Artistic Detachment in Japan and the West

Artistic Detachment

i n J a p a n a n d t h e We s t

Psychic Distance in Comparative Aesthetics

STEVE ODIN

A
University of Hawaii Press
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Odin, Steve.
Artistic detachment in Japan and the west : pyschic distance
in comparative aesthetics / Steve Odin.
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Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0824822110 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 0824823745 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Aesthetics, Comparative. 2. Aesthetics, European.
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Contents

Acknowledgments vii
Introduction Artistic Detachment as an Intercultural Theme 1

Part One Artistic Detachment East and West

1 Artistic Detachment in Western Aesthetics 27
2 Artistic Detachment in Japanese Aesthetics 99
3 An East-West Phenomenology of the Aesthetic
Attitude 170
Part Two Psychic Distance in Literature East and West
4 Psychic Distance in Modern Western Literature 199
5 Psychic Distance in Modern Japanese Literature 214
Glossary 281
References 283
Index of Names 291

v
Acknowledgments

I wrote this book as a 19941995

Fulbright scholar at Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan. I would espe-
cially like to thank Professor Tanaka Hideyoshi from the Aesthetics
Department as well as Professors Noe Keiichi, Ano Fumio, and Nu-
mata Hiroyuki at Tohoku University for their encouragement. Many
ideas in this volume have been developed over fifteen years of teach-
ing courses on Japanese and comparative aesthetics at the University
of Hawaii. Among my colleagues in the UH Department of Philos-
ophy, I would especially like to thank Professor Arindam Chakrabharti,
who has been a great source of information for this work. Among grad-
uate students in our Philosophy Department, I would like to thank
Brad Parks for his careful reading of my manuscript. Other colleagues
at the University of Hawaii have been profoundly instrumental in
the development of this project, especially Takie Sugiyama Lebra and
Valdo H. Viglielmo. Indeed, Professor Viglielmos dual expertise in
modern Japanese philosophy and modern Japanese literature has guided
the direction of this work. I would like to express my indebtedness to
Professor Steven Heine, as well, for his valuable comments on this
manuscript. Finally, Robert C. Neville, my philosophy adviser at both
the undergraduate and graduate levels, has made an important contri-
bution to the present work and his insights are cited in the following
pages.

vii
Introduction

Artistic Detachment as an Intercultural Theme

This book takes up the notion of artistic detachment, or

psychic distance, as an intercultural motif for East-West comparative
aesthetics. Specifically we will examine the notion of beauty as a func-
tion of psychic distance in Western and Japanese aesthetics, including
both the philosophical and the literary traditions. On the Western side
I underscore the notion of artistic detachment that developed from the
revolution in aesthetics initiated by Kants much celebrated (as well
as much criticized) idea of beauty as a function of disinterested con-
templation. On the Eastern side I highlight the Japanese notion of
beauty as hidden depths apprehended through artistic detachment, a
concept developed both in traditional Zen aestheticism and its refor-
mulation in the Kyoto school of modern Japanese philosophy. Insofar
as representative philosophers in the Kyoto school adopt an East-West
comparative framework rooted in a Japanese Buddhist metaphysics of
nothingness, they set forth a theory of disinterested aesthetic contem-
plation that synthesizes elements from both the Kantian and Zen Bud-
dhist traditions. Furthermore, I endeavor to clarify how artistic detach-
ment has been developed as a central motif in portrait-of-the-artist
novels in Japanese and Western traditions of literary aestheticism.
Portrait-of-the-artist novels in both traditions articulate a detachment
theory of art in which beauty is a function of an act of disinterested
contemplation. Moreover, the artistic detachment motif is related to
plot and character development insofar as the protagonist is typically
a young artist who cultivates heightened aesthetic consciousness
through disinterested contemplation to the point of extreme alienation.
Furthermore, artistic detachment is built into the structure of an im-
partial narrative that records satori-like epiphanies, or haiku moments
of sudden illumination, whereby the hidden depths of ordinary events
are disclosed through acts of disinterested contemplation. Ultimately
the goal of portrait-of-the-artist novels in both Japanese and Western
literature is transmutation of life into art through psychic distance.
1
2 Introduction
Yet a fundamental tension emerges in such novels between what
has been called the Ivory Tower and the Sacred Fount representing
the oppositional Apollonian/Dionysian impulses of detachment ver-
sus sympathy, distance versus involvement, disinterestedness versus
participation.
Critical objections to theories of artistic detachment and various
responses to them are another vital matter of consideration in this
project. It is often held that disinterested contemplation of the beau-
tiful is to be regarded as an escapist view whereby art is a sedative
inducing a spirit of renunciationan attitude variously labeled as
nihilism, pessimism, negativism, resignationism, voidism, or quietism.
Mystical theories of disinterested contemplation, so it is said, repre-
sent a nihilistic view that undermines this-worldly existence by locat-
ing the source of value in an otherworldly life. Again, detachment
theories of art are criticized for mind/body dualism: whereas an onto-
logical primacy of mind is the source of disinterested contemplation
representing enlightenment, the body is the source of all desires, feel-
ings, passions, and attachments designating ignorance. Another criti-
cism leveled against the Kantian view of disinterested contemplation
is that by locating art in an autonomous sphere distinct from morality
and religion it declines into a shallow aestheticism which emphasizes
beauty to the neglect of moral action, religious salvation, and social
transformation. Feminist critiques level the charge of a gender bias
holding that disinterestedness is a male perspective associated with
masculine ideals of the disembodied mind as the higher spiritual
facultywhereas interests, attachments, desires, passions, and feelings
are associated with feminine ideals of the physical body as the lower
material aspect of human existence. From the standpoint of an ideology
critique of power relations, disinterestedness has been undermined as
an aristocratic, elitist, and exclusivistic doctrine because it restricts the
notion of beauty to members of a privileged class able to cultivate
refined taste in beauty through development of artistic detachment in
a program of aesthetic education. One notable scholar agrees that psy-
chic distancing is indeed a vital factor in aesthetic experience, but she
criticizes the idea that it is a function of the subjects mental attitude:
the distance or otherness of a work of art, she contends, is a function
of its symbolic character. Others argue that the notion of artistic
detachment characterized by an aesthetic attitude with a special mode
of attention or state of consciousness is a myth that cannot be veri-
fied but is a phantom condition with no ontological status. While one
scholar affirms the central role of psychic distance as a factor in aes-
 Introduction 3
thetic experience, he nonetheless criticizes the landscape model
according to which the landscape is presented by framing devices as
an already finished picture with a fixed perspective and due distance.
Regarding the Asian side of this work, some have criticized the
Kantian interpretation of beauty in Japan. Thus the Japanese sense of
beauty is now exposed as an aesthetics of reclusion wherein ideals of
beauty rooted in detached contemplation are based on an ideology
critique according to which the repressed and exiled take up opposi-
tion to the ruling class under the subterfuge of poetic composition.
One of the most central debates in traditional Japanese aesthetics is
found in the works of Mootori Norinaga, who argues that the Zen
ideal of beauty as a function of detached contemplation represents the
Buddhist concept of perfection as becoming inhuman through non-
attachment to feelings, whereas the original Shinto religion of Japan
values above all else those human feelings that move the heart-mind
(kokoro) to spontaneous overflow of deep emotions. From this it should
be clear that the idea of beauty as a function of disinterested con-
templation has had strong criticisms leveled against it from both
Western and Eastern scholars of aesthetics. Nevertheless, I shall en-
deavor to show that there are compelling rejoinders to each and every
one of these critical objections to aesthetic theories of disinterested
contemplation.
Anticipating at least some of the conclusions presented in this work,
I argue that beauty is not just the fixed and given property of an
object but requires an aesthetic attitude of disinterested contempla-
tion. Against various criticisms leveled against aesthetic attitude the-
ories, I must emphasize that artistic detachment is not exclusive of its
opposite, namely, interest, feeling, desire, sympathy, or passion. Unlike
renunciation, which rejects both desires and their objects, artistic de-
tachment neither accepts nor rejects desires but instead objectifies and
observes them. Again, disinterested contemplation of beauty does not
mean that one is uninterested in the object. It simply means that
one enjoys beauty for its own sake apart from concerns for self-interest.
Whereas uninterested means bored, disinterested means impartial.
The attitude of artistic detachment is not an anaesthesia, apatheia, in-
difference, or insensitivity but a heightened state of embodied inter-
sensory awareness that maximizes both clear observation and affective
feeling. For this reason cultivation of an aesthetic attitude of artistic
detachment is widely regarded as the prerequisite of the connoisseur
who fully enjoys the exquisite refined sensations of immediate experi-
ence. Furthermore, the aesthetic attitude includes both a negative or
4 Introduction
inhibitory phase of detachment and a positive or creative phase of
imaginative reconstruction. A complete description of the aesthetic
attitude of artistic contemplation therefore includes not only elements
of disinterestedness, distancing, or detachment but also intense emo-
tional sympathy and creative imagination. Thus the perception of
beauty as hidden depths requires an aesthetic attitude including at
least three interactive aspectsdetachment, feeling, and imagination
unified in an act of psychic integration.

Phenomenology of the Aesthetic Attitude

In the final chapter of Part One, I develop a phenomenology of the
aesthetic attitude. One aim here is to articulate a unified metatheoret-
ical framework in order to illuminate the aesthetic attitude of psychic
distance as developed in Eastern and Western traditions. Another aim,
however, is to present a defense of aesthetic attitude theories from their
various critics. Essentially I argue that the notion whereby perception
of beauty involves an aesthetic attitude is itself required by the key
phenomenological doctrine of intentionality, or noesis noema corre-
lation, according to which aesthetic experience, like all experience, re-
quires a twofold analysis of both what is seen (noematic content) as
well as how it is seen (noetic attitude).
By phenomenology I refer to the philosophical method established
by Edmund Husserl, which aims not to explain but to describe
phenomena just as they appear to consciousness. Husserlian phenom-
enology traces part of its lineage back to Kants revolution in philos-
ophy: namely, the doctrine of transcendental idealism, according to
which objects of perception are not simply fixed or given but are
constituted by acts of consciousness. In Kants epoch-making trea-
tise on aesthetic experience titled The Critique of Judgement (1790),
beauty is no longer just a fixed property of the objectfor instance,
its harmony, unity, or symmetrybut is now something posited by
mental acts of a constitutive subject. For Kant perception of beauty
thus requires an aesthetic attitude that constitutes the aesthetic object.
The central feature of this aesthetic attitude is that it is disinterested
or, as it were, detached from all liking and disliking rooted in selfish
concern for personal gain or loss. Moreover, the aesthetic attitude con-
stitutive of beauty has both a negative or inhibitory phase character-
ized by disinterestedness and a positive or constructive phase through
reconstitution by free play of imagination.
Husserlian phenomenology begins with the act of epoch, or brack-
 Introduction 5
eting, of sedimented theories, understood as a neutralization of
mental positings, or a suspension of judgment, which neither affirms
nor denies the existence or nonexistence of phenomena but just ob-
serves and describes them as they appear to consciousness in their pre-
reflective presence. The idea of an aesthetic attitude is explicated by
phenomenological discourse based on the key doctrine of intention-
ality, or noesis noema correlation, whereupon the noematic content
of beauty requires an account of the noetic act by which the former
comes to presence. A phenomenological aesthetic based on the inten-
tionality thesis of noetic noematic correspondence thus holds that
beauty is constituted not only by what is seen (the noema) but also by
how it is seen (the noesis). As Husserl himself points out, the phenom-
enological attitude of epoch is a functional equivalent of the aesthetic
attitude insofar as both represent the neutral perspective of a disinter-
ested onlooker. In the phenomenological aesthetics of Heidegger,
an equivalent to epoch is to be found in Gelassenheit, or letting-be.
For Heidegger, Gelassenheit is the noetic act that corresponds to the
noematic content of aesthetic experience as the beauty of original truth
(Gk.: aletheia) in which phenomena radiate into unhiddenness through
the surrounding horizon of openness, presence, and nonconcealment.
It is this insight that aesthetic experience requires a description of
both noematic content and its correlate noetic acts of positing which
makes phenomenology a suitable framework for elucidating aesthetic
attitude theories of beauty in art and nature. Phenomenological anal-
ysis requires a shift from the natural attitude of already sedimented
interpretations in the noetic context to the openness of the phenom-
enological attitude, which in its negative phase requires epoch or
suspension of judgement and in its positive phase requires fantasy
variation in creative imaginationthereby to disclose (open up) phe-
nomena in their multiplicity, possibility, and variety. Insofar as the
phenomenological attitude has both a negative phase of epoch as neu-
tralization of sedimentations and a positive phase of fantasy variation,
therefore, it elucidates the two major aspects of an aesthetic attitude
directed to the contemplation of beauty: its inhibitory aspect of dis-
interested attention and its resulting constructive aspect of free play
in imagination.

A Brief History of Psychic Distance

The renowned literary critic Wayne C. Booth has remarked: A history
should be written of the concept of aesthetic distance. One element in
6 Introduction
such a history would be the growing knowledge, early in the century,
of oriental literature (1981:122n.; italics added). It is remarkable that
although the idea of aesthetic distance has come to occupy a central
place in Western philosophy of art in the wake of Kants notion of
beauty as a function of disinterested contemplation, there is no single
work developing a comprehensive treatment of this concept. It thus
goes without saying that no work articulates the notion of aesthetic
distance in both the Western and Eastern traditions. Hence one of the
aims of this book is to provide a historical survey of the concept of
aesthetic distance in terms of its Western and Eastern formulations.
Although on the Eastern side this work focuses on the concept of aes-
thetic distance in the Japanese tradition, I outline its development in
other Asian traditions. On the Western side, following the revolution
in aesthetics triggered by Kants Critique of Judgement in 1790, there
was a paradigm shift in the concept of beauty from an emphasis on
the constituted object to the mental attitude of the constitutive sub-
ject. After Kant many leading theorists in philosophy and literature
have held that perception of beauty requires cultivation of an aesthetic
attitude of artistic detachment or its various equivalents, such as psy-
chic distance, disinterested contemplation, isolation through framing,
recollection in tranquility, alienation effect, dehumanization of art, and
equilibrium in synaesthesis. Jerome Stolnitz argues that the Kantian
idea of beauty as disinterested pleasure is the key notion of modern
aesthetics, but he points out that disinterestedness is a fairly recent
idea [which] does not occur at all in the thought of antiquity, the
medieval period, and the Renaissance (1961a:131). Eastern theories
of beauty, however, have underscored the aesthetic attitude of dis-
interested contemplation from ancient times.

Western Models
Under such designations as artistic detachment, aesthetic contem-
plation, psychic distance, dehumanized art, intransitive atten-
tion, tranquil recollection, alienation effect, resignation, stasis,
will-less-ness, isolation, framing, equilibrium, synaesthesis,
objectification, symbolization, and letting-be, the Kantian idea
of beauty grounded in a disinterested attitude has come to occupy a
central place in modern aesthetic theory. The idea that beauty re-
quires a mental attitude, psychological state, or mode of attention
which is disinterested has been held in common by many philoso-
phers of art, literary critics, and aestheticians of very different persua-
 Introduction 7
sions, thinkers whose views on other issues are widely divergent. A
detachment theory of art and beauty grounded upon the disinterested
attitude is to be found, for example, in Shaftesbury, Moritz, Kant,
Goethe, Schiller, Schopenhauer, Heidegger, Bergson, Ortega y Gasset,
Wordsworth, Bullough, Stolnitz, I. A. Richards, Ingarden, Polanyi,
Santayana, C. I. Lewis, Prall, Mnsterberg, Langer, Beardsley, and other
aestheticiansto mention just a few of the preeminent thinkers in
this tradition. Moreover, the Kantian theory of aesthetic disinterest-
edness has been restated by the tradition of recent British analytic
philosophy by thinkers like G. E. Moore, Peter Strawson, and Stuart
Hampshire. The Kantian principle of disinterestedness has been devel-
oped in the Western literary tradition by writers in the French, British,
and American movements of aestheticism such as Gustave Flaubert,
Walter Pater, Oscar Wilde, Henry James, and James Joyce. It has been
said that the concept of disinterestedness represents a significant excep-
tion to the near chaotic divergence in opinion among aestheticians.
Indeed, disinterestedness has emerged as perhaps the single most influ-
ential notion in twentieth-century aesthetics.
One of the foremost proponents of aesthetic disinterestedness in
the twentieth century has been Jerome Stolnitz. In his essay On the
Origins of Aesthetic Disinterestedness, Stolnitz summarizes the
central role occupied by the concept of disinterested perception in
modern aesthetic theory:
We cannot understand modern aesthetic theory unless we understand
the concept of disinterestedness. If any one belief is the common
property of modern thought, it is that a certain mode of attention is
indispensable to and distinctive of the perception of beautiful things.
. . . And yet, as these things are measured, disinterestedness is a
fairly recent idea. Either it does not occur at all in the thought of
antiquity, the medieval period, and the Renaissance, or if it does, as in
Thomas, the allusion is cursory and undeveloped. [1961a:131]

As indicated in the foregoing passage, not only has the notion of dis-
interestedness become a central motif in modern aesthetics; it is also a
watershed between the old and new approaches to aesthetic theory.
According to Stolnitz, the principle of disinterestedness is nowhere to
be found in ancient, classical, and medieval aesthetics, wherein beauty
was equated with the attribute of an object as a harmony or sym-
metry. In the modern period, however, there was a paradigm shift to
an emphasis on a disinterested, distanced, or detached attitude as the
psychological basis of aesthetic experience. That is to say, while the
8 Introduction
old approach in aesthetics equated beauty with harmony and regarded
it as a property of the object, the new approach focuses instead on the
mental attitude of the subject. Or more accurately stated: the modern
approach describes beauty in terms of a correlation between the aes-
thetically valuable quality of the object and the contemplative atti-
tude of psychic distance adopted by the subject. By this view, certain
requirements of disinterest, detachment, or distance must be satisfied
in the consciousness of a spectator as a precondition for an aesthetic
experience. Beauty is not just to be understood as a quality inherent
in the aesthetic object, therefore, since it also depends on the attitude
of the beholder. The experience of beauty is constituted not only by
the thing that is seen but also how it is seen. It is only with this con-
cept of disinterestedness that the aesthetic now becomes a distinc-
tive mode of experience. Stolnitz refers to this paradigm shift as a
Copernican Revolution in aestheticswhether an object is beautiful
or sublime depends upon the experience of the spectator (1961a:
138). Stolnitz further maintains that following this revolution, the
subject matter of aesthetics is taken to be the experience of disinter-
ested perception and the nature and value of its objects (1961b:99).
Stolnitz (1961a; 1961b) contends that the foundation for the
notion of disinterestedness was first established by Lord Shaftesbury
(16711713) and the British empiricists holding the view that there
is a special faculty of taste. Yet it was only after Immanuel Kant
(17241804) that the idea became widespread in modern aesthetic
theory. Generally speaking, Kants contribution was his attempt to
overcome relativism by establishing normative grounds for univer-
sality in human judgement, including cognitive, moral, and aesthetic
judgements. Kants effort to establish normative grounds for uni-
versal validity claims of cognitive, ethical, and aesthetic judgements
in science, morality, and art is based on his transcendental idealism
whereby experience is constituted by acts of human consciousness.
In his first critique of pure reason, objectivity in cognitive judgement
was established through a priori categories of the understanding that
constitute the manifold of sensation; in his second critique of ethical
conduct, objectivity in moral judgement was established through cate-
gorical imperatives of duty posited by self-legislative reason through
the principle of universalizability; in his third critique, it is now
argued that objectivity in aesthetic judgements is achieved through the
mental attitude of disinterestedness. It is the disinterested attitude of
contemplation that makes possible impartial and universally valid
aesthetic judgements in matters of taste in the beautiful. Thus in his
 Introduction 9
Critique of Judgement (1952), first published in 1790, Kant explained
delight in beauty as a satisfaction that is disinterested (interesselos),
understood as a consciousness of detachment from all interest (6:51).
Moreover, for Kant the mental attitude constitutive of aesthetic expe-
rience involves both a negative or inhibitory phase of detachment as
well as a positive or creative phase that he characterizes as the free
play (89) of productive imagination and other faculties.
In the wake of Kant came a proliferation of theories of artistic
detachment in the tradition of German romantic idealism running
through Goethe, Schiller, Schopenhauer, and Heidegger. The icono-
clastic thinker Nietzsche, always philosophizing with a hammer toward
the end of shattering all absolutes, criticized what he regarded to be a
nihilistic tendency in this Kantian idea of disinterestedness, espe-
cially as found in Schopenhauers pessimistic teaching of resignation
from life. According to Nietzsches Dionysian aesthetics of rapture, art
is not a sedative that pacifies the will and leads to renunciation of life
but a stimulant functioning as the countermovement to nihilism which
results in total affirmation of life with total ecstasy. Yet according to
Heidegger, Kants theory of aesthetic disinterestedness, rightly under-
stood, is not nihilistic but instead supports Nietzsches own Dionysian
concept of beauty as overflowing and superabundant rapture or ecstasy
that completely affirms existence in the world. Heidegger reformulates
Kants theory of disinterested contemplation through his own existen-
tial-hermeneutical phenomenology according to which beauty is orig-
inal truth as an event of ontological disclosure whereby a phenomenon
stands out through ecstasy into the surrounding horizon of openness,
unhiddenness, and nonconcealment by means of the nonfocal aesthetic
attitude of Gelassenheit or letting-be as releasement toward things and
openness to the mystery of being.
This Kantian aesthetics based on the disinterested attitude required
for the perception of beauty was psychologized by Edward Bullough
through the notion of distancing. What had previously been termed
disinterestedness or detachment is for Bullough a psychological act
whereby one contemplates an event objectively through insertion of
psychic Distance. He sets forth psychic distance as the fundamen-
tal aesthetic principle and an essential factor in all beauty and art.
Bullough defines psychic distance in nonutilitarian terms as an act of
putting the phenomenon . . . out of gear with our practical, actual
self (1977:95). For Bullough, a degree of psychic distance is neces-
sary to the artist and spectator as well as the professional critic and
thus becomes a fundamental component in both the creation and
10 Introduction
appreciation of beauty in art. It is only when there is a loss of Dis-
tance through extremes of underdistancing or overdistancing that an
event ceases to be aesthetic.
The Spanish philosopher Jos Ortega y Gasset develops a theory of
aesthetic disinterestedness in terms of what he calls the dehumaniza-
tion of art. He gives a phenomenological description of a tragic event
involving the death of a great man that reveals the various possible
degrees of psychic distancing in a manner reminiscent of Bullough.
For Ortega, the goal is to achieve maximum distance from life result-
ing in the complete removal of the human element in art, that is, what
he otherwise calls dehumanized art. Three British writers, I. A.
Richards, C. K. Ogden, and James Wood, have together developed
their own theory of artistic detachment under the name of synaes-
thesis. For these thinkers the aesthetic experience is syn-aesthetic
experience. The term synaesthesis denotes a state of tranquil repose
achieved not by the simplification and exclusion of sense impulses
but instead by their balance, harmony, and equilibrium. The aesthetic
experience of synaesthesis is further said to be wholly disinterested,
detached, and impersonal. By this view the attitude of disinterested
contemplation is not a condition of anaesthesia, which numbs the
senses, but the heightened intersensory awareness of synaesthesia.
Hugo Mnsterberg, I. A. Richards, and Michael Polanyi have all
reformulated the Kantian principle of aesthetic disinterestness in
terms of an isolation theory of art wherein detachment from per-
sonal emotions is achieved by isolating an object inside the borders of
a frame.
Like Peirce, James, Dewey, Mead, Whitehead, Pepper, and others
in the tradition of American philosophy, C. I. Lewis argues that beauty
is the pervasive aesthetic quality spreading throughout events as
directly felt in immediate experience. But whereas the other Ameri-
can philosophers focus primarily on the role of feeling, emotion, pre-
hension, or sympathy, Lewis adopts a Kantian position and argues
that a mental attitude of distinterested contemplation is a precondi-
tion for an intuition of pervasive aesthetic quality. Lewis is himself
influenced by David W. Prall, who likewise argues that the pervasive
aesthetic quality of events requires an attitude of disinterested con-
templation for its enjoyment. Like Dewey, Lewis, and other American
philosophers Susanne K. Langer describes beauty as the immediately
felt pervasive quality of an artwork. Morever, she agrees with Bullough
that psychic distance is a factor in aesthetic experience. Yet unlike
Lewis, she does not regard distance as a function of an aesthetic atti-
 Introduction 11
tude but sees it instead as a function of the symbolic nature of art. It
is the symbol that gives an artwork its distance, or otherness, and
thus accounts for the response of contemplative detachment. In this
context Langer develops Whiteheads idea of art as a lure for feeling
that suspends ordinary aims and invites prolonged contemplation of
pervasive aesthetic quality.
The American philosopher Monroe C. Beardsley attempts to work
out a comprehensive notion of beauty through five criteria of aesthetic
experience: object directedness, felt freedom, detached effect, active dis-
covery, and wholeness. And as we shall see, this key idea of beauty as
rooted in disinterested contemplation was itself taken up as the central
theme in portrait-of-the-artist novels in the literary tradition of Goethe,
Flaubert, Pater, Wilde, James, Joyce, and many others. Thus a plethora
of theories of artistic detachment flourished in the Western philosoph-
ical tradition following the revolution in aesthetics established by Kant
namely, the view that whether an object is beautiful or sublime
depends on the mental attitude of the spectator.

The Japanese Model

When Jerome Stolnitz argues that the concept of disinterestedness is
nowhere to be found in classical and medieval aesthetics (1961b:
100), he is only considering the history of aesthetic theory in the
West. For what is now referred to as aesthetic attitude theory based
on such notions as disinterest, detachment, and distance has been sys-
tematically articulated with great depth by various Asian theories of
beauty, especially medieval Japanese ygen aesthetics. The need for a
multicultural East-West comparative account of psychic distance as a
factor in aesthetic experience is indicated by Wayne C. Booth in his
classic work on literary criticism titled The Rhetoric of Fiction. In this
book he points out the renewal of interest in detachment theories of
art and comments on the modern rediscovery of aesthetic distance
(1961:121). Booth describes the ideal of aesthetic distance in the
detached or disinterested authorial perspective of the modern novel as
a device to achieve objectivityor, in synonymous terms, imperson-
ality, neutrality, impartiality, and impassability (p. 67). For Booth this
effort to achieve objectivity, neutrality, and impartiality in authorial
perspective through disinterested reporting of events reaches its zenith
in such novelists as Gustave Flaubert in French literature, Henry James
in American literature, and James Joyce in English literature (p. 67
86). Booth also makes passing reference to the philosophical develop-
12 Introduction
ments of aesthetic distance by such thinkers as Jos Ortega y Gasset
and Edward Bullough (p. 119122). In this context Booth remarks
that a history of the concept of aesthetic distance should be written
including both Western and Eastern traditions (p. 122n.). From the
Eastern side Booth then cites Donald Keenes description of Japanese
bunraku (puppet) theater, as developed by the eighteenth-century
dramatist Chikamatsu, as well as the achievement of unrealistic alien-
ation effects (A-effects) in Brechts epic theater, which is itself ex-
plicitly patterned on certain effects in the Chinese theater (p. 122n.).
Both the bunraku plays of Japanese theater and the Beijing opera of
Chinese theater produce alienation effects by framing devices that
maximize aesthetic distance and thereby discourage emotional in-
volvement in the dramatic performance. Similarly, in Feeling and Form
Susanne K. Langer (1953:324325) underscores the function of what
Bullough calls psychic distance in the aesthetics of drama, citing
Brechts idea of the alienation effect in Western theater as well as its
counterparts in Chinese, Japanese, and Indian theater.
Hence at least one function of this book is to provide an East-West
history of the concept of aesthetic distance, including its development
through both philosophical and literary sources. On the Western side,
I trace the evolution of the concept of artistic detachment as high-
lighted through such notions asdisinterestedness (Kant), resigna-
tion (Goethe), detached contemplation (Schopenhauer), epoch or
neutralization (Husserl), Gelassenheit or letting-be (Heidegger),
alienation effect (Brecht), tranquil recollection of emotions (Words-
worth), detached curiosity (Henry James), luminous stasis of esthetic
pleasure (Joyce), psychic distance (Bullough), dehumanization of
art (Ortega y Gasset), isolation by framing (Mnsterberg, Polanyi),
synaesthesis (I. A. Richards), and symbolization (Langer). On the
Eastern side it is Japan that has articulated the most explicit and sys-
tematic views of beauty as requiring a disinterested aesthetic attitude
both in classical and modern periods, both in philosophical and literary
traditions. Moreover, it is the tradition of modern Japanese philosophy
and literature that has endeavored to present notions of artistic detach-
ment based on an East-West synthesis. At the same time it must be
said that important concepts of artistic detachment have emerged from
other Asian traditions. Thus we turn now to a brief overview of artistic
detachment in Japanese aesthetics along with a brief consideration of
the Indian and Chinese traditions. In such a manner I hope to establish
a universalized East-West transcultural paradigm of artistic detach-
ment wherein beauty is comprehended as a function of an aesthetic
 Introduction 13
attitude of disinterested contemplation through insertion of psychic
distance.

Psychic Distance in Indian Aesthetics. One of the most extraordinary

aesthetic doctrines, East or West, ancient or modern, is the classical
Indian rasa doctrine of beauty culminating in the tenth-century writ-
ings of Abhinavagupta. From the transcultural standpoint of East-
West comparative aesthetics, the rasa theory represents, if not the first,
certainly one of the earliest theories of artistic detachment. In Abhina-
vaguptas Dhvanyloka Locana (Light on Suggestion, 1990), a doc-
trine of artistic detachment is explicitly and systematically formulated
in terms of the concept of ntarasapeaceful beauty or the aes-
thetic experience of tranquility. For Abhinavagupta, the aesthetic
delight of rasa is where the supreme bliss (Skt. nanda) of the abso-
lute as sat-cit-nanda (existence-consciousness-bliss) is realized through
the physically embodied sensuous beauty of imaginative art and liter-
ature. He often compares it to the soma, or sacred herbal beverage, used
in ancient Vedic rituals to induce the ecstatic trance states of samadhi
wherein one enjoys the ultimate bliss of the absolute.
The salient features of Abhinavaguptas rasa theory of artistic detach-
ment as presented in this text might be summed up as follows: Rasa
(flavor) is aesthetic taste as the delight of beauty (1990:611). In imag-
inative poetry and art, the beauty of rasa is not imparted through direct
statement but always through suggestion (Skt. dhvani) (pp. 81 and
105107). Although traditional Indian criticism recognizes eight basic
rasas or aesthetic emotions that arise through poetic suggestion, there
is also a ninth: ntarasa, the rasa of peace (pp. 16 and 110). Since the
rasa of peace leads to liberation (moksa), it is the most important rasa
(p. 525). Furthermore, detachment (vairgya) is identified as the
basic state of ntarasa (pp. 479, 490, 691). Abhinavagupta (pp. 690
693) holds that the literary archetype of ntarasa is the epic Mahbh-
rata, especially the section known as Bhagavad Gita, which as a doc-
trine teaches liberation (moksa) through detachment (vairagya) and
which as a literary work of art expresses tranquil beauty (ntarasa)
through the mechanisms of suggestion (dhvani) and reverberation
(vyajan).
Although the word rasa literally means taste, savor, flavor,
relish, and other terms connected to gustatory metaphors, in the
framework of Abhinavagupta it came to specify beauty or aesthetic
experience. In his Dhvanyloka Locana (1990:16, 110), the eight
fundamental rasas or flavors recognized by classical Indian literary
14 Introduction
criticism are enumerated as follows: the erotic, the comic, the tragic,
the heroic, the furious, the fearsome, the gruesome, and the wondrous.
To these the ninth-century Kashmiri thinker nanda adds a ninth:
the rasa of peace, calm, or tranquility (nta) (1990:16). While nanda
was the first to establish the existence of ntarasa as a distinctive mood
with its own aesthetic quality, he does not accord it any privileged
status. nanda (1990:530) holds that the most important rasa is in fact
erotic love (rngrarasa). Abhinavagupta, in contrast, holds that the
principal rasa is ntarasa, the rasa of peace, not only because it is the
ultimate mode of aesthetic delight but also because it culminates in
the religious experience of moksa: liberation. In Abhinavaguptas words:
Suffice it to say that as the rasa of peace leads to moksa, which is the
highest aim of man, it is the most important of all the rasas (1990:
525). Abhinavagupta clarifies that the rasa of peace is itself the ulti-
mate dimension of the other eight kinds of rasa. The rasa of peace is
the common source and goal of all the other rasas and as such is a pre-
condition for their enjoyment. He states: The peaceful (nta) is the
basic nature common to all the rasas (p. 521). To illustrate this point
he cites the words of Bharata: The emotions arise from peace, each
from its peculiar cause, and when the cause has ceased, they melt back
into peace (p. 521). Hence the aesthetic experience of all the other
rasas is ultimately rooted in the immovable tranquility of ntarasa.
Tracing the origins of the notion of ntarasa in classical Indian
aesthetics, Masson and Patwardhan (1985:36) cite an important pas-
sage from an ancient text (Visnudharmottarapurna) that proclaims: O
King, they say that nta [peace] arises from vairgya [detachment]
(1985:36). Likewise, Abhinavagupta (1990:479, 490, 691) and nanda
(1990:478) both explicitly identify the basic emotion (sthyibhva)
of ntarasa as vairgya: detachment. Hence the aesthetic delight of
ntarasa or peaceful beauty is itself the function of an underlying psy-
chological act of disinterested contemplation characterized by detach-
ment from emotional reactions of craving and aversion.
To understand Abhinavaguptas aesthetic attitude of detached
contemplation by means of which the aesthetic delight of rasa is ap-
prendend, it is necessary to discuss his notion of sdhranikarana
generalization, universalization, or deindividuation. According to Ab-
hinavagupta, each rasa is the relishing of a generalized emotion that is
neither subjective nor objective but completely transpersonal in char-
acter. When particular feelings are deindividuated through the uni-
versalization process into generalized emotions of rasa, they cannot be
simply located either in the subject or in the object but become trans-
 Introduction 15
personalized pervasive aesthetic qualities, beyond spatial-temporal
determination, which are situated nowhere and belong to no one.
Dineth Mathur summarizes how detachment operates in the uni-
versalization process whereby personal feelings are transfigured into
the generalized emotions of rasa as the pervasive aesthetic quality of a
situation:
Aesthetic experience of rasa is a state of pure joy which depends on our
intuitive capacity to perceive the dominant emotional quality of the total
situation presented by the dramatist. In such an experience private
personal feelings are suspended and detached from the particular time
and place of actual occurrences and are elevated to the plane of univer-
salized human emotions. [1981:226]
Another work, Comparative Aesthetics: East and West by Angraj Chau-
dhary, relates the deindividualizing process (sdhranikarana) of
Abhinavaguptas rasa theory to Edward Bulloughs idea of psychic
distance as a factor in beauty and art:
Abhinavagupta, who flourished in the 10th Cent. A. D., explains with a
great amount of clarity and profundity the concept of psychic distance.
His theory of psychic distance hinges on the single concept of the de-
individuation of the aesthetic object. Whether this object is an emotion
in a drama or a sensuous form as associated with a painting, it is de-
individualized. . . . Psychic distance, therefore, is achieved in a work of
art by de-individualizing all emotions, characters and situations.
[1991:49]
He adds that the aesthetic delight of rasa, which is no less than a
revelation of the nanda or bliss of the absolute, is a disinterested
pleasure arising from the contemplation of deindividualized or univer-
salized emotions that belong to no individual person but to con-
sciousness in general.

Psychic Distance in Chinese Aesthetics. The ideal of nonattachment is a

central notion in the philosophical traditions of China, including the
ancient text titled I Ching (Book of Changes), along with later philo-
sophical traditions of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. Hexagram
20 named contemplation (kan) in the I Ching; chung or equanim-
ity in the Doctrine of the Mean (Chung-yung) of Confucianism; wu-hsin
or no-mind in the Platform Sutra of Chan Buddhism; wu-wei or
letting-be of the Tao Te Ching of Taoismall might be cited as
prototypes of detached contemplation in Chinese thought. While the
idea of nonattachment in the sense of artistic detachment is often
16 Introduction
implicit in the classical Chinese texts, it is rarely thematized in any
systematic way. A somewhat more explicit theory of artistic detach-
ment is to be found in the writings of Wang Kuo-wei, however, gen-
erally recognized as the foremost original thinker in modern Chinese
aesthetics. Wang formulates his theory of disinterested contemplation
based on an East-West synthesis and from this perspective endeavors
to illuminate the traditional Chinese sense of beauty.
As the most ancient book of China, if not the world, the I Ching
(Book of Changes) became the reservoir of archetypal images for the
Chinese poetic imagination through its famous sixty-four hexagrams
while at the same time functioning as a central text for later Confucian,
Taoist, and Buddhist traditions. Hexagram 20 can be regarded as a
symbol of detached observation in all its forms, including artistic
detachment. The Confucian, Taoist, and Buddhist commentaries on
the I Ching interpret the meaning of hexagram 20 in various ways;
but taken altogether, they generally express the meaning of kan as
representing a calm, tranquil, spontaneous, and detached contempla-
tion of nature as a creative aesthetic process of perpetual change and
transformation.
The concept of detached observation is again expressed in terms of
equilibrium (chung) in one of the four classics of Confucianism: the
Doctrine of the Mean. A celebrated passage from this work reads:
Before the feelings of pleasure, anger, sorrow, and joy are aroused it is
called equilibrium (chung, centrality, mean). When these feelings are
aroused and each and all attain due measure and degree, it is called
harmony. Equilibrium is the great foundation of the world, and harmony
its universal path. When equilibrium and harmony are realized to the
highest degree, heaven and earth will attain their proper order and all
things will flourish. [Chan 1963:98]

While the notion of equanimity (Ch. chung) is a major source for doc-
trines of detached contemplation in East Asia, it is only an implicit
notion of artistic detachment whereby beauty is understood as a func-
tion of disinterested contemplation through insertion of psychic dis-
tance. Indeed, based on his interpretation of this passage from the Doc-
trine of the Mean, the famous literary critic and sinologist I. A. Richards
(1922) has articulated a highly original concept of aesthetic experi-
ence through psychic distance in terms of his notion of synaesthesis,
understood as an equilibrium, balance, and harmony of diverse sense
impulses.
 Introduction 17
In the Taoist philosophy expounded by Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu,
the most celebrated idea of detached observation, or disinterested con-
templation, is that of wu-weivariously translated as nonaction, not-
doing, naturalness, spontaneity, laissez-faire, and noninterference or
letting-be. Wu-wei is a diverse concept functioning at multiple levels
of discourse including the religious, ethical, political, and aesthetic
dimensions of Taoism. In chapter sixteen of the Tao Te Ching, Lao-tzu
describes wu-wei as a contemplative mode of awareness that opens up
the bottomless empty void of nonbeing. For Taoism wu-wei is also the
basis for moral conduct through spontaneous natural acts in harmony
with tao whereas it is held that the Confucian ethical principle of li, or
ritual action, is artificial rule-governed behavior which arises only
when there is a decline of tao. Moreover, in Taoist political philosophy
the art of rulership is based on wu-wei in its meaning as noninterference
or laissez-faire. Through wu-wei one eliminates all conscious striving in
order to become spontaneous and responsive to tao in the unimpeded
flow of nature as a creative aesthetic process of perpetual change and
transformation. In the general context of its use in the arts, the Taoist
concept of wu-wei can be understood to represent the calm detached
attitude for contemplation of tranquil beauty as the void of dark
mystery in art and nature.
The Platform Sutra attributed to Hui-neng (638713), the legendary
sixth patriarch of Chan/Zen Buddhism in China, describes the imme-
diate experience of liberation in sudden enlightenment through no-
mind (Ch. wu-hsin) in its three aspects as no-thought (wu-nien), no-
abiding (wu-chu), and no-form (wu-hsian)all of which represent
various aspects of the mind of no-attachment (wu-chao), the emp-
tied nonattached mind of nonclinging, noncraving, and nongrasping.
But in the Japanese tradition of Zen/Chan Buddhism the doctrine of
no-mind (J. mushin) became explicitly and systematically applied to
the aesthetic experience of beauty in art and nature. As we shall see,
D. T. Suzuki elucidates Hui-nengs philosophy of nonattachment in
The Zen Doctrine of No-Mind: The Significance of the Sutra of Hui-Neng
(1949a). In other works such as Zen and Japanese Culture he applies the
Zen/Chan doctrine of no-mind in its sense as nonattachment to the
various arts and crafts of Japan, now explaining it as the aesthetic atti-
tude of artistic detachment underlying the traditional Japanese sense
of beauty.
We have seen that hexagram 20 titled contemplation (kan) in the
I Ching tradition, equilibrium (chung) in Confucianism, letting-be
18 Introduction
(wu-wei) in Taoism, and no-mind/no-thought (wu-hsin/wu-nien) in
Chan Buddhism all represent paradigmatic expressions of detached
aesthetic contemplation in Chinese culture. It can be said that overall
these concepts refer to detached observation in a very general way and
include the notion of artistic detachment only implicitly. A more
explicit theory of artistic detachment is to be found in the writings of
Wang Kuo-wei (18771927). His major treatise on Chinese aesthetics
is available in English translation with commentary in a volume titled
Wang Kuo-Weis Jen-chien Tzu-hua: A Study in Chinese Literary Criticism
(1977) by Adele Austin Rickett. In Jen-chien Tzu-hua (Poetic Reflec-
tions in the Human World), Wang points out that there are two aes-
thetic worlds in the experience of beauty: the world of no-self, or the
impersonal state (wu-wo chih ching), and the world of having self,
or the personal state (yu-wo chih ching) (Rickett 1977:1415, 26, 40
41). Again, for Wang the world of wu-wo (no-self) is the state of self-
detachment whereas the world of yu-wo (having self) is the state of
self-attachment. According to Wang the traditional Chinese sense
of the beautiful (yu-mei) is to be understood as representing wu-wo chih
ching, the world of no-self, the impersonal state, or the aesthetic atti-
tude of self-detachment.
For Wang the world of self-detachment is the major concern in
Taoist and Chinese Buddhist arts, while the world of self-attachment
is the concern of Confucian and Western arts. Whereas the world of
self-detachment at the heart of Taoist and Buddhist aesthetics is related
to the beauty of grace (yo mei), the world of self-attachment is related
to the beauty of vigor (chuang mei). In terms of the yin/yang (dark/
light, feminine/masculine, negative/positive, void/solid) polarity of
Chinese thought based on the I Ching, Wang interprets both conven-
tional Western art and Chinese Confucian art as expressing the vigor-
ous beauty of yang, whereas the Taoist and Chinese Buddhist arts are
said to express the graceful and mysterious beauty of yin. Wang says
that yang-based arts produced in a state of self-attachment express the
agency of human will, personal feeling, and rationality of self. The
yin-based arts produced from the impersonal state of self-detachment,
by contrast, express the self in harmony with nature, which is devoid
of personal emotion and human will. Furthermore, he describes self-
attachment as making the world and self-detachment as present-
ing the world. The Taoist and Buddhist landscape paintings of the
Sung dynasty and nature poems of the Tang dynasty depicting insub-
stantial mountains receding into the mysterious darkness of the
bottomless void and partly concealed with an atmospheric haze of mist
 Introduction 19
are examples of Chinese art expressing the graceful, dark, and myste-
rious beauty of yin in the impersonal state of self-detachment.
Rickett (1977:13) clarifies how Wangs idea of the beautiful (yu-
mei) as an impersonal state or world of no-self (wu-wo chih ching) is
strongly influenced by Arthur Schopenhauers theory of artistic detach-
ment. Describing Schopenhauers influence on Wangs aesthetics of
self-detachment, Rickett writes: The beautiful, then, is something
that can cause a man to forget his personal interest and play with it
without tiring, at peace with himself. It is a state of pure joy uncom-
plicated by any pull or stress of worldly cares or desires (1977:13).
She adds that Wangs theory also has strong Taoist overtones (1977:
15). Wang Kuo-Weis poetics describing how the graceful beauty of
yin or dark mystery is rooted in the attitude of self-detachment, under-
stood as the impersonal state of no-self (wu-wo chih ching), thus repre-
sents an original East-West synthesis that combines Taoist notions of
letting-be (wu-wei), nondesire (wu-yu), and self-forgetting meditation
(zuo wang) with Schopenhauers resignation theory of artistic detach-
ment, which aims to achieve emancipation from worldly suffering
through the Kantian disinterested will-less contemplation of beauty
thus to realize salvation in the holy peace of nirvana.

Psychic Distance in Japanese Aesthetics. Chapter 2 of this work analyzes

the traditional Japanese sense of beauty as a function of an aesthetic
attitude of disinterested contemplation through insertion of psychic
distance. Traditional aesthetic ideals in the Japanese canons of taste
such as aware (melancholy beauty), miyabi (gracefulness), ygen (pro-
found mystery), ma (negative space), wabi (rustic beauty), sabi (sim-
plicity), fry (windblown elegance), iki (chic), and shibumi (elegant
restraint)all contain an element of detached resignation. The de-
tached contemplation of beauty as a means to enlightenment was cen-
tral in the Japanese Buddhist religio-aesthetic tradition of geid: the
tao (or way) of art. This emphasis on artistic detachment in Japanese
geid can be traced back to its origins in what Misaki Gisen (1972)
calls the shikan aesthetic consciousness (shikan bi-ishiki) of the late
Heian and early Kamakura priesthood: The shikan aesthetic-conscious-
ness of Japanese poetics signifies a turning point characterized by the
shift in emphasis from the aesthetic object to the act of aesthetic con-
templation by which that object is itself constituted. The shikan (Ch.
chih-kan) practice of Japanese Tendai (Ch. Tien-tai) Buddhism is
itself rooted in the early Buddhist samatha-vipassan or tranquility
and insight meditation described by Buddha in his Great Discourse
20 Introduction
on Mindfulness (Pali: Mahasatipathana-sutta), wherein liberation from
suffering is attained through attention (sati), the detached observa-
tion of impermanent nonsubstantial phenomena with equanimity
(upekkha), or meditative equipoise between craving and aversion. The
shikan aesthetic consciousness developed through Tendai shikan
meditation practice cultivated a tranquil attitude of calm detachment
free of mental perturbation. Through Tendai shikan meditation the
priest gained insight into the middle truth (chtai) between the two
ills of eternalism and nihilism: though all phenomena are empty of
eternal being from the standpoint of the truth of emptiness (ktai),
they are not nihilistic nothingness, since they also have a provisional
truth (ketai) as impermanent and nonsubstantial events arising by
means of dependent coorigination (engi).
It was this Tendai practice of shikan meditation supported by the
philosophy of the middle way based on the three truths (santai) that
led to a deepening of Japanese aestheticism whereby beauty was
affirmed and art was recognized as a path leading to Buddhahood.
The detached contemplation of shikan aesthetic consciousness was
explicitly developed as a precondition for an experience of the tran-
quil beauty of ygen in the waka poetics of Chmei, Shunzei, and Teika
in the early Kamakura period. Moreover, the shikan aesthetic con-
sciousness of Tendai Buddhism, inherited by Zen and other sects in
the Kamakura period, had a profound influence on such famous priests
as Ippen, Kben, Dgen, and Mus. Scholars of Dgen (12001253)
have described his phenomenology of zazen as directed to realization
of genjkan: the presence of things as they are in being-time of
impermanence-Buddha-nature. The noematic content of genjkan, or
prereflective presencing, is correlated with the noetic attitude of
without-thinking (hishiry) as meditative equipoise between affir-
mative judgements of thinking (shiry) and negative judgements of
not-thinking (fushiry). The application to aesthetics is indicated by
the view of haiku poetry as an expression of events of genjkan through
the noetic attitude of without-thinking. Moreover, others have explic-
itly related the content of Dgens zazen as genjkan, or presence of
things as they are, to the aesthetic value of ygen, profound mystery.
This tradition came to fruition during the medieval period of Japa-
nese history in Zeamis theory of riken no ken, the seeing of detached
perception, which is the aesthetic satori-consciousness required for
the experience of beauty as ygen or mysterious darkness on the part
of both the actor and the audience of a n drama. Zeami explicitly dis-
tinguishes the seeing of detached perception (riken no ken) from ego
 Introduction 21
perception (gaken). While riken no ken is an objective, selfless, and de-
tached mode of seeing, gaken is a subjective, self-centered, and attached
mode of seeing. Hence it is shown that Zeamis artistic detachment
theory of riken no ken, which in turn is rooted in the Kamakura-period
shikan aesthetic consciousness underlying traditional Japanese geid
(the tao of art), in fact predates by many centuries the shift in Western
aesthetics initiated by Kants Critique of Judgement (1790), the recog-
nition that an object is beautiful or sublime depending on the mental
attitude of the beholder.
The concept of artistic detachment has been further developed by
thinkers related to the Kyoto school of modern Japanese philosophy
including Nishida Kitar, Nishitani Keiji, Hisamatasu Shinichi, D. T.
Suzuki, and Kuki Shz. Here I wish to clarify the Kyoto schools Zen
metaphysics of nothingness and its underlying Buddhist psychology
of nonattachment as the overall framework in which the doctrine of
aesthetic detachment is formulated. As crystallized by Nishitani Keiji,
the Zen metaphysics of nothingness includes a threefold process of
self-emptying that moves from the eternalistic standpoint of being
characterized by attachment to the ego and its objects of perception,
to the nihilistic standpoint of relative nothingness characterized by
attachment to nothingness itself, to the middle way standpoint of
emptiness, or absolute nothingness, characterized by total non-
attachment ( J. mushjaku) to either being or nonbeing. Nishida Kitar
relates Kants notion of the beautiful as a pleasure that is disinterested
(interesselos) to the traditional Japanese sense of beauty, which he defines
in terms of the Zen ideal of muga (Skt. antman), selflessness. His stu-
dent Hisamatsu Shinichi (18891980) considers the similarities and
differences between disinterestedness ( J. mukanshin) in Zen Buddhist
aesthetics and the disinterestedness (Ger. interesselos) of Kant and Ger-
man idealism. He furthermore establishes detachment (datsuzoku) as
an essential factor in all Zen art. Hisamatsu then proceeds to analyze
the factor of detachment in famous works of Zen literature and art,
including paradigmatic examples of ink painting, calligraphy, flower
arrangements, landscape gardening, architecture, interior decorat-
ing, n drama, ceramics, poetry, and the tea ceremony. For Hisamatsu,
the detachment and tranquility characterizing Zen art ultimately
spring from the boundless creative depths of the formless self of abso-
lute nothingness.
D. T. Suzuki holds that the key teaching of the Platform Sutra attrib-
uted to the legendary sixth patriarch Hui-neng is the Zen doctrine
of mushin, no-mind, which sums up the principles of no-thought
22 Introduction
(munen), no-abiding (muj), and no-form (mus), all of which denote
the mind of nonattachment. He then argues that the psychological
state of no-mind is where Zen and the arts merge. He shows how the
idea of mushin, or no-mind, represents the tranquil, unconscious,
spontaneous, and detached mind at the basis of Zen satori (enlighten-
ment) and its creative expression in the arts of traditional Japanese
culture, including the military art of swordsmanship as well as fine
arts such as poetry, painting, and drama. For Suzuki the aesthetic ideals
of ygen, wabi, sabi, and fry, as well as the traditional Japanese artistic
and literary forms that strive to embody these ideals, are all to be ana-
lyzed as a function of no-mind. Hence Suzukis writings bring to light
how the state of no-mind represents the aesthetic attitude of artistic
detachment in the tradition of Japanese Buddhist literature and art.
In contrast to the austere Zen Buddhist orientation of Nishida,
Hisamatsu, Suzuki, and Nishitani is the theory of artistic detach-
ment formulated by Kuki Shz (18881941), who studied under
the direct tutelage of Husserl and Heidegger in Germany as well as
Bergson in France. Kuki makes Buddhist detachment an essential
factor in the structure of iki (chic)an aesthetic ideal that emerged in
the amorous bordello society of the floating world (ukiyo) in Edo-
period Japan. According to Kuki, the aesthetic value of iki has a three-
fold structure of coquettishness (bitai), pride (ikuji), and resigna-
tion (akirame). While the sexual passion of bitai is embodied by the
amorous geisha and the prideful valor of ikuji is grounded in the path
of bushid or way of the samurai warrior, the detached resignation of
akirame is rooted in the religious mysticism of Zen Buddhism. As clari-
fied by Peter Dales relentless if not overzealous critique of nihonjinron
theories concerning the myth of Japanese uniqueness (1986:76),
Kukis doctrine of artistic detachment is not something peculiar to
Japan. In fact it incorporates the view of French decadent aestheticism
as formulated by Baudelaire and dAurevilly: iki is equivalent to chic
(fashion), while bitai corresponds to coquetterie (seductiveness), ikuji to
vanit (valor), and akirame to dsintressement (disinterestedness). Just as
for Kuki it is the Zen Buddhist attitude of akirame or detached resig-
nation that sublimates the pride of ikuji and the eroticism of bitai into
the aesthetic ideal of iki, so for Baudelaire, dAurevilly, and other
French decadents it is the Kantian attitude of dsintressement, or dis-
interestedness, that elevates the coquetterie and vanit into the aesthetic
ideal of chic. Furthermore, just as in the tradition of French decadent
aestheticism the connoisseur searches for exquisite, highly refined, plea-
surable sensations through a disinterested contemplation of beauty in
 Introduction 23
everyday life, so in Kukis view the tsjin (connoisseur) endeavors to
realize the ideal beauty of iki, or chic (fashion), through objective per-
ception of beauty in everyday life from the standpoint of an objective,
universal, and calm perspective, which is itself rooted in the attitude
of disinterested contemplation.
The notion of aesthetic distance is a recurrent motif in modern Japa-
nese fiction as well. Medieval poetic ideals like aware (sad beauty) and
ygen (profound mystery) have been appropriated into the tradition of
twentieth-century Japanese literary aestheticism in the creative fiction
of modern novelists such as Mori gai, Natsume Sseki, Kawabata
Yasunari, Mishima Yukio, and Tanizaki Junichir. All of these authors
have written novels in which the protagonist has a series of satori-like
epiphanies or haiku moments characterized as visions of ygen whereby
ethereal phenomena gradually fade into the surrounding void of mys-
tery and darkness. In accord with the phenomenological doctrine of
aesthetics taken up in the present volume, however, beauty is consti-
tuted not only by what is seen at the noematic pole but also how it is
seen at the noetic pole. This means that the experience of beauty as
ygen (profound mystery) at the noematic pole must be supplemented
by a description of the noetic act that corresponds to it.
The two giants of modern Japanese literature during the Meiji
period (18681912) are Mori gai (18621922) and Natsume Sseki
(18671916). In those works classified by J. T. Rimer as self-portraits
of the artist dating from 1909 to 1915 (see Mori gai 1994a:v), gai
develops his theory of aesthetic distance in terms of the resignation
(teinen, akirame) of the disinterested onlooker (bkansha). The struc-
tural pattern of stories written during this early and middle period of
his career is essentially the tension between giri (social obligation) and
ninj (human feeling)or, as it were, between the detached resignation
of teinen and that of romantic love. gais detached-onlooker mentality
combines Goethes attitude of resignation (Entsagung) with the tra-
ditional Japanese Buddhist aesthetics of akirame, detached resig-
nation. Natsume Ssekis novel titled Grass Pillow (Kusamakura,
1906) thematizes artistic detachment and the conflict between dis-
tance and involvement as well as the problem of over-distancing to
dehumaniza-tion. In this work he combines Japanese and British lit-
erary movements of aestheticism in order to show the process by
which a poet achieves psychic distance from life. Like Walter Paters
Marius the Epicurean, Henry James Roderick Hudson, Oscar Wildes
Portrait of Dorian Gray, James Joyces Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Man, and other classic works of creative fiction in the tradition of
24 Introduction
British aestheticism, Natsume Ssekis Grass Pillow is a portrait-of-
the-artist novel.
Grass Pillow concerns an artist-poet from Tokyo who undertakes a
haiku journey into the solitude of nature for the purpose of realizing
Zen enlightenment through the exercise of hininj: detachment from
human emotions. The term Sseki uses for artistic detachment, hininj,
can also be translated as nonhuman, in the sense of transcending
ordinary human feelings, thus suggesting the dehumanization of art
as later formulated by Ortega y Gasset in the West. In Ssekis novel,
hininj functions as the mental attitude that discloses ygen as the
ethereal atmospheric beauty of darkness and mystery so prized in
traditional Japanese canons of taste. By adopting the dehumanized
standpoint of hininj he endeavors to metamorphose all he sees into a
moment in a sumie painting, a haiku poem, or a n dramathereby
imaginatively transforming Life into Art via insertion of psychic dis-
tance. Ssekis notion of hininj thus fully appropriates the shikan
aesthetic consciousness underlying the traditional Japanese Buddhist
religion of beauty known as geid the tao of art. In his letters and
essays on literary criticism Sseki develops the theoretical dimensions
of hininj and formulates a sliding scale of degrees of distance in a
way similar to Bulloughs doctrine of psychic distance.
A recent Japanese work titled The Picture Scroll of Kusamakura and
the World of Sseki (Sseki sekai to Kusamakura-e, 1987) by Kawaguchi
Hisao presents the picture scroll by Matsuoka Eiky depicting the
scenes of ideal beauty through the artistic detachment from human
emotions (hininj) in Ssekis Grass Pillow. Ssekis use of literary imag-
ination to illuminate the act of emotional detachment (hininj), along
with his critical essays, letters, and the picture scroll based on Grass
Pillow, illustrate the creative process of aesthetic distancing from life
for both artist and spectator. Like other portrait-of-the-artist novels,
however, Ssekis Grass Pillow thematizes the struggle between detach-
ment and human feeling as well as the problem of overdistancing,
which can lead to dehumanization. It describes how the poet must
be both Artist and Citizen having both detachment from humanity
(hininj) and sympathy (aware)or, as it were, both distance from life
symbolized by the Ivory Tower and participation in life symbolized
by the Sacred Fount.
Part One

Artistic Detachment East and West

Chapter 1

Artistic Detachment in Western Aesthetics

The use of disinterestedness or disinterested contem-

plation to describe aesthetic perception first became widespread after
Immanuel Kant, who spoke of delight in beauty as that which satisfies
without interest (ohne Interesse). But in an important series of papers
Jerome Stolnitz traces the principle of disinterestedness back to what
he claims is its origin in the work of the Third Earl of Shaftesbury
(16711713). Stolnitz argues that disinterestedness is largely an inno-
vation of seventeenth-century British empiricism and is nowhere to
be found in classical or medieval aesthetics. Although the idea of dis-
interestedness became a staple concept for empirically oriented English
writers on aesthetic taste during the Enlightenmentmen like
David Hume, Joseph Addison, Edmund Burke, Archibald Alison, and
Francis Hutchesonit is Lord Shaftesbury who is credited with hav-
ing first articulated the idea. As Stolnitz asserts: It is Shaftesbury who
claims the distinction of being the first thinker to bring the phenom-
enon of disinterestedness to light and analyzing it (1961b:100).

Origins in Shaftesbury and British Empiricism

According to Stolnitz, Shaftesburys principle of aesthetic disinterest-
edness constitutes a major shift in the history of aesthetics from em-
phasis on beauty as a property of the object to that of an attitude of
the subject. Contrasting the classical and medieval theories of beauty
as harmony and the modern view holding that beauty requires a
special attitude that is disinterested, Stolnitz (1961b:111) writes:
27
28 Artistic Detachment East and West
The identification of beauty and harmony, which is ubiquitious in Greek
and Renaissance thought, is the old way of thinking. Shaftesbury, by
introducing the concept of disinterestedness, creates a new centre of
gravity in aesthetic theory.
According to Stolnitz, then, Shaftesburys principle of disinterestedness
signifies a major shift in the history of aesthetics: Shaftesburys theory
[of disinterestedness] is a watershed in the history of aesthetics (p.
111). Stolnitz adds that the tension between the old and new ap-
proaches arises in defining the field of the aesthetic. If one defines the
beautiful as a harmony that abides in certain objects as its indwelling
property, then the field of the aesthetic will be far narrower than if it
includes all objects of disinterested perception. The notion of disinter-
estedness is a broader and more inclusive conception of the aesthetic,
Stolnitz says, while the equation of beauty with harmony is far more
exclusive and aristocratic (p. 111). Hence if aesthetic object means
object of disinterested perception as held by Shaftesbury, then
nothing is a priori debarred, since it now becomes an empirical ques-
tion whether the aesthetic attitude is aroused and sustained by any
particular object. For some this has come to mean that any object
whatsoever can become aesthetic when seen from the standpoint of a
disinterested attitude.
Stolnitz (1961a:138) further clarifies that in the writings of Shaftes-
bury and other British empiricists the principle of disinterestedness
originally referred to a special mode of perception that was object-
centered as opposed to subject-centered:
In its origins, the term [disinterested] has to do with the notion of the
self. As the opposite of interestedness, it is equivalent in meaning to
non-selfishness. When Shaftesbury used disinterested to denote
perception of a thing for its own sake, the salient antithesis became that
between object-centered and self-centered.
In its original meaning as established by Shaftesbury, Stolnitz points
out, the idea of disinterested perception was based on a concept of self.
While the notion of disinterestedness has the moral connotation of
being unselfish, or nonselfish, Stolnitz adds that in its wider sense
it designates an experience which is essentially selfless or impersonal
as opposed to self-centered and egocentric: Impersonal or selfless
are now much closer to the mark than is unselfish (p. 138). Hence as
a doctrine of self it can be said that while interested perception is sub-
jective, self-centered, and egocentric, disinterested perception is objec-
tive, selfless, and impersonal.
 Western Aesthetics 29
Shaftesburys principle of disinterestedness originally emerged as a
polemic against egoism in ethics and instrumentalism in religion. In
particular, Shaftesbury opposed the disinterested attitude with the
notion of enlightened self-interest defended by Thomas Hobbes
(15881679). In his work Characteristics, Shaftesbury (1900:I, 317)
identifies interest with self-interest, as when he speaks of interested or
self-love. Here he opposes the notion of disinterestedness to Hobbesian
ethics, which argues that all actions are selfishly motivated by enlight-
ened self-interest. Shaftesbury also speaks of the disinterested love
of God, which he in turn opposes to [serving] God . . . for interest
merely (II, 55). He adds that when one loves God disinterestedly,
one loves God simply for Gods own sake (II, 55) because of the ex-
cellence of the object (II, 56). While in these assertions disinterested
perception is related only to ethical and religious concerns, in certain
other passages Shaftesbury presents an aesthetic application of the
principle of disinterestedness. In one section of Characteristics, Shaftes-
bury clearly distinguishes between what he calls interested regard (I,
296) and the attitude of disinterested aesthetic contemplation:
Imagine then . . . if being taken with the beauty of the ocean, which
you see yonder at a distance, it should come into your head to seek how to
command it, and, like some mighty admiral, ride master of the sea,
would not the fancy be a little absurd? . . . Let who will call it theirs
. . . you will own the enjoyment of this kind to be very different
from that which should naturally follow from the contemplation of
the oceans beauty. [II, 126127]

Here Shaftesbury refers the principle of disinterestedness neither to

God nor to moral action but to an object of beauty. In this case he em-
phasizes that the enjoyment of beauty is completely separate from the
desire of possession or practical utility. Furthermore, in this passage
he illustrates the notion of disinterested aesthetic contemplation versus
that of interested regard by means of reference to the oceans beauty.
Thus Shaftesbury, at least to some extent, anticipates Edward Bulloughs
(1977) famous example of the fog at sea wherein he illustrates his
principle of psychic distance as an essential factor in art and beauty.
It is sometimes held that Shaftesburys use of disinterestedness in
aesthetics is only an adjunct to his doctrines of religion and ethics. But
as Stolnitz points out, Shaftesburys ethical theory is nearly indistin-
guishable from an aesthetic theory. So that in its broader aspect, the
principle of disinterestedness is not so much ethical as axiological (value-
centric) in scope. Many of Shaftesburys assertions tend to support this
30 Artistic Detachment East and West
viewas when he writes that moral virtue is itself no other than the
love of order and beauty (1900:I, 279). Stolnitz (1961a:133) perhaps
best summarizes the basis of Shaftesburys principle of disinterested-
ness when he writes that although the historical occasion for this idea
was the fight against egoism and the vocabulary was nonaesthetic, on
the whole the general direction of Shaftesburys thought was toward
the aesthetic. In the final analysis, Shaftesburys principle of disinter-
estedness is both aesthetic and axiological, whether it is applied to the
contemplation of God, moral conduct, or an object of beauty, to the
extent that it signifies regard for something for its own sake without
any concern for self-interest or practical utility.

Disinterested Contemplation in German Aesthetics

Credit must be given to Jerome Stolnitz for his valuable research into
the origins of the disinterested attitude in the writings of Lord Shaftes-
bury, along with other writers in the tradition of British empiricism.
Nonetheless, we must agree with the literary critic M. H. Abrams when
he points out that Shaftesbury introduced the concept of disinterest-
edness only as ancillary to his ethical and religious philosophy (1981:
91). It was left to Shaftesburys successors in Germany, Abrams con-
tinues, to specialize the concept in order specifically to differenti-
ate aesthetic experience from religious and moral as well as practical
experience. After Immanuel Kant proposed his celebrated definition
of beauty as a disinterested pleasure with universal validity, the
notion of disinterestedness came to be widely accepted as the first
principle in the canons of taste that emerged in nineteenth-century
German idealism. The German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
(17491832), a contemporary of Kant who made the concept of res-
ignation (Entsagung) central to his own poetics, elegantly summarized
the ideal of beauty as a delight that is disinterested:

The stars not coveted by us

Delight us with their splendor.

Friedrich Schiller (17591805) made Kants idea of disinterested ap-

preciation of beauty a key element in the process of aesthetic education
and the achievement of human freedom. Arthur Schopenhauer (1788
1860) elevated the Kantian notion of disinterestedness into an act
of detached will-less aesthetic contemplation that gave momentary
salvation from the tragic suffering of worldly existence and thereby
 Western Aesthetics 31
brought one near to the Buddhistic state of nirvana or tranquility
achieved by the religious saint through complete renunciation of
life. Friedrich Nietzsche (18441900) would then launch a critical
attack against the notion of aesthetic disinterestedness as formulated
especially by Schopenhauer in his effort to overcome the problem of
nihilism, arguing instead for a Dionysian concept of beauty as rap-
ture or ecstasy that completely affirms existence in the world and
regards art not as a sedative but as a stimulant to lifethe distinctive
countermovement to nihilism. In the twentieth century, Martin Hei-
degger brings the story full circle when he defends Kants theory of
aesthetic disinterestedness from its misinterpretations by Nietzsche
and Schopenhauer. Heidegger then articulates his own artistic detach-
ment theory in terms of his notion of Gelassenheit, or letting-be, an atti-
tude of openness whereby there is ontological disclosure of things in
their beauty of original truth as aletheia, unhiddenness. But before we
undertake a survey of these fascinating developments in the history of
artistic detachment in Germany, it is necessary to consider the work
of Karl Philipp Moritz, a little-known German thinker who was actu-
ally the first to clearly articulate the notion of beauty as disinterested
pleasure.

