I
Aesthetics is facing an embarrassing predicament never met before. On one hand, the aesthetic has been driven out of its hereditary domain of literature and art, and the privilege it once monopolized has been stripped away, so that from time to time scholars raise doubts and charges against the legitimacy of the marriage between literature-and-art and the aesthetic. On the other hand, the aesthetic—become a "vagabond" wandering to the ends of the earth—has thereby made a home everywhere, so that not only is everyday life aestheticized, but even epistemology is aestheticized along with it. When literature and art deliberately disavow any connection with the aesthetic, and when the aesthetic mingles into everyday life until it loses its own boundary, aesthetics indeed verges on a crisis of life and death and seems to be heading toward its end. Just at this juncture, Qi Zhixiang's 600,000-word Aesthetics of the Sense of Pleasure (Le-gan Meixue) came out—which cannot but astonish and command admiration.
Qi Zhixiang realizes his ambition of reconstructing modern aesthetics by way of a "constructive postmodern" method. Pained that the "negative postmodern" deconstruction of aesthetics had fallen into extremism and nihilism, he calls for aesthetics to grasp the essence of the "constructive postmodern" method marked by "reconstruction"—to "construct upon the basis of deconstruction"—and he practices what he preaches, realizing his scholarly aspiration through solid achievements in aesthetic construction. Whether in the richness and fullness of its materials or in the breadth and depth of its theoretical vision, the monograph may be called outstanding, in a class of its own.
Aesthetics of the Sense of Pleasure offers a brief but penetrating critique of the various aesthetic views down the ages: it criticizes mechanical-materialist aesthetics for treating the essence of beauty as an objective, inherent, and unchanging "substance," and it opposes the way existential aesthetics and deconstruction shelve the question of beauty's essence, even practicing "de-essentialization"; at the same time, it does not simply discard the various research methods and their fruits, but clarifies them in the course of critique—gathering widely, tracing far, discarding the false and keeping the true, and applying them flexibly. In the monograph, the author takes in and uses semantic analysis, aesthetic psychology, epistemological aesthetics, phenomenological aesthetics, existential aesthetics, and even deconstruction and postmodern thought. The aesthetic, as a kind of human activity, is closely bound up with the features of the human; the richness and complexity of the human determine the richness and complexity of the aesthetic. We cannot exhaust the features of the human from any single theoretical viewpoint; likewise, we cannot prescribe the aesthetic and beauty with any one particular theory. Any single viewpoint is an arbitrary butchering of the aesthetic and beauty, and in the end makes the living aesthetic and beauty degenerate into a dead shell. Yet adopting multiple theoretical methods and ideas is not a matter of cobbling together a theoretical platter; it requires fully examining the adaptability of a theory to the object of study and its related dimensions, and examining the compatibility among the theories. It should be said that Aesthetics of the Sense of Pleasure is fairly self-consciously aware of this. In the author's words, it is "to reconstruct on the basis of deconstruction, to affirm on the basis of critique, to build on the basis of negation… to take both the ancient and the modern, to honor both essence and phenomenon, to weigh both speculation and feeling, to combine materialism with existentialism, to combine the ready-made theory with the generative theory, to balance objectivism and subjectivism, to balance subject-object division and subject-object interaction—taking 'beauty is a pleasure-object' as the theoretical origin-point, and reconstructing, by the principle of combining logic with empirical evidence, a new system of 'Le-gan aesthetics,' so as to offer useful reference for people to know the mystery of beauty, grasp the laws of beauty, guide aesthetic practice, and beautify their own lives." (1)
The greatest taboo of theoretical research is to go from theory to theory, and to cut reality rudely with theory, even disregarding the actual and disregarding common sense. Even though common sense inevitably contains errors, if theory therefore disregards common sense, it is bound to let theory itself degenerate into a castle in the air. Theory must face common sense and give its own interpretation of common sense. Another important feature of Aesthetics of the Sense of Pleasure is precisely that it faces common sense squarely, and even takes common sense as the starting point for theoretical interpretation. To set out from common sense is to set out from the actual phenomena of aesthetic feeling. The aesthetic and beauty are inseparable from the feeling of pleasure; this is a shared feeling not to be ignored—it is common sense—and Aesthetics of the Sense of Pleasure takes it as its own theoretical cornerstone. Beauty is the pleasure-object; yet not every object that pleases is beautiful—it must also benefit life, that is, it must have value for the human; therefore beauty is "a valuable pleasure-object." Setting out from the common sense of "pleasure," the work step by step carries out theoretical induction and delimitation, with rigorous logic gradually peeling out the essence of beauty, and gives a fine answer to the question "what is beauty."
