Stephen C. Pepper
and Chinese
Philosophy of
Art*
Suncrates
Respectfully dedicated
to
Lewis E. Hahn,
The greatest Contextualist as
Com-fusionist
of
Since John Dewey and Stephen C. Pepper,
An archetype of devoted educator,
teacher, and scholar
A great bridge-builder for
cultural interflow between East and West
And truly a consummate artist
of living wisely!
Foreword
The basic principles are the same the world
over. In fact, for me it was a
special joy to
recognize as if in a Chinese character some
principles I had often taught in English.1
---- Stephen C.
Pepper
As
this Congress is held as part of the activities for celebrating the 500th
anniversary of Columbus’ arrival in America, I propose to discuss “Stephen C.
Pepper and Chinese Philosophy of Art” — a topic which I hope would be found
both appropriate and relevant to our central themes “America and Its
Philosophical Expression.”
Paradoxically, intent on finding a “short-cut” to the Orient, Columbus
discovered America — a New World that was destined to play the historical role
as the meeting place of cultures East and West, North and South. No less paradoxically, intending to develop
what is a typically American theory of art and beauty, Pepper has hit upon a
real “short-cut” to the Orient — an Old World that is full of aesthetic
experiences, beauty and insights. We
refer particularly to his monumental work Aesthetic Quality: A Contextualistic Theory of Art and Beauty (1937). In this sense Stephen C. Pepper is the
As the
common saying goes, he who confesses is blessed. Allow me to begin with a confession.
While
first studying Aesthetic Quality back
in the late sixties, my initial impression was that Pepper sounded very much
like a Chinese philosopher of art, even speaking with a Chinese accent, if one
read between the lines. So exhilarated,
I told my mentor Professor Lewis E. Hahn — too prematurely perhaps — of my
youthful joy of “discovery.” As usual,
Hahn asked me for sufficient concrete, hard evidence. I had none at the time
until months afterwards when, as luck would have it, I happened to find the
final confirmation in Pepper’s own words:
When
Nietzsche called Kant “the great Chinese in Königsberg”
it is, I believe, because he had never heard of Pepper, who urged: “We could do with a lot of qi in
Two
scores have nearly passed since I first tasted the sheer joy of discovery. In
this short comparative study, however, my focal interest has shifted from the
5th century Chinese art critic Xie He (fl. 490) to
Shi Tao (1630-1717), one of the greatest creative artists and the most
penetrating and profound, the most original and systematic philosopher on the
Chinese art of painting that
Lastly, availing myself of this opportunity, I wish to dedicate to Lewis
E. Hahn this short piece of comparative studies in philosophy of art to arouse
congenial interests and responses from the younger generation of creative minds
the world over, whether East or West.
Suncrates
April, 2009
*****
One of the best writers on aesthetics
this country has produced.
….
Nothing he wrote has so much truth
and penetrating originality as his
Aesthetic Quality, a masterpiece
of analysis of aesthetic categories.3
---- Charles Hartshorne
on Pepper
1. The Challenge from
Kant: What Imparts Life to Works of Art?
It is
to Immanuel Kant, father of our modern aesthetics, that I owe the most
challenging formulation of the problem to be dealt with by any philosophers of
art:
“A poem may be very pretty and elegant, but is
soul-less. A narrative has precision and
method, but is soul-less. A speech may
be good in substance and ornate withal, but is soul-less. Even of women we may
say she is pretty, affable, and refined, but is soul-less. Now what is meant by ‘soul’ (Geist)?”4
Indeed, this question, posed by Kant, gets to the very soul and core of
all aesthetic reflections East and West. Yet nevertheless the German term Geist (for ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’) is hopelessly vague, though
highly suggestive. “What is characteristical of the
word,” comments Henry W. Cassirer (son of Ernest Cassirer), “is its indefiniteness. Geist
is a quality that is felt rather than thought.
It is strictly indescribable.”5 Kant speaks of it as “the animating
principle in the mind” and treats it in connection with the concept of ‘genius’
as “the creative faculty of presenting aesthetic ideas,” adding “I shall have
an opportunity hereafter of dealing more fully with ideas of this kind.”6 Unfortunately he
never did have such an opportunity.
So
far we seem to be left in a Kantian labyrinth in the company of “aesthetic
ideas” as counterpart to “rational ideas” (the former being inexponsible
and the latter, indemonstrable). A
Sino-American conjoint solution to this German puzzle is called for. At any rate, however, the Kantian question
provides us with an excellent point of departure—even an Archimedian
point, so to speak—for comparative studies in aesthetics. Moreover, the Kantian heritage, as we see,
proves to be a rich patrimony for Pepper who knows how to stand upon the
shoulders of his predecessors, ancient or modern.
To
begin with, I suggest: Replace the
phrase ‘soul-less’ with ‘quality-less” and then you see a world of difference!