Moritz: The Original Formulation

Although the notion of beauty as a delight that is disinterested
(interesselos) was firmly established in Western aesthetics by the German
philosopher Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Judgement, the idea did
not originate with him. Since Kant provides no textual references in
his analysis of aesthetic judgements as disinterested, there has been
much speculation about who might have influenced Kant most on
this point. Stolnitz (1961a) traces the origins of aesthetic disinterest-
edness to the seminal writings of Lord Shaftesbury and other British
empiricists. In that Kant was well read in the English writers of this
period, he was most likely influenced by them, at least to some extent,
in his formulation of disinterestedness as an aesthetic principle.
Yet the immediate source of Kants notion of aesthetic disinterest-
edness has now almost certainly been revealed in an important article
by Martha Woodmansee (1984): The Interests in Disinterestedness:
Karl Philipp Moritz and the Emergence of the Theory of Aesthetic
Autonomy in Eighteenth-Century Germany. Woodmansee acknowl-
edges the research of Stolnitz showing how, centuries prior to Kant,
the concept of disinterestedness had already been imported into the
32 Artistic Detachment East and West
arts by Shaftesbury in his essays collected in Characteristics (1711).
Woodmansee (1984:31, n. 14) shares the view of M. H. Abrams, how-
ever, who asserts that Shaftesbury introduced the concept only as an
adjunct to his ethical and religious philosophy. The idea of disinter-
estedness, she contends, was used to establish the autonomy of art, in
order to distinguish aesthetic experience from religious, moral, and
practical experience, only after it was transported to Germany. But
contrary to widespread belief, it was not Kant who first introduced the
idea of disinterestedness into German idealist aesthetics. For as Wood-
mansee (1984:23) points out, in 1785, five years before the publi-
cation of Kants Critique of Judgement, an obscure figure in the history
of aesthetics named Karl Philipp Moritz (17561793) gave the first
uniquivocal and systematic expression to the principle of aesthetic
disinterestedness in a brief essay titled Attempt at Combining All
Beautiful Arts and Sciences Based on Their Self-Sufficiency (Versuch
einer Vereinigung aller schnen Knste und Wissenschaften unter dem
Begriff des in sich selbst Vollendeten), which appeared in an influen-
tial German periodical called the Berlinische Monatschrift.
There can be little doubt that Moritzs essay came to Kants atten-
tion, for Kant published regularly in the Berlinische Monatschrift, and
in fact the March 1785 issue of this journal in which Moritzs essay
appeared contained one of Kants own articles. In this essay Moritz
criticizes the prevailing instrumentalist theory of art and argues instead
on behalf of an autonomous art object that is to be appreciated disin-
terestedly. Moritz holds that works of art are self-sufficient totalities
produced only to be contemplated for their own sakethat is to say,
with a disinterested pleasure in their beauty apart from all concern for
their practical utility or external purpose. Like the moral philosophers
in Germany during this period, Moritz uses the terms unselfish
(uneigenntzig) and disinterested (uninteressiert) interchangeably to
denote the absence of any selfish ulterior motives or interests, denoted
by the English term disinterested. Moritz thus states:
In contemplating the beautiful object . . . I roll the purpose back into the
object itself: I regard it as something which is completed, not in me,
but in itself, which therefore constitutes a whole in itself, and pleases
me for its own sake. . . . Thus the beautiful object affords a higher and
more disinterested pleasure than the merely useful object. [Cited in
Woodmansee 1984:23]

In the autobiographical novel Anton Reiser, the first volume of which

appeared in the same year as the essay in question, Moritz describes
 Western Aesthetics 33
the ultimate state of spiritual communion as a disinterested love of
God, an abandonment of self that culminates in a tranquil and bliss-
ful state of nothingness. He writes:
[They] . . . are concerned for the most part with that . . . total abandon-
ment of the self and entry into a blissful state of nothingness, with that
complete extermination of all so-called self-ness or self-love, and a totally
disinterested love of God, in which not the merest spark of self-love
may mingle, if it is to be pure; and out of this there arises in the end
a perfect, blissful tranquility which is the highest goal of all these
strivings. [Cited in Woodmansee 1984:32; italics added]
As Woodmansee clarifies, it is precisely this description of the highest
level of religious experiencethe blissful state of selflessness or noth-
ingness attained through a disinterested contemplation of Godthat
Moritz transported almost verbatim into his theory of art and beauty,
whereupon it came to characterize what we now term the aesthetic atti-
tude. For as Moritz asserts, the highest level of aesthetic experience is
likewise a state of blissful self-forgetfulness attained through the dis-
interested contemplation of beauty in art. In Moritzs words:
As the beautiful object completely captivates our attention, it diverts our
attention momentarily from ourselves, with the effect that we seem to
lose ourselves in the beautiful object; and precisely this loss, this forget-
fulness of ourselves, is the highest stage of pure and disinterested pleasure
which beauty grants us. [Cited in Woodmansee 1984:3233; italics
added]
Hence insofar as aesthetic experience is made analogous to religious
experiencea tranquil and blissful state of selflessness or nothing-
ness achieved through an act of disinterested contemplationWood-
mansee characterizes Moritzs theory of disinterested pleasure in the
beauty of art as that of a displaced theology (1984:33). Finally, to
anticipate the comparative thesis of this book, it should be noted how
the explanation of beauty as the function of an aesthetic attitude of
disinterested contemplation, the fusion of subject with object, self-
forgetfulness and ego transcendence occurring through the rapt atten-
tion of disinterested aesthetic contemplation, the analogy between
the disinterested mystical contemplation in religion and the disinter-
ested aesthetic contemplation of beauty in art, and the description of
aesthetic-religious experience as a selfless, tranquil, and blissful state
of nothingness articulated by Moritz in the Westall are character-
istic elements to be found in those Eastern theories of artistic detach-
ment formulated in the tradition of Japanese Buddhist aesthetics.
34 Artistic Detachment East and West
When one considers the extent to which the notion of beauty as
disinterested pleasure has influenced the history of not only German
aesthetic idealism but the whole of modern aesthetics in the West, it
is unfortunate that Karl Philipp Moritz has received so little recogni-
tion for his achievement as the one who first articulated this concept
in a fully explicit and systematic manner. Yet Moritzs ideas on the dis-
interested contemplation of beauty were nonetheless destined to play
a central if not dominant role in the history of modern aesthetics as
well as literary and art criticism, at least insofar as they came to be
reformulated by the genius of Immanuel Kant.

Kant: The Theory Canonized

If the theory of aesthetic disinterestedness had its ambiguous origins
in the writings of Shaftesbury and was later given explicit formu-
lation by Karl Philipp Moritz, it was finally canonized by Immanuel
Kant (17241804) in his monumental Critique of Judgement (Kritik der
Urteilskraft, 1790). Whereas Kants Critique of Pure Reason analyzes the
cognitive faculty in its capacity for knowledge, and his Critique of Prac-
tical Reason investigates the categorical imperatives of duty prescribed
by the self-legislative practical reason of autonomous moral agents,
his Critique of Judgement is an inquiry into the aesthetic judgement of
taste in beauty and the sublime. Kants Critique of Judgement, like his
other critiques, is articulated within a complex architectonic frame-
work. Of greatest importance for our present study are Book I: Analytic
of the Beautiful and Book II: Analytic of the Sublime, both of which
come in Part One, Critique of Aesthetic Judgement.
Kant divides his Analytic of the Beautiful into four moments, which
respectively consider judgements of taste in terms of four categories:
Quality, Quantity, Relation, and Modality. He argues that delight in
the beautiful must in its Quality be shown to be independent of all
interest, in its Quantity universally valid, in its Relation subjective
finality, and in its Modality necessary. The core of his argument is
set down in the first moment: the moment of Quality. It is here, in
the first moment, that Kant defines beauty in terms of a delight
which is said to be disinterested (interesselos) or without interest
(ohne Interesse). Kant begins the first moment with a claim: The judge-
ment of taste is aesthetic (1:41). He explains that a determination
of the beautiful by a judgement of taste is not a function of under-
standing, which refers the representation (Vorstellung) of it to the object
with a view to cognition, but is instead a function of imagination,
 Western Aesthetics 35
which refers the representation of it to the subject and its feeling of
pleasure or displeasure. Accordingly, a judgement of taste in the beau-
tiful is not cognitive, and hence not logical, but purely aesthetic, which
means that it is one whose determining ground must be subjective
(1:41). In contrast to cognitive judgements wherein the faculties are
restricted, in the aesthetic judgment there is a liberation of the facul-
ties in a free play of imagination, understanding, and feeling.
Through his clear distinction between cognitive judgements based
on logical categories of the understanding and aesthetic judgements
grounded in subjective feeling and the free play of imagination, Kant
thereby came to establish the field of aesthetics as an autonomous
sphere, a separate branch of philosophy, with its own aims, principles
and methods.
Having established the autonomy of aesthetic judgements, Kant
goes on to the next claim: The delight which determines the judge-
ment of taste is independent of all interest (2:42). What does Kant
mean when he says that a judgement of taste regards its object with
disinterest? What does he mean by disinterested pleasure or dis-
interested delight? To begin with, we must dispel the misunder-
standing which often arises upon encountering the term disinterested
for the first timethat it denotes being uninterested in something. Kant
himself attempts to clarify this matter when he writes: A judgement
upon an object of our delight may be wholly disinterested but withal
very interesting, i.e., it relies on no interest, but it produces one (2:43,
n. 1). By disinterested, he of course does not mean that an aesthetic
judgement of taste is uninterested in its object, or that it is bored with
the topic, but rather that it is devoid of self-interest or, as it were, free of
all concern for personal advantage and disadvantage or gain and loss.
Kant commences his explanation of what he means by disinterested
with a definition of interest. He writes: The delight which we con-
nect with the representation of the real existence of an object is called
interest. Such a delight, therefore, always involves a reference to the
faculty of desire (2:42). He later goes on to assert: All interest pre-
supposes a want, or calls one forth (5:49). From this it can be seen
that Kant establishes two criteria for disinterestedness: first, an in-
difference to the real existence of the object; and second, that of not
involving any desire or want. Elsewhere he makes it clear that these
two criteria are identical since to want something and to desire its
real existence are the same (4:48). His polemic here is that underly-
ing the experience of the beautiful is a free play of imagination and
understanding. This harmonious free play of faculties produces plea-
36 Artistic Detachment East and West
sure, and this pleasure is disinterested because it is cut off from the
real existence of objectsand hence from interest.
In the first moment Kant then proceeds to distinguish between
three kinds of delight: the agreeable, the good, and the beauti-
ful. Here he is primarily concerned to demonstrate that while plea-
sure in the agreeable and the good are interested, pleasure in the
beautiful is alone truly disinterested. Establishing the differentia
between these three modes of delight, he writes: The agreeable is what
GRATIFIES a man; the beautiful what simply PLEASES him; the good
what is ESTEEMED (approved), i.e., that on which he sets an objec-
tive worth (5:49). According to Kant, the agreeable, defined as
that which the senses find pleasing in sensation, and the good,
understood as that which is good for something (useful) and pleases
only as a means, are both always coupled with interest. Hence both
the agreeable and the good involve a reference to the faculty of desire
(5:48). In contrast, says Kant, an aesthetic judgement of taste in the
beautiful can have no interest as its determining ground. Thus he
concludes: Of all these three kinds of delight, that of taste in the
beautiful may be said to be the one and only disinterested and free
delight; for, with it, no interest, whether of sense or reason, extorts
approval (5:49). Kant then proceeds to formulate his celebrated
definition of beauty as an object of delight that is disinterested. In
Kants words: Taste is the faculty of estimating an object or a mode of
representation by means of a delight or aversion apart from any interest.
The object of such a delight is called beautiful (5:50).
Thus when Kant asserts that an aesthetic judgement of taste is apart
from any interest, he means that one appreciates an object of beauty
for its own sake without reference to its reality or to the external ends
of its utility and morality. In other words: the disinterested pleasure
one takes in the beauty of an object has no concern for personal sen-
sory gratification as is the case of delight in what is agreeable, nor does
it have any interest in the practical usefulness of something as is the
case of delight in what is good. Yet he further clarifies other attributes
of the disinterested attitude characterizing aesthetic judgements of
taste. To begin with, the disinterested attitude is said to be contem-
plative (5:48). As he writes elsewhere, an aesthetic judgement of
taste combines delight or aversion immediately with the bare contem-
plation of the object irrespective of its use or of any end (22:87).
Moreover, this act of disinterested aesthetic contemplation is described
as being completely detachedor as he states at one point, it is
attended by a consciousness of detachment from all interest (6:51).
 Western Aesthetics 37
Again, the disinterested attitude characterizing aesthetic judgements
of taste in the beautiful is said to be impartial, unbiased, and indif-
ferent. He asserts: Every interest vitiates the judgement of taste and
robs it of its impartiality (13:64). And elsewhere:

Every one must allow that a judgement on the beautiful which is tinged
with the slightest interest is very partial and not a pure judgement of
taste. One must . . . preserve complete indifference in this respect, in
order to play the part of judge in matters of taste. This proposition,
which is of utmost importance, cannot be better explained than by con-
trasting the pure disinterested delight which appears in the judgement
of taste with that allied to an interest. [2:4344]

While Book I of Kants third critique examines aesthetic judgements

of taste in the beautiful (das Schne), Book II is an inquiry into aes-
thetic judgements on the sublime (das Erhabene). At the outset he
asserts that the beautiful and the sublime agree on the point of pleas-
ing on their own account (23:90). They differ, however, in that while
beauty is characterized by form and limitation, the sublime is charac-
terized by formlessness or the limitlessness of that which is devoid of
form. In Kants words:

The beautiful in nature is a question of the form of the object, and

this consists in limitation, whereas the sublime is to be found in an
object even devoid of form, so far as it immediately involves, or else by
its presence provokes, a representation of limitlessness. [23:90]

When Kant speaks of the formless that may belong to what we call
Sublime (23:90), he refers to the indeterminate feelings of infinity
and boundlessness evoked by the greatness of nature as an immeasur-
able whole in contrast to the determinate feelings connected with the
form, and hence the finite boundedness, of objects judged as beau-
tiful. Nonetheless, Kant emphasizes that delight in the sublime, like
delight in the beautiful, is a kind of aesthetic judgement. And as a
kind of aesthetic judgement, delight in the sublime, like delight in
the beautiful, must in its Quality be apart from any interest. Kant
therefore writes:

For, the judgement being one of the aesthetic reflective judgement,

the delight in the sublime, just like that in the beautiful, must in its
Quantity be shown to be univerally valid, in its Quality independent
of interest, in its Relation subjective finality, and the latter, in its
Modality, necessary. [24:93]
38 Artistic Detachment East and West
Hence, like an aesthetic judgement on the beautiful, an aesthetic
judgement on the sublime requires as its precondition a certain mental
attitude on the part of the subject: an attitude that is completely dis-
interested. For this reason Kant emphasizes that delight in the sub-
lime is to be found in an attitude of mind (23:93). He further states:
This makes it evident that true sublimity must be sought only in the
mind of the judging Subject, and not in the Object of nature (26:
104). And again: Sublimity, therefore, does not reside in any of the
things of nature, but only in our own mind (28:114). On this basis,
then, Kant goes on to argue for a transcendental idealist position
whereby the determining ground of the sublime, like that of the
beautiful, is to be located in the mind of the subject and not just a
property in the object.
Just as Kants Critique of Pure Reason is said to have inaugurated a
revolution in metaphysics and epistemology, and his Critique of Prac-
tical Reason is described as having effected a similar revolution in ethics,
so his Critique of Judgement should likewise be understood as having
launched a shift in the field of aesthetics: namely, that whether an
object is beautiful or sublime depends on the mental attitude of the
beholder. And as we have seen, Kant specifies that this mental attitude
presupposed by an aesthetic judgement of taste is one that is disinter-
ested. For this reason the various theories of artistic detachment, aes-
thetic disinterestedness, and psychic distance that emerged in the wake
of Kants revolution in aesthetics have come to be known as aesthetic
attitude theories. Kants paradigm change in aesthetics had the effect
of shifting from a position of realism, which understands beauty as
something only inherent in the object, to an idealist (or, as it were,
transcendental idealist) position that underscores the contribution of
the mind in aesthetic experience. From the perspective of a transcen-
dental idealist theory of aesthetics, human consciousness is not simply
a passive recipient: to some extent it actively constitutes an object of
beauty through various noetic operations of the mind. In accordance
with the principles of his transcendental idealism, Kant argues that an
object cannot be beautiful and an experience cannot be aesthetic unless
certain mental conditions are satisfied. It is in this context that Kant
came to establish the disinterested attitude as a necessary condition
for the possibility of aesthetic experience. Generally speaking, then,
Kants revolution in aesthetics locates the determining ground of
beauty and the sublime in the mind of the subject and not in the
object of nature. For many, Kants aesthetic reversal carries with it the
significant implication that any object whatsoever can be seen as beau-
 Western Aesthetics 39
tiful if only it is contemplated from the standpoint of a disinterested
attitude. It should further be emphasized that Kant outlines both the
negative and the positive dimensions of the aesthetic attitude. Whereas
the negative or inhibitory aspect of the aesthetic attitude is defined
through its disinterested character as detached from personal desires,
the positive aspect is defined through its creative aspect as the harmo-
nious free play (89) of imagination.
Kants aesthetic attitude theory is not to be understood as a form
of relativism, subjectivism, skepticism, pessimism, or nihilism; it is not
a sophistic position which simply declares that beauty is in the eye of
the beholder. On the contrary, the intention of the second moment
in Kants Critique of Judgement is to demonstrate the universal validity
of aesthetic judgements (5057). Kant thus begins the second
moment with a remarkable claim: The beautiful is that which, apart
from concepts, is represented as the Object of a UNIVERSAL delight
(50). He adds that the definition of the beautiful as an object of
universal delight is itself deducible from the foregoing definition of it
as an object of delight apart from any interest. For acccording to Kant,
where anyone is conscious that his delight in an object is with him
independent of interest, it is inevitable that he should look on the
object as one containing a ground of delight for all men (50). When
we judge an object beautiful, we speak as if beauty were a property,
though in actuality the judgement is subjective, since it relates the
object with aesthetic satisfaction. Yet insofar as this aesthetic satisfac-
tion is said to be disinterestedthat is to say, completely impartial,
unbiased, and free of prejudiceit does not depend on any individual
preferences but is instead an object demanding a similar delight from
all persons and, on that account, valid for everyone. At this point, how-
ever, Kant clearly distinguishes between the objective universal validity
of logical judgements as opposed to the subjective universal validity
of aesthetic judgements. Since an aesthetic judgement of taste is a
function of subjective feeling and imagination in a free play of facul-
ties, so as to be liberated from all constraint by concepts, it cannot claim
the objective universal validity of a logical judgement grounded in
the understanding but may nonetheless be said to have a subjective
universal validity (55). Kant here introduces a special term for the
peculiar universality of aesthetic judgements: Gemeingltigkeit, mean-
ing common validity or general validity (54). Again, the com-
mon validity of a disinterested aesthetic judgement is grounded not
in objective concepts but in subjective feelings of pleasure and dis-
pleasure. This is summarized by Kant when he writes:
40 Artistic Detachment East and West
The result is that the judgement of taste, with its attendant consciousness
of detachment from all interest, must involve a claim to validity for all
men, and must do so apart from universality attached to Objects, i.e.,
there must be coupled with it a claim to subjective universality. [51;
italics added]
Hence, in this way, Kant proposes a brilliant solution to demonstrate
how aesthetic judgements can be subjective on the one hand and make
claim to universality on the other. For although aesthetic judgements
are grounded in subjective feeling and the free play of imagination
without determination by a concept of the understanding, since they
are at the same time disinterestedor, as it were, accompanied by a
consciousness of detachment from all interestthey are also said to have
a subjective universal validity that is presupposed by everyone.

Schiller: Disinterested Contemplation and Aesthetic Education

Friedrich Schiller (17591805) is best remembered for his work On
the Aesthetic Education of Man in a Series of Letters (1954). The aesthetic
philosophy Schiller developed in this book was immediately adopted
as the artistic banner of an eminent group of writers who contributed
to a German literary journal called The Gracesa group that included
such luminaries as Goethe, Herder, Kant, Fichte, the Humboldts, the
Schlegels, and Jacobi. Schiller posed a question that had not been
asked so profoundly since Plato: What is the ultimate role of art in
human life, society, education, and culture?
Schillers answer in these letters is that humanity must pass through
the aesthetic condition, from the merely physical, in order to reach the
rational or moral. That is to say: sensuous self must become aesthetic
self before he can become moral and intellectual self. Hence Schiller
asserts that the beautiful paves the way for mankind to a transition
from sensation to thought (Letter 19:92). And again: Through
Beauty the sensuous man is led to form and to thought (Letter 8:87).
Schiller goes on to say that humanity therefore must follow the path
of aesthetics, since it is through Beauty that we arrive at Freedom
(Letter 2:27). For this reason he states: Beauty must be exhibited as a
necessary condition of humanity (Letter 10:59). Schiller describes this
intermediary role of art and beauty as a bridge from the physical to
the rational stages with his Kantian theory of the play impulse, which
he also calls the play of imagination, aesthetic play, and the
aesthetic creative impulse. According to this view we have a dual
nature with two opposing drives or impulses: the sensuous impulse
 Western Aesthetics 41
(Stofftrieb), which binds us to nature, and the form impulse (Form-
trieb), the urge toward the rational freedom of our moral self. But there
is also an impulse that harmonizes both the sensuous and the form
impulses in a synthesis in which each is overcome by being lifted to a
higher plane (aufgehoben), thereby restoring the unity of human nature.
This third impulse is what Schiller calls the play impulse (Spieltrieb).
While the object of the sense impulse is said to be life and that of the
form impulse is shape, the object of the play impulse, conceived as a
general notion, can therefore be called living shape, a concept that
denotes all aesthetic qualities of phenomenaor, in a word, what is
called beauty (Letter 15:76).
It is in this context that Schiller puts forth his teaching of disinter-
ested aesthetic contemplation. According to Schiller, it is the free play
of detached contemplation or disinterested appreciation of beauty in
art that brings about a revolution in human character and thus leads
one from the physical to the moral freedom of rational existence. He
writes: When therefore we discover traces of a disinterested free appre-
ciation of pure appearance, we can infer some such revolution of his
nature and the real beginnings in him of humanity (Letter 27:132).
According to Schiller, the disinterested contemplation of beauty in
art has a relaxing or calming effect on the senses, finally resulting in a
complete freedom of detachment from all human emotions, passions,
and attachments. He therefore asserts that the inevitable effect of the
Beautiful is freedom from passions (Letter 22:106). Elsewhere he
describes how detached contemplation establishes a distance from life:
Contemplation (reflection) is Mans first free relation to the universe
which surrounds him. If desire directly apprehends its object, contempla-
tion thrusts its object into the distance, thereby turning it into its true
and inalienable possession and thus securing it from passion. [Letter
25:120]

While affective feeling, desire, and emotion bring the subject into
relation with the object, it is the act of disinterested contemplation that
inserts distance between the self and its affects in the production of aes-
thetic experience. For Schiller, then, it is distance from life achieved
though detached observation or disinterested contemplation of an
object which is itself a precondition for the aesthetic experience of
beauty, thus anticipating the notion of psychic distance developed by
Edward Bullough.
Schiller recognized the significance of Kants aesthetics for a phi-
losophy of education. The revolution initiated by Kants aesthetics
42 Artistic Detachment East and West
was a shift away from an emphasis on beauty as the property of har-
mony or symmetry in the object to an artistic attitude of the subject
in an act of disinterested contemplation. It is precisely because the
experience of beauty requires a constitutive act by the subject that
aesthetic experience indicates the need for an educational process of
cultivation (Bildung). For Schiller, then, it is the cultivation of an
aesthetic attitude of detached contemplation and free play of imagi-
nation that constitutes the basis for what he calls the aesthetic edu-
cation of man.

Schopenhauer: Salvation Through Detached Contemplation

Kants notion of aesthetic disinterestedness was enthusiastically adopted
into the philosophy of art and beauty formulated by Arthur Schopen-
hauer (17881860). Schopenhauers philosophy of art represents the
first major development of Kants doctrine of disinterested aesthetic
contemplation. Yet there is a fundamentally different orientation in
their respective theories of aesthetic disinterestedness. Kants approach
to the problem of disinterestedness is essentially logical and functions
as the precondition for universality or intersubjective validity claims
in judgements of taste. Schopenhauer is concerned more with the psy-
chological state of consciousness in aesthetic contemplation whereupon he
elevates the disinterested character of aesthetic experience as a manifes-
tation of genius and as conducive to a state of personal blessedness aris-
ing by means of an emancipation of intellect from the attachments of
desire or will. Moreover, Schopenhauer develops his theory of aesthetic
disinterestedness in the context of a metaphysical system that, although
inspired by Kantian philosophy, is at the same time quite different
from it. Kant had argued that behind the phenomenal world of appear-
ances lies a noumenal world of reality: the thing in itself. Schopen-
hauers innovation was to suggest that the Kantian thing in itself is in
fact an irrational impulse: the will to live. The phenomenal world is
regarded as an objectification of the will, so that the physical body
is itself an objectification of desires, whereupon the throat is an objec-
tification of thirst, the abdomen an objectification of hunger, the repro-
ductive organs an objectification of lust. Moreover, from his reading
of Indian Buddhist philosophy Schopenhauer derived the view that
the will expresses itself in ceaseless desire which results in suffering
born of craving and attachment. On this basis Schopenhauer developed
his nihilistic philosophical orientation that regards life as inherently
evil. It is in the context of this pessimistic worldview that Schopen-
 Western Aesthetics 43
hauer articulates his theory of aesthetic disinterestedness. Art exists as
a means of escape from the tyranny of will and the tragic suffering of
existence in the world. The detached contemplation of beauty in art
and nature, however, offers just a temporary escape from the misery of
existence; permanent deliverance comes only through a Buddhistic
renunciation of desire and selfhood in nirvana. Even if the scholar of
Buddhism complains that Buddha proclaims the middle way between
nihilism and eternalism and is thus wholly distorted by the pessi-
mism of Schopenhauer, it is instructive to see how early Indian Bud-
dhism was first comprehended by a leading philosopher in the West.
According to Schopenhauer a thing is beautiful only insofar as it is
the object of disinterested aesthetic contemplation: For the beauty
with which those objects present themselves rests precisely on the
pure objectivity, i.e., disinterestedness, of their perception. . . . Everything
is beautiful only so long as it does not concern us (1958:II, 374; italics
added). In this context, Schopenhauer illustrates the attitude of dis-
interested aesthetic contemplation with those often cited lines from
Goethe:
The stars not coveted by us
Delight us with their splendor.

In a clear statement of his idea of beauty as an object of detached aes-

thetic contemplation, Schopenhauer writes:
By calling an object beautiful, we thereby assert that it is an object of
our aesthetic contemplation, and this implies two different things. On
the one hand, the sight of the thing makes us objective, that is to
say, in contemplating it we are no longer conscious of ourselves as
individuals, but as pure, will-less subjects of knowing. On the other
hand, we recognize in the object not an individual thing, but an Idea.
[1958:I, 209]

One of the key sources for Schopenhauers idea of disinterested

contemplation is to be found in his theory of tragedy, especially the
tragic dramas of ancient Greece and Shakespearean theater. In Western
philosophy of art there have emerged several important views on
tragic art, including Aristotles idea that the function of tragic drama
is catharsis, the discharge of fear and pity. The next great theory of
tragic art was that of Schopenhauer, who argues that the function of
tragic art is to teach renunciation through detached contemplation by
disclosing the pain of transitory existence. Nietzsche overturns this
nihilistic view by arguing that tragic art leads not to nihilistic renun-
44 Artistic Detachment East and West
ciation but to Dionysian affirmation of life as innocence of becoming
in both its creative and destructive aspects. Hegel finds the essence of
tragedy in the dialectical clash between two half-truths. Among these
leading views of tragedy, it is especially Schopenhauers resignationism
that most concerns our study of artistic detachment. Schopenhauer
maintains that in tragedy the terrible side of life is presented to us: the
suffering and lamentation of humankind, the dominion of chance and
error, the fall of the righteous, the triumph of the wicked, the suffering
inherent in universal flux. At the sight of tragedy we turn away from
life, renounce the world, and become detached from phenomenal exis-
tence, finally leading to the point of complete resignation. Tragedy thus
brings one to adopt the objective, selfless, and disinterested standpoint
of the artist, an uninvolved spectator who only contemplates the beauty
of things as a will-less subject. He writes:

Our pleasure in the tragedy belongs not to the feeling of the beautiful,
but to that of the sublime; it is, in fact, the highest degree of this feeling.
For, just as at the sight of the sublime in nature we turn away from
the interest of the will . . . so in the tragic catastrophe we turn away
from the will-to-live itself. . . . What gives to everything tragic, what-
ever the form in which it appears, the characteristic tendency to the
sublime, is the dawning of the knowlege that the world and life can
afford us no true satisfaction, and are therefore not worth our attach-
ment to them. In this the tragic spirit consists; accordingly, it leads to
resignation. [1958:II, 433434]

According to Schopenhauer, then, the value of tragedy is that it teaches

detached resignation in the sublime quietude of disinterested aesthetic
contemplation.
From the standpoint of comparative aesthetics, Schopenhauers phi-
losophy of artistic detachment represents the first great synthesis of
Kantian and Indian theories of detached contemplation, including both
the Hindu and Buddhist traditions. Although Hegel incorporated the
Indian tradition into his global history of philosophy, he understood
Hinduism as an abstract monistic theory of the One, which like the
worldviews of Parmenides, Spinoza, and Judaism, all alike had to be
transcended by the Christian dialectical understanding of reality as a
trinitarian process of separation and return. Schopenhauer was the first
major Western philosopher to really identify with the position of Hin-
duism and Buddhismat least according to his understanding of these
religious philosophies based on the German translation of works avail-
 Western Aesthetics 45
able within his lifetime. For Schopenhauer the message of the Vedas,
Upanishads, and Gita was the teaching of contemplative detachment,
resignation, and renunciation. Above all else Schopenhauer embraced
the teachings of Buddha that focused on nirvana as a selfless or will-
less state of tranquility detached from all desires and passions. Schopen-
hauer understood Buddhism to represent a pessimistic worldview
teaching renunciation and detachment as the way to escape the pain
of existence. He regarded art, especially tragic art, as a sedative which
like an anesthetic drug numbs the observer to the pain of existence
and leads to tranquility. Yet the detached contemplation of beauty in
tragic art is only a temporary repose. For Schopenhauer, early Bud-
dhism teaches that the goal of detached contemplation is therefore no
less than moksa or emancipation: the total extinction of all desires in the
peace of nirvana.

Heidegger: Aesthetic Disinterestedness

The Kantian aesthetics of detached contemplation as well as the Hus-
serlian phenomenological tradition both culminate in the writings of
Martin Heidegger, perhaps the most influential philosopher in the
twentieth century. Here I will endeavor to clarify that Heideggers idea
of beauty as openness or ontological disclosure, apprehended through
Gelassenheit or letting-be, stands in the German tradition of aesthetic
disinterestedness running through Moritz, Kant, Goethe, Schiller,
Schopenhauer, and others. On the other side, Heidegger is profoundly
influenced by the ecstatic Dionysian aesthetics of rapture developed by
Nietzsche, who is the among the very strongest critics of Kant. Just
as Nietzsche himself never tires of ridiculing Kants objectivist idea of
a priori knowledge by arguing that there are no facts but only inter-
pretations, and just as he undermines Kants universalist ethics based
on the categorical imperatives of duty through his overturning of slave
morality with a master morality beyond good and evil, so he is relent-
less in attacking Kants notion of beauty as disinterested delight as the
basis of subjective universal validity claims in the arts. For Nietzsche
it seems that Kants notion of beauty as disinterested is Apollonian
whereas he himself favors the Dionysian mode of beauty as ecstasy or
rapture. Yet Heidegger explicates how the doctrines formulated by
Kant, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche are unified by his own idea of
beauty as unconcealedness through letting-be. In The Will to Power as
Art (1979), Heidegger defends Kants theory of aesthetic disinterest-
46 Artistic Detachment East and West
edness against the criticism of Nietzsche by claiming that the latter is
itself based on the misinterpretation of Kant by Schopenhauer. Hei-
degger goes on to bring the Kantian position into accord with his own
framework wherein the beauty of things presencing in primordial
truth as unconcealedness is apprehended by letting-be of Gelassenheit
a disinterested attitude of openness leading to an event of ontolog-
ical disclosure. For Heidegger the passion, ecstasy, rapture, and inten-
sity of emotion represented by Nietzsches Dionysian impulse is itself
fully engaged by the calm and tranquil artistic detachment of Kants
disinterested attitude representing the Apollonian impulse.
In Heideggers hermeneutical phenomenology, the disinterested
aesthetic attitude of Kant is represented by what he calls Gelassenheit,
the letting-be whereby things radiate into appearance as nonconceal-
ing presence so as to stand out through ekstasis into the openness, clear-
ing, or nothingness of being. For Heidegger it signifies a direct con-
tinuation of Husserls phenomenological standpoint whereby through
the act of epoch (suspension of judgement) one returns to the things
themselves in their aboriginal presencing. Gelassenheit is called medi-
tative thinking, which reveals things in their original truth (aletheia)
as openness, unhiddenness, or nonconcealment, in opposition to calcu-
lative thinking, which instead shows things in their derivative or
propositional truth as correspondence between concepts and facts. In
Heideggers hermeneutical aesthetics, meditative thinking or Gelassen-
heit opens up an empty space or clearing in being to enable the
primordial truth of things to become manifest. Gelassenheit is the medi-
tative stance of responsive openness that allows one to be released into
the opening of nothingness where things radiate into beauty as
nonconcealment.
In his essay titled Phenomenology and the Later Heidegger, Don
Ihde clarifies the manner in which Heideggers later thought repre-
sents a continuation of Husserlian descriptive-constitutive phenome-
nology. Ihde emphasizes that the basis of phenomenological method
is the concept of intentionalitythat is, directedness, referentiality,
or consciousness ofwhich involves the correlation a priori between
noesis/noema, cogito/cogitatum, or act/content (1974:21). Phenome-
nology describes not only the terminus of the intentional relation
the noema or content pole of experiencebut also the noesis or act pole
by which the former is itself constituted by mental operations includ-
ing cognition, imagination, and memory. Husserl describes the in-
variant structure of the perceptual field at the noematic pole in terms
 Western Aesthetics 47
of its holistic core/horizon, focus/field, or figure/ground gestalt con-
texture wherein the object clearly discriminated in the foreground
focus of attention is always encircled by a dimly apprehended horizon
in the background. He further describes the noetic pole in terms of
the mental acts that constitute the noematic content of experience.
Through sedimentation we habitually constitute the perceptual field
so that objects in the foreground are dominant and the horizon in
the background is recessive. With the phenomenological technique
of fantasy variation in imagination, however, one deconstructs the
sedimented focal object and reconstitutes the perceptual field by a
gestalt switch from foreground to background. Ihdes thesis is that
the later Heidegger is doing a radical phenomenological description
of horizons-phenomena (1974:20). Heidegger describes the noematic
content of experience as the region of openness that is itself bound
by the nothing as its ultimate parameter (1974:22). The region of
openness contains an inner horizon of latent alternative profiles sig-
nifying the multiplicity, variety, and possiblity of divergent per-
spectives by which an object may be constituted and reconstituted.
The region of openness is also the horizon of disclosure wherein the
focal object comes to presence in its primordial truth (aletheia) as
nonconcealment.
Heideggers phenomenology describes not only the horizon of open-
ness at the noematic pole but also the act of intentionality (noesis
noema correlation) by which it is constituted at the noetic pole. As
Ihde explains, the noetic act that intends the horizon of open-
ness encircling phenomena is described by Heidegger as Gelassenheit
or letting-be at the noetic pole. Gelassenheit is a nonfocal exercise
whereby one becomes detached from already sedimented focal objects
and is released into the openness of being at the outermost periphery
of the visual field. For Ihde the idea of Gelassenheit permits a noetic
reversalthat is, a gestalt switch from figure to ground, or a radical
shift of attention from the being of things in the foreground to the
horizon of openness/nothingness in the background. In a remarkable
passage, Ihde writes:

In Husserlian terms, the noematic description must be supplemented

by a noetic analysis of the act which intends the world terminus.
If now the noema is this strange horizon-phenomenon of the Open-
ness of Region, what is the noesis which correlates with it? Again,
Gelassenheit seems almost too simple to be truethe noesis is charac-
48 Artistic Detachment East and West
terized by terms which contrast it to any form of direct, central or
focal concern. . . . Thus Heidegger characterizes the noesis as not-
willing (nicht-Wollen), releasement or letting be (Gelassenheit), and
waiting (warten). [1974:24]

Heideggers essay The Origin of the Work of Art develops his

hermeneutical/existential-phenomenological aesthetics in terms of
the noesis/noema intentionality structure of beauty wherein Gelassenheit
or letting-be is the act of noetic reversal corresponding to the noematic
horizon of openness wherein all phenomena emerge into presence, un-
hiddenness, and nonconcealment. In this essay he defines the work of
art: Art breaks open an open place, in whose openness everything is
other than usual (1977:184). Again: Art then is the becoming and
happening of truth . . . the opening up of the open region, and the
lighting of beings (1977:183184). Heidegger subsumes the arts
under the classification of poetry (Gk. poesis) in its widest sense and
then defines poetry in hermeneutical terms as an act of ontological dis-
closure/openness where beings are revealed in their primordial truth
as unhiddenness: If all art is in essence poetry, then the arts of archi-
tecture, painting, sculpture, and music must be traced back to poesy.
. . . Poetry is the saying of the unconcealedness of beings (1977:184
185). Thus in another definition he states: Art, as the setting-into-
work of truth, is poetry (1977:186). He describes the horizon of
openness surrounding all focal objects revealed by the ontological
disclosure of poesis as saying the unconcealedness of things in works
of art: In the midst of beings as a whole an open place occcurs. There
is a lighting. . . . This open center is therefore not surrounded by
beings; rather, the lighting center itself encircles all that is, as does
the nothing, which we scarcely know (1977:175).
Heideggers Origin of the Work of Art describes not only the
mysterious horizon of openness/nothingness that surrounds all beings
at the noematic pole but also the act of Gelassenheit or letting-be as the
nonfocal exercise of artistic detachment whereby one is released into
openness of being at the noetic pole:

To this end, however, only one element is needful . . . to leave the thing
to rest in its own self, for instance, in its thing-being. What seems easier
than to let a thing be just the being that it is? Or does this turn out to be
the most difficult of tasks, particularly if such an intentionto let a
being be as it isrepresents the opposite of the indifference that simply
turns its back upon the being. [1977:161]
 Western Aesthetics 49
In this passage Heidegger clarifies that an aesthetic attitude of Gelassen-
heit or letting-be is required to apprehend the prereflective presence of
a thing in its simple beauty as it stands into the horizon of openness/
nothingness. Furthermore, he emphasizes that the aesthetic attitude
of letting-be represents the opposite of the indifference that simply
turns its back on beings. This same point is made in Heideggers On
the Essence of Truth:

To let something be has here the negative sense of letting it alone, of

renouncing it, of indifference and even neglect. However, the phrase
required nowto let beings bedoes not refer to neglect and indif-
ference but rather the opposite. To let be is to engage oneself with
beings. . . . To let bethat is, to let beings be as the beings which
they aremeans to engage oneself with the open region and its open-
ness into which every being comes to stand. . . . Western thinking
in its beginning conceived this open region as althea, the unconcealed.
[1977:127]

The stance of letting-be at the noetic pole is therefore not indifference,

renunciation, or neglect but a positive aesthetic attitude that engages
the place of openness at the noematic pole wherein all things are dis-
closed or opened up in the beauty of primordial truth as aletheia: uncon-
cealment. In Heideggers hermeneutical phenomenology of aesthetic
experience, the letting-be of Gelassenheit is an affirmative act of onto-
logical disclosure whereby particular beings in their prereflective pres-
ence come to stand forth through rapture of ekstasis into the openness
of being. Heideggers positive reformulation of Kants disinterested
aesthetic attitude through the notion of Gelassenheit or letting-be thus
corrects Schopenhauers nihilistic understanding of the concept as in-
difference or renunciation while at the same time bringing it into agree-
ment with Nietzsches ecstatic Dionysian affirmation of life through
aesthetic experience as rapture.
Hans-Georg Gadamer further develops Heideggers hermeneutic
phenomenology into a doctrine of aesthetic experience as ontolog-
ical disclosure that includes elements of artistic detachment and self-
forgetfulness. In a passage from Truth and Method, Gadamer asserts: To
the ecstatic self-forgetfulness of the spectator there corresponds his
continuity with himself. . . . The absolute moment in which a specta-
tor stands is at once self-forgetfulness and reconciliation with self.
That which detaches him from everything also gives him back the
whole of his being (1986:1131). This profound statement makes
50 Artistic Detachment East and West
clear that artistic detachment is not privation but an act which
recovers the totality of self and phenomena in an event of ontological
disclosure.

Psychic Distance in Contemporary Aesthetics

Bullough: Psychic Distance

The most famous detachment theory of art in the twentieth century is
the doctrine of psychic distance proposed by British psychologist
Edward Bullough in his justly acclaimed paper, Psychical Distance
as a Factor in Art and an Aesthetic Principle (1977). Bullough shifts
the notion of distance from the physical to the psychic plane, thereby
transforming it from a rule for poets (to distance their theme either
in space or time) into a psychological statement about the quality of
remoteness that objects assume in an aesthetic relation. One probable
source for Bulloughs idea of psychic distance as a factor in beauty is a
statement from chapter seven of Edmund Burkes Enquiry into the Origin
of Our Ideas on the Sublime and the Beautiful (1756): When danger or
pain press too nearly, they are incapable of giving any delight, and are
simply terrible; but at certain distances and with certain modifications
they may be, and they are delightful, as we every day experience.
Another likely source of influence for Bulloughs theory of aesthetic
distance is the work of Friedrich Schiller. To repeat the words of Schiller
from On the Aesthetic Education of Man in a Series of Letters: If desire
directly apprehends its object, contemplation thrusts its object into
the distance . . . thus securing it from passion (Letter 25:120). For
Bullough, as for Schiller, the pedagogical context of this notion is of
great significance in that it underscores how increased artistic sensi-
bility through control of psychic distance is something to be learned,
cultivated, and refined through a developmental process of aesthetic
education.
With his notion of psychic distance, Bullough reformulated in psy-
chologized terms the Kantian idea of disinterested contemplation as a
precondition for aesthetic experience. More than any other writer it
was Bullough who clarified that a specifiable aesthetic attitude was re-
quired in order to apprehend the beautiful and that this attitude is
characterized by a psychological act of distancing. Furthermore, he
allowed for a broad range of aesthetic response with his image of a
sliding scale of distance. With his notion of degrees of distance, Bullough
clarified that a fundamental problem of aesthetics was that of over-
 Western Aesthetics 51
distancing and underdistancing. His vivid examples such as the fog
at sea went far toward crystallizing the notion of aesthetic distance.
Altogether it was due largely to Bulloughs essay that the notion of
psychic distance came to be widely regarded as an indispensable factor
in art, beauty, and aesthetic experience.
Bullough says that an aesthetic experience results from the insertion
of Distance (1977:94). He adds: This Distance appears to lie between
our own self and its affections. In other words, distance lies between
our self and such objects as are the sources of these affective emotions.
The insertion of distance into an experience is further said to constitute
a special mental attitude (p. 94). Psychic distance is an aesthetic atti-
tude in which things are seen objectively and appreciated for their
own sake (p. 95). Bullough describes his admittedly metaphorical
notion of psychic distance as one of putting the phenomenon, so to
speak, out of gear with our practical, actual self, thereby allowing it
to stand outside the context of our personal needs and ends (p. 95).
Hence, like Kants notion of aesthetic disinterestedness, the idea of
psychic distance is completely nonutilitarian. Moreover, Bullough
refers to psychic distance as the much needed criterion of the beautiful
as distinct from the merely agreeable (p. 96). Kant had argued that
while pleasure in the agreeable as sense gratification is always bound
to self-interest, pleasure in the beautiful is always apart from interest.
Similarly, Bullough asserts that whereas the agreeable is nondistanced,
beauty in the widest sense of aesthetic value is impossible without the
insertion of distance (p. 118). On this basis he goes on to suggest that
psychic distance is such an essential factor in all art and beauty that it
is in fact the basic principle of aesthetics. Artists, critics, and audiences
must insert psychic distance into an event in order to elevate it into
an aesthetic experience. Thus at the conclusion of his essay he writes:
Distance becomes one of the distinguishing features of the aesthetic
consciousness . . . which, as I said at the outset, leads in its most preg-
nant and most fully developed form, both appreciatively and produc-
tively, to Art (p. 130).
Bullough illustrates the notion of psychic distance with his well-
known example of fog at sea. For most people, being a passenger on
a ship in a dense fog at sea would be an unpleasant experience apt to
produce feelings of acute fear and anxiety over invisible dangers. Never-
theless, a fog at sea can also be a source of intense relish and enjoy-
ment. In the latter case, one must observe the fog at sea in a purely
objective manner, suspending all practical interest, in order to see it
with the unconcern of a mere spectator. If one directs attention to
52 Artistic Detachment East and West
the features objectively constituting the phenomenonthe veil
surrounding you with an opaqueness as of transparent milk, the blur-
ring of the outline of things, the creamy smoothness of the water
the event assumes a quality of remoteness that transforms it into an
occasion of aesthetic delight. Hence Bullough argues that by putting
the phenomenon of a fog at sea out of gear with our practical aims and
interests, there is an insertion of distance or, as it were, a trans-
formation by distance. He concludes that the example of fog at sea
illumines the dual aspects of psychic distance: the negative, inhibitory
aspect, which discards the practical side of things along with our
practical attitude toward them, and the positive aspect, the creation of
aesthetic experience through the inhibitory action of distance (p. 95).
Bullough further argues that there are two ways of losing distance:
either to underdistance or to overdistance (p. 100). Underdistanc-
ing is said to be the commonest failing of the subject; an excess of
distancing is a common failure of art. Hence Bulloughs theory allows
for what he calls variability of Distance (p. 102) or degrees of Dis-
tance (p. 121). It is this image of a sliding scale of degrees of distance
that allows for such a wide range of aesthetic responses in Bulloughs
theory. He illustrates the problem of underdistancing on the part of a
spectator by reference to a man who believes he has cause to be jealous
about his wife and happens to witness a theatrical performance of
Shakespeares Othello (p. 99). By a sudden reversal of perspective he
will no longer see Othello apparently betrayed by Desdemona: instead
he will see himself in an analogous situation with his own wife. This
reversal of perspective is said to be the consequence of a loss of dis-
tance. To the extent that the spectator fails to insert psychic distance,
there is a proportionate loss of the aesthetic attitude. In contrast to
the underdistanced or even nondistanced standpoint of the jealous
spectator watching Othello, professional art critics make a bad audi-
ence if they become overdistanced by noting only the technical details
of the play. Criticism in art therefore requires a rhythmic interchange
between the practical to the distanced attitude and vice versa. The
same qualification applies to the creative artist. The artist involved in
the creation of beauty expresses personal feelings and emotions but
only on condition of a detachment from the experience (p. 99). Hence
the spectator, the critic, and the artist each must insert distance be-
tween the aesthetic object and their personal feelings. Since distance
admits naturally of degrees, however, it differs not only according to
the nature of the aesthetic object, which may impose a greater or
smaller degree of distance, but varies also according to the individuals
 Western Aesthetics 53
capacity for maintaining a greater or lesser degree. The insertion of
psychic distance may therefore be said to be variableboth according
to the distancing power of the individual and according to the character
of the aesthetic object (p. 100).
For Bullough the idea of degree or variability of distance is closely
related to what he calls the antinomy of distance. An aesthetic expe-
rience does not require that all personal feelings, desires, and emo-
tions be completely removed. Artist and spectator alike can enjoy per-
sonal feelings providing they are balanced by the insertion of psychic
distance. Bullough argues that herein lies his preference for the word
distance compared with such terms as objectivity and detach-
ment, since they are inflexible terms exclusive of their opposites (p.
100). According to Bullough, the tension between personal feelings
and the distanced attitude in an aesthetic experience points to a para-
dox of art: the antinomy of Distance (p. 98). He argues that the aim
of all art, both in appreciation and in production, is this antinomy of
Distance defined as the utmost decrease of Distance without its dis-
appearance (p. 100).

Ortega y Gasset: The Dehumanization of Art

One of the more radical theories of artistic detachment in the twentieth
century is to be found in The Dehumanization of Art (1948) by the
Spanish philosopher Jos Ortega y Gasset. Melvin Rader (1960:392
393) locates Ortega y Gassets key notion of the dehumanization of
art in the tradition of Kants theory of aesthetic disinterestedness and
Bulloughs doctrine of psychic distance. Ortega y Gasset, like Bullough,
formulates a doctrine whereby the artist observes an event from the
standpoint of a purely aesthetic attitude by inserting distance into
life. As a work of art becomes more stylized and unrealistic, its dis-
tance correspondingly increases. As the attitude of the artist becomes
more impersonal, the degree of distance again increases proportion-
ately. But unlike Bulloughs antinomy of distance, understood as the
utmost decrease of Distance without its disappearance, Ortega y
Gasset argues that the goal of modern abstract art is a maximum degree
of distance. Indeed, for Ortega y Gasset the aim of modern abstract
art is high distancing to the extreme point of dehumanizationin
other words, a complete removal of all human feeling, sympathy, and
attachment in art.
In a section of The Dehumanization of Art titled A Few Drops of
Phenomenology, Ortega y Gasset gives an illuminating phenomeno-
54 Artistic Detachment East and West
logical account of the successive degrees of distancing inserted into
the tragic event of a great mans death as witnessed from varying
perspectives, including those of his wife, a doctor, a reporter, and a
painter (1948:1318). He argues that the clearest way of distinguish-
ing these four points of view is by measuring them in terms of the
emotional distance between each person and the event they all wit-
ness (p. 14). Concerning the first perspective, that of the wife, he
writes: For the wife of the dying man the distance shrinks to almost
nothing (p. 14). In this case, her soul is so tortured by the death of
her husband that there is almost a total loss of distance from the
event. The perspective of the medical doctor who arrives on the scene
is several degrees removed (p. 14). Although the doctor is involved
with the event, it is in a professional capacity that provides him with
a stronger degree of distance than that of the wife, but not to the extent
that all human interest and feeling have been removed. The perspective
of the newspaper reporter inserts even more distance into the mans
death: When we now put ourselves in the place of the reporter we
realize that we have traveled a long distance away from the tragic
event (p. 15). The reporter is so aloof from the event that that almost
all human interest and feeling are now absent. The perspective of the
painter is that of a disinterested bystander who is completely unin-
volved with the event: The painter, in fine, completely unconcerned,
does nothing but keep his eyes open. . . . In the painter we find a maxi-
mum of distance and a minimum of feeling intervention (p. 16).
Ortega y Gasset concludes by stating that the uninvolved painter who
observes the event with a maximum of distance appears inhuman
(p. 17). He then goes on to defend this inhuman attitude of the
painter, however, arguing that the level of complete dehumanization
achieved by extreme distancing from life represents the very highest
standpoint of art in modern civilization. Hence, for Ortega y Gasset,
the dehumanization of art is not an overdistancing from life, since the
goal of art is no less than the realization of absolute distance (p. 26).

Vivas: Intransitive Attention

Eliseo Vivas proposes that aesthetic experience can be most clearly elu-
cidated in terms of the psychological act of attention. In his best-known
formulation he writes: An aesthetic experience is an experience of rapt
attention which involves the intransitive apprehension of an objects
immanent meanings in their full presentational immediacy (1966:
408). Moreover, he describes the aesthetic experience as one of in-
 Western Aesthetics 55
transitive attention and, again, as an intense experience of attention
wherein the self disappears (p. 411). Like Edward Bullough, Vivas
maintains that aesthetic experience requires a certain mental attitude
a special mode of attention, as it were. In aesthetic experience, atten-
tion is shifted away from self and is focused solely upon the object of
beauty and its intrinsic values.
According to Vivas, while ordinarily attention is transitive and rest-
less unless somehow controlled, the aesthetic experience is character-
ized by a heightened state of attention that he calls rapt attention,
intense attention, or intransitive attention. The key word in Vivas
formulation is intransitive, which he defines as signifying that atten-
tion is aesthetic when it is so controlled by the object that it does not
fly away from it to meanings not present immanently in the object
(p. 408). In contrast, other modes of attention discover in objects not
immanent but referential meaningsthat is is to say, meanings which
carry us beyond the object to other objects or meanings not present in
it (p. 409). Yet he also holds that there are specifiable characteristics
of an aesthetic object which elicit attention and make it intransitive: a
change, strength, striking quality, definiteness of form, as well as unity
in variety, theme, thematic variation, emphasis, and evolution accord-
ing to a rhythmic pattern (p. 410). For Vivas, then, while aesthetic
experience is to be conceived as a state of rapt, intense, and intransi-
tive attention, the generic traits of aesthetic objects are factors which
facilitate that attention while retaining it within the object.

Ingarden: Practical, Cognitive, and Aesthetic Attitudes

Roman Ingarden (18931970), a Polish philosopher who studied phe-
nomenology under Husserl, gives a splendid account of distancing
through the aesthetic attitude in The Cognition of the Literary Work of
Art. This book presents Ingardens conception of the literary work as a
stratified, multilayered, and polyphonic object whose existence depends
on the intentional acts of author and reader but is not identical with
those acts. Ingarden distinguishes the aesthetic from the practical
and cognitive attitudes operating when the reader interacts with a
literary text or other art object:

Above all, it is necessary to characterize the two attitudes of the reader

which are here being contrasted . . . (a) the purely cognitive or investi-
gating attitude and (b) the aesthetic attitude. Both are distinguished
from the practical attitude. . . . [1973:172173]
56 Artistic Detachment East and West
He then describes the various levels of hermeneutic interaction that
can occur between the subject and the art object in order to illustrate
these three attitudes along with the radical shift that occurs in chang-
ing from the natural to the aesthetic attitude. The practical attitude is
illustrated by someone who purchases a picture in order to hang it on
a wall. He assumes a cognitive attitude when he makes an effort to gain
knowledge of the properties of the painting he has purchased. But a
third attitude of aesthetic contemplation is also possible:
Finally, when he reposes on a sofa, is sunk in contemplation, and
attempts to view the work in its totality in its artistic form, only then
does he assume the aesthetic attitude and, in the fulfillment of the
aesthetic experience, discover the picture in its full individuality and
also in the value belonging to it which has been brought to appearance.
[1973:173]
Ingarden follows the Kantian tradition to the extent that he em-
phasizes how the aesthetic attitude is nonutilitarian in that it is a con-
templative state distinct from analytic and practical attitudes. His
analysis thus underscores the psychological shift from the practical
to the aesthetic attitude. Ingarden asserts: This transition from the
practical to the aesthetic attitude is perhaps the most thoroughgoing
change in mans psychological attitude (1973:196). Moreover, in
accord with the Kantian and phenomenological traditions, he main-
tains that the aesthetic attitude requires a total lack of interest for the
factual existence or nonexistence of an art object:
The original emotion produces in us a radical change in attitude,
namely, from the natural attitude of active life to the specifically aes-
thetic attitude. . . . It has the result that one passes from the attitude
which focuses on facts in the real world . . . to an attitude which
focuses on intuitive qualitative formations and the achievement of a
direct contact with them. [1973:195]
In accord with Husserlian phenomenological method there is a shift
from the natural attitude of already sedimented views to the phe-
nomenological (= aesthetic) attitude, starting with the epoch or sus-
pension of all affirmative and negative judgements regarding the
existence or nonexistence of a phenomenon. He then clarifies that in
shifting from the natural attitude with its practical and aesthetic inter-
ests to the aesthetic attitude with its disinterested perspective, one
assumes complete indifference for the real existence of a thing so as
to become contemplatively absorbed in its aesthetic qualities for its
own sake with no ulterior motive:
 Western Aesthetics 57
For, as a result of the original emotion, we are focused not on the fact of
the real existence of these or those qualities but on these qualities them-
selves. . . . Their factual appearance in a real object as its determination
becomes a matter of indifference for us. [1973:195]

Furthermore, in several places Ingarden clearly states that a process of

psychological distancing occurs in the aesthetic attitude: The dis-
tanced surveying of various parts of the work permits the surveyor to
assess their role in relation to certain other selected details of the work
(p. 248). He also speaks of a certain distance, once again in a metaphor-
ical sense, between the object of cognition and the subject of cogni-
tion (p. 281). Hence as in Bulloughs theory of psychic distance,
Ingarden holds that the distancing which occurs in the aesthetic atti-
tude is not spatial or temporal but psychological as an act of distanc-
ing to be inserted between the reader and the art objectin this case,
the literary text.
For Ingarden, then, the appreciation of beauty involves a disinter-
ested aesthetic attitude wherein a kind of detached contemplation
occurs through insertion of distance. Generally speaking, Ingardens
theory is continuous with the Husserlian phenomenological move-
ment tracing back to Kant wherein beauty is not just the quality of a
constituted object (noema) but requires a disinterested aesthetic atti-
tude on the side of the constitutive subject (noesis). For Ingarden, as
for Kant and the phenomenologists, aesthetic objects are not simply
fixed or given but are to some extent constituted through noetic acts
of intentional consciousness. A phenomenological description of any
experience, including the aesthetic experience of beauty, therefore re-
quires an account of the twofold noetic/noematic or act/content struc-
ture of intentionalitynot only a description of the noema or objective
content pole but also the noesis or subjective act pole, which itself con-
stitutes how the noematic content comes to appearance. In Husserlian
terms, a methodological bracketing (epoch) or suspension of judge-
ment is needed to put a phenomenon out of gear with all practical
and cognitive interests. Unlike Kant and the German phenomenolog-
ical tradition, Ingarden does not understand the aesthetic attitude in
the framework of transcendental idealism but instead develops it in the
context of a thoroughgoing realism. Experience of beauty in a literary
work of art begins, not in the aesthetic attitude, but in the natural atti-
tude with its practical and cognitive interests. As the preceding cita-
tions make clear, there is first a passive response to an aesthetic quality
in the object that imposes itself on us from without and then subse-
58 Artistic Detachment East and West
quently arouses an original emotion (1973:195). This original emo-
tion, elicited by an aesthetically valuable gestalt quality, then pro-
duces a shift from the natural attitude to the aesthetic attitude. At this
point the passive response to aesthetic quality is followed by various
creative acts of intentional consciousness that noetically constitute the
art object. He writes:
But we must not for this reason suppose that the aesthetic experience is a
purely passive, inactive, and uncreative contemplation of a quality . . .
which is in this respect opposed to active practical life. On the contrary,
an aesthetic experience constitutes a phase of a very active, intensive, and
creative human life. [1973:196]

Ingardens contribution is to have provided a typology of the various

possible attitudes that clearly distinguishes the practical and cogni-
tive from the aesthetic attitude. He presents a descriptive profile of
the radical shift that occurs from the natural to the aesthetic attitude
and offers concrete illustrations of the process. His account of the aes-
thetic experience is continuous with the Kantian tradition, not only
because it emphasizes that a special attitude is required in order to
appreciate beauty, but also because of the way this attitude is charac-
terized. For Ingarden the aesthetic attitude is characterized by contem-
plative absorption in a quality for its own sake, disengagement from
practical concerns, indifference to real existence, and psychological dis-
tance from the art object. Yet Ingardens account is realistic in that
the aesthetic attitude is initiated by a passive response to a quality in
the external object which then causes a shift from the natural attitude
with its practical and cognitive interests to the distanced contempla-
tion of the aesthetic attitude. Hence while the aesthetic attitude consti-
tutes the work of art through a variety of noetic/noematic intentional
operations, it must first be aroused from without by contact with a
quality in the object itself.

I. A. Richards et al.: Synaesthesis

In The Foundations of Aesthetics (1922) the well-known literary critic
I. A. Richards together with C. K. Ogden and J. Wood developed a
detachment theory of art in terms of a doctrine of synaesthesis. These
three British thinkers claim that synaesthesis is an explanation of the
aesthetic experience described by many of the greatest and most sensi-
tive artists and critics of the past and may be regarded as the theory
of Beauty par excellence (1922:7). They define their key principle of syn-
 Western Aesthetics 59
aesthesis as the equilibrium and harmony of diverse sense impulses
produced by a work of art, resulting in the simultaneous perception of
colors, sounds, flavors, scents, and other sensations that altogether
function to induce a total aesthetic effect. Their understanding of syn-
aesthesia as an equilibrium of impulses is on the Western side influ-
enced by the Kantian aesthetics of Friedrich Schiller, who is quoted as
saying: The only aesthetic repose is that in which stimulation result-
ing in impulse or movement is checked. . . . This is tension, equilib-
rium, or balance of forces, which is thus seen to be a general condition
of all aesthetic experience (p. 86).
On the Eastern side they credit the synaesthetic notion of beauty to
the Confucian theory of equilibrium (Ch. chung). Hence at the very
outset of a chapter called Synaesthesis they cite a passage from a
Chinese classic, Doctrine of the Mean (Chung-yung), which Richards, a
sinologist and Confucian scholar, translates as The Doctrine of Equi-
librium and Harmony, part of which reads:
When anger, sorrow, joy, pleasure are in being but are not manifested, the
mind may be said to be in a state of Equilibrium; when the feelings are
stirred and cooperate in due degree the mind may be said to be in a state
of Harmony. Equilibrium is the great principle. [Cited by Richards et al.
1922:1415]

Moreover, in an effort to find a single term that expresses both the

equilibrium and harmony of sense impulses in aesthetic experience,
Richards finds inadequate such words as ecstasy, nirvana, sublima-
tion, or at-oneness with nature and instead elects the term synaes-
thesis (p. 75). Thus he writes: As descriptive of an aesthetic state in
which impulses are experienced together, the word Synaesthesis . . .
conveniently covers both equilibrium and harmony (pp. 7576).
Richards further argues that in the psychological state of equipoise
produced by a work of art there is no tendency to action but only a
calm repose (p. 76). He adds that works of art producing action are
not beautiful but stimulative (p. 77). The function of beauty in a
work of art is not to excite the emotions but to pacify them, resulting
in the tranquil state of equanimity. Thus he writes: It is in this state
of equanimity and freedom of spirit . . . that a genuine work of art
should leave us (p. 84).
At this point, Richards et al. clarify that the experience of synaes-
thesis in which all the sense impulses are simultaneously engaged to-
gether in equilibrium and harmony itself requires a special mode of
rapt attention: an aesthetic attitude of detached tranquility, free of all
60 Artistic Detachment East and West
concern for practical actions, which is at once both disinterested and
impersonal in nature. The wholly disinterested character of synaesthetic
perception is clearly described by the authors as follows:

As we realise beauty we become more fully ourselves the more our

impulses are engaged. . . . Our interest is not canalised in one direction
rather than another. It becomes ready instead to take any direction we
choose. This is the explanation of that detachment so often mentioned in
artistic experience. We become impersonal and disinterested. [p. 78]

Hence for Richards, Ogden, and Wood, aesthetic experience is always

synaesthetic experience. Moreover, the experience of synaesthesis is
itself analyzed as a function of disinterestedness. As such, the disin-
terested aesthetic attitude is a necessary precondition for the synaes-
thetic perception of beauty. In such a manner, then, the principle of
synaesthesis clarifies the essential act/content structure of aesthetic
experienceincluding both the nature of beauty as embodied multi-
sensory awareness having equilibrium and harmony of diverse sense
impulses along with the aesthetic attitude of disinterested contempla-
tion required for its apprehension.

Strawson et al: British Analytic Philosophy

In twentieth-century theories of art and beauty the Kantian principle
of aesthetic disinterestedness has been restated in the tradition of British
analytic philosophy by thinkers like G. E. Moore, Peter Strawson, and
Stuart Hampshire. Generally speaking the analytic tradition has been
influenced by Kants epistemological critique of metaphysics, which
argues that metaphysical notions based on an illicit extension of
the categories beyond the bounds of sense are meaningless. Again,
British analytic philosophers have been attracted to Kants universalist
ethics based on categorical imperatives of duty prescribed by self-
legislative rationality of autonomous moral agents. Furthermore, ana-
lytic philosophers like Strawson have adopted a Kantian aesthetics
based on the idea of a non-rule-governed faculty of taste grounded
in an attitude of disinterestedness. In his essay titled Aesthetic Ap-
praisal and Works of Art, Strawson (1974:187) explains the impossi-
bility of any general rules for art by defining our appreciation of art as
totally devoid of any interest in anything it can or should do, or that
we can do with it, not even an interest in specific responses (say, excite-
 Western Aesthetics 61
ment or stupefaction) which it will produce in us. Hence for Strawson,
as for Kant, beauty is a function of disinterested pleasure, so that the
aesthetic signifies an autonomous domain which is free of all prag-
matic, utilitarian, and problem-solving concerns.

Bergson: Detachment, Creative Evolution, and Artistic Intuition

The French philosopher Henri Bergson (18591941) has formulated
an innovative detachment theory of art based on the principle of aes-
thetic disinterestedness in the context of developing his well-known
doctrines of intuition, temporality, duration, vital life impulse, and
creative evolution. Bergson is especially renowned for his concept of
intuition as formulated in his Introduction to Metaphysics (1903). In this
work he defines intuition as the kind of intellectual sympathy by
which one places oneself within an object in order to coincide with
what is unique in it and consequently inexpressible (1949:23). It is
through intuition that one can grasp the lan vital, or vital life force,
in the duration of an ever-flowing stream of creative evolution. Berg-
sons idea of the lan vital is a reformulation of Schopenhauers vitalistic
notion of reality as pure will signifying the Kantian thing-in-itself.
According to Bergson, reason stands outside its object, is mediated by
symbols, and produces a knowledge that is relative to a perspective
whereas intuition enters into the heart of its object, dispenses with
symbols, and therefore produces a knowledge that is absolute. When
applied to external objects, the intellectual sympathy of intuition
directly coincides with the immediately felt unique qualities of things,
just as when it is applied to the self it enters into the duration (dure)
or temporal continuum of the living present so as to immediately grasp
the dynamic and insubstantial stream of lan vital in the ever-changing
flux of creative evolution. Bergsons idea of intuition then becomes
the epistemological foundation for both his philosophy of art and his
religious mysticism. In Time and Free Will, Bergson develops his con-
cept of artistic intuition in terms of what he calls aesthetic feelings
or feelings of the beautiful. He writes: The feeling of the beautiful
is no specific feeling, but . . . every feeling experienced by us will
assume an aesthetic character, provided that it has been suggested, and
not caused (1989:1617).
But it is in Bergsons Creative Evolution that he develops an explicit
theory of aesthetic disinterestedness. In this work Bergson (1983:7)
describes human evolution in aesthetic terms stating that analogous
62 Artistic Detachment East and West
to the process of artistic creation we are like artisans creating and re-
creating ourselves continually. In the process of creative evolution
driven by the lan vital, the biological instincts are transformed into
the intellectual sympathy of intuition. He defines intuition as instinct
that has become disinterested, self-conscious, capable of reflecting upon
its object and of enlarging it indefinitely (p. 176; italics added). He
adds that it is the aesthetic faculty of an artist which proves the pos-
sibility of this kind of direct and immediate knowledge through the
disinterested intuition of beauty. This accords with Bergsons state-
ments in another work, Laughter, where he again describes the emer-
gence of a creative genius who possesses calm detachment of artistic
intuition, so that on rare occasions nature raises up souls that are
more detached from life. For Bergson, as the lan vital unfolds in the
temporal becoming of creative evolution, the animal instincts become
increasingly detached, disinterested, distanced, and self-conscious to
the point that they develop into intuitionnot only the intellectual
sympathy which serves as the basis for cognitive knowledge but also
the creative artistic intuition of beauty in aesthetic experience and the
mystical intuition of the divine in religious experience. Intuition is
Schopenhauers voluntaristic will become self-conscious through evo-
lution as a machine for the production of gods as the vital life current
becomes introspective and aware of itself. The process of creative evo-
lution thus culminates in a metamorphosis of biological instincts into
a heightened faculty whereby the artist vibrates in perfect accord with
nature through the detached sympathy of aesthetic intuition.

Mnsterberg: Isolation by Framing

Hugo Mnsterberg (18631916) taught in the Department of Phi-
losophy at Harvard University during that period called the golden
age of American philosophy: his colleagues included William James,
Josiah Royce, and George Santayana. Mnsterberg formulates an iso-
lation theory of art that recognizes the detachment of the aesthetic
attitude from all practical considerations or personal interests. In terms
of its general features, Mnsterbergs isolation theory of art resembles
many of the other artistic detachment theories considered thus far
including the disinterested attitude theories of art developed by Kant,
Schopenhauer, and Schiller in German idealist aesthetics as well as
Bulloughs psychic distance theory of art and Ortega y Gassets de-
humanization theory of art in twentieth-century aesthetics. The main
 Western Aesthetics 63
emphasis in Mnsterbergs theory is his fundamental distinction be-
tween the isolation of immediate aesthetic experience versus the
connection of rational scientific analysis. In Mnsterbergs words:
Connection is science, but the work of art is isolation; more than that,
isolation is beauty (1960:438). According to this view the primary
function of art is that of isolation:
Philosophy . . . has shown that all scientific knowledge leads us away
from the real object, giving us merely its connections; that if we want the
real object, we must separate it from all its connections, must grasp it in
its complete isolation; and that it is the function of art to bring about
this isolation and to show us the object in its immediate truth. [p. 442]

Mnsterberg clarifies the isolation of art as follows: If you really

want the thing itself, there is only one way to get it; you must sepa-
rate it from everything else, you must disconnect it . . . for the object
it means complete isolation; for the subject it means complete repose
in the object . . . and that is, finally, merely another name for the enjoy-
ment of beauty (p. 438). Hence the isolation of art has a dual effect:
manifesting the beauty of the object while at the same time inducing
a state of repose in the subject: To isolate the object for the mind
means to make it beautiful, for it fills the mind without an idea of
anything else . . . and this complete repose, where the objective impres-
sion becomes for us an ultimate end in itself, is the only possible con-
tent of the true experience of beauty (p. 438). He adds that this state
of repose, which is also the ultimate goal of religion and philosophy,
is achieved through the contemplation of beauty in the isolation of
art: Religion and philosophy seek this rest of the mind, this repose of
our existence in the contemplation of the eternal totality. The lover of
beauty seeks it in the contemplation of the single object; he isolates it
from the world and by that act of isolation . . . it brings a final rest to
the mind of the subject (p. 441).
Mnsterberg goes on to describe how an artwork isolates an object
through the borders of its frame: The landscape which the painter
gives us on the canvas is separated from the world by its frame; the
roads in that landscape do not lead anywhere outside of the frame
(1960:442). The function of art is to isolate an object within a frame,
thereby to abstract it from all connections with other things located
outside the frame. Summarizing the isolation of art with a frame,
Mnsterberg writes: The real work of art . . . holds our mind to the
object itself, its way leads nowhere and its frame ends its world. And
64 Artistic Detachment East and West
so we may say: to isolate an object for our mind; to show the object as
it really is; to give us repose in the object; to make the object beautiful
are only four different expressions of the same fact (p. 439).
It can now be seen how the Kantian idea of beauty as disinterested
pleasure has been reformulated by Mnsterberg in terms of an isola-
tion theory of art. It is through the isolation of a thing by a frame that
the detachment of art is achievedthereby to give repose in the sub-
ject while at the same time disclosing the intrinsic value of the object.
By the isolation of an object through framing in a work of art it now
becomes detached from everyday life so that its beauty can be appreci-
ated in itself without personal interest or practical consideration for its
connections to other things outside the frame. The Kantian basis of
Mnsterbergs doctrine of art as isolation is further to be seen in his
attempt to establish the normative grounds for universal validity
claims both for cognitive judgements of connection in science and for
aesthetic judgements of isolation through framing in art:

Both science and art, knowledge and beauty, are independent of indi-
vidual, personal desires. . . . Both make a general claim; they are not
meant as individual decisions, they demand an over-individual value;
that which is knowledge for one is taken to be knowledge for all; that
which is declared beautiful by one is assumed to appear beautiful to
all. Knowledge and beauty are thus postulates: you ought to connect
the things of the world in this way if you want knowledge, and you
ought to isolate the things of the world in that way if you want
beauty. [1960:439]

Hence for Mnsterberg, as for Kant, aesthetic judgements of the beau-

tiful in matters of taste are not relative determinations. Instead they
make their own general claim to universal validity insofar as they are
isolated or detached from personal interest.

