This book, "A Spiritual Geography of Early Chinese Thought" by Kelly James Clark and Justin Winslett, offers a reassessment of religion and the spiritual domain in early China (pre-220 CE), moving beyond past scholarly approaches that may have been colored by external doctrines or overly focused on perceived non-theistic or humanistic aspects of Chinese thought. **Core Approach: Mapping a Spiritual Geography** The book adopts the metaphor of a "spiritual geography" to explore the complex map of religion and religiosity in early China. This approach treats topics within early Chinese spiritual life like locations on a map, connected by various "routes" that reveal how concepts intersect. A "spiritual geography" specifically refers to the domain of spirits, encompassing entities like ancestors, ghosts, lesser gods, and particularly, the High Gods. The aim is to illuminate these areas, understand their connections, and explore their implications for a more complete understanding of early Chinese thought. The authors emphasize that this geography is multifaceted, ambiguous, and warrants diverse approaches due to its inherent complexity and diversity. **Challenging Dominant Narratives** A significant goal of the book is to push back against prevailing scholarly claims, often referred to as the "Naturalizing Narrative". This narrative includes central assertions like: 1. The Chinese did not believe in God or the afterlife. 2. Belief in God and the afterlife was common only among peasants or in texts like the Mozi, but not in "philosophical texts". 3. There was a historical "depersonalization of Heaven," moving away from anthropomorphic conceptions towards an impersonal natural force. 4. God and the afterlife were morally irrelevant to Confucian moral theory. The authors contend that such claims often reflect the concerns of contemporary scholars more than specific aspects of religiosity in China. They argue these narratives are historically unsustainable and simplify the complex reality found in early Chinese texts and artifacts. **Exploring Key Domains of the Spiritual Landscape** The book delves into specific areas of this spiritual geography: - **The High Gods (Di, Shangdi, Tian):** The most salient extrahuman agents in early China are the High Gods, referred to as Di, Shangdi, and Tian. Earliest references to Di in Shang dynasty inscriptions show belief in a being with power over natural and human affairs, reigning supreme over lesser spirits and ancestors. During the Zhou period, Tian also took on the notion of a Supreme Being, sometimes seen as replacing Shangdi at the top of the pantheon, and was strongly associated with socio-political authority and the Mandate of Heaven. These High Gods are frequently represented in early texts as having authority, issuing orders, and sitting at the top of hierarchies. They can be depicted anthropomorphically, acting as arbiters or selectors of rulers, echoing earlier understandings from oracle bones. Some texts even represent Heaven as the source of things, the progenitor of good in humanity, or the reason for human body parts, suggesting a creative or productive role. - Contrary to claims of depersonalization, the book argues that early Chinese texts, including foundational ones, often represent Heaven (Tian) as a person with a will, being superknowing, morally provident, and caring for the people. Examples from texts like the Shangshu and Shijing show Tian/Shangdi exercising moral authority, punishing the wicked, and rewarding the virtuous. The Analects and Mencius also contain depictions of Heaven as a source of moral order, having intentions, knowledge, and providence. Even texts sometimes categorized as "anti-theistic," like the Xunzi, Mozi, and Zhuangzi, include representations of the High Deity Heaven. A deep analysis of the Zuozhuan, for instance, reveals multiple and incompatible conceptions of Heaven, including active and personal ones, without a clear temporal trend towards depersonalization. - _Ideas for further exploration:_ How do the various textual representations of Heaven's attributes (will, knowledge, moral nature, creative role) align or differ across different periods and types of texts? What is the interplay between the concept of the Mandate of Heaven and the personal/impersonal representations of Tian? - **Ancestors and the Afterlife:** While some scholars have claimed a lack of afterlife belief in early China until the arrival of Buddhism, the book argues that evidence from recently discovered tomb texts and artifacts strongly indicates widespread belief in an afterlife. These findings provide "unmistakable and direct evidence" of indigenous Chinese ideas about death and the afterlife in pre-Buddhist antiquity. Tomb architecture, artifacts, and texts reveal conceptions of