Zong Baihua's Spirit Personality And The Journey Of His Esthetic Exploration

As one of the outstanding estheticians in 20th century in China, Zong Baihua's esthetical thought and the journey of his esthetic exploration undoubtedly have a significant enlightenment to the contemporary exploration into esthetics in China. A profound understanding of Zong Baihua and his esthetical thought must be based on the deep understanding of his spirit personality and value pursuit, and on the returning to his three-dimensional and living personality image. Based on the careful study of his works and other related material, this dissertation, from the angle of phenomenology and generation methodology, carefully studies Zong Baihu and his works, and tries to reveal his spirit personality and the journey of his esthetic exploration. On the base of analyzing the reason of his esthetic thought, the dissertation inquires what his esthetic thought is to seek three-dimensional and comprehensive researching effect. This dissertation stresses not only the study of works, but also how the works produced, and also emphasizes the connection between his works and his spirit personality. On the base of revealing his spirit personality, the author tries to have a dialogue with his thought to expatiate on the origin and development of his esthetic thought through the logical narration of his value pursuit and emotion vein. Through a reciprocal comparison and proof from his works to his spirit personality and then from his sprit personality to his works, the dissertation tries to accurately understand Zong Baihua, his esthetic pursuit and esthetic thought to the utmost to evaluate and reflect the journey of his esthetic exploration.The dissertation falls into four parts.The first section, based on the analysis of the innate factors and the acquired influence that affect the formation of Zong Baihua's personality, and of the connections between the two, elaborates the formation of Zong Baihua's personality, analyzes and summarizes his personality styles and life value foundation that aims to save the world, which serves as a preparation for the development of the whole text.The existing material shows that Zong Baihua belongs to the type of person with a typical introversive personality, who is more sensitive to the exterior stimulation, pays great attention to the innermost feelings, and to the pursuit of the poetic bourn and the philosophical implication in life. One who has an introversive personality shows the features of being reliable, calm and rational in actions and in life, which is clearly manifested in Zong Baihua's character.If the innate factor has made a foundation for the development orientation of Zong Baihua's personality, the establishment of his life values which is affected by the acquired influence factors such as family and era marks the formation of his personality. Influenced by his father, the salvation feeling has become the foundation of his life value. The May 4th Movement of 1919 stimulates Zong Baihua's patriotic enthusiasm, and the joining of the most influential social and cultural organization"Youth China Society"causes him to focus enthusiastically on the reality of society and life, ponders the nation's fate carefully. The philosopher's soberness and rationality leads him to the idea of saving the nation by means of education and academic study, and hoping to achieve his salvation and nation-saving wish through promoting human's quality. Zong Baihua begins his academic career from the study of philosophy. Schopenhauer's description of talent which agrees with Zong's value pursuit and genius leads to his intense talent complex that becomes a spiritual backbone of his salvation feelings, intensifying his salvation enthusiasm. The object of talent is the eternal concept, and the truth of cosmos and life. The talent, relying on his remarkable esthetical ability of cognition and comprehension, tries to seek the truth of cosmos and life in order to enlighten common people. Only in this way can he help them set a right outlook on cosmos and life and solve the foundational problem of salvation. With these outlooks Zong Baihua plunges himself into seeking the truth of cosmos and life which affects the emergence and style of his esthetic thought.The second section elaborates the origin and development of Zong Baihua's esthetical thought under the influence of salvation feeling and intrinsic personality, points out that the pursuit for the truth of cosmos which aims at salvation has decisive influence on the occurrence and development of his esthetical thought, and illuminates that his esthetical thought take"the personality"as the central category, the"personality construction"as the core meaning, the"personality cognition and comprehension"as the essential research approach and that his esthetical pursuit has the salvation as the ultimate objective.Zong Baihua's political ideal is the establishment of"Youth China". The core of his"Youth China"is the construction of the commonwealth's ideal personality. Zong Baihua thought that summoning up the commonwealth's spirit and personality was what he tried to seek through salvation. To achieve this, the cultivation of commonwealth's perfect individual personality is the major concern. To arrive at this point, it was most important to enlighten the commonwealth the truth of and to help them form a right outlook on the cosmos and life.As he furthering his philosophical research, he found that it was impossible to seek out the truth of cosmos and life by a mere philosophical speculation., and art was the best approach. So he began his esthetic thinking. The first question in his thinking was the nature of art. Through inquiry into it, his speculation of personality led to the production of his esthetic idea:"art is the manifestation of the writer's personality.""Personality"is the core category of his esthetic thought. The introduction of the category of sympathy deepened and expanded his esthetic thought which have"personality"as the core category. At the same time it prepared theoretically for the combination of his esthetic thought of personality with the search of the truth of cosmos and life.Zong Baihua thought only in the artistic bourn could the truth of cosmos and life can be comprehended and enlightened. Since art is the manifestation of the writer's personality, the stress of promoting the personality bourn became the prerequisite for searching the truth of cosmos and life. Zong Baihua, based on his profound knowledge of philosophy and extraordinary ability of cognition and comprehension, expanded the traditional artistic bourn theory and integrated it into his own