Defining beauty by taking "pleasure" as its basic property greatly expands the scope of beauty. Beauty is no longer, as Western aestheticians say, confined to sight and hearing; whatever can arouse pleasure—taste, smell, touch, and the other senses—can all produce the feeling of beauty. On the especially controversial matter of taste, smell, and touch, the monograph devotes considerable space to exposition, touching on Chinese and Western culture, the Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist schools, and even gourmet culture, wine culture, tea culture, and so on, using extremely rich cultural facts to clarify irrefutably the relevance of the five senses to the aesthetic and beauty, and finally reducing pleasure to the universal property of the aesthetic object—that is, the essence of beauty. At the same time, it reveals the innovativeness of the monograph's central view, "beauty is a valuable pleasure-object": "Le-gan aesthetics" is not "Le-gan culture," a mere summary of the features of ancient Chinese culture; nor does it refer to a traditional Chinese form of aesthetics; rather, it synthesizes the theoretical resources of Chinese and Western, ancient and modern aesthetics and, in combination with aesthetic practice, generalizes the general principles of aesthetics. Moreover, "Le-gan aesthetics" is not "the aesthetic-studies of pleasure"; its theoretical basis-point and ultimate goal are the essence and laws of "beauty," a generalization of the most basic qualities and properties of beauty—a "science of construction" after the question of beauty's essence had met with deconstruction, a reconstruction of the principles of aesthetics. It cannot be denied that the aesthetic reflection carried out by Aesthetics of the Sense of Pleasure opens a new path for aesthetic research and genuinely advances contemporary aesthetic construction.
Besides the features described above, the monograph also points out that "pleasure originates in suiting one's nature (shi-xing)," and gives a thorough exposition of "suiting one's nature" from both the "subjective beauty of suiting one's nature" and the "objective beauty of suiting one's nature," clarifying that it is precisely "suiting one's nature" that makes objective things into "pleasure-objects," that is, into "beauty." In expounding the connections and distinctions among a series of aesthetic categories such as "the grand-beautiful" and "the sublime," the monograph likewise, on the basis of synthesizing the various views, makes clear inductions and further clarifies these aesthetic categories.
II
When Aesthetics of the Sense of Pleasure tries to encompass within itself every sort of aesthetic method and aesthetic phenomenon, it inevitably creates certain inner incongruities and fissures—yet this is precisely where its value lies. A work polished to extreme refinement, seamlessly conforming to logic, can hardly provoke deep thought; on the contrary, it is precisely the incongruities, fissures, and contradictions in a work that leave the reader room for thought, inspiring the reader to go on thinking and to strive to crack the difficulties. One of the main problems here is the wavering of the theoretical basis-point.
