This singular work presents the most comprehensive and nuanced studies available in any Western language of Chinese aesthetic thought and practice during the ...

The most constructive response to the crisis in moral theory has been the revival of virtue ethics, which has the advantages of being personal, contextual, and, as will be argued, normative as well. It is also proposed that the best way to refound virtue ethics is to return to the Greek concept of technē tou biou, literally "craft of life." The ancients did not distinguish between craft and fine art, and the meaning of technē, even in its Latin form, ars, (...) still retains the meaning of skillful crafting and discipline. In Greco-Roman culture, techniques were very specific, covering dietetics, economics, and erotics. In ancient China, moral cultivation was intimately connected to the arts, from archery to poetry, music, and dance, such that virtually every activity would have both moral and aesthetic meaning. Using R. D. Collingwood's distinction between craft and fine art, it is proposed that the latter, particularly the performing arts of music and dance, can serve as a model for virtue ethics in our times. (shrink)

The most constructive response to the crisis in moral theory has been the revival of virtue ethics, which has the advantages of being personal, contextual, and, as will be argued, normative as well. It is also proposed that the best way to refound virtue ethics is to return to the Greek concept of technē tou biou, literally "craft of life." The ancients did not distinguish between craft and fine art, and the meaning of technē, even in its Latin form, ars, (...) still retains the meaning of skillful crafting and discipline. In Greco-Roman culture, techniques were very specific, covering dietetics, economics, and erotics. In ancient China, moral cultivation was intimately connected to the arts, from archery to poetry, music, and dance, such that virtually every activity would have both moral and aesthetic meaning. Using R. D. Collingwood's distinction between craft and fine art, it is proposed that the latter, particularly the performing arts of music and dance, can serve as a model for virtue ethics in our times. (shrink)

Western scholarship on early Chinese thought has tended to either dismiss the foundational role of metaphor or to see it as a uniquely Chinese mode of apprehending the world. This article argues that, while human cognition is in fact profoundly dependent on imagistic conceptual structures, such dependence is by no means a unique feature of Chinese thought. The article reviews empirical evidence supporting the claims that human thought is fundamentally imagistic; that sensorimotor schemas are often used to structure our understanding (...) of abstract concepts; that these schemas can be selectively combined to result in novel structures; and that there are inextricable connections between body, emotion, and thought in both everyday and philosophical cognition. It also provides a review of a recent trend where, explicitly or not, scholars from a variety of backgrounds have begun to take metaphor more seriously as a foundational bearer of philosophical meaning in early China. (shrink)

: Suggestiveness is a major theoretical category in Chinese aesthetic thought. Within the broader context of Chinese tradition, it is a product of the interpenetration of and exchanges between philosophical and artistic discourses. Despite its prevalence in Chinese aesthetic thought, suggestiveness has never been examined as an aesthetic category in its own right, nor have its implications been explored in relation to contemporary theories. This essay reexamines suggestiveness and its seminal ideas as an aesthetic category in Chinese tradition, exploring their (...) relation to philosophical thought and reconceptualizing their implications in terms of the postmodern idea of literary openness. As a preliminary attempt to pioneer an approach to Chinese aesthetic theory that may emancipate it from intellectual stagnation and at the same time preserve its characteristic features, this essay also intends to inquire whether insights of Chinese aesthetics, often characterized as gems of "Oriental mysticism," can be understood in terms of reflective analysis and have a meaningful dialogue with contemporary Western literary thought. (shrink)

Artistic Detachment in Japan and the West takes up the notion of artistic detachment, or psychic distance, as an intercultural motif for East-West comparative aesthetics. The work begins with an overview of aesthetic theory in the West from the eighteenth-century empiricists to contemporary aesthetics and concludes with a survey of various critiques of psychic distance. Throughout, the author takes a highly innovative approach by juxtaposing Western aesthetic theory against Eastern aesthetic theory. Weaving between cultures and time periods, the author focuses (...) on a remarkably wide range of theories: in the West, the Kantian notion of disinterested contemplation, Heidegger's Gelassenheit, semiotics, and pragmatism; in Japan, Zeami's notion of riken no ken, the Kyoto School's intepretation of nothingness, D. T. Suzuki's analysis of the function of no-mind, and the writings of Kuki Shuzo on Buddhist detachment. "Portrait of the artist" fiction by such writers as Henry James, James Joyce, Mori Ogai, and Natsume Soseki demonstrates how the main theme of detachment is expressed in literary traditions. The role of sympathy or pragmatism in relation to disinterest is examined, suggesting conflicts within or challenges to the notion of detachment. Researchers and students in Eastern and Western areas of study, including philosophers and religionists, as well as literary and cultural critics, will deem this work an invaluable contribution to cross-cultural philosophy and literary studies. (shrink)