Good Death, Suicide, and Divinization among Nineteenth-Century Chinese Scholars

Vincent Goossaert

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Chapter 9 Good Death, Suicide, and Divinization among Nineteenth-Century Chinese Scholars

In: Inner Worlds: Individuals and Interiority in Chinese Religious Life

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Vincent Goossaert

Vincent Goossaert
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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 255–275

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004738331_011

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Abstract

This essay explores conceptions and practices of good and bad death among nineteenth-century Chinese educated men and women. It combines different types of sources, narrative and normative: morality books (shanshu 善書) that develop a shared normative discourse on what defines a good and a bad death, and condemn or recommend, as the case may be, suicide; narrative sources, anecdotes in particular, which relate cases presented as successful deaths; and descriptions in newspapers that open a window on polemics unfolding during that period around extreme forms of staging death in public. I attempt to show that these discourses are inseparable from soteriology: the way one organizes their end of life determines their posthumous destiny, and choices that preside to the former hinge upon preferences about the latter.

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Inner Worlds: Individuals and Interiority in Chinese Religious Life

Series: Studies on East Asian Religions, Volume: 14

E-Book ISBN:: 9789004738331

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 01 Jul 2025

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Part 1 Exploring the Inner Life: Dreams, Visions, and Signs

Part 2 Constructing Identity: Karma, Hagiography, and Autobiography

Part 3 Refining the Individual: How to Die and How to Live

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Chapter 9 Good Death, Suicide, and Divinization among Nineteenth-Century Chinese Scholars

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Inner Worlds: Individuals and Interiority in Chinese Religious Life

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