Ontological Foundation of Chinese Philosophy on the Implicit Beauty of Images

Zhang Shiying＊

Western aestheticians interpret beauty in different ways. Beauty in their eyes is either harmony, imitation, or the appeal of tupos, all definitions being well backed by theories and philosophical origins. Then what is the philosophical origin of the traditional Chinese philosophy on implicit beauty of images? This is a question I will try to answer.

Let us start from ancient Greece, where its philosopher Pythagoras posed that“beauty is harmony.” This had a philosophical origin. Pythagoras held that the world is based on numbers, which are known for their beautiful proportions and harmony,and in his eyes, would serve as a good foundation for the definition of beauty. For example, there is a golden section rate in math, things drawn accordingly would be viewed as the most beautiful. Apart from painting, this golden section rate also applies to music and architecture. Things are based on numbers, implyingthat only when things are harmonious can beauty be achieved. That is the theoretic foundation or philosophical origin of Pythagoras’ philosophy of beauty.

The saying “beauty is imitation,” can be traced back to Plato, another philosopher of ancient Greece. Plato said beauty is imitation and there are two levels of imitation. The first level is imitating real things, for example, if you are painting a dog,the better you could imitate it, the more beautiful your painting would be. Plato’s philosophy is very profound. The real things, he further argued, are also imitations, and they are imitations of the ideals.For example, when we say something is a square,or a circle, there must be a measure, or a definition,or an ideal, as we like to call it. A square must have four equal sides and four equal 90-degree angles. A circle is the set of all points that are at a given distance from a given center. The ideals are indeed their definitions. Something is said to be a square only when it has been proved in line with the ideal of a square. It is the same with a circle.According to Plato, reality is an imitation of the ideal, thus the so-called real things are in fact not real. For example, can a circular thing be absolutely circular? Well, you can’t expect compasses to be 100% reliable. There must be a minor inaccuracy.Again, if you look closely at something square, is it really an ideal square? I’m afraid the answer is always disappointing. Thus Plato thought that only the ideals are real. The things in reality are only the imitations of the ideals, and are certainly not so real,let alone art, which is an imitation of imitations.This philosophy roused much controversy afterwards.

Despite the differences between the two definitions of beauty, we can easily see that both are talking about sensory beauty, which means beauty perceived by visual and auditory senses,as we viewing a good painting, or listening to a good piece of music. These two kinds of sensory beauty proposed by the ancient Greeks, however,missed one thing: the human aspect. It seems that in ancient Greece, human subjectivity had not yet been considered in the perception of beauty. The ancient Greeks, living in the childhood of human history, had not realized the importance of human subjectivity.

Inspired by modern Western philosophers from Descartes to Hegel, Western aesthetics began to emphasize human subjectivity and view it as a crucial part in the perception of beauty. A main feature of modern Western philosophy is to divide the world into two parts: The subjective world,namely human beings, and the objective world,namely all the things other than humans. According to Engels, this subject-object dualism thrived after the Renaissance. Though it had appeared as early as ancient Greece, it didn’t become popular until after the Renaissance.

Hegel has a most famous saying, “Beauty is the perceptual appearance of the ideal.” What is beauty? For Hegel, beauty is to present ideals through concrete, visible and palpable objects, as is shown in the well-known “beauty of tupos.”To accentuate a kind of beauty, a tupos must be created. Take the Chinese novel Dream of the Red Chamber as an example, its heroine Lin Daiyu is a sentimental tupos, on whom the author has heaped all sentimental symptoms, hence the beauty of tupos in the novel. Tupos, which highlights human subjectivity, marks the convergence of the subjectobject dualism with aesthetics.

However, this emphasis on human subjectivity went too far and resulted in alarming consequences,such as self-absolutism, which made humans selfish,and extreme anthropocentrism, which threatened nature. Modern and contemporary thinkers in the West criticized the subject-object theory as the very root of evil. The theory saw its heyday when Hegel was popular. History after Hegel is called post modernity, which, while repudiating self-absolutism and the subject-object world view, advocated that the world is, in the words of the Chinese, rather a harmonious oneness of all things, a unity of nature and man.

Given the new context, Western aesthetics shifted from stressing tupos and sensory beauty to accentuating the “explicit and implicit beauty.”Things not only convey an explicit on-the-spot beauty, but also imply something behind it. Finding the beauty is such a course that enables you to imagine and experience what is beyond the object.Take Heidegger’s philosophy of beauty for example,he abandoned tupos and held that beauty is figuring out the absent implicit aspects from the present explicit aspects. He also gave an example. One of Van Gogh’s well-known masterpieces depicts a pair of farming shoes, in a terrible condition, with very large cracks in the material. However, when people see it, they are magnetized, because Van Gogh’s genius allows them to look beyond the painting and see another vivid underlying picture, in which the poor farmers are toiling and struggling for a living. This experience of imagining, thinking and exploring from the visible to the invisible, from the present into the absent, this “enlightenment,” is a more profound perception of beauty embraced by the Western post modernism after the subject-object theory was abandoned.

