Lisa Raphals

The emotion of anger has received overall negative treatment in recent moral philosophy. This article explores the gendered representations of anger in the Lienüzhuan 《列女傳》 of Liu Xiang 劉向 (77–6 BCE). It begins with a brief account of the semantic field of anger and its representation in the Lienüzhuan, focusing on three important patterns. Perhaps most important is the didactic role of anger; and how female teachers use it (or avoid it) in instructing male sons, husbands and rulers. Second is the treatment of women’s distinct strategies for addressing the effects of being the object of the anger of others. The third is the representation of female anger in accounts of female vice. The representations of anger in the LNZ provides an important alternative to views of anger as motivated by the desire for payback and status. The LNZ, like other pre-Qin texts, understands anger very differently, and focuses on other-regarding anger, based on perceptions of wrongdoing and injustice.

This book argues for a divergence in early China between two views of the self. In one view, the heart–mind (xin 心) and spirit (shén 神) are closely aligned and rule the body as a rule rules a state. In the other, the person is tripartite. Mind and spirit are independent, and in some cases body and spirit align in opposition to mind. Chapter 1 surveys the Classical Chinese semantic field for terms for body, mind, spirit, and soul, and the psychological and physical faculties associated with them. Chapter 2 examines the relations of body, heart–mind, and spirit in the Shijing 詩經 (Book of Odes). Chapter 3 uses the Analects, Mencius, and Xunzi to describe a (dominant) mind-centered view in which mind and spirit together rule the body. Chapter 4 draws on the Guanzi, Zhuangzi, and Huainanzi to describe a spirit-centered, tripartite view in which spirit is largely independent of the mind. Chapter 5 describes the interactions of mind, body, and emotions in two texts excavated from Guodian 郭店: “Five Kinds of Action” (Wuxing 五行) and “Human Nature Comes from the Mandate” (Xingzi mingchu性自命出). Chapter 6 examines body, mind, and spirit in medical texts, especially the Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine (Huangdi neijing). It describes the heart (xin) as an organ of the body, but also focuses on the “storage” of psychological faculties such as spirit, intentions (zhi 志), or awareness (yi 意) in other organs.

Chinese philosophy has long recognized the importance of the body and emotions in extensive and diverse self-cultivation traditions. Philosophical debates about the relationship between mind and body are often described in terms of mind-body dualism and its opposite, monism or some kind of "holism." Monist or holist views agree on the unity of mind and body, but with much debate about what kind, whereas mind-body dualists take body and mind to be metaphysically distinct entities. The question is important for several reasons. Several humanistic and scientific disciplines recognize embodiment as an important dimension of the human condition. One version, the problem of mind-body dualism, is central to the history of both philosophy and religion. Some account of relations between body and mind, spirit or soul is also central to any understanding of the self. Recent work in cognitive and neuroscience underscores the importance of our somatic experience for how we think and feel.

This collection illustrates the centrality of skill within ancient ethics, including ancient Chinese ethics, showing how skill or techne has been a touchstone from the beginning of philosophical thought. Covering Socrates' search for expertise in virtue, the Republic's 'craft of justice', Aristotle's delineation of the politike techne and the Stoics' 'art of life'. Divided into four sections on Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics and Chinese ethics, it brings together world-leading philosophers working across this broad topic. Yet it is not limited to traditional figures and traditions, featuring essays on the importance of skill in lesser-known philosophers, such as Carneades and Antipater, and texts, such as the Zhuangzi. In doing so, it illustrates how skill, expertise and 'know how' are important in ethics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of action and cognitive science. This collection of specially-commissioned chapters is the first to foreground skill as central to Ancient and Chinese ethics specifically making it an essential for anyone interested in the value of cross-cultural philosophy today.

This article examines the operation of “skilled feelings” in metaphors for the heart-mind (xin 心) as ruler of the body. It focuses on three Chinese philosophical texts in contexts outside of the “Confucian” texts that have dominated the emerging field of comparative virtue ethics—the Zhuangzi 莊子, Sunzi Bingfa 孫子兵法 (Sunzi’s Art of War), and Huangdi Neijing 黃帝內經 (The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine)—and briefly contrasts the Chinese accounts to influential Greek metaphors of the mind as ruler of the body and passions.

: The semantic fields and root metaphors of "fate" in Classical Greece and pre-Buddhist China are surveyed here. The Chinese material focuses on the Warring States, the Han, and the reinvention of the earlier lexicon in contemporary Chinese terms for such concepts as risk, randomness, and (statistical) chance. The Greek study focuses on Homer, Parmenides, the problem of fate and necessity, Platonic daimons, and the "On Fate" topos in Hellenistic Greece. The study ends with a brief comparative metaphorology of metaphors for the action of fate including command, division or allotment, and wheel or cycles of change