The Thinking-Features of Classical Chinese Aesthetics and Their Modern Transformation

In his essay “The Rise of Aesthetic Consciousness in China,” Wolfgang Kubin pointed out the distinctiveness of classical Chinese aesthetics. He holds: “‘Beauty,’ whatever it may mean, was perhaps not at all the aim of artistic production in ancient China. The aim of producing art in ancient China was more likely the generation of ‘realm’ (jing) and ‘image’ (xiang); by providing the receiver with a notion concerning the endless process of cosmic order, ‘realm’ and ‘image’ gave birth to ‘meaning’ (yi).” [1] Kubin's view is plainly inspired by Ye Lang. The “Introduction” to Ye Lang's Outline of the History of Chinese Aesthetics already states clearly: “Classical Chinese aesthetics holds that only when the artist takes the ‘realm’ and creates a work that can attain the ‘wondrous’ (miao) can it lead through to the ‘Dao’ (‘qi’) that is the noumenon of the cosmos and of life. Therefore classical Chinese aesthetics does not, like Western aesthetics, prize the category ‘beauty,’ but particularly prizes such categories as ‘realm,’ ‘qi,’ and ‘wondrous.’” [2] On this basis, the Outline takes Laozi's thought as the starting point of the history of Chinese aesthetics and unfolds a description of the developmental thread of Chinese aesthetic thought, expounding the series of categories Laozi raised—“Dao,” “qi,” “image,” “being,” “nothing,” and so on—and their enormous influence upon classical Chinese aesthetic thought. Ye Lang's contribution to the history of Chinese aesthetics lies chiefly not in providing new historical materials but in displaying a kind of independent history of ideas. He does not apply Western aesthetic notions, categories, and systems to write Chinese aesthetic history, forcibly fitting the distinctive and creative aesthetic thought of ancient China onto the Western “Procrustean bed”; rather, setting out from a great body of aesthetic-historical material, he breaks the ready-made frames and, with unique insight, grasps the very root of classical Chinese aesthetics.

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The distinctive conditions of life and cultural-historical environments of different peoples nurture aesthetic consciousnesses of distinct character, and this decrees the diversity of artistic production and the difference of aesthetic thought. As Kubin and Ye Lang say, “beauty” is not the aim of artistic production in ancient China, nor is it the core of classical Chinese aesthetic thinking; the core question of ancient Chinese artistic production and aesthetic thinking is how, through “image” and “realm,” to approach the “Dao” and embody the “Dao”—that is, the “embodiment of the Dao.”

“The Dao as a thing is utterly shadowy, utterly vague” [3]: as the primordial chaos, the “Dao” is the “ancestor of the myriad things,” yet it is formless, limitless, and nameless; language and concept cannot speak the “Dao,” and logical thinking cannot approach the “Dao”; the best path is to establish the “image” and make the “realm,” and by the “image” and the “realm” to lead through toward the “Dao.” If the thinking about the “Dao” is the core of classical Chinese philosophy, then the thinking about how, by way of “image” and “realm,” to lead toward the “Dao” is the core of classical Chinese aesthetics, and from this was forged the distinctive character of the artistic spirit and aesthetic thought of ancient China.

Just as Laozi and Zhuangzi left an imprint upon classical Chinese aesthetic thought that cannot be wiped away, so did Plato and Aristotle of ancient Greece deeply influence Western aesthetic thought. Setting aside how great the difference may be between Plato's “Idea” and the so-called “Dao” of Laozi and Zhuangzi: when Plato says that art is “the shadow of a shadow,” an imitation of reality, he in fact severs art from the “Idea” that is objective spirit. Reality is the shadow of the Idea, and art is the shadow of reality; between art and the Idea is interposed the layer of “reality,” and art is a thing of the lower order. Aristotle followed precisely his teacher's line of thought, only that he was more willing to think close to the actual; he took up Plato's idea that “art is the imitation of reality” in order to examine how art “imitates reality” and how to make this “imitation” become a “beautiful imitation”—that is, the thinking of the aesthetic relation between art and reality. From Aristotle on, the aesthetic relation between art and reality became the core of Western artistic and aesthetic thinking; whether “representation” (external reality) versus “expression” (inner reality), or “realism” versus “abstraction,” “metaphor” versus “symbol”—none can leap beyond the thinking of the aesthetic relation between art and reality. Even where this bears upon art and truth, it is because art is first related to the sensuous world of reality and can then, through the sensuous world, be related to truth; it by no means, in the manner of Laozi and Zhuangzi, directly pursues the empty, shadowy, formless “Dao.” It is precisely on this basis that Western artistic and aesthetic thinking concentrate upon the sensuous image and its relation to reality; sculpture, painting, and the other plastic arts cannot do without “anatomy,” “perspective,” and “color theory”; and only thus could there appear in art and aesthetic theory such doctrines as “empathy,” “inner imitation,” and “distance.”

