Business Communication: 1 Page
As the manager of a bank, you have just walked in on an angry customer who was demanding to have a late penalty removed from his account. The employee who was helping him began to argue that the late penalty was applied correctly.
In your paper,
· Describe how you would address this situation.
· Explain how you would approach your employee.
· Identify how you would satisfy the situation with the angry customer.
The How Proper Communications Can Satisfy a Workplace Problem paper
· Must be one double-spaced pages in length (not including title and references pages) and formatted according to APA style.
· Atleast 2 references
· Must include a separate title page with the following:
· Title of paper
· Student’s name
· Course name and number
· Instructor’s name
· Date submitted
WHAT IS THE VALUE OF ART?
Prof. Andrea Baldini — UDCI — Week 2
VALUE AND EXPERIENCE
➤ Value of art generally
understood as aesthetic value
➤ Aesthetic value as the value
afforded by an aesthetic
experience
1. What is the
aesthetic?
2. What is aesthetic
experience?
THE PLURALITY OF THE “AESTHETIC”
➤ Art(s)playing a multiplicity of
functions
➤ Different arts (art kinds)
realizing different values
➤ Values grounded in
experiencing an artwork
➤ Possibility of understanding
other cultures by
understanding different
conception of aesthetic
experience (?)
OVERVIEW
1. Aesthetic objectivism vs.
aesthetic subjectivism
2. Challenges to traditional
theories of aesthetic
experience
3. Pragmatist rescue of aesthetic
experience
4. Neo-confucian models of
aesthetic experience
1. AESTHETIC OBJECTIVISM VS. SUBJECTIVISM
➤ Aesthetic Objectivism (AO)
➤ Art possessing value
(usually beauty)
independently from the
response of the appreciator
➤ Aesthetic Subjectivism (AS)
➤ Art possessing value as a
consequence of the
appreciator’s subjective
response
AS & AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE (AE)
➤ “Beauty is no quality in things
themselves; it exists merely in the mind
which contemplates them” (Hume 1757)
➤ AE
➤ Evaluative dimension
➤ AE as intrinsically enjoyable
➤ Phenomenological dimension
➤ AE as immediately perceived in
one’s consciousness
➤ Semantic dimension
➤ AE as meaningful (not mere
sensation)
➤ Demarcational-definitional
dimension
➤ AE as the essential feature of artHaring, Unfinished Painting (1989)
1882-85 1897 1902-1906
1905 1905
2. CHALLENGES TO AE
➤ Questioning the
phenomenological dimension
of AE
➤ AE as not immediate
➤ Responses to art as
cognitively penetrated
➤ Knowledge, beliefs,
ideas, etc. influencing AE
➤ Reduction to interpretation?
Left: Zhang Xu’s calligraphy. Right: two throw-ups (Tokyo, Seoul)
4. PRAGMATIST RESCUE OF AE
➤ Analytic vs pragmatist:
➤ Descriptive vs. Evaluative
➤ Semantic vs.
Phenomenological
➤ Definitional vs.
Transformational
➤ Emphasis on AE as a way to
rescue what it distinctly
human
➤ Feeling
.
Unit 3 Emotional Intelligence and Spiritual Intelligence.pdf
Business Communication 1 PageAs the manager of a bank, you ha.docx
1. Business Communication: 1 Page
As the manager of a bank, you have just walked in on an angry
customer who was demanding to have a late penalty removed
from his account. The employee who was helping him began to
argue that the late penalty was applied correctly.
In your paper,
· Describe how you would address this situation.
· Explain how you would approach your employee.
· Identify how you would satisfy the situation with the angry
customer.
The How Proper Communications Can Satisfy a Workplace
Problem paper
· Must be one double-spaced pages in length (not including title
and references pages) and formatted according to APA style.
· Atleast 2 references
· Must include a separate title page with the following:
· Title of paper
· Student’s name
· Course name and number
· Instructor’s name
· Date submitted
WHAT IS THE VALUE OF ART?
Prof. Andrea Baldini — UDCI — Week 2
VALUE AND EXPERIENCE
➤ Value of art generally
2. understood as aesthetic value
➤ Aesthetic value as the value
afforded by an aesthetic
experience
1. What is the
aesthetic?
2. What is aesthetic
experience?
THE PLURALITY OF THE “AESTHETIC”
➤ Art(s)playing a multiplicity of
functions
➤ Different arts (art kinds)
realizing different values
➤ Values grounded in
experiencing an artwork
➤ Possibility of understanding
other cultures by
understanding different
conception of aesthetic
experience (?)
OVERVIEW
1. Aesthetic objectivism vs.
3. aesthetic subjectivism
2. Challenges to traditional
theories of aesthetic
experience
3. Pragmatist rescue of aesthetic
experience
4. Neo-confucian models of
aesthetic experience
1. AESTHETIC OBJECTIVISM VS. SUBJECTIVISM
➤ Aesthetic Objectivism (AO)
➤ Art possessing value
(usually beauty)
independently from the
response of the appreciator
➤ Aesthetic Subjectivism (AS)
➤ Art possessing value as a
consequence of the
appreciator’s subjective
response
AS & AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE (AE)
➤ “Beauty is no quality in things
4. themselves; it exists merely in the mind
which contemplates them” (Hume 1757)
➤ AE
➤ Evaluative dimension
➤ AE as intrinsically enjoyable
➤ Phenomenological dimension
➤ AE as immediately perceived in
one’s consciousness
➤ Semantic dimension
➤ AE as meaningful (not mere
sensation)
➤ Demarcational-definitional
dimension
➤ AE as the essential feature of artHaring, Unfinished Painting
(1989)
1882-85 1897 1902-1906
1905 1905
2. CHALLENGES TO AE
➤ Questioning the
phenomenological dimension
of AE
5. ➤ AE as not immediate
➤ Responses to art as
cognitively penetrated
➤ Knowledge, beliefs,
ideas, etc. influencing AE
➤ Reduction to interpretation?
Left: Zhang Xu’s calligraphy. Right: two throw-ups (Tokyo,
Seoul)
4. PRAGMATIST RESCUE OF AE
➤ Analytic vs pragmatist:
➤ Descriptive vs. Evaluative
➤ Semantic vs.
Phenomenological
➤ Definitional vs.
Transformational
➤ Emphasis on AE as a way to
rescue what it distinctly
human
➤ Feeling
6. 4. NEO-CONFUCIAN MODELS OF AE
➤ AE as intellectual intuition
（⼼齋)
➤ Subjective experience
➤ Sensuous/perceptual pleasure
➤ Transcendence of one’s
distinction from the universe
Chinese Contemporary Art Series
Eva Kit Wah Man
Issues of
Contemporary Art
and Aesthetics in
Chinese Context
Chinese Contemporary Art Series
Editor-In-Chief
Dr. Chunchen WANG
China Academy of Fine Arts
No. 8 Huajiadi Nanjie Street, Wangjing, Chaoyang District
Beijing, P.R. China
[email protected]
7. Deputy Editors-In-Chief
Paul Gladston, Associate Professor, Nottingham University
([email protected])
Wenny Teo, Lecturer, Courtauld Academy of Art
([email protected])
Advisor Board
Alexandra Munroe, Curator of Asian Art, Solomon R.
Guggenheim Museum, New York
Britta Erickson, Ph.D., independent curator, Palo Alto
Duan Jun, Lecturer in Contemporary Chinese Art, Beijing
Institute of Technology, Beijing
Eugene Wang, Professor of Asian Art, Harvard University,
Boston
He Guiyan, Associate Professor, Sichuan Institute of Fine Arts,
Chongqing
John Rajchman, Professor, Art History, Columbia University,
New York
James Elkins, Professor, Art History, Theory, and Criticism,
School of the Art Institute of
Chicago
Katie Hill, Dr., Sotheby’s Institute of Art, London
Mian Bu, independent curator, Beijing
Melissa Chiu, Director of Hirshhorn Art Museum, Washington
DC
Michael Rush, Director of Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum,
East Lansing
Paul Gladston, Associate Professor, Director of the Centre for
Contemporary East-Asian
Cultural Studies, The University of Nottingham
Sheng Wei, Dr., Deputy Editor of Art Magazine, Beijing
Thomas J. Berghuis, Dr., Curator of Chinese Art, Solomon R.
