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Nafs ( نفس )

Conceptual Definition

In pre-Islamic Arabic poetry, Nafs was used to refer to a self or person, derived from the root n-f-s whose basic verbs are: nafusa, “to value, deem precious,” and nafisa, “to crave, desire, hoard.” The word nafas, meaning “breath,” is also from the same root. In the Qur’an, the word “nafs” appears 295 times and is used in a manner similar to the English “soul,” “psyche,” “ego,” or “self” and is used as a reflexive pronoun (e.g. “myself,” “herself,” “ourselves,” “yourself,” “itself” etc.). For example:

O you who believe! You have charge of your own souls/selves (5:105)

O humankind! Revere your Lord, Who created you from a single soul and from it created its mate, and from the two has spread abroad a multitude of men and women…

(4:1)

They said, “Lord, we have wronged ourselves, and if you do not forgive us, and have mercy upon us, we shall surely be among the lost.” (7:23)

Upon the earth are signs for those possessing certainty, and within your souls/selves, do you not see? (51:20-21)

By the soul and the One Who fashioned it

and inspired it as to what makes it iniquitous or reverent

Indeed, he prospers who purifies it

And indeed he fails who obscures it (91:7-10)

The Qur’an describes the nafs as participating in various experiential, appetitive, affective, and intellectual functions, and is generally understood to persist after the experience of death, which separates it from its body. “Nafs” is also used as a marker of identity, e.g. “nafs al-shay’” means “the self-same thing” and “nafs al-amr” refers to “things as they are in themselves.” A polysemic term, in its various uses in later Islamic traditions, it is typically defined in reference to the body (jism) and spirit (rūḥ), and debates over its origin (physical or spiritual, temporal or non-temporal), nature (material or immaterial or in-between), persistence and transformation after death (individually, collectively, or not at all), and the possibility of reincarnation and metempsychosis have continued down to the present day.

Philosophical Significance

As in ancient philosophy, the disciplines of Islamic philosophy (falsafa) and Sufism (taṣawwuf) both present themselves as methods of purifying and perfecting the nafs, and many prominent traditions of both describe themselves as being founded upon self-knowledge. A standard definition of the goal of the discipline of Islamic philosophy is “the perfection of the soul (nafs) by gaining the knowledge of the reality of things as they are through investigation and proofs, not through opinion and imitation.” Although its authenticity is contested, the hadith (saying of the Prophet) “he who knows himself (nafsafu), knows his Lord” is frequently quoted in Sufi literature to underscore the centrality of self-knowledge to the tradition.

Early Islamic theologians (mutakallimūn) and some Sufis held the nafs to be a kind of corporeal substance that suffuses the sensible body like sap in a tree or water in a flower. In this perspective, the nafs is the moral agent, controlling the body, and experiencing felicity or torment after death and resurrection (in which it is given a new body) depending on its actions and God’s will. As such, the nafs is the object of ethics and that in which the various human faculties of awareness, cognition, deliberation, memory, will, etc. inhere. The prominent Ash‘arī school of Islamic theology (kalām) generally argued for a kind of occasionalism in which that the nafs was a substance whose accidents were perpetually recreated at every moment by God. The continuity of the self was thus due to the continuity of the substance in which these different accidents inhered. However, later theologians, such as al-Ghazālī (d. 1111), were more influenced by the philosophical psychology of Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna) (d. 1037) and that of the Sufi tradition.

In most traditions of Islamic philosophy (falsafa), the nafs was generally held to be an incorporeal, eternal, spiritual, self-subsistent substance. Ibn Sīnā’s famous “flying man” thought experiment, which posits a person created floating in mid-air in a state of total sensory deprivation with no memory would still have self-awareness, thus separating knowledge of one’s self from knowledge of one’s body, indicating the distinction between the nafs and the body. Ibn Sīnā held that this self-awareness is an ever-present characteristic of the nafs, even in sleep, and is a kind of background foundation for all psychological (mental and sensory) activity. Nafs was the term used to translate the various forms and levels of the Aristotelian/Neoplatonic psyche ranging from the vegetative soul to the rational soul (al-nafs al-nāṭiqa), which characterizes human beings and is the aspect of the soul that survives the destruction of the body. An interesting corollary of this position is that some Islamic philosophers held that those who had not sufficiently cultivated this intellect or rational soul, bringing it from potentiality into actuality, would have no afterlife.

Sufi doctrines also posited a hierarchy of levels of the soul (marātib al-nafs) based on Qur’anic terminology, such as this common schema:

1) The “soul that incites to evil” (12:53). The level of soul that drives one to fulfill appetites without regard to morality or consequence

2) The “blaming soul” (75:2). The level of the soul that reproaches one for having done wrong

3) The “inspired soul” (91:8). The level at which the soul becomes open to inspiration and discernment between good and evil

4) The “serene soul” (89:27). The level at which the soul becomes serene and tranquil through its knowledge and experience that all the occurs comes from God.

5) The “contented soul” (89:28). The level of the soul that is pleased with all of God’s decrees-everything that happens to it.

6) The “contenting soul” (89:28). The level of the soul that is pleasing to God, even as it is pleased with God.

7) The “perfect” or “pure” soul. The level of the soul that is likened to a perfectly-polished mirror, reflecting all the Divine Names and Attributes, and is as pure as possible, being transparent before the Divine Reality.

These different levels of soul are described as being present in potentia in everyone, but are only actualized through spiritual exercises leading to the purification of the soul. Related doctrines described different levels of subtle “spiritual bodies,” in which the nafs was one particular level/body (the psycho-sensory-affective) or a name for the totality of spiritual “bodies” comprising the human being. Often in Sufi literature, the term nafs is used to refer to these lower levels of consciousness and selfish desire which must be overcome, purified, or even annihilated in order to reach God. In this sense, the nafs is typically described as the veil that separates one from God. Hoewever, in all of these schemas, as the knowing subject, the soul’s purification and health was deemed essential for proper cognition, particularly of metaphysical/spiritual matters.

This perspective uniting epistemology and ethics was broadly shared by the Islamic philosophical tradition, which described the purification of the soul in terms of its tajrīd (separation/liberation) from the body and the world of matter through spiritual exercises, ascesis, discipline, and contemplation of the non-corporeal realm and its realities. As Islamicist and contemporary Islamic Philosopher, Seyyed Hossein Nasr writes, this perspective constitutes a “universal Islamic principle stated in so many ḥadīths that gaining theoretical knowledge and a purification of the soul have to be combined in order for ‘science’ or ‘ilm to become rooted in the soul, transform its substance and embellish it in such a way that it will be worthy of eternal life in the Divine Presence.”

The prominent tradition of philosophical Sufism, particularly that inaugurated by Ibn al-‘Arabī (d. 1240)and his commentators, developed a doctrine known as “the Breath of the All-Merciful” (nafas al-Raḥmān) in which the nafs and everything else in creation is perpetually returned to God and manifested into existence at every instant, “with every breath,” in the poetic terminology of a hadith. The influential mystical philosopher, Mulla Sadra (d. 1636) made this doctrine the basis of his theory of substantial motion (al-ḥarakat al-jawhariyya) in which all substances, but especially the substance of the human soul (nafs) is constantly increasing in intensity of being (wujūd), moving towards the perfection and simplicity of being, returning to the One from which it was originally manifested. Although having an existence that precedes its attachment to the body, the soul’s individual existence begins with this attachment, which is what gives it its individual identity (this association with the material, sensory, and spatio-temporal is what allows it to be differentiated from other souls). Then the soul’s being increases in intensity as it develops, bringing its various potential faculties into actuality, like the blossoming of a flower from a seed, until the soul becomes a fully actualized intellect through the practice of philosophy (which includes spiritual exercises). Ṣadra thus argues that the individual human soul is corporeal in its origination and spiritual in its subsistence’ (jismāniyyat al-ḥudūth wa-rūḥāniyyat al-baqā’)

Historical Context

Islamic theories of the nafs were strongly influenced by the Qur’an, hadith, and traditions of Qur’anic interpretation, and also by the rich philosophical/religious contexts of the various traditions of Egyptian, Platonic, Aristotelian, Neo-Platonic, Stoic, Hermetic, Christian, Jewish, Zoroastrian, Vedic, Dharmic, Chinese, indigenous African (and various admixtures thereof) practice and thought that flourished in Islamic and neighboring lands. Arabic translations and commentaries upon Aristotle’s De Anima and Plotinus’ Enneads (translated as the “Theology of Aristotle” and attributed to the Stagirite) were particularly influential in shaping Islamic theories of nafs, with various thinkers creatively adopting, adapting, and arguing against the frameworks presented in these works. Many Islamic philosophical, theological, Sufi, and Heremetic works were translated into Latin (particularly) those of Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna) and Ibn Rushd (Averroës), profoundly influencing the development of medieval Christian and early modern notions of the “soul” and self, while in the Eastern Islamic lands, texts of philosophical Sufism and Sufi poetry in Persian and Chinese influenced Dharmic and neo-Confucian debates on the nature of the self in South and East Asia, respectively.

Significant References

Adamson, Peter, “Correcting Plotinus: Soul’s Relationship to Body in Avicenna’s Commentary on the Theology of Aristotle”, in P. Adamson et al. (eds), Philosophy, Science and Exegesis in Greek, Arabic and Latin Commentaries (London: 2004), vol. 2, 59-75.

Chittick, William. “Bābā Afżal-al-Dīn”. Encyclopaedia Iranica 3 (2011): 285–91. Available online: http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/baba-afzal-al-din (accessed on 5 June 2022).

Faruque, Muhammad Umar. Sculpting the Self: Islam, Selfhood, and Human Flourishing. University of Michigan Press, 2021.

Kaukua, Jari. Self-Awareness in Islamic Philosophy. Cambridge University Press, 2015.

Kukkonen, Taneli. “Receptive to Reality: Al‐Ghazālī on the Structure of the Soul.” The Muslim World 102, no. 3-4 (2012): 541-561.

