Chinese Journal of Literary Criticism

No.2, 2022

Wugan and Affectus: Two Inventions of Emotion and Their Chinese and Western Interpretations

(Abstract)

Liu Xuan

As conceptual tools for interpreting the world of sensual experience, wugan (sensing the object) and affectus recognize emotion in the mutual opening of human and object and sense, but perception and emotion themselves are in line with their respective cultural traditions. The aesthetics of wugan constructs emotion in a way that “holds the mind and the object in the middle,” in which the relationship between mind and object is a delicate and sensitive balance. The theory of affectus is derived from the idea of the parallelism of mind and matter, in which the thought pattern of feelings is more important, and contains the nature of the body more than that of external objects.