Chinese Aesthetics In The Study

This dissertation claims that the primary deficiency of the past theoretical researches in Chinese aesthetics is people mainly focused on the dualistic presupposition of western epistemology, mistaking aesthetic theory as an abstract summary of aesthetics experience from the existed aesthetic subject and object. It points out the aesthetic issues just evolve from the culture and the aesthetic subject and object are actually the historic results of culture generating (文化发生). This is the basis how the dissertation chooses to research the aesthetics from the perspectives of primitive religion, original science and moral philosophy.Studying the isomorphic quality of the primitive religious system, national system and patriarchal clan system, this dissertation finds that the mediumistic culture ("巫教"说) and the legend that Yin and Shang Dynasty had mature religion are not tenable because they ignored an important fact that during the historical process, the religion of Yin and Shang Dynasties kept adjusting itself to the changes of its political goals. And this Pan-political (泛政治化) tendency set the worldly and humanistic keynote for Chinese culture, extending a far-reaching influence on Chinese aesthetics.This dissertation also holds that the "sudden generating" of Ch'i ( "气" ) and Tao ("道"), two important concepts in Chinese thinking history and aesthetics history, derives from the knowledge-sociology, although there are still no reasonable explanations for this until now. It is asserted in this dissertation that the possible explanations for their split with their thinking prototypes and their sudden generating in the thinking history should be based on the two systems of Western Chou (西周) 's court official systems (王官制度) and the changing historic relationship between their two hidden thinking pedigrees.This dissertation points out that the past research of Confucianism focused more on its secular humanism but ignored its transcending religion , concerning more about the similarities between Confucius (孔子) and Mencius (孟子) rather than the basic differences between them. Another point is that the development of Confucianism from Confucius to Mencius can be understood as an evolutionary process of man's thinking. It is a changing course from the existed social man to the man of metaphysical moral entity and a forming process of the fundamental principle oneness of heaven and man( "天人合一" ) in Chinese aesthetics. During the process, the bamboo books of Chu at Quo Dian (郭店楚简) is a most important link.The goal of this dissertation is to make a historical description of this theoretical form about Chinese aesthetics, trying to grasp the historical process of the generating, developing, changing and fixing up of those functional categories such as aesthetic subject (Xin, 心), aesthetic object (Xiang, 象) and aesthetics experience (Le,乐) from the existed relationship between people and world, intending to work out the interdependent and interrelated structural relationship among these basic aesthetic categories.