It sounds better, more agreeable, and makes more sense. It gets to the whole
point of our concern today. I am
convinced that ‘quality’ is the core-concept not only for art theories alone, but
to all practitioners of the art of living wisely (to quote E. A. Burtt).7
2. Pepper in Contemporary American Philosophy and Aesthetics
In
The New American Philosophers (1968) Professor Andrew Reck
of
“Pepper occupies a prominent position in
contemporary American philosophy. While
C. I. Lewis has taught that the immediate quality of all experience is
aesthetic, it was Pepper who, more than any thinker of his generation, made
aesthetics and philosophy of art the technical fields of study they are now.
Other thinkers…. were later to make significant contributions to the area,
particularly I. K. Feibleman and Paul Weiss, but none
matches Pepper as aesthetician and philosopher of art.”8
Undoubtedly it is no exaggeration to say that Pepper remains the
greatest of
3. A Marshalling Hand
at Work
“When
we come to contextualism, we pass from an analytic
into a synthetic type of theory,”9 Pepper declares in World Hypotheses. Though
it makes few references to other aesthetic writers, any perceptive mind who
reads between the lines cannot but feel a marshalling hand that is constantly
at work: it moves, moulds, and melds.
Many of the important discoveries in the field, ancient or modern, are
fused, as it were, in a seamless manner into a coherent whole, a newer and
higher synthesis. Synthesis—that
is the key-note, the tenor of all contextualists.
Like
a work of art itself, Aesthetic Quality exemplifies
the principle of fusion par excellence. Worthy insights of alien (exotic?)
theories, as well as conflicting views and issues of a perennial nature, are
skillfully and successfully incorporated into his own system, wherein each of
them has been assigned its due place and proper order. Pepper has an unusual flaire
for things of beauty and value, capable of appreciating a variety of insights
of all major figures from Plato down to John Dewey and Merleau-Ponty,
while differing from them all in one way or another. He has a discriminating taste in the
superlative. For example, he has refined
Dewey, criticized Whitehead, rejected Croce, expanded Bergson
and made wise use of Kant and Hegel.
Unlike Dewey, he has the lingering influences of Hegel and even the neo-Hegelians
expurgated from the contextualistic positions. Unlike
Whitehead, he is free from “the logician’s and the mathematician’s bias”;
unlike Croce, he has no fear of Conflict, Analysis, and Regularity! Unlike Bergson, he has transcended the “intuition vs. intellect”
dualism! Unlike Kant, he is no formalist; unlike Hegel, he has cut off the
Absolute! With all these, he is able to advance contextualism
as twin-sister of Dewey’s pragmatism, but younger and prettier. As a
philosophic writer, he is profound without being “muddle-headed,”
and clear without being “simple-minded.”
4. Dewey and Kant: Two Rich Sources of Inspiration
The
character shared by Pepper and Dewey is such that what one finds in the younger
sister one finds also in the elder, but not vice versa:
“There is very little stated in Aesthetic Quality that is not also
better stated in Art as Experience, but the point is merely that many things
are not stated in Aesthetic Quality which
are said in Art as Experience, and which I believe should not be said by a pragmatist.”10
This,
as any one can perceive, is quite a charge against Dewey’s position in
pragmatism as impure, or hybrid.
Pepper’s humorous and witty remarks of criticism aroused Dewey’s rather
strong reaction. His is an
anti-monopolistic defense, in the form of a mild but firm and strong
protest. In his own words:
“Mr. Pepper … makes words like whole, coherence,
integration, etc., the ground of his charge, rather than situation. His charge
of an organicism has something in common with
Russell’s charge of ‘holism.’ … He assumes that I have combined an anti-pragmatistic position with a genuinely pragmatistic
one…
Thus, Dewey goes on to cite as witnesses ancient
Greek thinkers, modern organicistic philosophers, organismic biologists who are all allowed to use with great
freedom the same words without being subject to the same kind of charges as he
is. In fact, these words, from the
ancient Greeks down to the modern (Hegelian) school of objective idealism, are
originally “borrowed from esthetic experience” and “then illegitimately
extended until they become categories of the universe at large, endowed with
cosmic imports.”
“I close by saying that I don’t believe that any
school of philosophy has a monopolistic hold upon the interpretation of such
words as whole, complete, coherence,
integration, etc. … I am not prepared to deny to writers of this school
genuine esthetic insights; and in so far as these insights are genuine, it is
the task of empirical pragmatistic esthetics to do
justice to them without taking over the metaphysical accretions.”11
Dewey
might have said, “Mr. Pepper, our positions are far closer than you imagine or
put. You lend me great support when you reverse your previous dictum by saying
instead”:
‘For organicism the
coherence of feelings is central, while for pragmatism it is secondary and
instrumental, … While for pragmatism quality is central and for organicism [it is] only a sort of corollary.’[12
(When I say the same) Pepper
accuses me of deserting pragmatism for organicism!”
Thus, Dewey sums up his defense with a skillful
counterattack. As a matter of fact,
these two positions are essentially distinct but related; there is no such
thing as a neat bifurcation between them.
