On the Yangtze River Aesthetic Image and Its Mutual Generation with the Chinese Transcendental Culture
The Yangtze River is the largest river in China and the third largest in the world.For Chinese people,it is not only a super geography unit,but also a symbolic entity.As an aesthetic image,it is deeply rooted in our emotional and historical memory.Chinese literature has often depic-ted the Yangtze as an eternal,inexhaustible,and ancient symbol.This"image"is not irrational or romantic,but rather rooted in Chinese transcendental culture in a rigorous and intellectual way.The tradition of"以天慑人"(understanding human political matters in a cosmological way)preserves the possibility of communication between man and Nature.One important way of achieving this is by evoking virtue ideas through contemplating Nature.In this tradition,from the initial use of water as a metaphor for Taoism by the Confucian and Taoists,to the metaphysical contemplation of the image-ry of"the Yangtze River Flowing aimlessly"through the Tang and Song Dynasties,the Yangtze Riv-er has gradually been moulded into a non-objective spiritual existence beyond the scale of human be-ings in the Chinese cultural lineage,it provides a metaphysical solace to realize the ultimate affirma-tion of life,and to some extent enables the subject to break down the boundaries of self and reach the ethical state of everything in which"I"am meditative with things.Today re-grasping and re-in-terpreting the aesthetic image of the Yangtze River can help restore our emotional connection with the Yangtze River.
eternal riveraesthetic spiritvirtue of lifeecological ethics
万方数据
维普