Marmura, Michael, “Avicenna’s “flying man” in context.” The Monist 69, no. 3 (1986): 383-395.

Druart, T.A., “The Human Soul’s Individuation and its Survival After the Body’s Death: Avicenna on the Causal Relation Between Body and Soul,” Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 10 (2000), 259-273.

Rizvi, Sajjad, “Mulla Sadra”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2021 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2021/entries/mulla-sadra/>

Sviri, Sara. “The Self and its Transformation in Sūfīsm.” Self and Self-transformation in the History of Religions (2002): 195-215.

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Research Directory

One goal of “Cross-Cultural Conceptions of the Self” is to engage sources less-commonly studied by philosophers of religion. By working primarily in English who work at institutions of higher education, this project inherits the challenges for cross-cultural studies at work in the field and the academy. To proactively address issues of regional visibility, please see the participants’ suggestions for scholarship on each geographical region.

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Parityāga

Conceptual definition

Jain renunciants follow a rigorous method towards salvation, in which renunciation from worldly life, a non-violent way of life, the dissociation of Self and non-Self stuff and a purification from karmic matter towards omniscience become in time different facets of the same effort to access to a superior order of being in which the Self resumes its essential nature. At this stage, each Self is absolutely isolated. To reach this, everything that is not the Self – passions, wrong notions, matter, etc. – has to be patiently removed from the Self through continuous practices of renunciation. Renunciatory practices that enable this Self restauration are meant to block further inflows of karmic matter and to burn already adhering karmic matter. They include restraint in speech, mental and bodily activity (gupti), following given rules of behavior (samiti), reflecting on the miseries in life (anuprekṣā), practicing austerities (tapas) and behaving in a moral way (dharma), which itself includes cultivating self-control (saṃyama), abandon the world (tyāga), being detached from things (akiñcanya) and practicing chastity (brahmācarya).

Philosophical significance

In traditions such as Jainism, philosophical and religious teaching firstly aims to promote a type of behavior, a method to concretely modify an unsatisfying situation by modifying oneself. Traditions like this are foremost about transformative practices of the self. One does not only need to be aware of the core categorial distinctions – in Jainism, the distinction between Self and non-Self – one also has to realize her true nature through a set of practices, prominently renunciatory ones.

First, renunciatory practices are more precisely a type of internal sacrifice, where one has to give up current self conceptions before embracing new ones.

Second, renunciatory practices either remove one after one the many layers of self construction which are actually alien to what the self essentially is. For example, repentance and atonement are mechanisms aiming at modifying the self from a reappraisal of its past acts, removing labels deemed unfit. Or renunciatory practices displace the networks of association that exists between oneself and the surroundings. In this dynamic meditation, by modifying habits, relocates associations that prevent what is considered a proper self identification.

Historical context

In South Asia in the 6th c. BCE, considerations on the nature of the world and of human beings’ position in it were developed against a backdrop of Vedic practices of devotion revolving around a sacred fire. Two pan-Indian conceptions notably emerged from the idea that, besides entailing fruits in this life, the correct devotional practice could also secure beneficial consequences in one’s after-life. First, a conception of human life as a long circle of rebirths; second, the belief in the efficacy not only of the devotional act, but of all acts. These beliefs laid the basis of the renowned theory of karma, according to which our current situation in life is determined by our acts in previous lives. Acknowledging this conception, most South Asian traditions aimed at liberation (mokṣa) from the bounding karmic network and, each in its own way, put an emphasis on ceasing the acts that lead to further karmic footprints. This usually takes the form of ascetic practices such as meditation or abstinence, in order to renounce the clinging to transitory passions by reaching equanimity, and to perform as few acts as possible or only dispassionate egoless ones. This, in turn, implies renouncing the social and ritual life of the householder and becoming a wandering mendicant. As such, most of the South Asian traditions are, in different proportions, part of a ‘renunciatory paradigm’. In this renunciatory paradigm, Jainism is the tradition that goes the further. Jains were one of the ascetic groups called ‘śramaṇa’, ‘strivers’, to refer to the hardships of this path to liberation. Jain śramaṇas were more precisely called the ‘nirgrantha’, ‘the ones who are free from possessions’, since Jain male mendicants were singled out as the ones practicing nudity.

A peculiarity of Jainism is to essentially associate these renunciatory liberating practices with the imperative of non-violence. Besides, to cultivate this non-violence involves having an awareness of the existence of the life-forms, of other Selves, that surround us. Finally, since Selves are in essence unobstructed knowledge, perception and bliss, the last main facet of the Jain renunciatory stance consists in epistemic progress up to omniscience. Concretely, to get closer to the realization of our real nature is to follow practices that could be classified into a four-fold way:

  1. Practices of abstinence, in the line of no sexual intercourse, no food for given periods of time, non-possession up to the nudity of the Digambar monks;
  2. Practices towards self-control, like meditation or mortification of the flesh;
  3. Penances, today mainly consisting in fasts and recitation of prayers;
  4. Practices of non-violence, such as not eating meat, nor any product derived from animals, not drinking non-filtered water containing microscopic forms of life, walking with extreme caution so as to avoid killing life forms on the ground, and not using any other modes of transportation for the monastic community.

This is sufficient to see that Jainism is an arduous renunciatory path, in which the disciple needs methods to assist her. One such method is an incitement to cultivate a pessimistic attitude towards the world by means of twelve contemplations (Prakrit: aṇuvekkha; Sanskrit: anuprekṣā) on the miseries of life. These can be found in canonical and post canonical texts, like in the Tattvārtha-sūtra. These are incitements towards contemplation of human beings and their relation to the surrounding world, which prompt the awareness that:

(i) everything in the world is not enduring;

(ii) all beings are helpless;

(iii) when an individual is spiritually free, only she has been able to achieve it, and only she can enjoy it, no other individual can assist and share, each individual is isolated;

(iv) all relationships of an embodied Self are temporary, not real;

(v) empirical reality from life to death to life is endless and full of calamities;

(vi) the empirical universe is an abode for Selves that do not know their real nature;

(vii) embodied Selves are bound in impure, rotten and stinking bodies;

(viii) the influx of karmic matter is the main cause of miseries;

(ix) the stoppage of the influx of karmic matter is possible by means of penances;

(x) the purification of karmic matter that is already bound is possible by means of penances;

(xi) the doctrine (Prakrit: dhamma; Sanskrit: dharma) preached by the Jinas leads to spiritual freedom;

(xii) human enlightenment is rare and difficult to obtain, it is an essential duty of all humans to get it prior to their death.

Significant references/uses

First, in global philosophy of religion, traditions like Jainism focused on self centered transformative practices are important as they help to reshape the prevalent conception of divinities and the definition of religion.

Second, renunciation here mainly consists in acting in a controlled and restrained manner. This type of attention is also crucial for contemporary environmentalists, because this injunction goes in particular against the practices of mass consumption. In Jainism, even the laity must be careful and not desire beyond their needs. In this dynamic, a care for not wasting resource, as well as vegetarianism or veganism become important values. Besides, Gandhi’s style of action centered on self-control, as enjoined by the Gītā, was a source of inspiration for Indian environmentalists. It is worth pointing out that Gandhi’s stance was deeply influenced by Jainism.

Related emic terms

Saṃvara (blockage of the inflow of karmic matter), nirjarā (destruction of karmic matter), gupti (restraint speech, mental and bodily activity), samiti (rule of behavior), dharma (moral behavior), saṃyama (self-control) tapas (austerity), akiñcanya (detachment), brahmācarya (continence), anuprekṣā (reflexions on the miseries in life).

Related etic terms

Transformative practices, techniques of the self, controlled act, self-control, meditation.

References

ĀS = Āyāraṃgasutta. In Kumar, Muni Mahendra (tr.): Āyāro (Ācārāṅga Sūtra). Jain Canonical Text Series 1. New Delhi: Today and tomorrow’s Printers & Publishers, 1981.

Bhatt, Bhansidar. “Twelve aṇuvekkhās in early Jainism.” In: Nalini Balbir and Joachim Bautze (eds.): Festschrift Klaus Bruhn zur Vollendung des 65. Lebensjhares dargebracht vin Schülern, Freunden und Kollegen. Reinbek: Dr. Inge Wezler Verlag, 1994, pp. 171–94.

Dundas, Paul. The Jains. Routledge, 1992.

Johnson, W. J. Harmless souls: Karmic bondage and change in early Jainism with special reference to Umāsvāti and Kundakunda. In: Lala Sundar Lal Jain Research Series 9. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1995.

TS = Tattvārthasūtra of Umāsvāti. In Tatia, Nathmal (tr.): That which is. Tattvārthasūtra. A Classic Jain Manual for Understanding the True Nature of Reality. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1994.

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Basho

by Yuko Ishihara

Basho (場所), which literally means “place” in Japanese, is arguably the most important concept in the philosophy of Nishida Kitarō (西田幾多郎1870–1945), a modern Japanese philosopher and founder of the Kyoto School tradition. Nishida’s concept of basho was first introduced in an essay titled “Basho” published in 1926 in the context of seeking the foundations of our knowledge.[1] Taking issue with epistemological positions that assume the knower and known, subject-object distinction to begin with, Nishida wanted to show that the self or consciousness is not primarily an epistemic subject (as Kant and the Neo-Kantians would have it), but the “place” that makes knowledge possible.

