Aesthetics East and West

Abstract

Van Meter Ames, in his review of Essays in East-West Philosophy, has remarked that the 1949 Philosophers' Conference unhappily neglected any serious consideration of aesthetics East or West.' As a member of that Conference, I must agree with Ames that aesthetics was neglected in 1949 and that such neglect was unfortunate, particularly for those who do their best to keep abreast of twentieth-century times. It is to be hoped, of course, that the next Conference will broaden out not only geographically but also problematically, i.e., with respect to the range of problems considered central to the philosopher's quest. If philosophy is concerned, ultimately, with the nature of man and his relationship to the world in which he lives, then man's drive toward aesthetic expression, being as basic and as ineradicable as man's drive toward intellectual understanding, moral evaluation, or social reconstruction, must be an object of serious concern for the philosopher. It may be granted that a total approach to philosophy is, geo-culturally, an East-West approach; but within the framework of this total approach the world must be viewed not merely as something to be known and shared, but also as something to be expressed artistically and enjoyed or responded to aesthetically. What man is, how man views his world, and what man is spiritually capable of achieving-all of these are embodied not only in the Ethics of Spinoza, the Principles of Euclid, and the Analects of Confucius, but also in the sonnets of Shakespeare, the quartets of Bart6k, and the paintings of the Southern Sung artists. Observations of this kind should be so obvious as to be quite unnecessary. And yet, although there are a number of volumes devoted to the history of Western aesthetic theory, most historians of general philosophy concern themselves only with epistemological, metaphysical, and socio-moral issues. Indeed, one of the few philosophical works in English which is basically historical in its orientation and which includes, as a major part, aesthetic considerations, is the volume by Schoen, Schrickel, and Ames entitled Understanding the World.2 But even here we find what actually amounts to three