Rafal Banka is Research Fellow in the Faculty of Philosophy at University of Oxford in England. His areas of research include Chinese and Western comparative (metaphysics, aesthetics, methodology) philosophies and he is currently the Principal Investigator of a European Research Council grant “Mereological Reconstruction of the Metaphysical System in the Daodejing.” His recent book, Cognition and Practice: Li Zehou’s Philosophical Aesthetics, analyzes the aesthetic theory of Li Zehou 李澤厚 from a cognitive perspective. In this Recently Published Book Spotlight, Banka discusses Li’s connection to other philosophical thinkers, Li’s concept of “subjectality” (zhutixing 主體性), and the aim of this work.
What is your work about?
Briefly speaking, this is a monograph devoted to the aesthetic theory of Li Zehou 李澤厚 (1930-2021), one of the most important contemporary Chinese philosophers. In the book, I argue that Li’s concept of aesthetics belongs to the family of experience-based, in contrast with axiological theories or philosophy of art, and can be analyzed from a cognitive perspective. I also demonstrate that this dimension of his theory opens field to interpreting and complementing Li’s theory within a framework of empirical sciences, as well as engagement in a creative dialogue with contemporary aesthetics research.
What topics do you discuss in the work, and why do you discuss them?
As mentioned above, I focus on the cognitive dimension of Li’s aesthetics. It is inseparably connected with human practice understood in the Marxist way as manufacturing and using tools. The topics that are discussed in the book are naturally connected to these two pivotal aspects. Accordingly, within Li’s theory, I trace how cognition and practice from Confucian, Marxian, and Kantian philosophies have influenced, and in turn, forged Li’s original concept of “subjectality,” which underlays the aesthetic theory. Next, I show that aesthetic experience and—which at first sight appears counterintuitive—beauty are founded on human practice that is a form of cognition. But what is more important is how these aspects predispose Li’s theory to be complemented, or actually extended by contemporary and interdisciplinary research. The first aspect is discussed by referring Li’s theory to other important conceptions of aesthetics by John Dewey, Bence Nanay, and Wolfgang Welsch. The second one complements Li’s aesthetics with situated cognition, especially autopoietic enactivism, which I regard to be the most comprehensive interpretation.
Why did you feel the need to write this work?
I would attribute it to two aims. The first one is introducing a concept of philosophical aesthetics of Li Zehou (1930-2021), a (if not the) most influential contemporary Chinese philosopher, to the Western audience. Li is particularly known for proposing an original aesthetic theory founded on anthropological ontology. While Li does not need any introduction among aestheticians, other philosophers, and a large part of humanities scholars working in the Chinese-speaking world, his work is little known in the West. It must be admitted that Li is not completely anonymous in Western scholarship. However, his writings are known almost entirely by sinologists and Chinese studies scholars. At the same time, Li’s philosophy practically passes unnoticed among Western philosophers, who, when referring to Chinese philosophy, usually focus on classical schools, such as Confucianism or Daoism. This fact is probably attributed to a belief that Chinese thought is discontinued and what it tagged as contemporary Chinese philosophy is either historical studies of ancient Chinese thought or Western philosophy done in China nowadays. This situation is also reflected by little attention being given to contemporary Chinese philosophy in comparative or global philosophical research. While the importance of classical Chinese philosophy is undeniable, little attention is paid to contemporary Chinese thought, which can equally contribute to comparative or global philosophical research. In this respect, I believe Li’s aesthetics to be one of the most important philosophical projects that should intervene in this state of the art.
This leads to the second aim of this publication, which consists in underscoring that introducing Li’s work to Western philosophers goes beyond doing justice to increasing research diversity and benefitting philosophy on a comparative front. I believe, and hopefully convincingly argue in my book, that Li’s concept can contribute to contemporary aesthetics research. I particularly focus on two areas of plausible contribution. The first one is a historical aspect of aesthetics. Whereas most aesthetic theories assume that the characteristics of, say, beauty or aesthetic experience are universal, and hence they form theories that persist over time, Li shows that due to human practice, human cognitive structures, including emotional ones, change over time. This includes the aesthetic, which entails that aesthetic theories are of a temporal character. In this sense, Li proposes a metaaesthetic conception that offers an insight into how aesthetic theories change over time and, which is no less important, how they change in accordance with the type of practice throughout the history of humankind.
