| s-1
| A relevant question to our concern might be, would this artistic excellence in the Chinese tradition be the same as beauty? |
| s-2
| Arguably, beauty is regarded as the keyword in Western art tradition since antiquity. |
| s-3
| If we browse Chinese classical writings on art criticism, a striking difference manifests — there the category of mei or beauty does not have a dominant presence. |
| s-4
| For instance, among the 24 aesthetic categories of poetry listed by Sikong Tu 司空图 (837–908) in his celebrated treatise (Sikong n.d.), only three or four categories can be regarded as related to the Western notion of beauty. |
| s-5
| Moreover, according to Xu Hong’s (c. 1580–1660) Xishan Qinkuang 谿山琴况 (c. 1640), the most influential treatise on the aesthetics of guqin (Chinese zither) music, the category of li (pretty, beautiful) is merely the 10th of the 24 aesthetic categories, and the top six were harmony, tranquillity, clarity, profundity, antiquity, subtlety. [38] |
| s-6
| In Chinese paintings, prominence was given to the categories such as shen (spiritual) and miao (subtle) before mei. |
| s-7
| Overall, one also finds that the comparison between the beautiful and the sublime — which defined the influential aesthetics of Edmund Burke (1729–1797) and Immanuel Kant, and consequently became an iconic discourse in Western aesthetics — is also missing in the Chinese history of aesthetics. |
| s-8
| To conclude, in a cross-cultural comparative context, it is fair to say that an inquiry on what makes an artwork beautiful may turn out to be even less productive than in the contemporary artworld. |
| s-9
| 38. 和, 静, 清, 远, 古, 澹 (Research Institute of Music 2010, vol.14, 316–321). |
| s-10
| CONTEMPORARY DISCOURSE: BRIEF REMARK |
| s-11
| The Hegelian definition of aesthetics as the philosophy of art that considers the issue of artistic beauty as its core concern is no more enchanting in our time. |
| s-12
| Many would agree that the question “what makes an artwork beautiful” plays a minor role in contemporary aesthetics and philosophy of art, where the question has been updated to “what makes an artwork meaningful or valuable?” |
| s-13
| Two factors might contribute to this situation. |
| s-14
| Firstly, it is not a coincidence that the loss of interest in the inquiry into artistic beauty coincides with a sea change in the artworld, transformed by new art movements as well as struggles in defining art. |
| s-15
| Being beautiful is no longer a defining feature of art. |
| s-16
| Also, when the representationalism, the expression theories, formalism, neoformalism, aesthetic theories in defining art all fail to offer an account that is capable of coping with the dynamic scenes of the artworld, and when the anti-essentialist movement in philosophical aesthetics then paves a way to functionalism, institutionalism and various versions of historicism, the question of artistic beauty as such not only loses its limelight, but also is, to some extent, abandoned for its strong Hegelian colour. |
| s-17
| Now if “art” itself becomes an open concept or a socially, historically, culturally sensitive notion, then whatever makes an artwork beautiful is unlikely to be something homogeneous and unitary. |
| s-18
| Secondly, the inquiry into “beauty” experienced a shift of focus from the emphasis on aesthetic properties of the objects to the subjective experience involved in aesthetic appreciation. |
| s-19
| In other words, a shift from an inquiry about “the beauty of object” to the issue of “the pleasure of beauty.” |
| s-20
| The contemporary inquiry into beauty in general is often classified in light of the framework of realism vs non-realism. |
| s-21
| Realism regards artistic beauty as a property of artworks which is independent of the subject, while non-realism holds that artistic beauty is not an independent property of artworks. |
| s-22
| This shift has a long historical preparation, contributed especially by the British empiricists such as Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746) and David Hume (1711–1776). |
| s-23
| Hutcheson thinks that beauty lies in both the object and the subject, and artistic beauty comes from the quality of “uniformity amidst variety” in the object and the involvement of an “internal sense” in the subject. [39] |
| s-24
| Hume argues that “beauty is no quality in things themselves,” but a “sentiment” in “the mind that contemplates them” and “to seek the real beauty … is … fruitless.” [40] |
| s-25
| In contemporary aesthetics, from the study of empathy to Freud’s libido, to the evolutionary theory of beauty, to the focus on perception in aesthetic experience, more and more philosophers seek to answer the question of what makes an artwork beautiful in light of human physiology and psychology. |
| s-26
| For instance, the evolutionary theory regards artistic beauty as “fitness signal” that displays desirable personal qualities that strengthen reproductive advantage, and our pleasant feeling caused by something beautiful, like sexual pleasure, is engraved in our minds by the process of evolution, assisting us to make the “the most adaptive decisions for survival and reproduction.” [41] |
| s-27
| 39. “The Figures which excite in us the Ideas of Beauty, seem to be those in which there is Uniformity amidst Variety” (§ II, p. 28). |
| s-28
| “The internal Sense is, a passive Power of receiving Ideas of Beauty from all Objects in which there is Uniformity amidst Variety” (§ VI, 67). |
| s-29
| 40. “Beauty is no quality in things themselves: it exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty … every individual ought to acquiesce in his own sentiment, without pretending to regulate those of others. |
| s-30
| To seek the real beauty, or real deformity, is as fruitless an inquiry, as to pretend to ascertain the real sweet or real bitter” (Hume 1998, 136–137). |
| s-31
| 41. Denis Dutton (2010) provides such an account in his TED talk, “A Darwinian Theory of Beauty.” |