•

the individual is tied up in their social role

•

identified and honored on basis of role, not individual life history

•

e.g. as ancestry or father or son

•

not so much concern as individuals qua individuals

•

visual representation of this

•

early bronze vessels

•

individuals hard to identify

•

large numbers of people engaged in group activities

•

they are all playing their roles in the ritual

•

contrast with bowl from 530 BCE Greece

•

many individual characteristics

•

recognizable individuals engaged in activities

•

e.g. portrayal of Achilles and Ajax

•

figures are large and standing out against the background

•

focus is not so much the group activity and the scene that is going on

•

why did China focus so much on the social role?

•

higher population densities

•

agriculture in the Yellow and Yangtze was able to support much more people

•

living much closer together

•

large scale, intensive agriculture

•

agriculture

•

Classical Greece

•

goat herders wandering around on the hills alone herding goats

•

individual traders in small boats plying the coastline on their own

•

fisherman essentially engaging in relatively solitary activities

•

small scale farmers

•

Shang culture

•

large scale agriculture

•

agriculture in the Yangtze River valley was based on rice

•

labor intensive

•

you can't be a lone rice farmer

•

have to create large rice paddies

•

timing is crucial

•

you are essentially transforming the landscape into stepped hills of rice paddies

•

an immense amount of water control and labor that goes into this

•

so the demands of rice agriculture are going to tend to subordinate the individual to group activities

•

greater territorial integrity

•

China

•

the Yellow River and Yangtze River valleys are fairly flat

•

can travel easily

•

relatively unified around these East-West rivers

•

crops they could grow at one point on the river they could grow at another part since it was on the same latitude

•

relatively non-complex coastline

•

not many bends, curves and coves

•

Greece

•

coastline

•

convoluted

•

rocky

•

many coves that are easy to defend

•

you will have more fragmentation in a civilization based in the Mediterranean than in one based in the Yellow and Yangste River valleys

•

Eastern vs. Western patterns of social thought

•

individualism vs. collectivism

•

analytic vs. holistic

•

exercise to identify the difference: draw a picture of how big you see yourself in relation to your friends

•

gives a sense of how important you see yourself in relation to your social networks

•

USA/Canada is highest

•

Europe's slightly smaller

•

in Japan, they tend to display themselves as the same size or even smaller than

•

abstract relationships vs. analog/holistic patterns

•

show picture of carrot, rabbit and dog, ask which goes together

•

holistic thinker will say rabbit and carrot, tend to think in terms of scenes and relationships, and rabbits eat carrots

•

analytical thinker will say rabbit and dog go together, "animals go together since they are the same category of being"

•

show fish tank

•

analytical thinkers tend to concentrate on the moving fish

•

holistic thinkers tend to see more of what is in the background, i.e. everything in tank

•

research in China shows that people from wheat regions tend to think more analytically than those from rice regions

•

suggests a link between a how you make your living and how you see yourself in relation to your friends

•

thinking of yourself as a collective is probably the default way people have historically thought about themselves

•

what's new is individualism and analytic thinking that develops in Northern Europe at a certain time

•

unity of politics and religion in the Shang Dynasty

•

king is also the high priest

•

all religious functions are subordinated to his rule

•

no independent priesthood

•

there's no separation of church and state to use contemporary terminology

•

you can't separate the state from its religious affairs

•

the state receives its legitimacy directly from its function as a religious organization

•

very different than models of religion in of the world

•

Christianity

•

strong sense of rendering under Ceasar what is Ceasar's

•

we're going to have this kingdom of God that's going to be in the next world

•

Buddhism

•

a prince which is incompatible with him being a religious figure

•

he has to give up his political role in order to become a religious leader

•

in early China, politics, religion and family are all tied together

•

lack of a sharp divide between life and death

•

ancestors are not gone

•

we're aware they are dead, we've buried their corpses in the ground

•

but they are still present in an important, social way

•

people are still interacting with them

•

e.g. through sacrifice and divination

•

they continue to influence the world

•

the world the ancestors lived in was much like their own

•

they maintain social roles, status, personality, activities they had in life

•

so unlike Christianity, they didn't have the concept of death as a radical change where you go from an earthly world to the kingdom of heaven

•

and unlike in Buddhism of Karma, the idea that you are going to die and get reborn in a completely different form

•

death doesn't change the social structure of the present

•

paradox of virtue, of "de"

•

de, or moral charisma, can only be acquired by someone who is not consciously tryng to acquire it

•

it accrues to someone who is genuinely virtuous and genuinely other-oriented

•

oracle bones which portray stories of virtue

•

1. king's consort has fallen ill

•

king petitions the spirits to let him take her place

•

the spirit was impressed and spared both of them

•

2. two princes fall ill

•

king seems to offer his life for them

•

"the assisting princes having been restored to health, the king's de is with this even even more approved by the ancestors"

•

the king's offer of self-sacrifice has this result:

•

sick person gets well

•

king does not get ill

•

the king's "de" or virtue is magnified

•

but it works only if the king is not gaming the system

•

he has to be sincere, he has to know he is not acting in order to gain virtue, this is the paradox

•

this tension of how to gain virtue is something many ancient Chinese philosophers dealt with