Guggenheim Museum, New York
Voon Pow Bartlett, Dr., Project Manager, Tate Research Centre:
8. Asia-Pacific, London
Wenny Teo, Dr., Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Asian
Art, The Courtauld Institute of
Art, London
Yi Ying, Professor, Art Historian, Central Academy of Fine
Arts, Beijing
Yin Shuangxi, Professor in Contemporary Art, Central Academy
of Fine Arts, Beijing
Yu Yang, Associate Professor in Modern Chinese Art, Central
Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing
Zheng Shengtian, Editor-in-Chief of Yi Shu magazine,
Vancouver
This series focuses on what is happening to Chinese art in the
course of recent decades. Since
China has changed greatly, it is now a curiosity and a research
task: What is that? Why is that?
How can it be that? Culturally, why does Chinese art have its
own special image narrative?
How to evaluate and criticize Chinese art made today? Is it a
continuation of its history and
heritage? Is anything new that could be reconsidered further? Is
Chinese art an artistic issue or
a political one? This series of books will concentrate on such
questions and issues and will
invite international writers and scholars to contribute their
thoughts on the explanation and
elaboration of Chinese art today.
More information about this series at
http://www.springer.com/series/13527
http://www.springer.com/series/13527
10. methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names,
trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not
imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such
names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and
regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume
that the advice and information in this book are believed
to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty,
express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein
or for any errors or omissions that may have been
made.
Printed on acid-free paper
Springer-Verlag GmbH Berlin Heidelberg is part of Springer
Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)
Preface to “Chinese Contemporary Art Series”
The world’s present interest in and focus on China is related to
the great changes that have
taken place in China over the last 30 years. The alterations in
many phenomena actually allow
us to observe the changes in China. Historically, transformation
of a closed localized area does
not immediately and directly evoke a chain reaction in
neighboring areas. Today, however,
that is not the case, especially for a country like China that has
the largest population in the
world, that at present has a huge manufacturing capacity and
capability, that consumes vast
amounts of natural resources, and that exhibits an
11. unprecedented environmental impact. When
these kinds of changes occur in China, the world cannot but feel
their existence and impact.
This is a necessary result of today’s globalization and a
phenomenon that cannot be avoided
as the world enters into the true meaning of the term “global
village.” It does not matter
whether one opposes globalization, favors localized cultural
diversity, or favors a kind of ‘you
are within me and I am within you’ concept often referred to by
the neologism “glocalization.”
Because of its historical transformation, China is per force a
focus for the whole world and,
moreover, is a top priority focus. Today, there are more and
more research studies produced
about China, while institutions established to undertake
research on China are becoming more
prevalent in the world. This is both the continuation of
traditional “Chinese studies” and also
at the same time the start of a new world wide proposition: as a
country that maintains its
historical continuity, as a country that has endured more than a
century of chaos after which it
weakened and declined, can China truly become a modern state
of significance and democracy
to the world? This has become both an historical challenge and
a practical issue.
Viewing the matter from China internally, the Chinese also have
a historical curiosity over
the events that have occurred, and they are eager to know what
after all is the significance
of these transformations. Although they are directly involved in
their own desire for more
answers, they know that these answers will not be obtained in
12. the short term. In the field of art,
the stories that appear and emerge have research value and
require study because they are the
results and visual symptoms of this historical transformation.
The hope in editing and pre-
senting this collection of writings is that, by means of
publication, these literary works will
observe, record, and reflect China’s contemporary art stories
and their significance. Publication
will allow these articles and essays to reveal the development of
art during a time of special
temporal and spatial conditions. The searches for relevant
scholarship reveal much historical
baggage and an entangled history. Most of all, they provide a
history of visual movements that
requires special recognition and that represents the struggle and
rebirth of art during a time
when history was remade.
As the embodiment of spiritual expression and real existence,
China’s contemporary art is
rife with contradictions and strivings. Overall, however,
contemporary art in China is quite
different from that of any other historical period. It transmits
the effects of the propagation of
foreign concepts and values. China’s artists, as the inhabitants
of the piece of earth called
China, have an unprecedented variety of experiences. Chinese
discussions and arguments
about art, in both the modern and contemporary periods, have
differed entirely from the
dialogues and debates in other countries but, nonetheless, still
show the impact of the times.
Some of these arguments are about large topics such as a
comparison of the west and China,
13. v
cultural identity, and modernity, while some are about small
topics such as styles of language,
image generation, and even whether traditional brush and ink
painting always reflects the
psychology of a national culture. In fact, many of these issues
are temporary, and many more
are pseudo issues. Some of these issues are of a profound
nature, while some are issues
involving rediscovery and recreation that inspire new cultural
and artistic entities. No matter
what, the main problem of art in China today is that of putting
art into practice. If there is no
large quantity of creative art that is put into practice, then
academic research could become
specious. If art is not advanced uninterruptedly, it is difficult to
continue with research that
shows promising results.
This series focuses on what happens to Chinese art at present
and include monologues,
study on art history, case study, movements, critical discourses,
and so on. This after all is
work for the long term. By means of the publication of this
work, we hope to build a
worldwide research network on contemporary Chinese art, to
pass on China’s research and
tradition of “Chinese studies”, and to fuse together China’s
inquiries with those of interested
audiences throughout the world.
vi Preface to “Chinese Contemporary Art Series”
14. Acknowledgments
I am most grateful for the support of my close family, my
colleagues at the Department
of Humanities and Creative Writing at the Hong Kong Baptist
University, the technical
assistance of Dian Dian and Cecilia Tsang, and the co-
ordination support of Dr. Gladys
Chong. They granted me support and eased the pressure of
writing and editing this book, the
entries for which are the result of my efforts across the past
decade.
vii
Contents
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . 1
2 What Is an Author? A Comparative Study of Søren
Kierkegaard
and Liu Xie on the Meanings of Writing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . 5
2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . 5
2.2 What Is an Author? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . 5
2.3 Aesthetic Authors and Religious Authors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . 6
2.4 The Creative Force of Writing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . 8
28. 1Introduction
China, with its long-standing civilization and spectacular
growth over the past few decades, has generated intense
global interest in its art. Reports of Chinese artworks
breaking sales records have become common, and this
booming interest has sparked discussions on how China’s
transformations in the last century have shaped both its arts
and its philosophical aesthetics. For instance, how have
political, economic, and cultural changes shaped China’s
aesthetic developments? How have the country’s
long-standing beliefs and traditions informed modern desires
and forces, and how have these changes materialized in the
artistic manifestations? To learn more, comparative studies
between the Western aesthetic tradition and that of China are
needed. This book seeks to address this significant com-
parative perspective, and more importantly, it aims to enrich
the dialog between Chinese philosophical ideas on aesthetics
and those of the West.
This book deals with some significantly understudied
themes, including comparative aesthetics between the West
and China, contemporary aesthetics development in China
and Hong Kong, how art is intertwined with the politics of
identity, art and gender issues and the challenges in tradi-
tional and creative practices. Chapters 2 through 5 present
comparative studies in art and philosophical aesthetics
between China and the West. The discussions of these issues
in contemporary art and aesthetics show how Chinese
philosophical models can offer meaningful comparative
revelations.
In Chapter 2, for example, two prominent authors—Søren
Kierkegaard from nineteenth century Denmark and Liu Xie
from fifth century China—are examined to determine how
29. they represent their literary traditions and how their cultures
perceive the author’s function. Kierkegaard’s theory of
authorship is analyzed from a comparative perspective,
using Liu Xie’s 劉勰 Chinese literary criticism from Wenxin
Diaolong 《文心雕龍》 as a comparative model. The
author’s views on literary function, the spiritual and aes-
thetic dimensions and creative force of compositional liter-
ary writing and the goal of writing are examined, as
elaborated by these two authors. According to Kierkegaard,
the quality of an author’s writing is mainly tied up in his or
her religious mind, whereas Liu relates it to moral quality.
The analysis demonstrates how Kierkegaard and Liu com-
plement and enrich each other in their understanding of
authorship and writing, despite inhabiting distant centuries.
