Mark
CSIKSZENTMIHALYI

SCIENTIFIC PROJECT

• Using newly excavated administrative documents, how did early “talismans” (fu 符), “relocation documents” (yi dixia shu 移地下書), and “petitions to the spirits” (zhuci 祝词) draw on the language of administrative control in Han documents?

• Were the claims to authority used in early Celestial Masters texts similar or different from those of the Han imperial state, and to what extent did their administration rely on similar methods?

• In what sense can a set of traditions that appropriate the functions of a bygone imperial state be considered a “religion,” and how has the traditional reception of these traditions as fundamentally religious obscured important features?

The aim is to re-examine the question of the « origins » of Daoism, by tracing the early imperial development of a philosophy about the “Way” in the context of governance and law is something that holds potential for better describing early institutions developed under its banner in the second and third centuries CE.

BIOGRAPHY

Mark Csikszentmihalyi is the Eliaser Chair of International Studies and Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of California at Berkeley, where he also edits the journal Early China. His research area is early Chinese thought and culture, covering the formation of traditions we now call Confucianism and Daoism. He is also interested in how the categories « religion » and « philosophy » have been applied to East Asia, and therefore to the formative periods of cross-cultural contact between Europe and Asia.