The Essence Of Chinese Esthetics

This text is about the essence of Chinese esthetics, the text divides four major parts:As an ancient proposition in china, the combination of nature and man had different content in different times or for different representation。But it can be summarized to be: man are apart of nature; nature has general laws that man must obey; human natures are just the nature laws; man's ideal is the harmony between the nature and man, social and man. The Combination of Nature and Man always passed through the whole of Chinese esthetics.According to China's classical aesthetics, beauty originates form neutrality. "Neutrality" is one of the core categories of china's classical aesthetics, showing the dialectical harmony and dynamic harmony of the unity of opposites of the things. "Neutrality" is not the identity of the non-contradiction and undifferentiatedness of things. As the type of Chinese esthetics, "the combination of nature and man" first believes the harmony between the prerequisite of achieving beauty. The principle also holds that the harmony of things is the prerequisite of achieving beauty. So the China's classical aesthetics sticks to the maxim of "neutrality but difference" making things reach the state of neutrality to result in beauty.The esthetics thought of "Useless Value" corresponding to the Kant's "unintentional intentionality", it is the essence of beauty. The spirit contacting beauty to freedom, it still has a deep meaning, which is on keeping personality independent and pursuiting freedom of life. Meanwhile, this is the real conscious about the value of life and the appreciation of the beauty.In china, life aesthetics has even longer history. Chinese ancient aesthetics embodies profound human content, lofty personality and deep life implication. In Chinese ancient's poinion, art and esthetic inalienably related to people's spirit, bearing and soul. The goal of Chinese esthetics is life aesthetics. The vivid charm is the core of life aesthetics. So, "thevivid charm manifestation of felt life will be the perfect existence form which the literature and art will pursue".