Chapters 3 and 4 offer philosophical comparative studies
of contemporary Western discussions and debates on art,
aesthetics and values in China. In Chapter 3, American
aesthetician Richard Shusterman examines the contemporary
fate of aesthetic experience in his article, “The End of
Aesthetic Experience” (1997). The discussion of aesthetic
experience has long been regarded as one of the core con-
cepts of Western aesthetics until the last half century, during
which it has expanded into an umbrella concept for aes-
thetics notions such as the sublime and the picturesque. This
chapter agrees with Shusterman’s reading that aesthetic
experience has become the island of freedom, beauty and
idealistic meaning in an otherwise coldly materialistic and
law-determined world. Chapter 3 begins with the main
dimensions of aesthetic experience in the history of Western
aesthetics, as concluded by Shusterman. In the fragmentation
of modern life and the disjointed sensationalism of the
media, Shusterman notes that people are losing the capacity
for deep experience and feeling especially as we undergo
various extensive informational revolutions. This chapter is
31. Chapter 4 first reviews the recent debates on aesthetics
and the formation of related schools of thought in the new
China. It also introduces the late developments in Chinese
aesthetics as discussed by younger aestheticians who have
suggested a return to traditional values. The chapter presents
a historical account and philosophical analysis of the
development of philosophical aesthetics in China during its
Marxist regime, and focuses on the relation between the
subject and the object in aesthetic experience. It introduces
the four major schools of thought on aesthetics in the new
China and names their leaders: Gao Ertai, Cai Yi, Zhu
Guangqin and Li Zehou. Each leader has suggested a dif-
ferent relationship between the subject and the object in
aesthetic experience and initiated debates and controversies
among themselves. In the 1990s, a group of young Chinese
aestheticians suggested a modern aesthetics system in which
the traditional aesthetic notion of ganxing 感興 was recon-
structed. During the same period, Li Zehou’s shijian meixue
(aesthetics in praxis) was far more widely discussed and
critically reflected in the country. This chapter analyzes the
nature and the structure of the notion of ganxing, and
demonstrates its struggle for a balanced integration of tra-
ditional Chinese and Marxist aesthetics. The chapter con-
tinues to take a deeper look at the traditional notion of
aesthetic ganxing that demonstrates the concept’s connection
to China’s political developments and how the notions of
subjectivity and autonomy are emphasized in contemporary
Chinese aesthetics.
The concept of ganxing is both old and new, stemming
from traditional Chinese aesthetics related to aesthetic
experience in literary discourses but presently being used to
replace the old notion of aesthetic experience. It is now the
central concept of an aesthetic system promoted by a group
of young aestheticians in China in the 1990s. This chapter
briefly discusses whether the concept is new, and looks at
32. the direction in which it is developing. This discussion ties
the new developments in China to the theme of subjective
autonomy and the social contexts in contemporary Chinese
aesthetics. It is recently proposed that aesthetic system is part
of a long-term research effort to construct a new form of
aesthetics in China that manifests four construction princi-
ples: acting as a dialog for traditional and contemporary
aesthetics, merging Oriental and Western aesthetics, inte-
grating aesthetics with related studies, and enhancing the
advancement of both theoretical and applied aesthetics.
Given these principles of construction, it is important to note
that the overall tone is still Marxist, both in its basic structure
and intention. An examination of the core notion of the
system enables us to better understand the discussion of
contemporary aesthetics in China.
Chapter 5 focuses on the notion of “beauty,” exploring
the ideals of feminist aesthetics as a form of critical politics.
In appreciating feminist aesthetics’ attempts to reconstruct
the Western modern aesthetics model, the chapter points out
the differences between the latter’s agenda and the
non-Western suggestion—in this case traditional Chinese
aesthetics—as a potential alternative feminist paradigm.
Worth noting is the comparative revelation and conditions
feminist aesthetics are facing in drawing the non-Western
reference. It starts with the reflection and analysis of the
origin of “beauty” in Confucian aesthetics by tracing its
origin to the suggestion of the Confucian moral mind. The
emergence process for such an aesthetic experience is very
different from that of the Western mainstream, in which the
subject and object dichotomy is presupposed. The tran-
scendental mind of the process is the origin of the “truth,”
the “goodness,” and the “beauty,” which are not alien to
most Eastern philosophical models, and the subject corre-
sponds with Heaven. The chapter explores the ideals of
33. feminist aesthetics as a form of critical politics, noting sig-
nificant considerations while still appreciating feminist aes-
thetics’ attempts to reconstruct the Western aesthetics model.
Chapter 6 focuses on one of the most renowned Chinese
art forms—Chinese ink art, and explores how its modern
practice and variations offer new ways of understanding the
evolution and struggles of the traditional media under
identity and global politics. To further relate the philo-
sophical discussions to the global context, the rest of the
book dives into issues of art and aesthetics in post-colonial
Hong Kong and Shenzhen, China’s special administration
regions. Art and aesthetics in the two cities have been
undermined by related discussions dominated by concerns
with the happenings in mainland China. Brought up and
academically trained in Hong Kong, I provide a picture of
the on-going scenes in these “marginal” or “third” spaces in
China within the post-colonial discourses.
Thus, Chapters 7 through 12 focus on the developments
of Hong Kong art in both the colonial and post-colonial
periods. They elucidate with empirical case studies and
demonstrate how Hong Kong painters and artists have
struggled to define their cultural identities between the
Western influences and the Chinese tradition under the
political changes taking place in the territory. Chapter 7
provides a brief description of the fabulous history of
painting and painting theories in rapidly developing Hong
Kong from 1940 to 1980 by highlighting the work and
aesthetics of several representative Chinese painters and art
bodies. This outline of painting history reflects a search for
cultural identity and the attitudes among Chinese painters
who struggled between modernized, Western influences and
2 1 Introduction
34. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-46510-3_4
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-46510-3_5
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-46510-3_6
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-46510-3_7
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-46510-3_12
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-46510-3_7
their Chinese traditions. The attitudes of the younger gen-
eration in the 1980s, which related the capitalistic influences
to the search for an artistic identity are also mentioned.
Finally, artistic and cultural theories in contemporary
post-colonial discourses are critically examined, alongside
with their applicability to the case of Hong Kong.
Chapter 8 outlines the cultural background of Chinese
artists in colonial Hong Kong in the 1960s, when frustrated
claims for development and evolution of Chinese art were
expressed by one of their representatives, Lui Shoukwan.
Lui suggested and promoted a controversial form of “Ori-
entalism.” Unlike the version touted by Edward Said,
Lui’s notion actually implied a modified version of nation-
alism. The influences and practices of Lui’s theory are
examined in the chapter, including his proposals, followed
by the case of Hon Chi-fun. A contemporary of Lui, Hon
illustrated a unique way of being “Oriental” both in his
artistic experiments and beliefs. This review of Hon’s work
and beliefs is based on the philosophical, psychological, and
cultural perspectives suggested in Western and Chinese
aesthetics, psychoanalysis and post-colonialism respectively.
It discusses the problems of transnationalism and trans-
culturalism in contemporary aesthetics according to the
Hong Kong experience.
Chapter 9 begins by reviewing the background of the
development of Western feminist aesthetics, and stating the
35. chapter’s main agenda. It then presents a cross-cultural
examination of the work of representative female artists in
post-colonial Hong Kong who were active in the 1990s.
Particular areas of attention include their personal history
and creativity, their private (experience) and public (exhi-
bition) art, their personal responses to social and political
events, their exploration of and development in artistic lan-
guages and media, and the gender constructions and indi-
vidual reactions to their social environment in the 1990s
when Hong Kong’s return to China was receiving intense
attention. The chapter concludes that the notion of “Hong
Kongness” in the local art scenes is positive in that it sug-
gests a sense of hybridity and pluralism, and that the free-
dom and individual reactions demonstrated in the works of
these local artists have manifested meanings implied by
Western feminist aesthetics.