But what does it mean to say that the self is a “place?” Ueda Shizuteru (上田閑照, 1926–2019), a third-generation Kyoto School philosopher, has provided a helpful illustration.[2] In Japanese, when one hears the sound of a bell, one would naturally say, “Kane no oto ga kikoeru” (鐘の音が聞こえる), which can be literally translated as “The sound of the bell is heard.” For an English speaker, such a way of speaking sounds odd, for in English it is more natural to say, “I hear the sound of the bell.” Ueda explains that in the English phrase, the experience is grasped and articulated by the subject “I,” while the Japanese phrase is expressive of an event prior to such positing of the “I” as subject. Before the subject takes the experience as one’s own and says, “I hear…,” there is simply the experience of hearing the sound of the bell. There is not yet a subject that is hearing the bell nor is there an object, “the bell,” that is being heard. In his maiden work, Zen no kenkyu (善の研究, 1911), Nishida called this “pure experience.” It is the direct experience prior to the subject-object duality. Now, while the “I” as subject may be absent in such an experience, this is not to say that it is beyond consciousness. Before the self or consciousness becomes the subject of our experience, it withdraws and discloses the ringing of the bell just as it is. In other words, the self or consciousness is the “place” wherein the sound of the bell is heard. It should be noted that Ueda is not suggesting that the structures of our language directly reflect the way we experience reality, but only saying that the natural way of speaking in Japanese can serve as an illustration for the notion of the self at issue.

Nishida himself did not refer to the Japanese language, but turned to the logical structure of subsumptive judgments in order to show that consciousness is the “place” that makes knowledge possible. In the judgment “red is a color,” the predicate and universal “color” subsumes the grammatical subject and particular “red.” If one takes the particularization to its limit, one would reach that which is subject but never predicate, which was Aristotle’s definition of substance (hypokeimenon) and which he identified with individual things. But in order to know such individuals, they must still be subsumed by some universal. Accordingly, Nishida went the other direction and took the universalization to its limit where he found that which is predicate but never subject. Nishida called this “the transcendent predicate plane” (超越的述語面, chōetsuteki jutsugomen). All judgments and, accordingly, all knowledge, is grounded in this transcendent predicate plane, which he also calls “the place of nothingness” (無の場所, mu no basho). It is “nothing” because it cannot be objectified and predicated. Yet it is the “place” of all objectification and predication. This, for Nishida, was none other than the self or consciousness. However, as long as this “nothing” is understood relative to things that are objectified in consciousness, it is “the place of relative nothingness” (相対無の場所, sōtaimu no basho). The “true” place of nothingness, according to Nishida, is “the place of absolute nothingness” (絶対無の場所, zettaimu no basho). Here, absolute nothingness does not mean that there is absolutely nothing as if to suggest a nihilistic position. Rather, it means that the self has completely emptied itself (the self has become absolutely no-thing), letting things present themselves just as they are. According to Nishida, then, our knowledge is ultimately grounded in the place of absolute nothingness where there is no longer a distinction between the knower and the known. Though it was never his intention to provide a philosophical grounding of Zen Buddhism, the idea of the place of absolute nothingness as the selfless ground of our knowledge and reality clearly has its roots in Nishida’s experience in zazen. And it is with this idea that we find Nishida’s most original contribution, which finds no precedent in the history of philosophy.

In the 1930s and 40s, as Nishida’s interests became less focused on epistemological concerns and move more towards the historical reality, his notion of basho took on a new meaning. Basho is no longer understood in terms of consciousness, but the historical world wherein our embodied actions take place. However, this is not to say that the self was no longer important in Nishida’s philosophy. On the contrary, Nishida highlights the co-determining relationship between the self (or what he calls “individuals”) and the socio-historical world. On the one hand, the self is determined by the world in the sense that it is born into and lives in a society. On the other hand, through its actions, the self shapes the world and makes history. In contrast to the earlier period where basho, as the ground of knowledge and reality, was given priority over the “emplaced” (that which is “in the place”), the later period emphasizes the dialectical relationship between the self (the emplaced) and the world (the place, basho).

Nishida’s concept of basho influenced various thinkers not only within philosophy but in the sciences as well. For example, Imanishi Kinji (今西錦司, 1902–1992), a biologist and founder of Japanese primatology, developed the idea of the dialectical relationship between the self and the world from a biological point of view.[3] Kimura Bin (木村敏, 1931–2021), a Japanese psychiatrist, applied Nishida’s idea of basho to understand the nature of the self through an analysis of various mental disorders such as schizophrenia.[4]

Bibliography

Imanishi, Kinji. A Japanese View of Nature The World of Living Things by Kinji Imanishi. Translated by Pamela J. Asquith et al. London: Routledge, 2002.

Kimura, Bin.  Jikan to jiko [時間と自己, Time and Self]. Tokyo: Chuo Koron Shinsha, 1982.

Krummel, John W. M. and Shigenori Nagatomo, trans. Place & Dialectic: Two Essays by Nishida Kitarō. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.

Nishida, Kitarō. “Basho” [場所]. In Hataraku mono kara miru mono e [働くものから見るものへ, From the Acting to the Seeing], Nishida Kitarō Zenshū [西田幾多郎全集, Complete Works of Nishida Kitarō] Vol. 4, edited by Yoshishige Abe et al., 208–89. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1979.

Ueda, Shizuteru. Nishida Kitarō o yomu [西田幾多郎を読む, Reading Nishida Kitarō]. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1991.

Related emic terms: Zettai mu (“absolute nothingness”), jikaku (“self-awareness” in Japanese), consciousness, historial world

Related etic terms: Nothingness, being, hypokeimenon, consciousness

[1] See Kitarō Nishida, “Basho”, in Hataraku mono kara miru mono e [働くものから見るものへ, From the Acting to the Seeing], Nishida Kitarō Zenshū [西田幾多郎全集, Complete Works of Nishida Kitarō] Vol. 4, eds. Yoshishige Abe et al. (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1979), 208-289. The English translation can be found in: John W. Krummel et al. (trans.), Place & Dialectic: Two Essays by Nishida Kitarō (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).

[2] See: Shizuteru Ueda, Nishida Kitarō o yomu [西田幾多郎を読む, Reading Nishida Kitarō] (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1991), 326-329.

[3] See, for example: Kinji Imanishi, Seibutsu no sekai [生物の世界, The World of Living Things] (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1972). Originally published in 1941. The English translation is provided in: Kinji Imanishi, A Japanese View of Nature: The World of Living Things by Kinji Imanishi, trans. Pamela J. Asquith et al. (London: Routledge, 2002).

[4] See, for example: Bin Kimura, Jikan to jiko [時間と自己, Time and Self]. (Tokyo: Chuo Koron Shinsha, 1982).

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Jikaku

by Yuko Ishihara

”Jikaku” (自覚) is a Japanese word comprised of two Chinese characters, “ji” (自), which means “self,” and “kaku” (覚), which means “awaken.” Originally a Buddhist term meaning “self-awakening” or “awakening by oneself” in contrast to “kakuta” (覚他 literally, “awaken other”), or the awakening of oneself that has been guided by another, the word took on a novel philosophical meaning in the beginning of the twentieth century with the work of Nishida Kitarō (西田幾多郎, 1890–1945), the founder of the Kyoto School tradition. In the context of Nishida’s philosophy, jikaku can be roughly translated as “self-awareness” or “self-consciousness” and is one of the key terms that defines his thought. The term first took on an important role in his philosophy around the time of his second major work, Jikaku ni okeru chokkan to hansei (自覚に於ける直観と反省, 1917) which has been translated into English as Intuition and Reflection in Self-Consciousness.[1] The work resulted from critical reflection on the philosophy of junsui keiken (純粋経験) or pure experience presented in his maiden work, Zen no kenkyu (善の研究, 1911).[2] In this work, Nishida argued that pure experience, namely the direct experience prior to the subject-object split, is the fundamental reality and the foundation for all our knowledge. The question remained, however, as to how reflection and reflective thought, which assume a separation between the reflecting and the reflected, can arise from such pure experience. In order to address this concern, Nishida developed the concept of jikaku by taking insight from Fichte’s notion of “Tathandlung” where the unity of self-consciousness is understood as both the act and product of the I. Like Fichte’s Tathandlung, in jikaku the self infinitely develops itself by reflecting itself within itself.

Nishida’s notion of jikaku is further refined in the 1920s when the “place” component of jikaku is brought to the fore. Nishida eventually comes to see that the infinite process of self-reflection in jikaku cannot occur without the “wherein” or the “place” of its reflection. As he later formulates it, “the self mirrors (or reflects) itself within itself” (jiko ga jiko ni oite jiko o utsusu, 自己が自己に於いて自己を写す). Initially, the “place” (basho in Japanese, 場所) is understood in epistemological terms as consciousness or the self. In his theory of basho, first introduced in the late 1920s and further developed in the 1930s and 40s, the “basho of absolute nothingness” (zettai mu no basho, 絶対無の場所) is seen as the ultimate basho and ground of our knowledge and reality. Correlated to this is the notion of “the jikaku of absolute nothingness” (zettai mu no jikaku).[3] “Absolute nothingness” refers to the non-objectifiable nature of consciousness or the self, a complete eradication of the subject-object duality, where consciousness or self is no longer seen as standing over against the world. The “jikaku of absolute nothingness” entails that one become aware of this nature of the self, or better phrased, that awareness awakens to its absolutely no-thingness. “Jikaku” accordingly is a dynamic movement of awareness that essentially involves a deepening of the “place” of our awareness and one’s self-understanding. Here, we can clearly see the Zen Buddhist background to Nishida’s notion of jikaku. For such a deepening of jikaku is not separate from the search for and awakening to the “true self,” a distinctly Zen quest. Because the English equivalents “self-awareness” or “self-consciousness” lack this connotation, they fall short as translations of Nishida’s concept of jikaku. It is also worth noting that Japanese people speak of the deepening of one’s jikaku (jikaku ga fukamaru, 自覚が深まる) in ordinary speech. For example, one’s jikaku as a mother may deepen as she becomes more aware of her specific role as a mother by opening up to the various places involved in being a mother, such as her family, the community, etc. While the Buddhist connotation is absent in such usage, jikaku in ordinary speech still carries the sense of the dynamic movement of self-understanding and has an implicit reference to the “place” of the jikaku.   

