PDF《Imperial China》

s words, creative and new ideas concern only the ideological field, but their implementation through their institutionalization, popularization and conventionalization have real impact and innovation, their cultural integration and dispersal into all strata of the society and into the realm of daily life. Ge Zhaoguang, 2000;

2006.

4 Huizinga, 1919, 59: Maar voor het [geschiedkundig] kennen van het [laat-middeleeuwsche] cultuurleven behoudt de waan zelf, waarin de tijdgenooten leefden, de waarde van een waarheid. See also Ariès, 1977. An Attempt at a History of Mentality in Late Imperial China

389 which can be self-reflectively testified again on the empirical grounds of the individual persons alone. Sensitive and physical perceptions (gan 感) are not clearly separated from emotions (qing 情) or from abstract thoughts (si 思) and valuable wills (zhi 志).5 This concept is reminiscent of the clear description given by Gernet6 and is extremely close to Western modern philosophical studies that deny any borderline between emotions, thoughts, fantasy and memory. It also revaluates not only the existentialist notion of experience (Erlebnis) but also the cognitive aspects of emotions, the thinking function, thoughts somehow '

felt'

in flushes, pulses, '

movements'

of our livers, minds, hearts, stomachs, skin.

7 For the concept of mental structure I have in mind the complex system of various cognitive and practical aspects of the world of mind and body in a certain civilization. They are reflected in the common manner people classify and judge, outside and beyond rational and conscious theories: the perception of the self, the sense of responsibility, health and illness concepts,8 belief systems,9 and the ladder of values, especially the imagery and representation of the inner reality, states of mind and sensations, all of which regulate the immediate perceptions of social subjects, and result from their unconscious incorporation of unknown determinations.10 Imagery and memory play an important role in this mental structure. Collective memory is understood as a social process of

5 Cheng Chung-ying, 2001, 79.

6 Gernet, 1985, 147. He emphasizes the different ideological assumptions in China and in the West about the concept of individual self-consciousness: Not only was the substantial opposition between the soul and the body something quite un........