Chapter 10 focuses on institutional space, namely, the
Hong Kong Museum of Art. It revisits the museum’s exhi-
bition strategies, use of resources, and representative posi-
tion in both the colonial and post-colonial spaces to show
how this official/sanctioned art institution helps shape the
local identity. The ever-changing “internal” battles of cul-
tural identities are noted, and the role the museum that has
played in some of the cultural and political antagonisms is
also examined. A historical survey and investigation of some
of the official and eventual displays of art demonstrate how
the museum incorporates the concept of cultural identity,
challenges its stability and hegemony, and reformulates its
meaning and content. The argument is made for a subtle
form of cultural policy, other than the publicized version,
executed through the museum’s history and evolution as an
institution. The chapter points out that the museum offers a
variety of perspectives on hybrid discourses and the politics
of identity in material forms. It is this hybridity that calls
36. attention to disjunctions and conjunctions, reflected in the
museum’s development, organization, design and art dis-
play. The museum’s permanent collection of Chinese tradi-
tional fine art, together with special exhibits of Western
masterpieces, demonstrates how hybridity, in Bakhtin’s
sense of a mixture of social languages within the limits of a
single utterance or an encounter between two different lin-
guistic consciousnesses, is represented in the museum’s
operation.
Chapter 11 uses Hong Kong as a case study to examine
the hegemonic struggles of cultural identities. The author
illustrates these identity struggles in the period before and
around 1990s, when the situation was complicated by the
recognition that Hong Kong, with its economic and cultural
aggression, had itself become a colonizer of mainland and
overseas Chinese communities in terms of its export of
popular culture and other global products. This recognition
negates any reductive or essentialist descriptions of the city’s
cultural and artistic identity. The growing consciousness of
multiple identities, of being both the colonizer and the col-
onized, has also brought into question the possibility of an
“authentic” Hong Kongness when the Chinese root is
emphasized. The author argues that writing about native
experiences in the context of post-colonial reality generates
the pressure or expectation of presenting “differences” or
“othernesses.” The everlasting negotiation of cultural iden-
tity, rather than a national tradition in itself, is the hegemony
in the real sense. The discussion cites Gramsci’s belief that
hegemony is a “moving equilibrium,” containing relations of
force favorable or unfavorable to this or that tendency and
the leading elements in a particular “historic bloc.” This
chapter demonstrates the ways in which artistic creativity
incorporates the concept of cultural identity, challenges its
stability and hegemony, and reformulates its meaning and
content. The author discloses ways in which artists and
37. curators realize the power and influence of identity forma-
tion by making it a dominant—and thus hegemonic—theme,
especially in a post-colonial space where there are “internal”
battles between cultural identities. One can see how the
official museum of the post-colonial city plays a significant
role in the cultural antagonisms.
Chapters 12 and 13 discuss the tension between the
artistic identities of different Chinese communities. Unlike
the explicit social critique and grandeur of artworks exhib-
ited in the China Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2013,
which was expected to convey signs of Chineseness, Lee
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Kit’s art installation—“an impressionistic house”—in the
Hong Kong Pavilion appears not only abstract but mundane
and even “trivial.” It is argued in Chapter 12 that the
apparently trivial and ordinary elements of Lee’s work
constitute rather than reflect the new generation of Hong
Kong art. These elements may also be part of a strategy for
negotiating the political identity inescapably imposed on
Hong Kong by China. Some contemporary Hong Kong art
distances itself from or expresses skepticism toward the
grand narratives presented by China, to paraphrase the
writing of art historian David Clarke. The art of Lee Kit can
be seen as a “Hong Kong method” that uses the ordinary to
destabilize and challenge Hong Kong’s implicit political
38. identity, thereby promoting diversity and inter-Asian cultural
dynamics.
Chapter 13, the last chapter of the book, brings the focus
back to the global context by discussing the recent interest in
creative industries and the accompanying debates and
struggles over what defines art, the imitation act and fake art.
The traditional practice of moxie or imitation in Chinese art
and aesthetics is brought in as a way to examine how tra-
ditional art intersects with global consumerism. This chapter
uses Dafen Cun, an art village in Shenzhen, to illustrate how
the art scene has developed in the city’s specific cultural and
historical contexts, given China’s increasing globalization.
The practice of moxie or imitation in art in Chinese aes-
thetics is compared with the Platonic notion of mimesis,
such that the original meanings are explained. The chapter
then traces its development from the tradition to the late
Qing export paintings in which traditional Chinese aesthetics
is combined with Western perspectives to meet Western
interests. The discussion extends to the contemporary
development of moxie in China by considering the case of
Dafen Cun, revealing the distortion and the distraction of the
traditional practice and the diversion of interests in the
global art market. This last chapter demonstrates that this
book is intended to supplement the hotly debated and dis-
cussed aspects of China’s expansion across the world’s art
horizon.
4 1 Introduction
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2What Is an Author? A Comparative Studyof Søren Kierkegaard
39. and Liu Xie
on the Meanings of Writing
This study analyzes Kierkegaard’s theory of authorship from
a comparative perspective, by using Liu Xie’s 劉勰 Chinese
literary criticism in Wenxin Diaolong《文心雕龍》as a
comparative model. It examines the meaning of an author’s
literature writing, the spiritual, the aesthetic dimensions, and
the creative force of compositional literary writing, and
finally the goal of writing, as elaborated by these two
authors. In Kierkegaard’s sense, the quality of writing is
mainly tied up with the religious mind of a person, while to
Liu, the quality of writing is related to the moral quality of a
person. The following examination demonstrates how
Kierkegaard and Liu complement and enrich each other in
the understanding of authorship and writing.
2.1 Introduction
There is a significant religious depth in Søren Kierkegaard’s
articulation of authorship in his work, The Point of View on
My Work as an Author, in which he states (Kierkegaard
1998, p. 23):
What I in truth am as an author, that I am and was a religious
author, that my whole authorship pertains to Christianity, to the
issue: becoming a Christian, with direct and indirect polemical
aims, at that enormous illusion, Christendom, or the illusion
that
in such a country all are Christian of Sorts.
Yet, Kierkegaard also pays attention to the aesthetic sense
in writing, and contrasted it with the religious dimension. It
should be very revealing to read into the meaning of his
creative literary writing, as this is a way to reach the essential
Kierkegaard and his philosophical peculiarities; a compara-
40. tive approach will also enhance the comprehension of his
understanding of authorship itself, which should be discov-
ered at the very core of his existentialist philosophy.
Seeing the value of this approach, this chapter is a
comparative study of the accounts of the nature of writing in
Kierkegaard and Liu Xie. Liu is the author of a major Chi-
nese work in literary criticism, Wenxin Diaolong, published
in the seventeenth century in China. It examines the meaning
of authorship, the religious and aesthetic dimensions of
writing, the origin of writing and finally, the differences
within solitarily writing and social writing as illustrated in
the works of these two authors, which reveal the purposes or
ends of writing.
2.2 What Is an Author?
Kierkegaard seems to have emphasized writing in a purely
religious sense by saying that, since he is a religious author,
it is on the whole a matter of indifference to him whether a
so-called aesthetic public has found, or would be able to
find, some enjoyment through reading the aesthetics in his
works. He described it as a deception in the service of
Christianity (Kierkegaard 1998, p. 23). Writing accordingly
is something he would do by means of every sacrifice and
effort in the service of (Christian) truth (Kierkegaard 1998,
p. 24). Writing is also based on Christian humility and
self-denial, which to Kierkegaard means denial of his per-
sonality, as someone who is caught up in self-love, pride,
eccentricity, madness, and so on. It is through the way of
Christian self-denial that one’s writing can come close to the
truth (Kierkegaard 1998, p. 25).
Yet for Kierkegaard there are also paradoxes in writing.
As a Christian, he could not make his God-relationship
public, since he believed it should be expressed by human
42. responsibility (Kierkegaard 1998, p. 36). In a word, the
quality of writing is mainly tied with the religious quality of
the author (as a Christian in Kierkegaard’s case).
Liu Xie obviously does not present writing as possessing
such a paradoxical tension, nor does there exist for him a
differentiation between writing qua human being and writing
qua a religious being.
According to Liu Xie, an author refers to the writing
subject, or the subject in writing, who produces all the
writing and originates both the ideas and the feelings of the
writing from the internal self. Moreover, the author should
be rather an empirical self, rather than a saint who does not
write. As he suggests in Wenxin Diaolong:
[By “literary mind,” I mean] the mental exertion in writing.
(Liu
2003, p. 711)
Thus the obscure becomes manifest and the internal is
externalized. (Liu 2003, p. 388)
[The ideal author should] arrive at judgments as impartial as
the equipoise of weighing scales and come to an understanding
as clear as the reflection from a mirror. (Liu 2003, p. 693)
One should eradicate bias and personal likes and dislikes…
Writings are never too profound, except when understanding is
shallow. (Liu 2003, p. 693).
