International Social Science Journal (Chinese Edition)

No.4, 2022

 

Predestination and Good and Evil: A View of Fate in the Question of the Book of Life and Death

(Abstract)

 

Zhao Zhang

 

The book of life and death is a common setting in ancient stories of the underworld, shaped by folklore and literati alike, and the stories that have developed around it have become increasingly rich and varied, and reflect the multiple understandings of fate of the ancients. On the one hand, the book is strongly prescriptive about human life expectancy, on the other hand, it is common to see the alteration of the book. Fundamentally, this contradiction is caused by the different aspects of changeable and predestined destiny, and the complexity of the book of life and death is a reflection of the great tension of fatalism.