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Fox Spirits Research Paper

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Fox Spirits: Sharing their values and morals, helping restore humans’ lives.

Foxes, ghosts and other supernatural beings are constantly used in Pu Songling’s Liaozhai Zhiyi to criticize human behavior, administrative and social issues. The way Pu Songling makes use of those beings is by characterized them as connoisseurs of key values to succeed in the human world. However, humans prefer to stay away from these supernatural beings because even though Pu Songling’s narratives present foxes as beautiful women, in reality they are predatory demons who live on by obtaining men’s energy. In addition, foxes are capable of switching between human and animal form to successfully seduce and possess humans. Therefore, whenever a man encounters a fox …show more content…

With their knowledge, foxes can help humans in outrageous situations by using their values and try to get the humans acquire them to further have positivity in their lives. But, what are the values that fox spirits have and humans have not acquired? To find out more about the desired values, it is compelling to take a look at Confucianism, Neo-Confucianism and Daoism. It is possible that Pu Songling used those schools of thought to show the values human should have, and that Fox spirits have a knowledge of. Fox spirits have recognized values and moralities as in the following sentences. Ancestor worship and filial piety consist of having respect and nurture parents and older generations. Humaneness as in taking care and concern for other human beings. Ritual consciousness which involves having respect for rituals and do them in the proper way in the deepest sense, as well as continuing being filial to parents even they have passed away. The human relationships such as parent and child, minister and ruler, husband and wife, older and younger brother, friend and friend have to be in harmony and have respect for each other. Humans have to be good social beings, which means to have interactions with other people for society, government reasons, as well as giving public service to the community and learning from one another. Another important value is self-cultivation which is the process of learning and self-improvement to achieve personal and social order, which is greatly acclaimed in Neo-confucianism. Furthermore, good leaders are men with a lot of virtues, because they will be a good example for the community. Lastly, Daoism shows that humans should be “concerned about [their] own affairs, but should also focus on harmonious relationships between human beings and other species” (Xu, Jianliang, 529). Most of these values are often seen in Liaozhai Zhiyi, in

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