How to Understand Chinese Aesthetics

Abstract

Today to understand Chinese aesthetics necessitates locating it in the international context of aesthetics. Based on the semiotic differentiation among the premodern, the modern, and the postmodern, Chinese aesthetics is located in the international context. Undeniably, the modernization of Chinese aesthetics is the transformation of traditional Chinese aesthetics into modern western aesthetics. Because of the entrenched ideas from traditional Chinese aesthetics and Chinese Marxist aesthetics, the modern transformation of Chinese aesthetics faces many challenges; hence Chinese aesthetics still retains some features of the premodern. since there are some similarities in semiotic structure between premodern and the postmodern aesthetics, they can join forces against modern aesthetics, which typically emphasizes the autonomy of art and of the aesthetic. nevertheless, the difference between premodern and the postmodern aesthetics is even more significant. While the former emphasizes that art should follow the principle of reality, the latter argues that reality can be understood as a kind of art. these differences make Chinese aesthetics instrumental in rescuing postmodern western aesthetics from the one-sided emphasis on aestheticization.