Wenqi 文氣 (literary pneuma) is a foundational idea in Chinese aesthetics. It has remained elusive since its initial formulation, however. This is so largely because previous scholars did not examine its ontological and epistemological conditions in analytic terms, still less explore its implications in a conceptual framework of artistic creation. Here, it is proposed to explore its general as well as specific implications against the larger background of Chinese intellectual thought and in relation to contemporary theories of literature and aesthetics. (...) Through a philosophical inquiry, wenqi is here reconceived as an integration of the primal energy of the universe, the creative energy of human beings, and the totalizing force that animates an artistic work. Wenqi is viewed not as a substance or a product but as a creative and shaping force that flows from the writer into his writing, gives it a distinct shape, and makes it different from any other writing. The theory of wenqi is a system of aesthetic principles that govern the creative and shaping force operating in the space of three intertwined entities: the macrocosm of the universe including human society, the microcosm of the writer, and the microcosm of his writing. (shrink)

Zen/Chan 禪 occupies a unique position in world intellectual history. This article argues that there is a trend in the development of Chan thought which significantly reduces the innovative nature of Huineng’s 慧能 original thought and evinces an institutional effort to realign Huineng’s school of Chan with the Buddhist establishment. Its main objective is to locate the original sources of Huineng’s Chan and restore the revolutionary ideas of his thought. Adopting an approach that integrates historical materials with psychology, neuroscience with (...) philosophy, and close reading of Huineng’s interpretation of the Diamond Sutra and his innovative ideas and methods of cultivation in the Platform Sutra in relation to Laozi’s 老子 and Zhuangzi’s 莊子 Daoist ideas, it works out insights into the originality and universal appeal of Chan and the hitherto unpenetrated secret of Chan enlightenment. It concludes that the core of Huineng’s Chan thought is his idea of wunian 無念 (no-thinking), and satori 悟り is not the Buddhist enlightenment. (shrink)

In memory of Anthony C. Yu who read and commented on an early version of this article.In the comparative philosophy of art, there is a widely accepted view that, while classical Western aesthetic theory emphasizes the unity of beauty and truth, classical Chinese aesthetic theory focuses on the unity of beauty and goodness. Indeed, one striking feature of Chinese aesthetics is its emphasis on moral education and didacticism. Although Western tradition also emphasizes the importance of moral education in art as (...) early as Plato, there had appeared, after Horace and Philip Sidney, a dualist paradigm, which, while giving emphasis to both didacticism and entertainment, tends to put priority on the latter. By.. (shrink)

Zen/Chan, which used to be a Far Eastern philosophy-cum-religion, has evolved into a global cultural phenomenon. Despite the many views expressed by numerous thinkers in the world, the consensus on Chan and Chan enlightenment remains an agnostic Oriental mysticism. By exploring Chan and enlightenment from a combined perspective of history, philosophy, psychology, religion and linguistics, this article proposes a hitherto unexpressed view. Chan enlightenment is a prenatal physico-psychological existence, which grows out of a fetal subject’s perception of the womb. Although (...) this primordial mode of perception is unconscious, it is cosmic in nature because for the fetal subject the womb is the whole world with which it feels to be at one. This unconscious oneness may be termed the ‘cosmic unconscious’. Once born, no one can return to the prenatal mental state, but through personal cultivation and Chan practice one can experience a fleeting moment of the cosmic unconscious. In the final analysis, the essence o.. (shrink)

A groundbreaking work that uncovers an implicit system of hermeneutics in traditional Chinese thought and aesthetics.

