中国美学在21世纪的世界性意义

上个世纪的亚洲美学家们往往依据西方美学传统的基本模式来考察各种美学问题；但实际上，亚洲各国也有自己的与西方不同的美学传统。通过对中西美学传统的比较性考察，探讨中国美学在21世纪人类美学的总体发展中所具有的世界性意义。从中国美学的视点看，美不仅在人与审美对象的关系中具有单纯审美的意义，而且更在人的存在自身中具有形而上的意义；人不仅是审美对象和艺术作品的创造者，而且首先是人自身美的存在的创造者。事实上，只有当人自身的存在首先在形而上的意义上达到了美的层面时，人才有可能一方面在外部世界中创造出审美的对象，另一方面在内心世界中形成审美的心理。中国美学的这一洞见无疑能够大大扩展21世纪人类美学的理论视界和研究内容，使其超出西方美学传统的有限观念，甚至将其提升到人的存在的形而上层面，从而使其对人类的进步发展做出更大的贡献。

The Worldwide Significance of Chinese Aesthetics in the 21st Century

In the last century, many Asian scholars often discussed various aesthetic questions chiefly according to the model of the Western tradition, because it has been generally thought as the birthplace and the nursery of aesthetics itself as a science'. In fact, however, Asian countries do have their own aesthetic traditions rather different from the Western one. This essay will try to present a striking contrast between traditional Chinese and Western aesthetics and thereby show the worldwide significance of Chinese aesthetic tradition in the 21st century. Viewed from the perspective of Chinese aesthetics, beauty is not only of the aesthetic significance in the relation of human being to beautiful things and artworks, but also of the metaphysical significance in human life as a whole, and human being is not only the creator of beautiful things and artworks, but also the creator of her/his own beautiful existence. Indeed, one can both create beautiful things and artworks as aesthetic objects in the external world and feel aesthetic pleasure in the inner world through aesthetic activities only when one's own existence itself becomes beautiful in the metaphysical sense. The insight would definitely enlarge the horizon of the aesthetics of the 21st century and enrich its research contents, and even lift it to the metaphysical level of human existence and make it go beyond the limits of traditional Western aesthetics. Moreover, in consideration of the beautiful as one of the highest states of human life, the aesthetics of the 21st century would make much greater contributions to humankind as well when it tries to reveal the ways in which one is able to beautify one's existence itself in the metaphysical sense.