The Animal and the Daemon in Early ChinaExploring the cultural perception of animals in early Chinese thought, this careful reading of Warring States and Han dynasty writings analyzes how views of animals were linked to human self perception and investigates the role of the animal world in the conception of ideals of sagehood and socio-political authority. Roel Sterckx shows how perceptions of the animal world influenced early Chinese views of man's place among the living species and in the world at large. He argues that the classic Chinese perception of the world did not insist on clear categorical or ontological boundaries between animals, humans, and other creatures such as ghosts and spirits. Instead the animal realm was positioned as part of an organic whole and the mutual relationships among the living species - both as natural and cultural creatures - were characterized as contingent, continuous, and interdependent. |
Contents
Contextualizing Animals | 1 |
The Animal and the Daemon | 5 |
Animals as Images | 8 |
Defining Animals | 15 |
Problems of Definition | 16 |
Animals in Texts | 21 |
Naming Animals and Animal Names | 29 |
Conclusion | 42 |
The Transformation of Animals through Virtue | 137 |
Moral Hybrids | 153 |
Speaking with Birds and Beasts | 158 |
Conclusion | 162 |
Changing Animals | 165 |
A Cosmogony of Change | 167 |
Demonic Transformations | 171 |
Functional Metamorphosis | 173 |
Animals and Officers | 45 |
Managing Animals | 46 |
Ritual Animals | 56 |
Animals and Spirits | 61 |
Calendrical Animals | 64 |
Conclusion | 67 |
Categorizing Animals | 69 |
Qi and Blood | 73 |
Correlative Taxonomies | 78 |
Toward a Moral Taxonomy | 88 |
Conclusion | 91 |
The Animal and Territory | 93 |
Animal Patterns as Social Patterns | 96 |
Animals and Territory | 101 |
Animals beyond Territory | 110 |
Conclusion | 122 |
Transforming the Beasts | 123 |
Animals and the Origins of Music | 124 |
Animals Music and Moral Transformation | 129 |
Autonomous Transformations | 177 |
Symbolic Metamorphosis | 186 |
Portentous Transformations | 194 |
Metamorphosing Agents | 198 |
Critique of Change | 200 |
Conclusion | 203 |
Strange Animals | 205 |
Defining the Strange | 206 |
Interpreting the Strange | 211 |
Confucius Names the Beasts | 216 |
When the Grackos Nest in Lu | 225 |
The Dog as Daemon | 231 |
The Capture of the White Unicorn | 233 |
Conclusion | 237 |
Conclusion | 239 |
Notes | 245 |
| 321 | |
| 353 | |
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