Though
one has every legitimate right and reason to endorse Andrew J. Reck’s assessment that Pepper’s Aesthetic Quality surpasses Dewey’s Art as Experience in precision
and purity, yet let us not be blinded to the fact that Pepper’s strength
primarily lies in the clarity of exposition, whereas Dewey’s lies in the
boldness and massiveness of invention and conception. Methodologically speaking, Pepper is found to
be not completely flawless, in that he should have made better choices of root
metaphors for organicism and pragmatism. For how can he justify his claim for
maintaining the autonomy of each world hypothesis -- formism,
mechanism, organicism, and contexutalism--
while still keeping one and the same root metaphor, “historic event,” for the
latter two? (Though at times he attempts
to distinguish the two as integrative vs. dispersive, treating them as two
species of the same theory.)
Specifically he even calls contextualism a
“dispersive” organicisim.
Admittedly
we accept the common ground for these two; their key difference nevertheless is
a matter of focal emphasis. One starts
with historic event as its root metaphor; the other, situation. One takes quality as central, the other,
coherence. Thus, in order to prevent
unnecessary confusions I suggest keeping situation as the root metaphor for contextualism and historic event (or organism) for organicism, respectively.
What Samuel Johnson has said about the early poets and their followers
in later times applies perfectly well to our present case: “The first excel in
strength and invention, and the latter in elegance and refinement.”13 One characteristic
feature of Pepper as a philosophical writer is his remarkable clarity in
exposition and cogency in logical construction.
On the other hand, we may offer our tribute to the reverse virtues of
Dewey using a Chan-like Chinese proverb: “No big fish in too clear waters!”
The
remarkable thing, however, is that despite his sharp criticism of and explicit
deviation from Dewey in certain technical aspects methodologically considered,
Pepper has high admiration for him. As he told me in person at SIUC (1970), “If only five classic works
in the field of aesthetics could be mentioned, Dewey’s Art as Experience should
be among the list.” This is quite
a tribute from a philosopher of art in the strictest sense of the term. While Dewey speaks of Art as Experience in general, Pepper would rather have the
aesthetic field located in terms of ‘quality’, thus distinguishing the
quantitative from the qualitative (standard) definition of beauty. On the basis of Dewey’s integrationist
insight into Art as Experience,
Pepper further differentiates ‘quality’ into three dimensions: (1) intensity
(vividness); (2) extensity (spread); and (3)
depth (social significance), distinctively paralleling Irwin Edman’s four-dimensional view of art as (l) the
intensification, (2) the clarification, (3) the interpretation, and (4) the
unification of experience, as advanced in Arts and the Man. The whole text of Aesthetic Quality is devoted to a systematical
elaboration of such a three-dimensional criterion of beauty as enhanced
quality. A work of art ought to pass this strict criterion before it can be
called truly great; highest beauty has to meet all these three standards. So advocates Pepper. (For details, see Aesthetic Quality.)
Evidently, Dewey remains for Pepper one rich source of inspiration, the
other being Kant.
For
Pepper, no less suggestive than Dewey is Kant.
He has made full use of the Kantian heritage. To mention a few points: (l) the Kantian
notions of perception, apperception and idea of constituting the three steps of
relevant (imaginative) construction; (2) the Kantian theme of the “happy
relation” (harmony) of Imagination and Understanding as productive of aesthetic
ideas; (3) the Kantian contention that in aesthetic activities Understanding is
at the service of Imagination while in intellectual activities the relation is
reversed; and (4) the Kantian contrast of the Conceptual to the Non-Conceptual
Columns, taken emphatically, but not exclusively.
Such
important insights in the Kantian tradition, unfortunately, are deplorably
ignored by Croce and Bergson alike, yet they lead
Pepper to exclaim “
|
Feeling, or Non-Conceptual |
Concept or Conceptual |
|
(a)
inexponsible unexpoundable (b)
indemonstrable (a)
symbolic |
(a)
exponsible (b)
demonstrable (3c
schematic (or signal) |
By ‘inexponsible’ is meant ‘incapable of being reduced to concepts’
and by ‘indemonstrable’ is meant ‘incapable of being proved by concept.” The Non-Conceptual Column corresponds to
three types of knowledge (each being a form of a synthetic a priori Judgments):
(l) aesethetic (aesthetic ideas); (2) moral (rational
ideas); and (3) religious (symbolic knowledge).
The scope of knowledge taken in its inclusive sense is co-extensive with
the entire realm of human experience. On
the other hand, the Conceptual Column represents only one type of knowledge,
namely, the theoretical arrived conceptually (or relationally, intellectually,
etc.).
What
is of crucial importance in the above schematic representation is the
relationship between these two Columns as emphatic?,
not exclusive. Croceans
and Bergsonians have missed this whole point, hence,
one opposes intuition to concept; the other insists on brushing the concept
aside! To say that the aesthetic
judgment is non-conceptual does not imply that it is completely free from concepts;
it simply signifies that the distinctive character of such a judgment is not
conceptual; for in aesthetic experience no primacy is allowed to concept
(Understanding); but to feeling (Imagination).
