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The Aesthetic Grounds of Zhuangzi’s Cognition － In comparison with Kant’s Cognition toward the Thing-in-itself －
Journal of Humanities
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This paper contemplates the manifestation of imagination and artistic freedom in realization of dao (道) by studying the grounds of aesthetics in the philosophy of Zhuangzi. Zhuangzi tried to reach the ultimate value of the universal origin, or dao being freed from the limitation of the cognitive subjects’ arbitrariness. Its attainment can be mediated by unconstrained interactive communications among the cognitive subjects, and between the subjects and the objects. After all, he desired to realize true-knowing and eventual realm of freedom in perfect accordance with nature transcending human physical body and spirit. In Western philosophy, the attempt to accord nature and freedom was made especially by Immanuel Kant. It is located in the center of his aesthetics. In Kantian aesthetics, nature and freedom can be unified as one. Furthermore it is a coincidence between nature and human, truth and morality, universality and individuality, and the subjects and the objects. Beauty exists in-between the philosophy and art then still has the property and form of independence and abstractness. It is both universal and objective while individual and subjective concurrently. How can this animated, sensible and even concrete beauty go together with the rational, logical and universal philosophy? The belief that we may be able to find a clue to answer to this difficult question is the starting point of this paper. Epistemology and aesthetical philosophy in Zhuangzi has originality and yet studies have rarely been made under this theme. The preceding researches to compare Zhuangzi and Kant have dealt with imagination and aesthetic appreciations; however, few investigations have been made in depth to relate the purposiveness and Zhuangzi’s epistemology as far as I know. This paper will study Zhuangzi’s pursuit of true-knowing in association with art and free wandering by comparing imagination and purposiveness ― the major concepts of Kantian aesthetics. Particularly it will deliberate on Zhuangzi’s transcendental cognition in terms of its will to combine nature and freedom and suggest that free imagination and the realm of art are the ground for that. The ultimate purpose of this paper is searching for the possible connection of Zhuangzi’s cognition to the realization of aesthetics’ integral cognition through the comparison between the aesthetic cognition of Zhuangzi and Kant.
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