In fact, what "pleasure" itself stresses is an "aesthetic feature" or the "subjective feeling" of the aesthetic subject; it expresses a quality of aesthetic activity, is produced within the aesthetic relation, and is a subject's feeling brought about by a specific "activity" and "relation." Yet, in order to carry through the claim that "aesthetics is the 'philosophy of beauty' centered on the study of 'beauty,'" the monograph cannot but objectify "pleasure" into a "pleasure-object." But "pleasure" is, after all, not the same as "beauty": "beauty" has long been objectified and become a certain quality of objects, whereas "pleasure" has not yet been objectified and can hardly serve as a quality of an object—apart from the subject, apart from activity, apart from relation, "pleasure" has nothing to attach to. This is precisely why we often marvel that some thing is "beautiful," yet would almost never say that some thing is "pleasure." The "study of pleasure" ought to be the "study of the aesthetic," not the "philosophy of beauty"; yet the monograph equates the "study of pleasure" with the "philosophy of beauty," so that the "study of pleasure" thereby becomes the "philosophy of 'the pleasure-object,'" which brings about a shift of the theoretical basis-point. The monograph thus wavers between two theoretical basis-points. The author of Aesthetics of the Sense of Pleasure has already found the key that opens the door of aesthetics, has entered the hall and touched the theoretical basis-point; yet his original theoretical notions in turn hinder him from thoroughly shifting his own standpoint, so that he misses, by a hair's breadth, the richer and more profound theoretical insights he might have grasped. The wavering of the theoretical basis-point is fairly conspicuous when he discusses the "features of beauty." For example, the "imagistic-ness" and "objectivity" of beauty that the monograph proposes belong to the features of the object, whereas "pleasurableness" ought to belong to the features of subjective experience and activity; "value-ness" must reside within the subject-object relation; as for "subjectivity," it can only be spoken of with respect to the aesthetic subject; and once the fluidity of beauty is taken into account, it seems again to deconstruct the objectivity of beauty—in fact, the basis-point has already been shifted to the historicity of aesthetic activity. It is precisely in the induction of the features of beauty that we cannot but feel that, much like the "shifting scenes with each step" of a Chinese painting, the monograph, owing to the instability of its theoretical basis-point, produces logical contradictions among the various features and their mutual deconstruction.
If we do not cling to the notion that "aesthetics is the 'philosophy of beauty' centered on the study of 'beauty,'" but instead carry the theoretical basis-point of "pleasure" through to the end and push one step further—taking "activity" as the basis-point for studying the "aesthetic" and "beauty," or, as Zhu Liyuan advocates, "replacing the ready-made theory with the generative theory," affirming that "activity comes first" and that beauty is "dynamically generated" in aesthetic activity (2)—then such an aesthetic view will not lead to "anti-essentialism" and "nihilism," nor to the dreadful consequence of deconstructing aesthetics. On the contrary, it is precisely the aesthetic that, by means of "activity," links subject, object, and relation together and embodies all the features mentioned above: the object in aesthetic activity must possess imagistic-ness; the process of aesthetic activity must bring pleasurableness; the aesthetic, as a historically generated activity, objectively exists, and the features of its activity cannot but be objective—and in the historical course of the activity's development, through selection and shaping, objects are formed that suit the human and give the human pleasure, and this is beauty, whose features are likewise objective, while the relation between subject and object necessarily possesses value-ness; since aesthetic activity is jointly constructed by both subject and object, besides objectivity it is at the same time influenced by the aesthetic subject and possesses subjectivity; and when the historical situation changes, aesthetic activity is bound to be reconstructed accordingly, giving rise to the fluidity of aesthetic features and of the object-features of beauty. "Activity-first" is precisely a materialist—and moreover a historicist—worldview; it can more aptly reveal the essence, laws, and features of the aesthetic and beauty. To fix one's eyes tightly on the object, on the essence of beauty, and to take the contemplation of beauty's essence as the theoretical point of departure, is either to fall inevitably into the trap of essentialism or, while describing the features of beauty, to keep dissolving those features at the same time.
