Zhuofei Wang

The aesthetic concept of atmosphere places human sensitivities under various natural and cultural conditions in the foreground of aesthetic consideration. As the first monograph to integrate an intercultural perspective into this field, “Atmosphären-Ästhetik: Die Verflochtenheit von Natur, Kunst und Kultur” is devoted to discourses and practices on aesthetic atmosphere in Western and non-Western spaces. Approaches that play a fundamental role include intercultural philosophy, body phenomenology, history of art, image science, media theory, environmental philosophy, cultural anthropology, and philosophy of language. Dimensions from the East (Daoism, Buddhism, Feng Shui teachings, etc.) are also included in this context.

The concept stepping-out-of-oneself concerns a process by which things manifest themselves and make themselves present. This process does not depend on subjective influence but on the power of the thing itself. In this respect, the value of the thing itself and its impact on the sensory experience are brought to the foreground. From an aesthetic point of view, this concept corresponds to a new orientation of contemporary aesthetics of nature, which reflects the programmatic weakening of the subject-centered approach, the estrangement from the substance ontology as well as the phenomenological interest in the power of things. In this article, I attempt to argue that traditional Daoist thought can also provide a point of contact for the exploration of stepping-out-of-oneself. The focus on my study is on two issues: 1. under what circumstances is stepping-out-of-oneself possible? 2. how is it possible to perceive stepping-out-of-oneself?

Today, the focus of consumption has been shifting from pure use value to aesthetic-experiential value. Against this backdrop, the concept of design is undergoing a corresponding transformation - design is no longer solely about the manufacture of the product itself. Instead, the creation of atmosphere is brought to the forefront of design work, so much so that the product becomes one of the design elements. The focus on the design of atmosphere allows us to better reflect on the interaction between object, form, space, environment and human body, emotion and action. Our study will focus on the following issues: how can we create an atmosphere that can be experienced as good and meaningful? For a designer who often works in an international context, another question seems even more critical: to what extent can a significant atmosphere have an impact that transcends individual cultural boundaries? To answer these questions, we attempt to introduce the concept resonance into an ethical exploration of atmosphere design. A resonant relationship can occur in almost all dimensions of the human-world relationship and thus provide normative guidance for a good way of life. It is the responsibility of designers to enhance resonant sensitivity of ecological, interpersonal, cross-cultural as well as marginalized issues through the creation of atmospheric scenarios.

In past decades, the subject atmosphere and mood has gone beyond the physio-meteorological and psychological scopes and become a new direction of aesthetics which concerns two sides of the same phenomenon. As the primary sensuous reality constructed by both the perceiving subject and the perceived object, atmosphere and mood are neither a purely subjective state nor an objective thing. Atmosphere is essentially a quasi-object pervaded by a specific affective quality and a ubiquitous phenomenon forming the foundation of our outer life experiences, while mood is a quasi-subject pervaded by specific objective quality and thus a ubiquitous phenomenon forming the foundation of our inner life experiences. A practical dimension is thereby, from the outset, embedded in the consideration of both concepts. This is mainly characterized by actions and, correspondingly, ethical aspects, which concern the design and creation of atmosphere and thus the triggering of mood through works of art. Here, on the one hand, the process of artistic formation, long neglected in the European tradition, is given prominence as an aesthetic practice, and on the other hand, an interactive dialogue is effectively established between the artist, the work and the viewer. Due to the fact that atmosphere and mood, both as in-between, emphasize the interaction of the perceiver and the perceived from two sides, here the decisive question is: in what kind of environment do we live or participate and in what way do we experience it? The focus of aesthetics is now not on the conventional issue whether the environment is beautiful or gives us a sense of beauty, but on how the environment influences our feeling of being there (Befinden) through our own sensuality. Such an approach would contribute to a critical transformation in aesthetic methodology, namely from the ontological and/or epistemological what to the phenomenological and anthropological how. The tension between atmosphere and mood, as revealed here, opens up a large space for exploring a new understanding of aesthetics. On this basis the special issue pursued to diversify this discussion on an international level.

