Abstract

This article examines the concept of qingjing (sentiment-landscape) and its related aesthetic notions, such as qingjing (sentiment-scene) and yijing (idea-scene) in Wang Fuzhi’s and Wang Guowei’s aesthetic theories. We will compare these categories of aesthetics with the German aesthetic notion of Stimmung from the early Romanticism to Schopenhauer and investigate into parallel evolutions and influence studies. Although Goethe, Schiller, and Schopenhauer do not belong to the group of German Romantics, their conception of Stimmung and the spiritual eye draw on aesthetics of German Romanticism. Wang Fuzhi’s conception of qingjing is still inscribed into Chinese classical thought, such as Daoist cosmology based on the original Breath and the epistemology of Indian Buddhism, such as pramāṇa (measure). We will compare the parallelism in thought evolution regarding Wang Fuzhi’s theory of qingjing and the German concept of Stimmung, both as a crystallization and intertwinement of indissociable sentiment and landscape. Many German writers proclaim that landscape is the projection of subjective emotions from inside to outside, so it can be understood as an externalization of Stimmung. According to Wang Fuzhi, sentiment unfolds as landscape, and landscape, driven by a vital impulse, is truly endowed with emotion. There is still a dichotomy between subject and object related to Stimmung, but this is not the case for qingjing. Moreover, we will also investigate the direct influence of Stimmung on Wang Guowei’s conception of qingjing and jingjie, since Wang Guowei has already been influenced by the aesthetics of German Romanticism and Idealism, especially the notion of Stimmung. This influence also contributes to Wang Guowei’s deviation from Wang Fuzhi’s aesthetic theory.