Liu Xie elaborates his ideas of an author through his
discussion of how to nurture the qualities of one’s writing.
While Kierkegaard considers religious keenness as the
desired quality of an author, Liu presents the aesthetical
principles of the writing process in detail that include the
43. stage of imagination, choice and control of writing forms,
language practices, articulation of meaning, and the nature of
inspiration. He attributes the common qualities and capaci-
ties of all authors to seven categories, which all originated
from one’s heart; these include (i) talents; (ii) qi 氣;
(iii) learning; (iv) practice; (v) thinking; (vi) emotion; and
(vii) will (Liu 2003, p. 695).
In contrast, we should ask further: why is there a tension
between aesthetic writing and religious writing in Kierkeg-
aard’s work? Liu portrays the relation of the aesthetical and
spiritual dimensions as being in harmony, because both
originate from the author’s heart. To answer, we should
begin by elaborating how Kierkegaard distinguishes between
an aesthetic author and a religious author. In fact, these are
well reflected in his act of adopting pseudonyms in his
writings from 1843 to 1847.
2.3 Aesthetic Authors and Religious Authors
Kierkegaard does take the form/presentation of writing into
consideration, though he emphasizes that he is in the end, a
religious author who writes for the sake of Christianity. Yet
such form or presentation of writing can be justified when he
says, “such and such a phenomenon cannot be explained in
any other way, and that on the other hand it can in this way
be explained at every point, or that this explanation fits at
every point, then the correctness of this explanation is sub-
stantiated” (Kierkegaard 1998, p. 33).
Because the presentation of writing Kierkegaard mentions
is a deliberate duplexity from beginning to end, there is
something the author knows that his audience does not. This
duplexity refers to his saying that the author was always first
an aesthetic author, and then in the course of years changed
44. and became a religious author (Kierkegaard 1998, p. 30).
Nevertheless, the religious dimension is in fact present from
the very beginning, and the aesthetic dimension is also
present even in the last moment. As Kierkegaard suggests,
the only thing inexplicable is how it ever occurred to a
religious author to use the aesthetic in this way, while the
main thought throughout the entire work for such an author
is to become a Christian (Kierkegaard 1998, p. 41). This is
explained by the fact that the religious author must begin
with an aesthetic piece to be connected to his readers. In
order to guard against aesthetic excess, Kierkegaard says
writing cannot be practiced without “fear and trembling”; it
is at the same time a process of self-denial, in the sense that
one should not be distracted or overwhelmed by beautiful
words or sensations, for being a religious author is the key
aim (Kierkegaard 1998, p. 44).
One should notice that Kierkegaard has adopted pseud-
onyms in his writings from 1843 to 1847, and these writings
are referred by him as his “aesthetic writings,” In Kierkeg-
aard: An Introduction, Stephen Evans reminds readers that
Kierkegaard acknowledged in 1846 at the end of Concluding
Unscientific Postscript that he was the author of all those
pseudonymous works. Yet his explanation is that pseudon-
ymous “authors” have their own perspectives, just as char-
acters in a novel have views that may differ much from the
author of the novel (Evans 2009, p. 25). Evans admits that
by the time he wrote The Point of View for My Work as an
Author in 1846, Kierkegaard’s primary goals were religious.
Still, in contrast to the nominal Christian faith that domi-
nated his country and his society at that time, Kierkegaard
provides critical reflections on the nature of genuine Chris-
tian faith. As Kirmmse comments, Kierkegaard calls for a
return to what he refers to as “the Christianity of the New
6 2 What Is an Author? A Comparative Study of Søren
45. Kierkegaard …
Testament,” with its unconditional requirement to imitate
Christ that involves dying away from the world and an
unqualified willingness to suffer (Kirmmse 1990, p. 397).
This form of Christianity is compared to the Christianity of
established Christendom, with its “admiration,” its concern
with objective doctrines, and its fascination with the world
historical mediation of the truth and the historical triumph of
Christianity. It is said that in Kierkegaard’s view, the aim of
Christianity is total personal transformation and that if one is
to live, he is not to live naturally, but for “the eternal”
(Kirmmse 1990, pp. 466–467). In this sense, one must come
to a total break with Christendom and the old absolutist State
Church, which is unaware of the existence of the higher
mode of being, and desires nothing more than to stop up the
mouths of authentic “inward” individuals (Kirmmse 1990,
p. 492). In this way, he proposes what Evans confirms as a
form of “indirect communication”; he argues that commu-
nication which is ethical in nature or serves ethical-religious
ends must have the character of being “indirect.” This
explains and justifies his pseudonymity (Evans 2009,
pp. 26–27).
According to Jamie Ferreira, Kierkegaard wrote parallel
sets of aesthetic and religious writings throughout his career,
and published them alongside each other. One set of texts
was written under a variety of pseudonyms, while the other
set was written in his own name (“Søren Kierkegaard”),
including the series of “upbuilding” or Christian writings in
twenty-one edifying discourses. The former is basically an
aesthetic set of writing, which was generally described as an
“attack on Christendom” (Ferreira 2009, pp. 4–6). Examples
are the publication of EitherlOr under the pseudonym of
46. Judge William in February 1843 (Kierkegaard 1992), fol-
lowed by separate volumes entitled Repetition, (Kierkegaard
2009) and Fear and Trembling (Kierkegaard 2006). Besides
being aesthetical, these writings are regarded as taking up
the status of the “exception” in society (Hannay and Marino
1998, p. 5). This is related to the political changes in Den-
mark at that time, which included the establishment of a
constitutional monarchy and of a people’s church (Cross
1998, p. 135). Kierkegaard’s aesthetic writings echo his
suggestion of “an individual,” who should keep a distance
from the crowd, thinking and speaking as a genuine indi-
vidual. Critics said this form of writing was truer and more
poignant than attempts of contemporary theologians and
philosophers, whose systematic reconstructions ignored the
significance and attractions of the poly-pseudonymity and
stylistic variety of Kierkegaard (Cross 1998, p. 135). George
Pattison, for example, argues in his article, “Art in an Age of
Reflection,” that no theme recurs more consistently and
problematically in Kierkegaard than “the aesthetic.” He
mentions that Kierkegaard has diagnosed his time “as a
reflective age, an age without passion, in which [has] been
lost not only the immediacy required of great art, but also the
conditions for a religious understanding that allows us to see
that what currently counts as Christianity is a form of aes-
theticism” (Pattison 1998, p. 76).
There are several reasons for Kierkegaard’s adoption of
pseudonymity, the aesthetic form of writing being its form
and most significant justification. Andrew Cross said that
this starts from Kierkegaard’s master’s thesis, The Concept
of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates written in
1843, in which he finds in Socrates’ verbal irony the con-
tradiction between internal and external, a sense of detach-
ment, and an ironist’s air of superiority (Cross 1998, p. 135).
Cross points out that, among Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms,
47. Johannes Climacus of the Concluding Unscientific Post-
script, agrees with Socrates’ irony, arguing that irony is a
transitional phase between the aesthetic and ethical modes of
existence (Cross 1998, p. 135). Facing the existential
indifference and inauthentic claims of Christian living
among the People’s Church in Denmark of his time, Cross
interprets Kierkegaard’s playful use of irony as follows
(Cross 1998, p. 135):
[T]he expression of [his pseudonymous authorship is] the radi-
cal nature of his repudiation of human activity; to try to change
his world or simply to inveigh against it or even to withdraw
from it into some desert wilderness would be to attach some
importance to his outward, observable mode of life, and to
attach some importance to others’ understanding him, or at least
recognizing him to be different from them…. The ironist, being
truly independent, simply plays along, indifferent as to whether
anybody suspects that that is all he is doing.
In his thesis, Kierkegaard offers the best reasons for his
choice of writing aesthetically; he explains how it hides him
from the masses, and in this sense he identifies his writing
totally with the living attitude of Socrates toward his own
society (Cross 1998, p. 135)2:
In a certain sense, [Socrates] was revolutionary, yet not so
much
by doing something as by not doing something; but a partisan or
leader of a conspiracy he was not. His irony saved him from
that, for just as it deprived him of due civic sympathy for the
state, due civic pathos, it also freed him from being a partisan.
