Before we investigate Mencius' art, should we not first define the term "art" [i-shu] and identify the essentials in Mencius' art?

Han Fei was a famous Legalist in the late Warring States period. During the struggle to criticize the Confucian school, he developed the theory of the "rule of law," which laid a theoretical groundwork on which the newly emerging landlord class could build a centralized feudal state. His works had been appreciated by Ch'in Shih-huang. When Ch'in Shih-huang read the book Han Fei Tzu, he sighed and said, "I would feel no regret about dying if I could meet (...) this person and become his friend." Later Ch'in Shih-huang applied this progressive theory of Han Fei in practice and developed it through practice. (shrink)

The essays on aesthetics in recent publications, beginning with the criticisms of Chu Kuang-ch'ien's point of view in aesthetics and continuing down to his article "How Can Aesthetics be Materialistic and Dialectic?" [Mei-hsüeh tsen-yang ts'ai neng shih wei-wu ti yu shih pien-cheng ti?"], have focused on the problem of the relationship between the subjective and the objective in beauty and in sense of beauty. This is a fundamental problem in aesthetics, and only when we have solved this (...) problem can we answer the questions of what beauty is and wherein beauty lies. Some people have presented their own tentative answers to these questions, and these have been discussed by our comrades. (shrink)

Lü-shih ch'un-ch'iu [Spring and Autumn of the House of Lü] appeared on the scene in 239 B.C. This was the latter part of the Warring States period. Our country's transition from slavery to feudalism had already been basically completed, but chaotic wars of secession among the feudal princes still occurred. Remnant forces of the slave system were still quite strong, and the restoration-counterrestoration struggle between the declining slave-owning class and the newly emerging landlord class was proceeding violently. Lü Pu-wei (...) was a careerist and plotter of the declining slave-owning class and a representative of the Confucians. In response to the needs of the slave-owning class's counterrevolutionary restoration, Lü adopted the tactic of "attacking the mind." He sneaked into the government of the newly emerging landlord class in the state of Ch'in and played the role of an ardent vanguard for restoration. This big commercial slave owner, who had originally run around among Ch'in, Chao, and other states, had amassed thousands of gold pieces at home and possessed more than ten thousand slaves. He played around with political conspiracies and became chancellor of the state of Ch'in. Before King Ying Cheng of Ch'in personally took power in 238 B.C., political power fell for a time into Lü's hands. Lü Pu-wei worked in collusion with Lao Ai, a eunuch he sponsored, and joined the industrial and commercial slave owners and the aristocratic slave owners to form a frenzied restorationist force. On the one hand, they formed factions to strengthen private interests, expanded their power, and prepared for an armed coup d'état. On the other hand, they took in riff-raff [literally, people who had surrendered and rebelled], assembled Confucian scholars, set to work on ideology, and grandly created public opinion for the restoration of the slave system. At that time, a reactionary adverse current favoring the restoration of the slave system hung over the state of Ch'in. Lü-shih ch'un-ch'iu, which was compiled under Lü's direction by his retainers, was the product of this adverse current. (shrink)

1. Sŏŏn -- 2. Illyu sahoe ŭi tangmyŏn kwaje -- 3. 'Kŭllobŏl ch'ŏrhak (Global Philosophy)' ŭrosŏ sinsiryongjuŭi (Neopragmatism) -- 4. Sinsiryongjuŭi (Neopragmatism) ŭi kyŏngje ch'ŏrhak kwa kyŏngje ironjŏk mohyŏng -- 5. Sinsiryongjuŭi ŭi 'ch'ŏngsajin’ -- 6. Sinsiryongjuŭi (Neopragmatism) wa Miguk, Chungguk siryongjuŭi ŭi ch'aichŏm -- 7. Sinsiryongjuŭi (Neopragmatism) wa Marŭk'ŭsijŭm (Marxism) ŭi ch'aichŏm -- 8. Han'guk sahoe e taehan Sinsiryongjuŭi chŏgyong -- 9. Yoyak mit kyŏllon.

The preceding chapter listed the measures Ch'in Shih-huang took to consolidate the unification. Before all this, the state of Ch'in, through Shang Yang's reforms, had eliminated the hereditary privileges of the aristocracy, dealt a severe blow to the power of the slave-owning aristocracy, instituted the system of landownership by the landlords, established the system of commanderies, unified weights and measures, and carried out the policy of "emphasizing agriculture and restricting commerce," so as to enable the landlord economy to (...) achieve greater expansion in the state of Ch'in. Now Ch'in Shih-huang went a step further to propagate Shang Yang's Legalist policies, liquidated the aristocracy in the six states to the east, abolished the system of installing hereditary nobles to rule their domains throughout the country, and universally implemented the system of commanderies and prefectures. He also abolished the old aristocratic political structures maintained by the six states, established a centralized feudal system of dictatorship, and thus dealt a blow to the landownership system of the remnant slave-owning aristocracy. By means of laws and regulations, he established throughout the country the system of landownership by landlords and continued to adhere to the policy of "emphasizing agriculture and restricting commerce," promoted the development of the landlord economy, abolished the divergent laws and regulations of the six states, and put into effect throughout the country new laws and regulations representing the interests of the newly rising landlord class. He also standardized weights and measures, unified the written language, and fixed the length of axles of all carts. Generally speaking, during the first stage of the establishment of a unified, centralized feudal state, Ch'in Shih-huang, as the general representative of the newly rising landlord class, carried out a series of measures that "emphasized the present while slighting the past" and initiated a series of important political, economic, and cultural reforms. The "present" he "emphasized" was the newly rising landlord class, and the "past" he "slighted" was the declining old aristocracy. As a result, the Ch'in dynasty was able to exert a definite stimulating influence in the process of monumental historical transformation, to put an end to the prolonged period of division and rivalry among the feudal states, to unify our great multinational country, and to set up the largest centralized feudal state up to that time. To be sure, the Ch'in dynasty was after all a political regime of the landlord class. It was a machine of the landlord class to exploit and oppress the peasant masses. This is something we must recognize. (shrink)

Comrade Huang Yüeh-mien's article, "A Discussion of the Aesthetics of the Wealthy" [Lun shih-li che ti mei-hsüeh], which criticized my point of view in aesthetics, was published later than my self-criticism. Before he published it, he had presented it at a discussion meeting at Peking Teachers College. He let me read it only after he had submitted it to Literature [Wen-i pao] for publication. I wrote to the editor of Literature, Comrade K'ang Cho, saying that basically I accepted his (...) criticisms but that I wished to raise a number of points. I pointed out that the author's method of dealing with the problems of "empathy emotion," "forgetting self," and "inspiration" was not very different from the method that I had used before. I pointed out that "association of ideas" occupied an important position in his aesthetics — he seems to substitute "association of ideas of form" for "intuition of form." Furthermore, I stated that I did not think he had answered clearly the questions of whether "beauty exists in the mind or in the thing," of the relationship between beauty and sense of beauty, and of the difference between formal thought and abstract thought; and I said that I hoped he would give me more assistance with these questions. However, Comrade Huang Yüeh-mien for the most part ignored the points that I had raised and the questions to which I had sought answers, and he published in Literature the paper that he had presented at Peking Teachers College almost unaltered. Consequently, the questions that I raised concerning Comrade Huang Yüeh-mien's point of view in aesthetics remain unanswered. At that time I still felt that his point of view in aesthetics basically was materialistic, although there were some tendencies in it that raised doubts in my mind. This explains the fact that my judgments on idealist aesthetics remain to be improved. (shrink)