Aesthetics and meaning in experience: A theoretical perspective on Zhu Xi's revision of Song dynasty views of poetry

Michael A. Fuller argues that one must broaden one's understanding of aesthetic experience in order to appreciate the significance of Southern Song debates about poetry. Accordingly, to link our usual view of the aesthetic as "artistic" to a series of problems in the epistemology of phenomenal experience, Fuller introduces Immanuel Kant's concept of judgment. He suggests that Kant's approach to judgment and the role of genius in artistic creation bears similarities to and illuminates Su Shi's discussions of the problems of writing and knowing. Tracing continuities through the Southern Song, Fuller further demonstrates that Zhu Xi rejected Su Shi's epistemology and the aesthetic commitments bound to that epistemology, offering in their place new interpretations of poetic categories, and especially those of the Classic of Poetry.