The Ecological Aesthetic Implication Of Zhuangzi's "Joy Of The Fish"

This paper will give a detailed analysis on the ecological aesthetic implications in "Fish enjoying themselves" of Zhuangzi on the basis closing reading of the original text and previous studies on this issue.The study aims at providing the references or theoretical resources for the modern western aesthetics and helping the construction of contemporary ecological aesthetics"Fish's enjoying themselves" is an old fable in Autumn Floods of Zhuangzi.Zhuangzi,who use his debate to show that men can conform to the nature and wander in an absolute freedom.In this process,Zhuangzi returns back to the real being,with spiritual contact with other things.Such feeling as one of the equally existed being in gives a special aesthetic perspective to the system of western modem arts.The ecological aesthetics of Zhuangzi is built on the basis of the philosophical belief of Theory of Ecologically Being.He considered human as a natural state among the world,where every individual's spirit can contact and join with the whole nature.Zhuangzi never directly replied to Hui Tzu's question,leading him to an aesthetic state.A few hundred words though,the fable illustrates a series of aesthetic problems and discussions,such as the mutual feelings,the aesthetic enjoyment system and the expressions of the aesthetic feelings and so on.To fully understand his intention of telling this fable,we have to put it in the context of the chapter of Autumn floods,in which Zhuangzi expresses his way of viewing the world in Tao.To reach the absolute freedom,one have to avoid his arrogant old cognitive thinking style.By providing an imaginary situation with languages or images and the like,Zhuangzi failed to make Hui Tzu have the same feelings as him,since Hui Tzu always held his own logical cognitive thinking instead of the aesthetic ones.However,once Zhuangzi resorted to the help of languages,he also inevitably fell in the trap of cognitive thinking,which is useless to their question.The reason that Chuang Tsz can see the enjoyment of the fish in Hao River is that firstly he used to see this world in the perspective of Tao,a philosophy which assume the equality of all the beings in the world;secondly,he is good at mingling with the nature by considering all the things as subjects holding feelings and emotions as him.In a word,Zhuangzi create a situation in his book to help him dismiss the border of all things and conform to the equality of nature division.With the belief of ecological being,the respect for all the living beings.and the contacting practice,one can mingle with the whole nature and create a state of spiritual and physical existence.