Lewis: Disinterested Contemplation of Aesthetic Qualities

In the second generation of American pragmatism, an explicit Kantian
theory of aesthetic disinterestedness was set forth by Clarence Irving
Lewis (18831964). C. I. Lewis received his Ph.D. degree from Har-
vard University in 1910, where he studied in the Department of
Philosophy under William James, Josiah Royce, George Santayana,
Hugo Mnsterberg, and other leading thinkers from the golden age
of classical American philosophy. But a distinguishing feature of Lewis
system of thought is his effort to combine American pragmatism with
 Western Aesthetics 65
the philosophy of Kant. Hence like other American pragmatists he
defines beauty as the directly felt pervasive aesthetic quality per-
meating consummatory events while also taking up the Kantian posi-
tion that experience of beauty requires an aesthetic attitude of dis-
interested contemplation. Following the architectonic framework of
Kants three critiques, Lewis attempts to establish the grounds for
objectivity, universality, and impartiality in human judgements, in-
cluding cognitive, moral, and aesthetic judgements. His first book,
Mind and the World-Order, develops a pragmatic theory of knowledge
that Lewis himself terms conceptual pragmatism (1956:xi). In his
Kantian epistemology, human knowledge is described as a construc-
tive act that synthesizes the formal and material or conceptual and
empirical aspects of experience so that the directly apprehended
quality given in immediate experience is then interpreted through
the application of a concept. Moreover, in The Ground and Nature of the
Right (1955), Lewis articulates a Kantian universalist ethics wherein
moral rightness depends on the agents conformity to categorical
imperatives or universally valid ethical principles of right decision.
Likewise, in his theory of valuation he works out a Kantian theory
of the beautiful in terms of an aesthetic attitude of disinterested
contemplation.
Although Lewis briefly outlines his aesthetics and theory of values
in an appendix to Mind and the World-Order, his Kantian theory of
aesthetic disinterestedness is found especially in a later work titled
An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation (1946). Like the American
philosophers Charles S. Peirce, John Dewey, A. N. Whitehead, and
Stephen C. Pepper, Lewis develops a concept of value as the immedi-
ately felt aesthetic quality pervading all events. For Lewis, value is a
term used exclusively in the sense of a value-quality (1946:393).
Moreover, he states that value quality is a dimensionlike mode that is
pervasive of all immediate experience: All experience is esthetic in
the broad sense of being presentation of some quality-complex in which
value or disvalue is directly findable (p. 439). Generally speaking,
these American philosophers have underscored the role of feeling,
prehension, or emotional sympathy in the direct intuition of pervasive
aesthetic quality while neglecting or even rejecting the function of
artistic detachment as insertion of psychic distance from emotion.
There is a failure to grasp the aesthetic attitude as an act of detached
sympathyor, as stated by Wordsworth, an intense emotion recol-
lected in tranquility. Whitehead approaches this insight when at the
end of Adventures of Ideas he unfolds his process theory of self-creative,
66 Artistic Detachment East and West
aesthetic, and novel quantum events characterized by tragic beauty
enjoyed in a mental state of transpersonal peace.
But among the American philosophers it is especially C. I. Lewis
who underscores the view that a certain attitude is required for the
direct apprehension of pervasive aesthetic quality while further specify-
ing that this aesthetic attitude is to be defined in terms of a Kantian
idea of disinterestedness. Lewis writes in An Analysis of Knowledge and
Valuation: Esthetic apprehension requires to be thus disinterested in
order to be just, and to be free of sentimentalism and the pathetic
fallacy (p. 441). He adds that the aesthetic attitude requires to be
disinterested, impersonal and contemplative (p. 441). Similar to Eliseo
Vivas (1966:408) idea of the aesthetic attitude as intransitive atten-
tion, Lewis further describes the aesthetic attitude of disinterested
contemplation as an act of undistracted attention whereby phenomena
are directly apprehended in their qualitative immediacy: The esthetic
attitude is, thus, only the attitude of undistracted attention (1946:
444). For Lewis, the disinterested attitude of contemplation is there-
fore the differentia that marks off aesthetic experience from other
modes of human experience:
In the broadest sense, the esthetic might be marked off simply by refer-
ence to this esthetic attitude of disinterested interest in the presented
[quality]. . . . The directly apprehended is esthetic when we pause upon
it; contemplate the quality of what is given in and for itself. [p. 443]

His concept of the beautiful as an apprehension of pervasive aesthetic

quality through disinterested contemplation is summed up when he
asserts: Only those values are distinctively esthetic which are resident
in the quality of something as presented . . . and by that pause of con-
templative regard which suspends the active interests of further pur-
poses (p. 454). According to Lewis, then, the intrinsic value of beauty
in both nature and art is to be understood as the directly felt pervasive
aesthetic quality of events as given in immediate experience. Yet at
the same time this apprehension of quality requires an aesthetic atti-
tude of undistracted attention that Lewis, following Kant, describes
as an act of disinterested contemplation.

Polanyi: Artistic Detachment Through Framing

Michael Polanyi was a chemist who has become best known for his con-
tributions to the philosophy of science. Above all he is recognized for
his epistemological critique of scientific objectivity or detachment
 Western Aesthetics 67
as articulated in such works as Personal Knowledge (1958) and Knowing
and Being (1969). But in another work titled Meaning (1975), Polanyi
develops a theory of creative imagination in perception that unifies
both science and the humanities in a single coherent framework based
on the concept of tacit knowledge. He argues that while the ideal of
detached observation in science is a myth, it nevertheless plays a
central role in the aesthetic experience. In this context he develops an
isolation theory of art wherein detachment from life is acquired
through framing devices in poetry, literature, and the arts.
According to Polanyi, it is commonly assumed that science, in its
perfect state, is imagination-freea work of pure detachment and
objectivity (1975:64). In opposition to this view he argues that per-
sonal participation and imagination are essentially involved in science
as well as in the humanities (p. 65). Both the acts of scientific dis-
covery and artistic creativity are rooted in a common sourcenamely,
a free act of creative imagination that tacitly integrates otherwise
chaotic elements into a unified experience with a holistic focal sub-
sidiary or figure/ground gestalt structure. In the sciences, each act of
tacit knowing involves the triadic relation of subsidiary elements in
the background field, the focal target, and a personal knower who
synthesizes focal and subsidiary elements into a new meaningful whole
through an act of imaginative integration (p. 64). Polanyi writes: Let
us proceed with a critique of the exact sciences in order to displace
quite generally the current ideal of detached observation by a concep-
tion of personal knowledge (p. 29). Polanyi thereby rejects the scientific
ideal of pure objectivity through detached observation for a model of
involvement, engagement, and participation through personal knowl-
edge. Summing up his critique of scientific detachment, he asserts:
Its method is not that of detachment but rather that of involve-
ment. . . . Thus the ideal of pure objectivity in knowing and in science
has been shown to be a myth (p. 63).
Although Polanyi rejects the notion of scientific detachment as a
fallacy, he affirms the notion of artistic detachment. In this context he
develops an isolation theory of art whereby detachment from the per-
sonal interests and emotional involvements of life are achieved by iso-
lating an object within the artificial borders of a frame: These artifi-
cial patterns are . . . what isolate works of art from the shapeless flow
of both personal existence and public life. They make works of art
something detached (1975:101). Polanyis view at once shares much
in common with Hugo Mnsterbergs detachment theory of art as iso-
lation in a frame. But Polanyi credits his isolation theory of artistic
68 Artistic Detachment East and West
detachment through framing to the influence of I. A. Richards. As
Polanyi explains:
In poetry this necessary detachment from a particular personality is
furthered by the artificiality of the frame into which the poem is cast.
I. A. Richards points this out to us: Through its very appearance of
artificiality meter produces in the highest degree the frame effect, iso-
lating the poetic experience from the accidents and irrelevancies of
everyday existence. [p. 85]

Extending his idea of aesthetic detachment through the frame effect

from poetry to the other arts, he states: In painting and drama the
basic techniques and instrumental material used by these arts detach
them quite definitely from the course of our normal experiences (p.
117). The frame of a painting, the stagecraft of a play, the meter of a
poemall are mentioned as framing mechanisms producing the iso-
lation and detachment enjoyed by a work of art (p. 150).
Polanyi goes on to clarify his isolation theory of artistic detachment
based on the concept of framing in terms of the Kantian idea of aes-
thetic disinterestedness. He asserts that artistic detachment and isola-
tion produced by the poetic frame effect are something of what Kant
meant when he defined the aesthetic appreciation of art as a disinter-
ested pleasure (1975:87). Moreover, the detachment realized by a work
of art through the artifice of framing is itself the basis for its claim to
universal validity:
When the artificial frame of a work of art, integrated to its prose content,
establishes a detached work of art, it also sets forth a claim that its
value is universally valid. . . . All art is intensely personal and strictly
detached; and it must, as we said, claim universal validity for the per-
sonal self-set standards which it obeys. [p. 102]

Polanyis assertion is clearly a restatement of the Kantian theory that

aesthetic judgements are not relative but make claim to universal valid-
ity to the extent that they are detached or disinterested. The Kantian
basis of Polanyis aesthetics is to be seen in his theory of art as isolation
through a frame whereby an object becomes detached from life so as
to be admirable in itself without regard for personal interests or prac-
tical consideration of things beyond the frame. Moreover, he asserts
that the detachment produced by the frame effect in art and literature
provides the normative grounds for universal validity claims in aesthetic
judgements of taste.
 Western Aesthetics 69

Critiques of Aesthetic Disinterestedness

Here I would like to take up some of the major criticisms that have
been leveled against the notion of an aesthetic attitude of disinterested
contemplation and consider some counterarguments in its defense. We
begin with an examination of Nietzsches charge that Kants idea
of beauty as disinterested pleasure represents nihilism (whereby art
is a sedative leading to resignation) and absolutism or universalism
(whereby the disinterested attitude is said to provide a basis for uni-
versally valid judgements of taste). We then turn to a consideration
of J. Wolffs ideological critique against the elitism and exclusivism
of artistic detachment theories: since appreciation of beauty requires
cultivation of a special attitude of disinterestedness, it is restricted to
a privileged minority class and thus is held to be aristocratic in char-
acter. Next comes an analysis of Carolyn Korsmeyers feminist critique
leveled against psychic distance theories of art: the feminist critique
claims that these theories involve a strong gender bias which privileges
aesthetic experience by insertion of distance associated with higher
masculine senses (sight and hearing), rooted in cognition, over non-
distanced physical pleasures associated with lower feminine senses
(taste, touch, and scent) rooted in the physical body with its sensuous
desires, passions, and interests. Next we consider John Deweys criti-
que of artistic detachment theories: Dewey argues that enjoyment of
pervasive aesthetic quality requires, not an attitude of disinterested
contemplation by an uninvolved spectator, but participation, engage-
ment, and sympathy. After Dewey we turn to an exposition of Susanne
K. Langers critique of psychic distance theories of beauty. Like Dewey,
Prall, C. I. Lewis, and many other American philosophers, Langer
agrees that beauty is an immediately felt pervasive aesthetic quality of
events and goes on to show how this concept has parallels in Japanese
and Indian aesthetics. Unlike Dewey, she recognizes distancing as a
vital element of aesthetic experience, especially drama. She criticizes
the psychological emphasis on cultivating a disinterested attitude,
however, proposing instead that the distance or otherness of art is a
function of its symbolic character. Next comes an analysis of George
Dickies criticism of the myth of psychic distance, which holds that
the aesthetic attitude of psychic distance is a phantom state with no
ontological status. We conclude this survey with Allen Carlson. Accord-
ing to Carlson, one of the major paradigms for the aesthetic experience
of nature through insertion of psychic distance is the landscape, or
70 Artistic Detachment East and West
scenery, model of beauty. While Carlson affirms the significance of
an aesthetic attitude of psychic distance, he nonetheless criticizes the
landscape model wherein nature is reduced through framing devices
to a finished picture with a fixed perspective and due distance.

Nietzsches Critique of Kant (and Heideggers Response)

Among the first to criticize Kants notion of beauty as disinterested
pleasure was Nietzsche. At one level of analysis, Nietzsches criticism
of Kant can be understood in terms of the issue of universalism versus
relativism. According to Kants Critique of Pure Reason, universal valid-
ity claims in knowledge are to be accounted for by a priori categories
that order the manifold sensations combined in a synthesis of imagi-
nation. Likewise the Critique of Practical Reason establishes normative
grounds for universal validity claims in ethics through categorical
imperatives (absolute commands) of duty requiring that the rule by
which one acts can be generalized into a universal law by self-legislative
reason. In his Critique of Judgement, Kant elucidates the basis for uni-
versal validity claims in aesthetic judgements regarding matters of
taste through an attitude of disinterested contemplation. Against the
universalism of Kant, Nietzsche propounds a version of relativism, or
what he terms perspectivism, so that in epistemology there is no uni-
versal knowledge but only interpretations of interpretations; in ethics
there are no universal moral laws but only ethical relativism deter-
mined by the superabundant will to power of the overman beyond
good and evil; while in aesthetics there are no universally valid judge-
ments of taste in the beautiful but only Dionysian affirmations of
beauty as ecstasy or rapture. Nietzsches transvaluation of all values,
therefore, uses the philosophical sledgehammer to shatter all absolute
notions of truth, goodness, and beauty into a play of interpretive forces.
Nietzsches critique of Kant can be understood, as well, in terms of
the problem of overcoming nihilism. For Nietzsche, the Kantian
theory of beauty as disinterested pleasure that was later adopted by
Schopenhauer is just a proclamation of nihilism, pessimism, and world-
negationism. In contrast to this Apollonian idea of art as a sedative,
Nietzsche instead proposes his own Dionysian view whereby art is the
stimulant to life, beauty is the distinctive countermovement to nihil-
ism, and nature is justified only as an aesthetic phenomenon. Whereas
for Schopenhauer tragic drama leads to a Kantian attitude of disinter-
ested contemplation, Nietzsche argues that it leads to superabundant
overfullness of life through Dionysian affirmation and Yes-saying. As
 Western Aesthetics 71
Nietzsche writes in On the Genealogy of Morals: Schopenhauer makes
use of the Kantian version of the aesthetic problemalthough he
quite certainly did not view it with Kantian eyes (1986:134). Defin-
ing Kants view of beauty as disinterested pleasure, Nietzsche goes on
to state: That is beautiful, Kant said, which pleases us without
interest. Without interest! . . . When our aestheticians never wary of
maintaining, in favour of Kant, that under the spell of beauty one can
view even undraped female statues without interest, we may, to be
sure, laugh a little at their expense (p. 135). Nietzsche continues:
And here we come back to Schopenhauer, who stood much closer to the
arts than Kant did and yet failed to emerge from the spell of the Kantian
definition. Why was that? . . . Of few things does Schopenhauer speak
with so much certainty as he does of the effect of aesthetic contemplation:
he says of it that it operates precisely against sexual interestedness. . . .
He never wearied of glorifying this liberation from the will as the great
merit and utility of the aesthetic condition. [p. 135]
Nietzsches critique of Schopenhauer, like his critique of Buddhism,
is a polemic directed against the nihilism represented by an Apollo-
nian ideal of beauty as disinterested in favor of the life-affirming
Dionysian ideal of beauty as ecstatic. Stephen Batchelor (1994:264)
asserts:
Nietzsche strongly identified with the pre-Socratic figure of Dionysos,
the archetypal celebrant of will. Those calm Apollonian teachers who
taught renunciation and detachment were no more than preachers of
death, among whom Nietzsche included the Buddha. . . . Buddhist
dispassion was swept away in the same breath as Schopenhauerian
pessimism, and in their place stood an entirely new and superior kind
of human being: the bermensch.
In The Will to Power as Art (1979), which is the first of his series on
Nietzsche, Heidegger reinterprets Kants theory of aesthetic disinter-
estedness while bringing it into accord with his own framework. In
chapter fifteen of this work titled Kants Doctrine of the Beautiful,
for example, Heidegger attempts to defend Kants definition of beauty
as disinterested delight against Nietzsches critique, arguing that
the latters understanding of Kant is based on a misinterpretation of
Schopenhauer. Heidegger explains that one can acquire an under-
standing of Nietzsches statements about beauty from a study of
Schopenhauers aesthetic views, insofar as in his definition of the beau-
tiful Nietzsche thinks by way of opposition and therefore of reversal.
Yet the procedure is dangerous in this case since Schopenhauer has
72 Artistic Detachment East and West
misinterpreted Kants theory of beauty in such a manner as to seri-
ously alter its original meaning. In Heideggers words: The mis-
understanding [by Nietzsche] of Kants aesthetics involves an asser-
tion by Kant concerning the beautiful. Kants definition is developed
in sections 25 of The Critique of Judgement . . . delight, in which the
beautiful opens itself up to us as beautiful, is in Kants words devoid
of all interest (1979:108). Heidegger continues:
Aesthetic behavior, i.e., our comportment toward the beautiful, is
delight devoid of all interest. According to the common notion, dis-
interestedness is indifference toward a thing or person: we invest nothing
of our will in relation to that thing or person. If the relation to the
beautiful is defined as disinterested, then, according to Schopenhauer,
the aesthetic state is one in which the will is put out of commision and
all striving brought to a standstill; it is pure repose, simply wanting
nothing more, sheer apathetic drift.

Heidegger then considers Nietzsches polemics against the Kantian

theory of aesthetic disinterestedness: And Nietzsche? He says that
the aesthetic state is rapture. That is manifestly the opposite of all dis-
interested delight and is therefore at the same time the keenest oppo-
sition to Kants definition of our comportment toward the beautiful
(1979:108). In this context Heidegger directly cites Nietzsches criti-
cism of Kants notion of beauty: With that in mind we understand the
following observation by Nietzsche: Since Kant, all talk of beauty
. . . has been smudged and besmirched by the concept devoid of interest
(p. 108). Again he quotes Nietzsche as saying: Such getting rid of
interest and the ego is nonsense (p. 112). But Heidegger maintains
that Nietzsches relentless criticism of beauty defined as an egoless
attitude of disinterested pleasure is in fact not a reaction against Kants
own ideas but is based instead on Schopenhauers nihilistic misinter-
pretation of Kantian aesthetics.
According to Heidegger, Kants theory of aesthetic disinterested-
ness, rightly understood, is not nihilistic but instead supports Nietz-
sches own Dionysian concept of beauty as rapture or ecstasy that
completely affirms existence. He thus goes on to formulate a positive
interpretation of Kants understanding of beauty that dispels the
nihilistic understanding of Schopenhauer and brings it into harmony
with the Dionysian wisdom of Nietzsche. By Heideggers interpreta-
tion, the aesthetic disinterestedness of Kant is not mere indifference
toward something whereby the will is put out of commission; rather,
it means that in order to find something beautiful, we must let what
 Western Aesthetics 73
encounters us, purely as it is in itself, come before us in its own stature
and worth (1979:109). Moreover, our comportment toward the beau-
tiful as devoid of interest means unconstrained favoring (p. 109).
Schopenhauers misinterpretation fails to see that now, for the first
time, the object comes to the fore as pure object and that such coming
forward into appearance is the beautiful. He concludes: The word
beautiful means appearing in the radiance of such coming to the fore
(p. 110). In this way, Heidegger brings Kants Apollonian idea of
beauty as disinterested delight into conformity with Nietzsches Diony-
sian concept of the beautifulalong with his own aesthetic doctrine
of beauty as an event of ontological disclosure whereby things radiate
into original truth of unconcealedness through an attitude of openness
that he terms Gelassenheit: letting-be.

Wolff: The Elitism of Aesthetic Disinterestedness

In Aesthetics and the Sociology of Art, J. Wolff (1981b) charges that aes-
thetic attitude theories based on notions such as disinterested con-
templation, artistic detachment, or psychic distance are elitist, exclu-
sivistic, and aristocratic. Lynda Stone (1989) develops this thesis even
further by arguing that the elitism implicit in disinterested attitude
theories is an obstacle to any progressive educational program includ-
ing that of aesthetic education. The polemic here is that since aesthetic
experience requires a highly disciplined attitude, or mode of attention,
it is the special privilege of an elite and is thus incapable of being had
by all. But as a counterargument it should be pointed out that Schillers
On the Aesthetic Education of Man in a Series of Letters takes the diametri-
cally opposite view: the cultivation of an aesthetic attitude character-
ized by disinterested contemplation and free play of imagination,
Schiller holds, is itself the basis of aesthetic education. Thus while the
aesthetic attitude requires cultivation through an education process,
this in no way indicates an aristocratic exclusivism or elitism in that
all are free to cultivate the aesthetic attitude.
The charge that this Kantian notion of disinterestedness is aristo-
cratic, exclusivistic, and elitist is without question applicable to its
reformulation by Jos Ortega y Gasset in The Dehumanization of Art.
Ortega y Gasset, as noted earlier, defends detachment in modern art.
For him, modern abstract painting is a highly stylized art form that
distances to the extent that it altogether eliminates human elements
of feeling, emotion, and sympathy, resulting in what he calls de-
humanized art. He adds: From a sociological point of view the char-
74 Artistic Detachment East and West
acteristic feature of the new art is . . . that it divides the public into
the two classes of those who understand it and those who do not
(1948:6). While modern dehumanized art is the art of the privi-
leged aristocracy, the masses are incapable of receiving the sacrament
of art, blind and dumb to beauty (p. 6). Ortega y Gasset welcomes
the new art as a harbinger of the coming time when society estab-
lishes two distinct classes: the inferior masses on the one side and the
superior ruling aristocracy on the other. He therefore writes: A time
must come in which society, from politics to art, reorganizes itself into
two orders or ranks: the illustrious and the vulgar (p. 7).
Not all theories of aesthetic disinterestedness, however, are elitist
as held by Wolff. On the contrary, Jerome Stolnitz (1961b), the lead-
ing advocate of artistic disinterestedness in modern aesthetics, main-
tains that the older Greek and Renaissance theory which attributes
beauty to the object is in fact the more aristocratic notion since it re-
stricts the class of aesthetic objects to those in which the attribute of
beauty inheres (p. 111). If beauty is equated with the property of har-
mony, for instance, as was done in most ancient, classical, and medi-
eval theories, only certain privileged objects may be regarded as beau-
tiful inasmuch as they are harmonious, symmetrical, proportionate,
balanced, and the like. If we follow this line of reasoning, the notion
of disinterestedness is a much wider and more inclusive conception of
the aesthetic than that which equates beauty with harmony since now
anything can become an object of beauty to the extent that it is re-
garded with an attitude of detachment. In Stolnitzs words:
If it [aesthetic theory] embraces only certain things or certain proper-
ties of things, then the field will be far narrower than if it includes
all objects of disinterested perception. Disinterestedness is, as I
suggested earlier, biased towards a catholic and inclusive conception
of the aesthetic; harmony is considerably more exclusive and aristocratic.
[p. 111; italics added]

To illustrate how the disinterested attitude can be understood as non-

aristocratic, let us consider Van Goghs famous painting of a peasant
womans shoes as described by Heidegger in Origins of the Work of
Art. From the standpoint of an aristocratic elitism, nothing could be
less aesthetic than this picture of worn-out peasant shoes covered with
mud. If beauty is understood just as an attribute (harmony, symmetry,
proportion, and the like) of objects, then an old womans shoes would
not be an appropriate subject for great art. But if observed with an
 Western Aesthetics 75
attitude of artistic detachment, then even the shoes of a peasant radiate
into an epiphany of truth and beauty. Through Gelassenheit or letting-
be, there is an openness toward things whereby they come to presence
in an event of ontological disclosure such that now the soiled old shoes
of a peasant are uncovered in the beauty of original truth as aletheia:
nonconcealment.

Korsmeyer: A Feminist Critique

Another criticism leveled against the notion of aesthetic distance comes
from the feminist charge that such a doctrine entails a gender bias
which privileges masculine over feminine sides of artistic experi-
ence. At the risk of violating current demands for political correct-
ness, in this case one should not concede gender bias as grounds
for undermining detachment theories of art. The feminist critique
of artistic detachment theories is developed with special clarity by
Carolyn Korsmeyer (1990) in her article Gender Bias in Aesthetics.
According to Korsmeyer a gender biasthat is to say, a masculine bias
is operative in any aesthetic theory based on a notion of disinterested,
detached, or distanced attention (1990:4547). By gender bias or
masculine bias she refers to a systematic way of framing aesthetic
theory that appears to be neutral with respect to gender but upon
analysis is discovered to rely on concepts that are conceived as apply-
ing primarily if not exclusively to males. The argument she proceeds
to construct depends upon now familiar analyses of how feminine
and masculine concepts are associated with philosophical structures.
In epistemology, the paradigmatic rational animal is male whereas the
female is emotional. With respect to the traditional mind/body prob-
lem she points out that while the mind is associated with the mascu-
line, the body is associated with the feminine side of things. More-
over, while the cognitive senses of sight and sound are associated
with the higher mental abilities of the male, the bodily senses of
touch, taste, and smell are associated with the earthiness of the female.
Korsmeyer argues that this line of reasoning leads to a parallel structure
in aesthetic theory that again reveals a masculine gender bias. When
it comes to aesthetic theory, the masculine senses of sight and sound
are privileged over the feminine senses of touch, taste, and smell for
the reason that they appear less intimate with the body and are more
distant from our physical existence. This kind of distance is also
used in order to differentiate aesthetic senses from bodily senses.
76 Artistic Detachment East and West
While the bodily senses can offer sensuous pleasure, it is only the dis-
tanced objects of hearing and sight that provide for aesthetic delight
in the beautiful.
According to Korsmeyer, the hidden agenda underlying male-
centered theories of aesthetic disinterestedness is that of establishing
maximum distance from the interests, desires, feelings and attachments
of the physical body for purposes of maintaining dominance and con-
trol. Aesthetic appreciation so construed distinguishes pleasures of the
bodily senses from more distanceable pleasures that may be enjoyed free
from desire. The notion that one appreciates aesthetically only when
disengaged from practical, moral, or emotional interests becomes the
result of an urgent need to wrench apart the apprehension of beauty
from the desire to possess the beautiful object. But in opposition to
this view she maintains that feminist criticism has brought to light
how an element of desire, especially erotic desire, is functioning in all
modes of perception. In Korsmeyers words (1990:46):
Although the concept of disinterested or distanced attention is on the
wane, for years theories of the aesthetic were based upon the idea that
purely aesthetic perception or attention is free from interest, desire, or
any moral or practical concern. . . . But feminist analyses have built a
convincing case against this position, arguing that interest, most power-
fully in the form of desire, lurks within all perception, including hearing
and (especially) vision.

How are we to evaluate the validity of Korsmeyers charge that a

masculine gender bias underlies the doctrine of aesthetic disinterest-
edness? While her feminist critique raises important philosophical
questions and serves as a corrective to certain versions of the theory, it
does not undermine the doctrine of aesthetic disinterestedness as for-
mulated by some of its leading proponents. Let us begin by examining
Edward Bulloughs classic theory according to which psychic distance
is regarded as an essential factor in the experience of beauty. Bullough
(1977:118) points out a traditional distinction between the [physical]
lower senses of taste, touch, and scent and the [mental] higher
senses of sight and hearing. The so-called lower senses are related to
physical experience of the agreeable defined as nondistanced plea-
sure, while beauty in the widest sense of aesthetic value is impossible
without the insertion of distance (p. 118). He further asserts: Sight
and hearing have always been the aesthetic senses par excellence (p.
118). Bullough then discusses those who reject the lower senses: they
mediate only agreeable sensations, he says, but are incapable of con-
 Western Aesthetics 77
veying aesthetic experience. But he then goes on to repudiate this
view: Though true normally, this rigid distinction is theoretically
unfair to the senses, and in practice often false (p. 119). Bullough
admits that the senses of sight and hearing do lend themselves more
easily to aesthetic experience through insertion of distance than do
the lower senses of touch, taste, and smell: It is undoubtedly very
difficult to reach an aesthetic appreciation through the lower senses,
because the materialness of their action, their proximity and bodily
connection are great obstacles to their distancing (p. 119). Yet he also
states that one can insert psychic distance into any of the sense modes,
including those of touch, taste, and smell, thereby resulting in what
he calls the transition from the merely agreeable to the beautiful by
means of Distance (p. 119). Hence while Bullough does recognize
such distinctions between body and mind, higher and lower senses, or
sensuous versus aesthetic pleasure, he nonetheless contends that these
are by no means rigid distinctions so that all senses can provide for
enjoyment of beauty through transformation by distance.
Korsmeyers feminist critique of Bulloughs theory is illuminating
insofar as it brings into focus how the latter still clings to the idea
that objects of the lower senses are not easily distanced because of their
close bodily connection. Moreover she clarifies the masculine gender
bias that might underlie this view. The idea is that while the objects
of the higher cognitive senses of sight and hearing, supposedly rooted
in the masculine nature, are easier to distance and therefore function
as the primary means for appreciating beauty, the objects of the lower
bodily senses rooted in the feminine nature cannot be distanced ade-
quately or only with great difficulty and are therefore capable merely
of producing hedonic sensual pleasure as opposed to genuine aesthetic
delight.
The theory of aesthetic disinterestedness is not so easily overturned,
however, at least in its formulation by I. A. Richards, C. K. Ogden,
and J. Wood in The Foundations of Aesthetics (1922). In this work the
authors propose that the principle underlying all aesthetic experience
is that of synaesthesis. That is to say, aesthetic perception is always
syn-aesthetic perception. And as they define the term, synaesthesis is
precisely a togetherness of the multivariate sense modesor, as it were,
an experience of beauty wherein the diverse senses of sight, hearing,
touch, taste, and smell are all activated at the same time to produce a
total aesthetic effect whose emergent unity is beyond the combination
of its elements. In other words: Synaesthesis is a function of the whole
organism, both mind and body together, with all the senses operating
78 Artistic Detachment East and West
simultaneously and in accord. Synaesthesis is therefore intersensory
experience resulting from a profound unity of the sensesan inter-
fusion of multivariate sensations in an embodied sensorium of cross-
modal perception. In the experience of synaesthesis there is an equi-
librium and harmony between all sense modes such that no sensation
is conferred primacy over any others. But the precondition for a syn-
aesthetic experience of beauty is a state of attention described as being
detached, impersonal, and disinterested. In elucidating the structure
of synaesthetic perception the authors write: This is the explanation
of that detachment so often mentioned in artistic experience. We be-
come impersonal or disinterested (p. 78). Hence while achieving equi-
librium of sense impulses in synaesthesis requires a special aesthetic
attitude that is detached, distanced, or disinterested, it in no way en-
tails any gender bias that privileges masculine senses of sight and
hearing over feminine senses of touch, taste, and smell.

Deweys Critique Aesthetic Disinterest in American Pragmatism

Art as Experience by John Dewey (18591952) is widely regarded as the
most valuable work on aesthetics written in English during the twen-
tieth century. In chapter eleven, The Human Contribution, he dis-
cusses the psychological elements of aesthetic experience. It is in this
context that Dewey sets forth his polemic against the idea of aes-
thetic contemplation along with similar psychologized concepts like
those of equilibrium, disinterestedness, detachment, and psy-
chic distance. He makes his critical remarks against Kants theory of
aesthetic disinterestedness and related notions in the course of devel-
oping his own highly original concept of beauty as directly felt per-
vasive aesthetic quality in nature and art.
Dewey begins his critique by questioning the use of the term con-
templation to describe the nature of aesthetic experience:
At first sight, contemplation appears to be about as inept a term as could
be to denote the excited and passionate absorption that often accompa-
nies experience of a drama, a poem, or a painting. Attentive observation
is certainly one essential factor in all genuine perception including the
esthetic. But how does it happen that this factor is reduced to the bare act
of contemplation? [1980:252]

Dewey traces the idea of aesthetic contemplation back to the psycho-

logical approach to beauty in Kants Critique of Judgement. He writes
that after Kants theory of contemplation, the psychological road was
 Western Aesthetics 79
opened leading to the ivory tower of Beauty remote from all desire,
action, and stir of emotion (p. 253). He expresses a similar objection
to the term equilibrium: It may suggest a balance so calm and
sedate as to exclude rapture by an absorbing object (p. 257). Hence
not unlike Nietzsches critique of Schopenhauer, Dewey emphasizes
that beauty in art or nature is not a sedative leading to anaesthesia but
a stimulant to life which induces rapture and ecstasyin Deweys
words, the consummatory experience of seizure. Deweys critique
of aesthetic contemplation is then extended to other closely related
notions as follows: The ideas of disinterestedness, detachment and
psychical distance, of which much has been made in recent esthetic
theory, are to be understood in the same way as contemplation (p.
257). Taking each of these notions in turn, Dewey argues that all of
them, including disinterestedness, detachment, and distance, indicate
an aloofness from passionate emotion instead of fullness of participa-
tion, which is itself essential to both the creation and appreciation of
beauty. In Deweys words:
Detachment is a negative name for something extremely positive.
There is no severance of self, no holding of it aloof, but fullness of
participation. . . . The phrase psychical distance has been employed
to indicate much the same fact. . . . Distance is a name for a partici-
pation so intimate and balanced that no particular impulse acts to
make a person withdraw. . . . Disinterestedness, detachment, psy-
chical distance, all express ideas that apply to raw primitive desire and
impulse, but are irrelevant to the matter of experience artistically
organized. [p. 258]

Dewey then criticizes all of these artistic detachment theories on the

basis that they eliminate desire from aesthetic experience. His objection
to this point is stated in the following often quoted passage: Not
absence of desire and thought but their thorough incorporation into
the perceptual experience characterizes esthetic experience (p. 254).
In response to Deweys critique, it should first be noted that some
scholars think he exaggerates the difference between theories of
aesthetic disinterestedness and his own philosophy of art. Monroe C.
Beardsley (1966:340) comments on Deweys criticism of artistic de-
tachment as formulated in chapter eleven of Art as Experience:
There are . . . extremely penetrating criticisms of alternative character-
izations of aesthetic experienceas contemplation, equilibrium,
disinterestedness, detachment. Throughout this discussion, I have
the impression that Dewey is over-emphasizing his difference from the
80 Artistic Detachment East and West
others; that he is over-anxious to avoid associating with any of those
terms, because in each case there is a misleading implication.

In order to assess the full significance of Deweys critique it is neces-

sary to consider the relation of his aesthetic theory to the wider frame-
work of his philosophical system as a whole. Ultimately his objections
to such notions as contemplation, equilibrium, detachment, disinter-
estedness, or distance in aesthetic theory can only be understood in
the context of his general concept of experience. As implied by the
very title of his work, Art as Experience, the notions of art and experi-
ence are inseparable for Dewey. For this reason he asserts that in order
to comprehend aesthetic experience, the philosopher must first under-
stand what experience itself is (1980:274). He further maintains that
no test reveals the one-sidedness of a philosophy so surely as its treat-
ment of art and aesthetic experience (p. 274). For Dewey, detachment
theories of art, like other aesthetic theories, are too one-sided in that
they fail to give an adequate view of experience in its concreteness and
qualitative immediacy. While some aesthetic theories emphasize the
role of the subject, others emphasize the role of the object. Still others
try to explain the aesthetic experience by a single element like sen-
sation, emotion, reason, or imagination. Moreover, various aesthetic
theories interpret art as make-believe, as play, as imitation, as expres-
sion, as revelation, and so forth. Yet in Deweys view all of these theo-
ries are rooted in an attenuated concept of experience.
For Dewey, experience is always to be conceived as a situation,
context, or event that arises through a dynamic process of nature
in which an organism interacts with its social and physical environ-
ment (1980:246). Each organism/environment situation is conceived
as a contextual field of relationships which is itself unified by a single,
pervasive aesthetic quality that makes it whole and stamps it with
intrinsic value. Against the background of his concept of experience
he raises this problem: Where is the locus of aesthetic quality? Deweys
answer is that aesthetic quality is not to be located either in the sub-
ject or in the object since it in fact pervades the whole organism/envi-
ronment situation and is present in both subject and object, both mind
and matter, at once. As Dewey writes in his work on naturalistic meta-
physics titled Experience and Nature: The qualities never were in the
organism; they always were qualities of interactions in which both
extra-organic things and organisms partake. . . . They are as much qual-
ities of the things engaged as of the organism (p. 259). Hence for
Dewey the aesthetic qualities of experience are also the aesthetic qual-
 Western Aesthetics 81
ities of nature. Furthermore, pervasive aesthetic qualities funding
immediate experience are said to be directly felt, enjoyed, or had
prior to being known through conceptual analysis. These immedi-
ately felt aesthetic qualities permeating focus/field situations of expe-
rience are not static or substantial but are instead described as arising
through a process of dynamic interactions between an organism and
its environment so as to be momentary, perishable, and evanescent
valuable and precious to the degree that they are fragile and precarious.
With regard to his polemic against psychological art theories based
on such ideas as contemplation, equilibrium, detachment, disinterest-
edness, distance, or any other notion emphasizing the human contri-
bution to aesthetic experience, Dewey turns his critical remarks
toward systems of idealism, especially the Kantian variety of tran-
scendental idealism. He rejects the view of transcendental idealism
whereby beauty is not regarded as something that is in the object but
is instead noetically constituted by mental operations performed by
the subject. He also opposes subjectivistic theories of the kind pro-
pounded in The Sense of Beauty by George Santayana in which the
beautiful is defined as objectified pleasure. By objectification San-
tayana means the projection of our mental states into phenomenal
objects through a process of empathy. Pleasure is transformed into
beauty whenever aesthetic value is unconsciously imputed to the object
contemplated by projective transference. That is to say, for Santayana
beauty is pleasure regarded as if it were the quality of a thing. In repu-
diation of the subjectivism underlying this kind of aesthetic theory,
Dewey writes: Extreme instances of separation of organism and the
world are not infrequent in esthetic philosophy. Such a separation lies
behind the idea that esthetic quality does not belong to objects as
objects but is projected into them by mind. It is the source of the
definition of beauty as objectified pleasure instead of as pleasure in
the object (1980:248).
Dewey further criticizes theories of aesthetic disinterestedness insofar
as they underscore the strictly nonutilitarian basis of art and beauty.
Disinterested aesthetic contemplation appreciates an object of beauty
for its own sakeapart from any interest in its practical usefulness.
To apprehend something disinterestedly in the usual sense therefore
means to regard it as an end in itself and not a means. But for Dewey,
the theory of disinterested aesthetic contemplation is deeply mistaken
in separating beauty and utility as if they formed a rigid antithesis.
In this context he questions the opposition of objects of beauty and
use. There is no reason, he says, why the practical should stand
82 Artistic Detachment East and West
opposed to the aesthetic properties that belong to a work of art
(1980:260). He points out that there are many beautiful thingsart-
works, utensils, temples, citiesthat have a practical utility as well
as aesthetic quality (p. 260). In a statement that bears relevance to the
use of ceramic bowls in the Japanese tea ceremony, Dewey adds: As
far as the one who uses the utensil is concerned, I do not see why in
drinking tea from a cup he is necessarily stopped from enjoying its
shape and the delicacy of its material (p. 261). According to Dewey,
theories of artistic detachment that separate objects of beauty and
objects of use are part of the general error which he calls the compart-
mentalization of aesthetic experiencethe museum conception of art
whereby art is relegated to the museum and gallery (p. 6). It is
through compartmentalization that art becomes the beauty parlor of
civilization (p. 344).
Dewey attempts to overcome the artificial dualism whereby art is
isolated from the rest of social life by challenging the distinction
between objects of beauty and objects of use presupposed by theories
of aesthetic disinterestedness. His solution to the false dichotomy of
beauty and utility is worked out in terms of what he calls the ends-
means continuum. According to Deweys instrumentalism, creative
artistic process is a continuum in which aesthetic quality functions
both as an ends and a means so as to be instrumental and consummatory
at the same time. The ends-means continuum requires a division of
value into three kinds: aesthetic quality, ends-in-view, and consum-
matory experience. Few modern philosophers have clarified the aes-
thetic experience of qualitative immediacy as much as John Dewey.
But in Deweys pragmatic or instrumental theory of inquiry it is
not enough to enjoy the directly felt aesthetic qualities pervading the
organism/environment situations of experience as immediate values,
since these qualities can also function normatively to control an artistic
process throughout its duration until it culminates in a consumma-
tory experience. An ends-means continuum is a process whereby the
ends are at all times present in the means as an end-in-view. In Experi-
ence and Nature, Dewey writes: It is self-contradictory to suppose that
when a fulfillment possesses immediate value, its means of attainment
do not. . . . Means-consequences constitute a single undivided situa-
tion (1958:397). Through valuation (appraisal or judgement in
matters concerning values) one determines the values one wishes to
obtain and the conditions necessary to acquire them. One then imagi-
natively frames an end-in-view that functions as a value possibility or
norm to guide ones experience until the value is realized in a con-
 Western Aesthetics 83
summation. As ends-in-view, aesthetic qualities function as norms
that regulate action; such controlled activity is art. When this con-
trolled activity or art process realizes its ideal, there is a culmination
of experience in a consummatory terminus. A consummation is the
intense enjoyment of a realized aesthetic quality (art product) that has
been operant all throughout ones regulated activity (art process) as a
norm or end-in-view. Hence in an art process, the art product is
present throughout as the imagined or projected end-in-view.
From the standpoint of Deweys instrumental or pragmatic frame-
work, then, the aesthetic qualities pervading immediate experience
function not only as an end in itself but also as a means to something
else. It therefore makes no sense to abstract quality from the dynamic
ends-means continuum and overemphasize the appreciation of beauty
apart from its practical utility. For Dewey there is a rhythmic process
that moves from enjoyment of immediately felt aesthetic qualities to
ends-in-view to consummatory experience and back again to the
enjoyment of qualitative immediacy. Historically it must be recognized
that theories of aesthetic disinterestedness emerged in opposition to
doctrines of utilitarianism. Dewey has endeavored to formulate a
balanced framework wherein immediately felt aesthetic qualities per-
vading experience are not only enjoyed for their own sake but are em-
ployed normatively as ends-in-view issuing in the rapture of consum-
matory experience at the terminus of the artistic process.
Deweys emphasis on immediately felt aesthetic qualities pervad-
ing the organism/environment situations of experience provides for
enjoyment of things in themselves as bearers of intrinsic value. Yet at
the same time he rejects the false dichotomy of beauty and use adopted
by artistic detachment theories so that aesthetic quality is simulta-
neously an ends and a means. When an object of beauty is regarded
both as instrumental and consummatory, a dynamic ends-means con-
tinuum is established wherein experience is transformed into art and
all life becomes funded by aesthetic quality. Hence from the stand-
point of Deweys instrumentalist philosophy of art, beauty must func-
tion not only as immediate aesthetic qualities but also as ends-in-view
and consummatory values. Any theory of aesthetic disinterestedness
must allow for all three kinds of values to operate within a dynamic
ends-means continuum. Moreover, a theory of aesthetic disinterested-
ness must not be wed to a transcendental idealism that locates aes-
thetic quality in the mind of the subject and not in the object. Rather,
the theory of aesthetic disinterestedness must be rooted in an organismic
doctrine of experience that predicates aesthetic pervasive quality nei-
84 Artistic Detachment East and West
ther on subjects nor on objects but on organism/environment situa-
tions, or context-dependent events, which includes them both.
In Pragmatist Aesthetics, Richard Schusterman argues that in recent
years American pragmatist aesthetics has been strongly undermined
by British analytic philosophy while showing how the latter is itself
continuous with the Kantian tradition of aesthetics based on the idea
of beauty as disinterested pleasure free of pragmatic concerns. Follow-
ing Richard Rorty he suggests that the epistemological and meta-
physical conflict between analysis and pragmatism reflects a more
ancient quarrel between Kant and Hegel that in turn can be extended
into aesthetics. Various critics have likened Deweys thought to Croces
neo-Hegelian philosophy of art, which was itself the focus of the British
analytic critique of idealist aesthetics. British analytic philosophy is
hostile to Hegelian themes of holism, organicism, and historicist anti-
foundationalism, which are central to the American pragmatism of
Dewey. Explaining the influence of Kants notion of aesthetic disin-
terestedness on British analytic philosophy, Schusterman writes: The
Kantian notion of disinterestedness finds expression in much analytic
philosophy of art and presents a . . . contrast to pragmatist aesthetics
(1992:8).
Schusterman (pp. 79) demonstrates the continuity between British
analytic aesthetics and Kants notion of beauty as disinterested plea-
sure with textual citations from Peter Strawson, G. E. Moore, Stuart
Hampshire, and others. He maintains that this strategy, a carryover of
art for arts sake, was to protect the autonomy of art from unfair
competition with ruthlessly dominant utilitarian thinking. For fear
that art could not compete in terms of instrumental value, the aes-
thetic would represent a separate realm of freedom where art would be
free from use, function, and problem solving. According to Schuster-
man, Kants theory of beauty as disinterested pleasure depends on an
account of aesthetic judgement that presupposes special cultural con-
ditioning and class privilege (p. 8). He regards Kants idea of aes-
thetic disinterest as an elitist, aristocratic, and class-based theory that
maintains the status quo. Schusterman criticizes Kant as follows:
This rigid posture of lofty disinterestedness reflects the interest of a
narrow and professionalized philosophical conservatism which is either
happy to reinforce the status quo by representing it in philosophical
definition, or is simply too timid and effete to risk dirtying its hands in
the messy struggle over the shaping of art and culture. More dangerously,
the fetishism of disinterested neutrality obscures the fact that philos-
ophys ultimate aim is to benefit human life. [p. 45]
 Western Aesthetics 85
In support of Deweys critique of Kantian disinterestedness, Schuster-
man writes that in advocating a fully embodied aesthetic and reject-
ing Kantian disinterestedness, Dewey is right in tune with Nietzsches
recognition of the physiology of esthetics and its excitement of
interest (p. 10). Schusterman undermines the Kantian theory of
disinterestedness as a disembodied aesthetic in favor of Deweys prag-
matism, which instead adopts an embodied aesthetics like Nietzsche
and Merleau-Ponty. He further supports the position of Deweys prag-
matic aesthetics (p. 144) that art is at once instrumentally valuable
and a satisfying end in itself.
But instead of setting Dewey against Kant, one might adopt the
strategy of C. I. Lewis, who formulates a coherent theory of valuation
that integrates an aesthetics of immediately felt pervasive quality,
derived from American pragmatism, with an aesthetic attitude theory
of disinterested contemplation derived from Kant. In Mind and the
World-Order (1929) and An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation (1946),
Lewis formulates a doctrine of intrinsic values as the pervasive aes-
thetic quality of events in the tradition of American philosophy run-
ning through Peirce, James, Dewey, Mead, Whitehead, and Pepper.
Lewis writes: The word value is here used exclusively in the sense of
a value-quality (p. 393). The summum bonum or ultimate good of
life must be an experience having its self-justifying quality as aes-
thetic (p. 439). Like Dewey and other American pragmatists he
rejects the idea of simply located atomic sense qualities for a notion of
directly felt pervasive qualities that are context-dependent and thus
to be described in terms of their holistic focus/fringe structure whereby
the immediately presented qualities articulated in the foreground
are partly determined by the surrounding horizon in the nonarticu-
lated whole of the background (pp. 424430). Moreover, like Dewey
he argues that aesthetic qualities function both as intrinsic and in-
strumental values in an ends-means continuum: The instrumental
sign-function of a presentation and its significance as immediate felt
quale are cognate aspects of experience. . . . Every presentation has
both at once (p. 402). In the tradition of Kant, however, he also
underscores the role of the disinterested aesthetic attitude of detached
contemplation.
In his conceptual pragmatism Lewis formulates a Kantian episte-
mology wherein the immediately felt qualities given in experience are
constituted by acts of mental construction. Hence in his theory of
valuation he maintains that aesthetic experience includes both mate-
rial and formal aspects, whereby the directly felt aesthetic qualities
86 Artistic Detachment East and West
require a specific constitutive mental act of disinterested attention.
For Lewis the disinterested attitude is itself the differentia that marks
off aesthetic experience from other modes of human experience: In
the broadest sense, the esthetic might be marked off simply by refer-
ence to this esthetic attitude of disinterested interest in the presented
[quality]. . . . The directly apprehended is esthetic when we pause upon
it; contemplate the quality of what is given in and for itself (1946:
443). Again: Esthetic apprehension requires to be thus . . . disinter-
ested, impersonal and contemplative (p. 441). His concept of the
beautiful as an apprehension of pervasive aesthetic quality through
the mental act of disinterested contemplation is then summarized
when he writes: Only those values are distinctively esthetic which
are resident in the quality of something as presented . . . and by that
pause of contemplative regard which suspends the active interests of
further purposes (p. 454). Thus in contrast to Dewey and other Amer-
ican pragmatists who have exclusively underscored the role of sym-
pathy in the immediate experience of directly felt aesthetic quality,
Lewis clarifies how the aesthetic experience of value quality involves a
bipolar tension between sympathy and detachment, participation and
distance, or emotional involvement and disinterested contemplation.
As C. I. Lewis himself acknowledges (1968:670), his dialectical
understanding of aesthetic experience as requiring both sympathetic
participation in directly felt quality and insertion of psychic distance
through disinterested contemplation was itself influenced by David
W. Prall. And it is clear both from his vocabulary and from his refer-
ences that Prall has been influenced especially by John Deweys notion
of beauty as pervasive aesthetic quality. Regarding the aesthetic atti-
tude, Prall argues that aesthetic experience [is] distinguished by its
disinterested absorption in determinate qualities (p. ix). Aesthetic
experience and its description in aesthetic judgement requires that
one is aloof, but in the sense of an intense activity of full contempla-
tion of the essential qualities of things (p. 13). It is this sort of
aloofness, says Prall, that is common to all disinterested attention
(p. 13). He further asserts that the attitude of aloofness is a descrip-
tion of the characteristic disinterestedness of aesthetic experience (p.
13). Here Prall is agreeing with Kant and at least in one respect
taking a stand against Dewey by stating that aesthetic experience
involves an attitude of disinterested attention to qualities as immedi-
ately presented. Like C. I. Lewis (pp. 441444), Prall thus holds that
a sympathetic feeling of pervasive aesthetic quality viewed with an
 Western Aesthetics 87
attitude of disinterested contemplation is itself the differentia of aes-
thetic experience.
A theory combining a doctrine of pervasive aesthetic quality in the
tradition of American pragmatism with an aesthetic attitude of de-
tached contemplation is to be found in the imaginative presentation
of Robert Pirsigs best-selling novel, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Main-
tenance: An Inquiry into Values, first published in 1974. As Pirsig later
reveals in his sequel volume titled Lila (1991), this metaphysics of
Quality represents an extension of mainstream twentieth-century
American philosophy. Building on insights expressed in F. S. C.
Northrops The Meeting of East and West (1946), Pirsig then relates the
immediate experience of pervasive aesthetic quality in American prag-
matism to the direct intuition of nature as an undivided aesthetic con-
tinuum in Zen Buddhism. Unlike Dewey and other American philos-
ophers of qualitative immediacy, however, Pirsig stands near the view
of C. I. Lewis (1946:443) whereby aesthetic value is the immediate
experience of events unified by pervasive quality and an aesthetic atti-
tude of disinterested contemplation is itself the psychological state re-
quired for this experience of quality. In chapter twenty-five of Zen and
the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Pirsig emphasizes that a state charac-
terized by a Zenlike peace of mind, or mental quietness, is itself
the precondition for an immediate experience of aesthetic value quali-
ties. In Pirsigs words: Peace of mind is a prerequisite for a perception
of that Quality (1979:294). As the protagonist in the novel culti-
vates his Zen state of calm detachment, he is brought to a series of
satori-like epiphanies wherein commonplace events are disclosed in
their quality or suchness. Moreover, Pirsig (pp. 296297) emphasizes
that an immediate experience of quality through the Zen Buddhist
meditative practice of just sitting involves a twofold mental attitude
which includes both peace of mind and caring. The meditative
state of calm detachment and sympathetic caring enables the leading
character to experience quality in both art and technology so as to
integrate both the romantic (prereflective) and classic (reflective)
notions of quality. Through the aesthetic attitude of calm detachment,
all events become funded with the intrinsic value of pervasive aes-
thetic quality whether it is the consummatory experience of beauty in
art and nature or the process of fixing the engine of a motorcycle. He
therefore writes: When this concept of peace of mind is introduced
and made central to the act of technical work a fusion of classic and
romantic quality can take place at a basic level within a practical work-
88 Artistic Detachment East and West
ing context (p. 296). Thus Pirsigs novel presents an East-West model
of artistic detachment wherein awareness of pervasive quality by an
aesthetic attitude combining distance with involvement culminates
in a reconstruction of experience through the imaginative transforma-
tion of life into art.
The theories worked out by C. I. Lewis and David Prall in American
philosophy, along with Robert Pirsig in American literature, indicate
that a doctrine of pervasive aesthetic quality as held by John Dewey is
in no way incompatible with aesthetic attitude theories underscoring
a contemplative state that is detached, disinterested, and distanced
from human emotions. Lewis, Prall, and Pirsig argue, like Dewey, that
aesthetic quality is both instrumental and consummatory within an
ends-means continuumthereby overcoming the conventional dual-
ism between pragmatic utility and aesthetic value. But unlike Dewey
they work out a more balanced doctrine in which the delight of aes-
thetic experience is characterized both by full participation in life
through sympathetic feeling of pervasive felt quality and distance
from life through the tranquil state of disinterested contemplation.

Langer: Aesthetic Distance as Symbolization

Susanne K. Langer, perhaps the most extraordinary woman philoso-
pher in recent American thought, has developed an original theory of
art that criticizes and reformulates Bulloughs idea of psychic distance
in terms of her own doctrine of artistic symbols as forms for feeling.
Although Langer agrees with Bullough that psychic distance is vital
to art, the element of distance is not so much a function of a mental
attitude cultivated by the audience as a function of the symbolic nature
of art. Langers Philosophy in a New Key (1942) argues that the new
key in twentieth-century philosophy is the doctrine of the symbol.
Based on Ernst Cassirers doctrine of man as animal symbolicum, she
regards the defining characteristic of human mentality as the sym-
bolic transformation of experience. Aside from Cassirers neo-Kantian
doctrine that human experience is constituted by symbolic forms,
she also cites A. N. Whiteheads idea that the characteristic level of
human experience is symbolic reference and the view that all expe-
rience is conditioned by symbolic images produced through uncon-
scious fantasy in the depth psychology of Freud and Jung. For Langer,
human experience is mentally constructed by acts of symbolization
not only the discursive symbolism of math, science, and symbolic
logic but also the nondiscursive symbolism of art, religion, and
 Western Aesthetics 89
mythology. Against this background she develops her notion of art as
a symbolic form of human feeling and her notion of artistic creation
as the symbolic transformation of human experience.
In her chapter on music Langer makes the point that an artistic
principle may be obvious in just one special field and prove to be gen-
erally applicable to other arts only after development within that field.
As a primary example she cites Bulloughs theory of psychic distance:
Edward Bulloughs excellent notion of psychical distance would
probably not have been recognized as an important principle in music
or ceramic art, but the peculiar problems of drama require such a con-
cept (1982:209n.). She adds that Bulloughs idea of psychic distance
is surely valid in its original field of drama, even if it does not prove
to be universally applicable to all art and literature. Elsewhere in
the text she again makes reference to Bulloughs idea of psychic dis-
tance as the hallmark of aesthetic experience (p. 222). Here she cites
Bullough: Distance . . . is obtained by separating the object and its
appeal from ones own self, by putting it out of gear with practical
needs and ends (p. 223). While Langer agrees that psychic distance
is a factor in art and literature, she underscores that it is a description
of experience which has been translated into symbolsthat distance
is therefore symbolization: The content has been symbolized for us,
and what it invites is not emotional response, but insight. Psychical
Distance is simply the experience of apprehending through a symbol
what was not articulated before (p. 223). Hence the innovation of
Langers approach is that psychic distance is now described as a func-
tion of the symbolic content of art.
Langer expands upon her theory of psychic distance as the experi-
ence of an art symbol in her sequel volume called Feeling and Form
(1953). In this work she crystallizes her definition of art as follows:
Art is the creation of forms symbolic of human feeling (1953:40).
Again she brings up the aesthetic principle which Edward Bullough,
in an essay that has become deservedly famous, called psychic Dis-
tance. All appreciation of artpainting, architecture, music, dance,
whatever the piece may berequires a certain detachment, which has
been variously called the attitude of contemplation, the aesthetic
attitude, or the objectivity of the beholder (p. 318). She agrees with
Bullough that while terms like detachment, disinterestedness, and
objectivity characterizing the notion of an aesthetic contemplation are
inflexible, Bulloughs idea of psychic distance admits of degrees and
differs not only according to the nature of the object, which may im-
pose a greater or smaller degree of distance, but varies also according
90 Artistic Detachment East and West
to a persons capacity for maintaining a greater or lesser degree of dis-
tance. But as in her earlier work she again describes Bulloughs psy-
chic distance in terms of the artistic symbol: as a description of our
natural relation to the symbol that embodies an idea and presents it
for our contemplation, not for practical action (p. 319). Furthermore:
It is for the sake of this remove that art deals entirely in illusions,
which, because of their lack of practical, concrete nature, are readily
distanced as symbolic forms (p. 319).
As an example of psychic distance in Western theater, she writes:
Schiller, in his famous preface to Die Braut von Messina, called the
Greek chorus, which he revived in this play, a living wall to preserve
the Distance of the work (1953:322n.). Expanding her discussion
into a study of artistic detachment in East-West comparative aesthetics,
Langer goes on to describe the effects of psychic distance achieved in
Indian, Chinese, and Japanese theater (p. 324). She mentions, for in-
stance, how in Chinese plays the attendants in ordinary dress come
and go on the stage. Although to the uninitiated audience the stage-
hands appear to be an intrusion, they insert distance into the drama
by reminding us that it is art and not life. It was this same observation
of Chinese opera that led Brecht to formulate his idea of the alien-
ation effect as a principle of psychic distance in the theater. Moreover,
she describes how on the Japanese stage an actor may step out of his
part by giving a signal and address the audienceand then, by another
formal sign, resume his role, thereby inserting distance into the drama.
Langer asserts: These elements make the play dramatically convinc-
ing precisely by holding it aloof from actuality; they assure the spec-
tators psychical Distance instead of inviting him to consider the
action as a piece of natural behavior (p. 324). Langer then discusses
the function of artistic detachment in the rasa aesthetics of classical
Indian drama and poetry:
Some of the Hindu critics . . . understand much better than their
Western colleagues the various aspects of emotion in the theater . . .
the feeling that shines through the play itselfthe vital feeling of the
piece. This last they call rasa; it is a state of emotional knowlege, which
comes only to those who have long studied and contemplated poetry. It
is supposed to be of supernatural origin, because it is not like mundane
feeling and emotion, but is detached . . . pure and uplifting. [p. 323]

Langer argues that the extraordinary supernatural character attributed

to the aesthetic delight of rasa shows the mystification that beset the
ancient theorists when they were confronted with the power of a
 Western Aesthetics 91
symbol which they did not recognize as such (p. 323). For Langer,
then, the psychic distance described by Edward Bullough in modern
Western aesthetics, like its variants in the Chinese, Japanese, and
Indian forms of ancient Eastern drama, is to be understood as a func-
tion of symbolization. Although not recognized before, it is always
contact with the artistic symbol that produces the effect of psychic
distance in theater and the other arts both East and West.
Langers understanding of psychic distance is finally to be under-
stood in terms of her virtual theory of symbolic art, which in todays
computer-generated cyberspace culture might be called an aesthetics
of virtual reality. Art is virtual experience, or virtual reality, a sem-
blance of feeling, a mimetic illusion, or a hyperreal simulacrum. It is
this virtual, illusory, or semblance character of symbolic art that
accounts for its otherness from actuality and the contemplative
detachment, disinterestedness, or distance which is characteristic of
our response to it. Although Langer emphasizes the importance of
psychic distance in art, she deemphasizes the aesthetic attitude cul-
tivated by the subject and instead explains distance in terms of the
symbolic nature of the artwork: what Clive Bell terms the significant
form of the aesthetic object. Art produces detachment from human
feeling, not because the artist cultivates a rare, exceedingly difficult,
and artificial kind of aesthetic attitude, but because the artwork is a
significant form that functions as a symbol for human feeling. As
examples of the aesthetic attitude she mentions Schopenhauers notion
of a completely desireless state . . . as the proper attitude toward works
of art (p. 34). Again, she makes reference to Roger Frys description
of the aesthetic attitude as a disinterested intensity of contemplation
(pp. 3738). According to Langer: Artists . . . do not assume and
cultivate the aesthetic attitude (p. 45). She adds: It is not the per-
cipient who discounts the surroundings, but the work of art which, if
it is successful, detaches itself from the rest of the world. . . . The
most immediate impression it creates is one of otherness from reality,
the impression of an illusion enfolding the thing, action, statement,
or flow of sound that constitutes that work (p. 45).
The otherness of a work of art that detaches it from the environ-
ment and isolates it from the world is described as its aura of illu-
sion, or what Schiller terms its character of Schein, semblance. Langer
states: This detachment from actuality, the otherness that gives even
a bona fide product like a building or a vase some aura of illusion, is a
crucial factor, indicative of the very nature of art (p. 46). The detach-
ment produced by the semblance or illusion or similitude of an art-
92 Artistic Detachment East and West
work is then described as its virtual character (p. 49). Each kind of
art symbol has its own virtual character giving an aura of illusion, or
semblance, thereby constituting the otherness, detachment, and isola-
tion of that artwork as the source of psychic distance. Virtual space
(p. 72) is the primary illusion of plastic art and has three modes: the
virtual scene of painting, the virtual kinetic volume of sculpture,
and the virtual place of architecture (pp. 8795). Langers explana-
tion of psychic distance as a function of the semblance, illusion, or
virtual character of mimetic (imitative) art is clarified through her
example of architecture as a virtual place having an ethnic domain. She
writes: The place created by the architect is an illusion, begotten by
the visible expression of a feeling, sometimes called an atmosphere
(p. 99). A good French, Italian, or Mexican restaurant, like an Indian,
Chinese, or Japanese restaurant, is an illusion, semblance, or simu-
lacrum created by the virtual place of a work of architectureeach
with its own exotic atmosphere or ambience corresponding to a
unique ethnic domain, which isolates and detaches it from the sur-
rounding environment so as to provide a degree of distance from every-
day life. Langer identifies the virtual character producing detachment
in other modes of art: the virtual duration of music (p. 148), the
virtual gesture of dance (p. 187), the virtual life of poetry (p.
212), the virtual memory of literature (p. 277), the virtual future
of drama (p. 306), and the virtual present of film as the virtual
experience of a dreamlike reality produced by the virtual creative
imagination (pp. 412415). Hence for Langers aesthetics of virtual
reality, that psychic distance which is the hallmark of great art is not
something cultivated through an aesthetic attitude of disinterested
contemplation. It is instead a function of the virtual character of art as
a significant form symbolic of feeling, a hyperreal simulacrum that
produces the aura of illusion establishing its otherness from reality,
its isolation from the world, and its detachment from life.
The originality of Langers position can be appreciated by contrast-
ing it to other leading theories of art that have emerged in the tradition
of classical American philosophy. Similar to Dewey, Pepper, Prall,
Lewis, and other American thinkers, Langer has underscored the idea
of beauty as a pervasive aesthetic quality that permeates the artwork in
its felt wholeness. For Langer, as for Dewey, Pepper, and Lewis, quale
like colors, sounds, flavors, scents, and tactile sensations cannot be
simply located either in the subject or in the object, either in the
audience or in the work of art, but are immediately felt pervasive aes-
thetic qualities that are spread throughout the whole situation as its
 Western Aesthetics 93
single dominant feeling-tone. Langer writes: It is a quality, above all,
that pervades a work of art (1967:106). And elsewhere: The achieve-
ment of artistic quality is the first, last and only aim of the artists
work (p. 121). Dewey (1980:2758) holds that enjoyment of per-
vasive quality requires full active participation and sympathy while
strongly criticizing all aesthetic attitude theories of contemplative
detachment, distance, or disinterestedness. C. I. Lewis agrees with
Dewey that beauty is felt pervasive quality but, with Kant, holds that
such experience requires an aesthetic attitude of disinterested contem-
plation. As Lewis asserts: The esthetic might be marked off simply
by reference to this esthetic attitude of disinterested interest in . . .
the quality of what is given (p. 443). Langers position therefore
stands between the views of Dewey and Lewis: while she agrees that
the beautiful is immediately felt pervasive aesthetic quality, and that
psychic distance is a factor in aesthetic experience, she rejects the idea
that distance is the result of a special aesthetic attitude cultivated by
the audience. Instead she argues that it is a function of the symbolic
content of the work of art.
For Langer it is the symbol that gives a work of art its otherness and
accounts for the contemplative detachment or psychic distance char-
acteristic of our response to it. Langers emphasis upon the role of the
artwork itself in eliciting the contemplative response of psychic dis-
tancing is further developed in terms of her Whiteheadian concept of
art as a lure for feeling. Just as Langers idea of the art symbol is
deeply influenced by A. N. Whiteheads symbolic reference theory
of aesthetic experience (p. 183) wherein clear and distinct sense quali-
ties in the foreground focus are symbols for dim feeling-tone in the
background field, she is further influenced by his idea of imaginative
literature and art as a lure for feeling that induces maximum depth
of aesthetic experience in the terminal satisfaction of an event (pp.
184185). Langer states near the end of Feeling and Form: In art, it is
the impact of the whole, immediate revelation of vital import that
acts as the psychological lure to long contemplation. . . . The lure of
feeling (to borrow a phrase from Whitehead) is established almost at
once (1953:397). In his book A Whiteheadian Aesthetic (1961), Donald
W. Sherburne focuses on the idea of art as a lure for feeling as the
key to Whiteheads doctrine of aesthetic experience. For Whitehead
each occasion of experience is directed by a subjective aim that
governs the process of self-creativity wherein multiplicity is gathered
into a novel unity having the intrinsic value of directly felt pervasive
aesthetic quality. Sherburne clarifies how for Whitehead an artwork
94 Artistic Detachment East and West
lures the occasion of experience into suspending its usual subjective
aims and practical interests in order to substitute a deeper aim of
aesthetic recreation of value quality in an artwork. Similarly, Langer
develops Whiteheads suggestive notion of art as a lure for feeling
that suspends normal aims to elicit a response of prolonged disinter-
ested contemplation. Langers Whiteheadian notion of art as a lure for
feeling represents an important corrective to theories that overempha-
size the role of aesthetic attitude to the point of undermining the
function of art for inducing the factor of psychic distance. If psychic
distance is rooted solely in an act of consciousness, it does not explain
why certain works of art have the power to arrest the mind in tranquil
repose. According to Langer, then, psychic distance, contemplative
detachment, and disinterested attention are vital factors of aesthetic
experience, but they are not rooted so much in the viewers mental
operations as in the symbolic nature of art as a lure for feeling, an
invitation to contemplate beauty for its own sake.