The ecologically oriented aesthetics of nature envisaged in my article makes use of an understanding of aesthetics as a general theory of sensual perception as it was first expounded in the 18th century by Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten. It is not concerned primarily with the question of the beauty of nature and its experience by man, but rather and foremost with the “corporal and sensual experience of a person who is situated, lives, works and moves in a particular bit of nature” (Böhme 1989). Within such a concept of aesthetics of nature, corporeality, which is primarily conceived in the context of the New Phenomenology, is of decisive importance, because it embeds man, together with all his multifarious ways of perception and sense experiences, in the natural world. With these ways of embedding as a starting point, a perspective of the sensual relationship with natural environment can be developed. The focus is thus not on how we perceive individual natural objects surrounding us, but on how we affectively experience the atmosphere of nature which integrates human conditions and environmental qualities.

In the current eco-aesthetic debates, the reflection on the aesthetic human-nature relationship from the body’s dimension has become an important topic. Like most research in this field, an exploration of body’s functions and features in the eco-aesthetic context will be also the central interest of this article. To broaden the perspective of this subject, the viewpoint of the new phenomenology whose innovation mainly lies in paying attention to the pre-theoretical body phenomena and thus rediscovering the involuntary life experiences will be introduced here. With the crucial ideas of this doctrine (body, body communication, quasi-objects, primitive presence and common situation, etc.), the article intends to investigate the body’ s key role in experiencing the unity of human and nature as well as the reconciliation of the human natural and social qualities within the eco-aesthetic process.

Usually, our aesthetic experience in urban environment is oriented towards the picturesque tradition which focuses on the visual image of an aesthetic object as well as its form-related qualities. In this respect, the elements of the urban environment are visually selected, highlighted and combined. A unified urban space is thus split apart. However, what aesthetically appeals to us in a city should not be solely related to its pictorial image, due to the fact that our relationship with environmental conditions primarily exists in a multi-sensually perceptible way which is essentially atmospheric. Here, the term atmosphere has gone beyond the physio-meteorological scope and become an aesthetic concept which was initially developed by German scholars in the past decades. As the primary sensuous reality constructed by both the perceiving subject and the perceived object, atmosphere is neither a purely subjective state, nor an objective thing, but essentially a quasi-thing pervaded by a specific emotional quality. As a ubiquitous phenomenon, atmosphere forms the foundation of our life experience. It is impossible to free ourselves from its power. In this respect, urban scenes which we experience cannot be reduced to a pictorial image as well. Rather, they are atmospheric phenomena which are primarily grasped through a co-present body-being. Starting from this point of view, the central focus of urban aesthetics should therefore not be on the question of how to see and assess the physical form and spatial structure of a city, but on how to perceive their characteristics through the whole body, namely of how we are bodily disposed in urban space.

In the intercultural communication, an issue facing aestheticians is: can the word beauty appropriately express the central aesthetic phenomenon of each culture? If not, how can the approach of aesthetics, which was originally introduced as a branch of European philosophy, be transformed in accordance with respective traditions? Based on these considerations, my article will deal with how the concept atmosphere, which has been newly developed in the context of aesthetics as a general theory of perception, would contribute to broadening the aesthetic boundaries and thus opening up new topics and themes for the contemporary dialogue between East and West. As a consequence, a general question What is aesthetics? might be not very important. The decisive issue would be rather how the aesthetic realities are constructed in respective cultural atmospheres and how the transcultural atmospheres, especially in the global context, arise from their interaction.

As a newly developed field, the history of Chinese-language historiography of philosophy takes a higher priority in the studies of the history of Chinese philosophy since the 20th century. The relevant works before the 20th century, which were mainly written in ancient Chinese, are highly marginalized. The historiography of philosophy in a global perspective acknowledges the importance of different articulations and frameworks of what is called philosophy and history of philosophy, thus providing essential theoretical support for the reconstruction of the ancient Chinese historiography of philosophy. Based on this framework, my article is devoted to the overview of ancient Chinese historiography of philosophy, to show its basic features in approaches, methods, and styles.

As two concepts that are both distinct and intertwined, creativity and mimesis have their own history of development. In the visual arts, both refer primarily to the principles, methods, and procedures of image production. The production of images is neither entirely arbitrary nor entirely plannable, but has its own logic, which lies between work and reality, the inner world and the outer world as well as tradition and innovation. The relevant discourses are influenced by the respective cultural-historical frameworks. Due to this fact, it is of significance to consider the tension between creativity and mimesis in image practices from an intercultural perspective.