Date: Thu, 18 Jun 1998 16:06:35 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: PLC: =?gb2312?B?u9i4tDogUExDOiByZTpDaGluYT8=?=



Dear Jianping,

Thanks for your informative response. I was interested to hear that you
study aesthetics in an institution which is separate from any university.
Much in your response intrigues me, leading me to wonder what sort of
institutions contemporary Chinese universities evolved from, and how and
to what degree they have been integrated with WEstern models. But I will
work on formulating a more specific question about Chinese higher
education before I burden you with a question on the subject.

Here is a question you might be able to answer very well.  At your
institution, do people use either Marxist or phenomenological approaches
to aesthetic problems?  If so, do these people work comparatively,
examining Chinese and Western literature in relation to one another?

One more question-- in the West, scholars have been talking about
literature and aesthetic matters since ancient times, but what we call the
aesthetic only begins to appear as something radically separate from
other spheres of valuation  around the end of the 18th century. This
separation is perhaps most apparent in efforts of German and English
romantics to separate art from morality.  Did anything like this occur in
Chinese literature?  Are European and Chinese aesthetic traditions similar
enough to make such comparisons possible?  

These questions might still be to general.  But I hope you can shed some
light on them, perhaps with some citations in the first case and a
concrete example or two in the second.


 hh

PS  Don't feel you have to rush to respond.  Answer when you get time.
I'm not going anywhere this summer.

PPS  Thanks for explaining the distinction betwen Beijing university and
Beijing Normal.  My wife keeps getting different translations of
institutional names.  While she has enjoyed her trip greatly, it has been
attended by much linguistic confusion. 
.....................................................................




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