Communications in Humanities Research
- The Open Access Proceedings Series for Conferences
Communications in Humanities Research
Vol. 4, 17 May 2023
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Critique of Wang Guowei’s Gu Ya Theory and the Establishment of Veneration of Antiquity
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Abstract
Wang Guowei’s Gu Ya theory is considered one of the most influential aesthetic theories in modern China but has not been taken seriously in western scholarship. In this theory, Wang Guowei tries to oppose Kant's theory of genius by claiming that everyone should be able to create beauty. Wang Guowei focuses heavily on the Chinese literati instead of the whole population to which Kant refers. I found the Gu Ya theory implausible for either the Chinese literati or the peasants because the two points that Wang Guowei provides, “the first form” and the “markedness,” would be considered inadequate to prove his arguments. Besides that, one reason the Gu Ya theory fails to achieve its goal is the ignorance of the “veneration of antiquity,” which is significant in Chinese aesthetic appreciation. We must find solutions to either solve or refine the Gu Ya theory in order to accelerate the development of Chinese aesthetics. I firstly criticized and corrected the ambiguity of Wang Guowei’s “the first form” and the misunderstanding of the concepts of “marked” and “unmarked” in Chinese literature. Then, I established the “veneration of antiquity” as my aesthetic theory that fits the Chinese literati. In the end, I posted a thought about Wang Guowei’s idea of “wu ren 吾人” in his Gu Ya theory because he does not clarify and fails to build a connection with Kant’s theory.
Keywords
Chinese literature, Wang Guowei, Chinese aesthetics, Gu Ya theory, Kant
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- Volume Title
- Proceedings of the International Conference on Interdisciplinary Humanities and Communication Studies (ICIHCS 2022), Part 2
- ISBN (Print)
- 978-1-915371-31-7
- ISBN (Online)
- 978-1-915371-32-4
- Published Date
- 17 May 2023
- Series
- Communications in Humanities Research
- ISSN (Print)
- 2753-7064
- ISSN (Online)
- 2753-7072
- DOI
- 10.54254/2753-7064/4/20220269
- Copyright
- 17 May 2023
- Open Access
- This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited