Contenu du sommaire : De l'esprit aux esprits. Enquête sur la notion de shen

This paper examines the notion of shen in the context of early Chinese ritual and religion in practice. In ancient China significant conceptual parallels exist between the ways in which abstract notions such as shen " spirit " are interpreted by a philosophical tradition on the one hand, and their transformation in ritual and religious practice on the other. Following a discussion of attitudes towards the spirit world among the masters of philosophy in Warring States China, we examine sacrificial performance as a multimedia event that offered multiple routes of access to the spirits. Rather than addressing spirits as embodiments of a pre-existing order or pantheon, we argue that in early Chinese religion, sacrificial procedure was conceived of primarily as a progressive search or quest for spirit presence through performance. The latter was aimed at establishing a sensory bond between the ritual participants and spirits addressed.

Contemporary Chinese Intellectuals in Discussion with the Spirits : the Case of Liang Shuming (1893-1988) In the twentieth century, Chinese intellectuals have inherited a traditional belief in spirits as a part of the national psyche. If most of them have discarded this belief, judged irrational in the modern age, others have attempted to integrate it in a discourse which may give a rational account of the existence of spirits. Liang Shuming draws from both Confucianism and Buddhism in order to present the role of the spirits in the constitution of a moral universe, a role which holds an essential value for the human world.

Animation of the Body. The Notion of Shen in Early Chinese Medical Literature The Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon, a medical compendium dating to the Han, presents various and sometimes conflicting notions of shen. Rather than being understood in the sense of " spirit ", they most adequately correspond to the notion of a " soul " (in French : âme), a concept much debated in Greek, and later, French philosophy. Shen bears characteristics resembling those associated with qi " breath/energy ", the loss of which leads to death. It is to be preserved as a precious property, and must be prevented from escaping the body or being harmed by external forces or the needle of the medical practitioner who acts as a physician of body and soul. Despite the importance of the heart as its seat, the text further speaks of shen associated with the five organs and of shen associated with various parts of the body, making it difficult to understand whether shen refers to a single entity that assumes several functions according to its location in the body, or whether it refers to a plurality of elements. A basic feature of shen, singular or plural, is that it circulates within the body according to climatic or seasonal changes. The renshen " body soul ", in keeping with the renqi " breath of the body ", moves according to the moon cycle, the age of the person and the time in the year. Different systems were used to calculate these movements, probably reflecting a plurality of views. The Inner Canon twice advances the idea of a jade axis around which the soul constantly moves following a regular course, like stars circling the Pole. The course followed by the human soul within the body was also enacted by the sovereign in the Bright Hall, a symbolic palace that replicated empire and cosmos. body according to climatic or seasonal changes. The renshen " body soul ", in keeping with the renqi " breath of the body ", moves according to the moon cycle, the age of the person and the time in the year. Different systems were used to calculate these movements, probably reflecting a plurality of views. The Inner Canon twice advances the idea of a jade axis around which the soul constantly moves following a regular course, like stars circling the Pole. The course followed by the human soul within the body was also enacted by the sovereign in the Bright Hall, a symbolic palace that replicated empire and cosmos.

This paper attempts to answer the questions : What was Ge Hong trying to do when he wrote the Baopuzi ? What were his arguments ? And why, within the context of the time, were these arguments significant ? In answering these questions, the essay claims that there is a unified set of ideas concerning humans, sages, and the spirit world in the Baopuzi. Moreover, it is a set of ideas that underlies both the inner and outer portions of the text.

