Qigong, Philosophical Reading, and the Cultivation of Attention: Chinese Contemplative Body Practices and Slow Philosophy

Abstract

ABSTRACT Qigong practices are contemplative body practices and meditation techniques that emerge from Chinese philosophical, medical, and martial traditions. This paper argues that qigong is a kind of embodied philosophical activity that is analogous to the ‘slow philosophy’ called for by Michelle Boulous Walker. Four features of Walker’s slow philosophy are highlighted: (i) careful slowness, (ii) repetition, (iii) openness to the transformation of one’s propositional attitudes and one’s virtues, and (iv) a blurring of boundaries between philosophy and non-philosophy. A particular qigong practice is then examined as a case study: Hunyuan Qigong (Hùnyuán qìgōng 混元氣功), a qigong form taught by the Chen-style taijiquan master Feng Zhiqiang 馮志強 (1928–2012) that involves the practitioner moving her body through multiple series of broadly circular movements. It is argued that qigong practices are examples of philosophical activity analogous to slow philosophical reading, that slow philosophical reading and qigong practice can be mutually illuminating and can help us better understand what doing philosophy is, and that qigong can transform us both by changing our philosophically significant propositional attitudes and by providing means of cultivating virtues related to attention.