I am talking about Heidegger’s philosophy of explicit and implicit beauty because it is very much like the Chinese philosophy regarding the implicit beauty of images. Van Gogh’s shoes rightly serve as the present image on the surface, while the imagination it inspires, of how the farmers live a pitifully hard life and how unfair society is,happens to be what the Chinese call “the beauty beyond images” or “poetic beauty.” Additionally,the generation of Heidegger’s philosophy of beauty is somehow linked with theories of Lao Tse and Chuang Tzu, the two towering figures in Chinese philosophy. In fact, Heidegger had read Tao Te Ching authored by Lao Tse. It is quite possible that he turned his eyes towards China and its philosophy about the implicit beauty of images not so much accidentally as intentionally. Now here comes a real question: What then is the foundation theory for the implicit beauty of images?

Lin Daiyu is a sentimental tupos.

Think of the Internet. The world is also an interconnected network. All substances, man,objects, are the intersection points on the web, and they are there only because of the web. Without the web, the intersection points would not exist. For example, I myself am also an intersection point.The fact that now I am here talking with you could be attributed to infinite aspects in the background,such as what books I have read, what friends I have made, my studying experience in Southwest Associated University, who influenced me most,what genes I have inherited from my father, mother and people before them, and so on. All those things are reflected in me, in what I say. That’s my case.And it is the same with you, with all human beings,with dogs, and even cups. All the intersection points act as the “image,” in the words of Chinese, and in the words of the West, the “present substance.” On the other hand, behind each present substance lies something absent but perceivable, namely the source or maternal origin, the infinite background each person and object is against. The beauty of images lies in that you may perceive something absent and infinite, or the “meaning” from something specific and present, the “images.” This is a Chinese aesthetic consciousness. As a Chinese saying goes, “Shapes gush out like water, while their meanings stand beyond implicit.” “Shapes” here are the images, and they are always present. The “meaning,” however, is absent, and requires human efforts to be perceived.Thus, we can see that Chinese philosophy regarding the implicit beauty of images is completely in line with the Western philosophy regarding explicit and implicit beauty. Where does the implicit beauty of images come from? It stems from peoples’ common desire to return to their mother, to their maternal origin. Whether it is a poem, or a painting, they are all present images, and their real appeal lies in their underlying meaning, or maternal origin. This is the real beauty. I wish I could give a satisfying explanation for that.

Here I’ll give you an example. There is a poem authored by Wang Wei,

“As the years go by, give me but peace,

Freedom from ten thousand matters.

I ask myself and always answer:

What can be better than coming home?

A wind from the pine-trees blows my sash,

And my lute is bright with the mountain moon.

You ask me about good and evil fortune?

Hark, on the lake there’s a fisherman singing!

The first six sentences are all factual descriptions—the present image.

However, something more profound lies behind it: Out of the depth of misfortune comes bliss. The poet doesn’t say that directly. Instead, he says “Hark,on the lake there’s a fisherman singing!” Readers must figure things out by themselves. Then things start to be illuminated: Once you feel the unity of nature and man, the oneness of yourself with the world, wisdom will come. Another poem from Wang Wei reads “Where water ends, clouds rise.”What if you walk to a place without water and there is no way out? Look up at the sky, and you may see the clouds rising, giving a hint of rain. The two sentences are the present image, which, however,reminds us of our own life—when we tumble to the bottom, we may still believe that every cloud has a silver lining and we can start all over again.It is a kind of optimism originating from the unity of nature and man. Hence beauty and poetry are exuded from the two sentences.

Chinese love to talk about the implicit kind of beauty, for it is something more profound behind explicit things. Du Fu had a poem which reads “The country shattered to pieces, mountains and rivers still remain; spring comes and the town is buried in overgrowing weeds and trees.” It is a typical after-war depiction. The mountains and rivers are the image, implying all other things have been destroyed; the image of town with overgrowing weeds and trees indicates that not a living human soul is there. The two images, drawn simple but sharp, convey the most heart-breaking scene after a war. The poetic beauty is so impressive.

The ultimate “beauty” lies in our desiring nothing, in being content as we are, as if we finally return to our soothing birthplace. However, the truth is that we can’t help having desires, to eat the best food, to wear the best clothes, and so on, then why must we abandon all the desires for a spiritual habitat?

Heidegger has a theory that humans are born into an “authentic condition,” kind of like the primitive unity of nature and man in Chinese philosophy. When they enter the world ruled by the subject-object dualism, they begin to see the objects as something other than themselves,something they could work on and use so as to satisfy their desires. Thus, human desires are in fact closely linked with the subject-object world view.According to Heidegger, man seeking desires is on a tortuous road, which he called “being thrown into the world.” However, he thought it necessary and thus called the process “inevitable.” Unfortunately,once spurred by desires, humans become restrained by them, sinking into the “inauthentic condition,”and begin to search for spiritual liberation and “the return to the original authentic condition.” But how?Heidegger first thought that humans cannot really go back to their original authentic condition until they are dying, for that’s the time when they are completely free of desires. Later, Heidegger realized that his theories could in fact be improved and that,as long as a person is philosophical and poetic, he can return to the “authentic condition” at any time,gaining spiritual liberation and reposing in his spiritual paradise.