There exists a widely accepted opinion in Chan/Zen 禪 studies that Chan enlightenment is a mysterium ineffabile, impenetrable by human intellect. Reviewing the debate between Hu Shi 胡適 and D. T. Suzuki over Chan enlightenment and accounts of testimony by Chan masters and practitioners in history, this essay argues that Chan enlightenment can be understood rationally and intellectually. By analyzing the time-honored Chan practices that have led to enlightenment, it seeks to understand the mystery as an extraordinary mental condition in (...) which an enlightened person temporarily blocks thinking in terms of language, consciousness, and intellect, and experiences a momentary “erasing” of what has been impressed on the psyche since birth. (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)

Abstract:This article enquires into a transcultural aesthetic: bi-xing (inspired metaphor) in China and symbolic representation in the West, which share the common logic of correlative thinking. By examining its earliest provenance in the Zhouyi (Book of Changes) and Shijing(Book of Songs) in China's high antiquity in relation to divination, symbolization, and poetic creation in the West, it argues that this aesthetic arose from omen readings in divination, went through symbolism in linguistic representation, and became a poetic principle in aesthetic thought. (...) It concludes that correlative thinking was an approach to knowledge production and conception in traditional thought across cultures. (shrink)

This study explores the learning process of 32 Chinese senior high school English as a foreign language teachers via three demonstration lessons. It was demonstrated via a data analysis of oral reports and interviews that the cognitive activity of “question,” which was considered a significant contributor to collaborative discussion, was seldom involved in the participating teachers’ learning process, and that the absence of this cognitive activity reduced their learning to individual study of the observed practical skills. The study further reveals (...) four factors that prevented the participating teachers from collaboratively constructing language teaching knowledge based on what was observed: These were their perceived purpose of the modeled lessons, their manner of making meaning, their understanding of observer–observed relationship, and their perception of professional learning. The analysis presented provides important insights for teacher educators to better facilitate in-service teachers of foreign languages learning through observation. (shrink)

Sinologism 汉学主义is a recent cultural theory that focuses on Sinology, China–West studies, and cross-cultural knowledge production. Since its proposition at the turn of the 21st century, it has aroused substantial interest and given rise to discussions and debates both in and outside China. The special issue has selected seven articles in full or excerpted form to offer an initial introduction to the topic.

No new global order without a new global ethic!Since the ending of the Cold War, the world has not gone in the direction of peace, harmony, stability, and cohesion. If during the Cold War period the world was divided into two large camps, it has today fragmented into many regions in strife, conflict, and war. Instead of a centripetal force that works toward a global unity accompanying the process of globalization, we are witnessing a centrifugal force that tears different countries (...) and regions apart and turns formerly ideological conflicts into what Samuel Huntington calls a “clash of civilizations.” As a consequence, the world has been gripped by a paradoxical trend. The process of globalization should bring about... (shrink)

This study reports on a longitudinal inquiry into professional identity construction among six novice cross-border English language teachers from mainland China, who completed their pre-service teacher education in Hong Kong (HK) and began their teaching practice in local HK schools. The findings indicate that the participants navigated obstacles in teaching by deploying their own multiple languages as a cultural and linguistic repertoire. The findings also show that the teachers experienced difficulty legitimising their professional identity in the teaching community, where contextual (...) issues and power interplays mediated the process. Furthermore, it is found that the participants? commitment to teaching was negatively influenced by their non-legitimate position in the teaching community and the discordance between their teaching beliefs and the norms and values of their workplace. This study suggests that complex inter-relationships between marginal status in and legitimate membership of the community, between historical and cultural background, present practice, and future expectations, between social discourse and personal location, are involved in the process of identity construction. Measures to legitimate these teachers? position and to transform the linguistic and cultural repertories of these teachers into valuable resources of the local schools are suggested. Implications for future research are outlined. (shrink)

In the Chinese tradition, the relationship between art and philosophy is conceptually explored in terms of the relationship between dao and wen, which may respectively be viewed as representing philosophy and art. Over history, discourses on dao 道 and wen 文 are central to studies of Chinese literature, art, culture, and civilization. But just as dao holds a range of ideas in Chinese philosophy, wen is also one of the most complex terms in Chinese tradition, whose denotations and connotations are (...) multifaceted and open to interpretations. This article argues that the elusive nature of wen can be understood adequately from the perspective of language philosophy and aesthetics via its relationship to the metaphysical principle of the Dao. By examining the discourses on wen and dao, this article advances a thesis with three interrelated ideas: wen as manifestations of the Tao is an instance of “humanized nature”; the birth of wen marked the beginning of reflections on literature and art, hence inaugurating aesthetics in the Chinese tradition; and the early discourses on wen have determined the distinctiveness of Chinese aesthetic consciousness. (shrink)

