Chinese Journal of Literary Criticism

No.1, 2025

A Re-Examination of Wei Xi’s Notion of Magnificence in the Context of Intercultural Aesthetics

(Abstract)

Li Lin

In the context of intercultural aesthetics, Wei Xi’s notion of magnificence starts from the individual’s sensory and psychological experience, which not only contains the revelation of the commonality of human emotions, but also highlights the reverence for qi in the Chinese cultural system, revealing that the subject breaks through the individual’s limitations and realizes the transcendence in the realm of unity of heaven and human beings. The complexities of Chinese geography, history and culture are interwoven behind the notion. Wei Xi’s notion of magnificence is no less impressive than Burke’s theory of the sublime in terms of the description of the psychological and sensory responses of the aesthetic subject or the analysis of the aesthetic object. However, in the light of the contemporary development of the Western concept of the sublime, it is not difficult to find that Wei Xi’s notion of magnificence does not keep up with the times. By contrast, the promotion of traditional aesthetics requires the establishment of a good inheritance tradition and the transformation of the core categories of traditional aesthetics by aestheticians, thinkers and critics of different times, taking into account the new problems and phenomena of society and literature and art in the spotlight of the times. At the same time, it is associated with the concepts of contemporary philosophy and aesthetics to form a complete systematic interpretation, so as to give full play to the contemporary nature of traditional aesthetics and to construct the autonomy of Chinese literature and art theories in the new era.