Cognition and Practice: Li Zehou's Philosophical Aesthetics

240 Pages·2022·1.825 MB·English

by  Rafal Banka

Cognition and Practice
SUNY series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture
—————
Roger T. Ames, editor
Cognition and Practice
Li Zehou’s Philosophical Aesthetics
Rafal Banka
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2022 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever
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For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Name: Banka, Rafal, 1976– author.
Title: Cognition and practice : Li Zehou’s philosophical aesthetics / Rafal
Banka.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, [2022] | Series:
SUNY series in Chinese philosophy and culture | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022005651 | ISBN 9781438489230 (hardcover : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9781438489254 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Li, Zehou. | Aesthetics, Chinese. | Cognition.
Classification: LCC B5234.L4874 B36 2022 | DDC 170.92—dc23/eng/20220323
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022005651
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
Chapter 1 Confucian Inspiration 7
Chapter 2 Marxist Framework 23
Chapter 3 Reinterpreting Kant 37
Chapter 4 Philosophy of Subjectality 69
Chapter 5 Situating Subjectality 95
Chapter 6 Beauty 111
Chapter 7 Aesthetic Experience 125
Chapter 8 An Alternative Account of Aesthetic Experience:
John Dewey 161
Chapter 9 Contemporary Experience-Based Aesthetics 177
Afterword 191
Notes 195
vi CONTENTS
Bibliography 217
Index 225
Acknowledgments
Nothing is born in vacuum. This book would not be published without help
of many people. I would like to thank Roger Ames, editor of the SUNY Press
series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture, James Peltz, SUNY Press associate
director and editor in chief, as well as the anonymous reviewers who have
made my project see the light of publication. I also convey my debt to the
Charles Wei-hsun Fu Foundation and the International Society for Chinese
Philosophy, who in 2015 jointly granted me a Junior Faculty Award for an
article that was a prelude for a longer study completed as this very book.
I offer my deep thanks to Jinhua Jia and, again, Roger Ames, who invited
me to participate in the conference “Li Zehou and Confucian Philosophy,”
which took place at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa in autumn 2015.
It was an excellent exchange that led me to a comprehensive study of the
liaisons of practice and cognition in Li Zehou’s philosophical aesthetics. I
am deeply thankful to Anna I. Wojcik, my former MA and PhD theses
supervisor, for inspiring lectures in classical Chinese aesthetics, without which
I might not have developed interest in this part of Chinese philosophy. I
also express my regards to Szymon Szymczak, the most inspiring logician
that I have met. Last but not least, I would like to thank my wife Jinli He
for being a patient yet sincere critic and continuous supporter of what I do.
The project described in this book has been funded by the National
Science Centre of Poland, funding scheme: Sonata 12 (project registration
no. 2016/23/D/HS1/02451).
vii

Introduction
This book aims to present Li Zehou’s aesthetics as a form of cognition.
There are two reasons for undertaking this project. The general motivation
is to present the aesthetics of Li Zehou, one of the most influential living
Chinese philosophers, to the Western audience. Li lived from 1930 to 2021.
He studied philosophy at Peking University and was a former professor of
the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He was active as a philosopher
since the 1950s. His writings became particularly influential among Chinese
intellectuals in the 1980s, a period often referred to as Chinese Cultural
Fever (Zhongguo Wenhua Re 中國文化熱), when the monolithic discourse of
social realism became replaced with cultural pluralism, which among others
included qualitative changes in widely understood aesthetics.
Li is particularly known for proposing an original aesthetic theory
founded on anthropological ontology, otherwise known as the philosophy
of subjectality, but his work devoted to Kant’s thought as well as the history
of Chinese philosophy is no less important due to his specifically conceived
approach to historical materialism. While Li’s influence on contemporary
Chinese philosophy, and more generally humanities in mainland China,
is vast and can be counted in decades, he is hardly recognized beyond
Chinese-speaking academia. It must be admitted that Li is not completely
unknown among Western scholars. However, one should observe at the
same time that in Western academia, Li’s writings are known almost entirely
among scholars who work in sinology or what may be broadly construed as
Chinese studies. This shows that Li’s philosophy practically passes unnoticed
in the realm of academia that is unrelated to studies connected with Chi-
nese civilization. This is also the case of Western philosophy scholars who,
when they refer to the Chinese tradition, usually focus on Confucianism
and Daoism. While the importance of these classical Chinese philosophy
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