Exploration On The Concept Of Dan(?) During The Han And Wei Dynasties

The spiritual meaning of the concept of dan(?)in Chinese thought can be traced back to Huangdi neijing and Baihu tong in the Han Dynasty,which understood gallbladder as one of the internal organs of body on the one hand,and as the courage or decisiveness of a person on the other.Han people believed that the gallbladder of flesh takes part in the choosing and decision activity of one's will,and thus associates with courage and cowardice in human nature.Such kind of understanding on gallbladder will not be accepted by modern science of brain and physical mechanism,which is based on the mind-body dualism of Descartes.In fact,this disagreement reflects the difference of Chinese and Western concepts of mind-body.Therefore,this paper will compare the idea of dan in Huangdi neijing with the mind-body dualism of Descartes.The idea of dan in the Han Dynasty established the basic way to think about gallbladder in Chinese culture.Both physical and spiritual meaning of gallbladder comes to us when we refer to the concept of dan,and ancient Chinese people even believed firmly that one's willpower and courage stem from his or her flesh gallbladder instead of brain or soul.In the transitional period from the Han to the Wei Dynasties,people primarily concerns the dimension of willpower and courage in dan,because chaotic times desperately need hero,and the scholars of that time sprouted a sort of principle of individuality.Thus,dan,as a human quality matching to intelligence(congming ??),was topically argued in the Chapter of Hero in Liu Shao's Ren wu zhi(?????),and Ji Kang's "On Intelligence and Dan"(ming dan lun).This thesis relies primarily on these two texts and do some comparative work on the different ideas of intelligence and will between Chinese and Western thought.In addition,focusing on Ji Kang's doctrine,this paper also examines the prominence of the "will of dan"(danzhi ??)in the transitional period from the Han to the Wei Dynasties,and explains the reason why dan could be topically argued at that specially time.In this way,we can understand Wei-Jin's thought more comprehensively.