Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No.11, 2019

Between the Han and Jin Dynasties: The Shift in Chinese Aesthetics from Upholding the Confucian Canon to Valuing the Arts

(Abstract)

Liu Chengji

Han aesthetics involved Huang-Lao learning, Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism, with Confucianism as its mainstay. The Confucian aesthetics of the Han dynasty, falling between the pre-Qin and Wei-Jin periods, hovered at a critical point between change and absence of change. In the latter sense, it continued the ritual and musical traditions since the Western Zhou; in the former sense, while carrying forward tradition, it led to a new direction arising from changes in a series of propositions. “Changes” refers to the fact that the study of Confucian classics, literature, and the arts had respectively developed into the aesthetics of the Confucian classics, literary aesthetics, and artistic aesthetics. The dominant aesthetics was that of the Confucian canon, involving the aesthetic features of the six Confucian classics and changes in the relevant interpretations of Han Confucian scholars. “Literary aesthetics” refers to literature’s development from a knowledge concept into an institutional one, in which a flood of aesthetic factors led to the emergence of a literature with modern characteristics; and artistic aesthetics mainly involves the Confucian understanding of the relationship between “the Confucian classics” and “the arts,” and the extension of the arts from the six classical skills to arts in general. The trinity of Confucian classics, literature and the arts constituted the main framework of Han aesthetics. Historically, from the Han to the Jin, this framework was not invalidated by the fall of the Han dynasty; it continued to control and permeate the aesthetics of later generations. This study is intended to express three points: first, the place of the Han Dynasty in the history of Chinese aesthetics must be re-evaluated; second, the continuity of Chinese aesthetics from the Han to the Wei-Jin periods is more striking than its discontinuity; and third, solving the bias in current research on the history of aesthetics depends on adjusting our views on the history of aesthetics.