The Study Of Guo Xiang's Aesthetic Thought In Annotation On Chuang-tzu

This paper restructures and defines Guo Xiang's philosophical and aesthetic thought on the basis of text interpretation and comparative study of Guo Xiang's Annotation on Chuang-tzu and The Writings of Chuang Tzu.The introduction part presents Guo Xiang's life story and his basic method of Annotation on Chuang-tzu. Moreover, it also points out the core of Guo Xiang's philosophical thought and its association with aesthetics.The main content of this thesis consists of four parts:The first chapter focuses on Guo Xiang's philosophy and its aesthetic thoughts. The theme of Guo Xiang's philosophy is not existence or nonexistence, but "Dao". "Dao" is "Tian-dao", concretized into the issues of selfgeneration, Du-hua, and Xuan-ming by Guo Xiang. The first section grasps the groundless thinking tendency in the concept of the selfgeneration and deeply analyzes the significance of the basic proposition of the universal selfgeneration. It reveals the ideological essence of generation or life being, which is the most radical and groundbreaking interpretation and conversion in the light of Chuang Tzu's nihility theory in Guo Xiang's time; The second section discusses the issue of Du-hua. Du-hua is the further studies of "Tian-dao" and the aesthetic intuition theory, which holds that everything selfgenerated without any external foundation and internal objective; The third section emphatically analyses the sense of formation and aesthetic realm of Xuan-ming from the angle of Esthetics, which is different from Dao of Yin-yang in The philosophy of Zhou Yi.The second chapter probes into Guo Xiang's Nature Theory on the previous chapter's logical foundation. "Tian-dao" is the existence and formation of the universe, that is to say, "Tian-dao" is the expression of the nature and the nature is the embodiment of "Tian-dao" in this sense. However, the nature is only the self quality as the exordium.The third chapter shares with previous two chapters the basic ideas and reveals Guo Xiang's Genuine Knowledge Theory in the comparison with Zhuang-tse's theory. Guo Xiang and Zhuang-tse both agree on that daily experience is not genuine knowledge and emphasize to be a true person from the way of'know how'and'Practice'. Nevertheless, there is a sharp contrast in their expressions. Zhuang-tse focuses on the understanding of 'the general Dao'while Guo Xiang on the exploration of'Thingness'.The fourth chapter is to discuss Guo Xiang's Peripateticism. It developed from the comparative perspective studies of Guo Xiang's and Chuang Tzu's ideology and concretized into three dimensions:fate and encounter, life and death, dissociation and integration, which falls into three sections respectively.The last part draws conclusions on Guo Xiang's aesthetic thoughts and its foundation roles for later natural esthetic perspectives, especially discussing the personality construction of the saint model of internal sacredness and external social participation and its influence of scholar bureaucrat's aesthetic existence. This paper also points out the limitation of Guo Xiang's aesthetic thoughts, which is worthy of deeply consideration.