"The notion of 'gods' and religious beliefs in early China are often considered to be either unique to a single non-representative thinker, and therefore irrelevant in the writings of mainstream Chinese thinkers, or inconsequential to Chinese moral and political thought. Rejecting the claim that religious practice plays a minimal philosophical role, Kelly James Clark and Justin Winslett offer a textual study that maps the religious terrain of early Chinese philosophical texts. They analyse the pantheon of disembodied spirits, from high gods down to ancestor spirits, and discuss their various representations as anthropomorphic, transcendent and enforcers of morality, as well as examining conceptions of the afterlife and the role of the religious ritual in moral formation. Demonstrating how religious beliefs are both textually endorsed and ritually embodied, this book reveals that religion in early China is neither philosophically irrelevant nor limited to the domain of cognition, and instead forms a complex philosophical system capable of adapting to social, economic, political and environmental conditions."--

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