We adopt the formulation that the aesthetic is an "activity" rather than a "practice," because "practice" has a relatively determinate meaning—it generally denotes "purposive activity" and cannot encompass all types of human activity. Only by taking "activity" as the theoretical basis-point can we truly implement the methodology of "constructive postmodernism" and, according to the concrete state of the activity, effectively combine the various other research methods. Human activity objectively exists and is historical; it both continually changes history and is at the same time shaped by history. The aesthetic is generated in the historical process of human activity; it is the fruit of human activity's both differentiating and fusing, and thereby a distinctive kind of human activity is generated. It is precisely in the process of the development and evolution of human activity that those activities suited to human life and bringing a feeling of pleasure gradually separate out as "the aesthetic"; correspondingly, those objects that are harmonized with life and give pleasure in the activity become "beauty"-objects. "The aesthetic" and "beauty" are the human's naming of those distinctive activities and of the objects "selected" and "shaped" within them, and also the naming of other objects with similar features. Conversely, before humans had formed language and consciousness, the world and the myriad things were chaotic and indistinct, not existing in the manner of "the human's object," still less in the manner of "beauty's object." From this angle, beauty is also the objectification of human life-activity. While the human regards the objective world as his own object, he at the same time assimilates the world with his own life-activity, and thereby generates the "beauty"-object. "Any actual activity, if it is complete and is realized under the drive of its own impulse, will possess aesthetic quality." (3)
What we mean by "activity comes first" stresses logical priority, not temporal priority; it stresses that in the historical process of human "activity," the distinctive activity of "the aesthetic" is generated and differentiated out, while at the same time the distinctive object of "beauty" is selected and shaped, and the human capable of the aesthetic is also shaped. The aesthetic, beauty, and the aesthetic subject are jointly generated in the historical development of human activity. The reason people mistakenly think "beauty" precedes "the aesthetic" is that "beauty" has already been selected and shaped: it is a determinate, objectively existing object, and other objects with similar features are likewise determinate and objectively existing—they are easy to grasp—whereas "the aesthetic" is fluid and non-substantial, hard to grasp. Since the aesthetic, beauty, and the aesthetic subject are jointly formed in the historical process, an object possessing the features of beauty very easily triggers the human's aesthetic activity, jointly constructs the aesthetic "mediation," and arouses the aesthetic interest of the aesthetic subject. This is precisely why certain aestheticians mistakenly suppose that "beauty" is logically prior to "the aesthetic."
It must be pointed out that the "beauty-object" and the "aesthetic object" are different: the former refers to an objectively existing object, called the "beauty-object" because it possesses certain features; the latter refers to the aesthetic "mediation" generated within aesthetic activity, or the "aesthetic illusion," which exists only within aesthetic activity. The beauty-object is the object separated out and shaped, together with the aesthetic, in the historical development of human activity; it is an objective existence. The aesthetic object, by contrast, is generated in the present instant of aesthetic activity; it has not only objectivity but also subjectivity, is jointly constructed by both subject and object, and is fleeting. What Zhu Liyuan calls beauty "generated in the present" stresses precisely the beauty of the "aesthetic object"—a beauty of fleeting aesthetic illusion—rather than certain pre-existing objective features, that is, the beauty of the "beauty-object." People, however, are accustomed to calling the beauty-object "beauty," and find it hard to grasp the aesthetic mediation, that is, the beauty of the aesthetic object. The two formulations easily clash; to avoid misunderstanding, we make this clarification here.
In sum, from the historical angle, "beauty" can only arise together with "the aesthetic" in the course of the development of human activity; it is "generated," and before human aesthetic activity arose, nature was merely an objective existence, with no question of being beautiful or not. From the angle of present aesthetic activity, however, "beauty" is "pre-formed," because it already exists in advance as an object, and is also "generated," because only in the aesthetic present do subject and object interact to construct the aesthetic object. These are two different dimensions of examination: in the historical process, beauty is generated; in present aesthetic activity, beauty is both pre-formed and generated. The disputes among different views in fact confuse these two different perspectives.
