Abstract

The idea of a nous as arche, of a single purposive rational mind that creates the world or otherwise accounts for the world being as it is, has dominated most Western thought in one form or another since it was proposed by Plato, quoting Socrates, quoting Anaxagoras, in the Phaedo, particularly in the form given it in monotheist religions and theologies and, less explicitly but still powerfully, in their secular aftermaths. Each of the dominant traditions in pre-modern China is however “God-less” in the sense of lacking just this conception. This article takes a look at the forms of God-less religiousness developed in these traditions, as a way of recovering some of the ethical and epistemological alternatives obscured by the idea of God idea in monotheistic cultures.