Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica

Abstract

This paper reviews ancient Chinese concepts of life from the Shang and Chou to the Ch'in and Han Periods.  In general, these changes can be said to be related to a trend of secularization, as well as to the transformation of the political and social structure from a feudal to a prefectural-bureaucratic system. Ancient Chinese society up to the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Periods seems to have undergone a fundamental transformation.  In relation to this topic, my previous research examined problems of a structural nature; the current paper brings evidence to bear on the issue through research on the mentality of the period.
I divide the concepts of life in this period of over a thousand years into three stages.  The first stage covers the Late Shang and Western Chou, when life was thought to come from the ancestors, and the primary method for extending life was to pray to the ancestors.  During these four to five hundred years, we find that earlier prayers for life emphasized that of the clan as a group.  It is probably only from the middle of the Western Chou (about the end of the 10th century B.C.) that individual venerability first became an object of prayer.
The second stage is the Spring and Autumn Period.  It was believed that the ultimate source and supreme ruler of human life was the Heavenly Emperor residing above the ancestral deities.  This is perhaps related to the collapse of feudalism.  The Supreme Emperor was liberated from the monopoly of worship by the Chou kings.  Not to remain in his elevated isolation, he gradually extended his influence downward to the lives of the feudal lords and noble clans, and finally even the multitude of commoners could not escape his control.
This second stage was marked by a deep transformation.  On the one hand, the concept of life did not break away from religion.  On the other hand, through the dissemination of cultural and intellectual trends and through individual human activity, previously restricted views of life became common beliefs. In the Spring and Autumn Period, farsighted people considered the spiritual condition revealed in the demeanor and dignity expressed in the performance of the rites of the feudal ceremonial system to indicate an individual's longevity or premature death.  After some further development, life became something that individuals could pursue relying on their own efforts. This is the third stage as demarcated in this paper, traceable to about the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Periods.
In the Warring States Period, scholars who did not oppose the ceremonial system already knew that the enjoyment of the feudal ceremonial system was very harmful to life.  But feelings and desires can not be entirely guarded against, and so they proposed theories of moderation and nurturing life.  This paper divides the others, who did oppose the feudal ceremonial system in the pursuit of long life, into the two camps of those who cultivated the spirit and those who cultivated the physical body.  Although they attacked each other, fundamentally they both belong to what later ages categorized as Taoists.  The spiritual cultivation camp easily moved into philosophical contemplation.  The body cultivation camp, because it is more directly compatible with medicine and science, developed a rich and varied culture of cultivating life, and its influences remains today.