We remain thus immune from any sort of bifurcations. Such an interpretation is warranted by hints
derived from the Kantian contention stated above in (3); its consequents are so
enlightening that many of the Kantian oppositions such as knowledge vs. faith;
phenomena vs. noumena; the sensible vs. the
supersensible; in short, concept vs. feeling, must be seen in a new light as
contrast which, for Whitehead, is a mode of synthesis and, for Pepper, a mode
of fusion. The original Kantian epoch-making statement “Deny knowledge in order
to make room for faith” must make room for the revised version: “Deny knowledge
in order to make room for feeling”! For
faith is but a specific form of feeling, religious, moral, or cognitive.
In
line with the above elucidation we are readily led not only to the realization
of the epistemological imports of aesthetics, that what can be known can also
be felt, but that what can be felt cannot be merely known, i.e.,
conceptually. But, more importantly, we
are led to the realization of the primacy of the experiential — a grand theme
shared in common almost by all major philosophers of the contemporary age:
Whitehead, Dewey, Heidegger, Michael Polanyi, Pepper,
... etc. The main contention of Popper’s
Concept and Quality is based on the same insight. It sheds much light on the moot issues in
value-theories in general. What is value?—but a quality felt, a quality that
arouses our admiration and appreciation.
For Pepper, quality emerges from the dialectical interplay of the
intuitive and the intellectual through fusion. It is treated in connection with
its co-relational concept of texture. To Pepper, as to posterity, Kant means
far more than he himself could ever dream!
5. Presuppositions of
the Contextualistic Theory of Art
For a
fuller justification of Popper’s aesthetic theory we are referred to his
metaphysics as outlined in World Hypotheses.
Fundamentally considered, the affinity between Pepper and Chinese
aesthetic views is deeply seated in the congeniality of their metaphysics and,
moreover, in the kinship of their temper of mind. Obviously, it is out of place in this short
study to get into any in-depth discussion of the metaphysics of either. It
suffices to mention, en passant, chiefly for comparative purposes: (I) The root
metaphor for contextualism is ‘event’ or ‘historical
event’ — an event alive with its present or, as with Dewey, ‘situation’; (2)
The four fundamental categories in contextualism are
change and novelty, quality and texture (two pairs of co-relatives); (3) one of
the basic presuppositions of contextualism is the
belief that no event, if put into its proper context, is lacking in quality;
(4) ‘quality’ as a categoreal
concept cannot be defined, nor treated apart from its co-relative concept
‘texture.’ However, (5) it can be interpreted and shown thus: “The quality of a
given event is its intuited wholeness or total character; the texture is the
details and relations which make up that character or quality.”14 For example, the
quality of any piece of music is something that emerges as a result of the
fusion of all strains and notes as a whole.
6. The Chinese and Contextualistic Temper of Mind
If
aesthetics presupposes metaphysics, we must add, metaphysics presupposes a
certain temper of mind. In fact, these
three form a sort of trinity. Professor Bahm’s grand
theme that aesthetics implies and is implied by metaphysics is best exemplified
in the case of contextualism and the entire Chinese
philosophical tradition, though the same can be said of many other systems such
as those of Plato, Plotinus, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer,
Whitehead, Dewey, Heidegger, Bergson, etc. In all
such cases a given metaphysical system is inspired by aesthetic visions and
insights. Nay, it is, in the final analysis, but an
aesthetics in disguise! It is
interesting to note that in spite of all his “passionate skepticism” Bertrand
Russell “frankly confesses” that his “motives for several faiths are of an
aesthetic, not of logic, sort.”15
Nowhere else is Pepper found more congenial with the Chinese way than in
his contextualistic temper of mind.
And nowhere else has he more tellingly betrayed (revealed) such a temper of
mind than in Principles of Art
Appreciation, where it is stated:
“. . . to be dogmatic in our perceptions is to
shut ourselves off from an enormous amount of enjoyment in the perceptions of
other men and other cultures, and from an enormous amount of true understanding
of the world in which we live. ...
And in painting we gain in the understanding of
nature by relaxing our dogmatism and our provincial certainties, and considering
the insights of all these sensitive perceivers of nature, so also in
philosophy.16
In Aesthetic Quality he warns bad
critics: “To judge a work bad, a critic
must be big enough to see all around it and all through it.” The attitude
herein recommended for art critics and philosophers in general is an aesthetic attitude, the habit we are encouraged to cultivate is an art
habit which, for Whitehead, is the habit of enjoying vivid values. The purpose of all education, artistic or
philosophic, is the enlargement of the scope of value-appreciations. The
principles of art appreciation turn out to be the principles of wise ways of
living or, as with E. A. Burtt, “the art of living
wisely.” The above words from Pepper
should be held up as motto for any student of comparative studies in any areas
of choice. Such a wholesome attitude and
temper of mind, basically aesthetical in character, appreciative, undogmatic, sensitive, receptive, open-minded,
large-hearted, comprehensive, is wholeheartedly endorsed by Abraham Maslow, the distinguished American humanistic psychologist,
who terms the “receptive” “Daoistic” in the sense of
“Holistic” or “Wholistic.” But it is echoed by all great minds in the
Chinese cultural traditions. For example, Kongzi
(Confucius) is admired above all for being free from four human weaknesses:
“arbitrariness, cocksure certainty, dogmatism, and ego-centricity”; Laozi enlightens the world with his insightful remarks:
“Receptivity, hence impartiality; impartiality, hence eminence; eminence, hence
the way of Heaven; the Way of Heaven, hence Dao; Dao, hence everlastingness.”
