Although aesthetics has been to some extent marginalized in western philosophy, within the Chinese philosophical tradition aesthetics plays a key role. This article explores Chinese aesthetics as a site of valuable resources for rethinking the ways in which we conceptualize philosophical activity. After introducing a few distinct features of the Chinese aesthetic tradition, the article examines aesthetic distance in terms of guan, he, and ying, Chinese conceptions of artists and participants, and aesthetic suggestiveness or the inexhaustibility of a work of (...) art, in order to suggest that the Chinese philosophical tradition might contribute its sense of connection between style or method of doing philosophy and aesthetics to a contemporary metaphor of philosophy as aesthetic experience. (shrink)

This article engages bell hooks's concept of “radical black subjectivity” through the lens of the Buddhist doctrine of no‐self. Relying on the Zen theorist Dōgen and on resources from Japanese aesthetics, I argue that non‐attachment to the self clarifies hooks's claim that radical subjectivity unites our capacity for critical resistance with our capacity to appreciate beauty. I frame this argument in terms of hooks's concern that postmodernist identity critiques dismiss the identity claims of disempowered peoples. On the one hand, identity (...) critique has an emotional component, as it involves questioning the self and possibly letting go of aspects of that self in which a person has inevitably made emotional investments. On the other hand, it has an aesthetic component, as it opens a space for the creative crafting and recrafting of identity. Japanese aesthetics emphasizes that all aesthetic appreciation is accompanied by feelings of mournfulness, for the object of aesthetic appreciation is transient. Linking hooks's liberatory aesthetics with the resources of the Japanese tradition suggests that mournfulness in the face of self‐loss necessarily accompanies all instances of critical resistance. Thus non‐attachment becomes a useful framework in which to understand both the emotional and aesthetic components of empowered identity critique. (shrink)

This article discusses the relationship between archery and aesthetics, developing two central claims. First, in order to deliver successful results, the archer should attend not only to efficiency, technique and equipment tuning but also to the aesthetic experience; second, archery shooting methods embody and express ‘life-issue’ statements and desires concerning our relationship with the world. Depending on the archer’s shooting style, i.e., depending on the way in which a shot is executed and performed, the archer’s ‘sportive philosophy’ is, so to (...) speak, unfolded and made apparent. Specifically, I will argue that instinctive archery strives for flexibility and versatility toward the environment and with respect to one’s own body, whereas non-instinctive approaches sharpen effectuality and results by flattening the surroundings and limiting one’s own performative freedom. Exploring this idea, I will discuss the aesthetic underpinnings of archery, also showing in which ways different shooting methods lay the ground for irreducible aesthetic experiences of self-expression. (shrink)