The second area is where philosophy is involved in interdisciplinary research. Li’s aesthetics is founded on the dynamic processes of molding human diverse psychological structures. These structures are constituted by an active involvement of “subjectality” (term coined by Li, Ch. zhutixing 主體性), which is human subject of biological, social, and, last but not least, historical character. This naturally brings the context of situated cognition, which establishes natural extension potential for empirical sciences such as evolutionary and experimental psychology, neuropsychology, or affective sciences. In this respect, I believe that Li’s concept offers an interesting insight into the aesthetic from the perspective of phylogenetic development, in opposition to a large part of aesthetic experience-based theories that are predominantly focused on an ontogenetic dimension.
How do you relate the described philosophical conception to other well-known philosophies?
This question can be viewed from two angles, both of which are covered in the book. First, we can examine how Li’s philosophy is related to the well-known philosophies in terms of influences and contribution. Second, we can try to answer the question of how the proposed interpretation of Li’s aesthetics from a cognitive perspective can be referred to in similar aesthetic conceptions. In fact, answering both questions involves revealing very interesting aspects of Li’s aesthetics, which go far beyond mere intertextuality or inspirations. Regarding the first one, although Li’s concept of aesthetics is undeniably a most original project, it has been importantly influenced by the philosophies of Confucius, Marx, and Kant. At face value, it might seem perplexing how these very different philosophical formations inform Li’s philosophical construction. But there is a very clear thread of an interrelation—between practice and cognition—that binds them together at the foundations of Li’s aesthetics. According to Li, Confucius gave proper attention to emotions, which constitute human character traits and ensure proper interaction in the social space. Importantly, original emotionality in humans is “raw” and requires calibration, which is achieved by appropriate practice, including artistic activity. Marx endows Li’s project with a historical perspective, in which humans as a species are involved in material practice through which their cognitive structures are humanized, and which enables transcending a physiological level of human active existence in the world. Finally, Kant’s philosophy determines the focal point in Li’s philosophical construction—the subject. Importantly, Li reinterprets Kant through the lenses of historical materialism, which, together with the two remaining inspirations leads him to an original concept of “subjectality”—the human subject whose psychological, including aesthetic structures, are subject to incessant changes through material practice over a historical time.
As for the second question, my book aims at showing that Li’s aesthetics is part of research into cognitively oriented aesthetics. Accordingly, I am arguing why and how Li’s concept can be referred to in aesthetic theories by, for instance, Dewey, Nanay, and Welsch. What connects them is that they are experience-based, and hence focused on exploring widely conceived perception processes that involve the aesthetic. They also stand in opposition to aesthetics understood as a philosophy of art or a value theory, and are compatible with interdisciplinary research.
What effect do you hope your work will have?
First and foremost, I hope that this publication will make Li Zehou’s work more familiar in the Western philosophical academia. I also hope that viewing Li’s aesthetics from a cognitive perspective will be an important contribution to the debates in contemporary aesthetics research.
Rafal Banka
Rafal Banka is part-time faculty at Trinity University and affiliated faculty at Oxford University. His areas of research include Chinese and Western comparative (metaphysics, aesthetics, methodology) philosophies. He has run two Chinese philosophy projects funded by the National Science Centre in Poland and the European Research Council. He has published among others in Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy, Journal of Chinese Philosophy, and Philosophy East and West.
Maryellen Stohlman-Vanderveen is the APA Blog's Diversity and Inclusion Editor and Research Editor. She graduated from the London School of Economics with an MSc in Philosophy and Public Policy in 2023 and currently works in strategic communications. Her philosophical interests include conceptual engineering, normative ethics, philosophy of technology, and how to live a good life.