The Confucian classics as a whole are replete with similar insights on “the art
of living wisely” by first developing a mature, enlightened personality with a wholistic perspective and attitude: one who is able to “Be conciliatory yet
without identifying with others”17 so as to “Respect difference while enjoying
agreement.” The latter has become the guideline for the conduct of human life
moving towards a far more viable world order characterized by harmony and
creativeness. For all these, we must
say, a certain contextualistic awareness of the
importance of the pluralistic approach to matters of value is intrinsically
indispensable, no matter where or when.
The
whole secret of the Chinese way of doing philosophy is best revealed by
Professor Thomé H. Fang, when he declalres:
“The Chinese are artists before they become philosophers.”18 It is a bold statement that epitomizes
Zhuangzi’s vision: “A sage is one who, on the basis
of the cosmic beauty, is enabled to perceive and comprehend the Reason inherent
in all things” (and the meanings thereof).
Both confirm the insightful observation of George Rowley “The Chinese
way of looking at life was not primarily through religion, or philosophy, or
science, but through art.”19
In other words, it adopts an aesthetically-oriented approach and
attitude towards life and all life-activities.
Such an attitude proves to be most congenial to the contextualistic
temper of mind on the ground of trans- or meta-philosophical
considerations. Their kinship in mentality, in temper of mind, nourished in
what Professor Northrop calls “the immediately apprehended aesthetic
continuum,” is best reflected in their metaphysics — their world views or, as
with Pepper, their world hypotheses. The
contextualistic formulation of change and novelty,
quality and texture as fundamentals sounds like a pocket edition of the
fundamental principles of Chinese philosophy of creativity (Yi-Jing or The Book of Creativity). It is a de luxe pocket
edition of the Yi-Jing. In both cases we can meaningfully talk about
the metaphysical foundation of aesthetics as well as the aesthetical foundation
of metaphysics. In fact, we have good
reason to claim that at bottom for the Chinese, as for the contextualists,
aesthetics is meta-metaphysics!
7. Fundamentals of
Chinese Metaphysics
As
said before, both the contextualist and the Chinese
world hypotheses stand as colossal exemplars of the grand theme of the mutual
implication of aesthetics and metaphysics. Turning now to the metaphysical
consideration, we may highlight certain essential features of the Chinese view
such that one can easily spot the affinity as well as difference between the
two systems. In the light of Pepper’s
root-metaphor method, the Chinese world hypothesis can be shown to be a
root-metaphor philosophy, par excellence.
It is called “creative humanism” grounded in and generated by the
root-metaphor of “creative act” or “co-creative act.” It is a humanism grounded on Creativity as
the ultimate ultimacy, which accounts for the unity
of heaven, man, and earth (nature) in the process of the cosmic transformation
and change.
The
spirit of the Chinese tradition of creative humanism or, what amounts to the
same, creativism, can be summed up in a ninefold characterization : (l) process view in cosmology;
(2) value-centric view in ontology, implying a functional view of substance;
(3) trans-dualism in methodology; (4) experientialism in epistemology: (5)
pragmatism in philosophy of action, emphasizing on unity of theory and
practice; (6) existentialism in philosophy as elucidation of Existenz or human reality; (7) pan-pene-theism
in religion; (8) vivid qualityism in aesthetics; and
(9) empathy and-sympathy theory in ethics.
Contextualism
and the Chinese position have at least (1), (3), (4), (5) and (8) in common.
As to
the formulation of metaphysical principles or categoreal
concepts, the Chinese thinkers inspired by Zhuangzi
tend more towards Pepper than Whitehead, without the latter’s logician and
mathematician bias. The above quoted statement by Zhuangzi
can be hermeneutically interpreted in our modern terminology: “A philosopher is
one who, on the basis of the pervasive Aesthetic
Quality in nature, is enabled to construct a world hypothesis in terms of
which every item of our life experience can be interpreted.” Basically, metaphysics,
as Pepper sees it, is an art of interpretation. We have no use for the Whiteheadian
criteria of the ‘logical’ and ‘neccessary.’ Thus by revising the Whiteheadian
view of speculative philosophy, we may justly affirm that metaphysics consists
in the endeavor to form an incomplete (open), interdependent, and coherent
scheme of general ideas, i.e., notions of the utmost generalities, in terms of
which every item of our life experience can be interpreted.
