Hardship Aesthetics

Author: Liu Shilin
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-04-01
Features: The ontological emergence of life arises from the separation between humans and nature during the Bronze-Axial Age. Only through a psychoanalytic examination of the various forces in this great and painful transformation can one gain an in-depth and comprehensive understanding of the secrets of humanity. The spiritual trauma of humanity in the Axial Age: First, the spatial fear of the rational subject arises from its full awareness of its separation from nature; second, the temporal anxiety of the ethical subject arises from its primary focus on the split between humans and themselves; third, the poetic wisdom that emerges from this alienation gradually develops into a unique aesthetic function in opposition to rational wisdom. The only true path is to return to the Axial Age. The hallmark of spiritual life lies in "the distinction between humans and nature." The essence of Kantian ethics lies in: obtaining the moral ontology in intuition, which is particularly helpful in generating clear moral concepts; and because it is narrated through transcendental analysis, it alienates the "iron threshold" that life cannot transcend. The paradox and tragedy of life: Without the suppression and alienation of physiological desires by ethical symbols, humans cannot distinguish themselves from nature to become real human beings; without the judgment and resistance against this form of ethical alienation, humans cannot distinguish themselves from machines to become free human beings. The alienation of the Chinese nation in ethical practice stems from its reproduction of the human self based on the intrinsic concept of "seeking happiness through virtue." "Any great undertaking cannot be completed" is because the spiritual resources of humans or the "material conditions" that directly produce these resources are prematurely exhausted. The Critique of Pure Reason is the most important material condition for the modern spiritual awakening of the Chinese nation. The Critique of Pure Reason itself cannot rely on existing things. The issue is not that they "do not think," but that they cannot "think for themselves." Aesthetics of suffering is the fundamental ontological basis of spiritual life. "Objectification," "subjectification," "de-objectification," "de-subjectification," "anti-objectification," and "anti-subjectification" are its six core concepts. The aesthetics of suffering takes "the critique of pure desire" as the era's theme, serving as a continuation and contemporary interpretation of Kant's Critique of Judgment. To cleanse and critique the various problems emerging in the contemporary realm of sensibility, it is necessary to rely on a higher level of rational capacity and a more rigorous philosophical struggle than rational self-critique to accomplish this. In this regard, the aesthetics of suffering is fundamentally different from any other form of aesthetics in the history of aesthetics. There can be no way out in Heidegger's "forest of the world." Aesthetics is the clarification of the world itself, the appearance of all things in the natural light, and the entry of humans into this world under the open sky. In the philosophical context, the hallmark of human spiritual life is "the distinction between humans and nature." This process was completed in the historical Bronze-Axial Age. In the spiritual awakening of the Axial Age, humanity acquired three spiritual resources: rationality, ethics, and aesthetics, which constitute the prototypical structure of spiritual life in the civilized era. On one hand, they enabled humans to break free from their primitive state of being "indistinguishable from things" and directly created a glorious history of civilization. On the other hand, the very civilization, in its historical development of "clashing and harmonizing with things," has maliciously depleted this original vitality. It follows that the highest ontological interpretation of spiritual life can be reduced to "how is the reproduction of the ontological life of the Axial Age possible." The first part of this book discusses the three historical forms of spiritual life from a perspective of origin. In the initial awakening of the Bronze-Axial Age, Chinese Confucian ethics achieved its highest form in the "distinction between humans and beasts." In the rational awakening of the Enlightenment era, Kant became the highest representative of the new era through his outstanding transcendental analysis of "humans as an end in themselves." This book particularly elucidates the new moral ontological connotations of spiritual life. The second part of the book logically demonstrates "the structural analysis of the ontological life." The author first proposes a new dualistic context for narrating and interpreting the ontological life. One pole refers to poetic wisdom, which exists as primordial thought and is characterized by being "unmatched by things" or "indistinguishable from things." The other pole refers to rational wisdom, which exists as the spiritual structure of the civilized era and is characterized by subjectification and objectification. Since only within this new dualistic context can the true matrix of the birth of rational wisdom be found, it itself is the key to interpreting and analyzing the deep structure of life. The third part of the book primarily discusses the modes of production of spiritual life in the era of civilization. From the structural analysis of spiritual life, the transcendental condition for the reproduction of the human self lies in constructing the ontological differences between humans and tools, humans and animals, and the true human and the alienated human in terms of knowledge, will, and emotion. Since logically there exist three internal concepts of spiritual life, they necessarily externalize into three modes of human self-production: material production with a rational schema as its deep structure, human self-production with an ethical schema as its deep structure, and spiritual production with an aesthetic schema as its deep structure. On one hand, since the ethical schema directly distinguishes humans from nature, it is also the transcendental foundation for human self-production. On the other hand, since the alienating forces humans face vary across different historical periods, the modes of human self-production also differ accordingly. The fourth part of the book primarily addresses the new Axial Age structured by "anti-objectification" and "anti-subjectification." Since the era's consumerist ideology, on one hand, directly cancels the mechanism of reproduction of rational life through anti-objectification and, on the other hand, maliciously depletes the historical accumulation of ethical subjects through anti-subjectification, and furthermore indirectly negates the aesthetic freedom of humans characterized by de-objectification and de-subjectification, it has created the most severe alienation reality in human history. Only by starting from the sensible functions of spiritual life and the critique of pure desire can a truly viable mode of human self-production be constructed for contemporary humans. In this sense, the aesthetics of suffering is a fundamental ontology concerning the existential life of contemporary humanity. The existence and innovation of human civilization certainly require supplementing various new spiritual resources. However, since the distinction between humans and nature was only completed in the awakening of the Axial Age, it naturally must become the foundation for all other spiritual production activities. And in this era of consumer civilization where the Axial spirit has been maliciously depleted, reasserting the Axial Age—as the original human and the fundamental measure of being human—is also a renewed response to the spirit of ancient Chinese philosophers who sought to establish the heart of heaven and earth, to establish a destiny for the people, and to inherit the lost learning of the sages. Regardless of the passage of time and the changes of the earth, as long as people still hope to be human or need to know how to become truly human, only the spiritual resources created in the Axial Age, imbued with the essence of suffering, can help them accomplish this incredibly arduous and glorious task.