The generation and differentiation of human activity often form no obvious rupture; there exist fuzzy intermediate zones. How to demarcate them, how to name them, depends on cultural power: peoples of different cultural backgrounds can only divide them according to their own understanding and judgment, and so the ways of demarcation cannot but differ. Of course, such demarcation is not arbitrary, yet it is not absolute either. This is precisely why the Chinese and Western definitions of the aesthetic and beauty differ and yet can communicate and be negotiated with each other. The aesthetic and beauty can only be differentiated and formed in the course of the development of human activity; therefore, the study of aesthetics must take "activity" as its theoretical basis-point, examining and studying the aesthetic and beauty within the development of human activity. At the same time, it must also examine and study the present-day aesthetic and beauty within the horizon of "activity." The objectivity of human activity determines the objectivity of the aesthetic and beauty; the historicity of human activity determines their historicity. Over a relatively short span, the aesthetic and beauty possess a stable character; but over a long time they cannot but change with the shifts of cultural environment and activity. Among the different forms of beauty, because "formal beauty" is accumulated through the long process of human activity—a formal structure abstracted from human life-activity through the ceaseless washing of history, objectified upon material objects and closely bound up with human life—it is therefore often more stable and universal than "connotative beauty."
III
Consistent with its choice of theoretical basis-point, Aesthetics of the Sense of Pleasure acknowledges the duality of aesthetic activity: both the fusion of subject and object and the phenomenon of subject-object division occur. But the monograph lays greater stress on subject-object division, and takes "division" as its theoretical premise. "In aesthetic cognition, subject and object both interfuse and keep strictly to division; subject-object division is not only the premise of subject-object unity but also the basis for testing and measuring whether the interfused aesthetic cognition is correct." The monograph repeatedly stresses: on the question of how to treat the "subject-object division" method of aesthetic cognition and of theoretical research, the "constructive postmodern" methodology opposes both the "subject-object opposition" of objectivism and the "non-division of subject and object" of subjectivism, advocating that one take both subject and object into account, keeping strictly to "subject-object division" amid subject-object interaction, communication, and fusion, and, on the premise of "subject-object division" and within a harmless range, accommodating subject-object unity—thereby providing useful methodological assurance for the reconstruction of the theory of "Le-gan aesthetics." (4) On the basis of this understanding, the monograph, on one hand, attempts to reconcile phenomenological aesthetics and existential aesthetics with epistemological aesthetics; on the other hand, it consistently insists on epistemological aesthetics as the monograph's methodological foundation. Regrettably, the monograph has not yet deeply examined the concrete process of aesthetic activity, has not laid bare the inner mechanism of "subject-object unity" and "subject-object division," and so cannot establish a mutually compatible relation among the different theoretical methods, inevitably producing wavering and incongruity among theoretical methods, and even self-contradiction.
If we take "activity" as the theoretical basis-point and deeply analyze the inner process and mechanism of aesthetic activity, it is not hard to discover that "subject-object unity" and "subject-object division" in aesthetic activity depend respectively on the structures of the unconscious and of consciousness, while the unconscious and consciousness in turn depend on the structures of "behavior-language" and the "speech-act." (5) Aesthetic activity in fact most fully and most completely mobilizes the human himself as a whole; it fully digs out both the conscious and the unconscious potential of the human, and fully arouses both "speech-act memory" and "behavior-language memory." Aesthetic activity is a distinctive activity of deep cooperation between consciousness and the unconscious, between speech-act memory and behavior-language memory.
Human consciousness is constructed by speech-act memory, while the unconscious is constructed by behavior-language memory. Freud held that, in conscious activity, the "thing-presentation" must combine with the "word-presentation"; apart from the "word-presentation," the bare "thing-presentation" can only be unconscious. To put it more precisely: conscious activity is inseparable from speech-act memory, and those things we are conscious of and remember are in fact things expressed and constructed by the speech-act, not objectively real things. Apart from speech-act memory, bare behavior-language memory can only constitute the unconscious.