Professor Fang’s formulation of the Chinese metaphysical principles in
two versions fits in with the requirement of adequacy very well. His earlier, fuller account lists six
principles: (l) Life, (2) Love, (3) Creative Advance, (4) Primordial Unity, (5)
Equilibrium and harmony, and (6) Extensive Connection. These six principles are
later condensed into four: (1) Life, (2) Extensive connection, (3) Creative
Creativity, and (4) Creative Life as Process of Value-Actualization. Each of these categories is further
differentiated into certain sub-categories, such as Emergence of Novelty under
the Principle of Life, Communion through Contrast under the Principle of Love,
etc. (not to be elaborated here.)
Comparing the above formulation with Pepper’s four principles of change
and novelty, quality and texture, we will notice some important parallel
insights, such as change and novelty for Life, Creative Advance, Emergence of
Novelty; and texture for Process of Value-Actualization, Extensive Connection,
etc. The concept of fusion and its Chinese counterparts,
equilibrium and harmony, are basic and central in both systems. It is
the core-principle, an aesthetic principle applied to metaphysics,
that works wonders in human as well as cosmic creative activities.
8. The Chinese View of Art: A 3-Dimensional Characterization
In as
much as the Chinese aesthetical principles are expanded into a system of
metaphysical thought centering on the unity of the personal life and the
cosmos, we are led to the realization of the intimate relationship between art
and man. What is art? As formulated by Professor Fang in Creativity in Man and Nature, “However
varied and colorful has been the conception of art in art-history, the business
of art which is fine in nature, as of all creative activities, is to broaden,
to deepen, and to elevate the horizons of all human experience in infinite
dimensions.”20 Such
a definition of art, based on insights derived from rich sources in the Chinese
tradition, such as Confucianism, Daoism, and even the Chinese Mahayana Buddhism
(including the Chan Sect), is intended for the meeting of East and West on the
ground of art. The emphasis on
‘elevation’ is owed to the Chinese philosophical anthropology and psychology,
the height-psychology, so to speak, in the Confucian, Daoist,
and Buddhist traditions. Notice its
affinity with Dewey and Pepper — Professor Fang, having been taught by Dewey
only for one year as an undergraduate, proves to be the greatest spokesman for
Chinese philosophy in the 20th century.
Not only is there a Deweyian tincture in his
choice of words like ‘experience’; but also a Pepperian
tendency in his preference of a three-dimensional criterion of beauty. We find at least that Pepper’s 3-D
characterization of great beauty in terms of the intensity, extensity, and
depth of quality parallels so closely to Fang’s version in terms of the
broadening, deepening, and elevating of the horizons of human experience (n
infinite dimensions), that one cannot fail to perceive the amazing similarity
between them. At any rate, however, we
may well take Fang’s definition as representing the Chinese creative humanistic
view of art. It cannot be put better.
9. Pepper’s
Appreciation of Chinese Art and Aesthetics
Kongzi and Zhuangzi are said to
be the two greatest philosophers of art in ancient
However we learn very little from Kongzi on
painting; he lived at a time when the art of painting had not fully developed
in
“Her
fascinating smiles, how dimpling they are!
Her
beautiful eyes, how beaming they are!
….
All shining forth from the original state of her person.”
Zixia
(intimate name: Shang), one of Kongzi’s
most studius and scholarly disciples, who afterwards
became a distinguished teacher-scholar of the Master’s thought for his age,
asked,
“What does it signify?”
“Just as in the case of embroidery, quality
depends on the silk groundwork as context.”
“Does this apply in the case of Rites and
Propriety as cultural refinement?”
“Shang, you just get
me stimulated (with your feedback)! Only
with persons like you am I able to discuss odes and poetry!”22
It is no exaggeration to say that for Kongzi, as for Pepper, their common root metaphor “texture”
is derived from the same kind of aesthetic experience as an inexhaustible
source of inspiration.
Yet,
it is mainly the Daoist spirit that has inspired the
entire tradition of Chinese art, especially in landscape painting. Many of the Chinese aesthetic insights and
thoughts are embodied in discourses on painting which, as a rule, are put in
epigrammatic and even fragmentary forms, seldom systematized until Shi Tao, the
most original creative artist and the most trenchant, profound thinker on art
experiences.
Shi
Tao – a royal offspring of the overthrown Ming Dynasty in 17th century
In
this connection, we are further delighted to find that Pepper has demonstrated
superior understanding and appreciation of Chinese art and aesthetics, by
grasping the secrets in the use of brush-work and the application of the
principle of “fusion of the opposites” as the open sesame. Indeed, the concept of qi-yun
cannot be fully appreciated apart from acquaintance with the Chinese mastery of
the brush work. Inspired and encouraged
by his father, a “noted portrait painter” in
“The Orientals are particularly deft with ...
