Subproject A02

The Kinesis of Immortality. Spatial-kinetic Metaphors and Daoist Salvation

The subproject focuses on the role of spatial-kinetic metaphors in the formation of the Daoist religion between 300 BCE and 350 CE. First, the project aims to explore the relationship between cognition and religious communication. Second, the role of metaphors in the linguistic encoding of the transcendence/immanence distinction (especially with respect to deixis) shall be analyzed in detail. Third, the project will explore whether and to what extent spatial-kinetic metaphors worked as a semantic bridge between early Daoist literature and the broader realm of pre-Buddhist religions.