Dickie: The Myth of Psychic Distance

George Dickie has in recent years become the foremost critic of aes-
thetic attitude theory, including its associated notions of disinter-
ested attention, artistic detachment, and psychic distance. His most
systematic critique of the notion of the aesthetic attitude in its various
forms is set forth in Art and the Aesthetic: An Institutional Analysis (1974).
Dickies writings have ignited some of the most stimulating debates
to have emerged in recent aesthetic theory.
Dickies refutation of aesthetic disinterestedness as articulated by
Jerome Stolnitz has provoked Stolnitz to write various rejoinders in
an ongoing debate between the two consisting of a series of published
critiques and countercritiques. The concept of psychic distance has
enjoyed considerable popularity since it was introduced by Edward
Bullough in 1912. In recent years, however, Bulloughs theory has been
seriously questioned by Dickie, who in turn has been criticized by
such writers as Sneh Pandit (1976) and Sushil Kumar Saxena (1978).
Dickies earliest attack on the theory of psychic distance in art occurred
in the latter part of his essay Is Psychology Relevant to Aesthetics?
(1962). This critique was taken up once again in The Myth of the
Aesthetic Attitude (1964). He then defended his position in a brief
article, Bullough and Casebier: Disappearing in the Distance (1972).
His first full-scale treatment of the concept was published as Psychical
Distance: In a Fog at Sea (1973).
 Western Aesthetics 95
In 1964 Dickie published his best-known paper, The Myth of the
Aesthetic Attitude, in which he put forward a thesis that the aes-
thetic attitude is a myth which is not only no longer useful but
indeed harmful for aesthetic theory. To support his view Dickie criti-
cizes such well-known versions of the aesthetic attitude as the theory
of psychic distance developed by Bullough and the concept of disin-
terested attention articulated by Stolnitz and Vivas. For Dickie the
word aesthetic becomes vacuous in such a case. As an example
of what he calls the myth of the aesthetic attitude he points to
the use of distance or acts of distancing to characterize aesthetic
experience. He claims that psychic distance refers to a phantom state
of consciousness. In Dickies words: To introduce the technical terms
distance . . . [and others] . . . does nothing but send us chasing after
phantom acts and states of consciousness (1974:30). Elsewhere Dickie
cites Bulloughs now classic example of a fog at sea to illustrate the
transformation from a nonaesthetic to an aesthetic experience through
a shift in attitude by insertion of distance. In the fog a transforma-
tion by distance is produced in the first instance by putting the phe-
nomenon out of gear with our practical, actual self. Dickie relates
Bulloughs explanation to Schopenhauers account of the sublime in
which he speaks of the forcible detachment of the will necessary for
appreciating a threatening objectexcept that Bulloughs theory is
supposed to apply to all aesthetic experience, not just the threatening
sublime.
Dickie endeavors to refute Bulloughs theory on two counts. First,
he claims that distancing, as defined by Bullough, is not a kind of
voluntary action which people who frequently experience art are capa-
ble of bringing about consciously. He personally has never experienced
such an act, he says, nor does he know of anyone who has. He asks:
Is there, however, any evidence that acts of distancing and states of being
distanced ever actually occur in connection with our experience of art and
nature? When the curtain goes up, when we walk up to a painting, or
when we look at a sunset, do we ever commit acts of distancing and are
we ever induced into a state of being distanced? I cannot recall commit-
ting any action that suspends practical activities or being in a psycho-
logical state that prevents practical activity. [1974:99]

Second, he maintains there is no special distinction between practical

activity and art activity, as implied by Bullough and other distance
theorists, and therefore the entire phenomenon of art experience does
not need to be explained by reference to any special attitude that puts
96 Artistic Detachment East and West
the spectator in a peculiar relationship to the work. He criticizes the
terminology of distance theorists, their arguments, and the usefulness
of their examples. In general he denies that any special mode of atten-
tion can be called peculiar to the aesthetic attitude. He asserts that
the typically cited examples of failure to adopt the aesthetic attitude
for instance, dwelling on the artists intentions, thinking of the
cost of the work, or contemplating the artists techniqueall turn
out to be mere cases of inattention. Dickie concludes that the only
possible difference in attention between two experiences is that one
is either attending or not attending to something. According to
Dickie, there is no such thing as an aesthetic mode of attention,
unless one means by it paying close attention to the aesthetic object.
Attention is qualitatively the same in all instances whether aesthetic
or nonaesthetic.
In their rebuttal to Dickies position, Rader and Jessup (1976:59
60) point out that while soldiers are trained to pay close attention to
events, this mode of attention is not aesthetic, but practical and cog-
nitive, thus showing the qualitative difference marking off different
modes of attention. They conclude: There is a difference between
aesthetic attention and nonaesthetic attention. The critical difference
in marking off the aesthetic sphere is between these kinds of attention,
and not between attention and inattention. Paying close attention is
not sufficient to characterize aesthetic interest (p. 59). In another re-
buttal to Dickies view, S. K. Saxena presents a similar counterargu-
ment: What we have in cases like the above is not just close attention,
but such heightened awareness as comes in the wake of a temporary suspension
of the everyday attitude and discloses much new material. It is such special
awareness that distance signifies (1978:83). It can be said that
Dickies writings mark a transition from a period of widespread acclaim
to one of critical evaluation of psychic distance and related notions in
aesthetic attitude theory. Although the specific arguments forming
the basis of Dickies contention are not in the least persuasive, they
have raised philosophical discourse on aesthetic attitude theory to a
higher plane of analysis.

Carlson: The Landscape Model of Beauty

According to Allen Carlson, one of the major paradigms for the aes-
thetic appreciation of nature through an aesthetic attitude of disinter-
ested contemplation of beauty, achieved through insertion of psychic
 Western Aesthetics 97
distance, is that of the landscape or scenery model of beauty. In the
art world this model of appreciation through insertion of distance is
illustrated especially by landscape painting: In one of its favored senses
landscape means a prospectusually a grandiose prospectseen
from a specific standpoint and distance (1995:131; italics added).
Carlson describes a most interesting device called the Claude glass,
fashionable in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which pro-
duces a perceptual shift such that objects that are great and near are
removed to a due distance . . . and just perspective (p. 132). The
landscape model, he says, requires dividing the environment into
scenes or blocks of scenery, each of which is to be viewed from a par-
ticular point by a viewer who is separated by the appropriate spatial
(and emotional?) distance (p. 132). A drive through the country is
like a walk through a gallery of landscape paintings wherein each
landscape is viewed from a due distance. Carlson observes that tourists
reveal a preference for this model of appreciation by frequenting
scenic viewpoints where the actual space between the tourist and
the prescribed view often constitutes a due distance (p. 132).
Carlson highlights the requirement of psychic distance in the aes-
thetic attitude toward beauty in nature. At the same time he is critical
of this landscape model of psychic distance insofar as appreciation of
nature is reduced to a finished picture. He clarifies how the modern
tourist relies on a ideal perspective where psychic distance comes to
be fixed through various framing devices like scenic viewpoints, the
cameras viewfinder, and even the Claude glass of the eighteenth cen-
tury. The tourist wishes to observe the landscape as an already finished
picture where the scene is framed in a fixed perspective and set distance
through the cameras viewfinder: the result is a Kodachrome slide, an
artistically composed postcard of the scene.
For a response to Carlsons insightful position that psychic distance
often involves a reified, sedimented, or frozen landscape presented
like a finished picture with a fixed perspective and set distance, we
can turn to the poststructuralist and deconstructionist theory of this
landscape model of psychic distance articulated by Karatani Kjin in
his Origins of Modern Japanese Literature. According to Karatanis decon-
structionist theory, derived from Derrida, Foucault, Barthes, and other
French poststructuralists, the famous Japanese novelist Natsume Sseki
wrote novels based on a decentered worldview according to which his
sketching (shaseibun) technique, learned from his friend the great
twentieth-century haiku poet Masaoka Shiki, the landscape (sansuiga)
98 Artistic Detachment East and West
is not a description of a preformed, constituted landscape of natural
beauty, written in the past tense, but a constitutive act in the living
present that itself brings forth the emergence of landscape (1993:
31). In that the landscape is not a fixed structure with self-identity, it
now emerges in the very process of sketching, thus to be constituted
and reconstituted in multivariate forms by free play of fantasy varia-
tion in creative imagination.
Chapter 2

Artistic Detachment in Japanese Aesthetics

The Japanese tradition of Zen aestheticism has articu-

lated a variety of highly refined, elegant, and pervasive qualities of
atmospheric beauty such as aware (sad beauty), ygen (profound mys-
tery), wabi (rustic poverty), sabi (loneliness), shibumi (elegant restraint),
ma (negative space), iki (chic), and fry or fga (windblown elegance).
Although it is common for studies of Zen Buddhism and Eastern cul-
ture to mention such aesthetic qualities in order to convey the Japanese
sense of beauty, they generally neglect the aesthetic attitude of de-
tached contemplation required for the intuition of beauty. As empha-
sized by scholars like Izutsu Toshihiko (1981:16), the immediately felt
aesthetic qualities described in Japanese poeticsaware and ygen, for
exampleare derivatives from the fundamental value of yoj: over-
tones of feeling, overflow of feeling, or surplus feeling. Continuing
this tradition the modern Japanese philosopher Nishida Kitar has
observed how traditional Japanese culture is based on pure aesthetic
feeling; hence aware and ygen are both aesthetic qualities felt just as
they are in emptiness/suchness at the locus of absolute nothingness.
Likewise, in Western romantic poetics, William Wordsworth has said:
Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings. But as
Wordsworth further clarifies, this overflow of feeling is emotion
recollected in tranquility. In the Preface to his Lyrical Ballads, Words-
worth therefore asserts: I have said that poetry is the spontaneous
overflow of powerful feelings; it takes its origin from emotion recol-
lected in tranquility. Chmei explicitly defines ygen in terms of yoj,
overflow of feelings. But unlike the emotive, lyrical idea of poetry, it
99
100 Artistic Detachment East and West
is an overflow of feeling recollected in tranquility. The emotions are
still feltindeed, they are felt as deeply as possible, reverberating
into bottomless depthsbut now these feelings are recollected in
tranquility through insertion of distance. Similarly it can be said
that the distinctive aesthetic qualities of Japanese poetics such as
wabi, sabi, shibumi, fry, fuga, and ygen are all rooted in yoj, over-
flow of feeling, apprehended through a mental attitude of detached
contemplation as an intense emotion recollected in tranquility.
Why is Zen so directly related to the aesthetic attitude with its
characteristic traits of disinterestedness, detachment, and distancing?
First of all, the Japanese word zen (Ch. chan; Skt. dhyna) signifies
meditation, and the Zen Buddhist tradition underscores the act of
detached contemplation whereby phenomena are perceived just as
they are in the openness or disclosure of their emptiness/suchness.
Second, the Zen tradition of Japan, more than any other contempla-
tive tradition East or West, focuses specifically on the aesthetic expe-
rience of beauty manifested by ordinary phenomena in the openness
of emptiness/suchness and their creative expression through satori-
like epiphanies of literature and art. The idea of Zen detachment is
well known: there are innumerable anecdotes relating the complete
detachment of the Zen master who has achieved liberation, awakening,
and enlightenment. Yet what is distinctive about Zen aestheticism is
its emphasis on enlightenment through detached contemplation of
beauty in nature and art. The cultivation (shugy) of a tranquil, clear,
selfless, and detached state of contemplative awareness, leading to an
insight into the mysterious beauty of insubstantial phenomena in their
emptiness/suchness, is itself the characteristic feature of Zen Buddhism.
Finally, it should be emphasized that aesthetic attitude theories of
disinterested contemplation illuminate the Zen doctrine of satori
(enlightenment) arising through states of consciousness associated with
the traditional Japanese sense of beauty expressed through such ideals
as aware (tragic beauty), ygen (mysterious depths), wabi (spiritual
poverty), sabi (impersonal loneliness), and shibumi (elegant restraint
through understatement)including the mental attitudes of shikan
(calm and contemplation), or tranquility insight; mushin (no-mind),
or the spontaneous, preconscious, nonattached consciousness; and
hishiry (without-thinking), or the neutral state in meditative equi-
poise on emptiness, the shunyata-like nonpositional state between
thinking and not-thinking.
In his book titled Meaning (1975:85), Michael Polanyi reformulates
Kants idea of beauty as disinterested pleasure in terms of an iso-
 Japanese Aesthetics 101
lation theory of art and literature. Like I. A. Richards and Hugo
Mnsterberg, Polanyi develops a theory of art as isolation according
to which detachment from personal emotions is achieved by isolating
objects within the artificial borders of a framewhereupon the beauty
of an object can now be contemplated for its own sake without regard
for personal interests or utilitarian considerations for anything outside
the frame. But from the standpoint of East-West comparative aesthetics
it is indeed significant that Polanyi goes on to argue that the realization
of aesthetic detachment through the tranquil contemplation of beauty
reaches its apex in the Zen Buddhism of Japan. According to Polanyi,
artistic detachment is achieved not only through the framing effect of
painting, drama, and literature but also by means of the related phe-
nomena of myth, ritual, and contemplation of religious experience. In
primitive religions, he says, artistic detachment is realized through the
artificial framework of myths and their reenactment in sacred rituals.
Moreover, he describes how detachment is realized through the prac-
tice of pure contemplation in the via negativa meditation systems both
East and West. At this point, however, he raises the question how de-
tachment from life is achieved through pure contemplation without
the mechanism of a frame as employed in art, myth, and ritual:
We have so far attended only in passing to the question of how these facts
of the imagination become so fully detached from our daily concerns. . . .
But when we turn to the practice of pure contemplation, which passes
from the normal viewing of a landscape to a mystical contemplation of it,
we do not seem to be crossing any conceptual barrier or setting up any
artificial framework to separate this experience from the way we ordi-
narily view scenery. Where then, in such contemplation, do we find the
source of detachment? [p. 130]

Polanyi then proceeds to answer the query by reference to the tradition

of Japanese Zen Buddhism. In Zen, detachment from personal inter-
ests and desires is achieved through the intensive practice of zazen
meditation:
An answer to this question may be found most easily in Zen Buddhism,
and this should throw light on the whole range of other mystical visions.
Zen is acquired by prolonged, arduous training. . . . Descriptions abound
of the harsh discipline to which the Zen novice submits. His enlighten-
ment is associated with the effort and the suffering of this discipline,
which detaches his life from the flow of normal experience and opens him
to access to ecstatic meditation far removed from the humdrum interests
of life. [p. 130]
102 Artistic Detachment East and West
Citing Toshimitsu Hasumis Zen in Japanese Art, Polanyi underscores
the fact that the mode of detachment realized by Zen Buddhist
meditation is specifically that of an artistic detachment such that the
ecstasy of aesthetic experience is explicitly identified with the rapture
of mystical experience. Polanyi asserts:
Returning to the cult of rapturous contemplation in Zen Buddhism, we
meet with a theoretical development of it into a doctrine of aesthetics.
Art, poetry, and painting are said to be the transmission of visionary
experience and hence to tell of the NOTHING. . . . Of all ancient
systems of ecstatic contemplation, Zen Buddhism alone applies directly
to the creative arts. [p. 129]

With his characteristic depth of insight, Polanyi has given a splendid

analysis of beauty as a function of artistic detachment both in Zen and
in Western traditions. He points out that in contrast to other contem-
plative traditions like the via negativa meditation of Christian mysti-
cism in the West or the Yoga of Hinduism in India, the Zen Buddhism
of Japan has developed into an aestheticism wherein detachment is
specifically cultivated through the disinterested contemplation of tran-
quil beauty in art and nature. As Polanyi observes in the foregoing
passage, among the ancient systems of disinterested contemplation
Zen Buddhism alone applies directly to the creative arts.
In Zen Buddhism this detached mode of contemplation represents
a suspension of all mental conditioning and correlate habits of percep-
tion, which results in a spontaneous free play of imagination. Recall-
ing the phenomenological approach explicated earlier, we note that a
description of aesthetic experience requires an account of not only the
noematic (constituted) content of beauty as hidden depth at the
objective pole but also the noetic (constitutive) act of detached con-
templation that constructs the phenomenon at the subjective pole.
The phenomenological analysis of aesthetic experience begins with a
description of its noematic content as value-rich figure/ground gestalt
qualities: instead of attending exclusively to sedimented focal actuali-
ties discriminated at the core of the perceptual field, one now intends
the undiscriminated horizon of openness that surrounds it at the
background field as an aura of mystery and depth. At the noema side of
aesthetic experience, focal entities illuminated in the foreground
become clear only by contrast with that darkness of the horizon by
which they are encompassed at the background field, the horizon of
openness or disclosure which reveals unsubstantial objects in their
inner depths. In accordance with a noetic attitude of artistic detach-
 Japanese Aesthetics 103
ment, however, is a suspension of sedimented interpretations leading
to a free play of fantasy variation in creative imagination opening up
an inner horizon of latent profiles representing the multiplicity, variety,
and possibility of phenomena. The state of detached aesthetic con-
templation deconstructs sedimented focal settings leading to a gestalt
switch or reversal of attentiona shift of attention from the substan-
tial objects articulated in the foreground to the horizon of openness
presencing in the nonarticulated background. This noetic attitude of
detached contemplation discloses the content of beauty as a dimen-
sion of hidden mystery and depth as well as the inexhaustible reser-
voir of creative possibility. From the phenomenological standpoint, an
aesthetic object, understood as something that has the intrinsic value
of beauty, is constituted not just by what is seenthe noema or in-
tended meaningbut also by how it is seen: the intentional act of
consciousness which constitutes that meaning. For Zen Buddhism, as
we shall see, the intuition of aesthetic quality in art and nature on the
side of the noema is itself to be analyzed as a function of an aesthetic
attitude of contemplative detachment involving disinterestedness,
sympathy, and imagination on the side of the noesis.

Classical Japanese Aesthetics

Scholars have noted how ygen became the ideal of atmospheric beauty
expressed by Buddhist art and literature in medieval Japan. But few
mention the aesthetic attitude of detached artistic contemplation that
is required for the vision of ygen in an epiphany of beauty as bottom-
less hidden depths. And those who have discussed the aesthetic atti-
tude have confined their observations to a specific artist or thinker.
They have failed to recognize it as a recurrent motif running through-
out the Japanese traditionfrom its origins in Kamakura-period waka
(31-syllable) poetics of Chmei, Shunzei, and Teika, to the n drama
of Zeami and Zenchiku, to the monochrome sumie inkwash paintings
of Jsetsu, Shbun, and Sessh, to modern Japanese literature in the
tradition of Sseki, Kawabata, Mishima, and Tanizaki.
In this section I describe the aesthetic attitude of artistic detach-
ment in the ygen tradition of classical Japanese aesthetics. We shall
examine the pervasive aesthetic quality of ygen and related notions as
noematic correlates to noetic acts of contemplative detachment artic-
ulated by a broad spectrum of Japanese technical notions includ-
ing shikan (tranquility and insight), riken no ken (seeing of detached
perception), hishiry (without-thinking), muga (no-self, non-ego, self-
104 Artistic Detachment East and West
detachment), akirame (detached resignation), mushin (no-mind), hininj
(detachment from human feeling), mukanshin-sei (disinterestedness),
mushjaku (nonattachment), and so forth. First I consider explicit the-
ories of artistic detachment that have been articulated in the classical
aesthetics of Japan, beginning with its origins in what Misaki Gisen
(1972) terms the shikan aesthetic consciousness (shikanteki biishiki)
of late Heian and early Kamakura waka poetics. In this context I focus
on the pervasive aesthetic quality of ygen, or profound mystery, as an
epiphany of depth that manifests through the artistic detachment cul-
tivated by Tendai Buddhist shikan (Ch. chih-kan; Pali samatha-vipas-
sana) or tranquility and insight meditation as articulated in the early
waka poetics of Shunzei. Dgen (12001253), one of the foremost
Kamakura poet-priests in the tradition of shikan aesthetic conscious-
ness, articulates a Zen metaphysics of Buddha nature as genjkan, or
presence of things as they are, manifested in the being-time (uji) of
impermanence-Buddha-nature (muj bussh) that reflects the ygen
ideal of beauty as mysterious hidden depths revealed through the
oneness of practice-enlightenment (shusho itto) in zazen. For Dgen
the presence of things as they are is itself apprehended through the
contemplative attitude of without-thinking (hishiry)a state of
equilibrium that observes phenomena in emptiness/suchness without
blind reactions of craving or aversion, liking or disliking, acceptance
or rejection. We then explore how the Japanese Buddhist ideal of
ethereal beauty as ygen and its apprehension through artistic detach-
ment culminate in medieval n drama as presented through Zeamis
principle of riken no ken. To envision the profound mystery of ygen
involves a shift from the egocentric perception of gaken to the objec-
tive, selfless, and detached perception of riken no ken. Riken no ken is
the aesthetic satori-consciousness required for perception of ygen by
the actors and spectators of n theater as well as the playwright in the
creation of an original n drama.

Shikan Aesthetic Consciousness in Waka Poetics

The medieval Japanese aesthetic ideal of Buddhist literary arts was
known as the beauty of ygenliterally shadows and darkness or, by
extension, mystery and depth. Furthermore, the aesthetic ideal
of ygen was explicitly rooted in the Tendai Buddhist meditation
practice of tranquility and insight (Ch. chih-kan; Pali samatha-
vipasanna), or calm-and-contemplation, which influenced the devel-
 Japanese Aesthetics 105
opment of zazen (seated meditation) practice in Zen Buddhism. The
Tendai practice of shikan in East Asian Buddhism was itself an evolu-
tion of the original Indian form of samatha-vipassana meditation ex-
pounded by the Buddha as the way for attaining liberation (moksha)
from suffering (dukkha) in the peace of nirvana. Today the early Indian
form of samatha-vipassana (shikan) practice has been revitalized through
the Burmese tradition of Theravada Buddhism as based on the Bud-
dhas Pali-language treatise on meditation called Mahsatipathana-
sutta: The Great Discourse on Mindfulness. S. N. Goenka summa-
rizes the nature of samatha-vipassana, or tranquility and insight,
meditation in Buddhas teachings as follows:
By observing unpleasant sensations without reacting, we eradicate aver-
sion. By observing pleasant sensations without reacting, we eradicate
craving. . . . This is the stage known as sankhra-upekkha, equanimity
toward all conditioning, which leads step by step to the ultimate truth of
liberation, nibbna. [Hart 1987:123]

Goenka continues: The cause of suffering is tanh, craving and aver-

sion (Hart 1987:150). The root cause of suffering originates, not
from vedan or feeling, but from karmically conditioned reactions
to feelingcraving and aversion, liking and disliking, attraction and
repulsion, love and hate, sympathy and antipathy. Hence in the prac-
tice of samatha-vipassana the problem of suffering is eradicated through
vedan-sati or mindfulness of feelings with an attitude of equa-
nimity (upekkha), the even-minded state of calm detachment from
all conditioned reactions of craving and aversion. Goenka describes
how vedan-sati, mindfulness of feelings, results in equilibrium or
detachment from blind reactions of attraction or repulsion when he
writes:
Vedan is particularly important because it offers vivid, tangible experi-
ence of the reality of impermanence. . . . This realization makes obvious
the futility of attachment to something that is so transitory. Thus the
direct experience of anicca [impermanence] gives rise to detachment, with
which one can not only avert fresh reactions of craving and aversion, but
also eliminate the very habit of reacting. [p. 149]

According to early Buddhist psychology, then, liberation from suffer-

ing is attained by the meditation practice of tranquility and insight
leading to detachment from, or equanimity toward, all conditioned
reactions of craving and aversion. Moreover, the point cannot be over-
106 Artistic Detachment East and West
emphasized that the aim of this Buddhist technique of detached con-
templation is not to kill human feelings but, rather, to observe them
with equanimity free of habitual and conditioned blind reactions of
craving/aversion, liking/disliking, affirmation/negation, or acceptance/
rejection.
The Japanese sense of beauty has its roots precisely in this early
Buddhist practice of samatha-vipassana or tranquility and insight.
The importance of this shikan meditation as the mental attitude, state
of consciousness, or mode of attention determining the traditional
Japanese sense of beauty has been clarified by Misaki Gisen in a valu-
able study, Enlightenment of Natural Beauty: The Shikan Aesthetic
Consciousness in the Famous Priests of the Kamakura Period (Shizen
na bi no satori: Kamakura jidai meiso no shikanteki biishiki), which
appeared in the Summer 1972 issue of the Japanese periodical Bigaku
(Aesthetics). At the outset of his essay Misaki writes: For the last three
or four years I have tried to clarify the relation between Buddhism
and the special characteristic of Japanese aesthetic consciousness by
using the term shikan aesthetic consciousness (1972:10). As denoted
by Misakis apt phrase shikan aesthetic consciousness (shikanteki bi-
ishiki), the traditional Japanese sense of beauty involves a highly re-
fined aesthetic attitude rooted in the Buddhist meditation practice of
shikan. Misaki argues that Japanese aesthetic consciousness has been
deeply influenced by Buddhism since the Heian period, especially by
the Tendai Buddhist theory and practice of shikan. According to
Misaki, shikan is a discipline of meditation in which the poet-priest
becomes detached from ordinary human reactions of craving and aver-
sion in order to observe all phenomena as they are in their emptiness/
suchness. Through the deep tranquility of shikan meditation practice,
one realizes every phenomenon in nature as a spontaneous manifesta-
tion of the Buddha nature itself. Tendai Buddhist philosophy there-
fore affirms beauty in nature and recognizes art to be a valid path
leading to enlightenment or Buddhahood. This shikan aesthetic con-
sciousness of Tendai Buddhism was subsequently assimilated by Zen
and other sects in the Kamakura period. Misaki asserts that what he
calls shikan aesthetic consciousness is evident in the life and writings
of many famous priests of the Kamakura period, all of whom are
known for their love of nature and their composition of poetry. Yet
he further maintains that the shikan aesthetic consciousness of these
famous Kamakura priests was not that of an ordinary human aestheti-
cism but the enlightenment of natural beauty (jinen na bi no satori)
 Japanese Aesthetics 107
acquired through the meditative shikan practice of tranquility and
insight or calm and contemplation.
The Karma of Words: Buddhism and the Literary Arts in Medieval Japan
by William R. LaFleur (1983) brings to light how perception of
atmospheric beauty as ygen or profound mystery had its basis in
the Tendai Buddhist meditation practice of shikan. LaFleur says that
the poetry of twelfth-century Japan is strikingly different from that
written earlier and, moreover, this change is due to the presence of
a new dimension of depth (fukasa) (p. 80). Making reference to
scholars like Senichi Hisamatsu (to be distinguished from the Kyoto
school philosopher, Shinichi Hisamatsu), he then points out that this
depth dimension of medieval Japanese poetry is summed up in the
aesthetic quality of ygen (p. 82). Thus, according to LaFleur, ygen
involves an epiphany of depth (p. 131). He furthermore shows how
the aesthetic value of ygen is grounded in the theory and practice of
shikan meditation in the poetics of Shunzei, Teika, and Saigy (pp.
80106). Using the studies of Konishi Jinichi, LaFleur demonstrates
that in Shunzeis waka poetics the beauty of ygen participates in the
structure of Tendai shikan insofar as it manifests a deep and abiding
tranquility. Konishi Jinichi traces the Japanese medieval aesthetics of
ygen back to its source in Tendai Buddhist shikan meditation, point-
ing out that the content of shikan meditation is equivalent to the
content of Zen (cited by LaFleur 1983:94). These points are summa-
rized by LaFleur as follows:

In both the shikan of Tendai and the arts of ygen there is a definite quies-
cence and tranquility. In shikan this is undoubtedly related to the practice
of seated meditation, basically the seated zen, or zazen, that was part of
most Buddhist practice but received special emphasis in the Zen Bud-
dhist school. [p. 100]

As shown by LaFleur (1983:90), in a text on waka poetics (Korai

futeisho, 1197) Fujiwara Shunzei acknowledges the Tendai basis of his
aesthetic theory. In this text Shunzei asserts that the infinite depth
and profound meaning of poetry are akin to the shikan meditation of
Tendai Buddhism as described by its founder Chih-i (538597). For
Shunzei, the Japanese lyric called the uta is a process of transmission
of the Holy Dharma similar to the transmission of enlightenment
running through the Buddhist patriarchs. Moreover, Japanese poetry
is said by Shunzei to have a dimension of depth that has an affinity
108 Artistic Detachment East and West
with the three stages of truth in Tendai Buddhism showing the iden-
tity of convention (ketai) and emptiness (ktai) in the middle way
(chtai) (pp. 9091). Shunzei writes:
The Mo-ho chih-kuan of the Tendai school opens with these words by
Kuan-ting [Chih-is amanuensis]: Calm-and-contemplation [shikan] has
in itself a clarity and tranquility beyond anything known to earlier
generations. Now if we pay attention to this at the outset, a dimension
of infinite depth as well as profound meaning will be discovered. It will
be like listening to something sublime and exalted while trying to
understand the poetic sensibility. . . . Things that otherwise are incapable
of being expressed in words will be understood precisely when they are
likened to calm-and-contemplation [shikan]. [Cited by LaFleur 1983:90]
LaFleur goes on to cite the classic modern study called Ygen to aware
by nishi Yoshinori, who describes the process whereby the aesthetic
experience of ygen manifests through the calm-and-contemplation
of shikan meditation:
When all of ones ego has been transformed into the datum of nature
and when one has penetrated into the arena of shikanthat is, into the
locus of absorption into the vision of pure tranquilitythen nature and
mind or object and subject will have become one and the same. . . . The
individuals existence is the same as the totalitys, and the microcosm is
amplified in the macrocosm. This is the unique aspect of this aesthetic
experience. [Cited by LaFleur 1983:102103]
As nishi Yoshinori describes, the practice of shikan meditation results
in an aesthetic experience of ygen or deep profundity characterized by
identification of subject and object as well as an interfusion between
microcosm and macrocosm. In the holistic metaphysics of Tendai Bud-
dhism, this interfusion of microcosm and macrocosm is termed ichinen
sanzen, meaning in one thought-instant are three thousand worlds.
Hence in the waka poetics of Shunzei and others that emerged during
the medieval period of Japanese Buddhist literary arts, the Tendai
meditation practice of shikan, or tranquility and insight, culminates
in a holistic vision of beauty as ygenan epiphany of wholeness and
depth whereby the concentrated microcosmic phenomena articulated
in the foreground focus merge with the expanded macrocosmic void
of emptiness, voidness, nothingness, or openness in the nonarticulated
background field.
Another important manifestation of shikan aesthetic consciousness
is to be seen in the Mikky (Esoteric) or Tantric teachings of Tendai
Buddhism introduced to Japan by Saich, also known by his posthu-
 Japanese Aesthetics 109
mous title of Dengy Daishi. It was Saich who spread the Tendai
Buddhist shikan exercises of detached contemplation whereby phe-
nomena are observed with equanimity, devoid of craving or aversion,
thus revealing their suchness in the middle way (chtai) between
conventional existence (ketai) and emptiness (ktai). The detached
contemplation of mandala art in the Japanese tradition of Mikky
Buddhism is described by Michael Saso in his book Tantric Art and
Meditation: The meditator must not become attached to the vision,
in fact must burn all images away in the invisible fires of the Vajra
Worlds thunder and lightning, as well as the real fire of the Goma.
This meditative process is preeminently a part of the oral hermeneutic
called kuden (Saso 1990:242). He concludes: The kuden oral tradition
is based firmly on the Mdhyamika teachings of the empty middle
way. Neither affirming or denying the real (Ch. shih) or the phenomenal
(hsiang), the meditator in the Tendai tantric tradition is taught to burn
away and empty all images . . . until nothing, not even the ashes of
the Goma Fire, remains (p. 244). The Goma fire ceremony incorpo-
rates the shikan meditations on various mandala images but ends with
total detachment as conveyed by the powerful fire metaphor of burn-
ing them all to nothingness. The Tendai form of detached contempla-
tion, however, is to be understood as an attitude that clearly observes
the images without either affirming or denying their existence/non-
existencethus to stand in the middle way between eternalism and
nihilism.
Among the famous Kamakura priests in the Japanese tradition of
shikan aesthetic consciousness discussed by Misaki Gisen is Dgen
(12001253), the founder of St Zen Buddhism, who studied the
theory and practice of shikan meditation at Mount Hiei, the central
headquarters of Tendai Buddhism. Takahashi Masanobu (1983:61
67) has argued that the content of Dgens zazen (seated meditation)
is essentially that of ygen, the beauty of hidden depths. Takahashi
writes: The profound nature of Dgens thought finds its ground in a
certain characteristic which can be found deep within the psyche of
the Japanese. It is best expressed by ygen . . . which implies a quiet,
elegant and profound beauty (pp. 6162). Dgens aesthetic appreci-
ation of nature and the original creation of poetry about events in
nature has been further brought to light by Steven Heines important
books: A Blade of Grass: Japanese Poetry and Aesthetics in Dgen Zen (1989)
and A Dream Within a Dream: Studies in Japanese Thought (1991). Heine
agrees with Takahashis view that Dgens zazen is disclosure of sur-
plus aesthetic meaning as ygen rooted in yoj, overtones of feeling. In
110 Artistic Detachment East and West
Heines words: Dgens emphasis on the reality of unreality seems in
accord with the mysterious plentitude of meanings evoked by the
ygen/yoj poetic ideal (1989:66). According to Heine, Dgens in-
fluence was strongly felt by two key figures, Zeami and Rykan, both
noted for their distinctive interpretations of ygen. Zeami, the major
playwright and interpreter of Noh theater, was influenced by Dgen
in his approach to aesthetics as the fulfillment of ygen, that is, the
subjective attainment of purity and tranquility by both actor and
audience engaged in the plays performance (pp. 2324). Heine cites
the research of Nishio Minoru to directly connect Dgens key con-
cept of genjkan or manifestation of the koan (presence of things as
they are) to Zeamis ideal beauty as ygen, mysterious depths, in the
n drama. Heine states: Nishio Minoru traces a conceptual thread
linking Dgens notion of genjkan as spontaneous here-and-now
realization with Zeamis view of ygen (p. 24). Furthermore, Heine
develops the medieval ygen poetics of hidden depth implicit in
Dgens writings against the background of Tendai shikan practice:
Medieval poetry in particular is characterized by a sense of depth
(fukami) in pursuit of art as a way (michi). . . . Frequently derived from
the Tendai meditative practice of cessation-contemplation (shikan),
poetry refines, purifies and uplifts various emotional responses to the
world of form (p. 6).
It can be said that Dgens metaphysics of Buddha nature and phe-
nomenology of zazen are filled with the Japanese aesthetic sensibility
of the late Heian/early Kamakura period from which it emerged.
Dgens notion of impermanence-Buddha-nature (muj bussh) in the
flux of being-time (uji) reflects the aesthetic of perishability expressed
by the ideal of mono no aware, the sad beauty of things, just as his
notion of presence of things as they are (genjkan) reflects the aes-
thetic ideal of ygen, hidden depths. This can be seen clearly through
the standardized poetic imagery that Dgen uses to articulate his con-
ceptswhen he invokes images of the moon on the water to describe
the mystery and depth of events of genjkan, for instance, or images
of the passing seasons to depict the transitoriness of events in the
impermanence of being-time. An example of Dgens original waka
poetry manifesting the mysterious beauty of ygen in nature using the
codified image of the the full moon in the twilight darkness of an
autumn evening is translated by Heine (1991:68) as follows:

Mata minto Just when my longing to see

Omoishi toki no The moon over Kyoto
 Japanese Aesthetics 111
Aki dani mo One last time grows deepest,
Koyoi no tsuki ni The moon I behold this autumn night
Nerare yawa suru Leaves me sleepless for its beauty.

Furthermore, Dgens metaphysics of Buddha nature is rooted in

zazen practices related to Tendai exercises of shikan meditation and is
thus to be understood as an expression of what Misaki Gisen terms
shikan aesthetic consciousness. As we shall see, for Dgen this Tendai
shikan (tranquility-insight) practice would be reformulated in terms
of his shikantaza (sitting-only) form of zazen as propounded in the
St Zen sect of Japanese Buddhism. For Dgen, the sitting-only
practice of zazen is thinking (shiry) of not-thinking (fushiry) by
without-thinking (hishiry). According to the phenomenological
framework to be articulated later in this book, a description of the
mysterious beauty of ygen manifested by impermanence-Buddha-
nature in being-time as genjkan, or presence of things as they are, at
the noematic (content) pole must be accompanied by a description of
the noetic (act) pole, the mental attitude by which the former is itself
constituted. For Dgen, as we shall see, the mysterious beauty of ygen
represented by presencing of things as they are (genjkan) at the
noematic pole corresponds to the noetic attitude of without-thinking
(hishiry): the neutralized state of meditative equipoise detached from
all positive and negative mental judgements.

Riken no ken in Zeamis N Theory

Theoretical foundations for the aesthetics of n theater were established
by the actor, playwright, and critic Zeami Motokiyo (13631443).
The main artistic ideals established by Zeami were those of hana and
ygen. Hana, or flower, refers to the freshness and vitality of an actor
who can make the audience see an otherwise familiar role as if for the
first time. Ygen refers to the ethereal beauty of grace, elegance,
hidden depth, and mysterious darkness. As most popular English
introductions to Zeamis aesthetics point out, the ineffable mystery of
ygen is the fundamental aesthetic quality of a n play. What is neg-
lected by most studies, however, is the mental attitude required on the
part of both actor and spectator as a precondition for experiencing the
aesthetic quality of ygen. Yet the major theorists of n drama, includ-
ing Zeami and his son-in-law Zenchiku (b. 1405), clearly formulated
what in modern Western philosophy would be called an aesthetic atti-
tude theory of art and beauty. The atmospheric beauty of ygen is con-
112 Artistic Detachment East and West
stituted not only by what is seen but how it is seen. This is indicated
by Ueda Makoto when he writes:
In the 15th century, calm resignation came into greater prominence among
the components of ygen. Prolonged social unrest and the influence of Zen
Buddhism may have contributed to this change in emphasis. Two main
exponents of ygen in this last phase were Shinkei (140675), Shotetsus
student and an expert renga poet, and Komparu Zenchiku (140570?),
Zeamis son-in-law and a Noh theoretician. Shinkei felt that ygen lay not
in visible shape or color but in the beholders attitude, and he encouraged
poets to perceive supreme beauty in such monochromatic subjects as
pampas grass on a withered moor or a waning moon in the dawning sky.
Zenchiku went even further and claimed that the sun, the moon, the seas,
trees, and grass all displayed ygen. He thought that when an attitude of
calm acceptance was manifested in art it took the form of ygen and exuded
tranquil beauty. [1983:355; italics added]

As noted by Ueda, the aesthetic attitude in the n theory of Zenchiku

is more radical than that of Shinkei. For the poetics of Shinkei, as for
the n theory of Zenchiku, the tranquil beauty of ygen requires an
aesthetic attitudewhat Ueda calls a beholders attitude of calm accep-
tance. While for Shinkei the beauty of ygen lies in the beholders atti-
tude, certain properties in aesthetic objects elicit this attitudefor
instance, monochromatic themes like grass on a withered moor or a
full moon at twilight. For Zenchiku, by contrast, any object whatsover
can manifest the beauty of ygen when perceived with an aesthetic atti-
tude of calm resignation. Nonetheless, both versions constitute an aes-
thetic attitude theory which asserts that the experience of ethereal
beauty as ygen lies in the beholders attitude, while at the same time
specifying that this attitude is one of calm resignation, tranquility,
and serene detachment.
Richard B. Pilgrims Buddhism and the Arts of Japan describes how
traditional Zen-influenced Japanese arts seek to discover and manifest
the essence (honi) of phenomena while further explaining how the
Buddhist categories of nothingness (mu) or emptiness (k) have been
used to denote that essence one seeks to express via the aesthetic mode
(1981:4647). Yet Pilgrim goes on to clarify that the Zen Buddhist
dimension of Japanese art is seen in the turn from an emphasis on
the essence of aesthetic phenomena in their emptiness/suchness to the
mental attitude of the artist beholding those phenomena:
One indication of the deepening Buddhist and Zen influence on these
ideals after the Heian Period is that the understanding of the deepest
 Japanese Aesthetics 113
spiritual attainment of the artist shifts from the discovery of the essences
in things more directly to the quality of mind/spirit of the artist himself.
A good example is Zeamis notion that the underlying spiritual power of
the true masters kokoro (mind/spirit/heart) includes, but is not defined
by, the Buddhist experience of no-mind (mushin). [p. 47]

As Pilgrim further explicates, the mushin or no-mind of Zen Buddhism,

understood as a heightened mental state devoid of ego and empty of
all thought, has been explained by D. T. Suzuki and others as the
point where all arts merge into Zen. Moreover, in the tradition of Zen
aesthetics the state of mushin has come to designate a contemplative
attitude of calmness, tranquility, and spiritual detachment whereby
the emptiness/suchness of phenomena comes to manifestation. Pilgrim
asserts that in the Zen-influenced arts of Japan the word mushin
signifies the unconscious, non-attached, spontaneous mind (p. 46).
Again: Mushin in the arts is closely related to the tranquil, detached
but aware mind (p. 47). In Japanese Buddhist arts like the n drama,
then, the aesthetic experience of ygen or profound beauty, wherein
ethereal phenomena are viewed in their bottomless depths as standing
against the spatial background of nothingness, requires that the artist
cultivates a calm and tranquil attitude of contemplative detachment
as signified by the Zen state of mushin: no-mind.
In Zeamis n theory, the aesthetic attitude of disinterested contem-
plation required in all phases of artistic experience is explicitly and
systematically formulated in terms of his doctrine of riken no ken: the
seeing of detached perception. Since the kanji character for ri also
signifies distance, one might alternatively translate the word riken
as perception at a distance and riken no ken as the seeing of
perception at a distance. Understood as perception at a distance,
Zeamis principle of riken clearly indicates how in n and other Bud-
dhist arts of Japan the cultivation of a disinterested mental attitude of
artistic detachment itself requires a psychological act of inserting
psychic distance into an eventand that transformation by distance
is thus an essential factor in attaining enlightenment through the
arts. Zeami establishes the phrase riken no ken as a technical term indi-
cating that the mental attitude of artistic detachment must be culti-
vated by both the actors and the spectators of a n drama as well as the
playwright. The concept of riken no ken is regarded by Japanese scholars
of n theater as one of the most profound and original contributions of
Zeami to aesthetics in general and the dramatic arts in particular. Japa-
nese scholars like Nose Asaji, Nishi Minoru, and Omote Akira have
114 Artistic Detachment East and West
all offered a comprehensive explanation of the term. In her illumi-
nating study titled Riken no ken: Zeamis Theory of Acting and The-
atrical Appreciation (1987), Yusa Michiko states: Zeami developed
his insight into the nature of riken no ken . . . into a principle governing
the mental attitude that the actor should cultivate in order to become
a true master of his art (p. 333).
Zeami developed his principle of riken no ken in several treatises in-
cluding Kakyo, Yugaku Shudo Fuken, Kyui, Goi, and Rikugi. He intro-
duced the principle for the first time in his treatise titled Shikado,
written in 1420. Thus Zeamis aesthetic attitude theory based on the
principle of riken no ken was formulated centuries before the Coper-
nican Revolution in Western aesthetics established by Kants Critique
of Judgement (1790), wherein perception of beauty is now understood
to require a mental attitude of disinterested contemplation. Zeami
can therefore be regarded as having formulated one of the earliest fully
explicit and systematic theories of artistic detachment in the history
of aesthetics. In his various treatises Zeami articulates different aspects
of riken no ken so that according to the context it signifies the detached
contemplation of spectators in the audience during a n play (Shikado,
Goi, Yugaku Shudo Fuken, and Kyui), the detached contemplation of
the n actor that encompasses the awareness of the audience (Kakyo),
and the detachment of aesthetic consciousness in general (Rikugi).
With his theory of riken no ken Zeami thus clarifies that the aesthetic
attitude is to be defined by a detached mode of perception operating
in artistic production and appreciation as well as in the act of dramatic
performance.
For Zeami, aesthetic experience must be analyzed not only in terms
of its quality of ygen, or profound beauty, but also in terms of its cor-
responding mental attitude of riken no ken. That is to say, the artistic
detachment of riken no ken is the mental attitude on the side of the sub-
ject that opens up and brings into appearance the aesthetic quality of
ygen on the side of the object. In an important sense the beauty of
ygen can therefore be described as a function of riken no ken. The
thesis here is that the pervasive aesthetic quality of ygen is constituted
not only by what is seen but by how it is seen. In terms of the act/
content (noesis/noema) distinction of modern phenomenological dis-
course: if ygen forms the content (noema) of aesthetic experience, then
riken no ken is the act (noesis) of consciousness by which it is consti-
tuted. Hence there is always a direct correlation in aesthetic experience
between the perception of profound beauty (ygen) at the noematic
 Japanese Aesthetics 115
pole and the mental attitude of detached contemplation (riken no ken)
at the noetic pole.
Zeami clearly distinguishes between the detached perception of
riken no ken and the ego perception of gaken. In her study on Zeamis
doctrine of riken no ken, Yusa Michiko writes:
The contrast he [Zeami] makes between riken no ken and gaken, literally
ego-perception, is illuminating. If riken no ken is an objective, self-less,
and detached mode of seeing, gaken is a subjective, self-centered, and
attached mode of seeing. [1987:335]

According to Zeami, the actor of a n play can unfold the graceful per-
fection of hana (flower) and communicate the subtle beauty of ygen
(ineffable mystery) only upon making a radical shift from the subjec-
tive, self-centered, and attached mode of seeing represented by gaken
to that of the objective, selfless, and detached mode of seeing desig-
nated by riken no ken. Likewise, the audience can behold the myste-
rious and enchanting atmosphere of ygen created by the actors of a n
play only by making a similar shift away from the ego perception of
gaken to the detached perception of riken no ken. Moreover, the actor
of a n play must also be aware of his appearance in the eyes of the
audience. If the audience is yin (negative), the actor must be yang (posi-
tive); if the audience is yang, the actor must be yinthereby forming
a single body of theatrical experience. For this reason the riken no ken
of the actor must fully encompass the riken no ken of the audience. As
Zeami says in Kakyo:
Your appearance as seen by the audience forms for you your detached per-
ception (riken). What your own eyes see is your self-centered perception
(gaken) and not the seeing of detached perception (riken no ken). When
you exercise your riken no ken, you are of one mind with your audience.
[Cited in Yusa 1987:334]

Ultimately it is the shift away from the personal standpoint of gaken

or ego perception to the transpersonal standpoint of riken no ken or
the seeing of detached perception, which enables both actor and
audience to fuse together into an undivided aesthetic continuum of
heightened artistic awareness. The objective, selfless, and detached
perception of riken no ken is therefore a nondual experience that inte-
grates the perspectives of subject (shite, the actor) and object (kensho,
the audience) in a complete interpenetration of performer and specta-
tor. In this way the actor and the audience together form a single unit
116 Artistic Detachment East and West
of theatrical experience. This in turn has important implications for
the concept of ygen as the basic principle of beauty in the n theater.
Since the universal standpoint of riken no ken brings about a total
interfusion of actor and audience, the beauty of ygen cannot be
located either exclusively in the subject or exclusively in the object,
either in the performers or the spectators, but instead permeates the
whole theatrical event through evocation of atmospheric beauty as its
pervasive aesthetic quality.
Zeamis theory of aesthetic experience, including both his idea of
mysterious beauty as ygen and the corresponding mental attitude of
riken no ken, must ultimately be understood in the context of its
Buddhist foundations. While many scholars have established the Bud-
dhist dimensions of Zeamis n drama in a general way, Yusa Michiko
specifically clarifies the relationships between the Zen Buddhist satori-
mind and the aesthetic attitude of riken no ken. As Yusa notes, in Kyui
(ca. 1428) Zeami develops a scale of nine grades or ranks (i) of n
plays and the skills of the n actor modeled after the Zen hierarchy of
degrees of enlightenment. The highest level of art is the art of the
wondrous flower (mykafu), identified as the ultimate stage of riken
no ken: the seeing of detached perception. Describing this highest
rank of art in Zenlike terms, Zeami asserts: His art moves no-mind
(mushin no kan), that is, [the audiences] riken [aesthetic perception] of
the art of rankless rank (mui no ifu), and it is indeed the inexpressible
wondrous flower (cited in Yusa 1987:338). In Yugaku Shudo Fuken
(ca. 1424), Zeami connects his notion of riken no ken to the Buddhist
notion of emptiness (k) and no-mind or empty mind (mushin),
thus relating the epistemology of n theater with Zen Buddhist intui-
tion (p. 333). Yusa points out that the shift from the egocentric per-
ception of gaken to the objective, selfless, and detached perception of
riken no ken is in fact identical with the aesthetic satori-mind of Zen
Buddhism (p. 341).
Seen in the Japanese Buddhist context of its theoretical and practi-
cal foundations, Zeamis doctrine of riken no ken may be understood as
one of the historical culminations of Tendai shikan aesthetic conscious-
ness (shikanteki biishiki) underlying Kamakura-period waka poetics.
Just as the ethereal beauty of ygen was said to presuppose shikan aes-
thetic consciousness in the waka poetics of Shunzei and Teika, so in
Zeamis theory of n drama the aesthetic experience of ygen requires
the psychic distance or detached seeing of riken no ken. While Kama-
kura waka poetics was rooted in the Tendai meditation exercise called
shikantranquility and insight, the practice of detached contem-
 Japanese Aesthetics 117
plation beyond sympathy and antipathyZeamis theory of n drama
was also profoundly influenced by Zen theory and practice. His Zen-
oriented doctrine of riken no ken, like the Tendai shikan aesthetic con-
sciousness of waka poetics, holds that an experience of ygen involves
a shift from ego perception to the selfless, tranquil, and detached con-
templation of phenomena in their emptiness/suchness. Like the shikan
aesthetic consciousness of waka poetics, the riken no ken of Zeamis n
theater is systematically developed through methods of self-cultivation
(shugyo) with the final aim of achieving enlightenment, satori, in an
epiphany of depth. It is this realization of beauty as ygen through the
the cultivation of riken no ken, resulting in the aesthetic satori-mind
of Zen enlightenment, that ultimately establishes Zeamis n theater
as a major paradigm of geid: the tao of art in traditional Japanese
Buddhist culture.

The Aesthetics of Discontent

It can now be seen how the medieval Japanese aesthetic of ygen, pro-
found depth, itself corresponds to a mental state of calm detachment.
The aesthetic experience of ygen as contemplated through the Tendai
Buddhist meditation practice of tranquility and insight (shikan) is
summed up in Misaki Gisens (1972:10) phrase: shikan aesthetic con-
sciousness (shikanteki biishiki). The waka poetics of Shunzei, Chmei,
and Teika introduced the aesthetic ideal of ygen (profound mystery),
which added a new dimension of depth to the emotional and lyrical
Heian aesthetic ideal of aware (pathos). Zeamis n drama theory fur-
ther develops this medieval Buddhist literary ideal of ygen grounded
in riken no ken, the seeing of detached perception.
In The Aesthetics of Discontent: Politics and Reclusion in Medieval Japa-
nese Literature (1991) Michele Marra formulates an ideology critique
of aesthetic detachment in medieval Japanese literature and Western
orientalist studies of Japan based on the Kantian framework. As such
it provides an opportunity to critically examine the subject of artistic
detachment in Japanese aesthetics from a different perspective. Accord-
ing to Marra, the Buddhist literary arts of medieval Japan represent a
literature of reclusion (inja bungaku) written by poet recluses who
were Buddhist apostles of detachment (1991:98). The new Bud-
dhist aesthetic values of miyabi (gracefulness, courtliness) and fry/
fga (windblown elegance) were likewise rooted in detachment. Fur-
thermore, they have a hidden political agenda of developing a counter-
ideology to the established power structure: The moral and aesthetic
118 Artistic Detachment East and West
values of the aristocracy are rejected in light of their inadequacy to
conform to the Buddhist rule of detachment (p. 9). The literature of
reclusion underscores the aesthetic code of miyabi (courtliness), the
basic characteristic of which is a desire to withdraw from the world
(p. 11). Again, miyabi is based on a framework of detachment and
reclusion (p. 53). And the literature of reclusion is rooted in the
shikan practice of Tendai Buddhism. In Marras words, the literature
of reclusion is an anticourt aesthetic based on the tenets of the Mo-ho
Chih-kan (Great Concentration and Insight), a systematization of the
doctrines of the Tien-tai school of Chinese Buddhism. This trend
develops the theme of withdrawal already present in the aesthetics of
miyabi, giving it a newer and deeper meaning (p. 11). And else-
where: This new aesthetic was shaped by the values of these recluses,
known in Japan as inja or tonseisha, who lived according to the prin-
ciples of the Mo-ho Chih-kan (J. Maha-shikan, Great Concentration
and Insight)a seminal work of the Tendai sect by the Chinese monk
Chih-i (538597) imported to Japan at the beginning of the Heian
era (p. 59). This text is described as emphasizing the value of renun-
ciation: withdrawing from society in order to minimize attachment
to the world (p. 59).
Yet there is a paradox here in that the enlightened recluse emerges
as one who lives in constant awareness of the unsolvable contradiction
existing between his attachment to a life of reclusion and the total,
spiritual detachment which must be the target of reclusion itself
(1991:70). Marra mentions Chmei: Despite his statements to the
contrarylike a drifting cloud I rely on none and have no attach-
mentsChmei realizes that his own hut may be in some sort a sin,
and my attachment to this solitary life may be a hindrance to enlight-
enment (p. 92). The Buddhist monk Kenk (ca. 12801352) resur-
rected the views on miyabi expresssed by dissatisfied courtiers of the
Heian period and applied this model political center in an effort to
reestablish the realm of aesthetics within the world of political power.
Kenks ideal gentleman is one whose inner detachment from worldly
concerns allowed him to find a spiritual balance in a life inevitably
marred by social defilements (pp. 127128). Kenk emphasizes detach-
ment through awareness of muj (impermanence): In order to reach a
state of total detachment people must realize that death is unpredict-
able (p. 141). Marra states that Kenks holy men were paradigms
of singlemindedness and perfect spiritual detachment (p. 143). In
the tradition of the Mo-ho Chih-kan, Kenk upholds an ideal life of
reclusion spent in the pursuit of a quiet mental state (p. 145).
 Japanese Aesthetics 119
At the very outset Marra points out that Japanese literature has
often been approached through a Kantian framework which assumes
that literature is an autonomous discipline shaped by its own rules
(1991:1). This emphasis on the autonomy of literature and art in Kants
framework is based on the idea of beauty as disinterested pleasure: As
the German philosopher put it, the experience of the beautiful origi-
nates from the ability to represent an object by an entirely disinterested
satisfaction or dissatisfaction (p. 1). Marra says that the development
of modern aesthetics as an autonomous sphere has brought about the
tendency of decontextualizing, depragmatizing, and depoliticizing the
literary text (p. 1). Upon introducing Japanese classics to the West,
scholars have inevitably been guided by the aesthetic presuppositions
of Kants philosophy. This tendency was reinforced by the contempo-
raneous development of the nativist theories of Mootori Norinaga
(17301801), which similarly grant the literary text a privileged status
outside history and politics (p. 3).
Marra takes as his starting point Foucaults ideology critique of
power relations: Given Michel Foucaults assumption of the centrality
of power in the working of history, we realize that no human discourse
can ground itself outside the ideological process (p. 7). Marra thus
states his intention to repoliticize Japanese literary texts through an
aesthetics of power which shows how political discontent was often
displaced into the realm of aesthetics, literature, and culture. Despite
his disclaimer that his path of ideology analysis in the interpretation
of Japanese literary texts is not intended to reduce literature to ideol-
ogy (p. 12), the end result is just that: complete reductionism of
poetry into ideology, of aesthetics into politics, of literary art into power
relations. It is because of this problem that Kant set aesthetics in an
autonomous sphere. When is there a moment for the contemplation
of beauty in and of itself without ideological power relations of coer-
cion, dominance, or authority exerted by corrupt political systems?
Marra never quotes a poem unless it seems to reveal some hidden
motive of political revenge. The Kantian view is that one takes great
pleasure in the detached contemplation of beauty for its own sake.
There are many recluses who chose solitude, not for religious, moral,
or aesthetic reasons, but because they were forced into exile by political
pressures. But here the emphasis is on the psychological, the phenom-
enological, the radically empirical content of aesthetic experience
whereby the beauty of ygen and its variants like wabi or sabi are rooted
in an act of detachmentthus shifting from sedimented focal actual-
ities in the foreground focus of attention to the spatial horizon of
120 Artistic Detachment East and West
hidden depths in the background field. As detachment from habit
and convention, it means the reconstitution of the perceptual field
through free variation in imagination in an open possibility search
resulting in variety, multiplicity, and plurality in the novel recreation
of landscapes.
Thus while the ideological critique of artistic detachment in Japa-
nese literature adds a significant dimension to the theme, it is a great
error to reduce aesthetic experience through psychic distance to polit-
ical motivations apart from the spiritual and artistic impulses in which
appreciation of beauty through tranquil contemplation is ultimately
rooted. Although the ideology critique represents an important and
even indispensable approach to literary criticism, the vital function of
literature is presentation of epiphanies, moments of illumination, the
literary equivalent of spiritual enlightenment or disclosure of events
through cultivation of an aesthetic attitude of detached observation,
emotional sympathy, and free play of creative imagination. In the case
of Japanese tradition, literature aims to manifest the beauty of ygen,
profound mystery, as an epiphany of depth triggered by shikan as
disinterested contemplation of events in their emptiness/suchness.
Marra is arguing that the medieval Japanese aesthetics of ygen,
based on the mental attitude of detached contemplation, has been
misrepresented by the Western orientalist approach that assimilates
otherness by projecting its own imagein this case, the Kantian doc-
trine of beauty as disinterested pleasure. But the reader of this book
has already been presented with the history of Kantian aesthetics of
disinterested beauty and is not so easily mislead. What Marra presents
as the Kantian view is (as Heidegger has argued) Schopenhauers
misinterpretation of Kant. For Marra, the Japanese ygen ideal of beauty
grounded in detached contemplation is a literature of reclusion, with-
drawal, rejection, and isolation. In other words: the Japanese ideal of
beauty as ygen and its correlate aesthetic attitude of shikan aesthetic
consciousness represents the Western orientalist Kantian view of
nihilism, pessimism, voidism, negationism. Yet as even Heidegger
himself has argued, the Kantian view is not Schopenhauers pessimistic
doctrine of nihilism but the reverse: an ecstatic affirmation of phe-
nomena just as they are for their own sake. Despite the great erudition
of Marras work, I am suggesting that the medieval Japanese ideal of
beauty as ygen, and its corresponding aesthetic attitude of detachment,
is not an aesthetics of reclusion. It is an aesthetics of ecstasy, rap-
ture, and delight of events observed through disinterested contempla-
 Japanese Aesthetics 121
tion of beauty, which affirms the intrinsic value of things just they are
in the hidden depths of their emptiness/suchness.

Modern Japanese Aesthetics

We now turn to an account of artistic detachment in twentieth-
century Japanese aesthetics as articulated by modern Japanese philos-
ophers affiliated with the Kyoto school, including Nishida Kitar,
Hisamatsu Shinichi, D. T. Suzuki, Nishitani Keiji, and Kuki Shz.
To begin with, I adumbrate the Kyoto school Zen Buddhist meta-
physics of emptiness (k), or nothingness (mu), and its underlying
Buddhist psychology of nonattachment (mushjaku). Kyoto school
philosophers like Nishitani Keiji articulate a threefold dialectical Zen
logic of emptiness that moves from being (u) to relative nothing-
ness (staiteki mu) to absolute nothingness (zettai mu), which in turn
corresponds to a sliding scale of degrees of attachment and nonattach-
ment. While the eternalistic standpoint of being is characterized by
attachment to the separate ego and substantial objects, and the nihil-
istic standpoint of relative nothingness is characterized by attachment
to nothingness itself, the middle way of absolute nothingness is char-
acterized by a mental attitude of total nonattachment that affirms
things in their concrete particularity without clinging to either being
or nonbeing, existence or nonexistence, form or emptiness, presence
or absence. In the East/West Christian-Buddhist interfaith dialogue
of the Kyoto school, just as in traditional Zen Buddhism, it is through
nonattachment (J. mushjaku) that the self is emptied into the locus
of absolute nothingness; so in the via negativa apophatic Christian
mysticism of Meister Eckhart, it is through the kenotic act of de-
tachment (Ger. Abgeschiedenheit) that the self is emptied into the god-
head of nothingness. Moreover the Kyoto school philosophers articu-
late a Zen Buddhist aesthetics whereby through the discipline of
artistic detachment one is released into the field of absolute nothing-
ness as the boundless openness wherein emptiness is fullness and full-
ness is emptiness and all things presence just as they are in the beauty
of suchness.
In this section I endeavor to show how various Zen thinkers related
to the Kyoto school of modern Japanese philosophy, including Nishida
Kitar, D. T. Suzuki, Nishitani Keiji, Hisamatsu Shinichi, Kuki
Shz, and various others, have developed an aesthetic attitude theory
of artistic detachment as a precondition for the experience of beauty
122 Artistic Detachment East and West
in art and nature. Nishida Kitars An Explanation of Beauty (Bi
no setsumei, 1900) argues that the Japanese sense of beauty is rooted
in a mental state of muga as no-self, non-ego, or ecstasy. D. T. Suzukis
Zen and Japanese Culture, first published in 1938, clarifies how Zen
satori, or sudden enlightenmentas well as its diverse cultural mani-
festations in the Zen-influenced arts of Japanese culture ranging from
the military art of swordsmanship to the fine arts of painting, poetry,
drama, and teaare rooted in the Zen state of mushin, understood as a
tranquil, clear, unconscious, and nonattached state of no-mind-ness or
empty-mind-ness, functioning as the ultimate source for both the
creation and enjoyment of beauty. Hisamatsu Shinichis Zen and the
Fine Arts (Zen to bijutsu, 1971) analyzes the Japanese sense of beauty in
terms of the psychological state of artistic detachment cultivated by
Zen Buddhist modes of contemplation. He describes this psychological
state of the subject of absolute nothingness in terms of muga or no-
self, like Nishida Kitar, as well as mushin or no-mind like D. T.
Suzuki. He further characterizes this psychological state through the
aesthetic attitude of disinterestedness (mukanshin). According to
Hisamatsus analysis of the Japanese sense of beauty, Zen-influenced
works of art produced from the disinterested state of no-self (muga) or
no-mind (mushin) or no-thought (munen) springing from the subject
of absolute nothingness embody the peaceful quality of detach-
ment (datsuzoku). Kuki Shzs The Structure of Iki (Iki no kz, 1930)
develops an Eastern variant of decadent aestheticism which argues that
the Edo-period ideal of beauty as iki or chic involves enjoyment of
sexual feeling and other sensual pleasures through cultivation of a Zen
Buddhist mental attitude of akirame, detached resignation. In this
way the Kyoto school philosophers have worked out a Zen-influenced
theory of aesthetic experience that underscores the mental attitude of
contemplative detachment required for the apprehension of beauty in
art and nature.
A striking feature of modern Japanese aesthetics is the formulation
of various East-West models of artistic detachment based on a creative
synthesis of traditional Zen Buddhist notions of aesthetic distance
with Kantian theories of beauty as disinterested delight. An Expla-
nation of Beauty (Bi no setsumei, 1900) by Nishida Kitar relates
Kants idea of beauty as pleasure that is disinterested (Ger. interesselos)
to the Japanese sense of beauty as muga, no-self. In Zen and the Fine Arts,
Hisamatsu Shinichi analyzes traditional Zen art in the ygen style from
the standpoint of Nishidas metaphysics of absolute nothingness. For
Hisamatsu there is a similarity between the imaginative free play (Ger.
 Japanese Aesthetics 123
spielen) and disinterested (Ger. interesselos) character of art in the Kantian
tradition of German transcendental idealism and the quality of play-
fulness (J. asobi) and disinterestedness (J. mukanshin) in the Zen/Chan
Buddhist art of Japan and China. Moreover, he enumerates his famous
seven characteristics of Zen aesthetics in which detachment (J. datsu-
zoku) is a general trait of literature and art embodying the profound
mystery of ygen. The Structure of Iki by Kuki Shz analyzes the Edo-
period aesthetic ideal of iki or chic as a synthesis of three cultural
elements: the eroticism (bitai) of a geisha; the spiritedness (ikuji)
of a samurai; and the detached resignation (akirame) of a Buddhist
priest. Kukis analysis of iki is influenced by the French tradition of
decadent aestheticism, which has its philosophical roots in Kants
theory of beauty as a function of disinterested aesthetic contemplation.
When Kukis analysis of the Japanese sense of beauty is viewed from
the perspective of French decadent aestheticism as developed by Bau-
delaire and dAurevilly, then iki is equivalent to chic, just as bitai
corresponds to coquetterie (coquettishness), ikuji to vanit (pridefulness),
and akirame to the Kantian attitude of dsintressement (disinterested-
ness). Hence in contrast to Kyoto school thinkers like Nishida, Hisa-
matsu, and Suzuki, who articulate a more traditional Japanese Buddhist
aesthetics of reclusion typified by the Zen priest in the isolation of
nature or the solitude of the monastery, Kuki instead works out a deca-
dent aesthetics of Edo-period bordello culture exemplified by the
amorous geisha in the floating world that flourished in the sprawl-
ing red light Yoshiwara pleasure quarter of the city.
In chapter 5 we will consider East-West models of artistic detach-
ment forged by the two giants of Meiji-period literature in Japan: Mori
gai and Natsume Sseki. First I discuss the Eastern philosophy of
resignation underlying the creative fiction of Mori gai, a versatile
Meiji-period genius who built a double career as a novelist and an
army medical officer at the highest rank of surgeon general. In his
novels, novellas, short stories, and literary essays, gai develops his
philosophical theme of resignation (J. teinen, akirame) through an
impersonal narrative style written from the indifferent authorial per-
spective of a disinterested onlooker (bkansha) who can step back and
view events from a contemplative aesthetic attitude of cool detach-
ment, aloofness, and equanimity. Finally I present the remarkable
theory of psychic distance formulated by Natsume Sseki in his haiku-
novel Grass Pillow (Kusamakura), which depicts the mysterious beauty
of ygen as apprehended through the dehumanized aesthetic attitude
of hininj, detachment from human emotions. Both gai and Sseki,
124 Artistic Detachment East and West
as we shall see, elucidate their respective concepts of aesthetic distance
through the fundamental conflict between artistic detachment versus
emotional sympathy as well as the basic problem of overdistancing to
the point of dehumanization. Thus I will be examining the Japanese
sense of beauty as a function of artistic detachment in classical and
modern thought as articulated from a multitude of diverse perspec-
tives in both the philosophical and literary traditions of Japanese
aesthetics.
Here I want to undertake an inquiry into the aesthetic attitude of
disinterested contemplation, artistic detachment, or psychic distance
as it developed in the Zen tradition of modern Japanese philosophy.
An extensive body of writings on the nature of art and beauty has
developed in Japan since the Heian period in the fields of poetry and
drama and, to a lesser extent, in painting, calligraphy, ceramics, music,
the tea ceremony, flower arrangement, and landscape gardening. But
as Ueda Makoto (1983:1819) has observed, aesthetics as a distinctive
branch of philosophical study, with its own clearly defined principles,
methods, and subject matter, was first introduced to Japan from the
West by Nishi Amane (18291897), Mori gai (18621922), and
others during the early Meiji period. The modern Japanese term for
aesthetics, bigaku or the study of beauty, was coined by Nakae
Chomin (18471901) around 1883. Early Japanese specialists in the
field of bigaku were all students of Western, especially German, aes-
thetics who paid little attention to their own native Japanese tradi-
tion. This trend began to change only when philosophical studies of
traditional and premodern Japanese aesthetics emerged: The Structure
of Iki (Iki no kz, 1930) by Kuki Shz (18881941), for example,
and Ygen and Aware (Ygen to aware, 1939) by nishi Yoshinori
(18881959). At present there is still a gap between academic aesthe-
ticians who are mainly interested in defining the nature of beauty
through Western methods and professional critics who try to appraise
works of art in accord with traditional Japanese criteria. Hence Ueda
Makoto remarks: A synthesis of Japanese and Western aesthetics still
remains the ultimate challenge for both these groups (1983:19).
Although a comprehensive synthesis of Japanese and Western aes-
thetics has yet to be worked out in a systematic fashion, the modern
Japanese writers considered here did develop an East-West compara-
tive orientation to the field of aesthetics. Modern Japanese thought
grew out of the Meiji Restoration period (18681912), during which
time Japan opened up to outside influences and began to assimilate
 Japanese Aesthetics 125
Western ideals, norms, and values. The philosophy of Nishida Kitar
(18701945), Japans foremost speculative thinker, arose during the
late Meiji period and reflects this general effort of Meiji intellectuals
to synthesize Western and Japanese concepts. Nishidas works have
since inspired a virtual renaissance of speculative thought in what has
come to be known as the Kyoto school of modern Japanese philos-
ophy, which includes such luminaries as Tanabe Hajime, Nishitani
Keiji, Hisamatsu Shinichi, Takeuchi Yoshinori, Ueda Shizuteru, and
Abe Masao, along with others who are in various ways closely related
to the school like Watsuji Tetsur, Kuki Shz, and D. T. Suzuki.
In general the writings of Nishida Kitar and the Kyoto school of
modern Japanese philosophy are characterized by East-West compara-
tive philosophy and Buddhist-Christian interfaith dialogue articulated
within the framework of a traditional Japanese Buddhist metaphysics
of emptiness (k) or nothingness (mu). According to the Kyoto
schools Zen metaphysics of nothingness and its underlying Buddhist
psychology of detachment, reality is to be analyzed at three levels:
being (u)the level of attachment to the Cartesian subject and the
external world of material objects; relative nothingness (staiteki mu)
the level of nihility (kyomu), which breaks attachments to the ego
and material things by emptying them into a void of nonbeing and
yet retains a subtle attachment to nothingness itself; and absolute
nothingness (zettai mu) or emptiness (k)the level of complete
nonattachment (mushjaku) to both being and nonbeing. While
attachment to the Cartesian ego and the dualism of its subject/object
framework results in the problem of eternalism, substantialism, or
reificationism, attachment to nothingness results in the opposite prob-
lem of nihilism, voidism, or negativism. The breakthrough to absolute
nothingness, however, represents complete nonattachment to both
being and nonbeing at the middle way of emptiness standing between
the extremes of eternalism and nihilism. Through nonattachment one
is released into the boundless openness of absolute nothingness where
emptiness is fullness and fullness is emptiness so that all things come
to presence just as they are in their particular suchness. In both the
Christian kensis and the Buddhist nyat traditions, according to the
interfaith dialogue of Nishida and the Kyoto school, salvation/enlight-
enment is a function of nonattachment to the ego achieved by self-
emptying to nothingness. Moreover, since the compassionate bodhi-
sattva is detached from nothingness he does not cling to nirvana but
empties himself into the realm of samsara, just as in the kensis hymn
126 Artistic Detachment East and West
from Pauls Letter to the Philippians (2:511) it is said that Jesus
Christ was not attached to his equality with God but emptied him-
self into the form of a servant for the sake of others.
Nishitani Keiji provides a lucid description of this Zen logic of
emptiness, which moves from being to relative nothingness to abso-
lute nothingness as well as the corresponding psychological degrees
of attachment and nonattachment, in Shky to wa nanika (What Is
Religion?, 1961), translated into English under the title Religion and
Nothingness (1982). First he characterizes the level of being as attach-
ment to the Cartesian ego-self: The very existence of this self is marked
by a self-attachment (1982:32; 1961:38). At the level of relative
nothingness or nihilizing emptiness, the Cartesian ego is negated and
emptied into the void of nonbeing yet now becomes attached to noth-
ingness itself: As long as this nothingness is still set up as something
called nothingness-at-the-bottom-of-the-self, it remains what Bud-
dhism repudiates as the emptiness perversely clung to. . . . The self
that sets up this nothingness is thereby bound by it and attached to
it. . . . Nothingness may seem here to be a negation of being, but
. . . as long as the self is still attached to itit remains a kind of
being, a kind of object (1982:33; 1961:39). Nishitani describes the
level of emptiness or absolute nothingness as follows:
Buddhism goes further to speak of the emptiness of the nihilizing view,
by which it means to stress that absolute emptiness in which nihilizing
emptiness would itself be emptied. . . . All attachment is negated: both
the subject and the way in which things appear as objects of attach-
ment are emptied. Everything is now truly empty, and this means that all
things make themselves present here and now, just as they are, in their
original reality. They present themselves in their suchness, their tathat.
This is non-attachment. [1982:34; 1961:40]

As stated by Nishitani, when all attachment (shjaku) is negated

to subjects, to objects, even to nothingness itselfthis is non-attach-
ment (soshite mushjaku to iu koto de aru) (1961:40). Thus the stand-
point of being is characterized by a self-attachment that results in
eternalism, the standpoint of nihilizing emptiness is characterized by
attachment to nothingness itself so as to result in annihilationism,
but the standpoint of emptiness or absolute nothingness is opened
up through a psychological attitude of complete nonattachment. On
some occasions Nishitani touches upon issues of Zen Buddhist aes-
theticsas, for instance, when he relates the poetics of Bash to self-
negation on the field of emptiness (1982:128129; 1961:145146).
 Japanese Aesthetics 127
But generally speaking, Nishitani describes the realization of absolute
nothingness through nonattachment in the context of elaborating a
philosophy of religion. In this context Nishitani develops an East-
West interfaith dialogue by articulating the realization of absolute
nothingness through nonattachment to egoboth in terms of the
Zen Buddhist tradition of ntat (J. k), or emptiness of self, and
the Christian tradition of kensis or self-emptying. For Nishitani, as
for Nishida Kitar, Ueda Shizuteru, Abe Masao, and other Kyoto
school philosophers, the Christian kensis tradition is exemplified by
the via negativa mysticism of Meister Eckhart whereby, through detach-
ment, the self is emptied into the godhead of nothingness. The radi-
cal detachment underlying Eckharts kenotic theology and via nega-
tiva apophatic mysticism is seen as the clearest Christian analogue to
the nonattaching, nonclinging, and noncraving Zen Buddhist spiri-
tuality of emptiness in Japan. Like Zen Buddhism the Christian via
negativa mysticism of Eckhart requires complete detachment from all
thingsnot only from the internal ego and external objects but also
from all holy images, symbols, and archetypes, even representations of
Jesus, the Cross, the Virgin Mary, the saints, or God himself, and all
the feelings of love, reverence, and joy they inspire, for all must be
emptied into the godhead of nothingness beyond God.
Nishitani therefore describes emptiness as the field of what Bud-
dhist teaching calls emancipation, or what Eckhart refers to as Ab-
geschiedenheit (detachment) (1982:106; 1961:120). The kenotic
(self-emptying) tradition of via negativa Christian mysticism devel-
oped by Meister Eckhart approximates Zen Buddhism not only
through its contemplative exercises of self-emptying and its explicit
description of the godhead in terms of nothingness (das Nichts); it
also specifies the mental attitude of detachment or Abgeschiedenheit
(J. ridatsu; see Nishitani 1961:120) whereby one achieves the break-
through to nothingness. Hence according to the East-West encounter
theology of Nishitani Keiji, just as in Zen Buddhism it is through
nonattachment (mushjaku) that the self is emptied into the locus of
absolute nothingness, so in the via negativa apophatic Christian mys-
ticism of Meister Eckhart it is through the kenotic act of detachment
(Abgeschiedenheit) that the self is emptied into the godhead beyond
God as the desert of nothingness.
Although leading thinkers related to the Kyoto school have focused
especially on the philosophy of religion, they have made valuable con-
tributions to aestheticsincluding Art and Morality (Geijutsu to
dtoku, 1923) and various essays by Nishida Kitar, Zen and the Fine
128 Artistic Detachment East and West
Arts (Zen to bijutsu, 1958) by Hisamatsu Shinichi, Zen and Japanese
Culture (1988) by D. T. Suzuki, and The Structure of Iki (Iki no kz,
1930) by Kuki Shz. Each of these modern Japanese philosophers
has developed a Zen-influenced doctrine of aesthetic experience in
which the idea of artistic detachment plays a central role. Nishida
Kitar, for the first time, explicitly relates Kants notion of aesthetic
disinterestedness to the Japanese Zen Buddhist sense of beauty. Hisa-
matsu Shinichi discusses the similarities and differences of Kants
notion of aesthetic disinterestedness to artistic detachment in Japanese
Zen Buddhism and then proceeds to analyze in detail how detach-
ment is a fundamental aspect of Zen art. D. T. Suzuki, who introduced
Zen Buddhism to the West, formulates a notion of artistic detachment
in terms of the Zen doctrine of no-mind (mushin). Kuki Shz, who
has written perhaps the most original treatise on Japanese aesthetics,
makes Buddhist detachment a key element in his theory. On the
Western side, Kuki is influenced by a tradition of French decadent
aestheticism that traces its origins directly back to Kants theory of
beauty as disinterested pleasure. Hence this section focuses on Zen
Buddhist theories of artistic detachment produced by seminal thinkers
related to the Kyoto school of modern Japanese philosophy.

