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Dominique Hertzer: The Book of Changes (Yijing) in Chinese Medicine: Exploring “Pluralist Rationalities” of Divination and Chinese Medicine

Datum
16. Dezem­ber 2025 

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Dominique Hertzer: The Book of Changes (Yijing) in Chi­nese Med­i­cine: Explor­ing “Plu­ral­ist Ratio­nal­i­ties” of Div­ina­tion and Chi­nese Medicine

About the lecture:

The deep con­nec­tion between the Yijing and Chi­nese Med­i­cine (CM) dates back to the his­tor­i­cal ori­gins of the Yijing. In the Shuogua (Explain­ing the Tri­grams) com­men­tary, tri­grams are linked to spe­cif­ic body parts, and the hexa­gram and line texts ref­er­ence the head, neck, arms, back, abdomen, and legs. Focus­ing on yin and yang trans­for­ma­tions, the Yijing is foun­da­tion­al to under­stand­ing CM – both belong­ing to tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese knowl­edge sys­tems. His­tor­i­cal­ly, a dialec­ti­cal rela­tion­ship has exist­ed between med­ical and div­ina­to­ry expla­na­tion: accu­rate prog­no­sis stems from pre­cise diag­no­sis, ide­al­ly enabling pre­ven­tion. From this shared basis, var­i­ous meth­ods inte­grat­ing the Yijing into CM have devel­oped and per­sist today. This leads to an intrigu­ing ques­tion: why do CM and the Yijing remain vital and wide­ly prac­ticed despite a cen­tu­ry of mod­ern­iza­tion and sci­en­tifi­ca­tion in Chi­na? The intro­duc­tion of West­ern Med­i­cine (WM) trig­gered exten­sive dis­course on how both sys­tems might coex­ist. Chi­na has since devel­oped a unique mod­el: the “Inte­gra­tion of West­ern and Chi­nese Med­i­cine.” Does this reflect offi­cial legit­imiza­tion, or dis­tinct ratio­nal­i­ties? How do these ratio­nal­i­ties inter­act? What does this mean for the Yijing’s role in CM?

About the speaker:

Dominique Hetzer’s research into the con­tem­po­rary use of the Yijing in CM draws on both clin­i­cal prac­tice and aca­d­e­m­ic inquiry. Her sino­log­i­cal PhD at LMU Munich focused on the Mawang­dui Yijing, a div­ina­tion text from 162 BC. She then trained in CM in Munich and Tian­jin, becom­ing a Heilpraktikerin

and open­ing a prac­tice. Her clin­i­cal expe­ri­ence sparked cross-cul­tur­al research on mind-body dis­cours­es. Her sec­ond PhD, at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wit­ten-Herdecke, explored how dif­fer­ent cul­tur­al ideas about the mind-body rela­tion­ship influ­ence med­ical the­o­ry and practice.

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