Ancient Chinese artistic and aesthetic thinking, by contrast, never departs from the “Dao”; its fundamental orientation lies not in the relation between art and reality but in the relation between art and the “Dao.” Whether in artistic creation or in artistic appreciation, the ultimate aim is the “embodiment of the Dao.” “Art is the Dao, the Dao is art.” [4] Only artistic creation that can “embody the Dao” can attain the “wondrous realm,” the “transformed realm,” the “ultimate realm,” and truly become artistic creation; otherwise it can only halt at “technique” and cannot ascend into the hall of refinement. Since artistic creation is the experience of the “Dao,” it cannot be grasped through rational cognition but must rely on apprehension: one must “reach the utmost emptiness and hold fast to stillness” [5], must achieve “the fasting of the mind” and “sitting in forgetfulness” [6], and “with a clear and still mind savor the image” [7], so as to attain comprehension of the “Dao.” This is a process of savoring and wondrous apprehension; “savor” and “wondrous” thereby inevitably became important categories of classical Chinese aesthetics. [8] Art is the “image” that leads toward the “Dao,” and so the “image” does not merely halt at the “image” itself but continually generates and expands—image beyond image, realm beyond realm, meaning beyond words, rhyme beyond sound, savor beyond rhyme, purport beyond savor; the “image” always points limitlessly toward the “Dao,” passing from the determinate into the indeterminate, from the finite into the infinite. The tension formed between “image” and “Dao” draws and leads us to explore the “Dao,” to approach the “Dao,” to savor the “Dao,” to apprehend the “Dao”—and this is the wondrousness of the ideal. Such an “image” Wang Guowei called the “realm” (jingjie). The reason the “realm” was given so lofty a theoretical status by Wang Guowei, who said, “What Canglang called ‘inspired stir’ and what Ruanting called ‘spirit-resonance’ are still but the surface of the matter; they are not so good as my picking out the two words ‘the realm’ to probe its very root” [9], lies precisely in this: “inspired stir” and “spirit-resonance” each grasp one end and emphasize only one facet, whereas the “realm” at once contains both “image” and “Dao,” is the “image” that can embody the “Dao,” the “image” pregnant with the “Dao.” Such an “image”—that is, the “realm”—is precisely the root of the Chinese artistic spirit and of aesthetic thought. The “image” of Chinese art must connect with the “Dao,” and from this are derived the series of aesthetic categories “qi,” “spirit,” “principle,” “meaning,” “rhyme,” and the like. [10]

The primordial-chaos “Dao” is unregulated, limitless, and nameless—it is “nothing” (wu). The world is inaugurated from “nothing,” and the myriad things are born from “nothing”; “nothing” possesses a limitless creative power, and “nothing” therefore has its own unique importance in artistic creation and aesthetic thinking. Being and nothing generate each other; the real and the empty complement each other. In painting, “nothing” (blank space) is not empty nothingness; on the contrary, it is precisely with blank space that painting brims with life and vitality. In music and literature, blank likewise means that “at this moment soundlessness wins over sound.” “Nothing” opens up an atmosphere of vital mist; “nothing” lets the human cast himself into the space, immersed and accompanying, and so directly face the limitless, formless “Dao” and harmonize with the “Dao,” apprehending it with ease. Therefore in Chinese painting, to lend form and apply color is by no means of first importance; rather, the arrangement of being and nothing, the real and the empty, demands all the more the careful management of the master hand, so that one may even “depart from form to attain likeness” and thereby “transmit the spirit.” Such relations of being-and-nothing, of the real and the empty, are finally simplified into the relation of black and white. It is precisely from this angle of the “embodiment of the Dao” that ink-wash painting and cursive calligraphy can best embody the spirit of Chinese art. And it is precisely because of the pursuit of an “image” that embodies the “Dao” that the implicit character of Chinese art and Chinese literature was forged.

