Aesthetics Trilogy of Network Era: Three Essays on Art and Culture

Author: Zhang Jiangnan
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-02-01
Features: Nowadays, there is a widespread call to cultivate the cultural literacy of the entire society. Indeed, this is the responsibility and duty of a humanities scholar. However, the question arises: what exactly is cultural literacy, and what does it mean to possess it? The difference between the humanities and the natural sciences lies in the fact that the humanities are the study of values. And value, at its most fundamental level, is a belief. In this regard, the humanities are no different from religion. What accompanies belief directly is the concept of sincerity. Sincerity is an emotion that stems from a person's intimate relationship with their life and what sustains it. Once our lives lose a firm foundation and become rootless, our experience of sincerity also disappears. Therefore, the task of the humanities is to help people find the foundation of their lives and to rediscover the experience of sincerity, allowing us to appreciate the genuine sentiment expressed in Zhang Zai's "On the Analects" ("To establish a heart for the world, to establish a destiny for the people, to carry forward the lost learning of the sages, and to open a peaceful world for all generations"). We understand that improving cultural literacy means something along these lines. We may not be naturally gifted, and we started late in our studies, but perhaps our innate religious inclinations have led us to a deep yearning for this and a desire to put it into practice. This approach has brought us much hardship, the of which can only be slowly savored by ourselves.