The distinction between consciousness and the unconscious is rooted in the difference in the structural features of the two languages (behaviors). Behavior-language is not the exclusive property of humans; all animals have their own behavior-language—a far more ancient special language. Unlike the speech-act, behavior-language carries out its differentiation of the world not by "concept" but by establishing differences through "image"; therefore, measured from the angle of sign-features, behavior-language is imperfectly developed: it lacks the clarity, independence, and mediating character of ordinary language. Behavior-language always attaches to the body, is itself bodily behavior, and possesses corporeality. The human connects himself with the world through behavior, and reconstructs and assimilates the world by means of behavior-language—structuring the world according to the structure of behavior-language, fusing human and world into one, bridging the gap between human and world, thereby grasping the world, and at the same time endowing the world with the behavioral and life features of the human. The world is the extension of human life. It is precisely the non-independence and non-mediating character of behavior-language that "fuses into one" the world and the human self, and that dooms it to be unable to regard the world as an "object"—and therefore unable to enter the conscious activity premised on an "intentional object"; it is chaotic and indistinct, and can only constitute the human's unconscious. (6) The human unconscious accumulates the behavior-language memory branded by the entire process of human activity, and even contains memory still in the animal state. The structure of the unconscious is the structure of behavior-language, not the structure of the speech-act; Lacan's explaining it by the structure of ordinary language is a misinterpretation of the unconscious.
The appearance of the speech-act brought a brand-new countenance to human activity. The speech-act, which establishes difference on the basis of "concept," is not only clear but is an independent mediation, not attached to the human. The clarity, independence, and mediating character of the speech-act split the human apart from the world, creating distance between human and world, and likewise creating distance between language and world, and between language and human. The world at last becomes the "object" of the human, and human cognitive capacity thereby makes an enormous leap, able to imagine and to think apart from really existing things, powerfully promoting the development of consciousness and thought and the rise of metaphysical thought. The speech-act not only separates the human from the world but at the same time separates the human's behavior from the body, and further links behavior with the consequences of behavior, regarding them as objects of the human's reflection and setting purposes for human behavior—which greatly raises the rationality and effectiveness of behavior, elevates human reason and practical capacity, and makes the "in-itself" human grow into the "for-itself" human. "The locus and origin of the subject is language; only in language and through language can the transcendental understanding of the 'I think' be constituted." "The individual is constructed as a subject in language and through language." (7) Only through the speech-act does the human split off from the integral world, gradually grow into a subject, and the world become the human's object, become the objective pole; and only then does it become possible to go on to establish the aesthetic relation and construct the aesthetic object. The speech-act is the mark that distinguishes the human from the animal kingdom, the key factor by which the human rises above the animal kingdom. This feature of the speech-act—its distinguishing the human from the world—determines that only it can construct human consciousness, and at the same time determines that consciousness has the feature of "subject-object division."
In human everyday activity, consciousness and the unconscious, speech-act memory and behavior-language memory, are often coordinated; but aesthetic activity has its specialness. It is a deep cooperation between consciousness and the unconscious, between speech-act memory and behavior-language memory, a full unfolding of the potential of both. The non-reality of aesthetic activity (that is, the construction of the aesthetic illusion) suspends the human's inner repression, liberates the unconscious—including the deep unconscious—fully arousing the energy of the unconscious and fully activating behavior-language memory; at the same time, the energy of the unconscious in turn propels the whole of the unconscious realm and the conscious realm, arousing speech-act memory and luring the human to construct a metaphysical world. The aesthetic is generated precisely in the process in which the unconscious and consciousness, behavior-language memory and speech-act memory, mutually generate and mutually agitate one another, and therefore it enjoys the dual features of the two languages (behaviors). The aesthetic-intoxication realm of thing-self-unity and no-thing-no-self, as well as Lipps's "empathy," Groos's "inner imitation," Croce's "intuition," and Nietzsche's "Dionysian spirit," are built on the basis of the structural features of behavior-language; the sense of life and the soul-shaking power in aesthetic activity likewise stem from the close connection of behavior-language memory with the body and from the immense energy it has stored up; whereas subject-object division, aesthetic contemplation, the "Apollonian spirit," as well as Baumgarten's "perfection of sensuous cognition" and Kant's "reflective judgment," are closely related to the structural features of the speech-act. Aestheticians holding different views often stress only the features of one aspect of aesthetic activity, and thereby produce theoretical conflicts.