Nishida Kitar: Beauty as Muga and Aesthetic Disinterestedness

The bottom of my soul
Is so deep
Neither joy
Nor the waves of sorrow
Can touch it.
Can touch it.waka poem by Nishida Kitar

Nishida Kitar (18701945) is widely recognized as Japans foremost

modern academic philosopher. To give an idea of his prolific literary
career, the Collected Works of Nishida Kitar (Nishida Kitar zensh; NKZ)
amounts to nineteen volumes containing his major philosophical
works, including A Study of Good (1911), Thought and Experience (1915),
Intuition and Reflection in Self-Consciousness (1917), Problems of Conscious-
ness (1920), Art and Morality (1923), From the Acting to the Seeing (1927),
The Self-Conscious System of the Universal (1930), The Self-Conscious Deter-
mination of Nothingness (1932), and Fundamental Problems of Philosophy
(19331934, two volumes), followed by six more volumes of Philo-
sophical Essays produced in the last ten years of his life. Nishida is espe-
 Japanese Aesthetics 129
cially known for his early Jamesian notion of a pure experience (junsui
keiken) free of all subject/object dualism as articulated in A Study of
Good (Zen no kenky) as well as his later Buddhist reformulation of this
idea in terms of the place (locus, matrix, field) of nothingness as
first developed in From the Acting to the Seeing (Hataraku mono kara miru
mono e). Overall Nishidas contribution has been to establish a global
synthesis including an East/West comparative philosophy and Bud-
dhist/Christian interfaith dialogue within a Zen framework based on
the master concept of k (emptiness) or mu (nothingness).
Nishida articulated many of his basic ideas on aesthetics in Art
and Morality (Geijutsu to dtoku). Throughout this work he develops a
polemic against the uncritical identification of beauty with selfish
hedonic pleasure. In opposition to this view he cites with approval
Kants doctrine from The Critique of Judgement that judgements of taste
are disinterested. Moreover, Nishida illustrates the disinterested atti-
tude by citing a famous verse from the poetry of Goethe. Nishida
writes: Goethe stated that we delight in the splendor of the stars but
we do not desire them (die Sterne, die begehrt man nicht, man freut sich
ihrer Pracht). Similarly, beauty since Kant has been thought of as dis-
interested (interesselos) (NKZ 3:274). This reference to Kants idea of
the sense of beauty as disinterested accords with Nishidas strong
reliance upon a Kantian framework throughout Art and Morality,
wherein he endeavors to determine the a priori acts, conditions, or
grounds from which both the creative activity of the artist and the
moral decision of the self arise. In this case, Kants notion of an act of
aesthetic disinterestedness on the part of the subject is affirmed by
Nishida as an a priori condition for the possibility of an experience of
beauty in general.
These ideas expressed in Art and Morality were actually worked out
nearly a quarter of a century earlier, however, in Nishidas An Expla-
nation of Beauty (Bi no setsumei, 1900; NKZ 13:7880), an essay
on aesthetics I have elsewhere translated in full (see Odin 1987).
Indeed, An Explanation of Beauty was one of Nishidas first original
philosophical essays. Written eleven years prior to the publication of
his maiden work, A Study of Good, it is a blueprint containing an ini-
tial formulation of ideas, themes, and problems characteristic of what
has since become known by the honorific title of Nishida tetsugaku
(Nishida philosophy). After criticizing what he regards as unsatis-
factory accounts of aesthetic experience in the Western tradition, he
then analyzes Kants idea of artistic detachment in relation to his own
Zen Buddhist concept of beauty. Anticipating the arguments of this
130 Artistic Detachment East and West
terse essay, Nishida holds that the pleasure of beauty in art and nature
cannot be the hedonic pleasure described by Burke, nor the stable
pleasure of Marshall, but rather is to be understood in terms of the
disinterested pleasure expounded by Kant. Furthermore, it is this Kan-
tian notion of beauty as disinterested pleasure that best accords with
the Japanese sense of beauty as muga (selflessness).
Nishida begins his essay with an effort to formulate an adequate
definition of beauty (bi) or, as it were, the sense of beauty (bikan):
What is beauty? If we inquire into it from the emotional aspect, the sense
of beauty is nothing other than a kind of pleasure. Mainly since Burke,
British psychologists have emphasized that beauty is something that
gives a sense of pleasure, and that the sense of beauty is identical with
selfish pleasure. Although this explanation is also true to a certain extent,
as a definition of beauty it still is not adequate. [Odin 1987:215; see also
NKZ 13:78]
While Nishida agrees there is a certain truth to the idea that beauty is
a kind of pleasure (kairaku), he repudiates the notion that it can be
a pleasure related to self-interest or, as it were, selfish pleasure (shi-
yokuteki kairaku). He further criticizes the identification of the sense
of beauty with a merely selfish or hedonic kind of pleasure on the
grounds that there are many worldly pleasures which cannot be de-
scribed as beautiful or aesthetic. For instance, he asserts, everyone
would agree that no matter how much pleasure things such as fame,
wealth, food, and drink give us, we do not at all consider them to be
aesthetic pleasures (Odin 1987:215).
Nishida then considers a more sophisticated theory of beauty as
pleasure elaborated by the American psychologist H. R. Marshall:
Recently a man named Marshall has written a book titled Pain, Pleasure,
and Aesthetics, which explains in detail the sense of beauty as a kind of
pleasure. According to Marshalls argument, aesthetic pleasure is not
limited only to the moment when it is felt, but is enjoyed in the same
way when recalled later on. In a word, it is stable pleasure. [Odin
1987:215]
As Nishida points out, for Marshall the differentia of aesthetic experi-
ence lies in the relative permanence of pleasure both in impression and
in memoryin other words, stable pleasure (fuhenteki kairaku).
According to this criterion of beauty, hedonic sense pleasures elicited
merely by gratification of appetite are not aesthetic, since they quickly
pass into satiety when the physiological conditions of appetite are
removed. But the beauty of art produces relatively permanent or
 Japanese Aesthetics 131
stable pleasure that does not pass into satiety and is not diminished as
it is gratified. For this reason, Marshall argues that stable pleasure is
the special pleasure provided by art and known to us as beauty. While
Nishida agrees there is at least a partial truth to Marshalls definition
of beauty as stable pleasure, he rejects this idea as a complete explana-
tion of aesthetic experience.
In an effort to find a more satisfactory account of the beautiful, he
now turns to the explanation developed by the tradition of German
idealist aesthetics inspired by Kants Critique of Judgement, wherein the
sense of beauty is defined as consisting in a purely disinterested plea-
sure. Yet from the standpoint of East-West comparative aesthetics,
Nishidas most significant contribution in this essay is the manner in
which he then proceeds to reformulate the Kantian sense of beauty as
disinterested pleasure in terms of a key philosophical notion of Japa-
nese Zen Buddhismnamely, muga (Skt. antman), which can be alter-
natively translated in this context as ecstasy, no-self, non-ego,
or selflessness. Nishida continues:
Then what are the characteristics of the type of pleasure that makes up
the sense of beauty? What is the special characteristic of the sense of
beauty? According to the explanation of German idealism since Kant, the
sense of beauty is pleasure detached from the ego. It is a pleasure of the
moment, when one forgets ones own interest such as advantage and dis-
advantage, gain and loss. Only this muga (ecstasy, selflessness) is the
essential element of beauty; when this is lacking, no matter what kind of
pleasure you feel, it cannot give rise to the sense of beauty. [Odin
1987:216]
He then argues that when one is detached from the world and perceives
all things with an attitude of aesthetic disinterestedness in its sense as
muga, or selflessness, then any object whatsoever can be seen as beau-
tiful. He continues:
A great man who is not only aloof from external matters but is also com-
pletely divorced from any thought of self-interest reaches the point where
everything in life gives a sense of beauty. . . . Therefore, if you want to
obtain an authentic sense of beauty, you must confront things in the state
of pure muga. [Odin 1987:216]
After defining the sense of beauty as aesthetic disinterestedness in
the Japanese Zen Buddhist sense of muga, or selflessness, Nishida then
argues that beauty is identical with truth. He further emphasizes that
beauty understood as muga is identical only with intuitive truth
(chokkakuteki no shinri) and not with intellectual truth obtained by the
132 Artistic Detachment East and West
faculty of discriminative thought (shikryoku ni yotte etaru shinri). Here
he criticizes those who value only logical truth (ronriteki shinri) and
reject intuitive truth as the mere fancy of poets (shijin no ks).
According to Nishida, the intuitive truth of poets is that wherein we
have separated from the self and become one with things (onore o
hanare yoku mono to itchi-shite), such that it is truth seen with the eyes
of God (Kami no me o motte mitaru shinri). Nishida then identifies this
intuitive truth of beauty with the open secret or open mystery
(offenes Geheimnis) of nature revealed to the poet as described by Goethe
(Odin 1987:216217). Indeed, the later Kyoto school emphasis on
the Heideggerian idea of beauty as primordial truth of openness ap-
prehended through letting-be is here stated by Nishida in terms of
Goethes concept of nature as an open mystery seen through an atti-
tude of calm resignation.
While Nishidas essay begins with an effort to define beauty (bi),
it ends by attempting to clarify relationships between the three philo-
sophical disciplines of art (bijutsu), religion (shky), and morality
(dtoku). He now argues that since beauty is rooted in the experience
of muga as selflessness or ecstasy, it is ultimately of the same kind as
religion. In Japanese Zen Buddhism, muga or non-ego is a term com-
monly used to describe the selfless experience of satori: enlightenment.
Consequently, when Nishida defines beauty as muga he suggests the
proximity of aesthetic experience to spiritual enlightenment itself.
But while the muga of beauty is the muga of the moment (ichiji no
muga), the muga of religion is eternal muga (eiky no muga). It should
be pointed out that Nishidas fundamental distinction between the
temporary ecstasy of aesthetic experience as opposed to the eternal
ecstasy of religious experience is at once reminiscent of Schopenhauers
distinction between the momentary deliverance provided by artistic
detachment versus the everlasting salvation of nirvana or complete
spiritual resignation achieved at the level of sainthood. Hence in The
World as Will and Representation, Schopenhauer writes that the pure dis-
interested aesthetic contemplation of beauty by an artist does not de-
liver him from life for ever but only for a few moments (1958:I, 267).
Nishida then asserts that morality too derives originally from the
experience of muga. This claim is appropriate in that another standard
dictionary definition of muga is altruism, which is the moral impli-
cation of the term in its sense as selflessness or non-ego. Hence
Nishidas essay An Explanation of Beauty once again anticipates an
important theme from Art and Morality: in a chapter titled The Union
 Japanese Aesthetics 133
Point of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty (Shinzembi no gitsuten),
Nishida emphasizes that the fusion point for both art and morality is
the ecstatic experience of self-negation arising at the standpoint of
religious intuition. Toward the end of An Explanation of Beauty he
further argues that although morality originates in the same realm as
art and religionnamely, what he calls the Great Way of mugait
still belongs to the world of discrimination (sabetsukai) since the
idea of duty that is essential to morality is built on the distinction
between self and other as well as good and evil. Thus morality is still
not equal to the sublime realms of religion and art wherein the world
of discrimination is fully transcended. Yet, he concludes, when morality
advances to its highest degree there is no difference between the reli-
gious, artistic, and moral standpoints. Nishida concludes his essay as
follows:
If I may summarize what has been said above, the feeling of beauty is the
feeling of muga. Beauty that evokes this feeling of muga is intuitive truth
that transcends intellectual discrimination. This is why beauty is sub-
lime. As regards this point, beauty can be explained as the discarding of
the world of discrimination and the being one with the Great Way of
muga; it is really the same kind as religion. They only differ in the sense
of deep and shallow, great and small. The muga of beauty is the muga of
the moment, whereas the muga of religion is eternal muga. Although
morality also originally derives from the Great Way of muga, it still
belongs to the world of discrimination. . . . It does not yet reach the
sublime realms of religion and art. However, . . . when morality advances
and enters into religion, there is no difference between morality and
religion. [Odin 1987:217]
In the final analysis, the basic insight of Nishidas An Explanation of
Beauty is that while the spheres of art, religion, and morality differ
in extent as well as depth, thereby establishing a hierarchy of degrees
of values, they all originate ultimately from the same fundamental
experience of muga: ecstasy, non-ego, or selflessness.
Nishidas application of the term muga, or selflessness, to define
beauty throughout this essay clearly anticipates his Jamesian notion
of an egoless pure experience (junsui keiken) as developed in his first
published book, A Study of Good. Insofar as pure experience is under-
stood as an immediate experience (chokusetsu keiken) devoid of subject/
object bifurcation and empty of cognitive reflection, one can say that
beauty as muga or selflessness is a mode of pure experience. In his
mature philosophy Nishida would later reformulate his earlier notion
134 Artistic Detachment East and West
of pure experience in terms of mu no basho, the place of nothingness,
which is itself precisely the locus of muga, selflessness. Hence in this
way Nishidas description of the Kantian sense of beauty as disinter-
estedness from the standpoint of muga can be understood as an egoless
pure experience: the self is emptied and all events are seen just as they
are in the beauty of emptiness/suchness.
Nishidas An Explanation of Beauty clarifies a fundamental mean-
ing signified by Kants idea of aesthetic disinterestedness that is often
misunderstood by his critics: the relationship between selflessness and
disinterestedness in the experience of beauty. As demonstrated by
Jerome Stolnitz (1961a:132) in his study On the Origins of Aes-
thetic Disinterestedness, the historic occasion in which the concept
of aesthetic disinterestedness emerged was the polemic against self-
interest, egoism, and utilitarianism. Aesthetic disinterest implied from
the beginning a perception of a thing for its own sake, a perception
that is object-centered as opposed to self-centered (p. 138). And
while the idea of disinterestedness carried the sense of unselfishness
when opposed to egoism in ethics, in aesthetics it indicated more the
state of being selfless or impersonal (p. 138). Looking at the orig-
inal formulation of beauty as disinterested pleasure by Karl Philipp
Moritz, the aesthetic attitude of disinterestedness is again explicitly
defined in terms of self-forgetting:
As the beautiful object completely captivates our attention, it diverts our
attention momentarily from ourselves, with the effect that we seem to
lose ourselves in the beautiful object; and precisely this loss, this forget-
fulness of ourselves, is the highest stage of pure and disinterested pleasure
which beauty grants us. [Cited in Woodmansee 1984:3233; italics
added]

These aspects of aesthetic disinterestedness are emphasized by Nishida

Kitar when he describes Kants idea of beauty as a pleasure de-
tached from the ego (jiko o hanaretaru kairaku)further defined as a
pleasure of the moment, when one forgets ones own interest such as
advantage and disadvantage, gain and loss (Issin no rigai tokushitsu o
wasuretaru toki no kairaku). Moreover, Nishidas use of muga, or no-
self, likewise clarifies the deeper meaning of aesthetic disinterested-
ness in Kants theory as a selfless, detached, and impersonal contem-
plation of beauty.
On the Eastern side, Nishidas essay is a crystallization of muga as
the aesthetic attitude underlying the traditional Japanese sense of
 Japanese Aesthetics 135
beauty. As we shall see shortly, D. T. Suzuki identifies muga (no-self)
with mushin (no-mind) and then develops mushin as the mental atti-
tude of detached contemplation underlying Zen aestheticism in tradi-
tional Japanese culture. Likewise, Hisamatsu Shinichi identifies muga
(no-self) with mushin (no-mind) while restating both in terms of the
aesthetic attitude of disinterestedness (mukanshin) in Zen Buddhism,
which he relates in turn to the disinterested attitude of Kantian aes-
thetics. Traditional Japanese aesthetic categories like ygen, wabi, shi-
bumi, and sabi are all characterized by the disinterested aesthetic state
of muga (selflessness or non-ego). An example is provided by R. H.
Blyth (1981) in his classic study of haiku poetry, where he analyzes
Zen as it is related to the mind of the haiku poet under thirteen
headings, the first of which is Selflessness (p. 154). Blyth writes: It
is a condition of selflessness in which things are seen without profit or
loss (p. 155). He adds: The realization of the selflessness of things
comes through a realization of non ego, muga (p. 158). In this way
Blyths analysis clarifies the same relationships Nishida seeks to estab-
lish between the Zen Buddhist state of muga or selflessness and the
disinterested attitude free of all concern for gain and loss in the Japa-
nese sense of beauty.
Indeed, Nishidas quintessential expression of the Japanese sense of
beauty as rooted in muga or no-self is at the same time a clarification
of the Chinese sense of beauty formed through Taoist and Buddhist
worldviews as well as the earlier I Ching tradition. It should be recalled
how in his work titled Jen-chien Tzu-hua, Wang Kuo-wei articulates
the Chinese sense of beauty precisely in terms of the state of wu-wo
(J. muga), no-self (see Rickett 1977). Wang makes the fundamental
distinction between the state of no-self, or the impersonal state
(wu-wo chih ching), and the state of having self, or the personal
state (yu-wo chih ching). Furthermore, Wang defines the Chinese sense
of the beautiful (yu-mei) as being rooted in the state of no-self
(wu-wo chih ching) (Rickett 1977:1415, 26, 4041). The aesthetic
attitude of wu-wo is the egoless state of self-detachment in contrast
to yu-wo or the egocentric state of self-attachment. For Wang the
traditional Chinese sense of beauty as no-self or self-detachment rep-
resents a disinterested contemplative state of peaceful tranquility that
causes one to forget his personal interest . . . or stress of worldly cares
or desires (p. 13). From the standpoint of comparative aesthetics,
Wangs idea of the traditional Chinese sense of beauty as a function of
no-self or self-detachment is deeply influenced by Taoism and Bud-
136 Artistic Detachment East and West
dhism in the East as well as by Schopenhauer in the West (p. 13).
Hence just as for Nishida Kitar the traditional Japanese sense of
beauty is a function of muga, for Wang Kuo-wei the traditional Chi-
nese sense of beauty is a function of wu-wo: no-self, selflessness, or self-
detachment. Nishida Kitars view can finally be summed up with
the insight that the Japanese sense of beauty is to be defined as muga,
or no-self, which in Western terms approximates the Kantian idea of
beauty as a pleasure detached from the ego (jiko o hanaretaru kairaku).

Hisamatsu Shinichi: Zen Detachment and the Fine Arts

Hisamatsu Shinichi (18891980) graduated in 1918 with a doctorate
in philosophy from Kyoto Imperial University, where he studied
under the direct tutelage of Nishida Kitar. Through the influence
of Nishida, he began the study of Zen meditation at Myshinji Tem-
ple under Ikegami Roshi combined with a textual study of Zen Bud-
dhism as understood from the standpoint of Nishidas philosophy of
absolute nothingness. As a student of philosophy under Nishida
he studied the relation of Zen Buddhism to Western mysticism. A
collection of his works, Hisamatsu Shinichi chosakush (19691980),
includes Oriental Nothingness (1939), The Spirit of the Tea Ceremony (1948),
The Way of the Absolute Subject (1949), Mans Authentic Existence (1951),
and Zen and the Fine Arts (1958). After holding several earlier posi-
tions, Hisamatsu was appointed assistant professor at Kyoto Univer-
sity in 1937, where he taught Buddhist philosophy and religion until
his retirement in 1939. Hisamatsu is now regarded as a leading repre-
sentative of what has become known as the Kyoto school of modern
Japanese philosophy.
As can be seen from his bibliography, Hisamatsu combined an
expertise in the Zen philosophy of absolute nothingness with a strong
interest in Japanese Buddhist aesthetics. Apart from being one of the
foremost scholars of chanoyu with such works to his credit as The Spirit
of the Tea Ceremony (1948), Hisamatsu was also himself respected as a
tea master of distinction. Yet for purposes of the present study, Hisa-
matsus Zen and the Fine Arts (Zen to bijutsu) is of special relevance.
Since its translation into English in 1971, Hisamatsus Zen and the Fine
Arts has ranked alongside D. T. Suzukis Zen and Japanese Culture (1988)
as a standard introduction to Japanese Zen Buddhist aestheticism.
While Suzukis Zen and Japanese Culture underscores the central role of
mushin or no-mind in Zen Buddhist aestheticism, Hisamatsus Zen
and the Fine Arts explicitly articulates detachment as an essential
 Japanese Aesthetics 137
factor in all Zen art, including the famous paintings, poems, plays,
gardens, floral arrangements, ceramics, tea rituals, and other creations
springing from the Japanese religion of beauty. Hisamatsu in fact
underscores the identity between nonattachment and mushin or no-
mind in Zen Buddhist aesthetics. For Hisamatsu all Zen art is a
creative expression of absolute nothingness requiring a state of no-
mind characterized by its total nonattachment. Moreover, in this
work Hisamatsu discusses the Kantian sense of beauty as disinter-
ested (interesselos), pointing out both its similarities and differences
to the notion of disinterestedness (mukanshin) in Zen art. In the
following passage, translated from the Japanese edition of Zen and the
Fine Arts, Hisamatsu writes:
Art is said to be play (German: spielen) in contrast to work. It is said to
be, in the words of Kant, interesselos, meaning disinterested, without
practical interest. Of course, usually art is like this: an actor is not said to
have commited a murder only because he played the role of a murderer in
a play, nor does he receive accolades for having played the role of a
hero. . . . However, the manifestation of Zen is not this same kind of dis-
interested play, for it is a serious living activity. At the same time, this
active Zen expression does have its own kind of detachment which can be
described as an unrestricted freedom. This Zen disinterestedness is
quite different from the interesselos character of art because it derives from
the no-self (J. muga) or no-mind (J. mushin) nature of Zen. This
unrestricted freedom aspect of Zen should be called an artistic quality
of a higher level, as a kind of diversion not seen in ordinary theater arts.
Instead of the so-called disinterestedness of ordinary art, Zen is disinter-
ested even in actual life. It is a disinterested daily life, a practical life of
play, or as it were, a life-play. Herein may also be found the romanticism
of Zen. [1958:89]

According to Hisamatsu, then, there is a profound similarity between

the free play (spielen) and disinterested (interesselos) character of art
as conceived by the Kantian tradition of the West and the quality of
playfulness ( J. asobi) anddisinterestedness (J. mukanshin) in the
Zen Buddhist arts of East Asia. He also underscores an important dif-
ference between these two traditions, however, arguing that while the
disinterested play in Kants theory is confined to the autonomous realm
of the arts alone, Zen detachment is free of interest even in common
experience so as to be a disinterested actual life (mukanshin na jissen
seikatsu)a disinterested play of aesthetic delight in everyday exist-
ence that results in the total fusion of art and life. Furthermore, in
contrast to the interesselos or disinterested nature of beauty in Kants
138 Artistic Detachment East and West
formalist aesthetics, the mukanshin or disinterestedness of beauty in
Zen aestheticism has a quality of bottomless depths insofar as it is
rooted in what Nishida Kitar calls the muga or no-self dimension
of beauty and what D. T. Suzuki calls the mushin or no-mind
dimension of beauty in Zen Buddhist art and literature.
Hisamatsus remarks also clarify a basic insight of his teacher
Nishida Kitar as articulated in the latters essay An Explanation of
Beauty (Bi no setsumei). Nishida, after criticizing as inadequate
the idea of beauty as a selfish hedonic pleasure, goes on to affirm the
Kantian sense of beauty as a pleasure that is disinterested (interesse-
los). Nishida then proceeds to reformulate Kants notion of aesthetic
disinterestedness in terms of the Japanese Zen Buddhist sense of
beauty as muga, which again may be variously translated as ecstasy,
no-self, non-ego, or selflessness. In full accord with Nishidas
view, Hisamatsu says that the detachment or disinterestedness of Zen
art differs from the interesselos character of ordinary art insofar as it is
rooted in the no-self (muga) or no-mind (mushin) nature of Japa-
nese Zen Buddhism. Furthermore, as Hisamatsu elsewhere asserts in
Zen and the Fine Arts, this Zen state of muga or no-self is none other
than what he calls the fundamental subject of self-awareness (jikaku
no shutaisei) realized in Zen satori, or enlightenment (1958:51)
namely, the formless self (muso na jiko) understood as the subject
that is nothing (muteki shutai) (p. 55), a view he attributes to his
teacher Nishida Kitar (p. 54).
In another chapter of Zen and the Fine Arts called The Character-
istics of Zen Art (Zen geijutsu no seikaku), Hisamatsu enumerates
the seven characteristics of art in East Asian Zen Buddhism: These
Seven Characteristics are Asymmetry (fukinsei), Simplicity (kanso), Aus-
tere Sublimity (kk), Naturalness (shizen), Profound Darkness (ygen),
Detachment (datsuzoku), and Tranquility (seijaku) (1958:29). As is
apparent from this list, Hisamatsu enumerates detachment as an
essential characteristic of all Zen art. Hence what he previously dis-
cussed as the disinterested (mukanshin) or interesselos attitude of Zen
aestheticism is now analyzed in terms of the detachment (datsuzoku)
characterizing Zen art. Moreover, as he later clarifies, detachment is
inseparable from each of these other characteristics of Zen art. The
asymmetry and naturalness, for instance, are primary expressions of
detachment insofar as the latter denotes spontaneity or freedom from
convention. Simplicity and tranquility are qualities that nearly always
accompany the characteristic of detachment in a work of Zen art. More-
over, works of Zen art containing the traits of detachment, simplicity,
 Japanese Aesthetics 139
and tranquility are said to embody the aesthetic quality of profound
darkness (ygen): the ideal of beauty as mystery and hidden depths
that was most admired in medieval Japanese canons of taste.
Hisamatsu then considers each of these seven characteristics in
detail. In a section called Detachment (datsuzoku), he elucidates the
detached quality of Zen art as follows: The sixth characteristic of
detachment means, briefly stated, freedom from habit, convention,
custom, formula, rule, etc., that is, not being bound to things (1958:
34). Similar to the way Taoism undermines the Confucian principle of
li (ritual action) in terms of the spontaneity and naturalness of wu-wei
(letting-be), so Hisamatusu argues that it is only through detachment
from habit and convention that the Zen poet or painter can decondi-
tion experience and spontaneously recreate the landscape in novel
forms. In this section Hisamatsu emphasizes that detachment is a
fundamental characteristic of all cultural expressions of Zen and can
also be observed in the spontaneity and freedom from convention of a
Zen masters activities. Citing The Record of Lin-chi, Hisamatsu argues
that the Zen injunction When meeting a Buddha, kill the Buddha!
When meeting a Patriarch, kill the Patriarch! demonstrates that a
Zen master free of convention is utterly detached not only from worldly
things but also from the transcendent realm itself (p. 34). Hisamatsu
then applies the seven characteristics, including detachment, to the
great artworks in the tradition of East Asian Zen/Chan Buddhism. He
refers to inkwash paintings such as Hakuins Monkey and Sesshs
Winter, along with works of calligraphy such as Rykans Mind, Moon,
and Circle and Hakuins Mu, as Zen works of art in which the charac-
teristic of detachment is present to a remarkable degree (p. 35). And
in his analysis of selected plates he describes how detachment and the
other characteristics are embodied in famous examples of sumie ink-
wash painting, calligraphy, architecture, ikebana flower arrangement,
landscape gardening, crafts, n drama, the tea ceremony of chanoyu,
and other paradigms of Zen art in traditional Japanese culture (pp.
71106).
In his chapter What Is Zen? (Zen to wa nani ka), Hisamatsu
again discusses the seven characteristics of Zen art as they are rooted
in the formless self realized in Zen satori (sudden enlightenment). In
this context he further analyzes the characteristic of detachment (datsu-
zoku) as originating within the formless self as the subject of absolute
nothingness, which was discussed earlier in relation to Zen muga or
no-self as the ground of disinterestedness in Eastern art. Thus he
writes: The sixth characteristic, detachment, is also an important
140 Artistic Detachment East and West
aspect of the formless self (1958:65). He emphasizes that the form-
less self of absolute nothingness is completely detached in the sense of
not being attached to any formincluding both nonattachment to
self and nonattachment to external phenomena. It is through detach-
ment from all forms that Zen art shifts our attention away from objects
articulated in the foreground focus to the nonarticulated void of form-
less nothingness in the background field. Although concerned with
what has form, the subject of absolute nothingness remains formless
(p. 65). Thus the characteristic of detachment or freedom from all
form manifested by great works of Zen art ultimately has its source
in this formless self of absolute nothingness. In Hisamatsus words
(pp. 5859):
While Oriental culture may be described as a culture of Nothingness,
this Nothingness (mu) does not signify mere nonexistence or negation,
but instead refers to the Subject that is Absolutely and Actively
Nothing. . . . It is in the artistic expression of this Subject that is Abso-
lutely and Actively Nothing that we have the creation of a uniquely
Oriental art.

For Hisamatsu Shinichi, as for his teacher Nishida Kitar, Zen art in
Eastern culture is ultimately to be comprehended as a spontaneous
and creative expression springing from the bottomless depths of this
formless self: the subject that is absolutely nothing (zettaiteki na
muteki shutai). As stated by Hisamatsu in the preceding passage, the
nothingness (mu) of Zen Buddhism is not a relative nothingness or
nihilizing emptiness in the sense of a mere void of nonbeing and nega-
tion, but an absolute nothingness, or a dynamic, creative, and positive
emptiness that manifests all things in their particular suchness. Hisa-
matsu thus develops his Zen philosophy of art in the context of the
Kyoto schools metaphysics of nothingness with its underlying Bud-
dhist psychology of nonattachment wherein the eternalistic standpoint
of being, characterized by self-attachment, is emptied into the nihil-
istic standpoint of relative nothingness, characterized by attachment
to nothingness itself, which is then emptied into absolute nothing-
ness, characterized by complete detachment as the middle way be-
tween eternalism and nihilism. According to Hisamatsu Shinichi,
then, the art and literature of Zen Buddhist aestheticism manifest the
detached, tranquil, and serene beauty of profound mystery as a spon-
taneous expression of formless nothingness, which requires both for
its creation and its appreciation a disinterested mental attitude char-
acterized by total nonattachment.
 Japanese Aesthetics 141

D. T. Suzuki: The Zen Doctrine of No-Mind

Although Buddhist historians now debate whether Zen/Chan Bud-
dhism was introduced to China by the legendary Bodhidharma, it
cannot be doubted that Zen Buddhist philosophy, meditation, and
aesthetics were introduced to the West by D. T. Suzuki (18701966).
In works like The Zen Doctrine of No-Mind Suzuki argues that the cen-
tral teaching to be found in the Platform Sutra attributed to Hui-neng
(J. En), the legendary sixth patriarch of Zen/Chan Buddhism, is the
doctrine of no-mind (mushin) or no-thought (munen). He further
demonstrates how no-mind itself represents the mental state of total
nonattachment. Moreover, in Zen and Japanese Culture he shows how
the detached tranquility of no-mind functions as the aesthetic attitude
underlying the Zen-influenced art and literature of Japan. Suzuki
writes that the main purpose of Zen and Japanese Culture is to show the
role that Zen Buddhism has played in the molding of Japanese cul-
ture and character, especially as exhibited in the arts generally and
particularly in the development of Bushido (1988:18). He maintains
that the satori of Zen and the arts of traditional Japanese culture are
deeply related insofar as they have a common source in the nonattach-
ment of mushin (no-mind). Hence the central thesis that Suzuki puts
forward in Zen and Japanese Culture is that mushin [no-mind] . . . is
where all arts merge into Zen (p. 94). Suzuki clarifies how the de-
tached, tranquil, unconscious, and empty-minded state of mushin is
the mental attitude required to master the martial art of swordsman-
ship (p. 111) as well as the Zen tradition of literature and art (p. 220),
including haiku poetry, n drama, sumie inkwash painting, and chanoyu
(the tea ceremony). Suzuki (p. 220) holds that all great works of Zen
Buddhist art and literature manifest the beauty of ygen, profound
mystery, and that the ultimate source from which ygen arises is the
unconscious depths of mushin (no-mind). Hence, like the other Japa-
nese thinkers considered here, Suzuki describes how the Japanese atmo-
spheric sense of beauty is rooted in a psychological state, mental
attitude, or mode of attention that is cultivated through Buddhist
meditation.
The Zen doctrine of no-mind articulated by D. T. Suzuki has been
used throughout the history of Japanese aesthetics to denote the
mental attitude of artistic detachment required for both the creation
and the enjoyment of beauty. Here I refer to the scholarship of Richard
Pilgrim (1981:47), who points out the common use of mushin in the
Japanese Buddhist religio-aesthetic tradition of geid, or tao of art, to
142 Artistic Detachment East and West
signify a detached, empty, and tranquil mind. Yusa Michiko (1987:
342344) describes Zeamis use of the Zen concept of mushin to sig-
nify the aesthetic satori-mind of riken no ken, the seeing of detached
perception, which is the mental attitude of artistic detachment culti-
vated both by the spectator and the actor during the perfomance of a
n drama. Hisamatsu Shinichi (1958:89) likewise argues that the
disinterestedness (mukanshin) or detachment (datsuzoku) character-
izing the aesthetic attitude cultivated in traditional Zen art and liter-
ature has its basis in the egoless state of mushin: no-mind. Suzukis work
thus brings to light the Zen doctrine of no-mind as one of the major
theories of artistic detachment to have emerged in the history of Japa-
nese Buddhist aesthetics.

Life and Writings. Daisetz Tetitaro Suzuki was born in Kanazawa,

where at high school he became classmates and lifelong friends with
Nishida Kitar. At the age of twenty-one he was influenced by Nishida
to enter Tokyo Imperial University and at the same time began training
at Engakuji, a Rinzai Zen Buddhist monastery in Kamakura, under
the direction of Kosen Roshi. From 1897 to 1909 he lived abroad as
an editor and translator in the United States. Upon his return to Japan
in 1909 he became a lecturer at Tokyo Imperial University. In 1921
he moved to Kyoto to take the chair of professor of Buddhist philoso-
phy at Otani University and began publication of The Eastern Buddhist.
From 1951 to 1958 he again lived abroad in America and Europe. In
his final years he returned to Japan where he died, in Kamakura, at
the age of ninety-five. Suzukis writings comprise almost ninety titles
in Japanese and over thirty volumes in English. Aside from his research
into Zen he is known for his contributions to Mahayana Buddhism in
general, including studies on Kegon (Skt. Avatamsaka; Ch. Hua-yen),
Yogacara, and Pure Land Buddhism, the Gandavyuha and Lankavatara
sutras, Christian-Buddhist comparative mysticism, and traditional
Japanese culture. Suzukis Buddhist scholarship is grounded on his
study of texts in the original Pali, Sanskrit, Chinese, and Japanese lan-
guages as well as Western sources in French, German, and English. To
his interpretation of Zen Buddhism Suzuki brought not only a broad
knowledge of Western philosophy, psychology, and Christian mysti-
cism but also familiarity with the modern syncretic Japanese philos-
ophy of Nishida Kitar and the Kyoto school. It is often said that
Suzukis writings on Zen were inspired by his own experience of
satori or sudden enlightenment. In an autobiographical essay, Early
Memories (see Abe 1986:1112), Suzuki recounts his dramatic
 Japanese Aesthetics 143
experience of satori at Engakuji in December 1895 after five years of
intensive training in zazen.
Suzukis English-language works focusing specifically on Zen Bud-
dhism include such classic titles as Essays in Zen Buddhism (1933), An
Introduction to Zen Buddhism (1934), The Training of the Zen Buddhist
Monk (1934), Manual of Zen Buddhism (1935), Zen Buddhism and Its
Influence on Japanese Culture (1938), The Zen Doctrine of No-Mind (1949),
Living by Zen (1949), Studies in Zen (1955), Zen and Japanese Buddhism
(1958), Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis (1960), Zen and Japanese Cul-
ture (1959), The Field of Zen (1969), and What Is Zen? (1971) as well
as several edited volumes of selected writings such as Zen Buddhism
(1956) and The Essentials of Zen Buddhism (1962). As shown by the
testimonials from Abes A Zen Life: D. T. Suzuki Remembered (1986),
Suzukis writings exerted a deep and lasting influence on Western
advocates of Zen including Thomas Merton, Alan Watts, Philip Kap-
leau, and Robert Aitken, along with the San Francisco Renaissance
poets and novelists of the Beat Zen movement such as Jack Kerouac
and others. In Japan he strongly influenced Nishida Kitar and other
Kyoto school thinkers like Torataro Shimomura, Nishitani Keiji, Hisa-
matsu Shinichi, and Abe Masao. It is significant that Nishida Kitars
maiden work, Zen no kenky (1911), first translated into English by
V. H. Viglielmo as A Study of Good, is prefaced with an introduction by
D. T. Suzuki, who underscores the Zen basis of Nishidas philosophy
of pure experience and absolute nothingness articulated through a logic
of paradox.
Yet Suzukis works on Zen Buddhism in general and his writings
about the influence of Zen on Japanese culture in particular have been
strongly criticized on various points by Japanese and Western scholars
alike. As discussed by Fujioka Daisetz (1994:247250), the first crit-
ical assault leveled against Suzukis Zen Buddhism and Its Influence on
Japanese Culture was developed by Umehara Takeshi in the August
1966 issue of the journal Vision. First Umehara attacks Suzukis one-
sided emphasis on Zen and to a lesser extent Pure Land as the inspira-
tion underlying Japanese spirituality while neglecting Shintoism as
well as other Buddhist schools like Shingon, Tendai, and Nichiren
Buddhism. Umehara argues that although Suzuki emphasizes the
peaceful and compassionate nature of Zen spirituality he nonetheless
reveals a tendency toward militarism throughout his essays on Zen
and the samurai warrior. He also criticizes Suzukis failure to speak
out against Japanese militarism during World War II. Following Ume-
hara various scholars have criticized Suzukis writings on Zen Buddhism
144 Artistic Detachment East and West
and its influence on Japanese spirituality for its romanticized, ideal-
ized, and mythologized presentation of Zen. Some have undermined
Suzukis evangelical, missionary, and popularizing approach to Zen
while others criticize his works as being insufficiently historical,
philosophical, and rational. Peter Dale (1986) launches an ideology
critique against Suzukis Zen and Japanese Culture for its aesthetically
camouflaged militarism developed under the subterfuge of artistic,
moral, and spiritual ideals. He further criticizes Suzukis work for its
nationalism, cultural narcissism, and ethnic chauvinism insofar as it
represents a text in the genre of nihonjinron (studies of Japanese iden-
tity), which propagates the myth of Japanese uniqueness. Abe Masao,
summarizing various critical reactions toward Suzukis writings, points
out that Suzuki presented only Rinzai Zen, neglecting the important
stream of Soto Zen, including its remarkable Japanese promulgator,
Dogen (1986:112). Despite these and other legitimate complaints,
Suzukis Zen and Japanese Culture remains a classic treatment on the
subject of Zen aestheticism and its influence on traditional Japanese
spirituality.

Suzuki on Buddhist Detachment. In his chapter History of Zen Bud-

dhism in China from Bodhidharma to the Sixth Patriarch (Hui-Nng),
contained in Essays on Zen Buddhism, Suzuki underscores the central
importance of the doctrine of nonattachment in the Buddhist idea
of emanciation throughout all its phases of development:

As I have repeatedly illustrated, Buddhism, whether primitive or devel-

oped, is a religion of freedom and emancipation, and the ultimate aim of
its discipline is to release the spirit from its possible bondage so that it
can act freely in accordance with its own principles. This is what is meant
by non-attachment (apratishtita-cittam). [1927:I, 161]

He goes on to say that emancipation through nonattachment has both

negative and positive meanings. Whereas in its negative aspect it
means detachment from the ego, passions, senses, and intellect, in its
positive aspect it means return to the original nature of mind. For
Suzuki, the positive, affirmative, or antinihilistic view of Zen Bud-
dhism is finally realized in the Platform Sutra attributed to Hui-neng:
We can say that Zen has come to its own consciousness by Hui-nng.
. . . How then did Hui-nng understand Zen? According to him, Zen
was the seeing into ones own Nature. This is the most significant
phrase ever coined in the development of Zen Buddhism (1927:I,
 Japanese Aesthetics 145
203). As Suzuki understands Hui-nengs teachings, kensh or seeing
into ones own nature specificially means realization of mushin: no-
mind. Thus Suzuki finds the apex of Buddhism in the Zen doctrine of
no-mind.
Suzuki analyzes the Zen doctrine of no-mind in such works as
Mushin to iu koto (On No-Mind, 1939) and The Zen Doctrine of
No-Mind: The Significance of the Sutra of Hui-Neng (1949). For Suzuki
the Zen doctrine of no-mind (J. mushin; Ch. wu-hsin) sums up the
basic teachings of no-thought (J. munen; Ch. wu-nien), nonform
(J. mus; Ch. wu-hsiang), and nonabiding (J. muj; Ch. wu-chu) ex-
pressive of total nonattachment, nonclinging, and nongrasping as
propounded in the Platform Sutra. Suzuki maintains that the enlight-
enment of satori is characterized by the psychological state of mushin,
or no-mind, which is in turn grounded in the epistemology of nondis-
criminating prajn-intuition and the metaphysics of nyat (J. k):
emptiness. From the standpoint of depth psychology, Suzuki further
describes mushin as the unconscious and describes its realization in
satori as superconsciousness arising through consciousness of the un-
conscious, or what he also calls the cosmic unconscious.
Suzuki presents the Zen doctrine of no-mind from the perspectives
of both theory and practice in Living by Zen: Zen has several names
for satori. . . . Some of them are the mind that has no abode, the
mind that owns nothing, . . . the unattached mind, mindlessness,
thoughtlessness (1949b:75). Rephrasing the same constellation of
ideas from the Zen doctrine of no-mind as presented in the Platform
Sutra, Zen satori is here described in such terms as mindlessness
(= no-mind) or mushin, thoughtlessness (= no-thought) or munen,
and the mind that has no abode (= nonabiding) or mujall of
which are synonymous with the unattached mind (= nonattachment).
Suzuki underscores the primary importance of understanding Zen
enlightenment as mushin or mindlessness while at the same time
underscoring its meaning as nonattachment to forms and concepts:
Zen is most emphatic in its insistence on mindlessness. . . . To clear
consciousness of any trace of attachment to the mind-concepts, Zen
proposes various practical methods (p. 76). The following method by
Daushyu Yekai, a disciple of Baso, is then presented to induce the
state of mindlessness through nonabiding or nonattachment:

If you wish to have a clear insight into the mind that has no abode, you
have it at the very moment when you are sitting. . . . Things that are at
this moment before your mind are already here. What is important in
146 Artistic Detachment East and West
regard to things generally is not to get attached to them. When the mind
is not attached, it raises no thoughts of love or hate, and the present mind
will disappear by itself with all its contents. [p. 76]

Hence like the Buddhist technique of shikan (Pali: samatha-vipassana)

or tranquility and insight, the practitioner of Zen is here instructed
to enter the state of mindlessness by observing present mental con-
tents with equanimity, calmness, and detachment, thereby to eradi-
cate all mental perturbations arising from habitual blind reactions of
love and hate, attraction and repulsion, or craving and aversion.
In The Zen Doctrine of No-Mind, first published in 1949, Suzuki
emphasizes that the key teaching of the Platform Sutra attributed to
Hui-neng is no-thought (munen) or its synonymous term, no-mind
(mushin) (1990:57). Mushin and munen signify no-consciousness and
are therefore to be translated as the unconscious (p. 57). No-mind
and no-self are described as Hui-nengs seeing into ones self-nature,
which is itself seeing into nothingness (p. 30), which is the mind of
nonattachment, including detachment from the mind as well as de-
tachment from concepts and all other mental contents. The basic point
throughout his analysis is that no-mind sums up Hui-nengs triad of
nonthought (munen), nonform (mus), and nonabiding (muj) while at
the same time emphasizing how all three principles signify the empty,
calm, and undisturbed mind of total nonattachment. According to
Suzuki, no-mind indicates that the mind is altogether detached from
form, which also means detachment from the mind itself; and this is a
state of wu-nien [ J. munen], no-thought-ness (p. 102). Suzuki quotes
from Hui-neng, who asserts: What is wu-nien, no-thought-ness? See-
ing all things and yet to keep your mind free from stain and attach-
ment, this is no-thought-ness (p. 126). Again, Hui-neng is quoted as
saying: One who understands this truth is wu-nien (without thought)
. . . and wu-chao (without attachment) (p. 79). This means that no-
thought/no-mind is to see things but remain detached from them.
Suzuki states: Mushin [no-mind], or munen [no-thought], is prima-
rily derived from muga [no-self], wu-wo, antman, no-ego, selfless-
ness, which is the principal conception of Buddhism (p. 120). As
defined here, then, no-mind is to be comprehended as detachment
from ego.
Suzuki cites Hui-nengs explanation of nonform as detachment
from forms: By formlessness is meant to be in form and yet to be
detached from it (p. 58). Hui-neng describes the no-thought state of
praj-insight as engagement of the six senses with total detachment:

when
 Japanese Aesthetics 147
When you have emancipation, this means that you are in the Sama-
dhi of Praj, which is munen (no-thought-ness). . . . When used, it
pervades everywhere, and yet shows no attachment anywhere (p.
127). The third principle of nonabiding is likewise explained through
nonattachment as follows: If you wish to understand when the mind
comes to realize the moment of non-abiding, sit in the right medita-
tion posture, and purge your mind thoroughly of thoughts . . . have
no attachments to them. Not to have attachment means not to rouse
any feeling of hate and love (p. 66). Realization of no-mind through
meditation requires detachment and equanimity by observing mental
contents without blind reactions of love and hate, liking and dislik-
ing, craving and aversion, sympathy and antipathy. Hui-neng is again
cited as defining the process of dhyna (J. zen; Ch. chan) or meditation
by which insight into no-mind is achieved as nonattachment to inner
mind and outer form: Dhyna (tso-chan) is not to get attached to the
mind. . . . When outwardly a man is attached to form, his inner mind
is disturbed. But when outwardly he is not attached to form, his mind
is not disturbed (p. 33). The examples can be multiplied without
end. The main point is that Suzuki understands no-mind/no-thought
as the central teaching of Hui-nengs Zen/Chan Buddhism while defin-
ing no-mind as nonattachment, including detachment from the mind,
ego, self, form, thought, passion, desire, and the six senses. Yet Hui-
nengs Zen doctrine of no-mind is not a nihilistic theory of quietism.
It is the insight into ones own self-nature as mushin where the mind is
undisturbed in immovable praj-wisdom insofar as it enjoys the aes-
thetic world of forms but remains detached from them in a state of
equanimity without craving or aversion.

Suzukis Doctrine of No-Mind. The most popular work in Suzukis

extensive corpus of writings is no doubt Zen and Japanese Culture. And
since the time of its publication, it has become the standard introduc-
tion to Zen aestheticism. When Suzuki published Zen Buddhism and
Its Influence on Japanese Culture in 1938, it created a sensation in the
West. In 1940 it was translated into Japanese by Kitagawa Mom
and was widely read in Japan. Then, in 1959, a revised and enlarged
version of this work was published under the present title, Zen and
Japanese Culture. Whereas Suzukis other writings concentrate on Zen
philosophy, meditation, and enlightenment, this work focuses on how
the spirit of Zen influenced Japanese aesthetic ideals and their em-
bodiment in the various arts and crafts of traditional Japanese culture.
From the theoretical standpoint this work represents an application of
148 Artistic Detachment East and West
the Zen doctrine of no-mind to traditional Japanese culture. Its thesis
is that no-mind, the mind of nonattachment, is the aesthetic attitude
underlying the creation and enjoyment of beauty.
Suzukis Zen and Japanese Culture describes the Eastern cult of Zen
aestheticism, understood as a concentrated expression of Japanese
spirituality. According to the Zen hierarchy of values, the aesthetic
dimensions of life are given priority over the moral and cognitive
dimensions. For Zen aestheticism: Art impulses are more primitive
or more innate than those of morality. The appeal of art goes more
directly into human nature. . . . Morality is regulative, art is creative.
. . . Zen may remain unmoral but not without art (1988:27). Here
Suzuki openly admits that despite all rhetoric about bodhisattvas of
compassion, Zen does not sustain any moral position and remains
immoralbeyond good and evil. Moreover, Zen is a religion of beauty
wherein aesthetic and spiritual values are identical. Hence in Zen
Buddhism: Aestheticism . . . merges into religion (p. 355). For Suzuki
there is at once a close analogy between the creative artist and the Zen
practitioner: The artists world is one of free creation, and this can
come on from intuitions directly and immediately rising from the
isness of things. . . . To this extent, the artists world coincides with
that of Zen (p. 17). But he continues: What differentiates Zen from
the arts is this: While the artists have to resort to the canvas and
brush . . . Zen has no need of things external. . . . What Zen does is to
delineate itself on the infinite canvas of time and space (p. 17).
Hence the ultimate goal of Zen aestheticism is not the creation of
external artworks such as inkwash painting, poetry, or drama but the
creative transformation of ones own everyday life into a work of art:
The Zen-man is an artist to the extent that, as the sculptor chisels
out a great figure deeply buried in a mass of inert matter, the Zen-
man transforms his own life into a work of creation (p. 17).
In the Japanese cult of Zen aestheticism, the creative transforma-
tion of life into art requires cultivation of a mental attitude of con-
templative detachment. Suzuki asserts that Zen teaches a form of
detachment (1988:347). Yet here as elsewhere he underscores the
point that Zen detachment does not result in nihilism in the sense of
a life-denying or world-negating attitude of renunciation. Instead it
leads to a higher affirmation through an aesthetic and religious
insight into facts in their emptiness in the positive sense of their con-
crete particular suchness, thisness, or isness. Throughout Zen and
Japanese Culture he expresses the mental attitude of artistic detachment
as expressed through the profound mystery of ygen, the spiritual
 Japanese Aesthetics 149
poverty of wabi, the impersonal loneliness of sabi, and the windblown
elegance of fry. For instance, he describes the Zen intuition of
beauty in nature through disinterested contemplation by means of the
religio-aesthetic ideal of fry (windblown elegance), which the haiku
poet Bash identified as the spirit pervading the arts and crafts of
Japan: Such a disinterested enjoyment of Nature . . . is known as fry,
and those without this feeling of fry are classed among the most
uncultured in Japan. The feeling is not merely aesthetical, it has also
a religious significance (p. 81). He adds that this disinterested aes-
thetic enjoyment of beauty in nature represented by the nonclinging,
nonabiding, and nonattached spirit of fry is expressed in its deepest
form through the extreme artistic detachment of the Zen/Chan death
poem or parting-with-life verse:
It is perhaps the same [disinterested] mental attitude that has created the
custom among cultured Japanese of writing a verse in either Japanese or
Chinese at the moment of death. The verse is known as the parting-
with-life verse. The Japanese have been taught and trained to be able to
find a moments leisure to detach themselves from the intensest excite-
ments in which they may happen to be placed. Death is the most serious
affair absorbing all ones attention, but the cultured Japanese think they
ought to be able to transcend it and view it objectively. [p. 82]

Discussing Japanese aware or sad beauty in relation to Buddhist muj

or impermanence, Suzuki states: Evanescent glory has appealed very
much to the Japanese imagination . . . beauty is something momentary
and ever-fleeting (p. 381). He further relates the Japanese aesthetic
of perishability to the mental attitude of nonattachment cultivated by
Zen Buddhism: Changeability itself is frequently the object of admi-
ration [and] is associated with the virtue of non-attachment, which is
characteristically Buddhistic as well as an aspect of Japanese character
(p. 380).
At the core of Suzukis treatment of Japanese aesthetics is the Zen
doctrine of no-mind. For Suzuki the Japanese sense of beauty is itself
ultimately rooted in the psychological state that Zen Buddhism calls
mushin: no-mind, empty mind, mu mind, or mindlessness. He
maintains that Zen ideals of beauty in the medieval Japanese canons
of taste such as ygen (profound mystery), wabi (rustic poverty), sabi
(loneliness), and fga/fry (windblown elegance) are all to be analyzed
as a function of the egolessness and no-mind-ness of mushin. The Zen
experience of satori (enlightenment) as well as its multivariate expres-
sion in the arts and crafts of traditional Japanese culture all have the
150 Artistic Detachment East and West
psychological state of mushin as their common basis. Suzuki articu-
lates the detached Zen state of mushin as the unifying principle whereby
Zen fuses with art:
Mere technical knowledge of an art is not enough to make a man really
its master, he ought to have delved deeply into the inner spirit of it. This
spirit is grasped only when his mind is in complete harmony with the
principle of life itself, that is, when he attains to a certain state of mind
known as mushin, no-mind. In Buddhist phraseology, it means going
beyond the dualism of all forms of life and death, good and evil, being
and non-being. This is where all arts merge into Zen. [1988:94]

Suzuki analyzes no-mind as the psychological state of Zen satori as

well as the mental attitude underlying the various arts of traditional
Japanese culture including the military art of swordsmanship as
explicated in the writings of Zen master Takuan along with the variety
of fine arts like the n drama of Zeami, the haiku poetry of Bash, the
sumie painting of Sessh, and the chanoyu (tea ceremony) of Sen no
Rikky. In Zen and Japanese Culture, Suzuki again reaffirms his view
that the Zen doctrine of no-mind is the key teaching to be found in
the Platform Sutra: Mushin (wu-hsin) or munen (wu-nien) is one of the
most important ideas in Zen. . . . En (Hui-neng), the sixth patriarch
of Zen, emphasizes munen (or mushin) as most essential in the study of
Zen. When it is attained, a man becomes a Zen-man (1988:111n.).
The Zen doctrine of no-mind encapsulates Hui-nengs three principles
of no-thought, nonform, and nonabidingall of which denote a state
of emancipation through complete nonattachment. He defines no-
mind as follows: The Heavenly Way is above the self, which is mushin,
no-mind, or munen, no-thought. When mushin is realized, the mind
knows no obstructions, no inhibitions, and is emancipated from
thoughts of life and death, gain and loss, victory and defeat (p. 133).
Here mushin is described as a disinterested state insofar as it is has no
regard for self-interest in personal gain or loss. In this context Suzuki
then suggests a relation between mushin and Lao-tzus Taoist attitude
of wu-wei: doing by nondoing (p. 133). He also notes the similarity
between the no-mind-ness, empty-mind-ness, and egolessness of mushin
in Zen Buddhism and Chuang-tzus Taoist idea of mind-fasting
(shin-sai) (p. 148).
Furthermore, Suzuki emphasizes that while ushin is the conscious
mind attached to the ego, mushin or no-mind is the unconscious,
which is detached from the ego. He notes: The swordsman calls this
unconscious the mind that is no-mind (mushin no shin) (1988:147).
 Japanese Aesthetics 151
And he adds that the no-mind (mushin) is identical with everyday
mind (heij-shin) (p. 147). No-mind or the unconscious is everyday
mind as the effortless, natural, spontaneous, and pre-self-conscious
mind that eats when hungry, drinks when thirsty, and sleeps when
tired. In this context Suzuki translates passages from Takuans essay
The Mind of No-Mind (Mushin no Shin) to clarify how the Zen
doctrine of no-mind underlies the military art of swordsmanship (p.
111). According to Takuan the Zen swordman must shift from the
conscious mind (ushin no shin) to the unconscious, spontaneous, tran-
quil, empty, and detached mind of mushin no shin, the mind of no-
mind. For this reason Suzuki asserts: Takuan strongly emphasizes
the significance of mushin, which may be regarded in a way as corre-
sponding to the concept of the unconscious (p. 94). This radical shift
of attention from mind to no-mind is to be understood both in tem-
poral and in spatial categories. From the temporal perspective Takuan
writes that in Zen Buddhism ignorance (avidy) or nonenlightenment
means the abiding stage where the mind attaches itself to any object
it encounters. This attaching is known as tomaru, stopping or abiding.
The mind stops with one object instead of flowing from one object to
another (cited in Suzuki 1988:95). The nonattaching, nonabiding,
nonclinging, enlightened state of mushin (no-mind) and munen (no-
thought), by contrast, is always flowing without stoppage: When
mushin or munen is attained, the mind moves from one object to
another, flowing like a stream of water (cited in Suzuki 1988:111).
From the spatial perspective Takuan asserts that while the conscious
mind of ushin no shin is localized and so directs the mind or attention
to a specific focal point (the sword, the opponent, the act of striking,
the hara center in the lower abdomen), the unconscious state of no-
mind or mushin no shin is instead nonlocalized as an unfocused state of
attention that fills up the whole of ones being and flows freely as it is
needed (pp. 105106). Takuan ends his essay by stating that the art of
swordsmanship must be rooted in the experience of satori, which is
based on a psychology of mushin, or no-mind, and which in turn is
grounded in the Buddhist metaphysics of k, emptiness (p. 113).
Suzuki next goes on to apply the Zen doctrine of no-mind to the
fine arts of drama, poetry, painting, and the tea ceremony. While dis-
cussing the role of no-mind-ness in the arts of swordsmanship, he
identifies mushin (no-mind) and munen (no-thought) with muga (no-
self), arguing that this is also the psychological state underlying the
aesthetic ideal of sabi or impersonal loneliness in Japanese poetics:
This state of mind is also known as egolessness (muga or non-tman).
152 Artistic Detachment East and West
. . . The so-called spirit of sabi-shiori (solitariness), running through
Saigy or Bash, must also have come from the psychic state of ego-
lessness (1988:127). It should be noted that by grounding aesthetic
experience in the egoless state of muga while at the same time identi-
fying egolessness with no-mind-ness, Suzuki at once approximates
the view of Nishida Kitar (see Odin 1987) when he defines the Japa-
nese sense of beauty as muga.
Suzuki makes an analogy between the experience of satori and the
creation and enjoyment of beauty in the fine arts of Japan: This
supreme moment in the life of an artist, when expressed in Zen terms,
is the experience of satori. To experience satori is to become conscious
of the Unconscious (mushin, no-mind), psychologically speaking. Art
has always something of the Unconscious about it (1988:220). After
Suzukis Introduction to Zen Buddhism (1938) was republished in 1948
with a new foreword by C. G. Jung, Suzuki restated mushin in terms of
depth psychology as the unconscious, or what he also calls the cosmic
unconscious, and satori or enlightenment as the superconscious where
consciousness opens to the unconscious. He relates the Zen satori-
flash of clear insight into mushin or no-mind as the unconscious well-
spring of artistic creativity to the medieval Japanese Buddhist aesthetic
ideal of ygen (mystery and depth): My is sometimes called ygen . . .
in Japanese literature. Some critics state that all great works of art
embody in them ygen. . . . Where satori flashes there is the tapping of
creative energy; where creative energy is felt art breathes my and
ygen (1988:220). For Suzuki, then, art resonates with the profound
mystery of ygen when it springs from satoriwhich is seeing into
ones original Buddha nature as mushin or no-mind, the bottomless
depths of the unconscious functioning as the infinite reservoir of
creative potentiality. Hence, just as for Shunzei, the mysterious beauty
of ygen is apprehended through the contemplative detachment of
shikan, tranquility and insight, and for Zeami it is directly experi-
enced with the aesthetic attitude of riken no ken, the seeing of de-
tached perception, and for Suzuki it is realized in the psychological
state of mushin, no-mind, the cosmic unconsciousthe precon-
scious, spontaneous, natural state of nonattachment.
Suzukis doctrine of mushin or no-mind has a long history in Japa-
nese aesthetics and has been widely used in the various arts and crafts
that developed under the aegis of Zen. In Japanese aesthetics, gener-
ally speaking, the term mushin is used to represent the mental atti-
tude of artistic detachment functioning as the source underlying the
creation, performance, and enjoyment of beauty as ygen (mystery and
 Japanese Aesthetics 153
depth). In Buddhism and the Arts of Japan Richard Pilgrim (1981:47)
notes that the deepening of the Zen Buddhist dimensions of art that
can be observed after the Heian period is to be found in the shift away
from an emphasis on the beauty of things to the state of mind of
the artist. Pilgrim points out that the state of mind cultivated by the
Zen arts in the Japanese Buddhist religio-aesthetic tradition of geid
(the tao of art) is often described through the category of mushin, no-
mind. In this context he makes reference to D. T. Suzukis view (1988:
220) that mushin is the fusion point where Zen merges with art.
Furthermore, he emphasizes that in the religio-aesthetic tradition of
geidthe way of the artistthe concept of mushin specifically denotes
a mental attitude of tranquil detachment. Pilgrim asserts: Mushin
appears in many of the Way arts, especially those coming under the
influence of Zen in the Muromachi Period . . . mushin in the [Zen] arts
is closely related to the tranquil, detached but aware mind (p. 47).
This use of mushin to indicate a mental attitude of artistic detachment
in the tradition of Zen aestheticism is summed up by Pilgrim (p. 47)
as follows:
Among these [Japanese aesthetic] notions there is one which is found
in several artistic traditions. This is the Buddhist state of mind mushin
(no-mind, mu-mind). Whatever this terms meaning within an orthodox
Buddhist context, in the arts the word represents the unintending,
unconscious, non-attached, spontaneous mind.

