Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No. 10, 2025

The Emergence of the Artistic Doctrine of Mind-Nature and the Chinese Spirit of Art

(Abstract)

Niu Hongbao

The moral doctrine of mind-nature (xin xing), developed during the period of the Hundred Schools of Thought, and the Daoist doctrine of enlightened mind-nature both embody a distinctive mode of reflection: a conscious and emergent foregrounding of a priori condition that makes practice and experience possible. Guided by this modality, the concept of an artistic mind-nature first emerged from pre-Han ideas such as “poetry expresses aspiration/Zhi” and “music arises from the heart-mind.” In the Wei-Jin era, nurtured by the School of Mystery of mind-nature (xuan xue), aesthetic subjectivity gradually separated from metaphysical inquiry, marking a pivotal shift. This differentiation unfolded through four landmark discursive events. First, the establishment of an autonomous “l(fā)iterary mind” (wen xin) in Wen Fu (Rhymeprose on Literature) and Wenxin Diaolong (The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons), which thereby diverged from the Daoist doctrine of enlightened mind-nature. Second, Wen Fu’s emphasis on “poetry arises from feeling” departed from the older “poetry expresses aspiration/Zhi,” thereby disclosing the ontological status of feeling-nature at the core of the artistic mind-nature. Third, Zong Bing’s Preface on Landscape Painting advanced the notion of “purify one’s mind and relish the phenomena” as distinct from “imbue the Dao so as to reflect things,” thus articulating the ontological intent of a mind-nature doctrine for painting and art. Fourth, “the debate over speech and meaning” dissolved the Confucian symbolic conception of the doctrine of names and ritual norms, as well as its semiotics of prescriptions, and therefore cultivated a psychological capacity that combined the mind’s symbolic form and the natural bestowed formative, which became the most crucial mechanism for establishing the independent artistic doctrine of mind-nature. In sum, the doctrine of artistic mind-nature constitutes the foundational substrate that shapes the Chinese spirit of art and provides the principle for an independent knowledge system in Chinese aesthetics.