Becoming like Gods: Models of Mind and Self-Perfection in Early China

Curie Virág (University of Warwick)

In both the ancient Greek and early Chinese traditions, an ideal of human perfection described in terms of a transcendence of the ordinary human condition and the attainment of a godlike state can be found in major influential writings. While in the Greek tradition, this ideal of godliness—much studied by scholars—was quintessentially associated with the intellect and its capacity for reasoned, orderly contemplation, in early China, there seems to have been less agreement about what it meant to transcend the ordinary human condition and to achieve a superhuman condition—often referred to as shen 神(spiritual, divine), tian 天 (heavenly) or ling 靈 (numinous, spiritual, intelligent). This paper explores how key early Chinese texts (the Zhuangzi, Xunzi and Guanzi) described human potentiality through the language of self-divinization and what this might tell us about the contours of mind and self as envisioned in these texts. It concludes by considering what we might learn from the parallels and contrasts with Greek ideals of godliness in humans and what a cross-cultural examination of this theme might reveal about the distinct ethical and epistemic practices that developed in the two traditions.