[Academic Achievement] A Complete History of Chinese Aesthetics (Ten Volumes) Officially Published

News Network (Correspondent: Wang Zheng) Recently, A Complete History of Chinese Aesthetics (Ten Volumes), authored by Professor Chen Wangheng of the School of Philosophy at Wuhan University, was officially published by the People’s Publishing House. Spanning ten volumes in fourteen parts and totaling more than four million characters, the work systematically and comprehensively expounds the long history of Chinese aesthetics from the prehistoric Neolithic era to the late 1940s.

This work is distinctive in several respects. It breaks through conventional approaches in the academic community to writing Chinese aesthetic history by expanding the perspective of Han aesthetics to encompass the aesthetics of the entire Chinese nation. It provides relatively systematic and substantial discussions of areas often omitted or only briefly touched upon in other versions, such as prehistoric aesthetics, Qin aesthetics, Liao aesthetics, Jin aesthetics, Western Xia aesthetics, and Yuan aesthetics. With “theory of artistic realms” as the central framework, it examines the achievements, national characteristics, structural system, and developmental trajectory of Chinese classical aesthetics, making it a history of aesthetics with soul, structure, and system. The work also breaks the traditional dominance of literary and artistic aesthetics in the field, incorporating political aesthetics, environmental aesthetics, technological aesthetics, design aesthetics, and everyday aesthetics, thereby fully demonstrating the richness and uniqueness of Chinese aesthetics. It consciously adopts a contemporary perspective in interpreting the past, striving to promote the creative transformation and innovative development of Chinese aesthetics, while highlighting its unique contributions to world aesthetics. The project was supported by the National Publication Fund.

Professor Chen Wangheng has long been devoted to aesthetic studies. He has authored more than 40 scholarly monographs, including A History of Chinese Classical Aesthetics, A History of Ancient Chinese Environmental Aesthetics(seven volumes), and Environmental Aesthetics. He proposed the aesthetic system of “realm ontology,” constructed the framework of Chinese aesthetic spirit with “patriotic sentiment” at its core, and founded the theory of “sense of homeland” in environmental aesthetics. Works such as A History of Chinese Aesthetics have been selected for the Chinese Academic Translation Project.

(Editor: Zhao Jifan)