Beauty and Art in the Oriental Philosophy: An Aesthetic Study in the Traditional Chinese Philosophy

摘要

According to records of the Historian (Shi Ji), Confucius deserves a place among the illustrious men in the past and was the sage among the sages. In the oriental, it may be no exaggeration to say that we are still living in the traditions of Confucian thoughts. In the West, Plato did not work out a systemic exposition of aesthetic problems, but he dealt in his writings with all the problems of aesthetic. Likewise in the oriental, Confucius, the founder of 'Ru' school which has been known in the West as the Confucian, did not write any book specifically on aesthetics, but many passages on beauty and art could be found in the analects of Confucius (Lun Yu). The purpose of this paper is to make systematic study of Confucius's thoughts on aesthetics by means of examining relevant sayings in "Lun Yu" and other classic materials that impart his ideas of beauty and art. Now before proceeding to the main issue, a brief survey of his position in history and the characteristics of his thoughts in general will be made to compare with some Athenian philosophers of the classical period.