In the medieval period of Japanese aesthetics, the Zen Buddhist con-

cept of mushin was explicitly and systematically developed as a theory
of artistic detachment in the n drama of Zeami Motokiyo (1363
1443). As clarified especially by Yusa Michiko, in Zeamis n drama
the aesthetic attitude of artistic detachment is expressed through the
concept of riken no ken, the seeing of detached perception (1987:
331345). Moreover, for Zeami the artistic detachment of riken no ken
is identified with the Zen state of mushin (no-mind): According to
the Zen doctrine of mushin, or no-mind, the original state of the mind
is pure, devoid of any self-reflection. . . . Riken no ken as no-mind, or
the pre-self-conscious mind, is the seat of aesthetic delight (p. 342).
In this context Yusa identifies D. T. Suzukis understanding of mushin
as the unconscious and Zeamis understanding of the term: What
Suzuki calls unconscious is the pre-self-conscious phase of mind [in
Zeamis n theory] (p. 341n). Explaining riken no ken, the seeing of
detached perception, is itself rooted in Zen mushin and satori in Zeamis
aesthetics of the n drama: Zeamis insight into riken no ken is the in-
154 Artistic Detachment East and West
sight into the nature of aesthetic sensation, perception, and apprecia-
tion. Riken no ken is rooted in the reality of the primordial mind,
mushin, the idea so cherished by Zen, and it is enacted by the satori-
mind (p. 344). She adds: Riken no ken is nothing but the aesthetic
satori-mind exercised in the theatrical art (p. 341). Once again she
directly connects Zeamis understanding of satori, mushin, and riken no
ken to D. T. Suzukis doctrine of no-mind in relation to Japanese aes-
thetics (p. 341n). Zeamis treatise Kyi (ca. 1428) discusses the nine
ranks of n plays and the skills of the n actor and names the highest
stage of art as mykaf, the art of the inexpressibly wondrous flower.
The ninth and highest stage is described as the level where the n
actor moves no-mind (mushin no kan) or the audiences own highly
refined aesthetic attitude of riken or artistic detachment. Yusa thus
writes:

It was through the attention he paid to the audience that Zeami devel-
oped his insight into the nature of riken no ken, which he made into a
principle governing the mental attitude that the actor should cultivate in
order to become a true master of his art. In Ygaku Shd Fden, ca. 1424,
Zeami tied this initially practical insight with the Buddhist notion of
nyat (k), or emptiness, and mushin, the primordial mind or no-
mind, the mind clear of conceptualization and images. In this way, the
epistemology of noh became closely connected with Buddhist intuition
and sensibility in general, and that of Zen in particular. [p. 333]

In Zeamis n theory, the aesthetic attitude of riken no ken, the seeing

of detached perception, is therefore rooted in the Zen psychology of
mushin or no-mind, its underlying Buddhist metaphysics of nyat
(J. k), emptiness, and its actualization through the satori-mind of
enlightenment.
Finally, I would like to point out the close relation between D. T.
Suzukis Zen doctrine of no-mind and the view of Hisamatsu Shinichi,
who in his interpretation of Japanese Buddhist aesthetics explicitly
develops the Zen concept of mushin as a doctrine of artistic detachment
and disinterested aesthetic contemplation. To begin with, Hisamatsu
acknowledges Suzukis profound influence on him after they met
through an introduction arranged by Nishida Kitar. In Hisamatsus
own words: It was my most revered teacher, Dr. Kitar Nishida, who
in 1920 first introduced me to Dr. Daisetz Suzuki. Ever since that
time, for a period of some forty-five years, I have received Dr. Suzukis
many kindnesses in the Dharma (see Abe 1986:143). In Zen and the
Fine Arts, we recall, Hisamatsu discusses Kants idea of the aesthetic
 Japanese Aesthetics 155
attitude as a pleasure that is disinterested (interesselos) in conjunc-
tion with the Zen Buddhist aesthetic attitude of disinterestedness
(mukanshin):
Art is said to be . . . in the words of Kant, interesselos, meaning disinter-
ested, without practical interest. . . . Zen expression does have its own
kind of detachment which can be described as an unrestricted freedom.
This Zen disinterestedness (mukanshin) is quite different from the interes-
selos character of art because it derives from the no-self (muga) or no-
mind (mushin) nature of Zen. [1971:89]

According to Hisamatsu, then, while both Kant and Zen agree that
beauty requires an aesthetic attitude which is disinterested, there is
also a significant difference insofar as the artistic detachment culti-
vated by Zen has its basis, not in the transcendental ego as for Kant,
but in the egoless state of no-mind (mushin) or no-self (muga).
Like Suzuki and Nishida he defines the aesthetic attitude in terms of
muga or no-self. Moreover, like Suzuki, he identifies the egolessness of
muga with the no-mind-ness of mushin. The detachment (datsuzoku)
that Hisamatsu regards as a characteristic trait of Japanese Buddhist
art and literature in the ygen style is correlated with the aesthetic atti-
tude of disinterestedness (mukanshin), which itself derives ultimately
from the psychological state of no-mind (mushin) established through
Zen contemplation. Both Zen and Japanese Culture by D. T. Suzuki
and Zen and the Fine Arts by Hisamatsu Shinichi, therefore, clarify how
the Zen sense of beauty is rooted in mushin: the detached, empty, tran-
quil, and egoless state of no-mind.
For Suzuki, then, the heart of Zen is satori: an instantaneous awak-
ening to mushin or no-mind otherwise known as kensh, seeing into
ones original Buddha nature as no-mind. From the standpoint of
depth psychology, he restates the realization of no-mind in satori as
the sudden enlightenment whereby one achieves superconsciousness
by becoming conscious of the unconscious, or the cosmic unconscious,
which in Mahayana Buddhism is known as the laya-vijnna or store-
house consciousness. Following the Platform Sutra of Hui-neng he
describes no-mind as no-thought, nonform, and nonabiding, which
altogether represent the mind of nonattachment. Again, the no-mind-
ness of mushin is identical with the egolessness of muga (no-self). The
state of no-mind is attained by observing mental contents with de-
tachment and equanimity devoid of blind reactions of love and hate,
liking and disliking, craving and aversion. Suzuki understands the
psychology of mushin or no-mind in terms of its relation to the Zen
156 Artistic Detachment East and West
epistemology of immovable praj -intuition and the Zen metaphysics
of nyat, emptiness. The mind of no-mind is further explained as
the point where Zen merges with art. We have seen how in the his-
tory of Japanese aesthetics the Zen concept of no-mind is used to rep-
resent the mental attitude of artistic detachment. Both the military
art of swordsmanship and the fine arts of painting, poetry, drama, and
tea are all said to have a common source in the detached, tranquil,
spontaneous, unconscious state of no-mind. In the art of swordsman-
ship, no-mind signifies the pre-self-conscious or unconscious state of
the nonattaching mind that flows spontaneously from one object to
another as well as the nonfocal and nonlocalized mind that fills the
whole of being and is directed freely as needed. In the fine arts, no-
mind is the creative wellspring of the unconscious: the boundless void
of imaginative possibilities. Suzukis writings on Japanese culture thus
illuminate how Zen satori, along with its creative expression in Zen-
influenced art and literature, is to be analyzed as a function of no-
mind: the mind of nonattachment.

Kuki Shz: The Aesthetics of Iki

Among the major thinkers related to the Kyoto school of modern
Japanese philosophy, the work of Kuki Shz (18881941) is still
relatively unknown. Yet Kuki has written what some regard as the
most creative treatise on Eastern and comparative aesthetics in modern
Japanese philosophy. Hence one of the functions of this section is to
introduce the remarkable life and writings of Kuki to an English-speak-
ing audience. Of special interest to our intercultural theme of psychic
distance as a factor in aesthetic experience is how, in contrast to the
austere detachment characterizing traditional Zen ideals of beauty like
ygen, wabi, sabi, and shibumi, Kuki sets forth a decadent aestheticism
based on the high-fashion ideal of iki, or stylishness, wherein erotic
feelings and other sensual pleasures are sublimated into highly refined
sensations by the aesthete, dandy, or connoisseur (tsjin), who adopts a
Kantian/Zen impartial attitude of disinterested contemplation. From
the standpoint of East-West comparative philosophy, it is significant
how Kuki articulates his concept of iki (chic) as formulated through a
synthesis of akirame (detached resignation) of Zen aestheticism in the
East and the attitude of dsintressement (disinterestedness) of French
decadent aestheticism in the Westboth of which are based on an
aesthetic attitude rooted in disinterested contemplation of beauty for
its own sake without any concern for utility or moral considerations.
 Japanese Aesthetics 157
Kuki, or rather Count Kuki, was born into a wealthy family of
noble descent. After years of graduate study at Tokyo University, he
traveled to Germany in 1922 where he studied philosophy at Heidel-
berg, Freiburg and Marburg universities under the direct tutelage of
Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger along with such distinguished
neo-Kantians as Heinrich Rickert and Eugen Herrigel (himself later
known for his short work based on his experiences in Japan, Zen in the
Art of Archery). Then in the autumn of 1924 Kuki journeyed to France
where he would remain until the spring of 1927, engaged in the study
of modern French philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris with Henri
Bergson. Subsequently he returned to Germany in order to attend Hei-
deggers lectures in 1927 and then went back to France in 1928 to
study again with Bergson. As discussed by Stephen Light (1987), it
was for a period of about two and a half months during the fall of
1928 that Kuki employed none other than the young Jean-Paul Sartre
(then only twenty-three years of age) as a conversation partner on the
topic of modern French philosophy ranging from Descartes to Berg-
son. Light demonstrates that in 1928 it was Kuki who introduced
Sartre to the philosophy of Husserl and Heideggerthereby correct-
ing Simone de Beauvoirs claim in La Force de lge that it was Raymond
Aron who first informed Sartre about phenomenology in 1932 (Light
1987:23). Following this extraordinary sojourn in Europe, Kuki finally
returned to Japan in 1929. He obtained a professorship at Kyoto Uni-
versity in 1933 whereupon he joined Nishida Kitar and Tanabe
Hajime as a faculty member in the philosophy department.
Kukis major publications in Japanese include The Structure of Iki
(Iki no kz, 1930), Rhyming in Japanese Poetry (Nihonshi no oin, 1931),
The Philosophy of Existence ( Jitsuzon no tetsugaku, 1933), The Problem of
Contingency (Guzensei no mondai, 1935), and Humanity and Existence
(Ningen to jitsuzon, 1939). Among his published articles he has written
on various aspects of aesthetic theory such as A Consideration About
Fry (Fry ni kansuru ikkosatsu, 1937), The Fusion of Art and
LifeThoughts on the Second Volume of the New Manyosh (Gei-
jutsu to kekatsu to no yugoShinmanyosh maki ni no saiso, 1938),
and The Metaphysics of Literature (Bungaku to keijijgaku, 1940).
In addition, Kuki authored a series of essays in French during his stay
in Paris, including Considerations of Time (Propos sur le temps, 1928).
While at the time of this writing none of Kukis Japanese-language
works have as yet been published in an English translation, his trans-
lated Parisian writings, penned in French, are now available in Stephen
Lights book Shz Kuki and Jean-Paul Sartre: Influence and Counter-
158 Artistic Detachment East and West
Influence in the Early History of Existential Phenomenology (1987). Part
Two of Lights book contains a translation of Propos sur le temps, which
is itself composed of two brief essays. The first essay, The Notion of
Time and Repetition in Oriental Time, shows the influence of the
phenomenology of internal time consciousness developed by Husserl
and Heidegger in Germany as well as Bergsons voluntaristic notion
of temporality as a creative evolution of lan vital, here applied toward
the analysis of what Kuki calls Oriental time. The second essay of
Propos sur le temps, The Expression of the Infinite in Japanese Art, is
a treatment of Eastern aesthetics wherein Kuki analyzes the triple
source from which the spiritual content of Japanese art derives
namely, what he calls the spiritual mysticism of Indian Buddhist reli-
gion, the pantheism of Chinese Taoist philosophy, and the moral
idealism of bushid (Light 1987:52). Part Three of Lights book con-
tains a translation of Kukis Propos on Japan, which includes a series of
brief vignettes on the aesthetic and intellectual dimensions of Japa-
nese culture analyzed from the standpoint of French philosophy and
vice versa.
Kukis greatest contributions have been in the field of aesthetics
in particular his brilliant analysis of a Japanese concept of beauty
known as iki, an aesthetic ideal that acquired currency during the Edo
period. While older, more traditional Japanese aesthetic ideals have
received detailed scholarly analysis, the more recent concept of iki has
received little attention aside from Kukis treatise on the subject. Con-
sequently, Kukis study has become the standard reference text on iki
in the canons of modern Japanese aesthetic taste for scholars such as
Hisamatsu Senichi. As explained in Hisamatsus Vocabulary of Japa-
nese Literary Aesthetics (1963:6366), along with such closely related
notions as sui and ts, the aesthetic ideal of iki arose in the government-
regulated centers for prostitution in Edo-period Japan that have come
to be referred to poetically as the floating world (ukiyo). The ideal of
sui had a connotation of savoring the emotions aroused by relations
between the sexes as regulated by standards of elegant restraint. When
a man or woman understood sui and moved in circles where the expres-
sion was current, he or she was called suisama (a person clever in love).
Sui appears most conspicuously in Kamigata literature in Osaka during
the Genroku eraparticularly Ihara Saikakus kshoku-mono (fiction
dealing with amorous adventures). While sui was a regional term
used primarily in the Osaka-Kyoto bordellos, iki was fashionable in
the Yoshiwara pleasure quarter of Edo (present-day Tokyo). The aes-
thetic ideal of iki appears most prominently in early nineteenth-
 Japanese Aesthetics 159
century literature written in Edoparticularly in the prose genres
known as ninjbon and sharebon, in ballads (Kiyomotobushi, Shinnaibushi),
and in the kabuki scripts of Kawatake Mokuami and others. The term
ts also came into vogue during this period. As Hisamatsu Senichi
explains: Iki and ts are inextricably associated. Iki is a type of aes-
thetic ideal; ts is a term applied to someone pursuing that ideal
(1963:65). For this reason we have terms like tsjin (a ts person),
daits (a great ts), and various others. Broadly speaking, the cluster
of aesthetic terms like iki, ts, and sui all denote the nonchalance and
cool urban sophistication of the bordello dandy who was completely
at home in the demi-monde of the pleasure quarters in the floating
world of Edo-period Japan. It is against this general background that
we can now examine the technical philosophical analysis of iki pro-
vided by Kuki Shz.
Kukis understanding of iki is introduced, if only briefly, in one of
his 1928 Parisian essays written in French titled Geisha. In this essay
of only two pages, Kuki asserts that iki was a moral-aesthetic ideal em-
bodied by the geisha, highly refined courtesans of the floating world
(ukiyo), in Edo-period Japan. In Kukis words: The ideal of the geisha,
at once moral and aesthetic, that which is called iki, is a harmonious
union of voluptuousness and nobility (Light 1987:87). For Kuki this
moral-aesthetic ideal of iki reveals a paradoxical union of contradic-
tory tendencies such as the sensual and the noble to be found in both
the artistic sensibility cultivated in Edo-period bordello life and French
decadent aestheticism. He adds: Sensual pleasure animated by a noble
spirit is testament to a great idealist civilization. It is the reason why
Baudelaire, for example, has so many admirers in Japan (Light 1987:
88). While this brief vignette of the geisha offers a fascinating glimpse
into the paradoxical nature of iki as a moral-aesthetic ideal, to gain a
deeper understanding of this notion we must consider Kukis major
treatise on Japanese and comparative aesthetics: The Structure of Iki.
In December 1926, still living in France, Kuki finished a manu-
script titled The Essence of Iki (Iki no honshitsu)the rough draft of what
would later become his acclaimed work The Structure of Iki (Iki no kz).
Any consideration of Kukis inquiry into the structure of iki requires
an understanding of the philosophical method he used to conduct his
inquiry. At the end of his introduction to The Structure of Iki, Kuki
(1930:15) explains his basic methodological orientation:

The understanding of iki . . . must be a factual and concrete existential

understanding. Before inquiring into the essentia of iki, we must look at
160 Artistic Detachment East and West
the existentia of iki. In a word, the study of iki is not expressionistic.
Instead, it should be hermeneutic. What is the structure of iki as a form
of concrete, ethnic experience? First we will attempt to understand the
existential mode of iki through a description of phenomena of con-
sciousness. Then we will try to grasp it by the conditions of being
discovered through its objective expression.
In this passage Kuki expresses his methodological commitment to
existential and hermeneutic phenomenology as derived from Edmund
Husserl and Martin Heidegger. Kukis indebtedness to these two
philosophers is openly acknowledged in a footnote to the preceding
passage wherein he cites both Husserls Ideas: Introduction to Pure Phe-
nomenology (Ideen zu einer reinen Phnomenologie, 1913) and Heideggers
Being and Time (Sein und Zeit, 1927). His commitment to existential
phenomenology is at once clear from the statement that iki is an exis-
tential mode (sonzai ytai) that can only be grasped by a phenomeno-
logical description of phenomena of consciousness (ishiki gensh). In
other words, iki is not merely an abstract ideal of beauty to be seen
through its objective expressions. It is a concrete mode of existence or
way of being-in-the-world, the formal conditions of which are to be
described through the method of phenomenology. He further under-
scores this existential orientation of his study by asserting that a true
grasp of iki must be an existential understanding (sonzai etoku). More-
over, his statement that an inquiry into the existentia of iki must pre-
cede an inquiry into the essentia of iki is itself a direct invocation of
the well-known existentialist dictum: Existence precedes essence.
Finally, he specifies that his analysis of iki through the method of exis-
tential phenomenology is interpretive or hermeneutic (kaishaku-
teki). In other words: he will endeavor to gradually unfold the mean-
ing of iki as a concrete existential mode by describing its variety of
contexts and uses in Japanese culture. Through the hermeneutic
circle, one moves from text to context and back again to interpret the
parts through the whole and vice versa. In this case Japanese culture is
used to illuminate the structure of iki while at the same time iki func-
tions to illuminate the structure of Japanese culture.
Kukis methodological orientation in The Structure of Iki especially
reflects the influence of Heidegger. Although the phenomenological
method was initially developed by Husserl, it was Heidegger who for-
mulated the existential-hermeneutic approach to phenomenology that
Kuki adopts in his own work. Yet just as Kuki was profoundly influ-
enced by Heidegger, Heidegger himself would pay lasting tribute to
Kuki in his essay A Dialogue on Language contained in On the Way
 Japanese Aesthetics 161
to Language (1982). This dialogue presents a conversation between an
Inquirer (Heidegger) and a Japanese Visitor (Professor Tezuka of Tokyo
University) on the topic of Count Kuki, including the latters meth-
odological approach to the aesthetic ideal of iki. The opening lines of
this dialogue reveal the great esteem in which Count Kuki Shz was
held by both Martin Heidegger and Nishida Kitar:
Japanese: You know Count Shz Kuki. He studied with you for a
number of years.
Inquirer: Count Kuki has a lasting place in my memory.
Japanese: He died too early. His teacher Nishida wrote his epitaphfor
over a year he worked on this supreme tribute to his pupil.
Inquirer: I am happy to have photographs of Kukis grave and the grove
in which it lies. [1982:1]

Heideggers dialogue especially clarifies the hermeneutic nature of

Kukis inquiry into the structure of iki. Throughout the dialogue
there are many references to Kukis hermeneutic treatment of iki as an
aesthetic, moral, and even ontological notion. At one point the Japa-
nese Visitor states: What you mean to say with hermeneutics must
somehow have illuminated Iki more brightly for Count Kuki (p. 13).
Shortly thereafter, the Inquirer describes how Kuki attempted to her-
meneutically unfold the complex meaning of iki as the sensuous radi-
ance through whose lively delight there breaks the radiance of some-
thing suprasensuous (p. 14). The Japanese Visitor then responds:
With that explanation, I believe, Kuki has hit on what we experience
in Japanese art (p. 14).
While discussing the relationship between language and culture in
his introduction to The Structure of Iki, Kuki employs the etymological
style of analysis characteristic of Heideggerian hermeneutics in order
to disclose the complex of meanings signified by the Japanese word
iki. In this context he searches for equivalents to the Japanese word
among the European languages, especially French: chic, lgant, coquet-
terie, dandy, Fangerei, and raffin (1930:911). In English, iki in its sense
as chic denotes smartness, mod, posh, dapper, flair, stylish, and so
forth. But he concludes that none of these terms exhaust the full range
of meanings denoted by iki because they lack the essential component
of shibumi, a Japanese aesthetic ideal signifying astringency and ele-
gant restraint (p. 12). Thus Kuki writes: In short, there is no word
among Western languages which has precisely the same meaning as
iki. It is therefore justifiable to consider iki as an expression of the
unique existential mode of Eastern, or rather Yamato (Japanese), cul-
162 Artistic Detachment East and West
ture (p. 12). In such a manner, then, Kuki has already indicated the
paradoxical structure defining iki as a moral-aesthetic ideal. While in
some contexts the subdued elegance of shibumi may be taken as stand-
ing in direct opposition to the coquettishness of iki, the paradoxical
structure of Japanese aesthetic taste ultimately requires both elements
as contradictory poles within the total structure of iki.
In the second chapter of The Structure of Iki, Kuki gives a concise
summary of the structure of iki or chic as follows: The structure of
iki is revealed by three elements: bitai (coquettishness), ikuji (pride),
and akirame (detached resignation) (1930:28). He further clarifies that
among these three factors constituting the nature of iki, the coquett-
ishness of bitai serves as the foundation whereas the pride of ikuji and
the detached serenity of akirame are regulated by historical and cul-
tural factors (p. 28). According to Kukis analysis, the first element of
iki is bitai, signifying the bipolar tension generated when the self estab-
lishes a relationship with a member of the opposite sex. This inner ten-
sion of bitai denotes the coquettishness (namamekashisa), eroticism (tsu-
yapposa), amorousness (iroke), and sensuality (iropposa) that altogether
constitute the very foundation of iki. According to Kuki, bitai is the
element that locates iki in the world of intersexual (iseiteki) relation-
ships. The eroticism and amorousness of bitai are embodied by the
geisha, the courtesan (tayu), and the tsjin (dandy) who inhabited the
Yoshiwara pleasure quarter in the Edo-period floating world. As we
shall see, it is precisely this element of crude eroticism denoted by
bitai that ultimately constitutes iki as a Japanese mode of decadent
aestheticism.
The second element of iki is ikuji, designating the qualities of pride,
valor, nobility, spiritedness, and gallantry. This element of ikuji is his-
torically and culturally rooted in the military honor and chivalry of
the samurai who cavorted in the pleasure quarter of Edo and therefore
brings with it the moral idealism of bushid: the tao of the warrior. Now
the bushid warrior class that dominated Japan for seven hundred years
spilled over into all the other classes and so the ideal of ikuji or pride-
fulness came to permeate Japanese culture.
The final element constituting the aesthetic, moral, and spiritual
content of iki is akirame, meaning resignation, renunciation, or
detachment. Of course, it is this element of iki that is most perti-
nent to our present study on artistic detachment in the Japanese aes-
thetic of Zen Buddhism. In Kukis words: The third aspect of iki is
akirame (detachment). It is a disinterestedness based on a knowledge
of fate and a renunciation of worldly attachments (1930:25). Here as
 Japanese Aesthetics 163
elsewhere in The Structure of Iki, Kuki defines the resignation and de-
tachment of akirame in terms of mukanshin, a term denoting noncha-
lance, indifference, or, most literally, disinterestedness. It should
be recalled that mukanshin is the same Japanese term used by Hisa-
matsu Shinichi (1971:8) in Zen and the Fine Arts (Zen to bijutsu) for
the purpose of translating the German word interesselos or disinter-
ested, which for Kant determines the nature of aesthetic judgements
in matters of taste. Kuki further states that the attitude of disinter-
estedness (mukanshin) typical of akirame or detachment is acquired
especially by the older geisha through a long life of suffering and dis-
appointment in the floating world (1930:27). In this context he cites
the words: Sui [= iki] is crudeness (yabo) which has suffered (Yabo
wa momarete sui to naru) (p. 27). Finally, Kuki shows that the element
of akirame has its historical and cultural roots deep in the Japanese Bud-
dhist philosophy of resignation. It is precisely by virtue of this Bud-
dhist element of akirame or detached tranquility in combination with
the bushid element of ikuji or spirited gallantry whereby the crude
eroticism and sensuality of bitai is itself raised to the the level of iki as
a moral-aesthetic ideal of Japanese culture. Kuki therefore writes:
Briefly stated, in the existential mode of iki is contained the element
of bitai (coquettishness), which has as its foundation the ikuji (pride)
derived from the [moral] idealism of bushid and the akirame (detach-
ment) from the background of Buddhist irrealism, which altogether
define its existential perfection (p. 30).
While in the second chapter Kuki analyzes iki in terms of his triad
of seductive coquetry (bitai), the gallants pride (ikuji), and detached
resignation (akirame), in chapter three he clarifies the bipolar struc-
ture of iki in terms of a series of paired antonyms: shibumi (astringency)
versus amami (sweetness); gehin (crude) versus jhin (refined); jimi (plain)
versus hade (gaudy). And in a section entitled Shibumi/Amami (1930:
5057), he underscores the paradoxical structure of iki as an aesthetic
lifestyle or existential mode that is mediated by two formerly opposed
values in the canons of taste: astringency (shibumi) and sweetness
(amami). Kukis schematic chart on the structure of iki, appearing in
the same section, indicates that while the sweetness of amami is a
positive (sekkyokuteki) value directed toward the gaudy (hade), the
astringency of shibumi is a negative (shkyokuteki) value directed
toward the plain and somber (jimi) (p. 57). Within the paradoxical
aesthetic value structure of iki or chic denoting the cool sophistica-
tion and nonchalance of the stylish bordello dandy, there is a dual ten-
sion whereby the sweetness (amami) associated with the coaxing and
164 Artistic Detachment East and West
seductive quality of the coquettish geisha is itself tempered by the
astringency and subdued elegance of shibumi. Hence when Kuki defines
iki as a harmonious union of voluptuousness and nobility in his
Parisian essay called Geisha, he clearly anticipates his more detailed
analysis of the paradoxical amami/shibumi (sweetness/astringency) struc-
ture of iki as elaborated in his Iki no kz.
Kukis analysis of the bipolar amami/shibumi (sweetness/astringency)
contrast in The Structure of Iki exerted a profound influence on Doi
Takeos famous psychological study, The Structure of Amae (Amae no kz,
1971). In his section on amami/shibumi (pp. 5057) Kuki undertakes
a detailed analysis of amae (an aspect of amami)a notion that psychi-
atrist Doi Takeo would later argue was the key to Japanese patterns of
behavior. The word amae, which is etymologically related to the
adjective amai (sweet) and the noun amami (sweetness), is itself a
nominative meaning dependency wish or drive to dependence.
The verbal form, amaeru, means to play the baby to, to act like a
spoiled child, to coax, or to indulge upon anothers love. Con-
versely, amayakasu means to indulge, spoil, baby, or pamper some-
one. In terms of the amami/shibumi contrast, while shibumi or astrin-
gency is a negative quality that moves in the direction of restraint in
order to avoid social contact, amami or sweetness is a positive quality
that moves in the direction of establishing intimate social relation-
ships. Kuki writes: Amami (sweetness) expresses the positive quality
in this contrast in that between a person being indulged (amaeru-sha)
and a person indulging (amaerareru-sha), there is always a positive com-
munication opened up (p. 51). For Kuki, amae functions similarly to
the bitai component of iki insofar as it denotes a sweet, flirtatious, and
seductive type of coquettish behavior associated especially with amo-
rous relations between the sexes. As an example he cites various collo-
quial expressions using amae in an erotic sense like A woman is most
desirable when she amaerus (amaeru sugata iro fukashi) (p. 53). Hence
for Kuki there is an inner tension within the structure of iki. On the
one side shibumi, like akirame, has a negative value that moves toward
detachment from an object or person; on the other side, amae and
amami, like bitai, have a positive value that moves toward union with
an object or person.
In his Structure of Amae, Doi uses his key psychological notion of
amae (coaxing in dependent relationships) in order to interpret not
only Japanese patterns of behavior but the whole of traditional Japa-
nese culture, including the art and literature of Japanese aesthetics. Doi
analyzes the structure of amae as follows: Amae is essentially a com-
 Japanese Aesthetics 165
plete dependence upon an object, a wish for the identification of sub-
ject and object (1971:114). For Doi, both the Zen Buddhist expe-
rience of satori (enlightenment) and its modern reformulation in the
East-West philosophy of Nishida Kitar as a kind of pure experi-
ence (junsui keiken) are expressions of Japanese amae mentality with
its underlying dependency wish for an identification of subject and
object. Thus Doi writes: In this regard it is interesting that the
Nishida philosophy which became so popular in prewar Japan, with
its notion of a pure experience in which subject and object fuse, has
clearly received an influence from Zen (p. 92). Doi then interprets
the Japanese sense of beauty as an additional example of the amae men-
tality in that aesthetic experience also merges the subject with the
object: Let us now consider the Japanese aesthetic sense. Here too
the amae sensibility is an important factor. What is called beauty usu-
ally indicates that an object pleases the senses, such that the one who
enjoys the beauty of the object becomes one with it through that expe-
rience (p. 87). In this context Doi applies his amae principle to various
ideals of beauty in traditional Japanese aesthetics, including mono no
aware, wabi, sabi, and iki:

Above I have discussed some characteristics of Japanese thought in rela-

tion to amae psychology, but one could also find connections to various
other aspects. For example, the famous notion of mono no aware spoken of
by Motoori Norinaga appears to be similarly related to the amae sensi-
bility. Amae signifies being moved by some human or natural object
(taish) and thereby becoming entirely one with that object. Ultimately,
wabi and sabi, as as well as iki, and even the understanding of human
relationships established by giri-ninj (social obligation versus human
feeling), are all originally based upon mono no aware. [1971:91]

As Doi states in this passage, mono no aware or the sad beauty of ephem-
eral things is said to express the Japanese amae mentality in that it is a
deep emotion which unites a subject with some object. But he then
points out that the celebrated ingredients of the Japanese aesthetic
sensewabi and sabiimply a type of quietism that seeks to renounce
human society and hence would seem to be diametrically opposed to
the desire for human contact dominated by the amae mentality. Yet
the person who has achieved the detached tranquility of wabi and sabi
ultimately achieves an identity with his surroundings (p. 88). Doi next
contrasts the world-renouncing qualities of wabi and sabi with the aes-
thetic notion of iki. Iki, like amae, seeks to establish an identity of sub-
ject and object:
166 Artistic Detachment East and West
Another important notion, one that stands in contrast to wabi and sabi, is
the concept of iki. As opposed to wabi and sabi, the ideal of iki is not
attained by detachment from the human world but is an aesthetic sensi-
bility of someone who lives in the common world yet purifies life of the
roughness that accompanies amae in its cruder aspects. [p. 88]
Doi goes on to discuss the amami/shibumi contrast of iki as described
by Kuki in his Structure of Iki:
In Iki no kz, an excellent work by Kuki Shz that analyzes iki in detail,
the author defines iki as sophisticated . . . and then establishes its rela-
tionship to amae mentality. . . . He explains that iki, along with amami
and shibumi, are special intersexual modes of existence. . . . Considering
amami as the normal state, one finally arrives, by means of iki, at the
point of shibumi, whereupon one then exercises restraint in relationships
with others. [p. 89]

Of greatest concern for our present study is the recognition that an

aesthetic attitude of disinterestedness (mukanshin) is essential to iki
insofar as the Buddhist detachment of akirame is a basic element within
its complex structure. Yet the Buddhist detachment of iki must be
understood in a context quite different from that of the other Buddhist-
influenced aesthetic ideals we have examined. The traditional artistic
and literary ideals that emerged in the classical and medieval canons
of Japanese tasteygen, ma, wabi, sabi, fry, and shibumiall involve
to some extent a disinterested aesthetic contemplation of beauty in
the solitude and isolation of nature. The more recent aesthetic ideal of
iki, by contrast, is said to involve the exercise of Buddhist detachment
in the very midst of the red light districts that arose in the sprawling
urban centers of Japan. Accordingly, while the paradigm of a detached
and tranquil wabi/sabi lifestyle might be embodied by a reclusive Zen
artist-priest dwelling in a lonely tea hut in his quest for ideal beauty
through the religio-aesthetic tradition of geidthe tao of artthe iki
lifestyle is instead embodied by the sensual and elegant geisha of the
Edo-period brothels. Hence while the existential mode of iki does
indeed require a profound Buddhist element of akirame, or detachment,
it is not a detachment cultivated through tranquil meditation in the
temples of a mountain retreat but a detachment born from suffering a
broken heart in the bordellos of a floating world.
From the standpoint of comparative aesthetics, it is clear that Kukis
notion of iki has been strongly influenced by French doctrines of deca-
dent aestheticism. The French tradition of aestheticism, or aesthetic
decadence, was a nineteenth-century movement that included such
 Japanese Aesthetics 167
representative authors as Baudelaire and dAurevilly. As explained by
literary critic M. H. Abrams (1981:2), the movement of French aes-
theticism traces its philosophical origins back to the Kantian idea of
beauty as a pleasure that is dis-interested (interesselos). Although Kuki
studied Kantian philosophy with the leading scholars of Germany dur-
ing his sojourn in Europe, it is in the specific context of French aesthet-
icism that Kants idea of beauty as disinterested pleasure entered into
his notion of iki or chic as an aesthetic ideal. In his Essence of Laughter,
the French aesthete Charles Baudelaire describes the ideal of beauty for
his cult of dandyism as follows: The characteristic beauty of the dandy
consists, above all, in his air of reserve, which in turn arises from his
unshakable resolve not to feel any emotion (1956:50). Elsewhere Bau-
delaire asserts that the dandy aspires to indifference (p. 28). For
Baudelaire, it is this posture of contrived indifference, nonchalance, or
aloofness from human emotions that elevates the aesthetic life to a kind
of religion (p. 48). Similarly, Kukis aesthetic ideal of iki or chic has
a profound religious dimension by virtue of its Buddhist component
of akirame, detached resignation. The dapper savoir faire and serene
nonchalance of the Parisian dandy, the brothel habitu who is com-
pletely at home in the demi-monde, is based on a highly refined aes-
thetic attitude of dsintressement, a disinterested contemplation of beauty
for its own sake without any concern for utility or moral considera-
tions. Likewise, the Edo-period tsjin, the sophisticated bordello dandy
who frequents the Yoshiwara pleasure quarter, must cultivate an aes-
thetic attitude of disinterestedness (mukanshin). Just as for Baudelaire
the special beauty of dandyism is an air of reserve, for Kuki the spe-
cial beauty of iki is that of shibumi: elegant restraint. Kukis concept of
iki might therefore be described as representing a distinctive Edo-
period theory of aesthetic decadence formulated through an original
creative synthesis of both Japanese and French traditions of aestheti-
cism. In this context he describes how the aesthetic experience of iki
requires a mental attitude of disinterested contemplation that derives
from both the Japanese Buddhist notion of akirame (detached resigna-
tion) in the East and the dsintressement of French aestheticism in the
West.
As Peter N. Dale (1986:72) points out: If Heidegger provided
Kuki with his linguistic and conceptual tools, it is beyond doubt that
his reading of the French decadents was critical for his reappraisal of,
and sense of affinity with, the dandy tradition of Edo. Dale claims
that while Kuki has been profoundly influenced by Baudelaire and
other French decadents, the elements of bitai, ikuji, and akirame con-
168 Artistic Detachment East and West
stituting the threefold structure of iki have been specifically appropri-
ated from the work of Barbey dAurevilly. That is to say, Dale is charg-
ing Kuki of plagiarism. Dale writes: Bitai corresponds to dAurevillys
coquetterie, ikuji to his vanit, and akirame to dsintressement. There are
numerous other points of verbal and analytical correspondence (p.
76). According to Dale, for purposes of highlighting the absolute
uniqueness of Japanese culture in general and the aesthetic ideal of iki
in particular, Kuki neglects to cite dAurevilly as a major source for
his analysis. Kukis work thereby becomes one of disguised transposi-
tion, of discovering a Japanese counterpart to the Western theory, and
then erasing all comparison with his original. Dale adds: We see this
clearly in his failure to cite Barbey dAurevilly, though his analysis of
bitai, ikuji and akirame derives directly from the latter (p. 72). In his
effort to critically undermine what he calls the myth of Japanese
uniqueness propagated by works on nihonjinron or studies of Japa-
nese identity, Dale wishes to expose the nationalism, cultural chau-
vinism, and ethnocentrism implicit in Kukis aesthetic concept of iki
(pp. 57, 6873, 155161). Just as some have discerned the essence of
Japanness (nihonrashisa) in aware (pathos), amae (coaxing), aidagara
(relationship), akirame (resignation), tate (verticality), ma (interval,
space), ie (family household), or ki (spirit, mood, feeling), so Kuki sees
the quintessence of Japanness in his absolutely unique concept of iki
(chic). In accordance with the tradition of nihonjinron, Kuki endeavors
to interpret the whole spectrum of ethnic experience in the light of
his single chosen termin this case, the notion of ikiwith the aim
of showing how the entire Japanese tradition can be summed up with
this one key word. Yet as Dale rightly points out, Kukis tsjin (sophis-
ticate) in quest of an iki lifestyle has its counterpart in Baudelaires
dandy, just as the three constitutive elements of bitai, ikuji, and aki-
rame are directly corresponding to, if not derived from, dAurevillys
parallel notions of coquetterie, vanit, and dsintressement. Thus while
Kukis Structure of Iki stands today as a classic work on Japanese aes-
thetic taste in the modern period, his claim that iki is an absolutely
unique existential mode of Yamato culture with no Western counter-
part is exaggerated.
From this standpoint, Kukis Structure of Iki is to be understood as
articulating a highly stylized if not exotic form of Eastern aestheti-
cism that has built upon French as much as Japanese traditions of aes-
thetic decadence in literature and the arts. The fundamental notion
underlying Kukis East-West philosophy of decadent aestheticism is
that detachment is the prerequisite for connoisseurship whereby one
 Japanese Aesthetics 169
enjoys the most delicate hedonic sensations of life, including the erotic
passion of sexual relations, while at the same time inserting the dis-
tance of elegant restraint. In the final analysis, Kukis existential mode
of iki bears a deep structural proximity with the tradition of French
decadence to the extent that both advocate a posh and dapper aesthetic
lifestyle wherein crude eroticism, gallant pride, and cool detachment
are paradoxically combined in the pursuit of chic as the supreme
ideal of beauty.
Chapter 3

An East-West Phenomenology
of the Aesthetic Attitude

In concluding Part One of the book, I want to outline a

phenomenological interpretation of the aesthetic attitude of disinter-
ested contemplation as articulated by both the Western and Japanese
philosophical traditions. While the argument gradually unfolds in
the course of exposition, it is worth outlining some advantages of this
phenomenological approach here at the outset. The Copernican Revo-
lution in the history of Western philosophy is the transcendental ideal-
ism of Kanta view which argues that in human experience sense
objects are constituted by mental acts of subjectsjust as the turning
point in the history of Western aesthetics is Kants Critique of Judgement
(1790), where he sets forth his idea of beauty as a function of an atti-
tude of disinterested contemplation. Whereas ancient and medieval
theories present beauty as an attribute of harmony located in the object,
for Kant something is beautiful or sublime according to the disinter-
ested attitude of the subject.
Kants transcendental idealism was to be further developed in
Husserls phenomenology, which analyzes in detail how the human
mind constitutes the perceptual field through mental acts of inten-
tionality. Phenomenology is a descriptive method that starts with an
epoch, or suspension of judgement, and then describes phenomena as
they appear to consciousness in their prereflective presence. The idea
of epoch traces back to the ancient Greek skepticism of Pyrrho recorded
by Sextus Empiricus, where it means suspension of judgement leading
to liberation of tranquility in ataraxia (mental imperturbability).
Scholars have related the experience of tranquility of ataraxia in Greek
170
 An East-West Phenomenology 171
skepticism to the divine peace of nirvana in early Buddhist thought,
achieved through vipassana or insight meditation as observation of
feeling (vedana sati) with equanimity (uppekha) devoid of blind
reactions (tanha) of craving and aversion. The invariant stucture of
mental life is intentionality (consciousness-of): the noesis noema
correlation whereby the noema (objective content) is constituted by
the noesis (subjective act) of consciousness. Phenomenological meth-
odology thus involves a twofold description of both the noema or con-
stituted object pole and the correlate noesis or constitutive act pole. It
follows from this that a Husserlian phenomenological aesthetics
would likewise involve a requirement to provide a twofold descrip-
tion of beauty as something constituted by what is felt on the noema
side and how it is felt on the noesis side. Leading scholars have devel-
oped Heideggers philosophy in relation to Husserls phenomenology
wherein a noematic description of phenomena is supplemented by a
noetic analysis of the act that intends the noema. For Heidegger, the
noema is the horizon phenomenon of the region of openness wherein
the noesis is the open, detached, and nonfocal perception of Gelassenheit
or letting-be (see Ihde 1974:24). Heidegger undertakes a Husserlian
phenomenological description of beauty in terms of horizon phe-
nomena comprehended as the background horizon of nothingness/
openness at the noematic pole while Gelassenheit, letting-be, is the
act of detached contemplation that corresponds to it at the noetic pole.
Thus in essays like Origin of the Work of Art, Heidegger describes
art as the beauty of original truth (aletheia), or unconcealedness, where
phenomena stand out in ekstasis into the openness of nothingness
through the attitude of Gelassenheit.
I employ this kind of phenomenological analysis as a framework
by which to interpret the ygen style of art and literature in the Zen-
influenced tradition of Japanese aesthetics. (See Figure 1.) By this view
the atmospheric beauty of ygen, or mystery and depth, signifies those
value-rich figure/ground gestalt qualities (Gestaltqualitten) on the
side of the noema that are constituted by an attitude of disinterested
contemplation on the side of the noesis. A phenomenological analysis
discloses the noematic content of ygen as the beauty of hidden depth
through a description of horizon phenomena, wherein illuminated
objects clearly articulated at the foreground focus are seen to fade
gradually into a vague penumbral region of darkness and shadows in
the surrounding horizon of openness or nothingness at the nonarticu-
lated whole of the background field. By this view an aesthetic gestalt
quality of ygen on the noematic side is revealed as corresponding to a
172 Artistic Detachment East and West
Figure . Beauty in Japanese Aesthetics: A Phenomenological Diagram

Haiku Moment
(Epiphany)

Intentionality
(Noesis Noema Correlation)

Noesis (Act Pole) Noema (Content Pole)

[how it is seen] [what is seen]

Epoch (suspension) Horizon Phenomena of

Openness/Nothingness

(i) Neutralization (i) Outer horizon of prereflective

presence
(ii) Fantasy variation (ii) Inner horizon of multiplicity,
variety, possibility

Aesthetic Attitude Value-Rich Figure/

Ground Gestalt Qualities

(i) Detached sympathy (i) Rapture through distance

(ii) Reconstitution of (ii) Seeing as
perceptual eld

Shikan (tranquility and Yugen (shadows and darkness)

insight) as detached as beauty of mystery and depth
contemplation

noetic act of disinterested contemplation. This act has the nature of

phenomenological epoch (suspension of judgement), or neutralization
of sedimented mental positings, which allows the object to come to
presence just as it is in emptiness/suchness. The aesthetic attitude at
the noetic pole corresponding to the noematic content of beauty as
ygen is further seen to have both a negative aspect of disinterestedness
and a positive act of creative reconstitution through what Husserl calls
the practice of fantasy variation in imagination.
 An East-West Phenomenology 173
The mental attitude of disinterested contemplation that noetically
constitutes the noematic content of beauty as hidden depths is histor-
ically presented through its articulation by leading figures in the
shikan aesthetic consciousness (shikanteki-biishiki) of the ygen tradi-
tion of Japanese aestheticsincluding the meditative practice of
shikan or tranquility and insight in the early waka poetics of Shunzei,
Chmei, and Fujiwara no Teika; the riken no ken or seeing of detached
perception in the dramatic theory of Zeamis n theater; the hishiry
or without-thinking in Dgens phenomenology of zazen; the hininj
or detachment from human emotions in the haiku-novel Grass Pillow
(Kusamakura, 1906) by Natsume Sseki in modern Japanese literature
as well as the mukanshin or disinterestedness characterizing the
subject of absolute nothingness and the ridatsu or quality of detach-
ment characterizing the traditional Zen art object as described by
Hisamatsu Shinichi in the Kyoto school of modern Japanese philos-
ophy. In such a manner I sketch out an East-West phenomenological
aesthetics wherein beauty is comprehended as a value-laden figure/
ground gestalt quality having the content of hidden depth at the sur-
rounding horizon phenomena characterizing the noema, which is itself
constituted by a disinterested aesthetic attitude of detached contem-
plation achieved through insertion of psychic distance at the noesis.
In defining the aesthetic attitude it is first necessary to repudiate the
erroneous view that the act of artistic detachment is somehow exclusive
of desire, passion, emotion, feeling, sympathy, or other affective ele-
ments. Artistic detachment is an aesthetic attitude of heightened inter-
sensory awareness and intensified feeling that achieves rapture through
distance; it is not an anesthetic attitude that deadens the senses and kills
all feeling. As Robert C. Neville observes: Detachment is a prerequi-
site for connoisseurship (1978:41). At this point, however, he makes
an important disinction between the (positive) state of detachment
from desire and the (negative) state of renunciation of desire: Detach-
ment is not the same as renunciation. To renounce a desire is to reject
it, or to reject its object. Detachment from a desire neither accepts nor
rejects but objectifies and observes it (p. 40). He continues: Detach-
ment allows for a maximization of objective perception and affective
experience (p. 41). And again: This [detachment] is an extremely
complex form of consciousness which maximizes both passionate affect
and dispassionate observations (p. 41). Neville succinctly articulates
several important aspects regarding the psychology of detachment,
including the artistic detachment cultivated by the connoisseur.
Detachment is not a negative attitude of renunciation; it is a positive
174 Artistic Detachment East and West
mental state that maximizes both observation and feeling by combin-
ing them in a unified act of psychic integration. While renunciation
is a nihilistic stance that rejects desires and their objects, artistic de-
tachment is an aesthetic attitude that neither accepts nor rejects desires
but instead observes them with equanimity.

The Aesthetic Attitude in the West

Jerome Stolnitz describes Kants aesthetic attitude theory of disin-
terested contemplation as a Copernican Revolution in aesthetics
whether an object is beautiful or sublime depends upon the experience
of the spectator (1961a:138). Summing up the Western tradition it
can be said that while ancient and classical theories define beauty as
an attribute of the object, like harmony or symmetry, the Copernican
Revolution inaugurated by Kants transcendental idealism underscores
the aesthetic attitude of the subject. Aesthetic attitude means that
the acts or psychological states of subjects are involved in the perception
of beauty, so that a person can do somethinglike perceiving dis-
interestedly (Kant), exercising detached contemplation (Schopen-
hauer), inserting psychic distance (Bullough), recollecting powerful
emotions in tranquility (Wordsworth), holding intransitive atten-
tion (Vivas), or seeing-as (Aldrich). And as we shall see, the aesthetic
attitude of disinterested contemplation corresponds to the Husserlian
phenomenological attitude of epoch as openness to phenomena. Just as
the aesthetic attitude involves acts whereby a subject does something
like perceiving disinterestedlythe Husserlian phenomenological
attitude requires that one performs the epoch or neutralization of
sedimentations. Again, in Heideggerian terms, one exercises the noetic
attitude of Gelassenheit or letting-be in order to perceive the noematic
horizon of openness, presence, nonconcealment. Just as Husserls epoch
is a neutralization of all positive or negative judgements in order to
observe things presencing as they are, Heideggers Gelassenheit is called
a meditative thinking between judgements of yes and no at the basis
of calculative thinking. A characteristic feature of the phenomeno-
logical attitude of openness to phenomena is neutralization of all affir-
mative or negative judgements, just as for aesthetic attitude theorists
the state of disinterested contemplation involves detached observation
without desire or loathing.
The phenomenology of Husserl has its basis in the transcendental
idealism of Kant insofar as it underscores the point that all human
experience, including aesthetic experience, is actively constituted by
 An East-West Phenomenology 175
mental acts of intentionality as noesis noema correlation. Just as
phenomenology requires a twofold descriptive profile whereby an
account of the noematic content of experience is to be supplemented
by a description of the noetic attitude by which the former is posited,
an account of beauty requires both a description of the gestalt quali-
ties at the noematic pole and the aesthetic attitude of disinterested
contemplation at the noetic pole. Here I will endeavor to clarify how
the Husserlian phenomenological categories illuminate aesthetic expe-
rience in general and the idea of a disinterested aesthetic attitude of
detached contemplation in particular. I will then apply phenomeno-
logical categories to Japanese notions of aesthetic experience with their
characteristic approach to beauty as a function of an act of disinterested
contemplation.
From the foregoing it follows that a phenomenological aesthetics
regards beauty as something constituted not only by what is seen, the
noema, but also by how it is seen, the noesis. It is this insightthat aes-
thetic experience requires a twofold description of both noematic
content and its correlate noetic act of positingwhich makes phe-
nomenology an apposite framework for elucidating aesthetic attitude
theories. A phenomenological account of aesthetic experience describes
beauty as the hidden depth of value-rich figure/ground gestalt qual-
ities immediately presented at the noematic pole followed by a re-
flexive description of those corresponding acts of positing at the noetic
pole. One of the central motifs in Husserls phenomenology is that
the invariant structure characterizing phenomena on the noematic
side is its holistic core/horizon, figure/ground, or focus/field gestalt
contexture wherein objects discriminated in the foreground focus of
attention are always surrounded by an encompassing horizon at the
background field, including both a spatial and temporal horizon as
well as an inner horizon of alternate latent profiles. The method of phe-
nomenology thus requires a shift from the natural attitude of already
sedimented interpretations frozen in the noetic context to the open-
ness of the phenomenological attitude, which in its negative phase
requires epoch or suspension of judgement to neutralize habitual con-
structs and which in its positive phase involves spontaneous reorgan-
ization of the perceptual field through the Husserlian technique of
fantasy variation in creative imagination, thereby to disclose phe-
nomena in their multiplicity, possibility, and variety. Insofar as the
phenomenological attitude has both a negative phase of epoch as neu-
tralization of sedimentations, along with a positive phase of fantasy
variation, it elucidates the two phases of an aesthetic attitude directed
176 Artistic Detachment East and West
toward contemplation of beauty: its inhibitory phase of detached
sympathy and its constructive phase of seeing-as through inexhaus-
tible free play in creative imagination.
In Experimental Phenomenology (1977), Don Ihde explicates this Hus-
serlian phenomenological thesis of intentionality, or noesis noema
correlation, as follows: The analysis begins with what appears (noema)
and then moves reflexively towards its how [noesis] of appearing (p.
50). Again: What is seen, the noema, is correlated to the act by which
it is seen, the noesis (p. 130). In terms of a phenomenological analysis
of aesthetic experience, then, beauty is constituted not only by what is
experienced at the noematic pole but also how it is experienced through
constitutive acts of mental positing at the noetic pole. Ancient and
classical aesthetics locate beauty in the noemawhat is experienced
while romantic traditions following in the wake of Kants Copernican
Revolution argue that beauty is in the noesis or subjective acthow it
is experienced. Phenomenology arrives at a midpoint between these
extremes with the doctrine that the invariable trait of human con-
sciousness is intentionality or noesis noema correlation, so that the
phenomenological method requires a twofold description of both the
noema (what is experienced) and the noesis (how it is experienced).
Phenomenological aesthetics is above all a method of description
that begins with the reductionthe epoch or neutralization of sedi-
mented meanings of the natural attitudein an effort to return to the
field of lived experience to describe those vivid aesthetic qualities
immediately presented in the stream of consciousness. Based on the
key phenomenological notion of intentionality, or noesis noema corre-
lation, it is held that aesthetic experience, like all experience, requires
a twofold description of both the noema or constituted objects of expe-
rience as well as the noesis or acts of constitution by which the former
is itself posited. Phenomenology is at once akin to aesthetics insofar as
it goes back to things themselves to recover the vivid, intense, and
immediate value qualities of the noema. Also, the phenomenological
epoch or suspension of affirmative/negative judgements at the noetic
act pole is analogous to the aesthetic attitude in its negative or inhib-
itory aspect of disinterested contemplation. Furthermore the shift from
the natural attitude to the phenomenological attitude is similar
to the shift from the practical-utilitarian-cognitive attitude to the aes-
thetic attitude in its positive aspect of creative reconstitution whereby
already sedimented objects of the perceptual field are deconstructed
and then spontaneously reorganized into novel value-laden figure/
ground gestalt environments through the creative visioning process
 An East-West Phenomenology 177
that Husserl calls fantasy variation in imagination. Both psychic dis-
tance from intense feeling and seeing-as through fantasy variation
are thereby explicated by phenomenological discourse.
For Husserl, phenomenology is a science of accurate description
representing a return to the things themselvesthat is to say, a
recovery of events presencing just as they are when apprehended by an
act of epoch, a neutralization of already sedimented meanings which
is detached from frozen conceptual frameworks in events of disclosure
that enable phenomena to come into appearance in the concrete imme-
diacy of prereflective experience. Husserlian phenomenology includes
a critical analysis of the natural attitude wherein the objectified world
at the noematic pole appears as already fixed and given due to sedi-
mentations of habitual interpretations embedded in the world at the
noetic pole. Ihde explains how the epoch, or suspension of judgement,
deconstructs frozen structures of the noema constituted by already sedi-
mented interpretations in the noesis: Epoch displaces that natural atti-
tude or already sedimented [noetic] context from the outset (1977:
105). He further clarifies how the epoch neutralizes habitual sedimen-
tations of the natural attitude and leads to the phenomenological
attitude of openness (p. 108). The epoch results in a radical shift from
the natural attitude, characterized by already sedimented interpreta-
tions, to the phenomenological attitude characterized by openness to
phenomena: The first shift was what the Husserlian would call a shift
from the natural to a phenomenological attitude. . . . On reflection,
the Husserlian epoch is a device for breaking the bonds of familiarity
we have with things, in order to see those anew (p. 120). What should
be emphasized here is that this shift from the sedimentation of the habit-
uated natural attitude to the openness of the Husserlian phenome-
nological attitude is itself a functional equivalent of the shift from
the practical-cognitive attitude to the Kantian aesthetic attitude of
disinterested contemplation. Like the phenomenological attitude of
openness, the aesthetic attitude involves an epoch as disinterested ob-
servation of felt qualities immediately presented to consciousness. In
his explanation of phenomenological aesthetics, Monroe C. Beardsley
underscores this relation between the phenomenological reduction of
epoch and the aesthetic attitude required for perception of beauty:

For the Phenomenologists presuppositionless openness to what is pre-

sented, suspending [through epoch ] practical and theoretical concerns,
comes close to being a description of all aesthetic experience (cf. Ideen,
sec. 111). In some part, to have an aesthetic experience is to perform a
178 Artistic Detachment East and West
Phenomenological reduction [bracketing, suspension, neutralization,
epoch, presuppositionless openness]. [1966:367]
As Beardsley points out, the suspension of practical-theoretical con-
cerns and the openness of the phenomenological epoch are basically a
description of aesthetic experience. Specifically, the epoch corresponds
to the notion of an aesthetic attitude functioning as the noetic act
constitutive of beauty with its characteristic disinterestedness, detach-
ment, and distance. Indeed, the relation between the aesthetic attitude
of disinterested contemplation and the phenomenological attitude of
epoch is at once suggested by Edward Bulloughs notion of psychic
distance as an act of putting the phenomenon . . . out of gear with
our practical, actual self (1977:95). The act of putting the phenom-
enon out of gear by insertion of aesthetic distance is thus parallel
to the phenomenological act of epoch, which suspends, neutralizes,
switches off, brackets, and holds in abeyance all practical, cognitive,
and utilitarian concerns toward the aim of providing an objective
description of events through an impartial attitude of disinterested
observation.
In Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology, Husserl
clearly articulates his method as involving a shift from the natural
attitude, with its characteristic interests in sedimented objects, to the
phenomenological attitude of epoch, whereupon the transcendental
ego views everything from the neutral standpoint of a disinterested
onlooker. Husserl writes:
If the Ego, as naturally immersed in the world, experiencingly and
otherwise, is called interested in the world, then the phenomenologially
alteredand, as so altered, continually maintainedattitude consists
in a splitting of the Ego in that the phenomenological Ego establishes
himself as a disinterested on-looker, above the naively interested Ego. That
this takes place is then itself accessible by means of a new reflection,
which as transcendental, likewise demands the very same attitude of
looking on disinterestedlythe Egos sole remaining interest being
to see and describe adequately what he sees, purely as seen, as what is seen
and seen in such a manner. [1973:35]

Furthermore, in his 1913 work titled Ideas: General Introduction to

Pure Phenomenology, Husserl explicitly develops the disinterested on-
looker attitude characterizing the epoch or neutralization of the phe-
nomenological reduction in terms of the aesthetic attitude whereby one
disinterestedly observes a phenomenon in its presencing while suspend-
ing all judgements of affirmation (being) or negation (nonbeing):
 An East-West Phenomenology 179
But it is just the same with the object depicted, if we take up a purely
aesthetic attitude, and view the same again as mere picture, without
imparting to it the stamp of Being or non-Being. . . . But, as can clearly
be seen, that does not mean any privation, but modification, that of
neutralization. [1969:311312]
Husserl further defines the epoch in terms of an act of bracketing, sus-
pension, or neutralization of already fixed conceptual frameworks as
the attitude of detachment from all thetic positings: Neutralization as
general modification of all thetic consciousness . . . [is] a fundamen-
tally essential peculiarity of all consciousness generally, not attached to
the actual theses (p. 448; italics added).
The openness of phenomenological seeing refers not only to
detachment from sedimentationrepetitive habitual constitution of
phenomena in the natural worldbut also freedom as an open possi-
bility search for novel figure/ground gestalt environments. For Kant,
we recall, the aesthetic attitude has both negative and positive stages
by virtue of which the beautiful and sublime come into manifestation.
The negative/inhibitory phase of disinterestedness leads to a positive/
reconstructive phase of free play in imagination interacting with other
mental faculties. For Husserlian phenomenology the inhibitory phase
of artistic detachment is an epocha suspension of judgementthat
neutralizes already sedimented patterns leading to a positive phase of
free variation in creative imagination that reconstitutes the perceptual
field into novel topographical possibilitieswhereupon sedimented
focal objects are opened up into the continuum of an encompassing
horizon, including a field of lived space and a duration in the ever-
flowing stream of internal time consciousness. It is the inexhaustible
variation power of creative imagination that discloses multiplicity,
variety, and possibility in phenomena and opens up new horizons in
the topographical field. Through the act of disinterested observation
achieved by epoch, sedimented focal actualities habitually discrimi-
nated in the foreground are deconstructed, resulting in a noetic reversal,
gestalt switch, or shift of attention from foreground focus to back-
ground fieldwhereupon phenomena come to stand out through
ekstasis into the openness of being at the periphery in the spatial-
temporal horizon of the perceptual field. The neutralization of frozen
mental patterns through detachment from sedimented interpretations
discloses both the spatial horizon in the background field and the tem-
poral horizon in the ever-flowing stream of internal time conscious-
ness, whereupon the lived experience of the self now is revealed in its
wholeness as a being distended through past, present, and future
180 Artistic Detachment East and West
stages of the temporal continuumincluding those retentions or
noetic acts of intentionality constitutive of the past, protentions or
noetic acts constituting future phases, and primal impressions of
the now point. An act of artistic detachment (epoch, reduction, bracket-
ing, suspension, neutralization) opens up not only an outer horizon,
including a surrounding field of lived space and flowing stream of
lived time, but also an inner horizon of possibility, multiplicity, and
variety, so that the perceptual field is at each moment created and re-
created again and again through a spontaneous free play of fantasy
variation in creative imagination.
It is this aesthetic attitude of disinterested contemplation in its
two phasesthe passive stage of sympathetic detachment and the
active stage of spontaneous free play in imaginationwhich is devel-
oped by the Rader/Jessup thesis outlined in Art and Human Values. As
emphasized by the Rader/Jessup thesis, Kants aesthetic attitude
theory requires both a negative aspect of disinterestedness and a posi-
tive aspect of free play in imagination: He [Kant] maintained that
disinterestedness is necessary but not sufficient to characterize the
pure aesthetic judgment. Another indispensable mark of the aesthetic
is the harmonious play of our mental faculties including the resultant
pleasure (1976:51). To illustrate this idea of disinterested beauty as
imaginative variation power of free play they discuss Virgil Aldrichs
aesthetic attitude theory, based on Wittgensteins analysis of seeing-
as, using ambiguous figures like the duck/rabbit in Philosophical
Investigations. They cite, as well, another ambiguous figure used by
Wittgenstein: a black cross on a white ground or a white cross on a
black ground. Similarly, they analyze diagrams that can be perceived
as receding like a tunnel, or protruding like a truncated pyramid seen
from above, or flat like a small square in gestalt psychology where
diagrams are imaginatively transformed when a view switches from
one perspective to another (pp. 6465). Rader and Jessup clarify that
beauty is not only the fixed property of objects, but further requires a
description of the aesthetic attitude which constitutes its appearance,
and contend that the aesthetic attitude itself has two sides: an atten-
tional aspect of disinterestedness and an elaborative aspect of sym-
pathy and imagination. The attentional aspect of detachment, distance,
or disinterestedness does not eliminate the human element of feeling
whether desire, emotion, or sympathybut means that feeling is
apprehended in tranquility by detached observation. A disinterested
feeling suspends habitual interpretation of phenomena and allows for
the play of imagination and other faculties so as to spontaneously
 An East-West Phenomenology 181
reorganize events from different perspectives like the gestalt switch
illustrated by multistable optical illusions such as the duck/rabbit or
hallway/pyramid.
The very same point is underscored in Experimental Phenomenology
(1977) by Don Ihde, who in his Husserlian phenomenological inter-
pretation of art uses multistable diagrams like the hallway/pyramid
or Neckar cube to illustrate how the aesthetic meaning of the noema
(content pole) is constituted by mental acts of positing at the noetic
pole through free variation in imagination. He explores the interdis-
ciplinary relation between phenomenology and the arts by describing
how the already sedimented noetic attitude of fixed interpretation
constitutes the noema in habitual patterns whereas the polymorphic,
multiperspectival, and open noetic attitude of free variation spontane-
ously constitutes and reconstitutes the perceptual field into novel
figure/ground gestalt configurations to disclose multiplicity, possi-
bility, and variety of phenomena in their full complexity (pp. 147
152). The imagination is connected with the phenomenological atti-
tude of epoch as detachment from sedimentation or suspension of
habitual interpretation through neutralization of judgement, which
enables one to spontaneously reorganize the perceptual field into novel
value-laden figure/ground gestalt patterns through the creative vision-
ing process that Husserl calls fantasy variation rooted in the inexhaus-
tible variation power of imagination.
Theories of artistic detachment, as noted earlier, hold that beauty is
not simply the fixed and given property of some physical object but
also requires for its appearance the cultivation of a mental subjects
aesthetic attitude of disinterested contemplation. According to the
phenomenological doctrine of intentionality as noesis noema correla-
tion, aesthetic experience, like all experience, requires a twofold cor-
relate description of both the noema (or constituted object pole) and
the noesis (or constitutive subject pole) by which the former is itself
brought to presence in the horizon of openness/disclosure. Hence in
this chapter I develop a phenomenological theory whereby aesthetic
experience as rapture through detachment is described in terms of its
noesis noema intentionality structure, according to which beauty is
an epiphany of hidden depth at the noematic content pole constituted
by an attitude of detached contemplation at the noetic act pole.
The various aesthetic attitude theories of artistic detachment that
emerged in the Western and Eastern traditions are to be understood
from the phenomenological standpoint as efforts to provide a com-
plete account of aesthetic experience wherein beauty is described in
182 Artistic Detachment East and West
terms of its qualitative features at the noematic pole as well as the
mental acts by which the former is itself constituted at the noetic
pole. From the phenomenological thesis of intentionalityor noesis
noema correlationit follows that the aesthetic attitude of contem-
plation must be described both in terms of the what (noema) and the
how (noesis). An aesthetic attitude therefore functions like the phe-
nomenological attitude of epoch, or neutralization, an impartial
standpoint of observation that suspends all judgements of affirmation
and negation so that noematic phenomena come to presence as they
are in qualitative suchness. Furthermore, like the noetic shift from
the already sedimented views of the natural attitude to the openness
of the phenomenological attitude, the aesthetic attitude includes both
a negative phase of detached sympathy and a positive phase of recon-
stitution through free variation in creative imagination.

