Tradition
Self-cultivation
Overview
Self-cultivation or personal cultivation (Chinese: 修身; pinyin: xiūshēn; Wade–Giles: hsiu-shen; lit. 'cultivate oneself') is the development of one's mind or capacities through one's own efforts. Self-cultivation is the cultivation, integration, and coordination of mind and body. Although self-cultivation may be practiced and implemented as a form of cognitive therapy in psychotherapy, it goes beyond healing and self-help to also encompass self-development, self-improvement and self-realisation. It is associated with attempts to go beyond and understand normal states of being, enhancing and polishing one's capacities and developing or uncovering innate human potential.
Self-cultivation also alludes to philosophical models in Mohism, Confucianism, Taoism and other Chinese philosophies, as well as in Ancient Greek Philosophy, and is an essential component of well-established East-Asian ethical values. Although this term applies to cultural traditions in Confucianism and Taoism, the goals and aspirations of self-cultivation in these traditions differ greatly.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
Becoming is the movement through which a reality or totality becomes; in the animal or plant its essence as universal genus, is that which begins its movement and brings it forth. But this whole is not the product of something foreign, but its own product, what is already present as germ or seed; thus it is called end, the self-producing, that which in its Becoming is already implicitly existent. The Idea is not a…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy
States what Self-cultivation is; the author is tied to Self-cultivation in the knowledge graph.
But if we have finally learnt it, then we have attained to what in the world is called character, the _acquired character_. This is accordingly nothing but the most perfect knowledge possible of our own individuality. It is the abstract, and consequently distinct, knowledge of the unalterable qualities of our own empirical character, and of the measure and direction of our mental and physical powers, and thus of the…
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea
States what Self-cultivation is.
To set up an external aim strengthens by reaction the false conception of culture which identifies it with something purely "inner." And the idea of perfecting an "inner" personality is a sure sign of social divisions. What is called inner is simply that which does not connect with others--which is not capable of free and full communication. What is termed spiritual culture has usually been futile, with something…
John Dewey, Democracy and Education
States what Self-cultivation is.
Related ideas
- Epicurus
- Sudden awakening
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
- Zhuang Zhou
- Mind–body dualism
- Luminous mind
- Mencius
- Ren (philosophy)
- Anattā
- Mohism
- Nirvana
- Albert Ellis
- Psychotherapy
- Philodemus
- Sigmund Freud
- Yi (philosophy)
- Jōdo Shinshū
- Zen
- Taoism
- Tabula rasa
- Buddhism
- Sinosphere
- Chan Buddhism
- Lucretius
Place in the tradition
Part of Aesthetics.