In the 1930s, as Nishida’s interest turns towards the historical world, his notion of jikaku also takes on a new meaning. Jikaku is no longer understood within an epistemological context but is now understood in terms of our embodied actions in the world. As the concrete form of jikaku, Nishida introduces the notion of “acting intuition” (koiteki chokkan, 行為的直観) which refers to the interlacing relation between our seeing and acting. Specifically referring to the activity of creating things in the world, Nishida underlines how, on the one hand, we are determined by things as they solicit our actions and, on the other hand, we determine things as we create things and give them new meaning. We thus see things through our actions. Nishida further emphasizes the embodied and historical character of such actions and speaks of “the jikaku of the world” (sekai no jikaku, 世界の自覚) whereby the world expresses itself through our actions.[4]

Recently, Nishida’s notion of acting intuition has gained attention from scholars attempting to bring Nishida’s philosophy into dialogue with contemporary discussions on embodied cognition and enactivism. In an article from 2017, “Acting-Intuition and the Achievement of Perception: Merleau-Ponty with Nishida,” David W. Johnson turns to Nishida’s notion of acting intuition to supplement some of the underlying issues with Merleau-Ponty’s account of the relation between perception and expression.[5] In a 2020 book chapter titled, “Habit, Ontology, and Embodied Cognition Without Borders: James, Merleau-Ponty, and Nishida,” Jonathan McKinney et al. introduce acting intuition and related ideas in the context of what Nishida says about habit and sheds light on the resemblance Nishida’s ideas have with enactivism and ecological psychology.[6] Another interesting direction of research has been opened up by Mayuko Uehara and Elisabeth L. Belgrano in their 2020 article, “Performance philosophy seen through Nishida’s ‘acting intuition,’” where they apply the idea of acting intuition to vocal performance.[7] These articles all show that Nishida’s ideas have much to offer to contemporary discussions on the relation between the self and the world.

Bibliography

Johnson, David W. “Acting-Intuition and the Achievement of Perception: Merleau-Ponty with Nishida.” Philosophy East and West 67, no. 3 (2017): 693-709. doi:10.1353/pew.2017.0059.

Krummel, John W. M. and Shigenori Nagatomo (trans.). Place & Dialectic: Two Essays by Nishida Kitarō. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.

McKinney, Jonathan, Maki Sato and Anthony Chemero. “Habit, ontology, and embodied cognition without borders: James, Merleau-Ponty, and Nishida.” In Habits: Pragmatist Approaches from Cognitive Science, Neuroscience, and Social Theory, edited by Fausto Caruana and Italo Testa, 184-203. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020.

Nishida, Kitarō. An Inquiry Into the Good. Translated by Masao Abe and Christopher Ives. New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1990.

Nishida, Kitarō. “Basho” [場所]. In Hataraku mono kara miru mono e [働くものから見るものへ, From the Acting to the Seeing], Nishida Kitarō Zenshū [西田幾多郎全集, Complete Works of Nishida Kitarō] Vol. 4, edited by Yoshishige Abe et al., 208-289. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1979.

Nishida, Kitarō. Intuition and Reflection in Self-Awareness. Translated by Valdo H. Viglielmo, Takeuchi Toshinori, and Joseph S. O’Leary. Albany: SUNY Press, 1987.

Nishida, Kitarō. “Ronri to seimei” [論理と生命]. In Tetsugaku ronbunshū daini [哲学論文集第二, Philosophical Essays Vol. 2], Nishida Kitarō Zenshū [西田幾多郎全集, Complete Works of Nishida Kitarō] Vol. 8, edited by Yoshishige Abe et al. 273-394. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1979.

Uehara, Mayuko and Elisabeth L. Belgrano. “Performance philosophy seen through Nishida’s ‘acting intuition.’” In The Routledge Companion to Performance Philosophy, 69-76. London: Routledge, 2020.

Related emic terms: Basho (“place” in Japanese), zettai mu (“absolute nothingness” in Japanese), reflection, intuition, acting intuition

Relate etic terms: Self-awareness, self-consciousness, self-awakening

[1] Kitarō Nishida, Intuition and Reflection in Self-Awareness, trans. Valdo H. Viglielmo et al. (Albany: SUNY Press, 1987).

[2] The English translation is provided by: Kitarō Nishida, An Inquiry Into the Good, trans. Masao Abe et al. (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1990).

[3] Nishida’s theory of basho was first introduced in an essay titled, “Basho”, published in 1926. See: Kitarō Nishida, “Basho” [場所], in Hataraku mono kara miru mono e [働くものから見るものへ, From the Acting to the Seeing], Nishida Kitarō Zenshū [西田幾多郎全集, Complete Works of Nishida Kitarō] Vol. 4, eds. Yoshishige Abe et al. (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1979), 208–89. The English translation can be found in: John W. M. Krummel et al. (trans.), Place & Dialectic: Two Essays by Nishida Kitarō (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).

[4] For later Nishida’s views on acting intuition, see for example: Kitarō Nishida, “Ronri to seimei” [論理と生命], in Tetsugaku ronbunshū daini [哲学論文集第二, Philosophical Essays Vol. 2], Nishida Kitarō Zenshū [西田幾多郎全集, Complete Works of Nishida Kitarō] Vol. 8, eds. Yoshishige Abe et al. (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1979), 273–394. The English translation can be found in: Krummel et al. (trans.), Place & Dialectic.

[5] David W. Johnson, “Acting-Intuition and the Achievement of Perception: Merleau-Ponty with Nishida,” Philosophy East and West 67, no. 3 (2017): 693–709.

[6] Jonathan McKinney et al., “Habit, ontology, and embodied cognition without borders: James, Merleau-Ponty, and Nishida,” in Habits: Pragmatist Approaches from Cognitive Science, Neuroscience, and Social Theory, ed. Fausto Caruana (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 184–203.

[7] Mayuko Uehara et al., “Performance philosophy seen through Nishida’s ‘acting intuition,’” in The Routledge Companion to Performance Philosophy (London: Routledge, 2020), 69–76.

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Twofold-Being-in-the-World

by Yuko Ishihara

We human beings always find ourselves in a specific place. It may be our physical surroundings, cultural context, social environment, historical epoch, etc. It is because we are open to these various places that we can interact with other people and things around us. “Being in a place” (basho ni oitearu, 場所に於いてある) is therefore constitutive of our being. This was one of the basic insights highlighted by the modern Japanese philosopher and founder of the Kyoto School tradition, Nishida Kitarō (西田幾多郎, 1870–1945). A similar idea that is perhaps more well-known is Martin Heidegger’s idea of Being-in-the-world (In-der-Welt-sein). What Heidegger here calls “the world” is the ultimate place of all places that we find ourselves in. Ueda Shizuteru (上田閑照, 1926–2019), a third-generation Kyoto School philosopher, takes Nishida and Heidegger’s idea that “place” and “world” are constitutive of our being and develops this further by suggesting that the place we find ourselves in is ultimately twofold. According to Ueda, the world is the all-encompassing space of meaning. As such, it is finite and bounded. If this is the case, however, we must be able to ask the wherein of the world: Where is the world “placed in?” Yet, we cannot determine the “where” of such a place since doing so would make it another place in the world. Accordingly, Ueda calls this place, “unconfined openness” (限りない開け, kagirinai hirake) or, adopting a Buddhist term, “hollow expanse” (虚空, kokū). Insofar as the world is a finite whole that is “placed in” the hollow expanse, the place we find ourselves is ultimately twofold. Ueda denotes this twofoldness as “world/hollow expanse” (世界／虚空, sekai/ kokū). We are Being-in-the-world-in-the-hollow-expanse. He calls this the “twofold-being-in-the-world” (二重世界内存在, nijyū sekai nai sonzai).[1]

The idea that the ultimate place we find ourselves in is “groundless” can be found in the work of various thinkers before Ueda, including that of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) as well as Nishida’s disciple and Ueda’s teacher, Nishitani Keiji (西谷啓治, 1900–1990). However, while these thinkers had various influences on his thought, Ueda’s idea of the twofoldness of the world can be traced back to Nishida’s idea of basho, or place in Japanese. In an attempt to seek the ground of our knowledge and reality, Nishida develops a threefold theory of basho consisting of what he calls “the place of being(s)” (有の場所, u no basho), “the place of relative nothingness” (相対無の場所, sōtaimu no basho), and “the place of absolute nothingness” (絶対無の場所, zettai mu no basho).[2] For Nishida, our knowledge is ultimately grounded in “the place of absolute nothingness” where there is no longer the knower and known or subject-object distinction, and the self has emptied itself and has become absolutely no-thing. While Ueda’s idea of the twofold-being-in-the-world is not so much an epistemological notion as it is ontological, Ueda takes insight from Nishida’s idea that objects in the world (“the place of being(s)”) ultimately find their ground in the groundless ground (“the place of absolute nothingness”).

Now, to say that we live in a twofold world is not to say that we somehow live in two discrete places, the world and the hollow expanse. Ueda often speaks of the world as the “text” and its “margins” and “space between the lines” as the unconfined openness. The “world-text,” he tells us, has “infinite margins and a bottomless space between the lines.”[3] The metaphor suggests that instead of being another place juxtaposed with the world, the hollow expanse is a deeper dimension of the world that provides the world various layers and depth. This dimension, however, is by its nature invisible. And thus, for the most part, the twofoldness of the world is forgotten and we live in a world that has become one-dimensional.

                What implications does the twofold-being-in-the-world have for the self? Ueda tells us that because we dwell in a twofold world, the self is fundamentally “problematic” and “in a state of unrest.”[4] Ueda calls the subject that lives in the world of the all-encompassing space of meaning “the self” and the subject that finds its place in the hollow expanse, “the selfless self.” It is “selfless” because the hollow expanse cuts through and negates our conceptions of the self. Ueda therefore tells us that when the subject finds themselves in the twofold world, their self-understanding is not a simple “the self is the self” (or “I am I”). Rather, the subject in the twofold world says, “the self is selflessly the self” (or “I am not-I, and thus I am I”).[5] This, according to Ueda, is the self-understanding of the “true self.” But why is such a self “problematic” and “in a state of unrest?” The answer to this question lies in the two dangers that are inherent in the self. The first danger is for the self to close up by falsely believing that it is self-sufficient. The danger is one of self-enclosure and self-attachment. This occurs when the negation (“selfless” or “not-I”) falls off and one gets trapped in its own little ego. The world, for such a self, has lost the depth that the hollow expanse brings forth. According to Ueda, this is a common phenomenon since the twofoldness of the world is forgotten most of the time. Indeed, he even says that this is our default mode of the self. Another danger is for the self to lose itself in the selfless disclosure to others. Rather than coming back to itself and saying, “…and thus I am I,” it stops with “I am not-I.” As opposed to self-attachment, the danger here is one of self-loss.[6] These two dangers, self-enclosure and self-loss, are both intrinsic dangers of the self since both closing in and opening up are real moments of the self. According to Ueda, it is because the world we find ourselves is intrinsically twofold and because the self is in a dynamic movement of closing in and opening up that the self is fundamentally “problematic” and “in a state of unrest.”

