| Kuki Shuzo(1888-1941)studied in Europe under great philosophers such as Heinrich Rickert,Edmund Husserl,Henri Bergson and Martin Heidegger in 1922-1929.In 1935,Kuki took up a teaching post at Kyoto University until his death.His representative works include The Structure of “Iki”,The Problem of Contingency,and Opinions on Philosophy.Among them,The Structure of “Iki” is the essence of his aesthetic thought and his most influential book.Centering on the aesthetics of “iki”,this article studies its formation,content,characteristics and value.This paper is divided into three chapters in addition to the introduction and conclusion.Chapter One circles around the formation and content of “iki”.It is inseparable from Japanese attitude towards nature.The Japanese understanding of beauty has long been integrated with nature,showing that they are apt to discover beauty in normal things.It is the aesthetic habit that inspired Kuki to take “geisha” as the discussion object.Furthermore,his special life experience also provided rich material and writing motivation for the composition of “iki”.The description of the spirit and skill improvement of geisha demonstrates what “iki”is and makes it the standard of aesthetics.A solid framework of the theoretical construction of the aesthetics of “iki” has been laid by the extension,natural and artistic expressions of “iki”,thus building the aesthetic taste into a mature aesthetics view.Chapter Two is mainly about the aesthetic characteristics of “iki”.The author believes that the aesthetics of “iki” is a people-oriented aesthetic view that focuses on and cares for people.Taking “geisha” as the object,Kuki took the aesthetic perspective from the “spiritual world” back to the real world,and introduced the aesthetic habits of “beauty in form” in the West to the aesthetic vision of “beauty in body” in the East.Such a change in “direction” is also the aesthetic feature of Kuki.In addition,the “iki” aesthetics corresponds to the aesthetics of Japanese Shinto,Bushido,and Sado,and fully demonstrates the national and cultural characteristics of Japanese aesthetics.Kuki expressed his aesthetic view of emotion and life in the deeper level of “iki”,containing his feelings for his mother and Japanese culture,and expressed his views on life and thinking of the whole world from an aesthetic point of view.These studies have made the aesthetics of “iki” more distinctive.Chapter Three expounds the value of “iki” aesthetics.After The Structure of “Iki”,out came Kuki’s another book,The Problem of Contingency,mainly expressing his views of“survival” and “existence”,which can be regarded as a supplement of his own aesthetics.Through research,the author found that the aesthetics of “iki” is full of “contingency”,which contains the infinity of life.As a result,a comprehensive evaluation of and reflection on the aesthetics of “iki” can be made.The author believes that,for one thing,the main contribution of Kuki’s aesthetics lies in the particularity of “iki”,for another,it fails to become “universal”,shackled by particularity.However,the contradiction of the “iki” theory also opens up the possibility for its modern extensibility.What the “iki” theory emphasizes is actually a pursuit of enthusiasm for life that transcends the relationship between subject and object and that between self and others.On this basis,“iki” is more than a criterion of beauty,but also a kind of aesthetics of the realm of life,which coincides with the view of “everything as one” aspired by modern philosophy.Therefore,it is necessary to study the value of “iki” from a modern perspective and enrich its theory with the view of “everything as one” so that its aesthetics can be extended in a broader way.All in all,great values are embodied in the method of constructing his own aesthetics,the emotional power of his philosophy,and the goals he pursued.The study of Kuki’s aesthetics also has important reference value in and enlightening significance for the construction and development of aesthetics in China. |
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