PDF《Imperial China》

it takes into account what is conscious and voluntary, ideological systems, and pre-eminent and recessive values. However, the object of an investigation into a history of mentality―in my opinion―is especially extended to also include the more or less unconscious sphere, the currents of the deep which govern the imagery of the members of a society without their awareness, collective sensitivity or conventional categories and definitions, i.e., the collective complex conscious-unconscious.2 This field of observation covers feeling and reaction,

1 Dupront, 1969, 44C45.

2 I avoid the use of the terms collective consciousness and collective unconscious, because they remind us respectively of ?. Durkheim'

s concept of the shared beliefs and moral attitudes which operate as a unifying force within society by shaping beliefs and attitudes, and C. Jung'

s notion of the collective memory of humanity, which consists of pre-existent forms, the archetypes, beyond the memory of experiences by particular persons in the past. The former stresses the role of the common consciousness in relation to the solidarity between the members of a society and the latter the inherited and archetypal. Other concepts are Paolo Santangelo

388 attitudes, desires and abhorrence, moral, religious and aesthetic sensitivity, and the world of imagery: these elements form the mental sphere of a certain culture in a certain period, derived from the collective mentality but at the same time flowing into it and modifying it.3 They are based on everyday habits, on individual behaviour and emotional attitude;

this field concerns dreams and nightmares, illusions and fears, ways of perceiving oneself and external reality. While once this field concerned pre-historical knowledge, today we can consider it a new way to write history. Therefore Huizinga'

s sentence: But before the [historical] knowledge of cultural life [in the late Middle Ages], the illusion itself, in which the contemporaries lived, keeps the value of truth,

4 considers these illusions basic elements in the history of the mankind in any particular period. Mental Structure What then, is mental structure? If we consider the concept of the mind-heart in Chinese culture, we cannot but recognize its holistic notion. One of the best definitions is, in my opinion, that given by Cheng Chung-ying who writes, Mind is not simply an intellectual entity or a mechanism for thinking or reasoning. It is rather an inter-linked entity of sensibility, feeling, awareness, thinking and willing as testified by common experience of reflective subjectivity of the self identified as the '

I'

[…] If we take into consideration the sensate activity via various senses on the one hand and the volitive/purpositive decision-making power of the mind is in fact a matter of sense-feeling-thinking-willing in an internally and organically interrelated unity Levy-Bruhl'

s use of collective representations, and Hubert and Mauss'

s categories of the imagination. Here I focus on shared beliefs and values, and the myths and symbols that operate within a society, and are understood by most of its members.

3 For instance, the elites'

ideas, provided they are extremely deep and original, belong to the history of thought, but they become concrete historical and anthropological phenomena only when they reform institutions and laws, or better, when they modify costumes, habits, and ways of thinking for a long period, entering into both the private and public life. Imperial edicts, rules and prohibitions, and moral admonitions form an intermediate stage, and only popular acceptance can effectively transform ideas and theories into a common perception. The popularization of Neo-Confucianism is an historical example of this process, a long and complex process, which developed from the Song Dynasty up to the beginning of the Qing. Borrowing Ge Zhaoguang'