Chair: Philip J. Ivanhoe, University of Michigan

This panel seeks to improve our understanding of the conceptions of the self found in the early Confucian and Daoist traditions by introducing new approaches to the problem of analyzing conceptions of the self and their role within larger philosophical and religious systems. Each of the papers presented in the panel explores a different aspect of the creation and/or conceptualization of human selfhood in order to open up new avenues of interpretation in the study of ancient Chinese thought. Berkson’s paper uses the notion of "temporality" to examine the different conceptions of the relationship between "self’ and "nature" offered by Mencius, Xunzi, and Zhuangzi, and show how these different conceptions may have influenced these thinkers’ ethical positions and attitudes toward death. Sahleen’s paper focuses on the idea of "persona" as a moral medium in order to explain how descriptions of Confucius’ personal behavior contribute to the theories of self-cultivation and moral leadership found in the Analects. Slingerland’s paper applies the metaphor analysis techniques recently developed in the fields of cognitive science and linguistics to elucidate the conceptions of the self found in the Zhuangzi, while simultaneously exploring the larger issue of "experiential" or "embodied" realism as a methodology for comparative studies.

This paper explores the conceptions of the self held by Confucian and Daoist thinkers of the classical period and examines how differing notions of temporality and nature underlie and shape these conceptions. In particular, it examines Mencius, Xunzi and Zhuangzi, and shows that some of the key differences among their understandings of the self involve conflicting notions of temporality and, correspondingly, contrasting understandings of the relation of "self’ to "nature." This will shed light on other important differences among the thinkers, particularly their various attitudes toward death.

I first show how the Confucian notion of temporality sees human life unfolding through time in terms of narrative, and then explore the implications of this picture for an understanding of Confucian attitudes toward self-cultivation and death. I then contrast the Confucian "narrative" understanding of temporality with Zhuangzi’s picture, which appears to contain two different conceptions of temporality: the "momentary model" and the "natural cycles model." I will argue that both of these Zhuangzian conceptions (which are ultimately reconcilable) undermine narrative temporality and the conceptions of the self which it produces. I conclude by showing how Confucian and Zhuangzian models of temporality produce different understandings of our relationship to nature—from Mencius’ "self as the realization of human nature" to Xunzi’s "self as the overcoming/reformation of human nature" to Zhuangzi’s "realization of one’s true nature through the forgetting of self"—and that how each thinker conceives of self, temporality and nature has profound implications for his ethical vision and approach to death.

Joel D. Sahleen, Stanford University

This paper examines passages in the Confucian Analects which describe the manner in which Confucius speaks, walks, dresses, and performs rituals, and attempts to explain the inclusion of these passages in the text by showing how they contribute to the theories of self-cultivation and moral leadership it develops.

In the first half of the paper, I establish that Confucius and his followers believed an individual’s outward appearance, voice, gate, and mannerisms (i.e., their persona) can affect his or her internal dispositions, and then go on to discuss what types of dispositions the persona associated with Confucius might help to foster. The aesthetic vision of the good life and the good person found in the Analects is thereby shown to be an integral part of the theory of moral cultivation Confucius and his followers advocated. In the second half, I show how once the proper dispositions have been acquired, these same appearances and mannerisms serve to express the cultivated individual’s "moral power" (de), and provide a medium for his or her moral leadership. In the Analects, moral power is described as having an "attractive" and a "transformative" dimension—both of which, I maintain, can be explained in terms of the effect that the cultivated individual’s persona has on the behavior of others. The paper concludes by arguing that these two aspects of the Confucian persona create a cycle of moral transmission in which the cultivated individual attracts and transforms individuals who, by imitating their mentor’s persona, eventually become cultivated themselves.

Edward Slingerland, University of Southern California

This paper has two purposes. The first is to examine conceptions of the self in the Inner Chapters of the Zhuangzi through the techniques of metaphor analysis developed by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. This analysis should demonstrate that many of the metaphorical categories employed by speakers of English in conceptualizing the self (as described in Lakoff and Johnson’s latest work, Philosophy in the Flesh) are also to be found in this early Chinese text. The intention is to provide not only greater insight into the "Zhuangzian" conception of the self, but also to provide a corrective to previous approaches to the subject that overly exoticize the conceptions of the self found in the Zhuangzi.