Aesthetics of Everyday Life

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Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1443868345
Total Pages : 203 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (438 download)

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Book Synopsis Aesthetics of Everyday Life by : Curtis L. Carter

Download or read book Aesthetics of Everyday Life written by Curtis L. Carter and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2014-10-02 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a new trend in aesthetics appearing concurrently in the West and the East in the last ten years, the aesthetics of everyday life points to a growing diversification among existing methodologies for pursuing aesthetics, alongside the shift from art-based aesthetics. The cultural diversity manifest in global aesthetics offers common ground for the collaborative efforts of aesthetics in both the West and the East. Given the rapidly growing interest and its potential for attracting new audiences extending beyond the more narrowly focused traditions of twentieth-century analytic and environmental aesthetics, it stands to command its own share of attention in the future of aesthetic studies. The aesthetics of everyday life has become a stream of thought with a global ambition. This interest has led to numerous systematic and in-depth works on this topic, some of which were conducted by the authors represented in this volume. A salient feature of this book is that it not only represents the recent developments of the aesthetics of everyday life in the West, but also highlights the interaction between scholars in the West and the East on this topic. Thus, the project is a contribution toward mutual progress in the collaboration between Western and Eastern aesthetics. What distinguishes this book from other anthologies and monographs on this topic is that it reconstructs the aesthetics of everyday life through cultural dialogue between the West and the East, with a view to building a new form of aesthetics of everyday life, as seen from a global perspective. At present, the aesthetics of everyday life as a newly emergent approach to aesthetics may encounter skepticism among aestheticians accustomed to the rigors of analytic philosophers who prefer to discuss aesthetics at the level of abstract concepts and argument, and who tolerate the particulars of experience mainly as illustrations. But, there is no reason to abandon the pursuit of the aesthetics of everyday life in the face of such objections. On the contrary, there are many benefits to gain in bringing aesthetics to bear on a wider sphere of human life, made possible through efforts to show the relevance of aesthetics to a broader range of human actions.

The Pursuit of Comparative Aesthetics

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Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351883364
Total Pages : 429 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (518 download)

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Book Synopsis The Pursuit of Comparative Aesthetics by : Mazhar Hussain

Download or read book The Pursuit of Comparative Aesthetics written by Mazhar Hussain and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-03-02 with total page 429 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comparative aesthetics is the branch of philosophy which compares the aesthetic concepts and practices of different cultures. The way in which cultures conceive of the aesthetic dimension of life in general and art in particular is revelatory of profound attitudes and beliefs which themselves make up an important part of the culture in question. This anthology of essays by internationally recognised scholars in this field brings into one volume some of the most important research in comparative aesthetics, from classic early essays to previously unpublished contemporary pieces. Ranging across cultures and time periods as diverse as ancient Greece, India and China and the modern West and Japan, the essays reveal both similarities and deep differences between the aesthetic traditions concerned. In the course of these expositions and comparisons there emerges the general conclusion that no culture can be fully grasped if its aesthetic ideas are not understood.

Artistic Detachment in Japan and the West

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Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
ISBN 13 : 9780824823740
Total Pages : 310 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (237 download)

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Book Synopsis Artistic Detachment in Japan and the West by : Steve Odin

Download or read book Artistic Detachment in Japan and the West written by Steve Odin and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2001-04-01 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Artistic Detachment in Japan and the West takes up the notion of artistic detachment, or psychic distance, as an intercultural motif for East-West comparative aesthetics. The work begins with an overview of aesthetic theory in the West from the eighteenth-century empiricists to contemporary aesthetics and concludes with a survey of various critiques of psychic distance. Throughout, the author takes a highly innovative approach by juxtaposing Western aesthetic theory against Eastern (primarily Japanese) aesthetic theory. Weaving between cultures and time periods, the author focuses on a remarkably wide range of theories: in the West, the Kantian notion of disinterested contemplation, Heidegger's Gelassenheit, semiotics, and pragmatism; in Japan, Zeami's notion of riken no ken, the Kyoto School's intepretation of nothingness, D. T. Suzuki's analysis of the function of no-mind, and the writings of Kuki Shuzo on Buddhist detachment. "Portrait of the artist" fiction by such writers as Henry James, James Joyce, Mori Ogai, and Natsume Soseki demonstrates how the main theme of detachment is expressed in literary traditions. The role of sympathy or pragmatism in relation to disinterest is examined, suggesting conflicts within or challenges to the notion of detachment. Researchers and students in Eastern and Western areas of study, including philosophers and religionists, as well as literary and cultural critics, will deem this work an invaluable contribution to cross-cultural philosophy and literary studies.