Correspondingly, those objects that can fully arouse the human's consciousness and unconscious, speech-act memory and behavior-language memory, and are coordinated with them—that is, the objects harmonized with human life and able to shake human life—are the objects that give the human pleasure, that is, the beauty-objects.
In fact, speech-act memory and behavior-language memory in aesthetic activity do not split the autumn color evenly; they are often biased one way or another, and this is closely related to the cultural environment in which one is situated. The cultural environment both influences the overall features of aesthetic activity and the features of literary-artistic activity, and influences the definitions and theoretical generalizations that appreciators and aestheticians make of aesthetic activity. Or, more precisely, aesthetic activity and the cultural environment mutually shape and influence each other. One may even go a step deeper and say: the very foundation of human culture is rooted in the two languages (behaviors), and its features grow up from there. The reason-centrism of Western culture has made scholars pay more attention to the features that the speech-act brings into aesthetic activity, attending to subject-object division and to the cognitive character of aesthetic activity. Not until Nietzsche, Bergson, and later Heidegger's existential aesthetics was attention paid to the other side of aesthetic activity—stressing subject-object unity, stressing the experiential character of the aesthetic. Unlike the West, the notion of the "unity of Heaven and humanity" in Chinese culture accords with the structural features of behavior-language; or one may say that the view of the unity of Heaven and humanity is built on the basis of the structural features of behavior-language. This is also why Chinese aesthetics advocates the fusion of thing and self and pursues the rounded fullness of aesthetic conception (yijing).
When we have revealed the inner mechanism of aesthetic activity, then we can make clear in which respects phenomenological aesthetics, existential aesthetics, and hermeneutic aesthetics have interpretive power, and in which respects we must rely on epistemological aesthetics or analytic aesthetics, and how a mutually compatible relation can be established among the various methods. The aesthetic, as a holistic activity of the human, is closely bound up with the richness of the human, and likewise needs to draw on multiple theoretical resources and to be interpreted from multiple angles. Only by taking human "activity" as the basis-point, and by seizing the more basic, more concrete link of "behavior" within aesthetic activity, and exploring the inner psychological process and mechanism of aesthetic activity, can we penetrate the mystery of aesthetic activity. At the same time, only by placing beauty within the historical generation of aesthetic activity can we truly penetrate the "essence of beauty": beauty is generated in human activity; it depends on those qualities that are coordinated with human activity (behavior) and that can bring pleasure to the human and benefit life.
IV
At this point, we discover that when Aesthetics of the Sense of Pleasure takes "pleasure" as the most basic measure of beauty without placing it within "activity" and defining it clearly, then it can hardly avoid both producing an over-broadening of beauty and bringing a certain narrowness. The monograph's proposal of "pleasure (le-gan)" to replace "pleasant-sensation (kuai-gan)" is of important significance. As we understand it, "pleasure" is "pleasure" precisely because it is the perception of a sensory object; its difference from "pleasant-sensation" lies in whether or not the activity-process forms a clear sensory object and object of consciousness. The monograph has already noticed this. The author points out: "'Beauty' is the objectification and objectivization of the subject's pleasure. Without an objective object, no 'beauty' external to the subject is produced." Accordingly, the author excludes from the aesthetic and beauty the bodily sensations of the human organism, including the pleasant-sensations produced by the digestive system, the respiratory-circulatory system, the reproductive system, and the excretory system, and holds: "In such cases, subject and object are in a mixed, undivided state, and the subject has no clear object of pleasant-sensation (what object does the pleasant-sensation of sleeping off fatigue, or of sneezing, have?). Therefore I do not agree with expanding the scope of 'beauty' to matter that arouses organic pleasant-sensation through consumption." (8) Regrettably, the author has not gone a step further to examine sensory activity and to understand the inner ground that determines whether a perceived "object" forms; nor has he held to the above measure, so that he lists all five senses under the feeling of beauty, and even holds that animals too have the aesthetic.
