『장자(莊子)』의 지(知)-심미적 관점을 중심으로

Abstract

This paper is aimed at looking into ‘knowledge(知, zhi)’ from the perspective of aesthetics. The reason is that we primarily try to figure out how the concept of knowledge works in the modern art and also as a frame for recognition its effects on the art. The thought of Zhuangtzu tends to absolutely search for freedom and change, which means having no prejudice or preconceived idea when seeing things surrounding us. In the light of this, it can be found that the text of Zhuangtzu maintains a consistency of the aesthetic appreciation. In the study, knowledge starts with chengxin 成心 and then ‘zhi 知’ of Zhuangtzu is explained. chengxin is generally considered prejudice or preconception and I regard this as a mental structure that has been formed by personal judges on things with which he/she grows up. Furthermore, ‘xin 心’ includes some attitudes which direct to distinguish, understand and judge things and the consequences of it basically come from naming itself. To overcome such limits to aesthetical approach and come up with measures for them, I have discussed wuyan 無言 or buyan 不言, and xuxin 虛心 or xujing 虛靜. What is then zhi from aesthetical perspectives? In Zhuangtzu, xiaozhi 小知 is seen as secular and derived from chengxin. Dazhi 大知, however, is a true and ideal knowledge of everything that is sought by Zhuangtzu. With the similar method of it, I looked for xiaomei 小美 and damei 大美, where xiaomei is just a man’s vision, a beauty made of human languages while damei a unlimited beauty beyond human reasons. Zhi of Zhuangtzu ultimately pursues ‘True Knowledge(眞知, zhenzhi)’. We could see that this is not only something utmost but damei aesthetically. For this reason, we cannot easily judge or affirm True Knowledge and damei. That’s because zhi of Zhuangtzu is accompanied by indefinite changes. Accordingly, in this paper I suggest zhi as seen from the viewpoint of aesthetics is zhi itself and it is therefore yong 用 that can be permeated into anything else freely. His zhi notion is something before just knowing and also goes for a liquidity to catch a pure beauty, which necessarily demands dang 當 for the intuition of things and it comes from weidingye 未定也 that lies definitely behind dang. From the perspective of aesthetics, zhi is not simply a standard but rather zhi itself and it is a fluid concept with the condition of dang in any case because the fluidity can guarantee a potential extensibility of aesthetics. Therefore, we can get zhi of Zhuangtzu only when we don’t need hard to understand zhi itself.