Self and Body in Early East Asian Thought

This Element depicts the evolution of East Asian ideas for self-cultivation and body healing from 400 BCE to 200 CE.

This Element explores the development of self-cultivation methods in late Warring States and early imperial East Asia, analyzing textualization, systematization, and dissemination among social groups. It explores body models, vitality cultivation, disease models, and therapies, comparing them with early Western medical traditions.This Element examines evolving methods of cultivating the embodied self, including healing diseases and creating a superior person, in late Warring States and early imperial East Asia. It analyses many topics, including the textualization of bodily regimens and therapies, their systematization, their dissemination among different (and sometimes rival) social groups, and the diversity of traditions – religious, pharmacological, nourishing of life – that contested and combined to form a hegemonic medical practice. These topics in turn feature several issues: models of the body, regimens of cultivating and extending vitality, models of disease, and therapies for these ailments. All these ideas will be refined and extended through comparison with early Western medical traditions.