" Entering the Soul of the World ". Defining and Approaching Shen in the Work of Zhang Zai (1020-1078) This article is organized in two parts. First, it argues that the term shen can be understood as " soul " within a specific frame of translation. We propose to set aside two antagonistic readings of the Zhengmeng [Discipline for the Young Dim-witted], one being materialistic and the other metaphysical, and to show that this work can be read following the European philosophical discourse on change and energy. By relating the thought of Zhang Zai to that of Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), Spinoza (1632-1677) and Diderot (1713-1784), we hope to remove some of the perceived ambiguity that surrounds his view of the absolute and seek to highlight a logic of soul, a fusing between energy and sensibility, as well as an ethical orientation. In the second part we examine the issue of the perception of this absolute and of the recognition of the soul. The ethical bias of Zhang Zai, his emphasis on the adequacy of conduct, on cautiousness and precaution, on the " trigger " of moral life (ji), help to describe the soul-becoming of man as a personal, physical experience of a flow, an influence parallel to a transformation of the self. " Soul " is seen as pure dynamism, freed from the hurdles of social relationship. This dynamism instills new powers and uses in human behavior and social practices.

Self-Cultivation and Creativity : Reflections on Mou Zongsan's Relationship with an Energetic Confucianism Within the Chinese history of the self-cultivation (and particularly in Song and Ming Confucianism), the spiritual was confronted with a tendency of ontological " de-hierarchisation ". In philosophy, this movement appeared mainly in the evolution of the concept of " energy " (qi). The relation between the spirit (shen) or the regulating structure (li) on the one hand, and energy on the other constitutes one of the central questions of neo-confucian philosophy. From the northern Song up to the late Ming, the philosophical satus of the concept of qi-energy increasingly raised. During the last decades, scholarly debates on Confucianism in China have been very much influenced by the question whether the réévaluation of energy as a key-concept can provide new and critical perspectives for research into the Confucian tradition. In this debate, Zhang Zai (1020-1078) and Wang Fuzhi (1619-1692) as representatives of energetic Confucianism have been major objects of attention. With this development as a background, this paper deals with the following problem : if one abandons the value-hierarchy between immanence and transcendence, between the physical and the metaphysical world, and thus undermines the metaphysical basis of spiritual cultivation, how can the relationship between creativity, cultivation and ethics be critically reconceptualized ? According to Mou Zongsan (1909-1995), energetics and cultivation obviously form an opposition, with the moral effort aiming at limitation and control of the flow of energy. Is it possible to think of a more positive relation between cultivation and energetics ? The understanding of "the compénétration of the constituants without adherence" (jianti wulei) as an ascetic practice is thus part of a broader research into alternative modes of relation between ethics, aesthetics and self-cultivation. concept of " energy " (qi). The relation between the spirit (shen) or the regulating structure (li) on the one hand, and energy on the other constitutes one of the central questions of neo-confucian philosophy. From the northern Song up to the late Ming, the philosophical status of the concept of qi-energy increasingly raised. During the last decades, scholarly debates on Confucianism in China have been very much influenced by the question whether the réévaluation of energy as a key-concept can provide new and critical perspectives for research into the Confucian tradition. In this debate, Zhang Zai (1020-1078) and Wang Fuzhi (1619-1692) as representatives of energetic Confucianism have been major objects of attention. With this development as a background, this paper deals with the following problem : if one abandons the value-hierarchy between immanence and transcendence, between the physical and the metaphysical world, and thus undermines the metaphysical basis of spiritual cultivation, how can the relationship between creativity, cultivation and ethics be critically reconceptualized ? According to Mou Zongsan (1909-1995), energetics and cultivation obviously form an opposition, with the moral effort aiming at limitation and control of the flow of energy. Is it possible to think of a more positive relation between cultivation and energetics ? The understanding of " the compenetration of the constituants without adherence " (jianti wulei) as an ascetic practice is thus part of a broader research into alternative modes of relation between ethics, aesthetics and self-cultivation.

The Prince and the Fisherman : reflections on a divination case in the Zhuangzi Until today, parapsychologists studying the workings of the world beyond the human sensorium and academics researching divination have not been in dialogue. My paper aims to demonstrate, by means of a case study, the type of dialogue that could emerge between those two fields of research. An edifying story in Zhuangzi about a divinatory dream and a sacred tortoise offers a platform to facilitate this dialogue. This example will demonstrate the fructifying potential of such comparative work between East and West.