narrative movement of lines. The
flexible brush they habitually use is the most sensitive of all drawing
instruments to the movements and emotions of the hand. It spreads in thickness with the pressure of excitement, it thins to a thread at the thought of
tenderness... The Chinese and the Japanese have much to teach the West on the
use of lines.23
Later, at the 1969 East-West Philosophers’ Conference on “The Nature and
Function of Symbolism of Art in East and West” (dedicated to Pepper
exclusively), addressing the question of how far Oriental culture and art can
be understood and appreciated by an outsider, he replied readily: “Quite far. Only with a
little sympathetic willingness to understand.”24 His grasp of Chinese art and aesthetics
testifies to what he recommended as the sound approach. A perceptive mind such
as his, grasped the spirit of Chinese art better than most of the Western
scholars who understand the language. For example, the concept of qi-yun sheng-dong has given rise
to more than eighteen translations, none of which is truly correct. Some are
widely off the mark, such as the French translation by Ralphel
Petrucci, “La consonance de le esprit engenre le mouvement de la vie.” Even Lin Yutang’s rendering of it as “lifelike tone and atmosphere”
still falls short of the original. It is none other that the counterpart notion
to Pepper’s “vividness of quality” as applied to the art of painting. In the original Chinese it signifies “vividness
of quality” as a result -- through fusion -- of “force” (qi)
and “harmony” (yun), that is, (creative) impulse and
restraint; or, for Goethe, “life and form”; for Cassirer,
“feedom and form.”
10. Summary and
Reflections
Pepper grasped qi-yun in terms of “quality”
and he fully realized that quality is a matter of fusion out of which emerges
the total character. “The quality of a given event is its intuited whole or
total character; the texture is the details and relations which make up that character
or quality.” In the light of “union of the opposites” as the guiding principle
in art, he interpreted qi (abbreviated from qi-yun) as “emotional and intellectual balance” and
exclaimed, “If this is qi, we could do with a lot of qi in
Of the Six Essentials formulated by Xie He, only the first principle of “vividness of qi-yun” is the criterion on the basis of the intuited whole
or total character. The rest are details with the technical aspects that will
bring about such a total effect. They
are: (1) creating vividness of tone and atmosphere; (2) building structure
through brush work; (3) depicting the form of things as they are; (4)
appropriate coloring; (5) composition; (6) transcribing and copying (model
works). (2) suggests the idea of “the bone-like
structural use of brush-work.” Pepper’s
grasp of qi or qi-yun in
terms of “emotional and intellectual balance” (taking “balance” in the sense of
the axiological mean) sums up the principles of conflict and organization as
contributing to the enhancement of quality both in intensity and
extensity. The concept of “vividness”
conveys more than mere “intensity” as we see.
The
Six Essentials formulated by Jing Hao
of the tenth century include (1) qi and (2) yun (literally, force and harmony treated separately); (3)
thought or idea; (4) the scence sense? or context; (5) brush-work, and (6) ink-work. All for the sake of qi-yun. George Rowley’s Principles of Chinese
Painting is primarily based on these six essentials in the tradition of Xie He and Jing Hao. Pepper’s
“Review” shows that he is quite impressed with the Chinese insight into the
importance of union of opposites. It is
an application of the general principle of fusion, a principle that is so dear to his heart as a contextualist. With such a fusion-oriented temper of mind,
there is little wonder that Pepper can achieve an unusually sympathetic
appreciation of Chinese art and art-theories, which are both inspired by what
Joseph Needham calls the typically Chinese organismic
vision of the whole explicable in terms of trans-dualism or interpenetration as
the guiding principle of the mode of thought.
Pepper speaks proudly of the concept of fusion thus: ‘Contextualism is the only theory that takes the concept of
fusion seriously. In other theories it
is interpreted away as confusion, failure to discriminate,
muddle-headedness. Here it has cosmic
dignity.26
Here
Pepper is speaking no less proudly of contextualism
as a whole. With a contextualist
eye he catches immediately the spirit of Chinese art. The main thrusts of his insightful “Review”
can be summed up succinctly as follows:
(l) for lack of a one-to-one-correspondence between Chinese and
Western terms, he recommends sympathetic insight, adjustment, and patience for
the sake of proper appreciation;
(2) since qi-yun is the principle
which is the source of all other principles of art, it deserves particular
attentions;
(3) it combines “Confucian conformity, moderation, and lucidity
with Daoist freedom, naturalness (spontaneity), and
mystery.” There is clearly nothing quite like it in our (Western) culture. It
is neither mysticism purely, nor naturalism, but their unions;
(4) this artistic purity consists in a union of ecstasy and
convention, the personal and the impersonal, idealism and naturalism, man and
nature;
(5) the statement on the union of individuality and rule is a
maxim so simple and complete that it could hardly be better said;
(6) this principle goes deep into Chinese life;
(7) in
(8) this is not mysticism, nor art-for-art’s-sake-ism, nor even organicism. It is
emotional and intellectual balance (qualityism). If this is qi, we
could do with a lot of qi in
(9) the Chinese use of the void (wu,
unpainted painting) is generally misunderstood by the West as “negative space”—
a misnomer. Nothing could be more positive;
(10) finally, the virtue and value of comparative studies in art
(as in other areas): Western painting is itself enriched through determining
the difference from Chinese painting.
Either by learning something from it in which the Chinese have gone
beyond the West, such as the love of unbalance, irregularity, working out
rhythm in visual arts; incorporating time into painting, etc., or becoming
aware of things in Western art which we may have missed or taken too much for
granted and which stand out as a result of contrast, such as the “moving-focus”
principle, so typical in the Chinese painting, that is not much developed by
Western art.
