I’m pleased to announce the first Sino-Hellenic Network seminar of this academic year, generously supported by the Faculty of Classics in Cambridge. Please see details below:

Thursday 30th October, 11am-12.30pm GMT. Room R.01, Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge/ Zoom

Comparative Perspectives On Embodiment: The Invention of the Body in China and Greece

Lisa Raphals (UC Riverside/ Edinburgh)

Respondent: Douglas Cairns (Edinburgh) 

Abstract

The relation between “body” and “soul” is one of the most longstanding issues in the history of Greek, and later Western, reflective thought.  A Chinese history of the body presents different problems, both conceptual and contextual. I argue that the “body” (Greek sōma σῶμα, Chinese xing 形, ti 體, shēn 身) emerged as an explicit concept in both fifth-century Greece and fourth-century China.  However, Chinese and Greek accounts of the body emphasized very different things, and had different conceptual foci, beginning with interest in very different kinds of “natures.” I draw on Chinese texts from the fourth through second centuries BCE and Greek texts from Homer through Plato.  The first section considers the role of the body in several Chinese self-cultivation and ritual texts.  The second section reviews the Greek history of a concept of the body and how that history was appropriated in accounts of the soul.  The last two sections introduce comparative perspectives.

To receive the Zoom link, please sign up here, or alternatively sign up to be a member of the Network to receive regular updates.