The Aesthetic Attitude in the East

Western versions of an aesthetic attitude theory have been formulated
in terms of such representative notions as disinterestedness (Kant), de-
tached contemplation (Schopenhauer), resignation (Goethe), psychic
distance (Bullough), dehumanization of art (Ortega y Gasset), equi-
librium in synaesthesis (I. A. Richards), isolation through framing
(Mnsterberg, Polanyi), epiphanies of luminous mental stasis (Joyce),
intransitive attention (Vivas), seeing-as (Aldrich), alienation effect
(Brecht), emotion recollected in tranquility (Wordsworth), epoch or
neutralization (Husserl), and Gelassenheit or letting-be (Heidegger).
In the East, variants of an artistic attitude theory of disinterested
contemplation include ancient Indian ideals of aesthetic experience
such as Abhinavaguptas antarasa or peaceful beauty constituted by
sadrnikarana as the universalization process of deindividuation; the
ancient Chinese ideal of beauty established by the Taoism of Lao-tzu
as that unfathomable dark mystery (hsan) of the indeterminate void
(hs) constituted by the attitude of letting-be (wu-wei) along with
its modern reformulation by Wang as a yin mode of dark mysterious
beauty in the realm of self-detachment, world of no-self, or im-
personal state (wu-wo chih ching); and the Japanese ideal of beauty
constituted by shikan aesthetic consciousnessincluding Shunzeis
waka poetics of calm and contemplation (shikan), Dgens zazen state
of without-thinking (hishiry) as the neutral attitude between think-
ing (shiry) and not-thinking (fushiry), Zeamis n drama theory based
on the seeing of detached perception (riken no ken), Bashs haiku
 An East-West Phenomenology 183
poetics of impersonal loneliness (sabi), Sen no Rikys aesthetics of
the tea ceremony based on the detached attitude of rustic beauty
(wabi), or, in more recent Japanese philosophical thought, Suzukis
no-mind (mushin), Nishidas no-self (muga), Hisamatsus disin-
terestedness (mukanshin) and detachment (datsuzoku, ridatsu), Nishi-
tanis nonattachment (mushjaku) as the state between being and
nothing, Kukis detached resignation (akirame) as a component of
iki (chic), gais disinterested onlooker (bkansha) mentality of de-
tached resignation (teinen, akirame), and Ssekis detachment from
human emotions (hininj).
All of these detachment theories recognize that beauty is not just
an attribute of fixed and given sense objects: to some extent it is also a
function of the subjectan aesthetic attitude of disinterested con-
templation through detached observation of phenomena as they appear
to consciousness. In this way the theories adopt a phenomenological
orientation by describing how pervasive aesthetic qualities like mono
no aware (sad beauty of impermanent things), ygen (profound mys-
tery), wabi (rustic poverty), sabi (impersonal loneliness), shibumi (ele-
gant restraint), fry (windblown elegance), and iki (chic) are all alike
constituted by mental acts of achieving rapture through noetic acts of
psychic distancing. Like phenomenology, Zen attempts a return to
the things themselves in their original presence, suchness/isness, or
qualitative immediacy. Yet in accord with the intentionality thesis of
noesis noema correlation, a description of what appears (the noema)
must be accompanied by an analysis of how it appears (the noesis). It is
this phenomenological idea of intentionalitythat noematic mean-
ing is correlated with a noetic act of constitutionwhich requires some
kind of aesthetic attitude theory. Zen ideals of beauty like ygen are to
be analyzed in phenomenological terms as a description of events
presencing just as they are in a satori-like epiphany of depth revealed
at the surrounding horizon of openness/disclosure. This noematic de-
scription of ygen as beauty in terms of a holistic vision of events in
their hidden depths as the content of horizon phenomena encircling
all focal objects is to be correlated with the noetic act of positing,
which constitutes its appearance through an aesthetic attitude of de-
tached contemplation. Similar to the epoch of phenomenological aes-
thetics, detached contemplation of beauty in Zen involves a nonposi-
tional noetic attitude of no-mind, no-thought, or without-thinking
that neutralizes sedimented focal actualities habitually discriminated
in the foreground so that events open up and come to presence in the
expanded horizon of openness located in the background field of
184 Artistic Detachment East and West
boundless nothingness where emptiness is fullness and fullness is
emptiness. Just as the act of epoch neutralizes sedimented habitual dis-
crimination of focal actualities to apprehend the spatial horizon as a
surrounding background field, it also neutralizes sedimented percep-
tions of the present to apprehend the duration of a temporal horizon
as a flowing stream of internal time consciousness.
The relation between Husserls epoch and Buddhist samatha-vipassan
or tranquility-insight practice has been elucidated in a study by
S. W. Laycock (1994). Laycock clarifies that while Husserl on occasion
uses the terms epoch and reduction interchangeably, there is a dis-
tinction between them. While epoch indicates a shift of attention, the
resultant attitude to reflect radically on what presents itself is the
reduction. With this distinction, then, Laycock points out: The
epoch is, in certain dimensions of comparability, the Husserlian counter-
part of tranquility cultivation (Skt. samatha bhvan); and the reduc-
tion, of the cultivation of insight (vipassan bhvan) (p. 139). Again,
Laycock (p. 154) points out that the literal meaning of epoch as switch-
ing off approximates the Buddhist conception of nirvana as blowing
out the flames of craving and aversion. Furthermore, he describes the
Great Doubt ( J. taishi) of Zen as the Buddhist epoch (p. 152). Lay-
cock characterizes the Great Doubt of Zen as the equipoise of the
Buddhist epoch, because it is not simply the act of negation but rises,
in Hui-nengs words, above existence and non-existence (p. 150).
Thus like the Husserlian epoch, the Buddhist epoch is a neutral state
of equipoise between noetic judgements of affirmation and negation
which itself apprehends the noematic presence of phenomena sus-
pended emptiness-like between the realms of being and nonbeing.
Our phenomenological analysis of the aesthetic attitude of detached
observation underscores precisely this aspect of Husserlian epoch in its
sense of withholding all assent or dissent. In general the epoch
parallels the early Buddhist mindfulness practice of samatha-vipassan
(J. shikan) or tranquility-insight beyond all blind reactions of craving
and aversion, as well as the later Zen Buddhist epoch of the Great
Doubt beyond existence and nonexistence. It also functions as an
equivalent to Dgens zazen practice as without-thinking (hishiry)
beyond thinking (shiry) and not-thinking (fushir). As we shall see,
Dgens idea of enlightenment (satori) as presence of things as they
are (genjkan), seen by without-thinking (hishiry) beyond the affir-
mation of thinking and the negation of not-thinking, has been for-
mulated by scholars in aesthetic terms as the vision of ygen through
shikan practice, which in turn has been interpreted through Western
 An East-West Phenomenology 185
phenomenology as noematic presence corresponding to a noetic atti-
tude of epoch: the neutralization of all affirmative or negative judge-
ments. Furthermore, we shall see how in Ssekis literary treatment of
this theme the vision of ygen as epiphany of mysterious depths sus-
pended between existence and nonexistence requires emotional
detachment (hininj) from all sympathy (dj) and antipathy
(hand). Similarly, Joyces idea of epiphany as disclosure of beauty
requires a detached attitude characterized as a luminous stasis of aes-
thetic pleasure beyond kinetic reactions of desire and loathing. Like
the phenomenological attitude of epoch, East-West variants of the aes-
thetic attitude are seen to have this character of detached contempla-
tion that neither accepts nor rejects either desires or their objects but
simply objectifies and observes whatever is immediately presented to
consciousness in their suchness. Hence both the phenomenological
attitude of epoch and the aesthetic attitude of disinterested contem-
plation represent an impartial state of meditative equipoise between
affirmation and negation.
A phenomenological investigation into the aesthetics of darkness
and shadows developed by the ygen tradition of Japanese art and lit-
erature involves a description of both the qualities appearing as the
(objective) content of beauty and the (subjective) acts of positing that
correspond to themthat is to say, both what appears and how it
appears, both noema and noesis. Here I want to sketch a description of
the noematic phase followed by the noetic phase of constitutive acts.
A phenomenological investigation into the noematic content of beauty
as ygen underscores those aesthetically valuable figure/ground gestalt
qualities of immediate experience where illumined objects articulated
in the foreground are encircled by a surrounding penumbral zone of
twilight darkness and shadows in the encompassing nonarticulated
horizon of openness/nothingness at the background field. In a treatise
on ygen aesthetics called In Praise of Shadows (1977), Tanizaki Ju-
nichir describes the Japanese aesthetic preference that finds beauty
not in objects themselves but in patterns of shadow cast by things as
they recede into surrounding twilight, conjuring a halo of darkness,
an aura of mystery and depths.
The fundamental structure of perceptual phenomena, according to
such Western phenomenologists as Edmund Husserl, Martin Hei-
degger, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, is their essential point/horizon
or figure/ground gestalt contexture, wherein a clearly discriminated
foreground focus of attention is always encircled by an undiscrimi-
nated background field. As Merleau-Ponty observes, this nonarticu-
186 Artistic Detachment East and West
lated horizon of openness surrounding focal objects articulated in the
background is the field of lived space: he calls it the darkness in the
theatre necessary to the clarity of the spectacle and the zone of non-
being before which precise beings, figures and points appear (1962:
100). From the standpoint of phenomenology, the Japanese aesthetic
quality of ygen or shadowy darkness signifies the nonarticulated hori-
zon of lived space as the dark ground of nonbeing that envelops focal
entities in the field of being as a halo of mystery and depth. In The
Field of Consciousness, Aron Gurwitsch articulates the essential point/
horizon or figure/ground gestalt structure of the perceptual field as
described by contemporary phenomenologists in both auditory and
visual terms:
The figure-ground structure is exhibited in all perceptual phenomena
after a period of stillness, the sudden resounding of a musical note or
noise is experienced as figure emerging from a ground. . . . Experience
of stillness is parallel to the experience of darkness as visual background
out of which a luminous point flares up. [1964:112]
Don Ihdes Experimental Phenomenology (1977) explicates how aes-
thetic experience describes the figure/ground structure of noematic
phenomena as well as the noetic acts by which they are constituted.
The aesthetic worldview in which the horizon phenomena of the noema
are apprehended by noetic acts of suspension, variation, and reversal is
illustrated by Japanese landscape painting: an insubstantial object in
the articulated foreground focus of attention discloses that horizon of
openness or nothingness in the nonarticulated wholeness of the en-
compassing background field. Ihde observes: A somewhat more radi-
cal shift occurs in a type of traditional Japanese art. In this art some
objecta sparrow with a few blades of grass or a single cherry branch
with blossomsstands out against a blank or pastel background (p.
129). He continues:
Our traditional [Western] way of viewing would say that the subject
matterwhat stands out and is dominant in the foregroundis the
sparrow or the blossoming branch. The background is merely empty or
blank. . . . Yet the emptiness and openness of a Japanese painting is
the subject matter of the painting, the sparrow or the branch being set
there to make the openness stand out. . . . To understand such a painting
calls for a deep reversal in the noetic context. [p. 129]
This not only explains how Japanese painting discloses horizon phe-
nomena of openness, emptiness, or nothingness at the noema but indi-
 An East-West Phenomenology 187
cates that this aesthetic mode of viewing requires an act of suspen-
sion, variation, and reversal in the noesis.
A second example given by Ihde derives from another tradition but
applies nonetheless toward elucidating the Japanese aesthetics of dark-
ness and shadow:

A fascinating aesthetic view of the world can be found in a further-

reaching set of examples. Carlos Castaneda describes one such difficult
but captivating example in the teachings Don Juan offers him. The old
wizard advises Carlos to go out and look at a tree, and instead of seeing it
in the usual way (the natural attitude), he instructs him to look at the
shadows, so that eventually, it is the shadows that he sees as primary. The
wizard is trying to get Carlos to reverse the dominant and foreground and
the recessive and background, so that the ordinary tree/shadow appear-
ance becomes a shadow/tree appearance. [p. 128]

The shift from ordinary object/shadow appearance to the aesthetic

worldview of the new shadow/object appearance at the noema requires
an act of spontaneous reconstitution at the noesisa radical gestalt
switch or noetic reversal from the already sedimented view of the
natural attitude to the openness of the phenomenological attitude.
This phenomenological mode of seeing in its phases of suspension
(epoch), variation, and reversal is equivalent to the aesthetic attitude
of disinterested contemplation in its inhibitory aspect of detachment
and it reconstructive aspect of free play.
Heidegger, as we have seen, undertakes a Husserlian phenomeno-
logical description of beauty in terms of horizon phenomena as the
surrounding horizon of nothingness/openness at the noema whereas
Gelassenheit (letting-be) is the act of disinterested contemplation to
which it is correlated at the noesis. For Heidegger, beauty is original
truth (Gk. aletheia) or unconcealedness whereby phenomena stand out
in ekstasis into the openness, presence, and nonconcealment through
the meditative thinking of Gelassenheit. Heideggers description of
Gelassenheit as releasement toward things and openness to the mys-
tery at once suggests the atmospheric Japanese beauty of ygen or
mystery and depth apprehended through an aesthetic attitude of
detached contemplationvariously called shikan (tranquility-insight)
in the waka poetics of Shunzei, Chmei, and Teika, riken no ken (seeing
of detached perception) in the n theory of Zeami, hishiry (nonthink-
ing) in the Zen theory of Dgen, mukanshin (disinterestedness) or
datsuzoku (detachment) in the modern Zen philosophy of Hisamatsu
188 Artistic Detachment East and West
Shinichi, mushin (no-mind) in the Zen aestheticism of D. T. Suzuki,
hininj (detachment from human feeling) in the literary works of Na-
tsume Sseki, and so on.

The Haiku Moment

The Japanese Haiku (1960) by K. Yasuda elaborates a striking analysis
of haiku poetics wherein aesthetic experience is to be understood as a
haiku momenta satori-like epiphany or flash of insight wherein
pervasive aesthetic qualities like sabi (impersonal loneliness), wabi
(rustic beauty), and ygen (dark mystery) are evoked through an aes-
thetic attitude of disinterested contemplation. Yasudas articulation of
the haiku moment represents a Japanese literary equivalent to
James Joyces notion of an epiphany, or moment of illumination, in
which the vision of beauty as wholeness, harmony, and radiance
culminating in a vision disclosing the whatness (L. quidditas) of an
ordinary event is apprehended through an impartial attitude described
as a luminous stasis of aesthetic pleasure. In his explanation of the
atmospheric ideal of beauty in Japanese haiku poetics, Yasuda cites
the American philosophers of art (John Dewey, S. K. Langer, S. C.
Pepper) who develop a contextualist model whereby beauty is not
simply located either in the subject or the object but is spread through-
out the whole field, situation, or context as its pervasive quality. He
then goes on to clarify how pervasive qualities like ygen (mysterious
depth) and sabi (impersonal sadness) correspond to an aesthetic atti-
tude of disinterested contemplation. Yasuda describes three mental
attitudes in the perception of a dragonfly over a rye field: a farmer, an
entomologist, and a poet. The farmer adopts a commercial attitude that
views the presence of dragonflies over his rye field strictly in economic
terms. The entomologist adopts a scientific attitude that reductionisti-
cally analyzes the dragonfly with technical categories. Finally, there is
the aesthetic attitude of the haiku poet:
In contrast to these two attitudes, the poets is neither commercial nor
scientific. His attention is directed not to his knowledge about the
dragonfly, nor to the value of the rye field. He is interested in the object
for its own sake. . . . An attitude such as this is aesthetic. I shall call it a
haiku attitude. [1960:132]

Yasuda explains how for Bashs haiku theory the poet cannot inter-
ject anything of his personal, egoistic, or selfish attitude but must
instead depict the impersonal quality of the moment. According to
 An East-West Phenomenology 189
Bashs haiku theory, a poem should not be tinged with ones own
personal feelings of joy or sorrow: it is a description of the event in
itself enjoyed for its own sake. Yasuda continues:
When a person is interested and involved in the object for its own sake,
then, a haiku attitude is formed. It is therefore said that a haiku attitude
is a state of readiness for an experience which can be aesthetic. . . . This
readiness, moreover, must be for a disinterested form of single-minded
activity. If it is not disinterested, it will be commercial, the farmers atti-
tude, or scientific, like his friends [the entomologist]. [Hume 1995:134;
italics added]
Yasudas account of haiku poetics is at once reminiscent of Roman
Ingardens phenomenological study of literature in The Cognition of
the Literary Work of Art. Ingarden, as noted earlier, was a student of
Husserl who developed a phenomenological analysis of how aesthetic
meaning in a literary work is noetically coconstituted by intentional
acts of the author and the reader. One of the significant aspects of
Ingardens phenomenological analysis is that he describes both the
passive and active phases of intentionality whereby aesthetically valu-
able gestalt qualities given in the literary work of art elicit active noetic
operations of constitution. In this context he articulates a threefold
typology of mental attitudes operating when the reader interacts with
a literary work of art:
Above all, it is necessary to characterize the two attitudes of the reader
which are here being contrasted . . . (a) the purely cognitive or investi-
gating attitude and (b) the aesthetic attitude. Both are distinguished
from the practical attitude. [1973:172173]
According to Ingarden, then, there are three basic mental attitudes:
the cognitive, the practical, and the aesthetic. This scheme essentially
corresponds with Yasudas classification into commercial, scientific,
and poetic attitudes. Just as for Ingarden the cognitive and practical
attitudes are suspended in epoch for a shift to an aesthetic attitude of
disinterested contemplation in order to realize aesthetically valuable
gestalt qualities, so for Yasuda the haiku moment requires that one
shift from the scientific and commercial attitudes in order to realize
the poetic attitude of artistic detachment for awakening to immedi-
ately felt pervasive aesthetic quality.
Ingarden illustrates these three attitudes along with the radical
shift that occurs in changing from the natural attitude (the ordinary
state of sedimented practical/cognitive attitudes) to the openness of
the phenomenological/aesthetic attitude. The practical attitude is
190 Artistic Detachment East and West
illustrated by someone who buys a picture for interior decoration; he
assumes a cognitive attitude when he investigates the properties of
the painting he has purchased. But for Ingarden (1973:173), an aes-
thetic attitude of contemplative detachment is a third possibilityan
attitude of detached contemplation wherein one views the work of art
as a whole in its pervasive aesthetic value quality:
Finally, when he reposes on a sofa, is sunk in contemplation, and
attempts to view the work in its totality in its artistic form, only then
does he assume the aesthetic attitude.
Here the aesthetic attitude is described as an act of contemplation.
Moreover, for Ingarden the aesthetic attitude of contemplation is
regarded as a certain distance . . . between the object of cognition and
the subject of cognition (p. 281; italics added). Similar to the way
Ingarden discusses beauty in terms of aesthetic gestalt qualities of
literature, Yasuda explicates haiku poetry as aiming to depict the per-
vasive aesthetic quality of an event disclosed in a haiku moment. Yet
both thinkers hold that realization of pervasive figure/ground gestalt
quality requires a shift from the sedimented worldview of the natural
attitude to the openness of the phenomenological attitudeas it
were, a shift from the practical/cognitive attitude to the aesthetic atti-
tude. In accord with the phenomenological thesis of intentionality as
noesis noema correlation, we are obliged to describe the aesthetically
valuable gestalt qualities (Gestaltqualitten) disclosed at the noematic
pole as well as a reflexive account of the corresponding disinterested
attitude of detached contemplation at the noetic pole.
Art and literature of the Kamakura period are characterized by a
shift from the quality of aware (sad beauty) to the quality of ygen
(mysterious darkness or profound mystery). A noematic analysis of
beauty as ygen represents a description of horizon phenomena where
objects clearly discriminated in the foreground focus of attention grad-
ually recede into the mystery and darkness of the horizon of disclosure
in the nondiscrimated background field by which they are encircled.
The noematic content of ygen in turn corresponds to a noetic attitude
of detached contemplation. An emphasis on this kind of aesthetic
attitude of detached contemplation in Japanese geid (the tao of art) is
historically traced back to its origins in what Misaki Gisen (1972)
calls the shikan aesthetic consciousness (shikanteki biishiki) of the
late Heian and early Kamakura priesthood. The shikan aesthetic con-
sciousness of Japanese poetics signifies a turning point characterized
by the shift in emphasis from the object to the act of detached con-
 An East-West Phenomenology 191
templation by which it is constituted. This shikan (Ch. chih-kan) prac-
tice of Japanese Tendai (Ch. Tien-tai) Buddhism is itself rooted in
the early Buddhist samatha-vipasann (tranquility and insight) medi-
tation wherein liberation from suffering is attained through vedan-
sati: mindfulness of feeling, the detached observation of intense
feeling sensations with equanimity (upekkha), the even-minded per-
ception of phenomena free of all blind reactions of craving and aver-
sion, attraction or repulsion, love or hate, liking or disliking. Like the
phenomenological epoch (bracketing, reduction, neutralization), it is
a suspension of judgement that neither affirms nor negates the
phenomenon in being or nonbeing but is, rather, an openness that
allows the thing to presence in qualitative immediacy just as it is in
the emptiness/suchness of absolute nothingness.

Dgens Without-Thinking
One of the most significant expressions of what Mikaki Gisen terms
shikan aesthetic consciousness is to be found in Dgens Zen Bud-
dhist philosophy. In Dgens metaphysics of impermanence-Buddha-
nature, muj or impermanence of insubstantial events in the flux of
being-time (uji) is connected to the Japanese aesthetic of perish-
ability encapsulated by the sad beauty of aware, whereas genjkan or
presence of things as they are is related to the profound beauty of
ygen, these in turn being rooted in the detached tranquil mode of
attention cultivated by zazen meditation as an expression of shikan
aesthetic consciousness. But as various comparative works on Japa-
nese Buddhism have endeavored to clarify, Dgens thought can be
understood in Husserlian phenomenological terms wherein the appre-
hension of prereflective presence at the noematic content pole corre-
sponds to a shift from the natural attitude of already sedimented
interpretations to the phenomenological attitude of epoch or neutral-
ization at the noetic act pole. By this view, Dgens phenomenology
of zazen involves a twofold analysis of satori wherein immediate expe-
rience of things presencing just as they are (genjkan) at the noema
corresponds to the noetic attitude of without-thinking (hishiry).
Dgens notion of without-thinking approximates the aesthetic atti-
tude of epoch insofar as it requires detachment from judgements of
affirmation and negation and thus leads to seeing things presencing
as they are in openness of nothingness where emptiness is fullness and
fullness is emptiness.
Zen Action/Zen Person by T. P. Kasulis (1981) is a pioneering phe-
192 Artistic Detachment East and West
nomenological analysis of Dgen. Kasulis underscores the fact that
Dgens idea of genjkan (manifestation of the koan) is apprehended
by the mental state of hishiry (without-thinking). From a phenome-
nological standpoint, Kasulis translates/interprets Dgens central
notion of genjkan as presence of things as they are. Although Kasulis
does not emphasize the aesthetic dimension of Zen experience, he
remarks that Bashs haiku poetry is an example of a traditional Zen-
influenced literary art that expresses an event of genjkan, prereflec-
tive presence (1981:124). Using a phenomenological framework,
Kasulis (p. 72) goes on to explain how for Dgen the state of hishiry
or without-thinking is the (nonpositional) noetic attitude that itself
corresponds to the noematic content of enlightenment as genjkan. In
Dgens phenomenology of zazen (seated meditation), there is a dis-
tinction between three noetic attitudes of thinking (shiry), not-
thinking (fushiry), and without-thinking (hishiry):
1. Thinking represents a positional noetic attitude of either
affirming or negating and corresponds to the noematic content
of conceptualized objects.
2. Not-thinking is a positional noetic attitude of negation
whose noematic content is objectified thinking.
3. Without-thinking is the state of zazen meditation represent-
ing the nonpositional noetic attitude of neither affirming nor
negating that corresponds to the noematic content of genjkan,
the presence of things as they are (p. 73). Again, from a phe-
nomenological standpoint Kasulis (pp. 3951) analyzes mushin
or no-mind as the noetic act corresponding to the noematic
content of mu, nothingness (pp. 3951).
Kasulis further suggests that Heideggers phenomenological atti-
tude of Gelassenheit (letting-be) can be understood as a Western parallel
to the Zen doctrine of no-mindor what in Dgens phenomenology
of zazen is represented by the noetic attitude of without-thinking
(1981:4851). Kasulis writes that Gelassenheit is a state of composure
arising out of an attitude of letting things be (p. 48). For Heidegger,
Gelassenheit is a synonym for meditative thinking, which stands in
contrast to calculative thinking. Meditative thinking, or Gelassenheit,
is an attitude of letting-be whereby phenomena come to presence in
openness/nothingness of being; calculative thinking means to re-
present (vorstellen) things as objectified (p. 48). Similar to Mumons
Zen concept of no-mind as a moment of yes-and-no, Heidegger
speaks of Gelassenheit as being suspended between yes and no (see
 An East-West Phenomenology 193
Kasulis 1981:49). In Dgens phenomenology of zazen, this response
to primordial presence of things in nothingness through the state
between yes and no is designated by without-thinking (hishiry),
which is itself the nonpositional noetic attitude suspended between the
affirmation of thinking (shiry) and the negation of not-thinking
(fushiry). Thinking corresponds to affirmative judgement correlated
with being; not-thinking corresponds to negative judgement corre-
lated with nonbeing; without-thinking corresponds to the middle way
of emptiness/suchness between being and nonbeing. By this view
Heideggers Gelassenheit or letting-be through meditative thinking as
suspension of yes and no itself functions like Dgens thinking of not-
thinking by without-thinking as the middle between conventional
and empty levels of truth.
David E. Shaner further develops this Husserlian phenomenological
analysis of Japanese Buddhism including both the zazen of Dgen and
the tantric mandala visualization of Mikky Buddhism. Like Kasulis,
Shaner describes Zen enlightenment in terms of the Husserlian phe-
nomenological categories of noesis and noema. The act of neutralization
at the noesis corresponds to the perception of horizon phenomena at
the noema. His thesis is that both zazen meditation and tantric mandala
visualization neutralize sedimentationsresulting in holistic body-
mind awareness of nothingness presented as an expanded periphery
and horizon in toto. In this context, Shaner explicates Dgens idea of
without-thinking (hishiry) in terms of the Husserlian phenomeno-
logical category of neutralization (epoch), understood as a noetic atti-
tude of total detachment from habitual mental constructs:
Dgen explicitly refers to without thinking (hishiry) which is a tech-
nical term paralleling our contemporary phenomenological category of
neutralization. Just as neutralization has been seen to reflexively
transcend both affirmative and negative thetic intentions, without
thinking (hishiry) reflexively transcends both thinking (shiry) and
not thinking (fushiry). [1985:164]
He then goes on to clarify how Dgens noetic attitude of without-
thinking achieves nonattachment to self, including detachment from
body and mind, through neutralization of physical tensions and
mental intentions:
Thinking (shiry) is used by Dgen to represent affirmative thetic
positings. Not-thinking (fushiry), of course, designates the denial of
thinking and is itself a negative thetic positing. Therefore to represent
the mode of neutral presencing, which transcends thetic judgments and
194 Artistic Detachment East and West
frees attachment to body-aspects and mind-aspects, Dgen uses the term
without thinking. [p. 164]

According to the phenomenological method, the Zen concept of

aesthetic experience is to be analyzed through the noetic noematic
or act content intentionality structure of consciousness so that
without-thinking (hishiry) or no-mind (mushin) is the noetic atti-
tude which corresponds to the noematic content of prereflective
presence (genjkan) whereby events are disclosed (opened up) as they
are in emptiness/suchness. Generally speaking, Japanese Buddhist
notions like shikan (tranquility and insight), mushin/munen (no-mind/
no-thought), and hishiry (without-thinking) express the (nonposi-
tional) noetic attitude of detached contemplation that corresponds
to the noematic content of enlightened experience as nothingness/
openness, emptiness/suchness, or prereflective presence of things as
they are in being-time of impermanence-Buddha-nature. Applied spe-
cifically to the Japanese notion of aesthetic experience, the Zen cate-
gories of shikan, mushin, and hishiry represent the open, detached, and
spontaneous aesthetic attitude of tranquil contemplation at the noetic
pole which constitutes the beauty of things presencing just as they are
in ygen, profound depths, at the noematic pole.
Now let us examine how the phenomenological category of epoch
or neutralization can also illuminate the aesthetic dimensions in-
herent in Dgens notion of without-thinking. Misaki Gisen (1972),
we should recall, identified Dgen as one of the foremost poet-priests
of the shikan aesthetic consciousness. Takahashi says that the con-
tent of Dgens zazen is essentially that of ygen: the beauty of mystery
and depth. In Takahashis words: The profound nature of Dgens
thought . . . is best expressed by ygen . . . a quiet, elegant and pro-
found beauty (1983:6162). Moreover, one of the leading scholars of
Dgens Zen Buddhist philosophy, Steven Heine, in agreement with
Takahashis view, interprets Dgens metaphysics of reality as genjkan
based on an aesthetic appreciation of nature and creation of poetry in
terms of a mysterious plentitude of meanings evoked by the ygen/
yoj [mysterious depth/affective feeling] poetic ideal (1989:66). Heine
also traces the medieval ygen ideal of beauty as mysterious depths
implicit in Dgens writings to the Tendai meditative practice of
cessation-contemplation (shikan) (p. 6).
Both Western phenomenology and the Zen teachings of Dgen
have been incorporated into the East-West synthesis of Nishida Kitar
and the Kyoto school of modern Japanese philosophy. Nishida Kitar
 An East-West Phenomenology 195
often employs phenomenological categories of Husserl to analyze
various noetic-noematic intentionality levels of pure experience. Sub-
sequent thinkers related to the Kyoto school like Nishitani Keiji, Abe
Masao, Watsuji Tetsur, and Kuki Shz have appropriated Hei-
deggers existential phenomenology to articulate the horizon of abso-
lute nothingness/openness through detached contemplation without
judgements of affirmation/negation. As noted earlier, there are three
fundamental levels of reality in the Kyoto schools metaphysics of
nothingness and its underlying Buddhist psychology of detachment:
the first is being (u), the standpoint of eternalism that is marked by
attachment (shjaku) to the Cartesian subject and its objects; the second
is relative nothingness (staiteki mu), the standpoint of nihilism whereby
one becomes attached to emptiness itself; and the third is absolute
nothingness (zettai mu), the standpoint of nonattachment (mushjaku)
at the middle way between eternalism and nihilism. The mental atti-
tude of detached contemplation corresponding to the third level of
emptiness or absolute nothingness as the horizon of boundless open-
ness is described by Nishitani Keiji: All attachment is negated: both
the subject and the way in which things appear as objects of attach-
ment are emptied. . . . They present themselves in their suchness, their
tathat. This is non-attachment (1982:34; 1961:40).
Analyzed in terms of Dgens phenomenology of zazen, attachment
to being corresponds to the noetic attitude of thinking (shiry),
attachment to relative nothingness corresponds to the noetic attitude
of not-thinking (fushiry), and nonattachment at the place of empti-
ness or absolute nothingness corresponds to the noetic attitude of
without-thinking (hishiry). Or restated in terms of the Tendai
logic of Three Truths, which Dgen studied as a monk at Mount Hiei,
the headquarters of Tendai Buddhism in Japan: without-thinking cor-
responds to the middle truth (chtai) between the conventional
truth (ketai) of being and the empty truth (ktai) of nonbeing.
According to the Christian-Buddhist interfaith dialogue elaborated
by the Kyoto school, just as in Zen the standpoint of absolute noth-
ingness is realized through nonattachment (mushjaku, ridatsu) so
in the via negativa Christian mysticism of Meister Eckhart the radical
breakthrough whereby the self is emptied into the godhead of noth-
ingness (Ger. das Nichts) is achieved by detachment (Ger. Abge-
schiedenheit). Moreover, breakthrough to absolute nothingness by exer-
cise of detachment is understood in terms of Heideggers existential
phenomenology as releasement into the horizon of openness/nothing-
ness through detachment of Gelassenheit (letting-be). Kyoto school
196 Artistic Detachment East and West
philosophers typically cite Bashs haiku poetry as the paradigm of a
literary artform depicting events as they are in emptiness/suchness
realized through detached contemplation at the standpoint of openness/
nothingness. In terms of Heideggers phenomenological aesthetics,
the function of haiku poetry is disclosure of events in the beauty of
original truth as aletheia or unhiddenness whereby they come to pres-
ence, openness, and nonconcealment through the detached contem-
plative attitude of letting-be.
In accord with the revolution in aesthetics triggered by Kants tran-
scendental idealismwhich shifted the center of gravity from the
experienced object to the attitude of the experiencing subjectand
with its further development into the phenomenological concept of
aesthetic experience as being characterized by intentionality or noesis
noema correlation, all of the Kyoto school philosophers discussed
here describe various aspects of the Japanese Buddhist sense of beauty
as constituted both in terms of what is seen at the noema and how it is
seen at the noesis. For Nishida Kitar the Japanese sense of beauty re-
quires an act of self-negation in the ecstasy of muga or no-self. D. T.
Suzuki articulates traditional Zen ideals of beauty like ygen, wabi,
sabi, and fury in terms of an aesthetic attitude of mushin or no-mind:
the unconscious, spontaneous, detached state of awareness. Hisamatsu
Shinichi holds that there is a profound similarity between the free
play (Ger. spielen) and disinterested (interesselos) character of art as
conceived by the Kantian tradition of the West and the quality of
playfulness (J. asobi) anddisinterestedness (mukanshin) in the Zen
Buddhist arts of East Asia. In contrast to the austere Zen philosophy
of Nishida, Nishitani, Suzuki, and Hisamatsu, there stands the deca-
dent aestheticism of Kuki Shz. Kukis work integrates Japanese
canons of connoisseurship based on Zen principles of artistic detach-
ment with French decadent aestheticism tracing back to Kants idea
of beauty as a function of disinterested contemplation. Moreover,
Kuki studied with Husserl and Heidegger and assimilated the phe-
nomenological, existential, and hermeneutic modes of cultural analysis.
For Kuki, the high-fashion Edo-period aesthetic ideal of iki or chic
requires that beauty include three elements in a cultural synthesis:
the eroticism (bitai) of the seductive geisha, the prideful gallantry
(ikuji) of the samurai, and the detached resignation (akirame) of the
Zen priest. In bipolar terms, the aesthetic ideal of chic (iki) is to be
analyzed through a tension between emotional sympathy represented
by the sweetness of amami and psychic distance imposed by the
astringency of shibumi.
P a r t Tw o

Psychic Distance in Literature

East and West
Chapter 4

Psychic Distance in Modern Western

Literature

The problem of psychic distance as a factor in art and

beauty has been explored not only in the field of academic philosophy
but in modern and postmodern literature as well. The notion of
psychic distance has been thematized, for example, in the portrait-
of-the-artist novel that proliferated in the late nineteenth- and early
twentieth-century movements under the rubric of aestheticism, includ-
ing the controversial school of decadent aestheticism. It can be said that
aestheticism is a religion of art whereby salvation is achieved in an
epiphany, or moment of illumination, by disinterested contemplation
of beauty. As Ian Small writes in the introduction to his sourcebook
titled The Aesthetes: To experience life in the manner of art was the
definition of spiritual success in the terms of Aestheticism (1979:
xii). The portrait-of-the-artist novels function as a manifesto for aes-
theticism wherein art is elevated to the level of a religion with its own
paththe way of beauty; its own clergythe priest of imagination;
its own salvific goalthe rapture of aesthetic delight; and its own
spiritual disciplinecultivation of artistic detachment. The ideal of
aestheticism was to cultivate a heightened aesthetic attitude of artistic
detachment so that each moment could be viewed as if it were a paint-
ing, a poem, a play. Hence the ultimate religious goal of aestheticism
was no less than the imaginative transmutation of life into art through
insertion of psychic distance.
Another characteristic feature in portrait-of-the-artist novels is the
correlation between artistic detachment and the epiphany. As clarified
by M. H. Abrams in Natural Supernaturalism (1973:418427), a leit-
199
200 Psychic Distance in Literature East and West
motif of the modern novel is what James Joyce called the epiphany
the moment of vision. Like the Moment of Wordsworth and the
romantics, Prousts moments privilgis, Henry James act of imagination
which converts the very pulses of the air into revelations, Joseph
Conrads moments of vision, Thomas Wolfes attempt to fix eter-
nally . . . a single moment of mans living . . . that passes, flames
and goes, Virginia Woolfs moments of vision as the little daily
miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark,
and William Faulkners instant of sublimation are all enumerated
by Abrams (p. 419) as variants of Joyces epiphany in the modern
novel. Yet as Joyce himself emphasizes, the epiphany of an object
corresponds to an act of artistic detachment on the part of the subject.
It is precisely through cultivating an aesthetic attitude of disinterested
contemplation by insertion of distance that the artist imaginatively
transforms ordinary events of everyday life into epiphanies: ecstatic
moments of beauty, illumination, and delight.
In this chapter I want to discuss the role of psychic distance in rela-
tion to spiritual epiphanies of beauty as depicted in portrait-of-
the-artist novels. On the Western side we will look at four paradig-
matic works of fiction by authors related to the movement of British
aestheticism: Marius the Epicurean by Walter Pater; Roderick Hudson by
Henry James; The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde; and A Portrait
of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce. In Chapter 5, on the
Eastern side, we will focus on portrait-of-the-artist novels by the
two founders of modern Japanese literature: Mori gai and Natsume
Sseki. Whereas the creative fiction of Mori gai represents a crea-
tive synthesis of German and Sino-Japanese movements of philosoph-
ical-literary aesthetism, the fiction of Natsume Sseki signifies the
integration of British and Sino-Japanese aestheticism. As we shall see,
at the center of these Japanese novels is typically a developing artist
who seeks to observe satori-like epiphanies of beauty as hidden depth
through cultivation of artistic detachment. Yet a conflict arises when
artistic detachment is brought to the extreme of alienation, isolation,
and dehumanization. Hence the fundamental problematic character-
izing the philosophy of aestheticism expounded in these archetypal
portrait-of-the-artist novels, both East and West, is the dialectical ten-
sion between detachment versus sympathy. As clarified especially by
Maurice Beebe in Ivory Towers and Sacred Founts (1964), this funda-
mental conflict in portrait-of-the-artist novels can be articulated with
three interrelated themes: the Divided Self, the Ivory Tower, and the
Sacred Fount. In the process of self-realization, the developing artist-
 Modern Western Literature 201
hero experiences a Divided Self through the opposition between artistic
detachment from life (as symbolized by the Ivory Tower) and emo-
tional involvement with life (as symbolized by the Sacred Fount). A
final epiphany through reversal characteristic of portrait-of-the-artist
novels, both in their Eastern and Western variants, is that artistic de-
tachment is incomplete: moral sympathy is also necessary. The aesthetic
attitude required for the epiphany, or moment of vision, therefore
includes a creative synthesis of both the Ivory Tower and the Sacred
Fountnamely, the balance of distance and involvement, detachment
and sympathy, or disinterestedness and engagementunified in a
single act of psychic integration.
Here it should be noted that this chapter on the treatment of por-
trait-of-the-artist novels in Western aestheticism is relatively brief in
relation to Chapter 5 on the Japanese tradition. The reason for this is
simple: while there is a vast body of work available in English on the
Western authors considered here, little has yet appeared on the Japa-
nese tradition of literary aestheticism. Thus in the presentation that
follows, the various concepts, themes, and problems of Western aes-
theticism will be used as a point of reference to illuminate the tradi-
tion of literary aestheticism in Japan.

Origins
As emphasized by the literary critic M. H. Abrams, the French and
British aesthetic movements ultimately trace their philosophical
origins to the Kantian idea that beauty is itself a psychological func-
tion of disinterested contemplation:
Aestheticism, or the Aesthetic Movement, was a European phenom-
enon during the latter nineteenth century that had its chief philosophical
headquarters in France. Its roots lie in the German theory, proposed by
Kant (1790), that the pure aesthetic experience consists of a disinter-
ested contemplation of an aesthetic object without reference to its
reality, or to the external ends of its utility or morality. [1981:2]

In the French movement, fundamental notions deriving from Kantian

aesthetics included the autonomy of art, the value of art for its own
sake, artistic detachment, the free play of imagination as a precondition
for aesthetic experience, and beauty as a pleasure that is disinterested.
French aestheticism as developed by Baudelaire, dAurevilly, Flau-
bert, and others was later introduced into England by Walter Pater
(18391894). The aesthetic movementart for arts sakeflourished
202 Psychic Distance in Literature East and West
in England from the late 1860s until the early 1890s. Its basic motifs
were expressed in the conclusion of Paters Studies in the History of the
Renaissance (1873) and then further developed in his novel Marius the
Epicurean (1885). Indeed, Paters Marius the Epicurean became the
prototype for the portrait-of-the-artist novel that flourished in the
movement of British aestheticism including such representative works
as The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) by Oscar Wilde and A Portrait of
the Artist as a Young Man (1916) by James Joyce. The American writer
Henry James, who lived much of his life as an expatriate in London
and other European cities, developed the themes of French and British
aestheticism in a series of quintessential portrait-of-the-artist novels
such as Roderick Hudson (1875) and The Tragic Muse (1890).
In these and other archetypal portrait-of-the-artist novels arising
out of British aestheticism, psychic distance simultaneously operates
at many levelsincluding elements of theory, imagery, plot, character
development, and narrative construction. At the theoretical level, the
protagonist often constructs a doctrine of beauty as a function of dis-
tance. Moreover, such novels employ images of literary imagination to
illustrate the artistic detachment by depicting epiphanies of beauty
evoked through insertion of distance. The plot invariably focuses on
the aesthetic education of the hero through cultivation of distance in
the process of becoming a creative artistpoet, painter, sculptor, or
actoror else a dilettante, connoisseur, aesthete, or dandy. Even the
most commonplace event can be transfigured into an epiphany of
beauty through insertion of distance. It is through insertion of dis-
tance that life is transformed into art. As for character development,
the protagonist becomes increasingly distanced from life to the point
of complete indifferencewhereupon a fundamental conflict arises
between distance and involvement. The protagonist realizes that art
requires distance from life, and in this context he experiments with
the many possible degrees and variations of distance on the sliding
scale from low distance to middle distance to great distance. If there
is underdistancing, the artwork loses its universality, objectivity, and
generality. But if there is overdistancing, the work of art becomes
dehumanized. Hence the artist discovers that one must strike a golden
mean between excess and privationin this case, a balance that lies
between too much and too little distancing.
In portrait-of-the-artist novels, psychic distance is not only devel-
oped in terms of an explicit theory of detachment and then worked
into the plot and character development of its protagonist. It is also
a literary technique in the narrative construction of the novel. The
 Modern Western Literature 203
Rhetoric of Fiction (1961) by Wayne C. Booth has become a standard
work of literary criticism analyzing the control of aesthetic distance
in the modern novel. Booth describes how Henry James, James Joyce,
and other founders of modern Western fiction have established the
narrative ideal of objectivity as the disinterested reporting of events.
Booth (pp. 6783) further explicates how the modern literary ideal of
objectivity is expressed through a variety of synonymsimpersonality,
detachment, distance, or disinterestednessand includes such distin-
guishable qualities as neutrality, impartiality, and impassability. He
thereby shows how, in contrast to works of imaginative fiction that
encourage the reader to become fully involved in human emotions of
life, the novels of modern authors like James and Joyce instead develop
an elaborate system of controls over the readers varying degrees of
involvement and detachment.

Walter Pater: Pioneer of British Aestheticism

As pointed out by M. H. Abrams: The doctrines of French Aestheti-
cism were introduced into England by Walter Pater (1981:2). We
have already seen how French aestheticism had its philosophical roots
in Kants notion of the aesthetic attitudedefined both in terms of
its disinterestedness, or artistic detachment from personal desire on
the negative side, and by its free play of imagination on the positive
side. In accord with Kants revolution in aesthetics, Pater underscores
the shift in emphasis from the beauty of objects to the constitutive
acts of distancing by the subject. Thus in the introduction to his
sourcebook on British aestheticism titled The Aesthetes, Ian Small
asserts: Pater focused attention away from the object of contempla-
tion and on to the contemplating mind (1979:xv). The idea of an
epiphany was developed by Pater in his conclusion to Studies in the
History of the Renaissance, where he describes human experience as com-
prised of successive moments of heightened sensations in conscious-
ness. But influenced by Kants transcendental idealism Pater develops
a kind of phenomenological approach that focuses on the act of detached
contemplation whereby the moment of beauty itself comes into
appearance.
Paters ideal of artistic detachment, articulated in Studies in the His-
tory of the Renaissance and Imaginary Portraits, is vividly depicted through
the images of literary imagination in his novel Marius the Epicurean.
This work tells the story of a boy called Marius as he grows into man-
hood during the reign of the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius. In the
204 Psychic Distance in Literature East and West
process of achieving self-realization, Marius takes on the role of a
detached spectator of life: With this was connected the feeling . . . of
a poetic beauty in mere clearness of thought, the actually aesthetic
charm of a cold austerity of mind . . . that was made easy by his natural
Epicureanism, already prompting him to conceive of himself as but
the passive spectator of the world around him (1985:106). Impressed
by the ceaseless flux of existence described by the ancient Greek
philosopher Heraclitus, the young Marius adopts the philosophy of
Cyrenaicism, a modified form of Epicureanism based on the detached
contemplation of beauty. Although this new position is called Epicu-
reanism, it is not to be identified with pleasure-seeking hedonism:
Not pleasure, but a general completeness of life (p. 115). Marius
Epicureanism is described as a new aesthetic philosophy (p. 119)
based on an aesthetic education (p. 117) of cultivating an enhanced
sensibility to music, literature, and the arts, which in its highest form
is raised to the level of religion: Such a manner of life might come
even to seem a kind of religionan inward, visionary, mystic piety, or
religion. . . . In this way, the true aesthetic culture would be realiz-
able as a new form of the contemplative life (p. 118). Epicureanism
is thereby elevated to the status of a religion, so that the Epicurean
becomes an artist-priest devoted to the detached contemplation of
beauty in all its forms. The narrative describes Marius as something
of a priest, and that devotion of his days to the contemplation of what
is beautiful, a sort of perpetual religious service (pp. 182183). Fur-
thermore, the aesthetic attitude of the artist-priest is described not
only in terms of its negative aspect, as detachment from personal
desires, but also in terms of its positive aspect as the imaginative recon-
struction of experience: Had he not come to Rome partly under poetic
vocation, to receive all those things, the very impress of life itself,
upon the visual, the imaginative, organ . . . to transmute them into
golden words? (p. 136).
But in a later chapter titled Second Thoughts, Marius undergoes
a reversal. He now realizes the narrowness of his former aestheticism
as a religion of beauty: Cyrenaicism is ever the characteristic philos-
ophy of youth, ardent, but narrow in its surveysincere, but apt to
become one-sided, or even fanatical. It is one of those subjective and
partial ideals, based on vivid, because limited, apprehension of the
truth of one aspect of experience (in this case, of the beauty of the
world and the brevity of mans life there) (p. 181). He adds: The
Epicurean has a strong apprehension for the beauty of things, an
exclusive preoccupation with the aesthetic and imaginative side of
 Modern Western Literature 205
things, bent on living in a stream of refined sensations (p. 185).
What is neglected in the narrow aestheticism of his youth, we now
learn, is the cultivation of moral sympathy: If, now and then, they ap-
prehended the world in its fullness, and had a vision, almost beatific,
of ideal personalities in life and art, yet these moments were a very
costly matter: they paid a great price for them, the sacrifice of a thou-
sand possible sympathies, of things only to be enjoyed through sym-
pathy, from which they detached themselves (p. 185). The stunning
reversal and grand epiphany in the novel are a recognition that aes-
thetic detachment is not sufficient; there is also a need for moral sym-
pathy. Marius describes this new awakening as follows: It defined
not so much a change of practice, as of sympathya new departure,
an expansion, of sympathy (p. 188). Hence the new perspective does
not require a change in the practice of aesthetic detachment itself but
only its integration with the practice of sympathy. Toward the end of
his life, Marius embraces Christianity and his life takes on a deeper
mode of detachment through meditation on impermanence and
death. He now describes his attitude as a meditatio mortis, ever facing
towards the act of final detachment (p. 289).
Marius the Epicurean thus establishes the archetypal structure for
the pattern of the many portrait-of-the-artist novels that would follow
in the movement of British aestheticism: the protagonist adopts aes-
theticism as a religion of beauty rooted in the practice of artistic de-
tachment. The high priest of Paters Epicurean religion of beauty is
therefore one who develops an aesthetic attitude in which the acts of
detached contemplation and creative imagination alchemically trans-
mute life into art as an ever-changing stream of exquisite moments,
refined impressions, and intense sensations. Yet after taking detach-
ment from life too far, there is an epiphany: a flash of recognition that
perfection requires both artistic detachment and moral sympathy.

Henry James: The Detached Observer

Influenced by European aestheticism, the American novelist Henry
James (18431916) develops the theme whereby through detachment
and imagination the artist-hero turns ordinary events into an epiphany
of beauty so as to transform life into art. As James declared in a letter
to H. G. Wells: It is art that makes life (1920:II, 490). James made
a landmark contribution to literary style in the composition of a novel
with his aesthetic ideal of the detached observerthat is, the narrative
of his novels is restricted to the point of view or what he otherwise
206 Psychic Distance in Literature East and West
calls a center of consciousness, central intelligence, and lucid
reflector. James various portrait-of-the-artist novels typically focus
upon an artist-hero who is characterized as having the capacity for
describing the beauty of aesthetic events from the impartial stand-
point of a disinterested bystander, impersonal spectator, or detached
observer. In James The Sense of the Past, Detachment and selection
are described as the prime aids of the artist (19071917:XXVI, 61).
Yet the ideal artist-hero has the double-consciousness which includes
both artistic detachment and moral sympathy. Lambert Strether of
The Ambassadors is burdened . . . with the oddity of a double conscious-
ness. There was detachment in his zeal and curiosity in his indifference
(1907117:XXI, 5). In his study called Ivory Towers and Sacred Founts
(1964), Maurice Beebe uses the titles from two of James novels as
archetypal ideals of the artist-hero: the Ivory Tower, symbolizing the
ideals of detachment, disinterestedness, and distance, as opposed to
the Sacred Fount symbolizing participation, sympathy, and involve-
ment. As Beebe (pp. 197231) points out in his chapter on Henry
James: The Ideal of Detachment, both the ideals of the Ivory Tower
as detachment from life and those of the Sacred Fount as participation
in life are combined in James own twofold aesthetic ideal of an artist-
hero with a double consciousness of disinterested curiosity (or de-
tached engagement).
But in James novels the artist-hero is a person of genius who has
cultivated a highly refined aesthetic attitude characterized by the
negative or inhibitory phase of detached observation and the positive
or constructive phase of creative imagination. For James the artistic
genius is not only a disinterested bystander with the capacity for
detached, objective, and impersonal observation; he is also one who
possesses a talent for the imaginative reconstruction of experience.
In an often cited passage from his 1884 essay The Art of Fiction,
James articulates his theory of moments of vision in connection with
the faculty of imagination: When the mind is imaginativemuch
more when it happens to be that of a man of genius . . . it converts the
very pulses of the air into revelations. After suspending the normal
habits of perception through the exercise of artistic detachment, the
genius then uses the crucible of imagination to alchemically trans-
mute commonplace events into moments of beauty, delight, and illu-
mination. In one of his letters to H. G. Wells, James clarifies this
relationship between the negative phase of artistic detachment and
the positive phase of creative imagination in an aesthetic experience
of beauty:
 Modern Western Literature 207
There is, to my vision, no authentic, and no really interesting and no
beautiful, report of things on the novelists, the painters part unless
a particular detachment has operated, unless the great stewpot or cru-
cible of the imagination, of the observant and recording and inter-
preting mind in short, has intervened and played its partand this
detachment, this chemical transmutation for the aesthetic, the
representational, end is terribly wanting in autobiography. [1920:II,
181182]
James first portrait-of-the-artist novel, Roderick Hudson, was pub-
lished in 1875indeed, ten years prior to the appearance of Walter
Paters Marius the Epicurean. James international theme typically
establishes a contrast between the new country of America, with its
lack of art and culture, as opposed to the high culture of Europe with
its accumulated monuments and treasures of art. In James treatment
of the international theme, the American is typically spontaneous,
open, natural, and innocent whereas the European is governed by tra-
dition, elegance, grace, and refinement. For James the aesthetic ideal
of the international theme as it bears upon the development of a
young artist is to combine the spontaneity of the American with the
cultivation of the European. In Daisy Miller, James most popular work,
the international theme provides a contrast between the American
woman and the European woman in terms of Daisys spontaneity
versus the ritual decorum of the European woman. In Roderick Hudson,
the international theme is presented for the first time when a young
American sculptor named Roderick Hudson takes a pilgrimage to
Rome to report on a real aesthetic adventure (1980:80). Henry
James, like Walter Pater, describes the aesthetic education of a young
man in Romethus to portray his museum concept of life as a
gallery of art objects to be used for the detached contemplation of
beauty. The journey to Rome functions as an education of the senses
and imagination (p. 127) in a place where the American artist can cul-
tivate a heightened ability to receive intense aesthetic impressions as
a disinterested spectator. Rowland Mallet, the center of consciousness
in the novel, sees his friend Roderick Hudson developing a stoic atti-
tude of aesthetic detachment to the point of losing moral sympathy:
Rowland had found himself wondering shortly before whether
possibly his brilliant young friend were without conscience; now
it dimly occurred to him that he was without that indispensable
aid to completeness, a feeling heart (pp. 164165). But in the end
Roderick Hudson descends from art to life when he turns from
the ideal beauty of his marble statues to the worldly appeal of the
208 Psychic Distance in Literature East and West
heroine Christina Light. The failure of Roderick Hudson, in short, is
the loss of distance resulting from excessive involvement in human
emotions.
From Roderick Hudson (1875) to The Tragic Muse (1890) to The Golden
Bowl (1904), Henry James produced a series of portrait-of-the-artist
novels thematizing in various ways the problem of psychic distance in
aesthetic experience as well as the conflict between artistic detachment
and moral sympathy. James productivity throughout his long and
prolific career is no doubt to be explained, at least in part, by his own
genius of imagination, his great cultivation of detachment, and his
intensity of emotional involvement. Yet it has often been pointed out
that James, who never married, renounced all personal involvements
in life for the sake of his art. Hence unlike Roderick Hudson, Henry
James did not abandon his dedication to the ideal of artistic detach-
ment but remained aloof as an impartial observer of events from
beginning to end.

Oscar Wilde: Decadent Aestheticism

Both the aesthetic and the decadent movements in England are repre-
sented by the writings of Oscar Wilde (18541900), especially his
novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) and his play Salom (1893).
Moreover, Wildes life itself has come to be regarded as the very cari-
cature of a decadent aesthete. In The Picture of Dorian Gray, an aesthete
named Dorian obtains an occult portrait of his own image that en-
ables him to remain forever youngalthough the signs of aging, in-
cluding all physical and moral degeneration, are recorded in the paint-
ing itself. By this ingenious device Wilde at once establishes the
fundamental theme of aestheticism: the imaginative transformation
of life into art, or the effort to live each moment as if one is a figure in
a painting, novel, or play.
At one point his mentor Lord Henry informs Dorian that a woman
with whom he had been romantically involved, the Shakespearean
actress Sibyl Vane, has just committed suicide. Detached, aloof, indif-
ferent, and uninvolved, Dorian merely tells those present with cool
nonchalance that if they view her suicide as a moment in a Shake-
spearean play, instead of an occasion for sorrow, it now becomes an act
of great beauty when seen from the proper distance. Lord Henry then
recalls the words of Dorian and realizes they hold the key to Dorians
inability to feel sorrow over the actress death:
 Modern Western Literature 209
You said to me that Sibyl Vane represented to you all the heroines of
romancethat she was Desdemona one night, and Ophelia the other;
and if she died as Juliet, she came back to life as Imogen. . . . To you at
least she was always a dream, a phantom that flitted through Shake-
speares plays. . . . Mourn for Ophelia if you like. . . . But dont waste
your tears over Sibyl Vane. She was less real than they are. [1985:116]
Shortly thereafter, Dorian Gray confirms this view by stating that
there is nothing sad in Sibyl Vanes suicide, since it was the great
romantic tragedy of her age (p. 123). As a leading Shakespearean
actress, Sibyl Vane would regularly play Ophelia as well as Juliet,
Desdemona, Imogen, and other heroines of the stage, reenacting their
tragic lives and deaths night after night. On the eve of her suicide,
she simply played her greatest roleraising her own life into the
sphere of art (p. 123). In this context, Dorian further explains his aim
of becoming detached from all human emotions so that life can always
be seen from a purely aesthetic point of view (p. 122). Yet to those
listening to Dorian Gray, it seems that he has carried artistic detach-
ment from human emotions much too far and has lost all sympathy
for the people around him. As one person responds: You talk as if
you had no heart, no pity in you (p. 122). It is this lack of pity that
results in the collapse of his narrow aestheticism into a form of moral
decadence. Thus Wilde develops a subtle and ironic critique of deca-
dent aestheticism while expressing the fundamental tension between
artistic detachment and moral sympathy in the aesthetic way of life.

James Joyce: Culmination of the Tradition

The culmination of the portrait-of-the-artist novel in the tradition of
British aestheticism is without question James Joyces masterwork, A
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, first published in 1916. In this
work a developing artist-hero named Stephen Dedalus is described as
gradually detaching himself (1977:67) and becoming withdrawn
(p. 68), alone (p. 59),antisocial (p. 177), and so on. As Stephen
achieves increasingly greater aesthetic distance from life, he proceeds
to formulate his own detachment theory of art and beauty. First
Stephen expands upon Thomas Aquinas notion of beauty as having
three elements: wholeness (L. integritas), harmony (consonantia), and
radiance (claritas): Three things are needed for beauty, wholeness,
harmony and radiance (p. 212). The radiance is further described as
quidditas, the whatness or quality of a thing (p. 213). In a revised
210 Psychic Distance in Literature East and West
version of Portrait of the Artist called Stephen Hero, Joyce reformu-
lated this theory of beauty in terms of his celebrated doctrine of the
epiphany. As in the first version, beauty is analyzed as having the
three qualities of wholeness, symmetry, and radiance. The third quality
of beauty, identified as claritas or radiance, is also its quidditas or what-
ness. Moreover, the radiance of a thing wherein its whatness is disclosed
is itself the moment of revelation whereby the object achieves its
epiphany:
By an epiphany he meant a sudden spiritual manifestation. . . . He
believed that it was for the man of letters to record these epiphanies with
extreme care, seeing that they themselves are the most delicate and
evanescent of moments. . . . It is just in this epiphany that I find the
third, the supreme quality of beauty. [p. 288]

Having defined the beauty of wholeness, harmony, and radiance

whereby the object achieves its epiphany, Joyce describes the aesthetic
attitude of detached contemplation by means of which the quality of
beauty is envisaged:
The feelings excited by improper art are kinetic, desire or loathing.
Desire urges us to possess, to go to something; loathing urges us to
abandon, to go from something. . . . The esthetic emotion (I use the
general term) is therefore static. The mind is arrested and raised above
desire and loathing. [p. 205]

As opposed to the kinetic reaction of desire or loathing, the aesthetic

attitude of an artist resulting in the visionary apprehension of beauty
is described as a condition of luminous silent stasis beyond craving
and aversion or attraction and repulsion: Beauty expressed by the
artist cannot awaken in us an emotion which is kinetic. . . . It awakens,
or ought to awaken, or induces, or ought to induce, an esthetic stasis
(p. 206). And elsewhere: the instant wherein that supreme quality of
beauty, the clear radiance of the esthetic image, is apprehended lumi-
nously by the mind which has been arrested by its wholeness and
fascinated by its harmony in the luminous silent stasis of esthetic
pleasure (p. 213). Hence for Joyce the beauty of wholeness, harmony,
and radiance whereby the object achieves its epiphany must itself
correspond to a mental attitude of calm detachment on the side of the
artist: namely, the luminous silent stasis of aesthetic pleasure beyond
all desire and loathing.
Stephen then describes the historical evolution of literature in three
stagesthe lyrical, epic, and dramaticcorresponding to the move-
 Modern Western Literature 211
ment from involvement to detachment, kinetic to static, or personal
to impersonal:
The dramatic form is reached when . . . the personality of the artist . . .
refines itself out of existence, impersonalises itself, so to speak. The
artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond
or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent,
paring his fingernails. [p. 215]

At this level of analysis, the theme of artistic detachment is now de-

veloped as a literary technique for the narrative construction of a text.
The ideal of narrative composition is complete objectivity as an im-
partial, impersonal, and indifferent reporting of events. Artistic detach-
ment is now developed in terms of a system of controls over the
readers level of distance and involvement. Thus as the story progresses,
the artist-hero becomes increasingly detached, isolated, aloof, indif-
ferent, disinterested, impersonal, and distanced from life. This dis-
tancing is reinforced by the aesthetic theory that Stephen expounds in
which kinetic impulses of desire and loathing are rejected for the
luminous silent stasis of esthetic pleasure. It is this aesthetic stasis
beyond desire and loathing that leads to the epiphany of beauty in its
wholeness, harmony, and radiance. Further, Stephen describes his
preference for the dramatic form of literature wherein personality
is refined out of existence to become impersonal, aloof, and indif-
ferent through the aesthetic attitude of detached contemplation. The
thematization of psychic distance as a factor in beauty and its
correlate problem of overdistancing versus underdistancing is thus
approached from a variety of perspectives in Joyces multilayered
narrative.
According to James Joyce, then, the beauty of wholeness, harmony,
and radiance whereby the object achieves its epiphany requires for
its emergence an aesthetic attitude having two phases: the negative
or inhibitory phase, as a luminous stasis of aesthetic pleasure, and a
positive or creative phase of imaginative transformation. Describing
Stephens idea of the dramatic stage of narrative composition marked
by the shift from the personal to the impersonal, Joyce writes: The
esthetic image in the dramatic form is life purified in and reprojected
from the human imagination (p. 215). The material world created by
God must be purified in the human imagination in order to become
art. Abandoning his former goal of becoming a Jesuit priest who per-
forms the miracle of transubstantiation through the mass, Stephen
now elects to become instead a priest of eternal imagination, trans-
212 Psychic Distance in Literature East and West
muting the daily bread of experience into a radiant body of everliving
life (p. 221). Here Joyce brings to culmination a central and recur-
rent theme in the tradition of British aestheticism: the alchemical
transmutation of life into art through creative imagination. Joyces
passage, cited from Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, is at once remi-
niscent of the transmutation of life into art through the alchemy of
imagination described in classic texts of British aestheticism such as
Rosa Alchemica by William Butler Yeats, The Decay of Lying by Oscar
Wilde, and Marius the Epicurean by Walter Pater. Furthermore, Joyces
imaginative transmutation of commonplace events into epiphanies of
beauty recalls the use of alchemical transmutation of life into art in
the crucible of imagination described in The Art of Fiction and
other essays on literary criticism by Henry James. Thus for James
Joyce, as for others in the tradition of British aestheticism, the visionary
apperception of beauty is a function of a twofold aesthetic attitude
characterized by the exercise of detachment on the one side and crea-
tive imagination on the other.
As Maurice Beebe explains in Ivory Towers and Sacred Founts (1964),
Stephen Dedalus in Joyces Portrait is the archetypal artist-hero in
that the Divided Self of the protagonist wavers between the Ivory
Tower and the Sacred Fountbetween the aesthetic distance from life
required by his holy mission as an artist-priest and his natural desire
as a human being to participate in the life around him. Stephen grad-
ually retreats more and more into the isolation of his Ivory Tower to
look down from a distance upon the world below: aloof, indifferent,
detached. There is no reversal at the end of this novel. Stephen does
not recognize that beauty requires both artistic detachment and moral
sympathy. On the contrary, the novel ends with Stephen completely
exalted: As he sets off to undertake his divine mission as an artist-priest
of imagination, he has achieved total godlike distance from life: O
life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience
and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my
race (p. 253). But in Joyces next work, Ulysses (1922), the failure of
the artist-heros narrow aestheticism is revealed suddenly and unex-
pectedly in a dramatic reversal when Stephen Dedalus is presented as
the fallen Icarus. As clarified by C. H. Peake in James Joyce: The Citizen
and the Artist (1977), Portrait of the Artist shows the development of
Stephen Daedalus into an Artist through aesthetic distance, artistic
detachment, and isolation from life, but Ulysses shows the development
of Leopold Bloom into a Citizen through emotional involvement, social
engagement, and participation in life. Stephen of Portrait and Bloom
 Modern Western Literature 213
of Ulysses are complementary opposites in the process of resolving
internal conflicts in the search for self. Peake sums up his thesis when
he states:
Before any resolution could be achieved, it was necessary to develop the
concepts of artist and citizen and transform their mode of presentation.
Ulysses imposes this transformation abruptly and forcefully. The artists
painfully chosen isolation has proved sterile; detachment, however neces-
sary, has proved as unfruitful as submission; it is now equally necessary
for him to renew sympathies. [Peake 1977:345; italics added]
Thus when Joyces Ulysses is read as the sequel to Portrait of the Artist as
a Young Man, it clarifies precisely that detachment is bankrupt apart
from sympathy, that the Artist must also become a Citizen, and that
the aesthetic distance from life symbolized by the Ivory Tower must
be balanced by moral participation in life as symbolized by the Sacred
Fount.
Chapter 5

Psychic Distance in Modern Japanese

Literature

Whereas Nishida Kitar (18701945) became the lead-

ing philosophical representative of the modernization process during
the Meiji Restoration (18681912) through his attempt to synthesize
Eastern and Western values, the novelists Mori gai (18621922) and
Natsume Sseki (18671916) were his counterparts in Japanese liter-
ature. Indeed, Mori gai and Natsume Sseki are regarded as the two
giants of Meiji-period fiction. Their efforts to forge a creative synthesis
of Eastern and Western ideals through the medium of imaginative
literature derives partly from the fact that both gai and Sseki were
products of the new Meiji imperial university systemsent abroad to
study in Europe at precisely that key juncture in time when Japan,
after centuries of national seclusion (sakoku), was again opening itself
to Western influences. gai studied medicine, philosophy, and litera-
ture in Germany from 1884 to 1888; Sseki conducted research on
English literature in London from 1900 to 1903. Thus while gais fic-
tion represents a synthesis of Japanese and German literature, Ssekis
writings signify an integration of the Japanese and British literary tra-
ditions. And since both writers emerged during that transitional time
of the late Meiji period when the Tokugawa philosophical values were
still flourishing, both were fully grounded in Confucian learning as
well as Chinese language and literature. As a result, the creative fic-
tion of both gai and Sseki represents a profound syncretism of the
Chinese, Japanese, and European literary traditions.
Here I want to clarify how Mori gai and Natsume Sseki both
214
 Modern Japanese Literature 215
formulate an original theory of aesthetic distance which is then illus-
trated in various ways through their portrait-of-the-artist works of
creative fiction. Hasegawa Izumi has pointed out the aesthetic atti-
tude of detached resignation developed under the influence of Zen
Buddhist philosophy in both gai and Sseki: Much of gais writing
conveys a mood of resignation which is reminiscent of the attitude
toward life adopted by Natsume Sseki in the last years of his life
(1963:241). Mori gai articulates his theory of aesthetic distance in
what J. Thomas Rimer classifies as self-portrait of the artist stories
dating from 19091915 (see gai 1994) by means of his ideal of a
disinterested onlooker (bkansha) who cultivates an Apollonian con-
templative attitude of resignation (teinen, akirame), serenity (heiki), and
detached amusement (asobi). gais philosophy of detached resignation
is itself a synthesis of the traditional Japanese spirit of akirame and the
German romantic idea of resignation (Entsagung) formulated by Goethe
and other European thinkers. Natsume Sseki works out a theory of
aesthetic distance in his portrait-of-the-artist novel called Grass Pillow
(Kusamakura, 1906) wherein the beauty of profound mystery (ygen)
is apprehended in an epiphany of depth through a mental attitude
characterized by detachment from human emotions (hininj). Ssekis
hininj theory of artistic detachment is itself formed through a syn-
thesis of the Japanese and English literary traditions.
Both novelists thematize the tension between detachment and sym-
pathy that emerges in the process of becoming an artist through culti-
vating an aesthetic attitude of disinterested contemplation. Thus Mori
gai and Natsume Sseki both have developed an East-West model
of an aesthetic attitude of psychic distance as impartial observation of
phenomena in their suchness achieved through an aesthetic attitude
of detached contemplationa notion that is not only influenced by
the Kantian ideal of beauty as a function of disinterestedness but also
by that ancient Eastern philosophy of resignation which some have
described as the heart of traditional Japanese spirituality.

