This paper attempts at an analysis of the types of body-thinking East Asian Confucianism traditions.. four types of bodies and the issues involved are delineated, namely, a) body politic, b) body as norm, c) body as spiritual cultivation, and d) body as metaphor. We indicate that the current scholarship on the body in Chinese Philosophy has tow main foci.: Mind-scholarship and body thinking. The present essay explores the bodily “heart” in East Asian Confucian traditions and its development in socio-politics, thereby cutting across both trends to join them. On the one hand, this essay nudges the “mind-scholars” to note that, in China, the so-called mind is really the bodily “heart”, the heart of our human being. On the other hand, this essay calls on the “body-thinkers” to note that Confucian body thinking is not a general term but has its specific pivot, the bodily “heart”, which develops sociopolitically, not just perceives and cogitates as does the Western mind. It is in this way that this essay glues both camps together while giving both an active focal pivot.