As stated above, aesthetic activity is a deep cooperation between the human's consciousness and unconscious, between speech-act memory and behavior-language memory, and thereby an aesthetic activity is generated that both fuses subject and object and divides subject and object, and the aesthetic object is generated as well. In this process, it is precisely speech-act memory's simultaneous participation that re-creates the psychological distance between subject and object and finally constructs the aesthetic object. Animals, although they have behavior-language, have no speech-act; an animal can express only by "behavior," not by the "concepts" of language. The animal's world is the direct extension of its life; behavior does, to be sure, link the animal with the external world and enable it to respond nimbly to external events, but it cannot make the world an object of the animal's consciousness, and therefore cannot constitute an aesthetic object. The gorgeous plumage, the pleasant calls, the sturdy form of an animal that attract the opposite sex are merely a kind of unconscious conditioned reflex, accomplished by means of behavior-language. Likewise, not all the pleasant-sensations of the five senses that give the human pleasure belong to the feeling of beauty; the necessary premise for becoming the feeling of beauty is that not only is behavior-language memory fully aroused, but speech-act memory also participates and fully comes into play, thereby generating the aesthetic object—only then can such sensation possibly become pleasure and the feeling of beauty. "Without language, the qualities possessed by organic action—the so-called feelings—are merely potential and presaging pain, pleasure, smell, color, noise, tone, and so on. With language, they are differentiated and identified. Thereupon they are 'objectified'; they become immediate features possessed by things." (9) Whether or not an objective object exists does not finally decide whether the aesthetic can be formed; the aesthetic depends on whether a clear sensory object can be constructed. Concretely speaking, the gluttonous devouring of fine food brings physiological pleasant-sensation; only when taste enters the realm of "savoring," and the food becomes the intentional object of sensory activity, gaining pleasure at the psychological level, can this be called the feeling of beauty. The feeling of beauty brought by fine food is the fusion of bodily pleasant-sensation and psychological pleasure. It is precisely in the moment of savoring fine food that we not only carry out the behavior of "eating," but speech-act memory is also fully activated and intervenes, discriminating the flavor, so that the food in the process of "tasting" turns into a pleasure-object, a beauty-feeling-object, and we truly experience the "beautiful food." Compared with taste, smell, and touch, the activities of sight and hearing more easily involve the speech-act and create a psychological distance between subject and object—which is also why Western aestheticians tend toward sight and hearing and exclude taste, smell, and touch.
While producing an over-broadening of the aesthetic and beauty, taking "pleasure" as the criterion of judgment without clearly demarcating the boundary between "pleasure" and "pleasant-sensation" also very easily produces a narrowing of the aesthetic and beauty. For example, although the monograph gives an incisive exposition of the various categories of beauty, it abandons "the ugly" outside them. When pleasure is still confused with pleasant-sensation, we can indeed hardly regard the ugly as an aesthetic object, because what it brings us is displeasure and unpleasantness. Only when speech-act memory also participates do we open up a psychological distance from the ugly, and at the same time our rational power, following the speech-act, seeps into aesthetic activity, discovering profound import in the form of the ugly, gaining rational enlightenment, and from the ugly object reflecting back upon humanity's own spiritual power—thereby gaining spiritual solace and a shaking of the soul.
With the spirit of gathering a hundred rivers, Aesthetics of the Sense of Pleasure has constructed its own new aesthetic system and placed the theoretical basis-point upon "pleasure"; this has indeed powerfully pushed the contemplation of the aesthetic and beauty to the theoretical frontier and made a contribution to aesthetic construction. At the same time, by daring to face squarely the controversial difficulties of aesthetics, and thereby provoking sharp conflicts among different views, it inspires us to keep moving forward and to strive to explore the mystery of the aesthetic and beauty.