桓譚의 形神사상

Abstract

Huantan, who lived from the end of the West Han to the early days of the East Han. Huantan argued that the soul in humans had not existed before the formation of the body, which has material nature, and emphasized that the soul had existed only after the body had been formed. That is, in the notion of Huantan, the soul could be seen as a phenomenon incidentally appearing after the body, which is the material component of humans, existed. As such, to Huantan, the soul would not occur simultaneously with the form of humans and was not of a nature to independently exist separately from the body of humans. This view of Huantan regarding the relationship between the body and soul of humans shows a clear difference from that of previous thinkers. That is, Huantan thought that there was an inseparable relationship between the body and the soul, and clearly presented the view that the soul could exist only by relying on the body. In addition, Huantan also expressed a staunch opposition to the view that the body and the soul belonged to different natures and could be separated from and combined with each other. Huantan digged into the shapes of humans’ realistic lives to find answers to the questions ranging from the question of the origin of life to the question of how humans lead their lives and used the shapes of humans’ realistic lives as a milestone for recognition of the relationship between human body and soul. Huantan argued that human beings could not grasp their states before they begin to live and after they died with their recognition ability. The argument of Huantan as such can be said to have been influenced by the reality-oriented notion of Confucius. Therefore, the humans recognized by Huantan can be said to be beings recognized from the empirical aspect. Eventually, Huantan can be said to have observed the relationship between the body and the soul in the shapes of humans’ lives.