Great Beauty Without Beauty——Reflection Of Zhuangzi’s Aesthetics

As a historical relic, Zhuangzi is a text of chaos before the subjects had been differentiated in China. So it is worthy to pursuit of constructing a reasonable and effective aesthetics of Zhuangzi. This paper would attempt to review and restore the aesthetic thought of Zhuangzi."Dialectic paradox" is the Zhuangzi’s way of speaking, so when we said "the aesthetics of Zhuangzi", it also means that "the aesthetics of Zhuangzi is non-aesthetics". It is undoubtedly difficult to discourse the aesthetics in perspective of subjects.The "Dao" is the core of Zhuangzi’s theory. According to Zhuangzi, Dao is the origin and the underlying principle of the "Tian-di", the world or heaven and earth and all things."Ziran-Wuwei" is the essential characteristic of Dao, Ziran means nature or the natural, and Wuwei is non-action or having no activity.Although deviating from the Dao because of having activity, someone would become one or uniformity with the Dao when he clarifies his mind, and all problems of life and society also would be smoothly solved. As a philosophy of life, Zhuangzi’s theory belongs to a Dao-de philosophy or philosophy of "Dao and virtue (attaining Dao)", which is a quite consistent view in academia. In a narrow sense, it belongs to the moral philosophy, which has a traditional theoretical form called "virtue theory"(virtue theory of moral philosophy). In a broad sense, it is the Daode philosophy of "attaining Dao and getting virtue". In Zhuangzi’s view, when Dao was internalized to became a kind of spirit, Damei (great beauty and its sense) would be won, which is one of the spirit of "non-action in face of nature"(Ziran-Wuwei). However, the great beauty isn’t beauty; if it is seen as a sort of beauty, it isn’t a sort of beauty in an aesthetical sense, but in the "Dao and moral" spiritual sense. The realistic beauty must be gotten rid of, because it only is the branch of true beauty. The so-called great beauty belong to Dao or De (attaining Dao), and then, in a customary view, the great beauty was equaled with the essence of beauty. This opinion drowned the ontology of beauty in the Dao’s, so it not only demolished the boundary between beauty and truth, and good, but also misplaced their logical points. Dao is the same as beauty in essence, it is another reason that Ziran-Wuwei is misapprehend freedom, and freedom is generally regarded as the essence of beauty. In fact, Ziran-Wuwei isn’t the freedom itself, or the freeness of life, or aesthetic freedom, it hits the natural aspect of freedom, but denies the self aspect of freedom, and eventually wipes out the freedom.Form the perspective of experience, the Damei isn’t beauty, it means that the experience toward Dao indeed differs from aesthetic experience. For getting Dao, people must practice the Daoism doctrine to go back to the nature virtue, there are the practices what are "the fasting of the mind","sitting in forgetfulness","leveling all things","contenting with the fate", and so on. The great beautiful experience actually rises from the experience of getting virtue. As long as to be compared, there are many obvious differences between this experience of meditation (mind cultivation) and aesthetic experience in their purpose, intuition, and object, etc. In fact, there is no room for the latter. The Daqing (innate feeling) has no feeling (human feeling, emotion), it negates the aesthetic feelings. Zhuangzi explicitly opposed to the creation of art and beauty. It was tantamount to say that the aesthetics wasn’t significance, because of equaling the value of beauty with ugliness, and cancelling aesthetic judgment. It is inverse that Zhuangzi turned the relationship of "Tian (you)—man (I)" which is aesthetic into the relationship of "Tian (nature)—man (nature)" which is the natural state by becoming One with the Dao.In order to display the Dao, Zhuangzi created many fables about the arts or technologies. In Zhuangzi’s view, the Dao is whole, but arts are parts, and the former has no activity, the latter have activity. The arts do certainly harm to the Dao, so that it have to be excluded in the process to clean the mind, and that it don’t show what is the Dao. Zhuangzi want to replace the arts with "fantastic arts"which is recast by the non-action of Dao, but there will be no artificial arts, namely that the fantastic arts have no arts. In later ages, the fantastic arts were mingled with the arts, thus the arts can show the Dao.Zhuangzi’s philosophy failed to become a kind of aesthetics in a subject sense, but it’s full of potential strength which would results in aftereffect in aesthetic field. The later aesthetic thoughts, especially in the Six Dynasties, create many Daoism aesthetic categories and taste based on the theory of Zhuanzi (and Laozi), which can be called the Zhuanzi’s (Daoist) aesthetics within extended scope. In this broad sense, the Zhuangzi’s aesthetics in the "Dao and moral" spiritual sense has a corresponding Daoist aesthetics in an aesthetical sense in later, so that it can be said to achieve the unification.The Xuan (dark learning) of Wei-jin Dynasties, clear the substantial obstaces, and paved the way for the transformation. Wang-bi solved the problem of the Daoist aesthetics without emotions and form. The theories of Guo-xiang, as Duhua-xuanming, what Guo-xiang called the theory of self-transformation, and Zuxin-xiaoyao, called the natural and freedom, turned the metaphysical Dao into the essence of phenomena. Living following the natural or impulse shows a direct practicable fashion of the transcendental spirit. The transformation in later, especially the Wei-jin, embodied in the following aspects, the first is the object, the second is the aesthetic relation, the third is the subject. Compared the situations of transformation, you can clearly understand the distinctions between Zhuangzi’s philosophy itself and the later aesthetics called the Daoist aesthetics in the broad sense. The Zhuangzi’s philosophy will be had a thorough presentation.In short, Zhuangzi’s thought itself is the Dao-de philosophy of "attaining Dao and getting virtue". In the perspective of aesthetics, the aesthetics of Zhuangzi is non-aesthetics because of the way of dialectic paradox. If Zhuangzi’s philosophy has a kind of aesthetics, it could just be regarded as the aesthetics of "Dao and moral" spirit, instead of the aesthetics within the scope of aesthetics, and certainly showed anti-aesthetic. Strictly speaking, Zhuangzi’s aesthetics only has the potential and necessity that would results in aesthetic aftereffects, and it is a part of the Daoism aesthetics in the broad sense. Zhuangzi’s aesthetics is a kind of aftereffect aesthetics.