Sinologism is basically a cultural unconscious in China-West studies predicated on an inner logic that operates beyond our conscious awareness but controls the ways of observing China and producing China scholarship. Its logic has exerted a profound impact on studies of Chinese language and writing. Since medieval times the difference between Chinese and Western languages has been viewed as a conceptual divide that separates Chinese and Western traditions. It has motivated scholars to generate a considerable array of ideas, views, and (...) arguments on Chinese language and writing. This dazzling variety of views is characterized by a unifying logic similar to that of Sinologism: conditions of Chinese language are to be .. (shrink)

: The Zhouyi is the first of the Chinese classics and has, since medieval times, fascinated scholars from different parts of the world, who have produced numerous studies and expressed a dazzling array of views on its nature. It is argued that the Zhouyi has retained its exalted status and enduring appeal largely because it is an open book amenable to all kinds of appropriations and manipulations, and its openness comes from its being a semiotic system whose principle of composition (...) warrants unlimited interpretations. Through a semiotic-cum-philosophical inquiry, it is shown that the Zhouyi is first and foremost a system of representation, and because of its unique structure and principle of signification it forms an open hermeneutic space with infinite possibilities of interpretation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Divine and Artistic Ideal:Ideas and Insights for Cross-Cultural Aesthetic EducationMing Dong Gu (bio)IntroductionPeople in different cultural traditions would praise an excellent work of art as a masterpiece that has attained the status of the divine. This is a practice inherited from the ancient past. In high antiquity, when people did not have sufficient knowledge of artistic creation, they attributed creative inspirations and superb art to gods. In ancient (...) Greece people believed that all the arts were created by the Muses, daughters of the supreme god Zeus.1 Accordingly, they viewed divine creation as the highest order of representation and used the divine as the yardstick to measure artistic excellence. In early Greek thought Plato, through the mouth of Socrates, praised Homer as "the best and most divine of all."2 Citing the exquisite lyric poetry by Tynnnichs of Chalcis as evidence, he declared, "the god would show us, lest we doubt, that these lovely poems are not of man or human workmanship, but are divine and from the gods, and that the poets are nothing but interpreters of the gods, each one possessed by the divinity to whom he is in bondage."3In the Chinese tradition similar ideas existed from high antiquity. In early Chinese thought there is a parable in Zhuangzi's (369–286 BC) philosophical writing. It narrates how a skillful carpenter was commissioned by a king to make an ornate music stand. When the stand was finished, people, struck by the life likeness of the carved birds and animals on the stand, believed that he was able to make such superb art work because he was endowed with the divine power of gods.4 In literary criticism Yan Yu (fl. 1180-1235), a literary theorist whose views have exerted a lasting impact on Chinese poetry and poetics, proclaimed the divine to be the ultimate standard for [End Page 88] the poetic art: "There is only one ultimate achievement in poetry: it is called 'entering the divine.' When poetry enters the domain of the divine, it has reached its perfection and limit. Nothing can be added to it!"5 In other traditions, if people want to pass the highest praise for an excellent work of art, a simple exclamation, "That is divine!" would be sufficient.Thus, across cultures art has been related to the divine. Without reference to it, aesthetic conceptions of art and artistic creation would not be what they are today. This is because in many traditions the divine used to be viewed as the ultimate aesthetic ideal, and aesthetics is full of notions, ideas, and concepts related to it, without which artistic criticism and aesthetic education would be in a much impoverished state. The divine in art, however, is a slippery category in aesthetics that has been intuitively explored since high antiquity. In this article I will examine some critical and theoretical data on the divine, divine creation, and divine spirit in artistic representation from the Chinese and Western traditions and explore how the Chinese and Western traditions employ ideas of the divine for artistic conceptions and aesthetic education. On the basis of comparison and contrast, I will try to obtain some rational insights into the relationship between artistic creation and the divine in terms of logical analysis. Finally, I will make some efforts to reconceptualize the insights drawn from both traditions and explore to what extent the divine is still relevant to present-day aesthetics, how an aesthetic ideal may be conceived according to ideas of the divine in artistic representation, and in what ways an artwork may be considered to have entered the divine realm of the artistic ideal.God, Nature, and the Artistic IdealDespite vast differences in aesthetic conceptions, we can observe a discernable movement in the Chinese and Western notions of the divine in art from theistic and intuitive characterization to rational and logical conceptualization. This movement is characterized by a shift in emphasis from a personal god to impersonal nature, and from divine creator to human creator. Chinese and Western traditions started with a similar concern: What is the aesthetic ideal in artistic representation? Both traditions believe that the artistic ideal is... (shrink)

