Ge Hong
c. 283-343 CE · Daoism · Prominent
Ge Hong was a Daoist alchemist and physician in fourth-century China, under the Eastern Jin. Immortals exist and an ordinary man can become one: he wrote the Baopuzi to say how, through cinnabar preparations worked up in a laboratory, a craft called external alchemy. He saw no quarrel between chasing that and holding Confucian office in the service of the state, and he practiced medicine besides.
Signature
The position Hong is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Meaning
- leans Inherent
- Death
- Conditional Immortality
Positions on the 12 axes the sources answer
- The Divine
- leans Describable (25 on a 0–100 scale from Describable to Indescribable)
- Universals
- leans Realism (25 on a 0–100 scale from Realism to Nominalism)
- Identity
- leans Unchanging (28 on a 0–100 scale from Unchanging to Changing)
- Meaning
- leans Inherent (72 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Order
- leans Vertical (25 on a 0–100 scale from Vertical to Horizontal)
- Nature of Reality
- mildly leans Unity (31 on a 0–100 scale from Unity to Multiplicity)
- Ground of Being
- mildly between Immanence and Transcendence (56 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
- Truth
- leans Objective (75 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- Nature
- mildly leans Harmony (69 on a 0–100 scale from Mastery to Harmony)
- Polity
- leans Illiberalism (25 on a 0–100 scale from Illiberalism to Liberalism)
- Conviction
- leans Certain (70 on a 0–100 scale from Uncertain to Certain)
- Allegiance
- leans Local (28 on a 0–100 scale from Local to Global)
8 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Hong refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Other
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Government
- Monarchy
What is your ideal form of government? - Knowledge
- Tradition / Sense Experience
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Death
- Conditional Immortality
What happens at death?