Appreciation of the Beauty: An Approach to the Emancipation of Sufferings in Life ──some aesthetic views from Shopenhauer and their influence on Wang Guowei

Shopenhauer is an important Western aesthetician in the period of transition from the ancient to the modern times, while Wang Guowei is the founding father of modern aesthetics in China. However, it is through Wang's efforts that “the Western ideas of ‘aesthetics’ and ‘aesthetic education’, as well as the aesthetic thought and artistic views held by Shopenhauer, Kant, Schiller, Nietzsche, etc. began to be understood and accepted by the Chinese. The early aesthetic views from Wang reflects themselves in some of Wang's important works on aesthetics published in 1904: The Philosophy of Shopenhauer and His Theory on Education and On “A Dream of Red Mansions”. As this is just the period when Wang became intoxicated with Shopenhauer's philosophy and regarded it as “his companion”, Shopenhauer's view on philosophy and aesthetics leaves a very deep impression on Wang's aesthetic theory.