Aesthetics and Marxism

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Publisher : Duke University Press
ISBN 13 : 0822380536
Total Pages : 247 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (223 download)

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Book Synopsis Aesthetics and Marxism by : Kang Liu

Download or read book Aesthetics and Marxism written by Kang Liu and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2000-03-10 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although Chinese Marxism—primarily represented by Maoism—is generally seen by Western intellectuals as monolithic, Liu Kang argues that its practices and projects are as diverse as those in Western Marxism, particularly in the area of aesthetics. In this comparative study of European and Chinese Marxist traditions, Liu reveals the extent to which Chinese Marxists incorporate ideas about aesthetics and culture in their theories and practices. In doing so, he constructs a wholly new understanding of Chinese Marxism. Far from being secondary considerations in Chinese Marxism, aesthetics and culture are in fact principal concerns. In this respect, such Marxists are similar to their Western counterparts, although Europeans have had little understanding of the Chinese experience. Liu traces the genealogy of aesthetic discourse in both modern China and the West since the era of classical German thought, showing where conceptual modifications and divergences have occurred in the two traditions. He examines the work of Mao Zedong, Lu Xun, Li Zehou, Qu Qiubai, and others in China, and from the West he discusses Kant, Schiller, Schopenhauer, and Marxist theorists including Horkheimer, Adorno, Benjamin, and Marcuse. While stressing the diversity of Marxist positions within China as well as in the West, Liu explains how ideas of culture and aesthetics have offered a constructive vision for a postrevolutionary society and have affected a wide field of issues involving the problems of modernity. Forcefully argued and theoretically sophisticated, this book will appeal to students and scholars of contemporary Marxism, cultural studies, aesthetics, and modern Chinese culture, politics, and ideology.

The Aesthetics of Everyday Life

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Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780231135030
Total Pages : 252 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (35 download)

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Book Synopsis The Aesthetics of Everyday Life by : Andrew Light

Download or read book The Aesthetics of Everyday Life written by Andrew Light and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection explores the aesthetic qualities of human relationships, sports, taste, smell, food, and natural and built environments.

Everyday Aesthetics

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Publisher : OUP Oxford
ISBN 13 : 019160853X
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (916 download)

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Book Synopsis Everyday Aesthetics by : Yuriko Saito

Download or read book Everyday Aesthetics written by Yuriko Saito and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2008-01-03 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Everyday aesthetic experiences and concerns occupy a large part of our aesthetic life. However, because of their prevalence and mundane nature, we tend not to pay much attention to them, let alone examine their significance. Western aesthetic theories of the past few centuries also neglect everyday aesthetics because of their almost exclusive emphasis on art. In a ground-breaking new study, Yuriko Saito provides a detailed investigation into our everyday aesthetic experiences, and reveals how our everyday aesthetic tastes and judgments can exert a powerful influence on the state of the world and our quality of life. By analysing a wide range of examples from our aesthetic interactions with nature, the environment, everyday objects, and Japanese culture, Saito illustrates the complex nature of seemingly simple and innocuous aesthetic responses. She discusses the inadequacy of art-centered aesthetics, the aesthetic appreciation of the distinctive characters of objects or phenomena, responses to various manifestations of transience, and the aesthetic expression of moral values; and she examines the moral, political, existential, and environmental implications of these and other issues.

Japan, France, and East-West Aesthetics

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Author :
Publisher : Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press
ISBN 13 : 9780838640104
Total Pages : 528 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (41 download)

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Book Synopsis Japan, France, and East-West Aesthetics by : Jan Hokenson