esthetic ideology. He deepened and expanded his esthetic theory on the basis of inheriting predecessors'theory. The core meaning of his artistic bourn theory is stressing the research of personality bourn.In consistence with his esthetic thought, Zong Baihua emphasized the writer's spiritual personality, the pursuit of the ideal personality bourn, and factors for promoting it. The personality experience and comprehension is the basic approach for his esthetic study. A survey of Zong Baihua's research on literature and art shows that he always gave a profound comprehension and interpretation to the personality bourn and intrinsic spirit of the researching object in order to construct the ideal personality and lead the commonwealth's personality pursuit, as caused esthetic ideology more complete.The third section analyzes Zong Baihua's fulfillment of his esthetic thought in life and the philosophical speculation of his esthetical pursuit and method in order to echo the elaboration in the second section about his esthetical ponderation which takes the salvation as the value foundation.Zong Baihua's focus on the truth of cosmos and life and the promotion of personality bourn is displayed not only in his words but also in life fulfillment. He pursued a poetic life and lofty personality bourn through his life time. His life practice explained fully his esthetic pursuit, and his poem was a poetic imagination of the personality bourn during the artistic creation. He always paid attention to a scientific research methodology and stressed academic research should have theoretical base. While stressing the search for the truth of cosmos and life in artistic life bourn, he also carried on a metaphysical speculation in order to seek a philosophical base for his esthetic thought, as was proved by his notes of"metaphysics". The metaphysical speculation corroborated him from philosophical perspective that the search for the truth of cosmos and life can only be established in artistic cognition and comprehension rather than philosophical speculation, that is to say, the truth of cosmos and life can only be displayed by a cognition and comprehension of the life.The last section, based on the analysis and elaboration of his spirit personality, esthetic thought, life practice and philosophical speculation as well as the relationship among the three in the preceding sections, the author points out that Zong Baihua's esthetic exploration before the founding of the People's Republic of China all along paid close attention to the society and people's life, that he struggled to realize his ideals and aspiration of salvation by means of esthetics, that his basic life condition before the founding of the People's Republic of China can be summarized as the salvational"obsession"and esthetical"inebriation". Through the elaboration in the whole dissertation is revived Zong Baihua's journey of his esthetic thought for esthetics search; meanwhile the living individualized image of him is shown. On this basis Zong Baihua's academic journey is appraised and reflected from the angel of academic history.Zong Baihua in the period of"Youth China"displayed his value pursuit distinctively by means of a keen attention to the social problems. The dismissal of the"Youth China Society"blew Zong Baihua's enthusiasm of guiding the society. But his original value pursuit had not changed, and he was keener with the search of the truth of cosmos and life and gave more stress to the idea of salvation through the promotion of commonwealth's personality bourn. But because of the changes in living condition and his own mood, he had more esthetic inebriation while persisting in the salvation. The esthetic inebriation is both a way for him to spurn the filth in society and seek extrication, and a basic approach to realize and comprehend the truth of cosmos and life.Although Zong Baihua has made a remarkable contribution to the modern esthetics development in China, it is a fact that he hasn't left enough academic works as we hope. The main reasons must be sought from his own factors though the influences of exterior social environment especially those after the foundation of the People's Republic of China can't be neglected. The value foundation for his academic activities is his salvation feelings which are the fundamental purpose for his philosophical and esthetical exploration before the foundation of PRC when he never tried to consider questions of academic for the sake of academic study. In his mind salvation is the first, academic study is just an approach or tool for his value pursuit. It is because the value foundation for his academic exploration is the salvation mood rather than the academic value itself that he stopped his esthetics search in first several years after the foundation of the PRC, and devoted himself to the acceptance of the so-called"Marxism-Leninism"thought of his own. Though the political situation had some influence on him, the academic value foundation of salvation was the fundamental cause. After a fuss and perplexity during the years from 1949 to the middle of 1950s, Zong Baihua's academic attitude had subtle transformation. He began to focus on the value of academic study and consider esthetic questions consciously from the academic perspective. But he had to stop his academic exploration because of the Great Cultural Revolution, as left a deep regret on him in the late years because of the realization of academic study for the sake of academic study.A comprehensive survey of Zong Baihua's esthetic exploration shows that he persists in basing the search for beauty on the subject's inner realization and comprehension, and always stresses the promotion of personality bourn. He doesn't seek to grasp the noumenon of beauty metaphysically, but he stresses the search for beauty and poetic aspect of life, and the way he has to appreciate esthetic is filled with esthetic verve, as results in the fact that people can be moved deeply by his academic writing and enlightened profoundly by his esthetics. While hackling Zong Baihua's esthetic thought and savoring the splendid Chinese culture he described we can't help having such regrets as: he could have left us an inestimable amount of cultural inheritance given his scholarship, talent and understanding of beauty and art if he had made his research from the academic angle and had academic construction earlier. But history is history. We can only regret what Zong Baihua had regretted. But Zong's regret in turn gives us another spiritual wealth: His regret enlightens how intellectuals determine their value orientation, and how they deal with the relations between salvation, politics and academic study.