Literary pneuma is a foundational idea in Chinese literary thought and the theory of literary pneuma one of the major aesthetic theories in Chinese literature and art. Since its first appearance, however, this aesthetic has remained an elusive concept despite its central importance. This article adopts an interdisciplinary approach to examine major statements of wenqi in Chinese thought in relation to similar ideas in modern philosophy, aesthetics, psychoanalysis, and literary criticism. It attempts to understand its rationale, locate its conceptual groundings, (...) and reconceptualize it into an aesthetic theory for our time. (shrink)

EDITORS’ AbstractThis article is a direct response to Zhang Xiping’s criticism of Sinologism in particular and to the overall critique of Sinologism in general. With a succinct account of what Sinologism is, it provides detailed answers to a series of questions brought up by the critics. In an effort to clarify the relationship between Sinologism on the one hand and Orientalism, postcolonialism, deconstruction, New Historicism, postmodernism, and ideological theory on the other, it attempts to rethink the issues of paradigms for (...) Sinological studies, China–West studies, and cross-cultural studies. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Universal "One"Toward a Common Conceptual Basis for Chinese and Western StudiesMing Dong GuIn the world today, rapid globalization has drastically shrunk the geographical distance between the East and the West and greatly facilitated exchanges between different cultures and traditions. In the comparative studies of Eastern and Western literatures and cultures, however, an opposite trend characterized by the anxiety of cultural relativism prevails. It has been aptly reduced to (...) this claim: "[T]he East and the West are so distinctly different that ways of thinking and expression cannot be made intelligible from one to the other, and therefore the knowledge of one must be kept apart from that of the other" [Longxi Zhang xvii]. The viability of comparative studies, as is recognized, rests on the fundamental notion that two cultural objects juxtaposed for comparison should share some common ground, or that a valid frame of reference be applicable to both of them. In the comparative studies of Chinese and Western traditions, because these traditions are recognized as founded on different and often unique ontological premises and epistemological assumptions, it is difficult to locate a common conceptual entry point for a two-way dialogue, let alone a common conceptual basis undergirded by Chinese and Western philosophical thought, to establish a viable paradigm of comparison. The current absence of such a conceptual basis in the international context of globalization, which calls for dialogues between different cultures and traditions, cannot but force us to ask: is there a Chinese philosophical concept that signifies, as another Western philosophical concept does, the ontological and epistemological conditions of human existence, one that can be used as a conceptual premise upon which to build a bridge across the divide between the Chinese and Western traditions?Undaunted by the seemingly unbridgeable gap between Chinese and Western traditions, some scholars have made valiant efforts to locate a common conceptual ground. Following the lead of Qian Zhongshu, a Chinese erudite of the twentieth century, some scholars have also noted that the Dao (Tao) in Chinese philosophical thought and Logos in Western philosophical thought are remarkably comparable [Qian 408]. The compatibility of the Dao and Logos, however, has been problematized by other scholars, who argue that the differences between the Dao and Logos are more profound than their apparent similarities. James J. Y. Liu, for example, questions the universality of logocentrism as claimed by Longxi Zhang in both the Dao and Logos: "Zhang's comparison of dao to logos fails to take into account an important difference: in the West, logos is identified with God, but Lao Zi took great pains to say that dao is not the true name of the ultimate" [Liu 25]. Moreover, while in Lao Zi's conception, the Dao is a [End Page 86] feminine concept, the Western Logos, through its emphasis on presence, is obviously masculine in nature. More significantly, the pairing of the Chinese concept of Dao with the Western concept of Logos as a conceptual common ground has a fundamentally incommensurable point: namely, while the former is predicated on a fundamentally monistic view of the universe as a spontaneously self-generating entity, the latter, like Plato's Idea, is founded on a dualistic view of the universe as constituted by one world of essence and another of appearances, created by a powerful personal god.To establish a model for cross cultural studies, it is of little value to simply juxtapose a Chinese concept and a Western concept and find their similarities. In comparative studies, we need to find a conceptual model based on the pairing of similar concepts from different traditions that may yield promises of paradigms and methodologies. For this reason, my exploration is not concerned with the question of whether it is viable to pair the Dao and Logos together. I am more concerned with another question: Is it possible to build a conceptual and methodological model based on the near commensurability between the Dao and Logos? Some scholars suggest that the striking similarity invites and encourages further exploration. But in which direction or directions should we pursue the subject further? In my view, previous scholars' preliminary explorations have been promising, but too narrowly focused on the local... (shrink)