On the whole, his position was far too personally isolated, and
every relationship he contracted was too loosely joined to result
in anything…. [He] stood ironically above every relationship….
His connection with the single individual was only momentary,
and he himself was suspended high above all this in ironic
48. contentment.
Similarly, Kierkegaard’s aesthetic writing is a reflection
of his beliefs as an individual and a genuine Christian. As
Cross insightfully points out, Kierkegaard lives a life
opposite to those who claimed themselves to be Christians,
but whose purposes in life were determined by given desires
and ideals, by the norms of his society, without considering
2Cited from Kierkegaard’s master thesis entitled, The Concept
of Irony
with Continual Reference to Socrates, as quoted in Cross 1998,
p. 135.
2.3 Aesthetic Authors and Religious Authors 7
whether his society’s norms had any genuine authority over
them (Cross 1998, p. 137). His employment of aesthetic
writing also reflected the significance of the famous dictum,
“Subjectivity is truth.” Stated under the pseudonym,
Johannes Climacus, themes of subjectivity, inward-ness, and
what could loosely be referred to as the emotional life were
emphasized (Hannay and Marino 1998, p. 9). Ferreira fur-
ther relates this form of writing to the image of the religious
leap that Kierkegaard and his pseudonyms make generous
use of, laying the road all through the entire author-ship,
including the passion and imagination in Kierkegaard’s
account of religious transformation (Ferreira 1998, p. 207).
While Kierkegaard saw the need to communicate indi-
rectly on ethico-religious phenomena, especially while facing
pressures and accusations from the public at the time, he also
attacked deceptive public messages and hated the media
persons who produced those messages. These aspects of
49. Kierkegaard’s work can be found all throughout The Point of
View on My Work as an Author. He had no regrets in pro-
ducing his aesthetic writings. “[Some say] shame on me if I
was not willing to do [this writing] more courteously…. I was
very aware of what I was doing, that I was acting responsibly,
that not to do it would have been irresponsible, I did it”
(Kierkegaard 1998, p. 114). Kierkegaard explains that in his
later writings “the entire aesthetic production was taken into
custody by the religious; the religious put up with this
emptying out of the poetic;… the author was living in deci-
sive religious categories” (Kierkegaard 1998, p. 86). Yet
there are other meanings of the term “aesthetics” to which
Kierkegaard refers besides this style of writing and his
pseudonymous works. Stephen Evans points out that there
should be at least three meanings of the term “aesthetic”
implied in Kierkegaard’s writings; these refer to a particular
stage of existence, a characterization of art, and a dimension
of human life. Therefore, a person who lives ethically or
religiously does not leave the aesthetic behind, because it is
also a universal dimension of human life (Evans 2009, p. 69).
Liu Xie’s account of aesthetic writing refers to the art of
writing in general. He proposes to strike a balance between
pretention and authenticity when he suggests that there are
“six services” (liu yi 六義) in writing compositions (Liu
2003, p. 33):
To take the classics as models of composition renders six ser-
vices: the feeling will be deep, not affected; the style clear, not
mixed; the facts truthful, not false; the meaning straight, not
crooked; the form concise, not overgrown; the language beau-
tiful, not profuse.
Liu emphasized that language can be adorned by art, but
the most profound force and beauty of any writing spring
from an authentic mind (Liu 2003, p. 443). The beautiful and
50. the profound, which are the sources of all great writings, are
the result of the cultivation of the human mind and nature
(Liu 2003, p. 35). In the chapter entitled “Style and Natural
Endowments,” he writes that “If a writer excels in one of
these different styles, it is due to his learning” (Liu 2003,
p. 393). He then applied this understanding to his literary
reading and criticism of the Chinese classics, elaborating
them in “eight styles” (ba ti 八體), which are the elegant, the
recondite, the concise, the plain, the ornate, the sublime, the
exotic, and the frivolous. He elaborates (Liu 2003, p. 391):
Modeled on the classics, the elegant style is Confucian, while
the recondite with its abstruse diction and ornaments is Daoist.
Frugal with words and sentences, the concise style is charac-
terized by precision of analysis; straightforward in language and
clear in meaning, the plain style is cogent and to the point. The
ornate style is rich in metaphors and resplendent with orna-
ments; the sublime, expressing lofty ideas in grand designs,
dazzles with splendor. The exotic style renounces the old to
embrace the new and in so doing treads on strange and dan-
gerous bypaths; the frivolous, ostentatious in language but fee-
ble in thought, merely pursues the modish.
The evaluation of compositions is based on one’s genuine
feeling, which defines writing as succinct and truthful, and is
opposed to writings of mere artistry that are “flowery and
extravagant” (Liu 2003, p. 445). Liu criticized those writings
as being merely word plays and meaning-less (Liu 2003,
p. 425). Therefore, an aesthetic author should be an authentic
author, who may not be a religious author in Kierkegaard’s
sense. So questions arise: what defines authenticity in writ-
ing? What is its origin?
2.4 The Creative Force of Writing
51. Kierkegaard regards the Christian God as the creative force
of his writing; he claimed that he had incessantly needed
God’s assistance in order to be able to do a simple work or
assignment. His religious fervor is strong and understand-
able when he states (Kierkegaard 1998, p. 74):
I have been as if under arrest and at every moment sensed that it
was not I who played the master but that it was someone else
who was the master, sensed it with fear and trembling when he
let me perceive his omnipotence and my nothingness, sensed it
with indescribable bliss when I related myself to him and the
work in unconditional obedience.
He insists that it is authentic Christianity which is the
origin of writing and claims that to nurture the life of writ-
ing, authors must be cautious of both the aesthetic way and
speculative reasoning (Kierkegaard 1998, pp. 77–78). In a
word, aesthetic play as a style of writing is never the end of
writing, but something extra; it is something in tune with his
writing which has added “an extra string on my instrument”
(Kierkegaard 1998, p. 89). In a word, the origin of writing to
Kierkegaard is an authentic faith in Christ. Authenticity here
refers to the inwardness of an individual.
Liu Xie also agrees that the origin of art is at a meta-
physical level, but he puts it in Confucian terms. When it
8 2 What Is an Author? A Comparative Study of Søren
Kierkegaard …
comes to the origin of writing, it is qi which is the drive. Liu
says that nourishing qi, as the basic physical energy, will
follow one’s nature without conscious effort. It travels by
means of unobstructed thoughts and smooth feelings. One,
52. therefore, should not over-exert oneself in writing, or the
spirit will be exhausted and the vital energy will dissipate
(Liu 2003, p. 585). How does he describe this important
process? (Liu 2003, p. 595).
[W]hile writing, one must regulate and discharge his vitality
and
keep his mind tranquil and his vitality unimpeded. If vexed, he
should stop working in order to avoid clogging his mind. Once
inspired, he can apply his writing brush. Otherwise he may as
well put his writing brush away. Use leisure to relieve labor and
conversation to divert tension. Spare time to sharpen the mind,
and always maintain enough energy in writing. Thus your mind
will be as keen as a newly sharpened knife, and your bodily
pneuma (qi) will flow without obstruction.
Talent in writing also depends on vitality, as vitality
nourishes thoughts and thought shapes language (Liu 2003,
p. 377). Liu also claims that words and speech control the hub
of the physical world, which greets the ears and the eyes and
forms a circle of vitality or qi (Liu 2003, p. 375). Liu con-
sequently attributes the origin of writing to physical-and-
spiritual qi and its quality, which needs to be nourished,
cultivated, reformed, and expressed (Liu 2003, p. 377):
[M]ental void and emotional tranquility are essential for culti-
vating literary thought. Dredge the heart, purify the spirit. Use
diligence to accumulate knowledge, judgment to enrich talent,
experience to achieve thorough understanding, taste to select
language. Then thorough understanding, one can start writing in
according with the rules of prosody with a mind of unique
perception, one can wield the writing-brush to capture the
images in one’s vision.
