Abstract
This section looks into sightseeing from the perspective of an escalated experience of aesthetic engagement. This experience is threefold in essence, ranging from the aesthetic experience pleasant to the ear and the eye, guides them to go beyond this level and move up to the aesthetic feeling pleasant to mind and mood, and enlightens them to the aesthetic exaltation of intellectual intuition and spiritual freedom.
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- 1.
Li Zehou. Meixue sijiang [Four Essays on Aesthetics] (Beijing: Sanlian Bookshop, 1989). The Chinese version of this book is reprinted by other publishers in China. It is already translated in Korean and Japanese. Its English version is rendered by Professor Jane Cauvel and has come in print in 2006 (Cf. Li Zehou and Jane Cauvel, Four Essays on Aesthetics, Lanham et al.: Lexington Books, 2006). This is one of the few writings on aesthetics in China that features an individual, philosophical, and transcultural view as a result of transformational creation by virtue of Chinese sources and Western methodology.
- 2.
Liu Xiang (c. 77–6 B.C.) is the first to put forth the idea when talking about the beauty of voice and that of dressing, etc. His statement concerned can be rendered as follows: “Those who are properly dressed and have good manners please the eye. Those who have a nice voice and respond well in conversations please the ear. Those who like to develop good hobbies and abandon bad ones please the mind. People find it pleasing to the eye when seeing the superior man [or lord] properly dressed with good manners. People find it pleasing to the ear when hearing the superior man [or lord] speaking properly and responding timely. People find it pleasing to the mind when observing the superior man [or lord] exercising the virtue of human-heartedness while abandoning the vice of non-human-heartedness. The above three aspects are kept in the mind, circulated through the body, and demonstrated in the action and non-action.” Cf. Liu Xiang, “Xiuwen” [Cultivating Culture], in Shuo yuan [Selected Essays from Schools of Thought in the Han Dynasty], Vol. 19. Li Zehou, a contemporary philosopher of distinction in China, develops this idea in view of aesthetic activity and corresponding experience of common practice. Li continues to argue that “Aesthetic experience has different levels. The most common of them is associated with the pleasing of the ear and the eye (yue er yue mu). The above state is associated with the pleasing of the mind and the mood (yue xin yue yi). The highest state is associated with the pleasing of the will and the spirit (yue zhi yue shen). Yet, the pleasing of the ear and the eye is not equal to sheer pleasure, and the pleasing of the will and the spirit is not equal to religiously mystical experience.” Cf. Li Zehou, “Zhongguo meixue ji qi ta” [Chinese Aesthetics and Other Matters], in Meixue shulin [Journal of Aesthetic Criticism] (Wuhan: Wuhan University Press, 1983), Vol. 1, p. 27. These ideas are subsequently elaborated in Li Zehou’s Four Essays on Aesthetics.
- 3.
Zhuang Zhou, Zhuangzi nei pian [The Inner Chapters in The Book of Zhuangzi].
- 4.
Yi jing [The Book of Changes].
- 5.
One leading interpretation is briefed above. Now, it goes through a rediscovery and revaluation by virtue of instrumental rationality and pragmatic reasoning in face of ecological crises and environmental problems. This trend has been prevailing ever since the 1990s among quite a number of Chinese scholars and Western sinologists who tend to read modern messages into this old doctrine. It is therefore claimed to be conceptually significant and valid in reconstructing a more healthy relationship between humans and nature for the sake of environmental protection and ecological balance. The other leading explication is different, according to which the concept of tian is said to denote heaven in a symbolic sense. In other words, it is symbolic of a system of feudal morality or ethical codes. This system is also called the Dao that is grounded on the five constant virtues known as human-heartedness, righteousness, propriety, reasonability, and trustworthiness (ren yi li zhi xin). The Dao is considered one as a whole and remains the same in both cases. That is to say, it can be called the Heavenly Dao (tiandao) when it is up to identify with the Heaven, and likewise, it can be the Human Dao (rendao) when it is down to identify with the human. Accordingly, tian ren he yi (heaven-human oneness) can be replaced by tianren hede (heaven-human oneness in morality). This morality-based oneness is intended to perform a twofold service at least. First, it is to identify the Heavenly Dao with the Human Dao. This works not only to make them equally important, but moralize the interaction between heaven and human in spite of its mystical features. Second, such oneness is supposed to lift the moral system up to the sky so as to ennoble and divinize it. This helps to emphasize and reinforce the objective necessity and eternal characteristic of the moral system. Such being the case, tian as heaven is above ren as human. The former is legitimated with a metaphysical priority to determine the human conduct, while the latter is deprived of its individual subjectivity and thus expected to be a devoted follower. All this bears a hidden purpose, both ethical and political, to make people comply with this oneness under all circumstances in order to coordinate human relations and secure social order as well as stability. In a word, what the doctrine of heaven-human oneness in this regard emphasizes is the divinity and eternality of feudal morality rather than the unity between nature and humankind. This interpretation is inclusively peculiar of Confucianism proper due to its moral orientation and political commitment.
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Zong Baihua, Meixue yu yijing [The Aesthetics and the Artistic Realm] (Beijing: Renmin Press, 1987), p. 210.
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Wang, K. (2019). An Escalated Experience of Appreciating Nature. In: Chinese Culture of Intelligence. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3173-2_17
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3173-2_17
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