                Although the Kyoto School tradition is gaining recognition outside of Japan today, Ueda’s philosophy is still widely unknown. Recently, however, some English translations have come out,[7] and the first collection of essays on Ueda in the Western language is forthcoming as part of a book series by Springer called the Tetsugaku Companions to Japanese Philosophy.[8] The book will contain discussions on self-awareness, nature, and poetic language. Its publication will hopefully ignite more interest in Ueda’s philosophy.

Bibliography

Bouso, Raquel, Ralf Müller, and Adam Loughnane, eds. Tetsugaku Companion to Ueda Shizuteru: Language, Experience, and Zen (Tetsugaku Companions to Japanese Philosophy, 5). Cham: Springer, forthcoming.

Heisig, James W., Thomas P. Kasulis, and John C. Maraldo, eds. Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2011.

Krummel, John W. M. and Shigenori Nagatomo, trans. Place & Dialectic: Two Essays by Nishida Kitarō. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.

Krummel, John W. M., ed. Contemporary Japanese Philosophy: A Reader. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2019.

Nishida, Kitarō. “Basho” [場所]. In Hataraku mono kara miru mono e [働くものから見るものへ, From the Acting to the Seeing], Nishida Kitarō Zenshū [西田幾多郎全集, Complete Works of Nishida Kitarō] Vol. 4, edited by Yoshishige Abe et al., 208-289. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1979.

Ueda, Shizuteru. Watashi to wa nanika [私とは何か, What is this thing called the “I”?]. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2000.

Ueda, Shizuteru. Kokū /Sekai [虚空／世界, Hollow expanse/World]. In Ueda Shizuteru Shū [上田閑照集, Ueda Shizuteru Collection] Vol. 9. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2002.

Related emic terms: Being-in-the-world, basho (“place” in Japanese), world, kokū (虚空, “hollow expanse” in Japanese)

Related etic terms: Ontology, being, place, emptiness

[1] Shizuteru Ueda, Kokū /Sekai [虚空／世界, Hollow expanse/World], Ueda Shizuteru Shū [上田閑照集, Ueda Shizuteru Collection] Vol. 9 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2002).

[2] See Kitarō Nishida, “Basho”, in Hataraku mono kara miru mono e [働くものから見るものへ, From the Acting to the Seeing], Nishida Kitarō Zenshū [西田幾多郎全集, Complete Works of Nishida Kitarō] Vol. 4, eds. Yoshishige Abe et al. (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1979), 208-289. The English translation can be found in: John W. Krummel et al. (trans.), Place & Dialectic: Two Essays by Nishida Kitarō (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).

[3] Ueda, Kokū /Sekai, 327.

[4] Ueda, Kokū /Sekai, 149.

[5] Ueda, Kokū /Sekai, 150-151.

[6] Shizuteru Ueda, Watashi to wa nanika [私とは何か, What is this thing called the “I”?] (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2000), 36-39.

[7] John W. M. Krummel has a translation of Ueda’s Chihei to chihei no Kanata [地平と地平の彼方, Horizon and the Other Side of the Horizon, 1992] in: John W. M. Krummel, ed., Contemporary Japanese Philosophy: A Reader (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2019). Some excerpts of Ueda’s other writings can be found in: James W. Heisig, et al., eds., Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2011).

[8] Raquel Bouso, et al., Tetsugaku Companion to Ueda Shizuteru: Language, Experience, and Zen (Tetsugaku Companions to Japanese Philosophy, 5), (Cham: Springer, forthcoming).

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Somatology

by Louis Komjathy 康思奇

Somatology refers to discourse on, study of, and theories about the (human) body. While more conventionally used to refer to a branch of anthropology (a.k.a. “physical anthropology”) primarily concerned with the physical nature and characteristics of people or to a branch of biology concerned with the structure and function of the human body, the term may be used as a comparative and cross-cultural interpretive category. Etymologically speaking, “somatology” derives from the Greek sôma (“body”) and lógos (“study”). Thus, it may be applied to consider the embodied, enacted, and enfleshed dimensions of human being and experience, especially in terms of corporeality, embodiment, physicality, somatics, and the like. From an interdisciplinary perspective, some especially relevant—if under-consulted—disciplines include body work, dance, disability studies, feminist studies, kinesthetics, movement studies, physical education, ritual studies, “sports science,” theater, and so forth.

In terms of the Philosophy of Religion, especially as envisioned in its current “global-critical” trajectory, with an additional concern for embodiment, personhood, and subjectivity, somatology inspires deeper exploration and reflection on “the body” as a lived, phenomenological site of human being and experiencing. Here we must recognize that, while accepting certain shared, recurring morphological and structural features, there is no such thing as “the body,” especially when we engage culture-specific views, “corporeal phenomenology,” transformative body-techniques, and socio-political dimensions (see, e.g., Komjathy 2007). Thus, there is only my body and your body, and other bodies, both historical and contemporaneous. This is not to mention the assumptions often involved with categories like “embodiment.” Are consciousness and identity distinguishable from “the body?” We may consider the ways in which the mind is in the body, including the possibility of “philosophy in the flesh” (see, e.g., Lakoff and Johnson 1999) and perhaps an accompanying “philosophy of skin and touch” (see, e.g., Vasseleu 1998). Additional somatological trajectories include investigation of associated human (and “non-human”) vulnerability and the centrality of pain in the human condition (see, e.g., Scarry 1985; Good et al. 1992). We may, in turn, think of this as the “somatic turn” in scholarship and perhaps in pedagogy, and it may open up more radical possibilities with respect to organic and ecological being-in-the-world.

As herein employed, that is, as a proposed comparative and cross-cultural category, there is no known “historical usage” of somatology, so here we will focus on intersection-points and additional possibilities. In addition to more straightforward investigation of culture- and tradition-specific views and enactments, including from comparative and cross-cultural perspectives (see bibliography herein), somatology inspires consideration of the body as such. Here we may consider actual posture and movement patterns (see, e.g., Hewes 1955, 1957) as well as the anatomy of movement (see Calais-Germain 2007). One possible “thought-experiment” (“body-experiment”?) in this regard involves deeper reflection on and perhaps subversive interaction with the academic vogue of neuroimaging technology. While neuroimages are often presented as providing maps of consciousness (brain physiology), with accompanying legitimation narratives, once again mediated by technology (see, e.g., Heidegger 1977; also Komjathy 2015, 2018), a more direct engagement with human being and expression, here through the “lived/living body,” is possible. One radical counterpoint centers on mapping movement patterns. For this, we may engage and potentially employ “movement notation systems,” including Laban Movement Analysis (LMA). This includes consideration of the four dimensions of body, effort, shape, and space (see, e.g., Bradley 2008; also Komjathy 2018). Hypothetically, we can create notations of any activity or event that may become a historio-cultural record, including for potential future reconstructions (see, e.g., Goodman 1990).

Along these lines, somatology brings our attention to the ways in which human beings have transformed and can transform themselves/ourselves through “body-techniques” (see Mauss 1935, 1979; Martin et al. 1988; Murphy 1992; Hadot 1995; Komjathy 2007). While this occurs all of the time in various ways, including through cultural conditioning and architecture as mandated movement, there are intentional undertakings, whether through specific activities or larger training regimens, that result in specific, self-directed transformative effects. This may include latent and even anomalous capacities, including “paranormal” or “extraordinary” ones (e.g., extreme sports). While Philosophy and Religious Studies have tended to (over)emphasize “beliefs,” “doctrine,” and “thought,” worldview is only one dimension of religious systems and traditions. A shift towards “experience” and even “embodiment” are welcome modifications, but these should ideally be combined with “practice” (see, e.g., Komjathy 2015, 2018). This involves attention to the technical specifics of said techniques and regimens, including transformative effects. In Contemplative Studies, the latter are often discussed in terms of “states” (temporary psychological shifts) and “traits” (permanent character changes).

Another noteworthy, related dimension of somatology involves the unique ways that lived, embodied experience may inform one’s perspective and even writing. Here I am specifically thinking of Écriture féminine (“women’s writing”), which is usually traced to the article “Le Rire de la Méduse”/“The Laugh of the Medusa” (1975) by the French feminist and literary theorist Hélène Cixous. This “movement,” which involves writing in/as/through female embodiment and a more radical “femininity/feminism,” also includes Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva as key members (see, e.g., Marks and de Courtivron 1981). Interestingly, and perhaps adding another layer of gender complexity, Cixous’ writing is highly influenced by the German philosopher and culture critic Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) and by her lifelong friendship with the French philosopher and post-structuralist Jacques Derrida (1930-2004). Comparatively speaking, one might consider nǚshū 女書 (“women’s script”), which apparently was first developed between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, as a pre-modern Chinese precedent (see, e.g., Foster 2019). Like the late imperial Ruist (“Confucian”) influence on the European enlightenment via Jesuit Catholic Latin translation, one also wonders about indirect influence on this modern French movement.

