ABSTRACT
Shenming is a term of various uses, made up of the graph for “spirit,” “god,” or “numinous” (shen) plus that for “shining,” “intelligent,” or “evident” (ming), elucidated by Graham (1989, 101-105), Knoblock (1988, 252-255), Machle (1992 and 1993, 159-163), and others. Examples of translations are “godlike intelligence,” “gods,” “superhuman knowledge,” and “mental resources.” Translators often render the term as a phrase, or fall back on giving the two words separate readings and then conjoining them, but shenming should probably always be treated as a single term, even though it has rich overtones that can require more than one word in translation. Although it still has a popular use, it appears in philosophically significant works mainly in ancient texts, infrequently and scattered through a variety of sources.
