A Summary of the International Symposium on Aesthetics and Culture: East and West

An international symposium on "Aesthetics and Culture: East and West" sponsored by China Aesthetic Society and beijing international studies university was held in Beijing recently. Nearly 100 aestheticians from Britain, the United States, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Canada, India, the Netherlands, Finland, Greece, Turkey, Slovenia, Australia and China (including Taiwan Province Province and Hongkong) attended the meeting. Ruxin, President of China Aesthetics Society, Kenichi Sasaki, President of International Aesthetics Society, and marciano, President of Italian Aesthetics Society attended the meeting and participated in the discussion. During the meeting, the delegates discussed many important topics. Some of them have attracted the attention of Chinese and foreign scholars.

Comparison of eastern and western aesthetics. Richard shusterman, an American scholar, believes that the basic feature of pragmatic aesthetics lies in adhering to the positive role of art in improving human life through the concepts of "art of life" and "body aesthetics". Art can cultivate people's temperament, enhance people's physique and improve the quality of life of the whole group. Therefore, from the perspective of ethics and politics, aesthetics and aesthetic education are of great significance. These thoughts are intrinsically related to China's traditional Confucian thoughts of poetry teaching and music teaching, which is a field that needs to be deeply discussed from a cross-cultural perspective. Wolfgang Welsch, a German scholar, found that modern western thoughts and artistic expressions in the past 200 years have strong anthropocentrism characteristics, and other creatures and species in nature are only the foil of human beings. On the contrary, Asian art often shows a trend of non-anthropocentrism, implying a sense that all living things form a * * * body. This unique oriental consciousness will inspire people to generate new wisdom and create a philosophy that can overcome anthropocentrism. When Davie-Blue Baker, a foreign scholar, expounded the relationship between Melo-Ponty and East Asian aesthetics, he especially pointed out the similarities between Mei's aesthetic thought and Lao Tzu's philosophy. Vidra Singh, an Indian professor from Canada, discussed the relationship between Schopenhauer's philosophy and Indian aesthetics when talking about the forming factors of Schopenhauer's philosophy. Zhu Liyuan, a scholar in China, believes that some contemporary western philosophers have shown an idea of transcending the dichotomy between subject and object, which is similar to China's traditional philosophy. Reflected in the field of art philosophy or aesthetics, the same is true.

While analyzing the aesthetic similarities between the East and the West, some scholars also emphasize that the similarity between Chinese and Western philosophy does not mean that a viewpoint has universal applicability. Yang Yi, a researcher at China Academy of Social Sciences, divided the basic features of China's poems into three categories, namely, life poetics, cultural poetics and emotional poetics, among which the interpretation and translation of "emotional appeal" caused controversy among Chinese and foreign scholars. When talking about the translation of China's poems, Professor Bu Songshan of Taylor University emphasized the interaction between the differences of language and cultural traditions and untranslatability. Professor Kim Myung-hwan of Seoul National University takes Korean mask dance drama as an example of cultural self-confirmation, which shows the national characteristics of Korean aesthetics, but its internal significance can be conveyed or communicated beyond cultural boundaries. It can be said that although Chinese and foreign aesthetics are produced in different cultural contexts, mutual influence and inspiration are objective facts, although they do not constitute the primary and secondary relationship between general and special or other forms. Therefore, on the one hand, contemporary aestheticians need to keep an open attitude to study, deeply understand and study foreign aesthetics, and at the same time, they should abandon a closed attitude and avoid simply returning to the old model of ancient or local inertia, and strive to create an aesthetics that is "harmonious but different" and truly conforms to our national and cultural characteristics by unremitting study of Chinese and foreign styles.

Contemporary significance of oriental traditional aesthetics. Professor Ye Lang, Peking University, introduced the progress and main achievements in the study of Chinese aesthetic history in recent years. When answering questions from the audience, he expounded the modern significance of China's aesthetics in life, education, artistic creation and comparative aesthetic research. Dr. Wen Jiehua from Hong Kong focused on human body expression in Confucianism. Professor Zhou of Shandong University and a group of young and middle-aged scholars in China have made in-depth and concrete theoretical exposition and text analysis on the harmony, human relations, free spirit, thinking characteristics and intersubjectivity of China's classical aesthetics. Jack spector, an American scholar, vividly describes and shows the influence of China's calligraphy on French and English modernist poetry and painting in the early 20th century with detailed and convincing examples and pictures. In addition, when discussing the relationship between natural ecological aesthetics and oriental aesthetics, some Chinese and foreign scholars especially emphasized the theoretical significance of this topic in the post-modern context and its practical significance in economic construction and development.

The situation of contemporary art is in the field of contemporary western aesthetics and art theory, and the conclusion of art is one of the hot topics. Hegel used to think that art would be replaced by philosophy with the development of thought. Marx believes that the development of capitalism is contrary to some departments of art production, so it will affect art itself. Today, the proposition of the end of art is still quite confusing. Arthur Danto's works on the end of art have recently been translated into Chinese, which has aroused widespread concern. Yavich, the last president of the International Aesthetic Society, and Curtis Carter, the current secretary-general of the Society, all covered this issue. Today, great changes have taken place in the way art exists, and the significance of art in social life is different from the past, and the classical artistic concept is out of date. All kinds of arguments about the end of art, to a certain extent, just show this doubt. But this does not mean that we will usher in an era without art. Topics like "Art is dead, long live art" can express people's views on the final conclusion of art. We should know that "the meaning of life is easy" is an eternal law derived from the changes of everything in the world. The disappearance of an art form does not mean the disappearance of art as a whole. In fact, this will lead to new artistic forms or new artistic changes. It can be said that as long as people exist, different forms of art flowers will bloom in their gardens of thoughts and emotions.

Perhaps based on the above ideas, some scholars have expressed another classical idealistic view of criticizing the reality about the predicament of contemporary art. For example, Shi Zuofang, an aesthetician in Taiwan Province Province, China, believes that the evolution of artistic expression has experienced three forms since ancient times: the first is the expression of sound, the second is the expression of images, and now it is the expression of words. The so-called "sound", "image" and "writing" here not only represent different media, but also symbolize different aesthetic ways. Phonetics is mainly listening, images are mainly watching, and words are mainly reading. On the one hand, the fundamental crux of modern art lies in the objective and popular "language trap in the network" and its concepts or word games (such as conceptual art), on the other hand, it lies in the loss of aesthetic sensitivity of the subject of "saying me". The so-called art criticism or art appreciation mostly lacks more direct, focused, profound or immersive experience and personal wholehearted understanding. Therefore, we should strive to transcend the limitations and constraints of words, calm down, return to the true state of people, restart aesthetic comprehension who listens, and thus promote the rebirth of art.

One of the purposes of holding this international aesthetic seminar is to introduce the development of modern aesthetics in China to the international aesthetic community through the platform of academic exchange. Before the meeting, Teng Shouyao, Secretary-General of China Aesthetics Society, entrusted Gao Jianping and Wang Keping to organize and compile an English booklet to introduce the development of China Modern Aesthetics and China Aesthetics Society. During the meeting, a round table on modern aesthetics in China was specially organized, and domestic scholars were invited to introduce the aesthetic thoughts of Wang Guowei, Zhu Guangqian, Zong Baihua, Cai Yi and Li Zehou. Some European and American scholars are not familiar with the research results of China scholars because of language barriers and lack of translated texts. However, they generally believe that this academic dialogue is indeed a good start that has benefited a lot, and they are eager to strengthen exchanges between them and see the excellent translations of China's aesthetic works.