The scholarship on “the body” and “embodiment” is vast (see bibliography herein). Partially drawing upon Michel Foucault’s (1926-1984) “archaeology of knowledge” via Nietzsche’s “genealogy of morals,” Michel Feher and his collaborators have published the three-volume Fragments for a History of the Human Body (1989). For individuals interested in “body-techniques” and associated “transformative practice” there are a number of relevant publications (see above; bibliography herein). Summaries and syncretic theories appear in Louis Komjathy’s various publications (2007, 2015, 2018). Komjathy also has advanced a theory of embodiment and transmission, wherein different communities and traditions become manifest as unique presences and movement patterns in the world. This relates to his larger theory of (religious) praxis, involving the interrelationship among views, methods, experiences, and goals. Finally, just as there is a need for deeper engagement with “neurodiversity” in Consciousness Studies and philosophy of mind, my proposed Somatic Studies needs to consider assumptions about and claims rooted in “able-bodiedness,” especially in concert with perspectives from Disability Studies. 

Related terms: anthropology, embodiment, experience, personhood, pneumatology, psychology, qì 氣 (“subtle breath/energy”; Chinese), shēn 身 (“body/self”; Chinese), subjectivity, xīn 心 (“heart-mind”; Chinese)

References

Bermúdez, José Luis, Anthony Marcel, and Naomi Eilan, eds. The Body and the Self. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998.

Bradley, Karen. Rudolf Laban. London and New York: Routledge, 2008.

Calais-Germain, Blandine. 2007. Anatomy of Movement. Rev. ed. Seattle: Eastland Press.

Coakley, Sarah, ed. Religion and the Body. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Cottai, Thomas, and June McDaniel, eds. Perceiving the Divine through the Human Body: Mystical Sensuality. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2011.

Csordas, Thomas J., ed. Embodiment and Experience: The Existential Ground of Culture and Self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Feher, Michel, with Ramona Naddaff and Nadia Tazi, eds. Fragments for a History of the Human Body. 3 vols. New York: Zone Books, 1989.

Foster, Nicola. “Translating Nüshu: Drawing Nüshu, Dancing Nüshu.” Art in Translation 11:4 (2019): 393-416.

Good, Mary-Jo, Paul Brodwin, Byron Good, and Arthur Kleinman, eds. Pain as Human Experience: An Anthropological Perspective. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.

Goodman, Felicitas. Where the Spirits Ride the Wind: Trance Journeys and Other Ecstatic Experiences. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990.

Grosz, Elizabeth. Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1994.

Hadot, Pierre. Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault. Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell, 1995.

Heidegger, Martin. The Question Concerning Technology, and Other Essays. Translated by William Levitt. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1977.

Hewes, Gordon. “World Distribution of Certain Postural Habits.” American Anthropologist 57 (1955): 231-44.

_____. “The Anthropology of Posture.” Scientific American 196 (1957): 123-32.

Ingold, Tim. The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. London and New York, Routledge, 2000.

Johnson, Don Hanlon. Bone, Breath, and Gesture: Practices of Embodiment. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 1995.

Kasulis, Thomas P., with Roger T. Ames and Wimal Dissanayake, eds. Self as Body in Asian Theory and Practice. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993.

Komjathy, Louis. Cultivating Perfection: Mysticism and Self-transformation in Early Quanzhen Daoism. Leiden: Brill.

_____, ed. Contemplative Literature: A Comparative Sourcebook on Meditation and Contemplative Prayer. New York: State University of New York Press.

_____. Introducing Contemplative Studies. West Sussex, England and Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2018.

Laing, R.D. 1967. The Politics of Experience. New York: Pantheon Books.

Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought. New York: Basic Books, 1999.

Law, Jane Marie, ed. Religious Reflections on the Human Body. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995.

Marks, Elaine, and Isabelle de Courtivron, eds. New French Feminisms. New York: Schocken, 1981.

Martin, Luther, Huck Gutman, and Patrick Hutton, eds. Techniques of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988.

Mauss, Marcel. “Les techniques du corps.” Journal de Psychologie Normale et Pathologique 35 (1935): 271-93.

_____. “Body Techniques.” In Sociology and Psychology, translated by Ben Brewster, 95-123. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979.

Murphy, Michael. The Future of the Body: Explorations into the Further Evolution of Human Nature. New York: Penguin Putnam Inc., 1992.

Scarry, Elaine. The Body in Pain: The Making and Un-Making of the World. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.

Vasseleu, Cathryn. Textures of Light: Vision and Touch in Irigaray, Levinas and Merleau Ponty. London and New York: Routledge, 1998.

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Shēn 身

by Louis Komjathy 康思奇

Shēn 身 is a Chinese character that may refer to “body,” “person,” and/or “self,” depending on context. Etymologically speaking, the earliest forms (Shape Description automatically generated with low confidence/Shape Description automatically generated with low confidence) are pictographs, most likely depicting a pregnant woman. Under one reading, this suggests the capacity for birth and life as a biological organism in the world. As received, the character probably depicts the human torso viewed from the side. This is one’s personal embodied personhood, and it in turn relates to a larger lexicon of Chinese and Daoist psychological and somatological terms.

Shēn 身 is a Chinese character that may refer to “body,” “person,” and/or “self,” depending on context. Etymologically speaking, the earliest forms  are pictographs, most likely depicting a pregnant woman. Under one reading, this suggests the capacity for birth and life as a biological organism in the world. As received, the character probably depicts the human torso viewed from the side. This is one’s personal embodied personhood, and it in turn relates to a larger lexicon of Chinese and Daoist psychological and somatological terms.

In terms of the Philosophy of Religion, especially as envisioned in its current “global-critical” trajectory, with an additional concern for embodiment, personhood, and subjectivity, shēn brings our attention to culture-specific and tradition-specific technical terms related to embodiment, personhood, subjectivity, and the like. Such cultural, linguistic and philosophical sensitivity also encourages, and in fact requires, accompanying engagement with contextual meanings and applications. In addition, shēn inspires reflection on human being as embodied, enacted, and lived. We may inquire into the various dimensions of self from a comparative and cross-cultural perspective with attention associated indigenous terminology beyond Anglocentrism and Eurocentrism. Thus, terms like shēn may result in critical investigation of unquestioned assumptions and received views.

The Chinese character shēn 身 became a key religio-philosophical concept in the classical period of Chinese culture and literature, specifically from the Warring States period (480-222 BCE) to the Early Han dynasty (206 BCE-9 CE). However, it appears in earlier ancient literature, such as the Shījīng 詩經 (Classic of Poetry), as well. Again, we must be attentive to context-specific meaning. The character, in turn, relates to a larger repertoire of Chinese “body characters” and “self characters” (see Kohn 1991; Ames 1993; Komjathy 2011, 2013). Chinese and Daoist views of embodiment tend to be psychosomatic, with energetic and psychospiritual being equally important characterizations. There are three primary Chinese and Daoist terms related to “body,” namely, shēn 身, xíng 形, and tǐ 體. First, shēn, probably a pictograph of the human physique, seems to be used most frequently to refer to one’s entire psychosomatic process. In passages where shēn as “self” refers to the physical body, it is one’s “lived body” seen from within rather than “body as corpse” seen from without. The second character relating to Chinese notions of “body” is xíng, which is the “form” or “shape,” the three-dimensional disposition or configuration of the human process. Xíng-form has a morphological rather than genetic or schematic nuance. Finally, the third character designating “body” is tǐ, which relates to “physical structure” said to be a “combination of twelve groups” or parts. Tǐ-physical structure relates to the scalp, face, chin, shoulders, spine, abdomen, upper arms, lower arms, hands, thighs, legs, and feet. In addition to clarifying Chinese conceptions of body/self, these terms reveal that concern over “self” is not foreign to Chinese culture, contra to facile and conventional feminist or post-modern critiques. In addition, shēn may be used to refer to “person” and “self,” so it may be further connected to other, related characters. These include wǒ 我/wú 吾 (“I-ness”), jǐ 己 (“self”), míng 名 (“name/fame”), and zì 自 (“self”). Here míng is particularly interesting, as it technically refers to one’s given personal name, bestowed by one’s parents. It thus has the added connotations of “fame” and “reputation,” and social identity by extension. In any case, shēn brings our attention to the complexity of both indigenous terms and context-specific meaning. For example, chapter thirteen of the anonymous fourth-second century BCE Dàodé jīng 道德經 (Scripture on the Dao and Inner Power), a key classical Daoist text, contains the following line: 「及吾無身，吾有何患？」. It has been mistranslated as “if I did not have a body, what calamities would I have?” when here shēn refers to a personal self, resulting in “if I did not have a self, what calamities would I have?” This relates to the Daoist aspiration to become “formless” (wúxíng 無形), “nameless” (wúmíng 無名), “selfless” (wúsī 無私), and the (un)like. Thus, we must be constantly attentive to not only contextual nuance, but also unrecognized assumptions and possible unintended consequences in translation work.

Daoist adherents and communities in turn developed some of the most sophisticated indigenous Chinese discussions of embodiment (see Schipper 1978, 1993; Kohn 1991; Despeux 1994; Komjathy 2008, 2009, 2011, 2020), which might be beneficially compared to the contemplative psychological cartographies utilized in Buddhist meditation systems. Daoist discussions include what it is referred to as the “Daoist body” and associated “Daoist body-maps” (shēntú 身圖). This is the human body actualized, cultivated, and explored in Daoist practice, and it may result in a different type of being-in-the-world. One noteworthy dimension of Daoist views centers on the body as sacred, the body itself as a manifestation of the Dao 道 (Tao/Way), the sacred and ultimate concern of Daoists. This emanationist and immanence “somatology” may challenge assumed mind-body dualism, or even calcified distinctions. While beyond the present entry, there are various, related technical terms, including jīng 精 (“vital essence”), mìng 命 (“life-destiny”), qì 氣 (“subtle breath/energy”), shén 神 (“spirit”), xīn 心 (“heart-mind”), and xìng 性 (“innate nature”). These may be further connected with what may be understood as the Daoist “alchemical body” and “mystical body” (see Komjathy 2011, 2020), which relates to the Daoist meditation practice of internal alchemy (nèidān 內丹). Specifically, the associated Daoist practitioners engage the “physical body” as containing a “subtle body,” which consists of subtle corporeal locations and energy channels. The former are often designated with the technical term dāntián 丹田 (“elixir fields”), while the latter correspond to “meridians” (mài 脈). In more standardized accounts, the meridians include the twelve primary organ-meridians and the so-called Eight Extraordinary Channels, with the latter being especially important in Daoist practice.