Zong Baihua divided the beauty in Chinese art into “engraved gold inlaid with color” and “the lotus emerging from water,” holding that the two ideals have run consistently through Chinese history, but that “the lotus from water” is a higher aesthetic realm, displaying the great liberation of aesthetic thought. [11] “Engraved gold” and “the lotus from water” can both embody the “Dao,” but after all the lush and variegated color of imagery tends to obscure the “Dao”—this is the so-called “the five colors blind the eye, the five tones deafen the ear” [12]; once the lead-and-powder is washed clean, as with “the lotus from water,” the “Dao” on the contrary attains its manifestation.

Since art takes the “embodiment of the Dao” as its aim, this decrees that Chinese art does not cling to the external image, is not bent upon the precision and richness of the surface of the sensuous image, but develops toward a clear and quiet style and pursues the “clumsy,” the “plain,” the “naive,” returning to simplicity and embodying the “Dao” within the primordial vastness. In literature, poetry and lyric attained the highest achievement, and poetry and lyric in turn take the plain, the natural, and the implicit as the superior grade: “Not a single word set down, yet the whole flowing grace attained.” Though the “Dao” is formless and nameless, it is nowhere absent; so long as one has the apprehending nature, the spiritual sensitivity, and the unique insight of the wise eye, every “image” can embody the “Dao,” and one can “pick it up just by bending down, with no need to borrow from a neighbor; the Dao is everywhere fitting, attained the moment one sets one's hand to it.” [13]

The art that takes the “embodiment of the Dao” as its aim naturally has no so-called beautiful and ugly. The beautiful can embody the “Dao,” and the ugly can embody the “Dao” as well: “Toad and Xi-shi, the strange and the freakish—the Dao penetrates them as one.” [14] The beautiful and the ugly together orient toward the “Dao,” and the two can mutually transform. “The foul and rotten transform anew into the miraculous; the miraculous transforms anew into the foul and rotten.” [15] The ugly, by its “strangeness,” displays the “Dao” and makes people produce aesthetic wonder. The ugly is linked and penetrated with the “Dao”; the ugly is no longer merely ugly, but is “ugly-and-grand, ugly-and-fine” [16]; the ugly brims with vital vigor, and the ugly contains the mystery of the cosmos and of life.

The art that embodies the “Dao” is, however, not the only path; the secluded natural world and the noisy city street can both “embody the Dao.” Life can be made artistic, human existence can be made artistic—so long as one can “embody the Dao” within life and existence, this is the artistic life, the artistic existence. In the ordinary “cutting up of the ox,” the “wielding of the axe,” the “carving of the bell-stand,” and even in political maneuvering, one can “embody the Dao” and make these display the artistic spirit. The process of “embodying the Dao” is a process of the liberation of the mind; it leads the human into the free realm of “roaming.” “Roaming” is the concrete mode of life and experience of mind proper to the “embodiment of the Dao”; and it is precisely by possessing such a state of life and of mind that one can truly enter the fine境 of artistic creation. The “embodiment of the Dao” is the basic link, the ultimate aim, and the fundamental feature of ancient Chinese aesthetic activity—as Xu Fuguan says: “The Dao that Zhuangzi pursued is in fact the highest artistic spirit; therefore Zhuangzi's contemplation of the world is itself an aesthetic contemplation.” [17]

Compared with Laozi and Zhuangzi, the thinking-weight of Confucius and of Confucian theory falls not upon the essence and features of aesthetic activity but rather upon the ethical content and the social-educative function of aesthetic activity; and because social ethics is itself bound up with the natural “Dao” (the Heavenly principle) and originates from the natural “Dao,” in the course of the development of aesthetic thought it complemented the Laozi-Zhuangzi aesthetic thought centered on the “embodiment of the Dao,” enriching the content and color of classical Chinese aesthetics, and did not form an aesthetic-thought pattern opposed to or mutually canceling it. [18]