Pepper’s words equally apply to Chinese artists and philosophers of
art. For instance, the concept of the
mean, or equilibrium and harmony, is a notion that has been taken too much for
granted by the Chinese so that they seem to speak of it as commonplace. By contrast to Pepper’s thoroughgoing
treatment of “restraint” as the marshalling principle for controlling contrast,
gradation, and thematic variation, they will re-consider its value. This
principle of restraint, as Professor Hahn chooses to call it, is the principle
of optimal effect free from any negative connotation involved in the term
‘restraint.’ Nothing could be more positive, to quote Pepper. For it indicates
the axiological mean (Nicolai Hartmann), the
omega-point in any given event or situation.
It is simply perfection perfected, consummation consummated. Another important lesson the Chinese can
learn from Western aestheticians is the importance of theorization and
systematization of great visions and insights in which the Chinese creative
mind abounds and excels. Pepper can be
held up as a model for synthesizer and systematizer
in this and other related areas, too. It
took
*****
*
Originally presented to Section of Aesthetics, the 11th Inter-American Congress
of Philosophy celebrating the 500th Anniversary of Columbus’ Arrival in
America, held at University of Guadalajara, Guadalajara, Mexico, November
10-15, 1985, chaired by the late Professor Lewis E. Hahn; herein published for
the first time in a revised and expanded form celebrating Hahn’s Centennial
Anniversary (2008).
Notes
1 Stephen C. Pepper, “Review of Principles
of Chinese Painting by George Rowley,” Philosophy and Phenomenological
Research, Vol. 9 (December, 1948), 329-331.
2
Cf. Jian Yihan, A Study of the Sayings on Painting by Shi Tao
(Taipei: The Chines
Culture University Press, 1982, First Edition;
1987, Second Edition), p. 164.
3 Charles Hartshorne, “Pepper’s Approach to Metaphysics,” (a criticism
of World Hypotheses), a written communication
received in August 1979; title supplied by editors for
https://people.sunyit.edu/~harrell/Pepper/Index.htm.
4 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgement, tr. James Meredith (Oxford: The Calrendon Press, 1928, reprinted 1964), p. 175.
5 Henry W. Cassirer, A Commentary on Kant’s Critique of Judgment (London: Methuen and
Co. Ltd., 1938), p. 278.
6 Kant, op., cit., p. 212.
7 Professor Burtt’s correspondence with
Suncrates in 1989, a few days before his passing, in which he expressed his
deep regret that throughout his career as scholar and professor in the academic
field he had missed taking the course in “the art of living wisely” – a course
he strongly recommended for his younger
professional colleagues.
8 Andrew J. Reck, The New American Philosophers (New York: A Delta Book, 1971), p.
46.
9 Stephen C. Pepper, World Hypotheses (Berkeley, Los Angeles,
and London: University of California
Press, 1971), p. 232.
10 Stephen C. Pepper,
“Some Questions on Dewey’s Esthetics,” Paul A. Schilpp
(ed.), The Philosophy of John Dewey (New
York The Tudor Publishing Co., 1951), p. 372.
11 Pepper, Ibid.; Schillp,
op. cit., pp. 553-554.
12 Ibid., p. 553.
13 Cf. Samuel Johnson, The History
of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia, Chapter 10,
selected in L. I. Bredvold, A. D. McKillop
and L. Whitney (eds.), Eighteenth Century of Poetry and Prose (New York: The Ronald Press, 1939), p. 706.
14 Pepper, World
Hypotheses, p. 238
15 Bertrand Russell, “Philosophy in the twentieth Century,” Skeptic
Essays, selected in R. E. Egner and L. E. Denonn (eds.), Basic
Writings of Bertand Russell (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1961 , 261.
16 Stephen C. Pepper,
Principles of Art Appreciation (New
York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1949),
pp. 249-240.
17 Cf. The Analects, Book XIII, S. 23; Doctrine of Equilibrium and Harmony, S.
15, etc.
18 Thomé H. Fang, The Chinese View of Life: The Philosophy of
Comprehensive Harmony (Taipei: The Linking Publishing Co., 1980), p. 42.. Fang, The Chinese View of Life ss
19 George Rowley, Principles of
Chinese Painting (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1959),
p. 3.
20 Thomé H. Fang, “West and East Meet on the
Ground of Art,” included in Creativity in
Man and Nature (Taipei: Linking Publishing Co., 1981), p. 154.
21 The Analectss,
Book VII, §. 6.
22 Cf. Ibid., Book III, §. 8; Ku Hung-ming’s translation modified to suit the original intention
in the text .
23 Pepper, Principles of Art
Appreciation, p. 187.
24Stephen C. Pepper, “On
the Use of Symbolism in Sculpture and Painting, Philosophy of East and West, Vol. 19 , No.
3 (September, 1949), 277.
25 Pepper, “Review of Principles of Chinese Painting by George Rowley,” in op. cit.,
329-331.
26 Pepper, World
Hypotheses, p. 232.