The Concept Of Taste In Chinese Aesthetics Revisited

Taste is one of the concepts in ancient Chinese aesthetics. It was short of theoretical definition before. This thesis focuses on the concept and hopes to give a clear view on it.Firstly, we clarify the relationship between gustatory sense and beauty. There is an opinion that the sense of beauty in ancient Chinese came from gustatory sense because of the letter beauty has a relation with gustatory. We discriminate this view and point out that this opinion concludes form a misreading of text. We affirm there was an idea that gustatory is joyful in early Chinese documents. Taste was considered as one of the desires and was set against the T'ao. So, taste was depressed. From this idea we know that the Confucian aesthetic spirit unit beauty and good form the ethics ground.There are two ways that gustatory sense participate aesthetics. The first way is synaesthesia. Many studies approve this way and acknowledge that gustatory sense turn into aesthetics by this way. They raised a hypothesis called'discuss music by taste'in ancient Chinese aesthetics. We show that this hypothesis is lack of persuasion. Synaesthesia in aesthetics is not so much as in physiology-psychology and in cognitive science. The second way is metaphor. We point out this is a common phenomenon and the reason of this phenomenon.Secondly, we study taste as a aesthetics concept. We line out the process that taste came into aesthetics as a basic concept by metaphor, but not synaesthesia. And the discussion about the relation between words and meaning in Wei-Jin-metaphysics was the key point of this process. This metaphor was first used in metaphysics and then in aesthetics borrowing form metaphysics.The concept of taste has two forms, the noun form and the verb form. As the noun form, taste is used as a term of judgment and it has no definite connotation. It describes various objects. It spreads itself in multi-sequence. It is variable when use in different texts. Descript that, taste has a central value orientation called'implication', that means taste pursues meaning out of the words. In poetics, it mirrors in three types of poem: connotation has taste, insipidness has taste, simpleness has taste. Out of this three types, we then discuss two concept named taste-as-surplus and taste-as-tasteless. The concept taste-as-surplus was much valued by ancient poets. They thought a lot writing techniques to achieve taste-as-surplus. The concept taste-as-tasteless was much influenced by the philosophy of Lao-zi and Zhuang-zi. It was a embodiment of their philosophy impact on ancient Chinese aesthetics. Tasteless is not no tasteful but full of taste.As the verb form, taste also has functions in forming the thoughts of art in Chinese history. We discriminate the functions from two aspects. First, from the creation and appreciation activities, taste shapes a kind of experience which emphasis the participation rather than cognition and virtual part rather than concrete part of art. Then in the theory activities, taste forms an idea of beauty that the spirit of art is most valued, and it also develops a narrative style of criticism that were fond of competition and judgment of different works or artists.Thirdly, we discriminate three topics in literature theory, which associated with taste and discussed by many researchers before. First topic is Lu-ji's Wen-Fu and the concept of taste-of-omit. After our discussion, we affirm that there is no such poetic view in Lu's book. Second topic is whether there is a theory called Taste Theory in Zhong-rong's Shi-Pin? Some researchers approve for this theory and others disagree with them. We look into both two sides and lead our opinion that there is no such a theory exists in Zhong's book, despite that his usage of taste has influence on taste concept. The last discussion around a letter by Si-kong-tu called A Letter to Mr Li on Poem. There are so many words about this letter and say that it contains a poetic idea which was named taste-outside-taste. We show this view birth out of misreading of the letter, and then this misreading influence literature theory very much. There is a complex pedigree sequence of this theory in Chinese literature theory.The last chapter is an addition one. For many researchers have compared the different attitudes toward taste between ancient Chinese aesthetics and western aesthetic, we also give a brief view of how did taste in western came to be an aesthetic term in history.