Shen, Jianyu

Junior Fellow: October 2021–September 2022

Research Project: A Sceptical Examination of “Immortality” in the Kabbalistic and Daoist Hagiographical Texts

Our human nature tends to reject and transcend death, the inevitable end of life. This aspiration is amply reflected in various literary works, among which hagiography is a primary field. This research aims at a sceptical analysis of the notion of “immortality” in the legendary accounts of the saints by comparing the mystical language of the Kabbalistic and Daoist traditions. On the one hand, immortality is a classic motif in the library of world literature, mirroring an everlasting desire for an eternal life shared by all humanity. Yet on the other, this concept transcends the empirical knowledge of the living, who have never vanquished death. The fundamental question is therefore: How could the idea of “immortality,” the triumph over death, be described in the sacred texts by those who have no experience of it at all (as first-person reports are less than rare)? More generally, can something beyond human experience be transmitted via language? Furthermore, what literary techniques did the hagiographers use in order to persuade their readers to believe in something that none of them had achieved? In short, the linguistic bewilderment of the meaning of immortality and the mechanisms of its persuasion based on an empirical absence are the two major angles of enquiry. While the narrators of the past encountered the challenge that “dying is itself a nonevent” and “the absence of death changes the meaning of all other events,” our challenge is now that of a sceptical demystification.

Jianyu Shen is writing a PhD thesis in Jewish studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.