Ye Xie Aesthetic Thought

Origin of Poetry written by Ye Xie in the early Qing Dynasty which combined the historical materials, discourse and comments in descriptive pattern is different from the traditional metaphysics pattern. This has caused the academic world's concern and acceptance. Many scholars regarded the Aesthetic Thought System of Ye Xie and Wang Fuzhi as the symbol of Chinese traditional aesthetic summit. But these conclusions are mainly based on the characteristic structure, because it is another systematically theoretical work after The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons. But it is weak in systematic analysis on aesthetic thought, and it is also vague in the position and theoretical value in the whole Chinese classical aesthetic development.This thesis combines the logical method with historical method, starting from the angle of modern aesthetics and putting Ye Xie into the reference of Chinese traditional aesthetics and the harmonious characteristics, then study his aesthetics, his literature theories and his thought. The approach of my study is not limited to the single text of Origin of Poetry. I tried to combine his personal character, his experiences, the contemporary trend of thoughts and other information to find out how he summarized and developed Chinese traditional harmonious aesthetics. Since this study is not limited to discuss the theory or system of Origin of Poetry, it helps to broaden the sight of research on Ye Xie's thoughts and also helps to investigate his status and value in the field of Chinese traditional aesthetics and Chinese ancient literature comments with a much wider vision. There are three main parts in this thesis.Part one: Ye Xie's life experiences and the source of his aesthetics.Ye Xie's thought contains the characteristics of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism. He gave priority to Confucianism, took on some characteristics of Buddhism and Taoism and gathered many characteristics of other Schools of Thought, so his personality appears to be abundant. His theoretical source was affected by Neo-Confucianism and the Application School of Ming & Qing Dynasty, and pursue the organic unification of perception and rationality. It emphasizes Chinese traditional ideas of Integration of Nature and Man of the rational subject, the belief of pan-vitalistic philosophy and simple dialectics, and all of them nourished Ye Xie's aesthetics.Part two: the principle and system of Ye Xie's aestheticsYe Xie thought that the beauty of all things naturally lies in the world, only those who have insights can find it. This idea put emphasis on the aesthetic objectivity as well as the importance of the aesthetic subject at the same time. It showed the aesthetic system theory that the beauty must combine the aesthetic object and the insightful subject. The so-called insights requires that the aesthetic subject should have not only the perception and imagination, but also the rationality and the cognitive competence. Aesthetic creation is the combination of the objective essences"LI SHI QING"and the subjective essences"CAI DAN SHI LI"through the media of aesthetic imagery. While Ye Xie's artistic developing theory decreased the predecessor's additional sense of worth in normal concept, and it will combine ethic critique and aesthetic critique, which foreshow that Chinese aesthetic values will transfer from politics to artistic aesthetics. In a word, Ye Xie's aesthetic thoughts were run through all the time the unification of man and nature, subject and object, sensibility and rationality, random and inevitability, purposefulness and regularity, and so the integrated and rigorous aesthetic system was established.Part three: The historic position and current significance of Ye Xie's aesthetic thoughts.Ye Xie's whole aesthetic system, harmonious thoughts and peotic mood embodied the classic, harmonious and preliminary conclusion of Chinese aesthetics. At the same time, Ye Xie, affected by the individual liberation trend of Ming Dynasty, had special perspective on emotional function. The metaphor was also endued with more abundant connation from the aesthetic acceptance angle, which foreshowed classical, harmonious self-disintegration and breakthrough. The aesthetic relation theory, literary historical theory, aesthetic imagery theory and imagery experiencing theory of Ye Xie's aesthetic thoughts surpassed his time and possessed extreme modernity.