A more general philosophical discussion of shēn and related termsin traditional Chinese culture has been published by Roger Ames (1993). Like Ames’ work more generally, there are problematic categorizations centering on “philosophy,” but the article nonetheless represents foundational reading. In terms of the “Daoist body,” key scholars include Catherine Despeux, Livia Kohn, Louis Komjathy, Joseph Needham (1990-1995), and Kristofer Schipper (1934-2021). Komjathy’s articles (2011, 2008, 2009, 2020) include summaries and critical analysis. This may be thought of as part of a larger “fragments for a history of the human body” (see Feher 1989; also Murphy 1992), a lived and living history that might include greater attentiveness to religion as manifesting as embodied movement in the world.

Related terms

Anthropology, body, embodiment, míng 名 (“name/fame”; Chinese), personhood, pneumatology, qì 氣 (“subtle breath/energy”; Chinese), somatology, xīn 心 (“heart-mind”; Chinese)

References

Ames, Roger. “The Meaning of Body in Classical Chinese Philosophy.” In Self as Body in Asian Theory and Practice, edited by Thomas Kasulis, 157-77. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993.

Despeux, Catherine. Taoïsme et corps humain. Le Xiuzhen tu. Paris: Guy Trédaniel, 1994.

Feher, Michel, with Ramona Naddaff and Nadia Tazi, eds. Fragments for a History of the Human Body. 3 vols. New York: Zone Books, 1989.

Kohn, Livia. “Taoist Visions of the Body.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 18 (1991): 227–52.

Komjathy, Louis. “Mapping the Daoist Body: Part I: The Neijing tu in History.” Journal of Daoist Studies 1 (2008): 67-92.

_____. “Mapping the Daoist Body: Part II: The Text of the Neijing tu.” Journal of Daoist Studies 2 (2009): 64-108.

_____. “The Daoist Mystical Body.” In Thomas Cottai and June McDaniel (eds.), Perceiving the Divine through the Human Body: Mystical Sensuality, 67-103. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2011.

_____. The Daoist Tradition: An Introduction. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013.

_____. “Daoist Body-Maps and Meditative Praxis.” In Transformational Embodiment in Asian Religions: Subtle Bodies, Spatial Bodies, edited by George Pati and Katherine Zubko, 36-64. London and New York: Routledge, 2020.

Murphy, Michael. The Future of the Body: Explorations into the Further Evolution of Human Nature. New York: Penguin Putnam Inc., 1992.

Schipper, Kristofer. “The Taoist Body.” History of Religions 17.3/4 (1978): 355-86.

_____. The Taoist Body. Translated by Karen Duval. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993 (1982).

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Pneumatology

by Louis Komjathy 康思奇

Pneumatology refers to discourse on, study of, and theories about pneuma, a Greek term that may indicate “breath,” “life,” “soul,” “spirit,” “wind,” and so forth. In this way, it has some overlap with psukhḗ (Latin: psychē) and, by extension, psychology. In a more technical sense, pneuma connects with energeia (Latin: energia; “activity”) (see, e.g., Smil 2017). While “pneumatology” is often used in modern Christian theological contexts to refer the study of the Holy Spirit (see, e.g., Kärkkäinen 2002), here I want to propose employing it as a comparative and cross-cultural term for exploring culture-specific and tradition-specific terms and views related to vital breath and energy. Such a reframing extends the topic beyond Christocentric frameworks, although Christian views would be included. The comparative framework is particularly relevant for the study of Asian and Chinese philosophies/religions in general and Daoism in particular, although more recent cross-cultural encounters suggest wide application and relevance.

In terms of the Philosophy of Religion, especially as envisioned in its current “global-critical” trajectory, with an additional concern for embodiment, personhood, and subjectivity, pneumatology enables us to avoid certain common (Eurocentric/Christocentric) assumptions and to consider larger, tradition-specific and perhaps trans-cultural insights. Specifically, it inspires us to investigate dimensions of self beyond or within the more conventional “body,” “mind,” and/or “soul” frameworks. It raises the possibility of subtle, underlying, and perhaps mutually infusing influences and presences. While it is presumably uncontroversial to draw attention to breath/breathing/respiration, and perhaps to bone, gesture, movement, skin, and the like, “subtle breath” and “subtle anatomy and physiology” are often taboo topics in mainstream academic discourse, perhaps invoking pre-modern and presumably “unscientific” ideas associated with “vitalism” (see Normandin and Wolfe 2016). So, while one might hear invocations of topics like “quantum physics” or “dark matter,” such views are not necessarily extended to human identity and personhood. How does something like mass-energy equivalence (E=mc2) or the so-called “observer effect” relate to subjectivity on a lived, phenomenological level? The possibility (actuality?) of energy moving in/as/through space and bodies inspires a variety of other questions, further investigation, and perhaps deeper or at least “alternative” modes of being and experiencing.

Pneuma was a central concept and concern among the ancient Hellenistic Stoics, for whom it generally designated the active, generative principle that organizes both the individual and the cosmos. In its highest form, pneuma constitutes psychē (“soul”). The latter, in turn, was regarded as a fragment of the pneuma that is the soul of the Divine (see Sellars 2006; also Hadot 1995). In this way, it may be further connected to eudaimoníā, or flourishing in/as/through virtue. The Hellenistic concept in turn flowed into and influenced early Christianity, including in the form of Gnosticism, and specifically its Hellenized views regarding khristós as logos (cf. Hebrew: messiah) and accompanying paráklētos (cf. Hebrew: ruach; also kavod; shekhinah), usually taken to refer to the Holy Spirit. For present purposes, one area where pneuma enters into the comparative and cross-cultural study of religion is in the work of the Sinologist Edward Schafer (1913–1991) and his intellectual heirs. Like many scholars of his generation, Schafer drew on Classical Studies for his translation methodology, specifically choosing to translate the Chinese and Daoist concept of qì 氣 (ch’i; Japanese: ki; Korean: gi) as “pneuma” (see, e.g., Schafer 1966). This translation and interpretive trajectory influenced the current entry, although the presentation of qì-as-pneuma is problematic on multiple grounds (see Komjathy 2013). Briefly, it uses a foreign (Greek) concept to translate another foreign (Chinese) concept (qì), which obfuscates the matter. Like translating shén 神 as “daimon,” it also invokes the accompanying ancient Hellenistic views and values to represent radically different ones. The term is thus better left untranslated as “qì,” although it may refer to physical breath and a more subtle presence depending on context. If translation is required, “subtle breath” or “vital breath” are perhaps most viable. Drawing upon the indigenous Chinese tradition, we may, in turn, think of “pneumatology” as qìxué 氣學 (“Qì Studies”), and vice versa.

As received, the character qì 氣 consists of qì 气 (“steam”) over mǐ 米 (“rice”), thus suggesting that it is somewhat analogous to vapor. The esoteric Daoist variant 炁 consists of jì 旡 (“collect”) and huǒ 火/灬 (“fire”), thus suggesting subtle warmth. Along with yin-yang 陰陽, qì is one of the key dimensions of traditional Chinese cosmology, including as utilized in both Chinese medicine and Daoism. Perhaps somewhat surprising to non-specialist readers, like the emphasis on ritual (lǐ 禮) as being human (rén 人), qì also has played a role in Ruist (“Confucian”) views and practices. In any case, Daoism is particularly relevant for present purposes. As part of a classical and foundational Daoist worldview and lifeway, qì refers to a subtle, even numinous presence that underlies and infuses all of existence and every individual being, at times including “non-sentient” ones. While part of one’s original and inherent constitution, qì may be more or less present, and one may be more or less sensitive to it. For Daoists, there are specific contemplative practices, including apophatic (emptiness-/stillness-based) meditation and internal alchemy (nèidān 內丹), that activate and strengthen this enlivening energetic presence. Qì, in turn, relates to other dimensions of human personhood from a Daoist perspective, including xīn 心 (“heart-mind”) and “body” (shēn 身). Like everything in existence, these may be understood and mapped as manifestations of qì. From a Daoist alchemical perspective, qì also is located in an entire “theosomatics” centering on the “subtle body,” which consists of subtle corporeal locations and energy channels (mài 脈). While qì flows throughout this network, the navel region, referred to as the “Elixir Field” (dāntián 丹田) and “Ocean of Qì” (qìhǎi 氣海), is considered the primary storehouse of qì in the body. In addition, Daoists distinguish different types of qì. The most important is dàoqì 道炁, the “qì of the Dao” or “Way-Energy” for short, which also is referred to as língqì 靈氣 (“numinous qì”). This refers to a more primordial and less differentiated form of “energy,” a sacred presence, associated with the Dao 道 (Tao/Way), the sacred and ultimate concern of Daoists, which Daoists attempt to connect with and live through. Such views and orientations further connect with Yǎngshēng 養生 (Nourishing Life) and modern Qìgōng 氣功 (Energy Work/Qì Exercise), which usually refer to health and longevity practice and which may or may not be Daoist (see Komjathy 2013).

As herein proposed, the Chinese and Daoist concept of qì thus represents a culture-specific and sometimes tradition-specific term related to “pneumatology.” It may, in turn, be connected to parallel, cross-cultural terms like àṣẹ (Yoruba), energeia (Greece), ki 氣 (Japan), mana (Melanesia and Polynesia), nilch’i (Navajo), pneuma (Greece), and prāṇa (India), to name some.

