Of Chinese Classical Culture "body"

This paper presents a perspective of Shen (a combination of body and soul) in Chinese scriptures, which would offer solutions to the highly concerned problems in philosophy, such as World outlook, Human Existence and Security, Death and Transcendence, as well as Aesthetics. It also shows the peculiarity of Shen in Chinese scriptures through the exploration of these problems.The first chapter analyses the noumenon of Shen and reveals its especial relation with the universe in Chinese scriptures. Chinese people believe they share the same structure, the same material and the same working pattern. Therefore, Shen and the universe are interconnected.The second chapter reveals the signification of Shen in human life. The Shen thinking in Confucianism and Taoism shows the political views and values of different philosophy divisions, but they end in the common consciousness of life showing the importance of Shen and reflecting the deep concern about vitality, security and power.The third chapter is about death, the ultimate concern of human being. To prevent the invasion of death, the ancestors was invented ways of life extension and body conservation, such as moral cultivation, austerity practice, antiseptic study and human propagation. Another way to escape death provided by philosophy and religion is transcendence. But, in China, even transcendence was rewritten to fit the dream of living with Shen in paradise. It can never be cut from human themselves.Abraham H Maslow has named aesthetics a high-ranking transcendence. Via an aesthetic construction of time and space, Arts make people forget about the hard life and the fear of death and blur the boundary between creature and creator and evoke people's love serves life. Shen serves as both the sprit of life and human life itself, the former expresses the will of nature and that of human being, while the later acts as the noumenon which provides the emtion resource in aesthetics. It's aesthetics that finally clear the bewilderment of "to be or not to be",under the help of Shen.After comparing the different definitons of Shen in China and Body in the west, the paper builds up a basic understanding of Shen. Exploring all the basic problems of human life, we can draw a conclusion that Shen in Chinese scriptures is not only a combination of body and soul, but also a being of human reason, living, transcendence and emotion. It helps to bridge the separation between body and soul in western culture, and achieve the Chinese poetry of life.