Lecture on “Bie-Modernist Aesthetics as a Method of Thought” was successfully held by Nanjing University
During the Dragon Boat Festival holiday, Professor Wang Jianjiang, a famous aesthetician and founder of Bie-Modern Theory, gave an academic lecture titled “Bie-Modernist Aesthetics as a Method of Thought” in Room 323, School of Literature, Xianlin Campus, Nanjing University. More than 10 doctoral students listened to Mr. Wang Jianjiang’s report.
Professor Wang Jianjiang described the basic framework, traditional roots and realistic activation, methodological enlightenment and international dissemination of Bie-modernism philosophy and aesthetics from four aspects: Overview of Bie-modernism, Philosophy of Bie-modernism – Aesthetics Category and Thought Source, Bie-Modernist Aesthetics as a Method of Thought, and “Bie in the West”. He said that today’s topic came from a question asked by Professor Liu Yiqing when he held a lecture on Bie-modernism at Nanchang University in 2019. At that time, it only explained the distance between the hybrid of modern, pre-modern, and post-modern and the real modernization from the method of proportion analysis and random theory, and explained the various possibilities of the Bie-modern, such as selecting the good or the bad, or persisting the inertia.
The lecture today is the discussion of methodology in the sense of philosophical ontology, epistemology and axiology, including the methodology of distinction with difference and distinction without difference, the methodology of leaping pause-cutting, the methodology of “yet-for-being” and that of “Sino-West-Marxism-I” with “I” as the focus. Among them, the dialectics of distinction with difference and distinction without difference means that the realm of distinction without difference (shown in “The superior virtue is not virtue, it is for virtue”, “All things are the same”, “No discrimination”) is unified with the reality of unavoidable distinction with difference, which shows the duality and forewarning of Bie-modern thinking methods. From the laws of civilization transformation, cultural development, and literary and artistic innovation, the method of leap-forward pause is found where new models of inheritance-cutting-innovation and borrowing-cutting-innovation is derived to replace the old models of inheritance-innovation and borrowing – innovation. He said that the rise of modern civilization is not the result of inheriting agricultural civilization. On the contrary, the birth of industrial civilization, which is separate from agricultural civilization, realizes the innovation of civilization and generates modern agriculture. Likewise, the great changes brought about by the May Fourth New Culture Movement were not the result of inheriting pre-modern culture, but rather the result of severing from pre-modern culture. The formation of literary style schools and artistic style schools is also the result of cutting off from tradition and inheritance. The methodology of “yet-for-being” in Bie-Modernist Aesthetics aims at waiting for the appearance of zhuyi. The reason why Bie-modernism aroused heated discussions in the international philosophical and aesthetic circles, and gave rise to the Chinese Philosophical Quadrilateral Theory and the Chinese Philosophical Moment Theory is that it examines the lack of local ideas to form a goal to seek, and has thus entered the international historical stage. As for the method of “Sino-West-Marxism-I”, it reveals the creative subject status of I, and the urgency of self-centered, independent and innovative approach for the construction of zhuyi.
Professor Wang Jianjiang’s lecture aroused the strong interest of the doctoral students. They asked questions one after another, and the atmosphere was lively. Professor Wang Jianjiang answered them one by one patiently.
In the end, Wang Zhenglong, professor of literature and art and doctoral tutor at the School of Literature of Nanjing University, concluded that Mr. Wang Jianjiang’s lecture, based on the local and global perspective, is full of new ideological discoveries and theoretical innovations, and is very methodologically enlightening. What he proposed is not only a theoretical response to China’s realistic appeal, but also an equal dialogue between Chinese scholars and Western thought, which is full of inspiration and reference for the construction of China’s social science discourse system.