The literature on pneumatology, broadly conceived, is vast, especially if one engages tradition-specific materials and studies. On the East Asian side, some works may have broader appeal as well as inspire deeper reflection and application. Yasuo Yuasa (1987, 1993) and Nagatomo Shigenori (1992) have attempted to advance a ki-centered theory and approach, with specific attention to the so-called (imagined/projected?) “mind-body problem.” Shigehisa Kuriyama (1999) discusses issues of embodiment in Chinese and Greek medical traditions, including consideration of the central importance of qì in the former. Finally, Zhang Yu Huan, and Ken Rose (2001) offer a “brief history of qì,” with a specific focus on Chinese medicine.

Related terms: anthropology, embodiment, energy, mana (Proto-Oceanic), qì 氣 (Chinese), pneuma (Greek), prāṇa (Sanskrit), psychology, shēn 身 (“body/self”; Chinese), somatology, xīn 心 (“heart-mind”; Chinese)

References

Hadot, Pierre. Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault. Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell, 1995.

Kärkkäinen, Veli-Matti. Pneumatology: The Holy Spirit in Ecumenical, International, and Contextual Perspective. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2002.

Komjathy, Louis. The Daoist Tradition: An Introduction. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013.

Kuriyama, Shigehisa. The Expressiveness of the Body and the Divergence of Greek and Chinese Medicine. New York: Zone Books, 1999.

Nagatomo Shigenori. Attunement through the Body. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992.

Normandin, Sebastian and Charles Wolfe, eds. Vitalism and the Scientific Image in Post-Enlightenment Life Science, 1800–2010. New York: Springer, 2016.

Schafer, Edward. “Thoughts about a Students’ Dictionary of Classical Chinese.” Monumenta Serica 25, no. 1 (1966): 197–206. https://doi.org/10.1080/02549948.1966.11744946.

Sellars, John. Stoicism. London and New York: Routledge, 2006.

Smil, Vaclav. Energy and Civilization: A History. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2017.

Yuasa Yasuo. The Body: Toward an Eastern Mind-Body Theory. Translated by Nagatomo Shigenori and T.P. Kasulis. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987.

———. The Body, Self-Cultivation, and Ki-Energy. Translated by Nagatomo Shigenori and Monte Hull. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993.

Zhang Yu Huan and Ken Rose. A Brief History of Qi. Brookline, MA: Paradigm Publications, 2001.

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Anthropology

by Louis Komjathy 康思奇

Anthropology refers to discourse on, study of, and theories about the human. While more conventionally used to designate the social scientific discipline and field dedicated to research on human culture, especially through ethnographic fieldwork, the term may be used as a comparative and cross-cultural interpretive category. Etymologically speaking, “anthropology” derives from the Greek ánthrōpos (“human”) and lógos (“study”). Thus, it may be applied to consider the multidimensional, psychosomatic identity and experience, the entire spectrum, of being human/human being, including embodiment, personhood, psychology, subjectivity, and so forth. In this way, there is some overlap with “Christian (theological) anthropology,” which concerns human relationality to divinity beyond the merely physical and social dimensions of humanity across times and places. Considered and applied holistically and comprehensively, anthropology raises questions about the “fullness” of human being, including with respect to the animal/human/divine ternary and the possibility of “something more.”

Anthropology refers to discourse on, study of, and theories about the human. While more conventionally used to designate the social scientific discipline and field dedicated to research on human culture, especially through ethnographic fieldwork, the term may be used as a comparative and cross-cultural interpretive category. Etymologically speaking, “anthropology” derives from the Greek ánthrōpos (“human”) and lógos (“study”). Thus, it may be applied to consider the multidimensional, psychosomatic identity and experience, the entire spectrum, of being human/human being, including embodiment, personhood, psychology, subjectivity, and so forth. In this way, there is some overlap with “Christian (theological) anthropology,” which concerns human relationality to divinity beyond the merely physical and social dimensions of humanity across times and places. Considered and applied holistically and comprehensively, anthropology raises questions about the “fullness” of human being, including with respect to the animal/human/divine ternary and the possibility of “something more.”

In terms of Philosophy of Religion, especially as envisioned in its current “global-critical” trajectory, anthropology inspires us to consider human being/being human in its (our) complex and multidimensional expressions and forms. The term thus has some overlap with the more familiar philosophical categories and approaches of existentialism and ontology. Comparatively speaking, it draws our attention to existence and being, including meaning and purpose. Although third-person discourse (“objectivity”), especially in the academic vogue of cultural relativism, secular materialism, and social constructivism, is usually assumed (and presumed) in mainstream academic discourse, this may represent a form of alienation and dissociation. “Anthropology” in turn makes space for the possibility of first-person discourse, or “critical subjectivity.” This involves a disciplined approach open to public investigation and debate. Nonetheless, as anthropology is not just about other people/selves, but about me and you, it inspires us to consider the embodied and lived dimensions of our beings, including communal and ecological relationality.

Historically speaking, there is a classical Hellenistic approximation of our current “anthropology” in the works of the Greek philosopher and polymath Aristotle (384–322 BCE), who of course advanced his own specific “theory of the human” defined by reason and agency in contrast to “animals” (see Keil and Kreft 2019). One of the earliest known usages of the term in the more technical sense of an academic discipline appears in 1647 in the writings of the Danish theologian-physician Thomas Bartholin (1616–1680) and his son Caspar Bartholin the Younger (1655–1738), who divided it into anatomy (“body”) and psychology (“soul”). The social scientific discipline as such is sometimes traced to the Spanish Catholic Franciscan friar and missionary-priest Bernardino de Sahagún (ca. 1499–1590), who conducted “ethnography” (evangelization) in “New Spain” (present-day Mexico) (see León-Portilla 2002). It expanded in Great Britain and the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, eventually becoming one of the cornerstones of the “social sciences” as we know them today. If we were to follow this trajectory, an entire received corpus and key figures would be invoked. The same is true with respect to “theological anthropology” (see Cortez 2010).

However, this entry is not about the history of the term, the social scientific discipline, or the Christian theological application, so here we will focus on the use of “anthropology” as a comparative and cross-cultural—and possibly theological—category. As the academic discipline of Religious Studies, assuming there is such a discipline, has explicitly defined itself in contrast to (Christian) Theology, the invocation of “theology” here may be problematic and lead to dismissal. However, like “anthropology” herein, I propose using other categories like theology and soteriology as comparative and cross-cultural terms. These refer to discourse on the “sacred” and “ultimate purpose” of human existence, respectively (see Komjathy 2018). Along these lines, we cannot, or at least we should not, presume and thus artificially delimit “the question of the human,” and our humanity by extension. Are we simply biological organisms destined to decompose? Is my consciousness simply brain chemistry, a series of physiologically determined “synaptic firings?” Or is my being connected to something larger, infused with other presence, and capable of more? Is being-human also being-animal, and even being part of the human-primate collective? Do we have a choice in all of this?

If we are open to considering anthropology in its diverse dimensions and expressions, then, following Religious Studies, we need to engage an equally complex variety of disciplines, approaches, and perspectives. This relates to interdisciplinarity, multidisciplinarity, and even transdisciplinarity. More straightforwardly and perhaps expectedly, some contributing fields include anthropology (narrowly defined), biology, neuroscience, philosophy, psychology, and so forth. More radically, one thinks of Animal Studies, Consciousness Studies, Contemplative Studies, dance, movement studies, somatics, and the like (see Komjathy 2018), with many of these being interdisciplinary as well. Depending on the specific dimension of being human/human being that we are exploring, we will need to determine which of said disciplines are most relevant and applicable. The matter becomes even more complicated if we want a more complete account, and perhaps if we want a more enlivening form of being and experiencing.

As mentioned, “anthropology” as herein employed encompasses consciousness, embodiment, experience, movement, personhood, psychology, and the like. That is, we should not reduce human being to either “body-based” or “mind-based” views. This includes along the lines of contemporary attempts to reduce various dimensions of human being and expression (e.g., religion) to biology. While controversial, “theology” inspires us to ask deeper and larger questions, although these again may overlap with “non-theological” existentialism. There may be dimensions of humanity that require more complex, diverse, holistic, integrated, and sophisticated approaches. For example, there are religious adherents, communities, and traditions that emphasize other, perhaps hidden capacities. Here I am thinking specifically of the Chinese Daoist and larger traditional East Asian emphasis on qì 氣 (“subtle breath/energy”), which parallels other cultures as well, and of the traditional Indian and larger Asian emphasis on siddhi (lit., “accomplishment/fulfillment”), variously referred to as “numinous abilities,” “paranormal psychology,” and/or “psychic/supernatural powers.” Some commonly identified ones include clairaudience, clairvoyance, invincibility/invulnerability, knowledge of past lives, multivocality, and so forth. Regardless of what one personally thinks of such claims, they are, in fact, religious claims about human being and potential (see Young and Goulet 1994; Cardeña et al. 2000; Kripal 2017; cf. Martin and McCutcheon 2012). They make claims about us, about our own being and experiencing. If we take them seriously, in whatever manner, how will we explore them?

Related terms: Embodiment, experience, personhood, pneumatology, psychology, qì 氣 (“subtle breath/energy”; Chinese), shēn 身 (“body/self”; Chinese), somatology, subjectivity, xīn 心 (“heart-mind”; Chinese)

References

Cardeña, Etzel, Steven Jay Lynn, and Stanley Krippner, eds. Varieties of Anomalous Experience: Examining the Scientific Evidence. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association, 2000.

Cortez, Marc. Theological Anthropology: A Guide for the Perplexed. London and New York: T & T Clark, 2010.

Keil, Geert, and Nora Kreft, eds. Aristotle’s Anthropology. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019.

Komjathy, Louis. Introducing Contemplative Studies. West Sussex, England and Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2018.

Kripal, Jeffrey. Secret Body: Erotic and Esoteric Currents in the History of Religions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017.

León-Portilla, Miguel. Bernardino de Sahagún: First Anthropologist. Translated by Mauricio Mixco. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002.

Martin, Craig, and Russell McCutcheon, eds. Religious Experience: A Reader. Sheffield, England: Equinox Publishing, 2012.

Young, David, and Jean-Guy Goulet, eds. Being Changed by Cross-cultural Encounters: The Anthropology of Extraordinary Experience. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994.