the afterlife as separate from the living world, inhabited by spirits of the dead (ancestors), and show concern for securing a favorable postmortem journey. These discoveries offer a "thicker form of life" context within which to understand the more implicit remarks about the afterlife in transmitted texts. - Transmitted texts, despite often focusing on ritual advice without explicit metaphysical detail, also assume the postmortem existence and powers of ancestors. Texts like the Documents, Liji, and Zhongyong discuss ancestor worship, temples, and spirits, suggesting ancestors could intercede, punish, or reward, and were on an ontological par with High Gods and other spirits. Concepts of the soul, often discussed as a folk dualism involving a nonmaterial entity (hun/po) that separates from the body at death, were present, enabling conscious postmortem existence. Rituals, such as summoning the soul or inscribing merits on stelae, aimed to guide the deceased, appease spirits, or preserve the deceased's legacy in the afterlife. - Regarding Confucius, while two passages in the Analects (11:12, 7:21) are often cited for an "agnostic humanism," the book suggests these are often misinterpreted, potentially focusing on Zilu's unreadiness rather than a rejection of spirits or afterlife, and that the commentarial tradition for centuries accepted the reality of the spiritual world Confucius countenanced. Viewing Confucius's character across multiple transmitted texts and understanding the Analects within the context of widespread mortuary practices suggests an affirmation of ancestor spirits. Belief in the afterlife, including Confucian-flavored views of it, did not decrease as China became more "Confucian," but rather views became increasingly "Confucian". - _Ideas for further exploration:_ How did mortuary practices change over time, and what do these changes tell us about evolving beliefs regarding the soul's journey or destination? How did different social classes conceptualize and prepare for the afterlife, given the disparity in archaeological evidence? - **Lesser Deities:** Beyond the High Gods, early Chinese spiritual geography includes a pervasive presence of Lesser Deities, which the book explores. These extrahuman agents appear across various materials from the pre-imperial era, exhibiting their own complexities and dynamics. Texts like the Zhuangzi represent lesser deities, sometimes contrasting their uncanny abilities with those of humans, or showing them interacting with virtuous rulers. The Guoyu and Zuozhuan also mention gods (shen) in mythistorical narratives and discuss their roles in sacrifice and punishment. - _Ideas for further exploration:_ What were the specific domains and powers attributed to different types of lesser deities? How did beliefs and interactions with lesser deities vary geographically or among different communities? **Methodological Considerations** The book emphasizes the importance of examining a wide variety of texts and recently discovered artifacts, rather than relying solely on a few transmitted texts or imposing axiomatic concepts from external religions. It argues against the anachronistic categorization of pre-imperial thought into discrete, uniform "Schools" (like Confucianism or Daoism), highlighting that the texts themselves are complex, accretional, and often inconsistent, produced by many hands over centuries. Understanding the spiritual landscape requires looking at the "complex and intersecting concepts and issues" as they appear in the diverse sources. The authors also incorporate insights from the cognitive science of religion, specifically supernatural punishment theory, which suggests a natural human tendency to believe in moralizing, providential high gods as a mechanism for facilitating cooperation beyond kin-groups. This approach leads them to expect and find representations of such deities, as well as afterlife beliefs, in early Chinese texts, even in a context sometimes claimed to be non-religious. **Conclusion** "A Spiritual Geography of Early Chinese Thought" argues that early China possessed a rich, diverse, and complex spiritual landscape, encompassing High Gods, ancestors, the afterlife, and lesser deities. By drawing on a wide range of textual and archaeological sources and critiquing prevailing narratives, the book demonstrates that representations of anthropomorphic High Gods, afterlife beliefs, and the moral/social salience of the spiritual domain were widespread, not limited to certain texts or social strata, and persisted throughout the early period. It provides a detailed look at how these spiritual concepts were represented and engaged with in early Chinese thought, offering a more complete picture than previously presented by narratives focusing on humanism or naturalism.