| |
IN the strict and original sense, both phenomenology and aesthetics are not inherent parts of Chinese traditional thinking. Hence Chinese phenomenological aesthetics include its introduction and dissemination, professional studies and expanded applications, as well as comparative studies and cultural mergence between this subject and Chinese traditional thinking.
The first comprehensive and accurate introduction about Husserl’s phenomenology in China appeared in 1929. But the political disturbance of several decades thereafter shattered any hope of a continual translation and in-depth research. The only exception occurred in 1965, when Xu Fuguan published in Hong Kong his famous book, The Spirit of Chinese Art, in which he believed that Chuang Tzu’s heart, in “fasting of the heart” (xin zhai), was analogous to Husserl’s pure consciousness after the epoche and was therefore the “subject of art spirit”. It is the first book we can find about phenomenological aesthetics in China. In 1980, Li Youzheng’s introduction to Roman Ingarden indicated the revival of the research into phenomenological aesthetics. It is because of the effort and impetus of many scholars, including Ni Liangkang and Sun Zhouxing, who were both leading researchers and reliable translators, that some basic writings of Husserl, Heiddeger, Merleau-Ponty, Roman Ingarden and Mikel Dufrenne have been successively translated into Chinese since then. After no more than twenty years, phenomenology has replaced classic German philosophy and won its prestigious status and power of discourse. It also invoked much enthusiasm and high expectations among writers of literary theory, many of whom soon became its main upholders and practitioners.
Chinese scholars give their different answers to the question: “What is phenomenological aesthetics?” For most of them, it means, firstly, the eradication of the subject-object dichotomy in aesthetic epistemology or ontology; secondly, the method of aesthetic intuition against the pursuit of essence in metaphysics; and lastly, the use of reduction in different ways. Just as the ambiguity of the concept of phenomenology, the diversity of views among Chinese scholars is the outcome of their different phenomenological resources or of their distinctive perspectives.
Xue Hua pioneered investigating Husserl’s phenomenological aesthetics in his book Hegel and the puzzle of art (1986) which relied on Phantasie, Bildbewusstsein, Erinnerung. He tried to solve the question of the origin of art and beauty by basing aesthetic judgment on imagination. Zhang Zailin, a scholar of comparative philosophy, held that the thought of intersubjectivity from later Husserl brought the possibility of interaction of western and Chinese aesthetics, because traditional Chinese aesthetics was accustomed to viewing beauty as quasi-intersubjective. Zhu Liyuan, an influential theorist in literary and art circles, who favoured the ideas of the life-world and intersubjectivity, played an important role in advocating Chinese phenomenological aesthetics. However the transcendence of the subject in Husserl’s theory was purposefully overlooked not only in Zhang Zailin’s interpretation, but also in Zhu Liyuan’s reading. The publication of Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness in Chinese in 2000 gave a new impetus to the further development of the already popular music phenomenology, and at the same time Ni Liangkang’s “the Phenomenology of Image Consciousness” (2001), which was a new investigation into Phantasie, Bildbewusstsein, Erinnerung, attracted such widespread attention that some authors in their writings regarded the analysis of image consciousness as one of Husserl’s representative achieve-ments in art phenomenology.
When Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit (1926), Unterwegs zur Sprache (1956) and Poetry, Language, Thought (1971) were translated into Chinese, he began to enjoy high reputation in the Chinese philosophical circle. But in the phenomenologically-based...
[ End of sample | Please purchase the magazine for full articles ]
|
