On Fulfilling Things of Confucian Junzi: a Comparative Care Aesthetics by Xiao Ouyang

Care Aesthetics is an emerging trend in the discourse of everyday aesthetics. In this talk, I want to introduce ideas from the Confucian tradition embodied in the Yueji (Book of Music) and the Zhongyong (Doctrine of the Mean). I think they may help enrich the relevant arguments contributed by scholars such as Yuriko Saito. My general thesis is simply as such: in the Confucian ideology, by “fulfilling things” (cheng wu成物) surrounding us and allowing them to achieve perfect states (through care activities such as cultivation, repair, maintenance, appreciation, etc.), we can then complete the fulfilment of ourselves. This idea is not only implied by Confucian cosmology but also of aesthetic importance in reflecting our co-existence with the everyday things.

BIO: Xiao Ouyang (欧阳霄) is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Peking University, China. He was a tenured Associate Professor at Wuhan University, China, and an Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow at University College Cork, Ireland, where he also completed his PhD. He mainly works on comparative philosophy and is interested in various topics in aesthetics & philosophy of art, ethics, political and social philosophy. He has publications on international journals such as Philosophy East and West, Monumenta Serica: Journal of Oriental Studies and Australasian Philosophical Review. He also publishes on Chinese journals. He was interviewed by The Irish Times (“What does the rise of China mean for western values”, Nov. 2017). Besides academic work, he devotes himself to Chinese classical arts such as poetry, calligraphy, painting and literati music.