The Zhouyi is the first of the Chinese classics and has, since medieval times, fascinated scholars from different parts of the world, who have produced numerous studies and expressed a dazzling array of views on its nature. It is argued that the Zhouyi has retained its exalted status and enduring appeal largely because it is an open book amenable to all kinds of appropriations and manipulations, and its openness comes from its being a semiotic system whose principle of composition warrants (...) unlimited interpretations. Through a semiotic-cum-philosophical inquiry, it is shown that the Zhouyi is first and foremost a system of representation, and because of its unique structure and principle of signification it forms an open hermeneutic space with infinite possibilities of interpretation. (shrink)

Traditional Chinese philosophy, if engaged at all, is often regarded as an object of antiquated curiosity and dismissed as unimportant in the current age of globalization. Written by a team of internationally renowned scholars, this book, however, challenges this judgement and offers an in-depth study of pre-modern Chinese philosophy from an interdisciplinary perspective. Exploring the relevance of traditional Chinese philosophy for the global age, it takes a comparative approach, analysing ancient Chinese philosophy in its relation to Western ideas and contemporary (...) postmodernist theories. The conversation extends over a broad spectrum of philosophical areas and themes, ranging from metaphysics, hermeneutics, political theory, religion and aesthetics to specific philosophical schools including Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism. By engaging many time-honoured philosophical issues from a comparative perspective, this book bridges the gap between Eastern and Western thought and emphasises the need for a newly fortified global humanism and a deeper appreciation of different philosophical and religious values in an age gripped by large-scale crises. Arguing that traditional Chinese philosophy has immediate relevance to the many challenges of modern life, this book will be useful to students and scholars of Asian Philosophy and Asian Studies in general. (shrink)

The Zhouyi is the first of the Chinese classics and has, since medieval times, fascinated scholars from different parts of the world, who have produced numerous studies and expressed a dazzling array of views on its nature. It is argued that the Zhouyi has retained its exalted status and enduring appeal largely because it is an open book amenable to all kinds of appropriations and manipulations, and its openness comes from its being a semiotic system whose principle of composition warrants (...) unlimited interpretations. Through a semiotic-cum-philosophical inquiry, it is shown that the Zhouyi is first and foremost a system of representation, and because of its unique structure and principle of signification it forms an open hermeneutic space with infinite possibilities of interpretation. (shrink)

Sinologism 汉学主义is a recent cultural theory that focuses on Sinology, China–West studies, and cross-cultural knowledge production. Since its proposition at the turn of the 21st century, it has aroused substantial interest and given rise to discussions and debates both in and outside China. The special issue has selected seven articles in full or excerpted form to offer an initial introduction to the topic.