Michael Puett-To Become A God
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To Become a God: Cosmology, Sacrifice, and Self-Divinization in Early China
by
Michael Puett
3.96 · Rating details · 27 ratings · 2 reviews
Evidence from Shang oracle bones to memorials submitted to Western Han emperors attests to a long-lasting debate in early China over the proper relationship between humans and gods. One pole of the debate saw the human and divine realms as separate and agonistic and encouraged divination to determine the will of the gods and sacrifices to appease and influence them. The opposite pole saw the two realms as related and claimed that humans could achieve divinity and thus control the cosmos. This wide-ranging book reconstructs this debate and places within their contemporary contexts the rival claims concerning the nature of the cosmos and the spirits, the proper demarcation between the human and the divine realms, and the types of power that humans and spirits can exercise. It is often claimed that the worldview of early China was unproblematically monistic and that hence China had avoided the tensions between gods and humans found in the West. By treating the issues of cosmology, sacrifice, and self-divinization in a historical and comparative framework that attends to the contemporary significance of specific arguments, Michael J. Puett shows that the basic cosmological assumptions of ancient China were the subject of far more debate than is generally thought. (less)
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Paperback, Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series, 384 pages
Published May 1st 2004 by Harvard University Press (first published September 30th 2002)
Original Title
To Become a God: Cosmology, Sacrifice, and Self-Divinization in Early China (Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series)
ISBN
0674016432 (ISBN13: 9780674016439)
Edition Language
English
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Nov 08, 2011Jessica Zu rated it really liked it
Shelves: hist597c, translation
How did people in early China conceptualize and express the relationship between humanity and divinity? Is China really the land of unity of human and spirits where all are living in a harmonious cosmos, as argued by many scholars since Max Weber? By tracing keywords like spirits, sacrifices and divinization, self-divination, and cosmology in foundational texts of early Chinese thought from the late Shang (mainly oracle bones and bamboo strips) to the end of the Western Han and by tuning into the nuances, tensions, and concerns manifested in the texts themselves, Michael Puett reconstructs a plausible story of the rise of correlative cosmology in the 4th century B.C.E as a critique against the dominant theomorphic claims at the time (p.200).
According to this line of story, early Shang and Zhou practices of sacrifices and divination were not grounded in a harmonious model of cosmology. Contrary to the common scholarly understanding of continuity of humanity and divinity in early Chinese thought, Puett characterizes the human relations with Di and spirits as agonistic. The living had to transform the deceased into proper ancestors through appropriate and timely sacrifices, placed in a pantheon of spirits with the oldest ancestors situated closest to Di, whom then can be manipulated through human actions like sacrifices to petition on behalf of the living. By carefully contextualizing key claims on the continuity of humans and spirits in texts like “shao gao” in Shangshu, Puett puts forth a powerful critique of scholars like David Pankenier’s interpretation of Zhou’s conquest of Shang as a turning to the normative cosmological linking of king with Heaven and a turning away from Shang’s aberration of discontinuity (Puett, pp. 55-57).
During the fourth and third centuries B.C.E., the dominant court practices based on sacrificial-theistic model animated various visions, understandings, and practices of what makes up the cosmos and the human’s place in it. Through close scrutiny of a plethora of texts at the time, Puett reveals to us the emergence of many new claims of self-divinization with diverse and often polemic views over the nature of the human and the divine and on how to become a god. However, these claims of self-divination were nothing but minority critiques of the dominant view. Even though the Qin and Eastern Han emperors as well as theorists and religious specialists (fangshi) found some of the claims on sacrifices, self-divination, and cosmology useful to the empire-building project, a more unified view of correlative and harmonious cosmology did not emerge until the end of the 1st century B.C.E. And yet, even this “monistic” cosmology, which was put forward by Kuang Heng and built upon Dong Zhongshu’s correlative thinking, cannot be simply labeled as a “harmonious oneness” because of its insistence on the disunity of human and gods, its denial of imperial divinity, and its emphasis on proper sacrifices as the medium between the humanity and the divinity (Puett, p. 314).
Freed from earlier normative comparisons with early Greek and the limiting framework of social evolutionary theory as well as cultural-essentialist tendency, Puett tells us a plausible and exciting story about early Chinese thought. Nevertheless, Puett’s use of evidence leaves many things to be desired. First of all, many ancient Chinese texts cited in this volume are notorious for its difficulty of interpretation. Despite Puett’s careful examination of secondary literature in English, the omission of Chinese commentaries about these texts leaves one wonder whether some of the tensions and debates could be further corroborated by a careful reading of the commentaries around these texts. Second, the validity of close reading depends crucially on the integrity of the texts themselves, especially when used as evidence for a certain historical period. Given the long commentary tradition around many of these texts like shijing and shangshu, it is disappointing the Puett has not paid enough attention to the dating and integrity of these texts before embarking on the journey of close reading. For example, in his close reading of “shengmin” in Maoshi, a Western Han recension of Shijing as evidence for Zhou thought on sacrifices and divinations, Puett owes his reader at least a passing explanation of why Maoshi is chosen among many existent recensions and commentaries and why the readers should not worry about meanings accrued to the text between Zhou and Western Han (p. 63 and pp. 68-74).
A third point is both relevant to the use of evidence and to the comparative methodology employed in this book: the out-of-network comparison with early Greek thought. In comparative studies, a comparison between two thought systems that were developed more or less without any contact is dangerous both because of the difficulty (or infinite possibilities) of translation of key concepts and because of the human tendency to use the more familiar system as a ruler to measure up the Other (the unfamiliar system). With great care, Puett successfully demonstrates how various Chinese thought defies earlier categorizations like monism/dualism, continuity/discontinuity. In the mean process, Puett sets up another dichotomy of agon and harmony, failing to notice the mereological thinking and a sense of dynamic harmony dominant in Chinese perception of the cosmos. For example, based on my readings of the texts examined in Puett’s book, my impression is: despite the difference between Shang Zhou perception of Di as capricious and the correlative cosmology in Western Han, the overarching goal is that harmony is achievable or bridgeable through human activities, quite unlike the Greek mythology aiming at gaining human autonomy. Again, my comparison of China and Greek thought falls into another dichotomy: oneness vs. autonomy. But this failure only further highlights the fundamental difficulty of comparing two out-of-network systems. A more productive comparative method should bring in at least a third party, say Indian or Islamic thought, where at least some cultural contacts can be established in the time period under consideration.
Another interesting point is the strong influence of Hegelian dialectics in the overall structure of Puett’s arguments: the development of ideas and societies is driven by the tension between competing forces. Though it is dangerous to rely too heavily on a philosophy of history, Puett’s skillful employment of it is beneficial for at least two reasons. On one hand, zooming into the tensions manifested in texts themselves allows him to successfully break away from earlier cultural-essentialist thinking and social evolutionary theories. On the other hand, Puett’s scrutiny of diverse meanings of self-divination and sacrificial activities foregrounds the fact that competing claims simultaneously produce dynamic forms of Chinese cosmological thought and animate competing understandings and practices of what makes up the cosmos and human and divinity’s places in them. Hence, in the end, Puett’s most important contribution is not his new interpretations but a new (not necessarily better) way of doing intellectual history.
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