国外学者评陈望衡《中国环境美学》

Reviews on Chen Wang-heng's Chinese Environmental Aesthetics by Foreign Scholars

武汉大学陈望衡教授是我国著名的美学家,他多年来主要从事中国美学史、美学原理的研究,20世纪90年代开始从事环境美学研究,相继出版了《环境美学》《我们的家园》两部专著,并与美国学者共同主编"环境美学译丛"。他的环境美学论著两次获得教育部人文社会科学优秀成果奖。2015年,他在英国著名的劳特利奇出版社(Routledge)出版了英文著作《中国环境美学》(Chinese Environmental Aesthetics),此书列入中国教育部外译项目,是第一部在英语世界出版的由中国人撰写的环境美学专著。该书出版后,《斯坦福哲学百科全书》(Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy)在"环境美学"辞条予以介绍,认为这一著作"获得诸多关注","使生态美学有了充分而丰富的发展"。有一些外国学者还为此书撰写了一些评论,本刊挑选四篇予以刊登。

After being published in 2015 by Routledge, Chinese Environmental Aesthetics written by Professor Chen Wang-heng at Wuhan University has provoked huge reaction around international academia. The book has been introduced in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and is highly praised for 'developing robust versions of ecological aesthetics'. Meanwhile, a number of important scholars abroad have written reviews on the book. American scholar Holms Rolston III thinks Professor Chen brings the Western world the most comprehensive Chinese environmental aesthetics in his book. Chen's great strength is his account of how in China man and nature interact with each other. The Chinese have a strong sense of being 'at home' in nature. The 'sense of home' represents thus the highest level of identification with the environment. Rolston also points out that Chinese environmental aesthetics is different from its American counterpart in that the beauty of wild nature is not well celebrated. Dutch scholar Jos de Mul holds that Chinese Environmental Aesthetics not only conceptualizes the 'sense of home',but also shows how this ancient wisdom can be applied today to protecting environment which nowadays is suffering from serious problems.American scholar David Brubaker makes positive remarks on the book in four aspects: first, the book has deep theoretical basis by tracing the ancient Chinese philosophy and taking aesthetics of nature as foundation of environmental aesthetics; second, the book tells us that unity of subject and object in nature is contained in the traditional principle that 'man is an integral part of nature', and based on the unity of environmental aesthetics, the constructive system framework of environmental aesthetics has been established; third, instead of applying analytic and pragmatic philosophies of nature and art, the interpretation of environmental beauty in this book will inspire an aesthetic revolution; fourth, it serves as a guide to planning and designing agricultural and urban environments.According to American scholar Andrew Lambert, the book is especially enlightening in the background of environmental degradation nowadays. It denies the previous dichotomy between humans and nature, and reconstructs the relationship by referring to traditional Chinese philosophy. He believes that it has practical significance to claim that natural beauty'should be understood as the highest form of beauty',and 'sense of home' should be used to observe the environment. Meanwhile he proposes that we should be aware of the distinction between the beauty of nature and beauty in the natural environment and pay more attention to learning from traditional Chinese gardens to build our modern environment.