Download or read book Japan, France, and East-West Aesthetics written by Jan Hokenson and published by Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Japan, France is the first comprehensive history of the idea of Japan in France, as tracked through close readings of canonical French writers and thinkers from the 1860s to the present. The focus is literary and intellectual, the context cultural. The discovery of Japanese woodblock prints in Paris, following the opening of Japan to the West in 1854, was a startling aesthetic encounter that played a crucial role in the Impressionists' and Post-Impressionists' invention of Modernism. French writers also experimented with Japanese aesthetics in their own work, in ways that similarly thread into the foundations of literary Modernism. Japonisme (the practice of adapting Japanese aesthetics to creative work in the West) became a sustained French tradition, in texts by such writers as Zola and Proust through Barthes and Bonnefoy. Each generation discovered new Japanese arts and genres, commented on the work of their predecessors in this vein, and broke still more ground in East-West aesthetics to innovate in the forms of Western literature and thought. To read literary history in this way unsettles Eurocentric assumptions about many of the French writers who are commonly considered the

Neoplatonism and Western Aesthetics

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Publisher : SUNY Press
ISBN 13 : 9780791452790
Total Pages : 280 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (527 download)

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Book Synopsis Neoplatonism and Western Aesthetics by : Aphrodite Alexandrakis

Download or read book Neoplatonism and Western Aesthetics written by Aphrodite Alexandrakis and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2002-01-01 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shows how the aesthetic views of Plotinus and later Neoplatonists have played a role in the history of Western art.

Tragic Beauty in Whitehead and Japanese Aesthetics

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Publisher : Lexington Books
ISBN 13 : 1498514782
Total Pages : 357 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (985 download)

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Book Synopsis Tragic Beauty in Whitehead and Japanese Aesthetics by : Steve Odin

Download or read book Tragic Beauty in Whitehead and Japanese Aesthetics written by Steve Odin and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2016-05-19 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The present volume endeavors to make a contribution to contemporary Whitehead studies by clarifying his axiological process metaphysics, including his theory of values, concept of aesthetic experience, and doctrine of beauty, along with his philosophy of art, literature and poetry. Moreover, it establishes an east-west dialogue focusing on how Alfred North Whitehead’s process aesthetics can be clarified by the traditional Japanese Buddhist sense of evanescent beauty. As this east-west dialogue unfolds it is shown that there are many striking points of convergence between Whitehead’s process aesthetics and the traditional Japanese sense of beauty. However, the work especially focuses on two of Whitehead’s aesthetic categories, including the penumbral beauty of darkness and the tragic beauty of perishability, while further demonstrating parallels with the two Japanese aesthetic categories of yûgen and aware. It is clarified how both Whitehead and the Japanese tradition have articulated a poetics of evanescence that celebrates the transience of aesthetic experience and the ephemerality of beauty. Finally it is argued that both Whitehead and Japanese tradition develop an aesthetics of beauty as perishability culminating in a religio-aesthetic vision of tragic beauty and its reconciliation in the supreme ecstasy of peace or nirvana.

A Companion to Ancient Near Eastern Art

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Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 1118336755
Total Pages : 703 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (183 download)

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Book Synopsis A Companion to Ancient Near Eastern Art by : Ann C. Gunter

Download or read book A Companion to Ancient Near Eastern Art written by Ann C. Gunter and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2018-09-08 with total page 703 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides a broad view of the history and current state of scholarship on the art of the ancient Near East This book covers the aesthetic traditions of Mesopotamia, Iran, Anatolia, and the Levant, from Neolithic times to the end of the Achaemenid Persian Empire around 330 BCE. It describes and examines the field from a variety of critical perspectives: across approaches and interpretive frameworks, key explanatory concepts, materials and selected media and formats, and zones of interaction. This important work also addresses both traditional and emerging categories of material, intellectual perspectives, and research priorities. The book covers geography and chronology, context and setting, medium and scale, while acknowledging the diversity of regional and cultural traditions and the uneven survival of evidence. Part One of the book considers the methodologies and approaches that the field has drawn on and refined. Part Two addresses terms and concepts critical to understanding the subjects and formal characteristics of the Near Eastern material record, including the intellectual frameworks within which monuments have been approached and interpreted. Part Three surveys the field’s most distinctive and characteristic genres, with special reference to Mesopotamian art and architecture. Part Four considers involvement with artistic traditions across a broader reach, examining connections with Egypt, the Aegean, and the Mediterranean. And finally, Part Five addresses intersections with the closely allied discipline of archaeology and the institutional stewardship of cultural heritage in the modern Middle East. Told from multiple perspectives, A Companion to Ancient Near Eastern Art is an enlightening, must-have book for advanced undergraduate and graduate students of ancient Near East art and Near East history as well as those interested in history and art history.

