This book presents the foundations of classical Chinese aesthetic discourse - roughly from the Bronze Age to the early Middle Ages - with the following animating questions:
What is art?
Why do we produce it?
How do we judge it?
The arts that garnered the most theoretical attention during this time period were music, poetry, calligraphy, and painting, and this book considers the reasons why these four were privileged. Whereas modern artists most likely consider themselves musicians or poets or calligraphers or painters or sculptors or architects, the pre-modern authors who produced the literature that established Chinese aesthetics prided themselves on being wenren, “cultured people,” conversant with all forms of art and learning. Other comparisons with Western theories and works of art are presented at due junctures.
Key Features
- Addresses Chinese aesthetic discourse on its own terms
- Provides comparisons of key concepts and theories with examples from Western sources
- Includes more coverage of primary sources than any other English-language book on the subject
- Each chapter opens with a helpful summary, highlighting the chapter’s key themes
1. Stirrings of the Heart 2. Stirrings of the Cosmos 3. The Spread of Virtue 4. The Fallacy of Authenticity 5. The Immortal Spirit 6. Against Verisimilitude 7. The Unity of the Arts 8. Metacriticism, Meta-Writing, and Beyond
Biography
Paul R. Goldin is Professor of East Asian Languages & Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Rituals of the Way: The Philosophy of Xunzi (1999); The Culture of Sex in Ancient China (2002); After Confucius: Studies in Early Chinese Philosophy (2005); Confucianism (2011); and The Art of Chinese Philosophy: Eight Classical Texts and How to Read Them (2020). In addition, he edited the revised edition of R.H. van Gulik's classic study, Sexual Life in Ancient China (2003), and has edited or co-edited six other books on Chinese culture and political philosophy.
