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Li Zehou. Translated by Maija Bell Samei. The Chinese Aesthetic Tradition. Nonfiction. Honolulu. University of Hawaii Press. 2010. 257 pages. $50.00. ISBN 9780824833077
Li Zehou is indisputably one of the most inspiring figures in twentieth- century Chinese philosophical and aesthetic studies. Since the 1950s, Li's preeminence in the field of Chinese philosophy and aesthetics in mainland China has gone unchallenged. However, although he is extremely famous in China and his philosophical and aesthetic works remain longterm bestsellers in the Chinese book market, his name is less well known by Western readers. The translation of The Chinese Aesthetic Tradition is therefore very significant. This volume ushers Western readers into Li Zehou's interpretation of the whole sweep of Chinese aesthetic thought. Now, almost twenty-two years after its original publication, this book still enables us to rethink Chinese aesthetics in a much broader cultural and historical context.
Li Zehou's influence is based on his many publications, through which he has built up his own unique and creative philosophical and aesthetic framework. Among his works, The Path of Beauty, published in English by Oxford University Press in 1998, and The Chinese Aesthetic Tradition are particularly crucial. In his recent book Brief Theory of Li Zehou's Aesthetics, scholar Liu Zaifu considers these two books to be the outer and inner structures of Li's aesthetic thought. By discussing painting, calligraphy, poetry, fiction, material culture, and archeology, Li Zehou has written the history of Chinese taste in The Path of Beauty; the book is a special history of taste in that its survey crosses the boundaries of the history of the arts, history of literature, history of religion, and material history. As the complement to The Path of Beauty, The Chinese Aesthetic Tradition focuses more on Chinese aesthetic ideology, which is the inner construction of Chinese aesthetics. According to Li, the ideological constituents of the Chinese aesthetic spirit include Confucian ideas, Daoism, Qu Yuan, and Chan Buddhism.
The Chinese Aesthetic Tradition differs from Zhu Guangqian's aesthetic paradigm, which focuses mainly on artistic aesthetics, in that Li Zehou's aesthetic theory is...