Aesthetic Attitude and Phenomenological Attitude: From Zhu Guangqian to Husserl

Abstract

The anti-naturalistic attitude of the phenomenological attitude is closed to the aesthetic attitude of the artist who shows no interest in the epistemologicalontological aspect as well as the pragmatic aspect of worldly objects. Husserl came to the awareness of the specific character of the phenomenological attitude he had adopted since a decade when he discovered the proximity of the attitude of an artist with his own philosophical attitude in 1907 through the encounter with the art work of his relative Hugo van Hofmannsthal, the famous Austrian playwright and poet. In order to shed light on Husserl’s important discovery, this essay will start by elucidating the basic essential characteristic of the aesthetic attitude provided by the famous contemporary Chinese aesthetic philosopher Zhu Guangqian. With Zhu’s elucidation of the aesthetic attitude in mind, we will try to show not only the proximity of the phenomenological attitude with the aesthetic attitude, but also the interwoven usage of imagination and perception in Husserl’s phenomenological method. This will also help us to understand why the study of art work occupies a privileged place in the phenomenological movement after Husserl.