He concludes that experience, learning, and a sense of
unity can together assist the working of the mind. When he
53. elaborates the mental or spiritual part of qi, he emphasizes a
physical perspective, saying that young men are more vig-
orous than experienced and elderly men, having strong
powers of judgment, but being weak in writing. It takes both
youthfulness and maturity to produce good writing. This is
why Liu says that the mystery of imagination lies in the
merging of the spirit with the physical world (Liu 2003,
p. 375). Besides the physical state, writing is also promoted
by knowledge, diligence, and learning. In this context, he
also mentions natural gifts or talents (Liu 2003, p. 527):
Talent is inborn; learning is attained. Some are learned, but not
talented; some are talented, but have no learning. A man weak
in
learning is inept at using allusions; a man poor in talent has
difficulty in handing language and feeling. That is the
difference
between learning and talent. Therefore, in organizing ideas into
compositions, in the conspiracy of the hearth with the writing
brush, talent plays the leading role, while learning assists.
When
talent is joined with learning, outstanding compositions will be
produced. If one is shallow in learning or poor in talent, his
works
will not be real achievements, however pretty they may appear.
Liu then proposes a classification of the talents of men,
something Kierkegaard did not do. In contrast with Kier-
kegaard’s authentic Christianity—where writing springs
from one’s faith in God and authentic religious experiences
—Liu traces the origin of writing to the spiritual experience
of the metaphysical Dao (Liu 2003, p. 3):
[When earthly patterns and heavenly images take shape], infe-
rior and superior places are established, and the two primal
powers of heaven and earth are born. Yet only when humans
54. join in does the Great Triad form. Endowed with the divine
spark of consciousness, humans are the quintessence of the five
elements, the mind of heaven and earth. When the mind is born,
speech appears. When speech appears, writing comes forth. This
is the way of Dao.
It is in the realm of the Dao that qi comes and goes. Qi
can be too overwhelming sometimes for the choice of words.
Under these circumstances, Liu says that ideas may rush in
like miracles; in those settings, words cannot easily be made
ingenious. Ideas come from the mind, but the choice of
words is guided by ideas; those two are closely knitted
together (Liu 2003, p. 379).
Besides stressing on metaphysical and religious experi-
ences, both Kierkegaard and Liu also emphasize the
authenticity of an author. They criticize writers who cherish
worldly ambitions in the disguise of words, and those who
actually pursue vain success, but write about unworldly joy.
The way to maintain authenticity for Liu is to abandon the
excessive forms that correspond to a mind full of desires.
“Only then can [the author] be considered to have integrated
ornament and substance and accomplished himself as a
writer” (Liu 2003, p. 499). Kierkegaard discusses authen-
ticity mainly in Christian terms, regarding writing as
“something [achieved] by means of every sacrifice and effort
in the service of the truth” (Kierkegaard 1998, p. 24). His
way to be authentic is to begin with self-denial—that is
denying choices based on self-love, pride, eccentricity, and
madness—since only God alone can allow him as an author
to understand the truth (Kierkegaard 1998, p. 25).
So, when an author decides on what should be written, he
will judge the topic’s suitability, to see if its explanations fit
at every point (Kierkegaard 1998, p. 33). Aesthetic judgment
corresponds to the religious mind governed by God; Kier-
55. kegaard maintains that his entire aesthetic production was
taken into custody by this religious awareness (Kierkegaard
1998, p. 85).
2.5 The Goals of Writing
Kierkegaard insisted that the author is “an individual human
being, no more and no less” (Kierkegaard 1998, p. 57). The
personal existence of an author must be in a close relationship
with God, one of self-denial and self-evacuation, allowing
2.4 The Creative Force of Writing 9
God’s governance to nurture the author, so that it is reflected
throughout the whole process of writing (Kierkegaard 1998,
p. 77). An author is always divided between being oneself
and not being oneself. He or she is never just himself or
herself in writing, since the true author is God. In addition,
the author is always situated in an existential context; Kier-
kegaard holds that one’s existential conditions would change
in “altogether accurate correspondence” with shifts in one’s
writing (Kierkegaard 1998, p. 70). Therefore, one should also
change one’s existential conditions in order to improve one’s
writing. If one fails in doing so, the crowd, which Kierkeg-
aard always condemned, would take over and twist the truth.
One of Kierkegaard’s famous proverbs states that “the
crowd” is untruth; he quoted the Apostle Paul in saying that
“only one reaches the goal” (Kierkegaard 1998, p. 106).
Kierkegaard confers a special meaning to the notion of
“that single individual.” The single individual is someone
every human being is or can be. It is also a category through
which, the age, history, and the human race must proceed in
order to become authentically religious (Kierkegaard 1998,
56. p. 115). Here one can read the multifaceted nature of a
personal being, one who is not just himself; but also a
religious person who should glorify God and promote the
Christian faith among people. Therefore, Kierkegaard states
that the religious author must first try to establish an affinity
with the people through the aesthetic form of writing. Yet in
order not to be taken over by the aesthetics form or pleasure
one creates for the crowd through writing, Kierkegaard
required the author to be certain of himself; this meant that
the author must relate to God “in fear and trembling”
(Kierkegaard 1998, p. 118).
How did Kierkegaard practice these principles in his own
Danish context? Describing his contemporaries (“the present
age”) as an age “devoid of passion, flaring up in superficial,
short-lived enthusiasm and prudentially relaxing in indo-
lence,” (Kierkegaard 1978–2000, Vol. 7, p. 65) Kierkegaard
was obviously provoked by their lethargy. It was also an age
of publicity flooded by miscellaneous announcements
through which no one could acquire any profound and
capacious learning. Instead, Kierkegaard was looking for
“consistent and well-grounded ethical views, sacrificial
unselfishness, and high-born nobility that renounce the
moment” (Kierkegaard 1978–2000, Vol. 8, p. 67). All these
seemed hardly possible to realize in his own time (Kier-
kegaard 1978–2000, Vol. 8, pp. 70–76).
[The age] lets everything remain; but subtly drains the meaning
out of it…. [I]t exhausts the inner actuality of relations in a
tension of reflection that lets everything remain, and yet has
transformed the whole of existence into… its facticity… a
passionless and very reflective age.
This explains the reason of his adoption of pseudonyms
in many writings: it is to express his criticisms in an indirect
57. and ironic manner. In Either/Or, Kierkegaard said that habit
and boredom have gained the upper hand, typical of “a
passionless and very reflective age”; but he also hoped that
“the present age” would become “the condition for a higher
form [of living] if a corresponding intensity takes over”
(Kierkegaard 1987, p. 258). That higher form of living is to
be supported by the author who has the humility and courage
to be aesthetically transformed (Kierkegaard 1987, Vol. 2,
p. 125).
[Such an author] feels as a character in a drama the deity is
writing, in which the poet and the prompter are not different
persons, in which the individual, as the experienced actor who
has lived into his character and his lines is not disturbed by the
prompter, but feels that he himself wants to say what is being
whispered to him… he who in the most profound sense feels
himself creating and created, who in the moment he feels him-
self creating has the original pathos of the lines,… he and he
alone has brought into actual existence the highest in aesthetics.
Kierkegaard tactfully responds to questions highlighting
the differences between aesthetic and ethical forms of life by
saying that “the aesthetic in a person is that by which he
spontaneously and immediately is what he is; the ethical is
that by which he becomes what he becomes. The person who
lives in and by and from and for the aesthetic that is in him,
that person lives aesthetically” (Kierkegaard 1987, Vol. 2,
p. 187).
What is this “higher form” of life? How does it affect
one’s own writing? The former question deals with being an
authentic self, a life filled with passion. The purpose of
writing for Kierkegaard is to bring passion and truth to
religious people by aesthetic means; this is the aesthetic state
of existence in a positive sense. Writing is personal, but its
purpose is for the meaning of religious self and the religious
58. faith of others. To exist religiously is to be concerned with
how to interpret such things as “self-denial” and “humility”;
these should not be isolated from aesthetic and ethical forms
of life. This explains his claim that writing is a true Christian
invention; its worth is determined by what it achieves
(Kierkegaard 1998, p. 44).