Whatever the rhetoric, the third stage is the negation of negation to the first stage, advising people to take on a philosophical and surrealistic mentality amid realities entangled with desires,so they can enjoy freedom anytime they want,even though they are with desires all the time.Heidegger’s theory of “returning to the authentic condition,” also shared by Chinese philosophy,kind of divides human life into three stages: the first stage is the primitive “authentic condition,” or“baby-like” in Lao Tse’s words, when human beings live in a state between waking and sleeping, naive,without desires; the second stage is the “inauthentic sinking,” kind of like “knowing no end,” “knowing no contentment,” and “focusing on wit and getting further away from naivety” in Lao Tse’s words; the third stage is “the return to the authentic condition,”as is implied in Lao Tse’s “maintaining authenticity like a baby” and “viewing no desire as real desire and no intentional learning as real learning.” That,through the lens of the Chinese philosophy on implicit beauty of images, can be understood as asking people to look beyond the daily images and figure out the maternal origin in the background,or to be “insightful,” as people often say. Only in that way can daily life be poetic, free and really beautiful. We all know that Zen advocates that each detail of life is a kind of Zen. In my opinion,the Zen contained in all things is in fact the poetic meaning behind them. And Zen is telling us that we should make our lives poetic, always extracting the beauty and meaning beyond the images, thereby making life free and beautiful.

The implicit beauty of images, adored by the Chinese, means rising above the reality of“images” and returning to the super-natural world of “meanings.” To some extent it represents the highest level of beauty. Lower-level sensory beauty cannot be really beautiful unless it is backdropped by underlying meanings. I’ll give you a very easy example. There are two ladies. One is always gaudily dressed and wears exquisite makeup, but beyond that she conveys nothing. There is a complete lack of meaning in her. So, what do you think? Is she beautiful or not? I’m afraid she might be viewed as “a pile of luxurious decorations that only cause blindness,” as Lao Tse once described.In contrast, another lady, though just slightly dressed-up, is attractive, for her beauty lies in her temperament, in something deep inside worth investigating in the world of meanings behind her image. That is what we call “real beauty.”

Now let us talk about how to live. No one dare treat reality lightly. We focus on the “images,” our desires, the very current path that lies at our feet. To be sure, we cannot live without desires, for we are after all not ascetic monks. We all want to eat good food and wear good clothes. But we must never forget that we should be an “authentic” person,a “real” person with a real spirit, who can face reality and remain true to our desires, while always standing above them, looking far beyond and never getting fettered. So, I often tell my friends to,“Face the reality and transcend the reality,” or, as Buddhism advocates, “never getting too obsessive.”An obstinate fixation on something is called“obsessiveness.” Buddhism tries to free humans from excessive obsessiveness and provide us with a larger world view. By “being not obsessive,”people will be liberated from reality. In that sense,the implicit beauty of images will help us when we are seeking freedom, just as Hegel once said,“Beauty serves as a liberating force.” Therefore, the ideas and meanings behind the images are greatly valued not only in China but also in the West. Post Modernism, for example, criticized art that only cared for the explicit beauty of images. Duchamp,a French postmodern painter, took a giant step forward by holding that humans must learn to think, to also have a spiritual habitat. He insisted on“bringing art to life and making art a part of life,”thereby making life more profound. By the way, you may see here that some traditional Chinese views have, accidentally or intentionally, been adopted by the West. The East and the West are not always opposites of each other, though there might be slight differences, for example, the “unity of nature and man” in Chinese philosophy, and even the implicit beauty of images, might sound a bit simple and primitive to Westerners, but the general trend is that the essence of the Chinese philosophy is being assimilated by Westerners.

Martin Heidegger

I’d like to repeat that the world is an entire web.That is the ontological foundation for not only the Chinese philosophy about the implicit beauty of images but also for morality. Seeing a world through a mere intersection point endows us with both an aesthetic consciousness and a moral consciousness,such as what we call “the feeling of kinship” with all human beings and living creatures: They are all our own blood kin and friends. Such a kind of morality is not a dictation on the do’s and don’ts but more like the natural outcome of one’s aesthetic emotions. Thus, I always think that the Chinese philosophy related to the implicit beauty of images is a wonderful tool for us to help make our lives more poetic and profound.

(Translator: Xu Qingtong; Editor: Xiong Xianwei)

This paper has been translated and reprinted with the permission of China Literature and Art Criticism,9th issue of 2017, Vol. 24.