Since art takes the “embodiment of the Dao” as its aim, and not the art-image itself, nor the imitation of reality, then the direct thinking about the art-image and its aesthetic relation to reality loses its importance, and there is no need to rely upon anatomy, perspective, or color theory. The “embodiment of the Dao” decrees that the thinking-center of classical Chinese aesthetic thought is the relation between “image” and “Dao,” and not the art-image itself or the aesthetic relation between art and reality. The art-image and reality are both concretely real, and one may still make a rational, even empirical, analysis of them. The “Dao,” however, cannot be named; how one is to “embody the Dao” naturally cannot be named either; it is likewise “mystery upon mystery,” “like a goat hung up by the antlers, leaving no track to seek.” Rational analysis kills the life of art; it can grasp only the “branch,” only the “coarse,” and makes the “Dao” vanish. If one would force a name upon it, one can only, like Zhuangzi, use fable or metaphor, circling around to approach it. He Yisun says: “The transformed-realm of the poet is like wind and rain galloping past, like ghosts and spirits appearing and vanishing, the eyes filled with the empty and illusory, the ears filled with the fleeting—suddenly it comes, suddenly it goes; it cannot be glossed by word or phrase, cannot be pursued by trace.” [19] The poet's “transformed-realm” has no track to seek; its wondrousness is not what the glossing of words or rational analysis can grasp. “Such language has of itself a vein flowing freely through it; only by steeping oneself within it can one obtain it; one must not drag in much external doctrinal language, which would only clog up the poet's living meaning.” [20] The more one uses external doctrinal language to interpret, the further one departs from the poetic intent and the further from the “Dao,” and so the poem's fresh life is suffocated. Poetry can only be chanted again and again, savored, appreciated, and immersed in, before one can obtain its true purport. Calligraphy and music are likewise so. Therefore ancient Chinese literary criticism and art criticism reject rational analysis, advocate “not falling into the verbal trap,” and rely heavily upon apprehension, mostly adopting linguistic metaphor, and—by way of annotation, point-and-comment, preface-and-postface, and the like—attach themselves to the literary-artistic text, helping, pointing, and enticing the appreciator to enter in person the deep hall of literature and art and apprehend the mystery within. Ancient Chinese literary criticism, art criticism, and aesthetic thought are “theories” that surpass the ordinary theoretical form, “non-theory theories,” whose mode of thought relies upon poetic wisdom rather than logical thinking—and this is determined by that fundamental cognition of the essence of art, the “embodiment of the Dao.”

The formation of classical Chinese aesthetic thought has its own distinctive cultural-historical context. It has its own distinctive problems, its own distinctive mode of questioning, mode of thinking, and mode of expression. Among these, the most fundamental problem is: how to “embody the Dao.” Its many other aesthetic categories are all related, whether closely or distantly, to the “Dao,” with the “Dao” dimly pulling at them from behind. The “embodiment of the Dao” constitutes the core of classical Chinese aesthetic thought and forges the distinctive character of classical Chinese aesthetics. Classical Chinese aesthetics is precisely a “system” composed, with the “embodiment of the Dao” as its core, of a series of related aesthetic categories. Because the very problem of how to “embody the Dao” decreed the relinquishing of logical thinking and rational analysis and the advocacy of non-logical apprehension and wondrous insight, it thereby relinquished the logical system. Classical Chinese aesthetics is a relatively loose “system”—one might even call it “anti-system”—composed, with the “embodiment of the Dao” as core, of a series of related aesthetic categories. And the non-logical thinking-feature in turn decreed that Chinese aesthetic categories often lack a clear definition of meaning: categories such as “qi,” “will,” “realm,” “rhyme,” “spirit,” and the like, whose connotation is hazily multivalent and whose extension shifts and does not stay fixed, often differing across different times, different users, and different texts, and possessed of a broad space of interpretation. This very interpretability also endows these categories with vitality and lets them be used again and again and kept ever fresh. Therefore the collation and study of classical Chinese aesthetic thought should focus not upon constructing a system, but upon combing through the aesthetic categories, interpreting the complex connotation of each category, discerning the shifting tracks of each category, and studying the interrelations among categories. Chinese and Western aesthetic thought can mutually compare and mutually illumine each other, but they should by no means be forced into simple correspondence; to transplant Western aesthetic theory directly to interpret classical Chinese aesthetics, and to imitate the Western aesthetic system in order to construct a classical Chinese aesthetic system, would often kill the marrow and soul of Chinese aesthetic thought, and would thereby cancel Chinese aesthetics.

