| As a " poet and philosopher", Fang Dongmei has always shown his concern and exploration on "beauty" in his learning and thinking process. If observed fundamentally, it is not hard to discover that he keeps a close eye on the presentation and construction of aesthetic consciousness in people’s real life. Under the guidance and inspiration of the western life philosophy and western aesthetics, he rediscovers and elaborates the life resources that have been carried in traditional Chinese culture. Through modernization and transformation of these resources, he tries to provide shelter for people who have no place to develop their spiritual world in a transitional period with collisions between Chinese and Western cultures, and he inherits and carries forward the Chinese traditional aesthetics which has the power of consoling human bodies and souls.Although the academia is still controversial on whether Fang Dongmei is a modern new Confucian, this thesis insists that we shall not consider him just as an important figure of the modern new Confucianism. However, only when we put him into that group of modern new Confucianism to study could the specialty and significance of his thoughts be more fully revealed. With respect to the historical development of modern new Confucian life aesthetics, Liang Shuming is the opener, Xiong Shili built the foundation of the life ontology, and Mou Zongsan and Tang Junyi, who revered Confucianism only, further interpreted life with morality, and considered morality as the root of producing and promoting beauty. Differently, Fang Dongmei intends to explore not only the aesthetic spirit of Confucianism but also of other school of thoughts including Buddhism in the Chinese culture. Therefore, he manages to converge the different thoughts in the name of" value ", and then explains that for humans there are not only the sense of beauty achieved with morality, but also the beauty of art symbolizing freedom and liberation, as well as the divine beauty representing infinity and detachment. Only by coordination and complementation of the three could we lead our lives to perfect realms. On the whole, his aesthetic thinking mainly revolves around four aspects of life ontology, aesthetic ontology, expressionism artistic theory and aesthetic consciousness theory.First of all, based on Zhouyi’s philosophy, and combining Bergson’s "life philosophy", Whitehead’s " philosophy of organism ", as well as the basic and harmonious spirit of Huayan Buddhist philosophy, Fang Dongmei puts forward the concept of " common life " which has an ontological nature and significance, and explains the mutual cooperative and harmonious relationships between human beings and the universe in the process of life creation and evolution. He constructs "life ontology" and considers beauty as the evolving progress of human life with "common life","the great beauty of heaven and earth" generated by the convergence. In this sense, construction of "life ontology" has laid a solid philosophical foundation for comprehensive and in-depth explanation of Fang Dongmei’s life aesthetics.Secondly, Fang Dongmei’s study on beauty is not confined to pure theoretical dimensions. In contrast, it pays more attention to the subject’s inner experience of the free and creative life spirit implied in the " common life " evolution. Thus " creation" is the key to beauty. Through comprehensive grasp of the life of Bergson creation theory and Chinese traditional philosophy of "Taoism", Fang’s understanding of life creation is derived from the subject’s intrinsic life impulse of "starting from emotions". Under the guidance of free spirit, it constantly runs toward and combines with the universe’s highest value of "the reflection and anchorage of reasons", and thus completing his unique understanding toward "creation". And from this point of view, through three poetic songs of life he shows three types of beauty in three Chinese traditional schools of thoughts, namely, Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. Confucianism, by advocating moral unification of heaven and human and high praise of education and moralization creates the beauty of the enrichness of life. Taoism, by advocating seeking guidance from the universe and reflecting to the world, achieves the beauty of freedom in life. Buddhists takes the road of creating the illusion and self-accomplishment and shows life’s beauty of detachment. The above three schools of thoughts are seemingly different, but are actually deeply in unity from their connotations, that is, the " harmony " of "emotion" and "reason". It is further pointed out that the ambitious, healthy and optimistic spirits that are filled with Chinese spiritual life evolved right from here. In addition, by contrasting Chinese culture with Greek and European culture, Fang Dongmei highlights the advantages of Chinese culture that are based on the above three schools of thoughts in developing those spirits, which shows the characteristics of Chinese aesthetic life.At the same time, the artistic theory is an important dimension of Fang Dongmei’s life aesthetics. Notably, his discussions on art is not confined to the analysis and revelation of the art of specific experience and phenomenon, but focuses on searching in depth and in detail of the philosophy so as to reveal the inner life spirit of Chinese art. In Fang’s opinion, art is essentially about the figurative expression of the beauty of the world and the universe formed by universal life creation. Based on this, Chinese art generally shows not the pursuit of the lifelike portrait of specific images, but having the characteristics of reaching the spiritual source with "spirit" generated by the art experience and complying with humanism. This deep, broad, inexhaustible, barrier-free art enables people to have access to spiritual transcendence and life and soul settlement.More important is, in Fang Dongmei’s view, only after the significance of aesthetic consciousness returns to the real life can it be implemented. The most important point is the continuous exaltation that people experience in the aesthetic appreciation process so as to shackle off the reality and to reach the free realm of life. Speaking from this sense, the realms of the highest life and aesthetic consciousness should be mutually exchangeable. Fang examines the ideal personalities of the " sage"," Lofty man " and " prophets " and the corresponding three ideal boundaries of life, namely," moral realm "," art realm" and " religious realm " in Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. Based on the above examination, he proposes on what he considers as the perfect personality type, that is, the combination of the saint, poet and prophet as one person. In his opinion, only this type of person can comprehend the highest value of the universe with the most comprehensive and perfect mindset, appreciate beauty with an artist’s talent, appreciate kindness with moral sentiments, find truth through philosophical wisdom and experience divinity through real noble religious faith. Therefore, the highest realm of life is the mysterious realm that unifies the true, the good and the beautiful. And the beauty of life in this realm is not only emotional, but also moral and sacred. Beauty has become a representation of "perfect" or "perfection ".Using modern western life aesthetics as a reference, Fang Dongmei re-interpreted the Chinese traditional culture. Through his poetic language, he revives his thoughts on life, constructs aesthetics system of life with native culture, which not only effectively promoted the creative transformation of the Chinese aesthetics, but also turns aesthetics attention back to human, opens up an aesthetic development path quite different with western epistemological aesthetics, and in reality provides paths to solve the problems of conflicting thoughts and on the abeyance and even the evanescence of value produced in modernity development. In addition, by upholding the beneficial factors in national culture and the rational factors in Western thoughts, Fang Dongmei’s life aesthetics construction has led to our knowledge level reflections on twentieth century Chinese aesthetics which has been making Western aesthetics as our knowledge foundation so as to provide a preliminary idea for the independent, continuous, as well as sound development of Chinese aesthetics. |
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