Smile of the Buddha

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Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520242084
Total Pages : 312 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (22 download)

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Book Synopsis Smile of the Buddha by : Jacquelynn Baas

Download or read book Smile of the Buddha written by Jacquelynn Baas and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The relations between eastern and western cultures have long been a neglected topic, and this careful and intelligent look at a small but significant part of those relations is most welcome."--Thomas McEvilley, author of The Shape of Ancient Thought "How wonderful that Jacquelynn Baas has seen the light of the Buddha's smile shining from faraway Asia into the realm of the art of modern times in what we think of as the West! . . . Her work reveals how some of our most influential artists explored and expressed the sophisticated perceptions and joyful energy emanating from the realm of Buddhist Asia."--Robert A. F. Thurman "As a Buddhist scholar and artist I welcome this thoughtful and richly detailed study of how many aspects of Buddhism have stimulated, invigorated, and enriched Western arts over the past 150 years."--Stephen Addiss, author of The Art of Zen "A crucial contribution to modern art studies, this high-spirited text surveys Western artists awakened by the wisdom of the East, from Monet and Duchamp to O'Keeffe to Martin. It is a thoughtful book about thoughtful artists, their values and their visions, with a lot to offer general readers and specialists alike."--Charles Stuckey, Associate Professor of Art History at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Four Essays on Aesthetics

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Publisher : Lexington Books
ISBN 13 : 9780739113219
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (132 download)

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Book Synopsis Four Essays on Aesthetics by : Zehou Li

Download or read book Four Essays on Aesthetics written by Zehou Li and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2006 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Available for the first time in English, Li Zehou's philosophical aesthetics interpret the historical origins and evolution of aesthetic experience and their significance to the intellectual, emotional, and spiritual growth of human beings. Although LI's ideas have been debated in China for more than two decades, his conversations with Jane Cauvel will now allow Western students and philosophers to re-encounter Chinese and Western conceptions of aesthetics, and the way art shapes indiciduals, societies, technology, and the future of humankind.

Body Consciousness

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Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1139467778
Total Pages : 203 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (394 download)

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Book Synopsis Body Consciousness by : Richard Shusterman

Download or read book Body Consciousness written by Richard Shusterman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2008-01-07 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemporary culture increasingly suffers from problems of attention, over-stimulation, and stress, and a variety of personal and social discontents generated by deceptive body images. This book argues that improved body consciousness can relieve these problems and enhance one's knowledge, performance, and pleasure. The body is our basic medium of perception and action, but focused attention to its feelings and movements has long been criticised as a damaging distraction that also ethically corrupts through self-absorption. In Body Consciousness, Richard Shusterman refutes such charges by engaging the most influential twentieth-century somatic philosophers and incorporating insights from both Western and Asian disciplines of body-mind awareness. Rather than rehashing intractable ontological debates on the mind-body relation, Shusterman reorients study of this crucial nexus towards a more fruitful, pragmatic direction that reinforces important but neglected connections between philosophy of mind, ethics, politics, and the pervasive aesthetic dimensions of everyday life.

Eastern Approaches to Western Film

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Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 135011331X
Total Pages : 299 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (51 download)

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Book Synopsis Eastern Approaches to Western Film by : Stephen Teo

Download or read book Eastern Approaches to Western Film written by Stephen Teo and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-07-11 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eastern Approaches to Western Film: Asian Aesthetics and Reception in Cinema offers a renewed critical outlook on Western classic film directly from the pantheon of European and American masters, including Alfred Hitchcock, George Lucas, Robert Bresson, Carl Dreyer, Jean-Pierre Melville, John Ford, Leo McCarey, Sam Peckinpah, and Orson Welles. The book contributes an “Eastern Approach” into the critical studies of Western films by reappraising selected films of these masters, matching and comparing their visions, themes, and ideas with the philosophical and paradigmatic principles of the East. It traces Eastern inscriptions and signs embedded within these films as well as their social lifestyle values and other concepts that are also inherently Eastern. As such, the book represents an effort to reformulate established discourses on Western cinema that are overwhelmingly Eurocentric. Although it seeks to inject an alternative perspective, the ultimate aim is to reach a balance of East and West. By focusing on Eastern aesthetic and philosophical influences in Western films, the book suggests that there is a much more thorough integration of East and West than previously thought or imagined.