Liu has a different mundane agenda clearly spelled out
regarding the purpose of writing. In the postscript of Wenxin
Diaolong he clearly describes the function of literary writ-
ings: “[Through writing] the five rites are enacted, the six
government functions are performed, the sovereigns and
ministers are distinguished, and the army and the state are
glorified” (Liu 2003, p. 713). To achieve these purposes in
writing, the author should have impartial judgment, eradicate
his bias and personal likes and dislikes, and not be emo-
tionally stirred (Liu 2003, p. 695). Instead of attributing
religious sentiments to an author, Liu asserts a Confucian
way of life to regulate the physical nature and the temper-
ament of an author. He states that an author is an advisor on
state affairs, who should take up heavy responsibilities and
10 2 What Is an Author? A Comparative Study of Søren
Kierkegaard …
be a pillar of the state; when in office, he should use the
opportunity to bring about political achievements (Liu 2003,
p. 371). The purpose of writing is to make constructive
contributions to society. From a Confucian perspective, this
is grounded in the practice of self-cultivation. In sum, Liu
Xie prefers direct engagement in one’s present time and
society, contrasting significantly with Kierkegaard’s indirect
and ironic writing style. Consequently, Liu proposes a less
reflective or critical set of attitudes for a writer. Liu’s ideal
59. author seems to lead a life echoing ethical values, which
Kierkegaard described in Either/Or, Part II (Kierkegaard
1987, Vol. 2, p. 232):
The person who lives ethically has seen himself, knows himself,
penetrates his whole concretion with his consciousness, does
not
allow vague thoughts to rustle around inside him or let tempting
possibilities distract him with their juggling; he is not like a
‘magic’ picture that shifts from one thing to another…. He
knows himself.
2.6 Revelations Through Comparison: On
the Meaning of Authorship
One can also study Kierkegaard’s ideas about writing in
reference to Christian art. According to Thomas Aquinas,
religious art is a “thrust toward Transcendence” (Clarke
1983, pp. 301–314). Similarly, Kierkegaard’s portrayal of
writing reaches beyond the ordinary; it moves from within
the limitations of human life toward an ultimate dimension
of reality, as Aquinas also suggests (Aquinas 1944, Vol. 1,
pp. 808–810). Writing as a form of art is a matter of reaching
out from the finite toward the infinite, even though it is
expressed in finite sensible symbols.
Aquinas emphasizes the deeper metaphysical union of
soul and body in aesthetic expression. The point of departure
for the imagination and the resulting image used in human
artistic expressions are the sensitive and corporeal parts
united in one body. This is what individual writing means:
(Aquinas 1944, Vol. 1, pp. 808–810)
[T]he proper object of the human intellect, which is united to a
body, is the quiddity or nature existing in corporeal matter; and
it is through these natures of visible things that it rises to a
60. certain knowledge of things invisible. Now it belongs to such a
nature to exist in some individual, and this cannot be apart from
corporeal matter;…
Now we apprehend the individual through the sense and the
imagination.
The author must always begin with knowledge of the
sensible world and then be “led by the hand (of God)” to the
invisible through the visible (Clarke 1983, p. 310). Kierkeg-
aard’s Christian writing, as revealed in his discussions about
aesthetic and religious writing, is a matter of self-denial and a
final leap beyond the sensuous; it is a personal and religious
journey to be devoted to God.
It is said that the most mysterious aspect of a work of
religious art is where the individual genius of the artist
comes most to the fore; in the same way, the ends of writing
are to stimulate readers’ minds, hearts, and feelings so that
they will be spontaneously inspired to leave mundane
interests, and reach out toward the transcendent mystery of
the divine. In a word, religious writings should enable a
comparison between the sensible things of our experience
and a negation or denial of them in their present limited state
in the face of the transcendent (Clarke 1983, pp. 306–308).
Kierkegaard, in this sense, shares with Aquinas similar
ideas on religious writing. He justifies the presentation of
writing as a religious leap built upon the “duplexity” of first
being an aesthetic author and then becoming a religious
writer (Kierkegaard 1998, p. 30). Religious writing must
begin with an aesthetic theme in order to connect with
readers. Kierkegaard’s notion of self-denial is the concrete
expression of the religious leap; in this way self-love is
abandoned and subsequently the author’s heart-mind is filled
61. with the divine source for writing. But what seems to be
lacking in Kierkegaard’s discourse is that religious art’s
initial reference to the world is the author’s sense and
imagination, since the human act of knowledge is the act of
the whole human being, soul, and body (Clarke 1983,
p. 303). For Aquinas, writing is a springboard that goes
beyond the sensuous world to the formal essence of the
sensible thing itself or to its cause. Kierkegaard’s self-denial
accords with the negation of all self-imperfections and lim-
its, yet he does not elaborate the forms of religious writing
that employ symbolic expression. Religious art should, as
Norris Clarke puts it, “put forth a positive symbolic
expression of some similitude with the Transcendent, then
partially negates this similitude, by introducing some ele-
ments of strangeness or dissimilitude with our ordinary
experience on a finite material level” (Clarke 1983, p. 313).
Kierkegaard does ask for self-denial and self-emptiness to let
the Divine to take over in writing. The author is like an
empty vessel who, once guided by the Divine, will find the
appropriate form for his religious writing. Kierkegaard says
the only thing inexplicable is how it ever occurred to a
religious author to use the aesthetic style in such an ironic
way (Kierkegaard 1998, p. 34).
What is hidden here is the material, sensuous, or physical
dimension of Kierkegaard’s writing on authorial discourse.
This is a dimension that has been discussed in detail within
Wenxin Diaolong. However, discussion on physicality in
writing in The Point of View on My Work as an Author is not
clearly articulated (Kierkegaard 1998, p. 78).
2.5 The Goals of Writing 11
2.7 Somatic Sensibilities Informing Writing
62. How should writing be rooted in sensible realms? What role
does the body play in “existing” and in writing?
Liu provides a good discussion and some examples about
writing and bodily existence in Wenxin Diaolong.
Human beings are born with seven emotions. They are stirred in
response to the environment. It is natural that people will
express themselves when their emotions are stirred. (Liu 2003,
p. 63)
The mystery of imagination lies in the merging of the spirit
with the physical world. Vital energy (qi 氣) holds the key to the
spirit, which resides in the heart. Words and speech control the
hub of the physical world, which greets the ears and the eyes.
When the hub works smoothly, no forms of the world can be
hidden. When the key is clogged, the spirit wants to flee. (Liu
2003, p. 375)
One must regulate and discharge his vitality, and keeping his
mind tranquil and his vitality unimpeded. If vexed, he should
stop working in order to avoid clogging his mind. Once
inspired,
he can apply his writing brush. Otherwise he may well put his
writing brush away. Use leisure to relieve labor and conversa-
tion to divert tension. Then your mind will be as keen as a
newly
sharpened knife and your bodily pneuma (qi 氣) will flow
without obstruction. (Liu 2003, p. 595)
One can easily relate Liu’s discussion to Mencius’ theory of
the body, which we will not elaborate here (Mencius 2A.2, 6A:
14 and 15; 6B: 15 and 7A: 38. See Van Norden’s (2015)).
Still, it should be understood that the Confucian heaven
63. (tian 天) is the cosmological ground of everything in nature
(including human beings); humans’ essential characteristics
are endowed by heaven as the moral heart-mind (oftentimes
simply rendered as “mind”). Therefore, as Mencius elabo-
rates, the heart-mind is the noblest and the greatest compo-
nent of the body; it is more than simply physical because of
its moral consciousness or innate knowledge of goodness.
Smaller components in the human body are the physical
ones that have basic functions, like hearing and vision.
Physical needs or desires of the smaller components have to
be subordinated to the control of “thinking greatest-
component,” which constitutes the center of moral princi-
ples and will. Moral knowledge and its capability need to be
developed and pre-served in self-cultivation in order to
transform the physical human subject into the virtue of a
“great person” or sage.
Chung-ying Cheng points out that both moral psychology
and moral metaphysics are involved in this transformation,
providing a basis for understanding what a person should do
in one’s personal life and in one’s social intercourse with
others. According to traditional Confucianism, this process
is the central and ultimate concern of human activity (Cheng
1991, p. 188–195). Mencius’ discussion, which has shaped
the related discourses in Wenxin Diaolong, demonstrates the
significant exercise of the mind in dominating and repressing
the smaller components of the body. For it is only through
the stimulation of the mind and the hardening of the body,
that a person is able to fulfill any great responsibility
bestowed on them by heaven (Mencius 6B:15). The vital
point in creative writing is not to lose control of one’s mind
or let the mind lose the focus on moral education and
knowledge. This is thoroughly discussed in the chapter on
“Style and Natural Endowments” in Wenxin Diaolong.
These principles contribute to the nourishment of the flood
