland, 2013).
One influential thinker of comparative studies of East-West philosophy is Yuasa Yasuo, who argues that in the East-Asian concept of the body based on the classical Chinese medicine, there is a ‘mind-body synthesis’ in contrast to the ‘mind-body dualism’ of the West (Brownwell, 2009:32). Yuasa describes a ‘third term’, the qi 氣 ‘vital energy’, that mediates between the psychological and physiological, or mind (心 xin) and body (形 xing/身 shen), that is like an
‘all-purpose essence’ (Yuasa, 1993:137). It is hard to find a Western equivalent of this term, that describes a kind of energy or force that flows freely in and gives life to a person. Qi is responsible for the operation of the senses; it is supposed to make speech in the mouth and sight in the eyes, it can grow “when the mouth takes in tastes and the ear takes in sounds” (Shun and Wong, 2004:185). Qi is linked to the emotions and balances a person’s physical and psychological well-being.
Yang Ru Bin 楊儒賓 (1996) notes in his Ruijiade shentiguan 儒家身體觀 (‘The Confucian Concept of the Body’) that Confucian thought constructs the body as a three parted division into form (xing), qi, and spirit/mind (shen/xin). He also notes that Confucian thought assumed an integral connection between the body and society, body and nature, body and mind, interior and exterior, and that there was continuous motion between the poles (Yang, 1996, quoted in Brownwell, 2009:32). So unlike the static dualistic approach that separates mind and body, here we understand that everything is connected and all earthy things are in direct correlation with each other. Our body form is conjoined with our mind and constitutes the manifestation of our inner vigour that runs through our veins – it is a whole cosmos in itself that interacts with its outer world.
As we can see, Chinese literati have taken quite a different approach to the body, which is also reflected in the language. Chinese has several words that may be translated into English as
‘body’: the three most common characters, some that have been mentioned above already, are
shen 身, ti 體 and xing 形.
Sun Lung-kee 孫隆基 notes that in thinking about themselves and their relationships with other people, Chinese people use the word shen rather than concepts like ‘personality’ or ‘individual’
(Sun, 1983, quoted in Brownwell). Mark Elvin translates shen as ‘body-person’ as it implies a lived body, a life history (Elvin, 1989 quoted in Brownwell, 2009:35). It is the shen body that
‧
is self-aware, capable of inner reflection and cultivation and is the socially constructed self that is marked by signs of status (Sommer, 2010). The shen is the site where personal values and moral autonomy are constructed (Sommer, 2010). “To reflect on my shen three times a day”
is to reflect on the person with regard to its intentions and actual behaviours (Zengzi, Analects cited in Cheng, 2004:130).
Xing, which literally means ‘shape’, is mostly referred to the body’s outline rather than to its
physical identity. It may thus be considered as “the only term for the body that has nothing to do with the person seen whole” (Sivin, 1995:14). Having xing prevents one from being formless in the cosmos, but having a shen body places one in more specific relationships with other human shen bodies (Sommer, 2010).Ti is the character that is used in the words for ‘physique’ (tizhi 體制, xingti 形體, tixing 體形, tipo 體魄) and is also referred to the different parts of the body, such as the four limbs and the
senses (Shun and Wong, 2004:184). Its primary sense is that of an individual unit or a closed system. However, the inanimate body is also the vessel for lived experience, indicated by the phrases tihui 體會, ‘to know from experience’, and tiyan 體驗 ‘to learn through personal experience’ (Brownwell, 2009:35). Ti bodies differ from xing forms as ti bodies are understood in terms of the relationship between whole and part; xing are more commonly understood in terms of the relationships between inner and outer, subtle and manifest, or depth and surface (Sommer, 2010). Ti bodies are “wholeness that can be dividied from within”, whereas xing forms are “templates that can be shaped from without” (Sommer, 2010:301). A ti can be one person, one family, and one body politic of an entire state. In the broadest sense, ti is a“wholeness that can encompass life and death and heaven and earth, and it is a corpus of such scale that can incorporate all under heaven” (Sommer, 2010:324).
In Zhongguo wenhuade shenceng jiegou 中國文化的深層結構 (‘The Deep Structure of Chinese Culture’), Sun Lung-kee (1983) argues that Chinese people grow up in a condition of dependence within a network of social obligations, especially among them being the hierarchical family. The older generation is overly concerned for the physical well-being of the younger generation (Sun, 1983 quoted in Brownwell, 2009). In Confucianism the body is something that one has been given by the parents. In the Classics of Filial Piety it says: 身體 髮膚，受之父母，不敢毀傷，孝之始也. (“Since we receive our bodies, flesh, hair, and bones from our parents, allowing no harm to come to our persons is the beginning of filial
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
piety”) (Yun, 1977:59). This means that our bodies are not our own, as they have been passed on to us from our parents and it is our responsibility to preserve this body and keep it free from harm, so that it can be passed on as a healthy body to one’s descendants. This notion goes in hands with the Annals of Master Lü who states that parents and children are actually one body in two parts, or yi ti liang fen 一體兩分:
“[The relationship between] father and mother and their child, and between the child and it’s father and mother, is that of one body in two parts, of a common qi in two breaths. They are like grasses and plants from the same flowers and fruit, like trees from the same rootstock (lit., “root mind,” gen xin 根心). They may be in different places, but they communicate with one another; they may have unseen intentions, but they are known to one another; one may be sick or in pain, and the other will try to help them;
one may be worried or anxious, and the other will sense it; when one is alive and flourishing, the other is happy; when one dies, the other is sad. Such is what it means to have the close intimacy of bone and flesh” (Knoblock and Riegel, 2001 cited in Sommer, 2010:310).
As we will see in the later part of the research, this notion of the body being something that we have been given and that should be respected and not be harmed is still very persistent in Taiwanese society. In Western societies the idea that the body is something that belongs to oneself and can be freely “designed” as one pleases is more dominantly represented but can be increasingly heard from Taiwanese voices, as well.
Having explored Eastern and Western body concepts in general, I would now like to continue the discussion on the main topic of my research, which is how and why bodies are being modified, purposefully changed without and within. In what way these two discussed concepts play a role in Taiwanese contemporary society, will be explored in the results section.