Human Body, Agency, and Self-Cultivation: A Comparative Study of Body in Greek, Chinese, and Muslim Medical Traditions

The various ways of observing the body have led to diverse conceptions of the self and its bodily cultivation, as presented in Greek and Chinese medical literature. If Greek observation of the body offers the notion of agency in the form of voluntary actions within muscles, the Chinese gaze of se suggests the notion of agency through necessary “obedience” or “submission” for self-cultivation. However, the existing accounts of the body and its self-cultivation in Chinese and Greek traditions do not comprehensively represent the entire concept of the body and the self. Therefore, this article examines comparable bodily aspects obtained from the Muslim medical tradition. The Muslim physicians employed the anatomical body from the Galenic tradition to form their concept of the body, while simultaneously their ideas paralleled those of the Chinese medical tradition in emphasizing the necessity of “submission” to certain regimens and disciplines in the pursuit of bodily self-cultivation.

کلیدواژه ها:

Human body ، Self Concept ، Greek World ، Islam ، Chinese Medical Tradition