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To regard the aesthetic as the “embodiment of the Dao” is the notion of the “literati and refined gentlemen,” but in ancient China it was the dominant aesthetic notion. With the formation of civic society, this notion at last met with challenge. Since the Song and Yuan, urban popular culture developed rapidly: storytelling-and-singing, the medley (zhugongdiao), the prompt-book tale (huaben), the variety play (zaju), the southern drama (xiwen), fiction, and popular airs and ditties became the everyday entertainment and diversion of the common consumer, their basic features being commerciality and amusement. The cultural taste of civic society not only broke the formerly unified situation but also infected the literati and refined gentlemen. The commercialization and amusement-ization of literature and art both lured some literati to immerse themselves in it and impelled them to serve, directly or indirectly, urban popular culture, thereby producing a mutual influence and fusion between literati taste and civic taste. Although orthodox thought was not overturned, literary-artistic and aesthetic notions had already undergone a subtle, imperceptible shift. “Feeling” (qing) came to be more valued, with a strong tendency to take the place of the “Dao.” By the time of the Ming, Li Zhi vigorously advocated the “childlike-heart theory,” declaring, “The coming of sound and color issues from one's nature and feeling—how could it be forced and distorted into being?” [21]; Tang Xianzu trumpeted the “feeling-only theory”; and the secularized atmosphere had already brewed into an unstoppable force. This was, on one hand, because the “Dao” of Laozi and Zhuangzi, the natural “Dao,” continually suffered distortion and alteration, growing ever more bloated and even being stealthily switched for the Neo-Confucians' “Dao,” becoming a shackle binding thought and binding human nature; and, on the other hand, because the development of individuality demanded that people pay more heed to their own feelings, shifting their gaze from the empty natural “Dao” toward the intimate inner “feeling.” But the most fundamental cause was the growing strength of civic society; the participation of civic culture and its daily-increasing influence brought about the secularizing tide.

Literature and art must first attend to secular life, not to the so-called “Dao.” Li Zhi says: “Wearing clothes and eating food—these are the very principles of human relations and the patterns of things; apart from wearing clothes and eating food, there are no human relations, no things.” [22] These daily trifles of clothing and eating are precisely the truest, the most able to move people. “Wearing shoes is a matter; one merely speaks plainly of the matter. The man of business merely speaks of business; the tiller of the field merely speaks of the field—clear and full of savor; and words of true virtue make the hearer forget his weariness.” [23] For the ordinary common folk who lack traditional cultural cultivation, the “Dao” is remote from them and of no concern at all; they do not know what the “Dao” is, and what interests them is the trifling matters at hand, feeling and sensuous pleasure. In his “Preface to Urban Love-Lyrics,” Li Kaixian says: “The two airs ‘Shanpo Yang’ and ‘Suonan Zhi’—even when sung by women just learning to speak, are still songs. But their lewd and voluptuous immodesty cannot bear the ear; their sound is indeed lewd, yet their import issues straight from the lungs and liver, unadorned—truly the feeling of man and woman; even between ruler and minister, between friend and friend, men often lodge their feeling here, and so this feeling is the most able to move people. Therefore the airs issue from the lanes, and true poetry is only among the folk.” [24] Facing the voluptuous and lewd songs current among the folk, Li Kaixian could boldly affirm them and conclude: “True poetry is only among the folk.” Had there been no vigorous development of the folk's vital force, no change in the social atmosphere, no rampant spread of civic taste, this would have been hard to imagine. Yuan Hongdao called folk-songs “transmissible works”; Zhuo Renyue called the Ming folk-song “the unique masterpiece of the Ming,” to be ranked alongside Tang poetry and Song lyric; Feng Menglong collected and compiled the Mountain Songs, declaring his aim “to borrow the true feeling of man and woman as an antidote to the false medicine of fame and moral teaching” [25]. All such cases reveal the clues of the change in literati aesthetic taste and in the social aesthetic fashion.