Entangled East and West

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Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN 13 : 3110570602
Total Pages : 349 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (15 download)

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Book Synopsis Entangled East and West by : Simo Mikkonen

Download or read book Entangled East and West written by Simo Mikkonen and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2018-12-17 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite increasing scholarship on the cultural Cold War, focus has been persistently been fixed on superpowers and their actions, missing the important role played by individuals and organizations all over Europe during the Cold War years. This volume focuses on cultural diplomacy and artistic interaction between Eastern and Western Europe after 1945. It aims at providing an essentially European point of view on the cultural Cold War, providing fresh insight into little known connections and cooperation in different artistic fields. Chapters of the volume address photography and architecture, popular as well as classical music, theatre and film, and fine arts. By examining different actors ranging from individuals to organizations such as universities, the volume brings new perspective on the mechanisms and workings of the cultural Cold War. Finally, the volume estimates the pertinence of the Cold War and its influence in post-1991 world. The volume offers an overview on the role culture played in international politics, as well as its role in the Cold War more generally, through interesting examples and case studies.

The Chinese Aesthetic Tradition

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Author :
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
ISBN 13 : 0824833074
Total Pages : 282 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (248 download)

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Book Synopsis The Chinese Aesthetic Tradition by : Zehou Li

Download or read book The Chinese Aesthetic Tradition written by Zehou Li and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2009-11-12 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Li Zehou (b. 1930) has been an influential thinker in China since the 1950s. Before moving to the U.S. in the wake of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, Li published works on Kant and traditional and contemporary Chinese philosophy. The present volume, a translation of his Huaxia meixue (1989), is considered among Li’s most significant works. Apart from its value as an introduction to the philosophy of one of contemporary China’s foremost intellectuals, The Chinese Aesthetic Tradition fills an important gap in the literature of Chinese aesthetics in English. It presents Li’s synthesis of the entire trajectory of Chinese aesthetic thought, from ancient times to the early modern period, incorporating pre-Confucian and Confucian ideas, Daoism, Chan Buddhism, and the influence of Western philosophy during the late-imperial period. As one of China’s As one of China's major contemporary philosophers and preeminent authority on Kant, Li is uniquely positioned to observe this trajectory and make it intelligible to today’s readers. The Chinese Aesthetic Tradition touches on all areas of artistic activity, including poetry, painting, calligraphy, architecture, and the "art of living." Right government, the ideal human being, and the path to spiritual transcendence all come under the provenance of aesthetic thought. According to Li this was the case from early Confucian explanations of poetry as that which gives expression to intent, through Zhuangzi’s artistic depictions of the ideal personality who discerns the natural way of things and lives according to it, to Chan Buddhist-inspired notions that nature and words can come together to yield insight and enlightenment. In this enduring and stimulating work, Li demonstrates conclusively the fundamental role of aesthetics in the development of the cultural and psychological structures in Chinese culture that define "humanity."

Asian Aesthetics

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Publisher : NUS Press
ISBN 13 : 9971695006
Total Pages : 330 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (716 download)

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Book Synopsis Asian Aesthetics by : Ken-ichi Sasaki

Download or read book Asian Aesthetics written by Ken-ichi Sasaki and published by NUS Press. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While the artistic traditions of the various countries of East, Southeast and South Asia display distinctive aesthetic features, this volume examines the qualities of each area, and seeks commonalities that define the aesthetics of a broader Asian civilization. Contributors includes specialists in philosophy, literature, art history, religion and the comparative study of cultures. Some of them are writing from within their own cultural traditions while others approach their subjects as outside observers. The book is divided into five sections, dealing with Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Indian and Southeast Asian aesthetics. Individual chapters provide in-depth investigations of specific traditions, embracing both classical as well as modern aesthetic forms. The author suggest that Japanese culture is characterized by an openness to diverse cultural influences, Korean culture by "peninsularity," Chinese culture by parallels with the West, Indian culture by "rasa" (a kind of "cosmic" feeling that is distinct from one who feels), and Southeast Asian culture by dilemmas of modernization. The volume as a whole integrates these studies, clarifying essential elements of each aesthetic culture and drawing on this material to characterize an Asian civilization that transcends individual countries and cultures.