The development of civic society promoted the flourishing of drama and fiction. These works “exhaust the divergences of human feeling and worldly conditions, and furnish to the utmost the partings and unions, the sorrows and joys,” being “clear and easy to understand, in the language of the common house.” [26] Yuan Hongdao described the fashion of the time: “Today, from the farmer in patched coat and the village fellow and country wife, down to the seventy-year-old elder and the three-foot child, all talk of how Liu Ji defeated Pei, how Xiang Yu would not cross the river, how Wang Mang usurped the throne, how Guangwu restored the line—matters they can recount from beginning to end, with the names of the persons set out in detail. From morning till dusk, from dark till dawn, even forgetting food and sleep, they never weary of disputing it.” [27] One may see how people loved it and how widely it spread. Compared with poetry and lyric, drama and fiction are simply of the below-form order; they are closer to daily life, more concrete and vivid, and attend more to sensuous pleasure, and so are the more welcomed by the citizenry. This is a process whereby a social aesthetic fashion and aesthetic ideal grow daily more secularized.

The secularization of aesthetic fashion is its becoming reality-bound, this-worldly, sensuous, sense-organ-oriented. Thereupon, the creation of the sensuous image and the problem of the relation between art and reality correspondingly came to the fore. “Reality” took the place of the “Dao” at the core, and was directly and intimately related to literature and art. The thinking-center of literature, art, and aesthetics shifted; even the fiction-commentary of Jin Shengtan, Mao Zonggang, Zhang Zhupo and others, inspired by feeling, never fundamentally broke through the original theoretical paradigm, and yet had already fixed its eye more upon the sensuous image and its relation to social reality. The set of theoretical discourse formerly constructed around the “embodiment of the Dao” grew daily more threadbare and hard to apply to the new literary-artistic practice. The decisive status of the “embodiment of the Dao” wavered and was lost by the day, and literature, art, and aesthetics thereby gained the possibility of throwing off the “Dao.” [28] This very background is one of the important reasons why Western literature, art, and their aesthetic theory could enter China and take deep root. [29] Had there been no development of native literary-artistic practice, no change in social aesthetic consciousness, Western aesthetic thought would have had no living soil in China. Since the modern era, Sino-Western cultural exchange has fully unfolded; in particular, the Western educational system widely implemented in China further strengthened the spread of Western literature, art, and aesthetic theory, and finally brought about the transformation of the Chinese mode of aesthetic thinking and of the theoretical paradigm, even nearly endangering the survival of traditional Chinese aesthetics. Yet, however that may be, the “embodiment of the Dao” has already become the river-source of the development of Chinese art and aesthetics; it flows on without cease, seeping into every domain of art and into the people's mode of thinking.

As an oriental land of ancient and long-standing civilization, with a rich and brilliant ancient literature, art, and classical aesthetic thought that urgently await our collation and study, this is for us an unshirkable task. But we likewise cannot ignore the changes since the formation of Chinese civic society, especially since the modern era; cannot ignore the shift in the center of gravity of modern Chinese literary-artistic practice and aesthetic thinking; cannot ignore the new problems posed by the age; and still less can ignore the impact and influence of the internationalizing tide—which has, to a certain degree, brought about the rupture of tradition and the large-scale incursion of Western culture, and brought about the fusion of Sino-Western culture. This is a worldwide tide, and also a new cultural need brought by civic society; one cannot evaluate it with a narrow national notion. The spread of Western culture and the fusion of Sino-Western culture have further enriched the culture of the Chinese nation and broadened its cultural horizon. Facing this reality, we should not stubbornly cling to classical Chinese aesthetics and shut many new thoughts—including Western aesthetic thought—outside the door. Modern Chinese aesthetic thought has in fact already taken in many Western aesthetic notions, injected them into its own blood and fused them into its own body. Therefore, the “Chinese aesthetics” we now speak of should be a pluralistically coexisting aesthetics, containing at once “classical Chinese aesthetics” and the secularized, Westernized “modern aesthetics.” To neglect the latter is to be unable to answer the problems the age poses and unable to interpret the changing literary-artistic practice and aesthetic practice. Of course, the construction of modern aesthetics must still be closely connected with Chinese problems, with the practice of aesthetic activity, and with the Chinese cultural tradition. This is an aesthetics ever broadening and ever growing richer.