Akirame: Detached Resignation in Mori gai

Mori gai is regarded by many Japanese scholars as the preeminent
author of Meiji-period fiction. gai was a prodigy who graduated
from the Medical College of Tokyo Imperial University at only nine-
teen years of age and was later sent as an army medical officer to Ger-
many to study nutrition and military hygiene. In his lifelong career as
a high-ranking army medical officer, he earned promotions as director
216 Psychic Distance in Literature East and West
of the Military Medical College, director of the medical staff to the
Imperial Guard Division, and chief editor of the Japanese Medical
Journal, finally being appointed to the highest position of surgeon
general of the Japanese army in 1907. After retiring from the army in
1916 he was appointed director and chief librarian of the Imperial
Museum. Parallel to his achievements in the military, scientific, and
medical fields he became one of the most renowned figures in modern
Japanese literature. gais works of creative fiction amount to more
than one hundred and twenty titles including novels, novellas, short
stories, diaries, poems, plays, and biographies. Moreover, he was the
founding editor of the literary magazine Subaru (The Pleiades). He
was a brilliant linguist, as well, who became a translator of European
literary and philosophical works into modern Japanese during the
Meiji period. Aside from his fluency in German and other European
languages he was known for his remarkable command of both classical
Japanese and Chinese. In his dual career as a medical doctor, scientist,
military officer, government official, and high-ranking bureaucrat on
the one side and novelist, short story writer, playwright, poet, essayist,
biographer, cultural historian, literary critic, aesthetician, teacher,
editor, linguist, and translator on the other, gai was a towering intel-
lectual figure who came to represent the paradigmatic Renaissance
man of the Meiji Reconstruction: a genius who bridged science and
the literary arts.

gais East-West Philosophy of Resignation

gais creative fiction is outstanding not only for its great literary and
aesthetic value but also for its deep philosophical content. His stories
typically focus on philosophical themes and often contain lengthy dis-
cussions of various Western and Chinese philosophers. In some cases
Shizuka Kanai in Vita Sexualis (1909), for example, or Ono Tasuku
in Kompira (1909)the main figure is a professor of philosophy by
vocation. For a period of time gai lived with his relative Nishi Amane
(18291897), one of the first Meiji scholars to study abroad, who is
credited with having introduced Western philosophy into Japan and
with having coined a great part of Japanese philosophical terminology,
including the term tetsugaku for philosophy in 1874 (Piovesana
1969:11). In his German diaries and semiautobiographical works of
fiction like Daydreams (Ms, 1911), gai recollects his study of
German philosophy, literature, and aesthetics, including Kant, Hart-
mann, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Goethe, and others, while a student
 Modern Japanese Literature 217
of medicine in Berlin. It is from his study of German romantic litera-
ture and philosophy in the West, combined with his encyclopedic
knowledge of the Chinese and Japanese philosophical traditions, that
gai came to formulate his own theoretical standpoint: what Hase-
gawa Izumi calls gais philosophy of resignation (1963:244). Oka-
zaki Yoshies book gai to teinen (gai and Resignation, 1969) presents
an exhaustive account of the resignation motif in gais life, thought,
and fiction. According to Okazakis interpretation, gais fiction rep-
resents variations of his central theme: detached resignation (teinen,
akirame). For Okazaki the pervasive mood in gais fiction is one of
complete detachment as expressed through the narrators contrived
stance as onlooker (bkansha) or disinterested malcontent (fuheika).
gais philosophy of detached resignation signifies one of the first
great theories of aesthetic distance based on an East-West synthesis
during the Meji period of modern Japanese literature.
The most famous statement of gais attitude of detached resigna-
tion is to be found in his essay My Standpoint (Yo ga tachiba,
1909): The word that sums up my feeling best would be that of resig-
nation. My feeling is not confined to the arts; every aspect of society
evokes this in me. Others may think I am suffering to hold such an
attitude, but I am surprisingly serene (1991:27). He further clarifies
that resignation (teinen, akirame) designates a mental attitude of
serenity, nonchalance, coolness, or indifference (heiki) (1971:
VII, 99; 1991:26). Indeed, a common expression of contemporary Japa-
nese youths in Tokyo is zenzen heiki desuI am totally cool [de-
tached]. As gai states in the passage just cited, the stance of de-
tached resignation is not only an aesthetic attitude that is applicable
to the arts but an entire way of life. In everyday Japanese parlance, the
word akirame can sometimes be understood as giving up and func-
tions similarly to the Japanese expression shikata ga nai (it cannot
be helped). But in its Buddhist context, akirame further denotes an
attitude of serene detachment in the sense of calm acceptance when
confronted by overwhelming forces of destiny or fate (unmei) result-
ing from the karmic law of cause and effect (inga). Hence in gais
philosophy of resignation the term akirame does not indicate giving
up but signifies instead a contemplative mental attitude characterized
by detachment, serenity, and equanimity, which itself results in a
heightened capacity for clear disinterested observation and penetrating
insight into everyday events. Furthermore, gai was born into the
samurai class and uses the word akirame in the bushid sense of serene
detachment rooted in the unbending resolve of the warrior. In gais
218 Psychic Distance in Literature East and West
writings, akirame is not a passive state of acquiescence at all: it is a
dynamic attitude of discharging ones duty (giri) at the sacrifice of
ones human feelings (ninj).
Through the medium of creative fiction, Mori gai works out a
cross-cultural philosophy of resignation based on an East-West syn-
thesis of the Japanese, Chinese, and German literary traditions. Hase-
gawa Izumi says that gai adopted a characteristically Oriental ap-
proach to life which is best described as the philosophy of resignation
(1963:244). The Oriental influences entering into gais East-West
philosophy of detached resignation include attitudes characteristic of
traditional Japanese Buddhism as well as Tokugawa-period Japanese
Confucianism and neo-Confucianism. In semiautobiographical stories
like Daydreams (Ms, 1911), gai develops the concept of an
onlooker attitude of calm resignation in terms of traditional Japanese
Buddhist symbols of isolation and detachment while depicting him-
self as a Buddhist recluse who observes everything with a detached
gaze (gai 1994:180). According to Hasegawa (1963:242), gai
formulated this philosophy of detached resignation during his
government-imposed exile in the remote city of Kokura on the Japa-
nese island of Kyushu between the years 1899 and 1902, at which
time he is known to have practiced Zen meditation. Donald Keene
(1973:841) relates the cool detachment characterizing gais bystander
attitude of resignation to the Zen-influenced bushid code of the
samurai warrior. Dilworth connects gais onlooker mentality of re-
signed sadness to traditional Japanese aesthetic sensibilities pervading
n drama, haiku poetry, the tea ceremony, and modern Japanese cinema
(see gai 1991:32). As Rimer emphasizes, gais onlooker mentality
of detached resignation derives partly from his early upbringing in
the tradition of Confucian self-cultivation (gai 1994:4).
gais philosophy of resignation thus has its roots in the tradi-
tional Japanese aesthetics of akirame, which itself has been deeply
influenced by the detached tranquility of Zen meditation with its cul-
tural manifestations in the military arts of the warrior as well as the
fine arts of painting, poetry, and drama. The Eastern philosophy of
resignation articulated by gai in fact represents an aesthetic stance
toward life that is continuous with the Zen Buddhist ygen tradi-
tion of Japanese literature and art. Ueda Makoto (1983) describes the
Eastern concept of resignation in its Zen Buddhist sense as an aesthetic
attitude of calm acceptance that elicts visions of tranquil beauty as
ygen: In the 15th century, calm resignation came into greater promi-
nence among the components of ygen. Prolonged social unrest and
 Modern Japanese Literature 219
the influence of Zen Buddhism may have contributed to this change
in emphasis. . . . When an attitude of calm acceptance was manifested
in art it took the form of ygen and exuded tranquil beauty (1983:
VIII, 355; italics added). Although gais fiction does not generally
depict exotic Eastern images of beauty as ygen in the same way as to
be found in certain works by Sseki, Kawabata, Tanizaki, and Mishima,
his disinterested bystander nonetheless functions as an aesthetic atti-
tude of calm resignation whereby the meaning of commonplace events
in everyday life is disclosed in an epiphany of depth through insertion
of psychic distance.
If gais philosophy of detached resignation is rooted in traditional
Eastern attitudes cultivated by Confucianism, Zen Buddhism, bushid,
and Japanese aestheticism, on the Western side it can be traced to
Spinoza, Goethe, Schiller, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Hartmann, and
various other European thinkers. gai articulates this conflict of res-
ignation versus passion, detachment versus sympathy, distance versus
involvement, in terms of Nietzsches two fundamental aesthetic atti-
tudes: the Apollonian versus the Dionysian. gai develops this Apollo-
nian/Dionysian motif in novels like Vita Sexualis (1972:150) and
Youth (1994a:442) and in literary essays like History as It Is and His-
tory Ignored (1991:7). Although Nietzsche criticizes the nihilistic
modes of passive resignationism propounded by Schopenhauer and
instead upholds a Dionysian aesthetics of ecstasy, gai himself favors
an Apollonian spirit of detached contemplation that aims toward a
state of peace, calm, and serenity. One author states: gais Apollo-
nian spirit of resignation is reminiscent of both Spinoza and Goethe:
Spinozas philosophy, itself mediated through gais long interest in
Goethe, played a role in the formation of this resignation concept.
Like Spinoza, gai was impelled to neither laugh nor weep. . . . But
like Goethe, gai conceived of this kind of resignation in terms of
active pursuit of duty and destiny (gai 1991:27).
gais idea of resignation, then, was significantly influenced by the
German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (17491832), a contem-
porary of Kant who made the concept of resignation (Entsagung) cen-
tral to his own aesthetic theory. Yet as we can see from gais favorite
quote from Goethe, resignation is to be found not in passivity but
through action and fulfillment of duty as prescribed by the demands
of the here and now (gai 1994:176177). Thus while gais disin-
terested onlooker strives to realize a contemplative aesthetic attitude
of calm resignation, it is at the same time the dynamic resignation of
Goethe in the West as well as that of bushid in the East, which for the
220 Psychic Distance in Literature East and West
samurai warrior means to achieve detachment from human feelings
(ninj) through active fulfillment of ones duty (giri). Rimer notes that
Japanese critics often see gais philosophy of resignation as the result
of his growing sense of disillusionment over aspects of his own life
and career, as well as the shortcomings of Meiji Japan. But he empha-
sizes that gais bystander mentality of detached resignation is a posi-
tive state of mind directed toward acquiring deep insight into life
not a pessimistic attitude of withdrawal resulting from emotional
fatigue (see gai 1991:385n). Rimer explains gais Apollonian phi-
losophy of resignation in positive terms by means of Bertholt Brechts
alienation effecta dramaturgical technique used to insert aesthetic
distance for the purpose of establishing an objective standpoint from
which to develop an ideology critique leading to social transformation.
In Rimers words:
Intellectual awareness requires objectivity, and aesthetic distance permits
the reader to contemplate what he has read and generalize from it. gai
wants more than a personal, emotional response. Bertholt Brecht, in
describing his celebrated alienation effect, wrote that his object was
not just to arouse moral objections to certain circumstances of life but to
discover means for their elimination. gai, in his own way, is attempt-
ing a similar effort in his Apollonian meditation. [gai 1991:10]

gais Apollonian spirit of detached resignation is therefore not the

nihilistic, pessimistic, or negativistic attitude toward life undermined
by Nietzsche in his Dionysian critique of Schopenhauer. Instead it
represents a positive system including the spiritual value of peaceful
tranquility, the cognitive value of clear insight, the aesthetic value of
subdued quietness, and the moral value of social transformation in an
active pursuit of duty through disinterested action.
Upon considering gais double career as doctor/scientist and
novelist/artist, one might speculate on how his specialization in medi-
cine actually comes to bear upon his literary works in terms of their
form and content. As for the content, his works often deal with medical
issues. The single most interesting example is probably gais highly
acclaimed story called The Boat on the River Takase (Takasebune,
1916), which probes the case of a man charged with murdering his
own brother but whose actual intentions lead to a discussion on one of
the central problems of biomedical ethics: the question of euthanasia,
mercy killing in order to let a person die painlessly (1991:234). Fur-
thermore, some of his autobiographical stories have a medical doctor
as their protagonist: such figures as ta Toyotar in The Dancing
 Modern Japanese Literature 221
Girl, Okada from The Wild Geese, and mura Snosuke, the doctor
and man of letters from Youth. Shibue Chsai (1916), a masterpiece
from gais later period of biographical literature (shiden), details the
life of a Tokugawa physician whose main interests were medicine and
literaturea kind of disguised autobiography that enabled gai to
write with distance about a historical figure who could almost have
been himself.
Most interesting of all is how gais specialization in medicine bears
upon his detached stance as a writer. Rimer suggests that one possible
source of gais bystander attitude of detached resignation is his medi-
cal training: a similar quality, Rimer says, can be observed in the work
of another literary doctor, the Russian playwright Anton Chekhov
(gai 1994:34). But why would a medical doctor with the rank of
surgeon general become a novelist who develops a philosophy of res-
ignation? The answer may lie in what might be termed the medical
paradigm of philosophy: rooted in ancient Greek skepticism, devel-
oped by a physician named Pyrrho, and then passed down through
the writings of Sextus Empiricus. According to this medical paradigm,
philosophy is not just an academic pursuit but a form of psychotherapy
aimed at healing both mind and body through realization of ataraxia,
mental tranquility, achieved by epoch, suspension of judgement,
in a neutral state of meditative equipoise between affirmation and
negation. gais bystander attitude of detached resignation indicates
a state of equilibrium that, like the ataraxia of Sextus Empiricus, has
a therapeutic function resulting in mental tranquility through absence
of mental perturbation.
Indeed, Buddhism too is based on the medical paradigm of philos-
ophy insofar as the Buddha himself declares that he is the great physi-
cian, that his techniques are cures, and that his thought is a therapy
leading to the goal of recovery from illness. According to the four noble
truths expressing the Buddhist medical paradigm, the problem is suf-
fering, the cause is blind reactions of craving or aversion, the solution
is nirvana or tranquility, and the way is nonattachment to both crav-
ing and aversion. As various comparative studies, have noted, this
therapeutic model of ancient Greek skepticism leading to absence of
mental perturbation in ataraxia or mental tranquility is near to the
medical paradigm of Buddhism where suffering in cured through
tranquil contemplation in the peace of nirvana. Both the ataraxia of
Greek skepticism and the nirvana of Buddhism overcome suffering
through a state of mental tranquility achieved by detachment from
judgements of affirmation and negation or feelings of liking and dis-
222 Psychic Distance in Literature East and West
liking. gais Apollonian ideal of detached resignation, expressed
from the impartial standpoint of a disinterested onlooker, can be
understood from the context of the medical paradigm of philosophy
typified by ancient Greek skepticism in the West and Buddhism in
the East.

Resignation in gais Fiction

We have seen how gai sums up the theory of artistic detachment
defining his own stance as a writer through his notion of the disinter-
ested onlooker (bkansha) characterized by detached resignation (teinen,
akirame), serenity (heiki), and playfulness (asobi). He further describes
the philosophy of resignation underlying his standpoint as a disinter-
ested onlooker in terms of Nietzschean aesthetic categories as the
Apollonian attitude of tranquil contemplation in contrast to the dark
emotional Dionysian standpoint of intoxication, rapture, and ecstasy.
As a novelist, however, gai articulates his philosophy of resignation
not only in conceptual terms but also through the images, symbols,
and metaphors of the literary imagination as presented through the
artistic medium of creative fiction. In the fiction of gai, the Apollo-
nian attitude of detached resignation is developed as a philosophical
theme that is then worked into the plot and character development as
well as an authorial perspective of narrative construction. Scholars
recognize three periods of development in gais fiction: the early
period of gais career includes three romantic novellas written soon
after his return from Germany; after a hiatus of twenty years, gai
began his middle period extending from the end of the Russo-Japa-
nese War to the death of the Meiji Emperor in 1912; gais late
period, extending from the end of the Meiji Reconstruction in 1912
to around 1916, includes historical novels (rekishi shsetsu) and bio-
graphical (shiden) pieces. The evolution of gais philosophical motif
of detached resignation can thus be traced through these three stages
marking his literary career.

Early Period. The resignation and bystander themes received their

initial formulation in three romantic novellas written immedi-ately
after gais return from Germany: The Dancing Girl (Maihime,
1890), A Sad Tale (Utaka no ki, 1890), and The Courier (Fumi-
zukai, 1891). Hasegawa Izumi cites with approval the view that mod-
ern Japanese literature began with gais four-year stay in Germany
(Hasegawa 1963:237). Scholars have pointed to gais aesthetic
 Modern Japanese Literature 223
attitude of detached resignation as an aloof bystander, disinterested
onlooker, or impartial observer during his years in Germany as consti-
tuting an important factor leading to his development as a novelist.
J. T. Rimer underscores the quality of detachment characterizing Mori
gais objective bystander attitude during this formative period of his
development:

Yet even in these early years gai found he possessed one basic charac-
teristic that permitted him both to observe and to create: his ability to
put himself in the position of what he was to call at one later point the
[detached] bystander. No matter how involved he became in the events
around him, gai preserved the ability to study them, and himself, with
a certain detachment. [gai 1994:3; italics added]

It was gais ability to step back and insert psychic distance into events
in order to perceive them objectively as a disinterested onlooker with
cool detachment that defined his heightened powers of clear observa-
tion and artistic creation.
gais first published story, The Dancing Girl (Maihime), which
in 1989 was turned into an elegant film by the director Shinoda Masa-
hiro, is a blueprint for much of his later writings. According to Hase-
gawa Izumi, The Dancing Girl is gais first autobiographical self-
portrait of the artist as a young man and establishes central and
recurrent themes developed throughout his entire literary career. In
Hasegawas words: The Dancing Girl is an important key to under-
standing gai, as is Delusions [Ms], which provides a psychological
portrait of the artist during the years he spent in Germany (1963:
241). The Dancing Girl tells the story of a young military doctor
named ta Toyotar who is sent to Germany by the Japanese govern-
ment to study Western medicine. ta soon creates a scandal, however,
when he develops a passionate love affair with a beautiful German
dancer named Elise who subsequently becomes pregnant with his
child. Torn between the conflicting forces of duty versus romantic love,
he decides to return to Japan in order to advance his career. The struc-
tural pattern of The Dancing Girl, like many other stories written
by gai during his early and middle period, is the tension between
giri (social obligation) and ninj (human feeling)or, as otherwise ex-
pressed, between the detached resignation of akirame and the passion
of romantic love. The aesthetic philosophy of detached resignation in
gais writings during this first period of his literary career has been
summed up as follows:
224 Psychic Distance in Literature East and West
If we follow Okazaki Yoshies interpretation, the concept of resigna-
tion formed one side of Ogais earliest literary expression. His first
romance, Maihime (1898), revolves around the tension between
giri, that is, loyalty to the performance values of clan and family,
and ninj, that is, the dictates of the human heart and aesthetic emo-
tion. . . . The tension between giri and ninj, between teinen (resigna-
tion) and romantic love, reoccurs in Ogais next works, Utaka no
ki and Fumizukai. . . . gais middle period works, written between
1906 and 1912, rang various changes on the resignation theme. [See
gai 1991:26]

In the romantic novellas of gais early period, we find a genuine

Japanese literary counterpart to the celebrated international theme
developed in American literature by Henry James, beginning with
Roderick Hudson in 1876. James portrait-of-the-artist stories focusing
on the international theme typically involve a youthful American
artist-hero who travels abroad to Europe to experience its museums,
galleries, and monuments of art and then endeavors to record his aes-
thetic impressions from the standpoint of a disinterested onlooker. In
this context there arises a tension between the requirements of artistic
detachment and emotional sympathy. Likewise, in stories like The
Dancing Girl Mori gai develops an international theme wherein a
young Japanese man travels to Europe as a disinterested onlooker and
a similar tension develops between detachment and sympathy. Both
James and gai were the first major novelists of their respective coun-
tries to live in Europe and write autobiographical self-portrait-of-the-
artist stories based on their experiences abroad. Scholars of both James
and gai have emphasized that it was their powers of heightened clear
observationthrough the aloof, indifferent, and impartial third-person
stance as a disinterested bystander or detached onlooker in a foreign
culturethat led to their development as major novelists. In the semi-
autobiographical portrait-of-the-artist stories of both James and gai
the idea of artistic detachment is formulated as a philosophical theme
and then worked into the literary elements of plot, character develop-
ment, and narrative technique. These parallels take on special impor-
tance when one realizes the extent to which both novelists were respon-
sible for shaping their own literary traditionsJames in American/
European literature and gai in Japanese literature. In this respect one
can discover kindred spirits in Henry James and Mori gai as dis-
interested observers who used their standpoints as aloof onlookers to
record their experiences in a foreign culture.
 Modern Japanese Literature 225
Middle Period. During this second period gais literary output was
prolific and resulted in three novelsVita Sexualis (1909), Youth (Seinen,
1910), and The Wild Geese (Gan, 19111912)and an unfinished work
titled The Ashes of Destruction (Kaijin, 1912). gais most celebrated
novel, The Wild Geese, which in 1953 was turned into an internation-
ally acclaimed film called The Mistress, is a lucid expression of the
Apollonian/Dionysian struggle between detachment versus sympathy,
duty versus human feeling, calm resignation versus passionate love.
Other stories belonging to this period that have come to be regarded
as classic statements of gais aloof bystander attitude of detached
resignationincluding Kompira, Asobi (Play), Fushinch
(Under Reconstruction), Ms (Daydreams), and Hyaku monoga-
tari (Ghost Stories)have now been made available in an anthology
titled Mori gai: Youth and Other Stories (1994a). It is significant that
the stories expressing gais Apollonian bystander mentality of de-
tached resignation are grouped together by the editor under the title
Self-Portraits of the Artist: 19091915. Like other works of crea-
tive fiction in the portrait-of-the-artist genre, gais stories depict
the artist as an aloof figure who cultivates an aesthetic attitude of dis-
interested contemplationthereby leading to the fundamental con-
flict between detachment and sympathy along with the problem of
overdistancing to the point of dehumanization.
gais story Under Reconstruction (Fushinch, 1910) can be
read as a sequel to The Dancing Girl. Under Reconstruction is
the tale of Watanabe, a high-ranking Japanese bureaucrat who goes to
a restaurant in a Western-style hotel in downtown Tokyo to meet his
former mistress, a German woman who is a singer. But after their en-
counter it seems they will never meet again. Watanabe and his mis-
tress appear to be ta and Elise of The Dancing Girl, now in middle
age, twenty years later. But Watanabe of Under Reconstruction ex-
presses a deeper level of detachment than does ta of The Dancing
Girl. When his former German mistress asks Watanabe if she might
kiss him while seated at the restaurant, he remains aloof and says:
We are in Japan (1994a:152). Rimer explains Watanabes bystander
attitude of cool detachment, distance, and resignation as follows: Life
has brought him [Watanabe] a certain sense of psychological distance
from his own environment. . . . tas self-awareness in the earlier story
remains a purely personal one. In Under Reconstruction . . . Watanabe
maintains a distanced and detached attitude toward his own emotions
throughout his interview with his nervous and unsettled partner
226 Psychic Distance in Literature East and West
(1982:212). He continues: It was in this period of life that gai began
to speak of the need he felt in himself to develop an attitude of resig-
nation, a desire to define himself as a bystander (p. 212). Thus in
the transition from The Dancing Girl to Under Reconstruction
there is a shift from the romantic standpoint of emotional involve-
ment to the objective standpoint of a detached neutral bystander who
inserts psychic distance into events in order to enjoy them with an
artistic attitude of calm resignation.
gais concepts of resignation, serenity, detached amusement, eter-
nal discontent, and the Apollonian contemplative attitude are summed
up by his notion of the bkansha (detached onlooker), which surfaced
in Ghost Stories (Hyaku monogatari, 1912). Ghost Stories is a
semiautobiographical portrait-of-the-artist story wherein the narrator
is revealing gais own view of himself as the bkanshaa detached
onlooker, uninvolved bystander, impartial observer. This story is nar-
rated by Setsuzo, who describes himself as a born onlooker (umare-
nagara no bkansha). In Setsuzos words: I thought deeply, deeply,
over my own attitude of the bystander which has been with me since I
was born. . . . I am one fated since birth to be a bystander (gai
1994a:194). Again, Setsuzo asserts: I myself, both by natural incli-
nation and personal custom, have always had a tendency, where I may
go, to become a bystander (p. 193). At a party in which a traditional
game of telling ghost stories is to be played, Setsuzo once again takes
up his position as a bystander through the exercise of detached obser-
vation. But an epiphany of self-revelation occurs when he meets the
host and suddenly recognizes another bystandera mirror-image of
himself: And indeed I have felt most like myself when I . . . could
remain at ease among the bystanders. . . . I realized that I felt as though
I had met an old friend in a strange land. I felt as though one bystander
had recognized another (p. 194).
In another semiautobiographical portrait-of-the-artist story en-
titled Kompira (1909), written a year after the death of gais own
infant son from whooping cough, the attitude of detached resignation
is once again expressed through the narrator, a philosophy professor
named Ono Tasuku. After the death of his son, Ono describes his atti-
tude of cool indifference as follows:
Although the professor had contemplated how very sad it would be if his
son were to die, he was shocked at how exceedingly shallow and insignif-
icant his grief now seemed. It was as if he felt none of the deep sorrow he
had expected. . . . At the same time, the scene in the room struck him
with vivid, objective, dreadful clarity. . . . He saw them all so clearly and
 Modern Japanese Literature 227
with cool indifference as if they were merely characters on a stage. He felt
intensely displeased to see himself standing there as if he were a mere
bystander. [gai 1994a:127]

This passage clearly reveals the aesthetic attitude of a disinterested

onlooker who with cool indifference views everyone as if they were
fictional characters. The narrators position as a detached bystander
allows him to perceive events in an aesthetic way by viewing other
people as if they were figures in a play. As in the alienation effect of
Brecht, the narrator becomes an uninvolved spectator by inserting
psychic distance into the events unfolding as if in a theatrical perfor-
mance. By adopting the standpoint of an impersonal observer he can
see even the death of his own son as if it were only a scene in a drama.
gais story Kompira focuses on the motif that has become the sine
qua non of portrait-of-the-artist literature both East and West: the act
of psychic distancing required by the aesthetic attitude of a detached
bystander as well as the conflict between artistic detachment versus
emotional sympathy and the problem of overdistancing to the point
of inhumanity.
The resignation (akirame, teinen) and bystander (bkansha)
themes defining gais Apollonian spirit of detached observation attain
new depth and clarity in Daydreams (Ms, 1911). In Daydreams
gais sense of himself as a disinterested bystander is expressed through
the narrator, who is now an old man facing death. The old man lives
as a recluse in a small huta common symbol of detachment in the
aesthetics of reclusion of medieval Japanese Buddhist literature as
represented by Kamo no Chmeis thirteenth-century essay, An
Account of My Hut (Hjiki). According to the narrative in gais
story: In this small hut, built some time ago as a country retreat, just
large enough to sit in, the old man has only the barest of necessities,
like a Buddhist recluse (gai 1994a:180). The old man expresses the
detached attitude of an uninvolved onlooker when he says: I felt like
a man standing at the crossroads who looks coolly at the faces of
passersby. My gaze was detached, but I did stand there and occasion-
ally raise my hat to them (p. 178).
In the context of describing his position as a detached onlooker, the
old man reflects on his lifelong study of German romantic philosophy
and literature. He remembers that the first philosophical book he
read as a young medical student in Berlin was Hartmanns Philosophy
of the Unconscious (p. 172). Here gai expresses his view that Hart-
manns aesthetics . . . was still the best to date, the most original
228 Psychic Distance in Literature East and West
(p. 179). Elsewhere gai explicitly develops the medieval Japanese
Buddhist aesthetic ideal of ygensignifying the ethereal beauty of
darkness and shadows or mystery and depthas a synonym for
Hartmanns aesthetic concept of the unconscious (see Bowring 1979:
76). This view, incidentally, is analogous to D. T. Suzukis idea that
the beauty of ygen embodied in Zen art and literature represents a
breakthrough to the state of mushin (no-mind), the cosmic uncon-
scious (1988:220). Although the old man in Daydreams admires
Hartmanns aesthetics of the unconscious, he is nonetheless critical of
its nihilistic stance toward life. In an effort to discover the source of
Hartmanns aesthetics he next turns to Schopenhauers philosophy of
resignation, but again he rejects the attitude of renunciation in the
world-negating standpoints of nihilism, pessismism, and quietism: I
had not been able to accept Schopenhauers Quietive, that sedative which
tried to destroy the will to life and make people enter a state of noth-
ingness (1994a:179). The old man also describes how the pessimism
of Schopenhauer and Hartmann is brought to a more extreme degree
in Philipp Mainlaenders philosophy of redemption. According to
Mainlaender it is inconsistent and unreasonable for Hartmann to hold
such a deeply pessimistic view of existence while arguing that one
should nevertheless affirm life. Mainlaender himself, the old man notes,
committed suicide at the age of thirty-five (p. 176). Next the old man
takes up a study of Nietzsches Dionysian aesthetics of the superman.
For the superman art is not a sedative leading to passive resignation
but a stimulant to life that overcomes nihilism through a transvalua-
tion of all values leading to a complete affirmation of existence in the
innocence of becoming. But ultimately the old man is dissatisfied
with the Dionysian aesthetics of Nietzsche: This too, however, was
intoxicating wine rather than nourishing food (p. 179). The old man
further recollects how he was led to adopt Goethes philosophy of
resignation in action. Hence the author cites his favorite statement by
Goethe: How can a man come to know himself? Never through re-
flection. Perhaps through action. Try to do your duty and in the end
you will know your true worth. What is your duty? The demands of
the here-and-now (cited in gai 1994a:177).
At the end of the story the old mans disinterested attitude of resig-
nation, serenity, and equanimity is most fully expressed through his
calm detachment toward death itself: And so I descend the final slope
of life and know at the bottom lies death. I am not, however, afraid of
death. . . . I myself have no fear of death, nor have I Mainlaenders
death wish. Neither in fear nor in love with death, I simply walk down
 Modern Japanese Literature 229
the final slope (p. 177). gais Daydreams thereby formulates the
bkansha theme of a detached bystander through a dynamic philosophy
of resignation based on a cross-cultural synthesis derived from Japanese
Buddhism and its Zen manifestation through bushid in the East and
German romanticism in the West. This East-West philosophy of de-
tached resignation, developed in Daydreams and other portrait-of-
the-artist stories dating from the middle period of gais career, has
been described by R. J. Bowring (1979:130131):

The end result of the search [for resignation] revealed in Ms was

quite inconclusive, as one can see from the rest of the stories written
between 1909 and 1912. Their central theme turns out to be the explo-
ration of the nature and possibility of maintaining an attitude of detach-
ment towards life and its problems. Was the position of a bystander, an
onlooker, a dispassionate observer, tenable for a sensitive intellectual?
The pessismism of Hartmann and the Buddhist speculations clearly led
in the direction of an attitude of resignation. The continual rejection of
theories in Ms suggests that there were strong doubts.

An important restatement of the resignation motif is to be found in

gais notion of detached amusement or playfulness (asobi) expressed
in stories like Asobi (1910) and Fushigi na kagami (1912). This
relation between detachment and play in art has a long history in
both its Eastern and Western variants. In his Critique of Judgement, for
example, Kant explains the aesthetic attitude whereby beauty is ap-
prehended both in terms of its negative or inhibitory aspect as disin-
terested (interesselos), that is, detached from personal desires, and
its positive aspect as the harmonious free play (spiel) of productive
imagination (1952:89). Likewise in The Aesthetic Education of Man
Schiller (1954:Letter 15, 76) describes the disinterested aesthetic atti-
tude of detached contemplation as a function of the play impulse
(Spieltrieb). Ueda Makoto (1982:34) explains how in his later years the
Japanese haiku poet Bash reformulated his Zen-influenced aesthetic
ideal of sabi or impersonal loneliness in terms of karumi or light-
ness, whereby detachment from human emotions is now achieved in
everyday life through a lighthearted attitude of humor and playfulness.
In Zen and the Fine Arts (1971:89) the Kyoto school philosopher Hisa-
matsu Shinichi underscores the similarity between the playful and
disinterested character of the aesthetic attitude in the Kantian tra-
dition of German philosophy and the quality of playfulness (J. asobi)
and disinterestedness ( J. mukanshin) in the Zen Buddhist aestheticism
of Japan. It is precisely this relation between detachment and playful-
230 Psychic Distance in Literature East and West
ness characterizing the artistic attitude of a bystander that gai de-
scribes through his synthesis of the Japanese and German traditions
of literary aestheticism.
In his story called Play (Asobi, 1910), gai develops his idea
that the achievement of serenity through resignation is to be found in
the lighthearted playful attitude of detached amusement whereby
all situations are to be regarded as if they were a kind of childlike
game or sport (see gai 1994a:137147). gais views are expressed
through the narrative of Kimura, a government official and man of
letters who uses the attitude of detached amusement to transcend the
boredom and suffering of his everyday life when he is transferred to a
provincial office after he has gained a reputation as a writerjust as
gai had been exiled to Kokura in Kyushu for three years. The nar-
rative explains that for Kimura doing anything was a kind of play
(p. 144). Kimuras playful attitude of detached amusement is further
described as being neither serious nor frivolous (p. 146). Expressing
gais own authorial perspective as a disinterested bystander, Kimura
then describes the activity of creative writing as a kind of game or
sport he plays with a childlike attitude of detached amusement: When
he wrote, he felt like a child playing its favorite game. That didnt
mean that there werent some difficult times. In every sport there was
some obstacle to overcome. He also knew that art was nothing to laugh
at (p. 143).
The theme of detached play is once again taken up in a later story
titled Strange Mirror (Fushigi na kagami, 1911). While sitting in
his room and listening to his wife doing accounts, gai suddenly feels
his soul has withdrawn from his body and is dispassionately observing
him from the outside:
Seeing that my body was just mumbling when my wife said anything its
shadow took an interest. But it had not the slightest feeling of pity.
Why? Because they say that my soul treats everything with detachment
(asobi) and so takes an indiscriminate interest in anything it comes across.
Since when has this been common knowledge? I recently described the
life of a petty official who led his wretched life with serenity, and in
making him confess his attitude of resignation I used the word asobi.
No sooner did someone kindly recognize it as my own confession than
that whole crowd . . . pointed me out to each other crying asobi, asobi.
. . . From then on they had a marvellous label for my soul. [Bowring
1979:132133]
Here gai explicitly identifies resignation (akirame) with play (asobi)
while clarifying how both signify a mental attitude of serene detach-
 Modern Japanese Literature 231
ment. In this passage gais authorial perspective of playful amuse-
ment through detached resignation is disclosed through a satire of
his own story called Play (Asobi), wherein he had first confessed
his bystander attitude of asobi (detached amusement). The narrative
continues:

Now that this detached essence of mind had slipped out of my body it
became interested in everything it saw. . . . It had no sympathy, no
fellow-feeling. This too has long been recognized by the world at large.
Detachment (asobi) is an affirmative evaluation, but lack of sympathy is a
negative one; the former is a constructive assertion, but the latter merely
passive. [Bowring 1979:133]

This illuminating passage from Fushigi na kagami clearly expresses

gais bystander attitude of detached playfulness as well as the Apol-
lonian/Dionysian conflict of artistic detachment versus emotional sym-
pathy. He then relates the conflict of detachment versus sympathy to
the body/mind distinction when in a sudden moment of epiphany the
detached essence of mind is separated from the physical passions of
his corporeal self through an imagined out-of-body experience. Fur-
thermore, it underscores the fundamental aesthetic problem of over-
distancing to the point of dehumanization. Here we find one of gais
clearest statements that while artistic detachment is itself a positive
quality it becomes negative if divorced from human feeling. Both de-
tachment and sympathy, resignation and pity, distance and involve-
ment, are necessary conditions for art as a unity of Apollonian and
Dionysian impulses. In this context he also clarifies how his stance as
a writer is connected to the bystander attitude of playful resignation
when the detached essence of his spirit, now liberated from the pas-
sions of its physical body, is described as becoming fascinated by every-
thing it sees. These points are summed up by R. J. Bowring in an anal-
ysis following his translation of the preceding passage from Fushigi
na kagami:

Here we have the two sides of the coin clearly represented. To be

detached is a desirable quality but it brings with it the complica-
tions of inhumanity. The simple man Kimura [from Asobi] is safe
as long as he is never subjected to the pressure that the professor in
Kompira undergoes. When the natural instinct is towards uncom-
plicated sympathy when faced with human tragedy, the mask of in-
difference and cool detachment becomes distasteful and untenable.
[1979:133]
232 Psychic Distance in Literature East and West
The Apollonian contemplative spirit of detachment, resignation,
playfulness, and serenity is also manifest in gais three major novels:
Vita Sexualis, Youth, and The Wild Geese. gais first novel, Vita Sexualis
(1909), banned by authorities soon after its publication, discusses such
topics as autoeroticism, homosexuality, pornography, sex education,
and erotic art. Like Youth and The Wild Geese, Vita Sexualis employs the
impartial narrative standpoint of a detached onlooker to examine ob-
jectively the subject of awakening sexuality in youth. In Vita Sexualis
gai expresses his aesthetic preference for the calm Apollonian spirit of
detached resignation in opposition to the ecstatic Dionysian attitude
driven by dark emotions, passions, lusts, and will to power. gais aes-
thetic preference for the Apollonian spirit is intended to undermine the
Japanese literary movement of naturalism (shizenshugi), which he criti-
cizes as overemphasizing the Dionysian spirit of passion. At the same
time gai maintains that both the Dionysian attitude of passion and
the Apollonian standpoint of detachment are necessary for art. The nar-
rator, a retired university professor of philosophy named Kanai, states:
He did not acknowledge only what Nietzsche called Dionysian as
deserving the name of art. He also acknowledged the Apollonian as
art. In sexual desire detached from love, however, there could be no
real passion so that even he himself could not but realize that a person
without passion cannot be a good subject for autobiography (gai
1972:150).
It is instructive to compare Mori gais Apollonian attitude of de-
tached contemplation with the Dionysian ecstasy of Nietzsches phi-
losophy of art as developed in the fiction of Mishima Yukio. Contrast-
ing Mishimas fiction to works like gais autobiographical novel Vita
Sexualis, for instance, R. Starr writes: Mishimas determinism, then,
compelled him to take the opposite position to Mori gai in regard
to his sexuality: the Dionysian sex-drive could not be controlled by an
Apollonian act of will (1994:40). Mishimas Decay of the Angel (Tennin
gosui) describes the physical deterioration of Honda, its main protago-
nist. Starr asserts:
Hondas moral decline . . . begins in youth as an innocent observer, one
who likes to watch great events from the sidelines, and to speculate on
their meaning. By old age he has become a caricature of himself, no
longer a detached, philosophic observer but a prurient voyeur, spying
on proletarian lovers in city parks. The evil which lurks beneath the
surface of passive detached observation itself is unmasked for what it
is and stands in sharp contrast to the stalwart virtues of an unreflective
man of action such as Isao. [1994:59]
 Modern Japanese Literature 233
Starr contends that Mishimas novels represent an aesthetics of death,
night and blood that culminates in an act of destruction: when his
philosophical sledgehammer shatters the mask of its protagonist, the
nihilistic void of empty nothingness within is exposed. In this case
the mask of a detached, contemplative observer with Apollonian
calm is uncovered as the passive nihilism of a deviant voyeur.
gais novel called Youth (Seinen, 19101911), itself partly modeled
after Goethes Wilhelm Meisters Apprenticeship (1796), is a portrait-of-
the-artist novel about a young man named Junichi who aspires to be-
come a novelist. Once more stating his opposition to the Japanese nat-
uralist movement with its overindulgent emphasis on the physical
aspect of human passions, gai describes his own view of spiritual
naturalism (1994a:430), which underscores the spiritual values of
human life. In this context he again takes up the theme of resignation
versus passion in terms of Nietzsches Apollonian/Dionysian aesthetic
categories. He describes Schopenhauers resignationism as a pessimistic
renunciation of life and its dialectical overcoming through Nietzsches
Dionysian attitude with its total affirmation of life. He criticizes the
individualism of Nietzsches superman theory based on will to power,
however, wherein one strives to become great by defeating others.
Instead he sets forth his own doctrine of altruistic individualism (p.
482), a view that is intended to posit a middle axiom between Western
egoism and Eastern groupism. gais narrator clearly expresses his
identification of erotic passion or romantic love with the intoxication of
Dionysius: The idea of love contains in it an intoxication with life.
. . . Something like opium or hashish! True, opiums prohibited out-
wardly even in China, but I doubt if a human being can ever abandon
such a drink. Even if hes punished by Apollo, Dionysius will never
become extinct (p. 442). Later he describes how a geisha named
Ochara working in the Edo-period Yoshiwara pleasure district of the
floating world combines the Dionysian spirit of passionate emotion
with the Apollonian spirit of disinterested contemplation. The narra-
tive reports a news item in the newspaper that ran as follows: It has
been the talk of the town that Ochara . . . has been wild in her pursuit
of men ever since she has been an apprenticed geisha. . . . The saving
feature about her passion for these handsome faces, however, say those
who knew her, is that she remains disinterested (p. 505; italics added).
This struggle between Apollonian versus Dionysian impulses in art
expressed by the theme of akirame versus romantic love in Vita Sexualis
and other works in the middle period of gais fictioncalls to mind
Kuki Shzs The Structure of Iki (Iki no kz), wherein the Edo-period
234 Psychic Distance in Literature East and West
aesthetic ideal of iki (chic) embodied by the geisha is likewise de-
scribed as a tension between the detached resignation of akirame and
the erotic passion of sexual love (1930:25).
The thematization of conflict between resignation and feeling devel-
oped in gais earliest romantic novella, The Dancing Girl, is again
to be found in his most popular novel, The Wild Geese. The Dancing
Girl and The Wild Geese are complementary versions of gais inter-
national theme in that the former is a sad love story about a Japanese
medical student living in Berlin who renounces his passionate affair
with a German girl named Elise in order to return to Japan whereas the
latter is the melancholy tale of a Japanese medical student living in
Tokyo who forgoes romantic involvement with a Japanese woman
named Otama in order to study abroad in Germany. The Wild Geese is
acknowledged today as one of the finest novels in the canon of modern
Japanese literature. Despite the high regard in which he is held among
Japanese critics, Mori gai has not achieved widespread recognition
by Western readers. But gais The Wild Geese is a novel to be savored
as much as any of the works by Natsume Sseki, Akutagawa Ryno-
suke, Kawabata Yasunari, Tanizaki Junichir, Mishima Yukio, End
Shsaku, Abe Kb, e Kenzaburo, and other modern Japanese novel-
ists who have acquired a readership in the West. As a creative work of
fiction The Wild Geese is a simple romantic tale of unfulfilled love that
evokes pure aesthetic pleasure through its enchanting story as well as
the graceful beauty of its symbolic images and the subdued elegance
of its understated prose. As a historical piece it vividly recreates the
picturesque urban scenes of old Tokyo in the Meiji period, mostly
long since vanished through modernization. As a semiautobiographical
work it is a self-portrait-of-the-artist novel that affords us many psy-
chological insights into gais life and mental state during his forma-
tive years as a young medical student at Tokyo Imperial University.
The Wild Geese is a culture-bearing novel that has often been praised
for its uniquely Japanese character insofar as it represents a classic ex-
pression of traditional Japanese aesthetic sensibilities. But it is also a
philosophical novel in which the resignation and onlooker themes
are presented with special clarity. It can be said that the Japaneseness
of The Wild Geese consists at least partly in its poignant expression of
the spirit of akirame or detached resignation pervading traditional
Japanese thought and culture.
In the translators introduction to The Wild Geese, gais philosoph-
ical concept of resignation, worked out during his three years of exile,
is explained as follows: Perhaps the Kyushu period had its positive
 Modern Japanese Literature 235
aspect in helping gai define resignation, a key word in his vocabu-
lary and one especially important in The Wild Geese. To gai, the word
means serenity of mind which enables one to calmly observe the world
and ones self (1959:6). This explanation of akirame clarifies that for
gai resignation does not indicate a passive state of giving up but a
mental attitude of serenity (heiki) resulting in heightened powers of
clear observation rooted in tranquility. Like the traditional Japanese
Buddhist exercise of shikan (tranquility and insight) culminating in
satori, the akirame characterizing gais bystander mentality involves
an attitude of calm detachment from craving and aversion leading to
an epiphany or flash of insight into the commonplace events of every-
day life. In The Wild Geeseas in The Dancing Girl, Vita Sexualis,
Youth, and various other storiesgai employs an objective style of
impartial narration written from the disinterested authorial perpec-
tive of an indifferent bystander to describe the awakening sexuality of
a young person coming of agein this case, a young Japanese woman.
In The Wild Geese, Otama the heroine is an onlooker who waits each
day with calm resignation for an attractive university medical student
named Okada to pass by her house. Through the bystander attitude of
resignation the heroine sacrifices her human feelings for the sake of
duty when she is forced by circumstances to become the mistress of a
rich moneylender named Suezo in order to provide for her elderly
father:
And now that she realized she was not only a whore but one kept by a
usurer whom the world detested, the feeling of humilation that time and
resignation had softened and toned down emerged once more. . . . Grad-
ually her thoughts settled. Resignation was the mental attitude she had
most experienced. And in this direction her mind adjusted itself like a
well-oiled machine. [1959:47]

The narrative describes Otamas increasing sense of detached resigna-

tion during her encounters with Suezo as follows: She would be with
him in the room, but her real self was detached, watching the scene
from the side. . . . Her treatment of Suezo became more cordial but her
heart more remote. . . . She did not even feel sorry for him because of
her indifference (pp. 7677). And later: She had acquired that cool-
ness of mind that most women in the world who do have it can reach
only after experiences with many men. Suezo found it stimulating to
be trifled with by her coolness (p. 102).
At the conclusion of The Wild Geese, the philosophy of resignation
is reformulated in terms of what gai calls the unbefangen attitude
236 Psychic Distance in Literature East and West
(1959:118)a mental state characterized by equilibrium, serenity, and
impartiality. A jujitsu student named Ishihara explains the bushid
philosophy of resignationwhereby one can attain mental equilibrium
through an impartial attitudeto Okada and the narrator so they can
sneak past a police box with a goose they have just illegally killed.
The narrator says: So Ishihara lectured us on our mental attitude in
passing the box in question. It was, to sum up what I heard, that we
should not waver in our equilibrium of mind; that if we wavered, there
would be a gap; that if there were a gap, it would give the antagonist
the advantage. . . . It seemed to me that his speech was nothing more
than what his jujitsu master had told him (p. 117). After they have
successfully completed their task, Ishihara asserts: I taught you the
secret of the minds equilibrium. . . . You were able to get beyond the
policeman and maintain an unbefangen attitude! (p. 118). Hence in the
final pages of The Wild Geese it can be seen how once again gai formu-
lates his Apollonian ideal of a detached onlooker based on a contempla-
tive philosophy of calm resignation by means of an East-West synthesis
that integrates the traditional Japanese spirit of akirame with the un-
befangen attitude of German romanticism.
Like Henry James, James Joyce, and other pioneers in the Western
tradition of literary aestheticism, Mori gais portrait-of-the-artist
stories focus on the aesthetic education of a young writer through cul-
tivating the power of disinterested observation and in this context
illuminate the conflict of artistic detachment versus moral sympathy
along with the problem of overdistancing that leads to dehumaniza-
tion. gais fiction in Japanese literature can therefore be analyzed in
terms of the three interrelated motifs in Western portrait-of-the-artist
novels as articulated by Maurice Beebe (1964): the Divided Self, the
Ivory Tower, and the Sacred Fount. For the recurrent motif in these
Japanese portrait-of-the-artist novels produced during the middle
period of gais literary career is precisely that of a developing artist
who endeavors to realize wholeness by overcoming the Divided Self
through psychic integration of two struggling forcesthe Apollonian
versus the Dionysianthereby to reconcile estrangement from life
symbolized by the Ivory Tower and involvement with life symbolized
by the Sacred Fount.

Later Period. In the last period of his literary career, gai came to
realize his full potential as a writer through the historical novella (reki-
shiteki shsetsu) and biographical fiction (shiden). In his historical writ-
ings gai becomes preoccupied with the spiritual, moral, and aesthetic
 Modern Japanese Literature 237
significance of the past for the presentthereby reflecting his own
efforts to integrate modern Western and traditional Japanese values
during the Meiji Reconstruction. gais story Exorcising Demons
(Tsuina, 1909) gives us a key to his deepening interest in history as
well as his turn to the genre of historical and biographical fiction when
he paraphrases Nietzsche on the twilight of art: The best things within
us may be an inheritance of the sensibilities of an ancient time (1994a:
64; see also p. 69).
gais later works are characterized by a distanced, disinterested,
and detached reporting of historical events as recreated in tranquility
from the objective, impartial, and impersonal narrative standpoint of
an uninvolved onlooker. Rimer observes: Coolness and objectivity
characterize [gais] attitudes in re-creating the past (gai 1991:7).
In History as It Is and History Ignored (Rekishi sono mama to reki-
shibanare, 1914), where he elaborates on the aesthetics of his historical
fiction, gai again uses the Dionysian/Apollonian categories to classify
his own philosophy of art: In general, I would say that my works are
not Dionysian but Apollonian (1991:7; 1971:VII, 105106). For
gai the Dionysian spirit is based on full participation in life and pas-
sionate involvement in human emotions whereas the Apollonian spirit
requires aesthetic distance from life and cool detachment from human
emotions. Although gai recognizes that both impulses are necessary
to art, the Apollonian spirit of his later historical works embodies the
tranquil and detached attitude of contemplation (1991:7; 1971:VII,
105106) as opposed to the Dionysian spirit of intoxication, ecstasy,
and rapture.
In his later historical fiction gai pushes his ideal of detached ob-
servation to a new extreme in an effort to achieve maximum psychic
distance from human emotions. Donald Keene remarks: His [gais]
detachment . . . made his later works seem cold (see gai 1991:36).
The austere detachment characterizing these later works can be seen
in stories like The Abe Family (Abe ichizoku, 1912) and The Inci-
dent at Sakai (Sakai jiken, 1914), both of which examine the feudal
values of the samurai warrior. This relation between the detached spirit
of the samurai warrior and the bkansha or onlooker mentality that
gai establishes in his later writings can be understood through D. T.
Suzukis description of Zen swordsmanship: The perfect swordsman
. . . is an indifferent onlooker of the fatal drama of life and death in which
he himself is the most active participant (1988:96; italics added).
Shortly after the seppuku (ritual disembowelment) of General Nogi
at the death of the Meiji Emperor in 1912, gai wrote The Abe
238 Psychic Distance in Literature East and West
Family in reaction to the feudalistic custom of junshi, the rite of sui-
cide carried out in order to follow ones lord to the grave. The psycho-
logical dimension of this work has been examined by the Japanese
psychiatrist Doi Takeo, who cites The Abe Family as an example of
people who live only by tatemae, ritualized social institutions, in total
separation from honne or spontaneous personal feeling. Thus an abso-
lute priority is accorded the value of giri (social obligation) over ninj
(human emotion). In this story gais narrative adopts the objective
standpoint of a detached bystander in order to describe the tragic de-
struction of the Abe clan through a series of macabre battles, bloody
massacres, and ritual suicides.
Similarly, gais story The Incident at Sakai employs the imper-
sonal narrative standpoint of an indifferent onlooker in order to de-
scribe in gruesome detail a historical incident involving a group of
Japanese samurai forced to commit ritual suicide as reparation over
the death of French soldiers killed during a struggle at the port of
Sakai, near Osaka (see gai 1991:129151). While recreating this
bloodcurdling scene, gais narrative account is careful to suppress
the expression of any sympathy or antipathy but simply provides an
objective, neutral, and impartial description of the event as it un-
folded. Edwin McClellan articulates the ice-cold detachment charac-
terizing gais objective style of impartial narration in this historical
tale: Sakai jiken . . . in which [gai] describes the execution by en-
forced self-disembowelment of eleven footsoldiers . . . is a grim and
grisly tale, made all the more so by the authors unrelenting detach-
ment (1983:V, 53). gais detachment is demonstrated by the fact
that he betrays no horror at the pain and cruelty of the bloodletting as
one samurai after another kneels before the authorities and disem-
bowels himself; instead he tells the story as objectively as possible in
order to achieve an epiphany of insight through insertion of distance.
Yet as McClellan points out: The apparent severity of [gai] . . . the
almost perverse detachment of his stance as a writer . . . have in Japan
won him the kind of reverence accorded to no other writer (p. 53).
Dilworth makes an apposite comparison between the tranquil resig-
nation of the disinterested onlooker in gais later historical fiction
and the aesthetic attitude of resigned sadness in the movies of Ozu
Yasujir, one of the greatest of Japanese filmmakers. He notes that
like the ending of a typical gai story (Sakai jiken, Jiisan baasan,
Takasebune), Ozus films such as Late Spring, Tokyo Story, and An
Autumn Afternoon conclude with a quiet atmosphere of serene beauty
as viewed through the silent repose of an aesthetic attitude character-
 Modern Japanese Literature 239
istic of the spectator of a n drama, the participant in a tea ceremony,
or the haiku master objectively viewing a landscape (see gai 1991:
33). Hence the hero of an gai story, like the protagonist of an Ozu
film, is a disinterested onlooker who is able to step back and savor the
moment by adopting the contemplative aesthetic attitude of calm
resignation. Donald Keene discusses the aesthetic attitude of artistic
detachment in the philosophy of resignation underlying Mori gais
life, thought, and fiction in relation to the detachment from human
emotions cultivated by the samurai warrior based on the Zen-influenced
philosophy of bushid. Keene writes: Mori shared with his samurai
heroes a reluctance (akin to traditional Japanese impassivity) to dwell
on the emotions. His detachment . . . made his later works seem cold,
but their strength and integrity were strikingly close to the samurai
ideals he so admired (see gai 1991:36). The objective style of narra-
tion in gais later historical fiction thus reflects the tranquil detach-
ment of Zen meditation with its cultural manifestations in geid, the
way of the artist, and bushid, the way of the samurai warrior.
It can now be seen how in his later fiction Mori gai forged a
uniquely objective style of narrative technique by adopting the im-
personal standpoint of a detached bystander to history. Earlier we noted
how in his classic study The Rhetoric of Fiction (1961:6783) Wayne C.
Booth analyzes the control of aesthetic distance in the modern
Western novel. He describes how Henry James, James Joyce, and other
founders of modern Western fiction have established the narrative
ideal of objectivityotherwise expressed through synonyms like detach-
ment, distance, disinterestedness, impersonality, equanimity, neutrality,
impartiality, and impassability. Architects of the modern novel in the
Western tradition like Henry James and James Joyce endeavored to
create an objective style of impersonal narration purged of all human
subjectivity in which the self is refined out of existence through an
attitude of mental stasis whereby the events of life would attain their
epiphany. Exemplifying the traditional Japanese aesthetic ideal of shi-
bumi, or subdued elegance, the understatement, astringency, and re-
straint characterizing gais objective style of literary narration brings
events to their epiphany by disclosing essence through simplification.
gais pioneering efforts to forge an objective mode of narrative con-
struction from the authorial perspective of a detached onlooker clearly
parallels the experiments in objective narration developed by Henry
James and other giants of modern Western literature. Like these pio-
neers in the West, Mori gai rejects fiction wherein the reader is en-
couraged to become fully involved in human emotions. Instead he de-
240 Psychic Distance in Literature East and West
velops an elaborate system of controls over the readers varying degrees
of involvement and detachment. Hence, like his counterparts in mod-
ern Western literature, gai engineered a new literary form based on
an objective style of narration that seeks an epiphany of insight through
the disinterested neutral reporting of events.

Hininj: Artistic Detachment in Natsume Sseki

Natsume Sseki, whose lifespan coincided almost exactly with the
Meiji Restoration (18681912), is widely regarded as one of the pre-
eminent figures in modern Japanese literature. In 1907 Sseki resigned
from his prestigious position on the faculty of Tokyo University to
edit a literary column at the Asahi newspaper, during which period he
wrote about one novel per year. Sseki is known mostly for his early
comic novels Botchan (Little Master, 1906) and Wagahai wa neko de aru
(I Am a Cat, 1906), as well as his later psychological novels like Sore
kara (And Then, 1909), Mon (The Gate, 1910), Kokoro (The Heart,
1912), and Meian (Light and Darkness, 1916). But Sseki also wrote
an extraordinary novel focusing on the Japanese sense of beauty titled
Kusamakura (Grass Pillow, 1906). The philosophical theme of this
novel is the role of psychic distance in the aesthetic experience of
beauty in art and nature. Sseki elaborates upon the aesthetics of this
novel in his brief autocommentary titled My Grass Pillow (Yo ga
Kusamakura, 1906) and in a letter to Morita Shei dated 30 September
1906, both of which are now included in his complete works. Taken
altogether this material outlines a systematic theory of beauty as a
function of psychic distance. In particular he describes how the Japa-
nese sense of beauty as ygen, mysterious darkness, requires the cul-
tivation of a disinterested aesthetic attitude that he terms hininj, de-
tachment from human feeling. While Sseki is especially concerned
to depict the traditional Japanese sense of beauty, he at the same time
draws inspiration from both Western and Eastern traditions of literary
aestheticism in order to show how art requires distance from life. Yet
the danger of artistic detachment is always that of overdistancing to
the point of dehumanization, alienation from life, and exile from society.
The dialectical tension between artistic detachment versus human
emotion thus becomes the fundamental problematic in Ssekis novel.
The main character of Grass Pillow is an artist from Tokyo who en-
deavors to achieve Zen enlightenment through the disinterested con-
templation of ethereal beauty in nature. Although it is not mentioned
in the story, the actual setting is a remote spa in the volcanic area of
 Modern Japanese Literature 241
Mount Aso in Kyushu. By means of such artistic detachment the pro-
tagonist of Grass Pillow attempts to view events of nature like a haiku
poem, a sumie monochrome inkwash painting, or a n drama, so that all
life is transformed into art. Thus Sseki uses the vivid image-making
power of literary imagination to illustrate the process of distancing as
it occurs in aesthetic experience as well as in acts of artistic creation
and artistic appreciation. In scene after scene he portrays how the
imagery of ygen or mysterious darkness is evoked in an epiphany of
depth through acts of psychic distancing.
In 1926, Ssekis novel was made into a set of three picture scrolls
totaling twenty-three meters in length by Matsuoka Eiky (1867
1916), a distinguished painter of the Yamato-e school, and his disci-
ples. Following the story of Grass Pillow, the scroll depicts its images
of tranquil beauty seen from the aesthetic attitude of disinterested
contemplation. A faithful reproduction of this scroll, made by a team
of Japanese artists, has now been made available in a Japanese book
titled Sseki sekai to Kusamakura-e (The Picture Scroll of Grass Pillow
and the World of Sseki) by Kawaguchi Hisao. As Kawaguchi notes
in his introduction: The scroll follows the story of Kusamakura, depict-
ing its impressive scenes one after another, and shows an interesting
and instructive interpretation of this haiku-like novel in which detach-
ment from humanity is a motif (1987:1). Through this picture scroll
one can visualize the haiku journey of Ssekis artist-hero on his quest
for ideal beauty through aesthetic detachment.

Ssekis Grass Pillow as a Haiku-Novel

The Meiji novel that best expresses the traditional Japanese sense of
beauty is no doubt Ssekis Kusamakura (Grass Pillow), translated into
English as Unhuman Tour (1927) by Takahashi Kazutomo and later re-
translated as The Three-Cornered World (1965) by Alan Turney. My
Grass Pillow (Yo ga Kusamakura, 1906)a brief autocommentary
in which Sseki explains the aesthetics of his own novel (1925:XIV,
565568)first appeared in the journal Bunsh sekai in November
1906. It is in this essay that Sseki announces Grass Pillow as represent-
ing the discovery of a new genre of literature which he calls the haiku-
novel (haikuteki shsetsu). Indeed, Ssekis Grass Pillow can be regarded
as a haiku-novel not only in terms of its form and content but also
in terms of its spontaneous method of composition: it was written
from start to finish within less than one week in a sudden burst of crea-
tive inspiration.
242 Psychic Distance in Literature East and West
At the outset of his essay, Sseki enumerates some of the various
types of novels predominant in the literary fiction of the times, em-
phasizing that they are essentially realistic works aiming to expose the
truth of life through a description of inner psychological events in the
mind or external facts in the world. His own work is contrasted to these
conventional novels as follows:
My Grass Pillow was written with the completely opposite meaning from
what is usually called a novel in the world. I would be satisfied if a kind
of feelinga feeling of beautyremains in the mind of the reader. Other
than this I have no objective. Hence there is no plot and no development
of events. [p. 565]

In this passage Sseki clearly articulates two distinguishing features of

Grass Pillow: first, the sole objective is to evoke a feeling of beauty
(utsukushii kanji); second, there is no development of events (jiken no
hatten ga nai). Unlike the conventional novel, which has as its main
purpose the development of an interesting story or plot in order to
reveal the truth of life, Ssekis Grass Pillow has no plot and aims only
to disclose the beauty of events in nature so as to produce an aesthetic
effect in the mind of the reader. Insofar as Grass Pillow is a plotless
novel with a discontinuous story line and no development of events, it
is a precursor of the nouveau roman or new novel of postmodernist
literature. For Ssekis Grass Pillow, as for the decentered novels of
James Joyce, the purpose is not to tell a story but to record epiphanies
of beauty.
At the conclusion of his autocommentary, Sseki suggests that a
work like Grass Pillow, which is devoid of plot and aims only to pro-
duce an aesthetic effect in the reader, might be called a haiku-novel
(haikuteki shsetsu). Here Sseki asserts that in addition to the conven-
tional novel, the haiku-novel showing the beauty of life should also
exist (p. 568). He continues: If this haiku-novel, although it is a
strange name, came to be established, it would open up a new area in
the world of literature (p. 568). Sseki ends with the statement that
the haiku-novelwhose sole function is the creation and enjoyment
of beautyhas never existed before in its pure form either in Japan or
in the West. Thus Grass Pillow may be regarded as signifying the advent
of a new literary genre in the world of fiction (p. 568).
Ssekis haiku-novel Grass Pillow depicts the poetic journey of a
young artist from Tokyo into the solitude of nature on his way to an
isolated hot-spring (onsen) resort in Kyushu. The very title of Ssekis
work, Kusamakura, means Grass Pillowwhich by poetic convention
 Modern Japanese Literature 243
refers to a haiku journey into nature, sleeping under the stars at night
with the grass as ones pillow. As a haiku-novel, Grass Pillow is designed
to be a modern novel patterned after the classic haiku travel diaries of
Matsuo Bash (16441694), especially the record of his nine-month
journey through the wilderness of Tohoku in 1689 called Oku no hoso-
michi (Narrow Road to the Deep North, 1694). The haiku travel diary
is written in haibun (haiku prose): thus seventeen-syllable haiku poems
are accompanied by a prose narrative that creates the atmosphere for
the poem to spring forth in a satori-like epiphany. The protagonist of
Grass Pillow resembles Bash insofar as he is depicted as an artist-priest
on a spiritual pilgrimage in search of Zen enlightenment achieved by
detachment from emotions through poetry. Like Bash the protago-
nist of Ssekis haiku-novel adopts a mode of Zen aestheticism that
elevates art into a religion of beauty through a fusion of aesthetic and
mystical experience. The Zen aestheticism of the artist-hero is clearly
indicated when he declares that haiku poetry is a discipline which
culminates in the achievement of Zen satori: enlightenment. In the
poets words: To become a poet is one way to achieve enlightenment
(Shijin ni naru to iu wa, ishu no satori de aru) (1972:35). It can be said
that the artist-hero of Grass Pillow, who goes unnamed throughout the
novel, becomes an archetypal figure representing a composite image
of Shunzei, Chmei, Teika, Saigy, Sessh, Riky, Zeami, Bash, and
all those who have followed the Japanese Buddhist religio-aesthetic
tradition of geid: the tao (or way) of art.
While the artist-hero of Grass Pillow takes Bashs view on the reli-
gious dimensions of poetry, in terms of style he is much closer to the
Edo poet Yosa Buson (17161784), a leading haiku poet as well as an
accomplished master of bunjinga (literati) painting. Buson developed
his own unique brush style known as haiga (haiku painting) and would
often depict scenes in nature both with haiku poems and haiku paint-
ings. The Meiji poet Masaoka Shiki (18671902) appreciated Buson
for the pictorial quality of his poems and praised Busons haiku for
being almost paintings. Unlike Bash, Buson does not speak of the
oneness of self and nature but captures the precise beauty of events
with a clarity of impression as seen with the objectivity of a painter or
poet. Using Buson as his model, Shiki advocated the reform of haiku
through the painterly technique of sketching (shasei). This tech-
nique, developed by Shiki in the 1890s, involves the practice of going
out into nature with notebooks and making sketches from life. The
aim is to depict as is (ari no mama ni utsusu) based on an immediate
experience of events in their suchness according to the format of haiku
244 Psychic Distance in Literature East and West
poems. Natsume Sseki was a close friend of Shiki from their student
days and was strongly influenced by the sketches from life technique.
As Janine Beichman notes in Masaoka Shiki (1986:21), Shiki stayed
with Sseki in 1895 and led a group of young haiku poets called
the Wind in the Pines Society (Shf Kai) that met nightly in
Ssekis home. Besides his serious involvement with haiku composi-
tion and sketching literature, Sseki was also an amateur landscape
painter.
Like Buson, and like Sseki, the artist-hero of Grass Pillow is both a
painter and a poet. As he hikes up the mountain trails, the painter-
poet of Ssekis haiku-novel visualizes the canvas of nature as if it were
a landscape painting, a black-ink drawing, or an unraveling picture
scroll. As a result, both the prose and poetry of Ssekis haiku-novel
vividly depict the landscapes of nature with a painterly quality remi-
niscent of the pictorial (egaku-teki) style of Buson and the sketch-
ing (shasei) technique of Shiki in Japanese literature, not to mention
the word painting of Ruskin in English literature.

Poststructuralist Dimensions
The profound influence of Masaoka Shikis prose sketches from life on
Ssekis creative writing style and its wider implications for Meiji fic-
tion has been emphasized by Karatani Kjin in his poststructuralist
modernity critique (kindai hihan) titled Origins of Modern Japanese
Literature: Although Sseki may appear to have suddenly turned to
creative writing at the age of thirty-eight, he had practiced haiku
composition with Masaoka Shiki since his student days and had be-
come deeply involved in Shikis sketching or shaseibun movement
(1993:179). Karatani points out that when Sseki began writing I Am
a Cat (Wagahai wa neko de aru), it was not as a novel but as a sketch to
be featured in a haiku journal (p. 179). Grass Pillow (1906), which was
written during the same period as I Am a Cat (1905), is also to be
understood as shaseibun or sketching literature. Karatani explains:
Sseki sought the basis of sketching in . . . an attitude of detachment
(p. 181). He adds that in Grass Pillow the attitude of detachment
required for sketching is thematized by the word hininj (p. 181).
Whereas this kind of detached or nonhuman (hininj) standpoint is
achieved in Grass Pillow by viewing events with the impartial objec-
tivity of a painter or a poet, it is achieved in I Am a Cat by observing
things with the aloofness, indifference, and irony of a pet cat. More-
over, while the modern Japanese novel typically uses the ta suffix to
 Modern Japanese Literature 245
denote the past tense, shaseibun or sketching literature describes the
immediate experience of events as they are happening now and is
always written in the present tense. Karatani writes: Ssekis fictional
writing began with the composition of sketching literature or shasei-
bun writings, which generally employed the present progressive tense.
. . . This type of writing was pioneered by Masaoka Shiki (p. 73). The
past tense of the ta suffix describes reified constructs with a fixed self-
identity whose origins have been forgottenincluding a fixed and
given landscape (sansuiga) and its correlate notion of a centered sub-
ject or self (watakushi). Karatani notes: Sseki could not accept what
Michel Foucault defines as the principle of identity in European
thought. For Sseki, structures were entities which were interchange-
able and capable of redefinition (p. 16). While most discussions of
Meiji literature still presuppose modernist categories of identity that
Sseki tried to negate, Karatani maintains that the literary critic Et
Jen develops a postmodern reading of Sseki though his focus on the
sketching technique of Shiki Masaoka:
Et attempts to analyze developments in this decade of Meiji by focusing
on the sketching of Shiki and his disciple, Takahama Kyoshi. Accord-
ing to Ets interpretation, description (bysha) in Meiji literature
should not be understood as a process of describing something, but as the
emergence of the thing itself, and hence of an entirely new relationship
between words and things. [p. 30]

Earlier we noted how Allen Carlson (1995:132) highlights the re-

quirement of psychic distance in the aesthetic attitude. Nonetheless he
is critical of the landscape model of beauty insofar as appreciation of
nature is reduced to a finished picture with a fixed perspective and
due distance established by framing devices: scenic viewpoints, the
cameras viewfinder, even the nineteenth-century Claude glass (a
special mirror for inserting distance). But as we can see from the pre-
ceding citation from Karatani Kjins deconstructionist analysis of
Japanese literature, the sketching technique of Shiki and Sseki is
not a description of a preformed, already constituted landscape written
in the past tense: it is a constitutive act in the living present that
itself brings forth the emergence of landscape (or what Et would
term the emergence of things) (1993:31).
Karatani underscores the point that Shikis technique of sketching
was meant to bring back to life the world of haiku that had been
brought into being by Bash and flowered under Buson but now
seemed on the verge of extinction. For Shiki, the haiku technique of
246 Psychic Distance in Literature East and West
shaseibun did not connote sketching in the sense of copying. It was
an attempt to revitalize language in all its diversity. It was Sseki,
rather than Shikis disciples, who carried on this mission. For Sseki
sketching meant the liberation of writing, the liberation of diverse
genres (1993:179).
Karatanis deconstructive analysis opens the way for understanding
Ssekis haiku-novel in its proper context as a mode of sketching liter-
ature. The attitude of detachment required for sketching becomes the
central theme of Grass Pillow as presented through the concept of
hininj. The liberation of writing and revitalization of language in-
tended by the sketching method is achieved in Ssekis Grass Pillow
by a remarkable stylistic virtuosity in a multiplicity of genres derived
from Chinese, Japanese, and English literary traditionsincluding
ancient, classical, and modern/postmodern traditions of literature, both
in poetry and prose, as developed in the East and the West. In Ssekis
decentered haiku-novel there are no fixed structures with self-identity:
all events formed through sketching are in the process of creation, re-
creation, and transformation. Grass Pillow is a form of sketches from
life literature combining prose and poetry that depict the immediate
experience of events written in the present progressive tense. The
painter-poets sketchings are a process of describing, not something
already fixed, but the constitution of the thing itself; not a description
of a preformed landscape but the very emergence of the landscape itself.
Insofar as the landscape is not a fixed structure with self-identity, it
emerges in the very process of sketchingthus to be constituted and
reconstituted in multivariate forms. Likewise, the heroine called Nami
is revealed to have no fixed subject or self or identity that can be
grasped by a totalizing perspective; rather, like a multisided inkwash
picture, it is disseminated into an irreducible plurality of meanings
and perspectives devoid of essence, center, or core. Thus from the stand-
point of Karatani Kjins deconstructive postmodernist investigation
into the origins of Meiji literature, Ssekis haiku-novel Grass Pillow
is to be comprehended as an imaginative experiment in shaseibun or
sketching literature derived from Masaoka Shikis innovative sketch-
ing technique of haiku composition and from the painterly (egakuteki)
style of the Yosa Buson.

Ygen: The Ideal of Beauty

As Ueda Makoto (1976:11) has emphasized, the ideal of beauty in
Ssekis Grass Pillow is the medieval Japanese concept of ygenmys-
 Modern Japanese Literature 247
tery and depth or shadows and darkness. The painters aesthetic
preference for traditional Asian standards of taste in general and the
Japanese ideal of ygen in particular is revealed when he states his ap-
preciation for the poetry of Tao Yuan-ming (365427) and Wang
Wei (701?761), the haiku of Bash (16441694) and Buson (1716
1784), the calligraphy of the Zen priest Ksen (16331695), and the
landscape painting of Wen Tung (10181079), Taiga (17231776),
and Sessh (14201506). When the painter-poet of Grass Pillow re-
flects on what might best serve as a subject for poetry, he enumerates
traditional symbols of ygen. The painter-poet thinks to himself: The
shadow I had just seen, considered just as a shadow, was charged with
poetic beauty. . . . A hot spring in a secluded mountain village, the
shadow of flowers on a spring night, a voice singing softly in the
moonlight, a figure on a misty moonlit evening, are all good themes
for an artist (1972:34).
As William LaFleur points out: Ygen involves an epiphany of
depth (1983:131). Izutsu Toshihiko (1981:2628) vividly describes
this epiphany of depth in terms of a figure/ground phenomenological
model whereby art and literature in the ygen style of beauty depict
how unsubstantial phenomena articulated in the foreground gradu-
ally shade into the monochrome darkness of a bottomless void in the
nonarticulated whole of the encompassing background. Hence through-
out Ssekis haiku-novel the protagonist records one epiphany of depth
after another through exotic images of ygen by concentrating, not on
objects in the clearly articulated foreground focus of attention, but on
the dim halo of shadows and darkness they cast as they recede into the
twilight atmosphere of encompassing space to disclose the bottomless
void of nothingness. Ssekis versatility as a writer is amply demon-
strated in Grass Pillow as seen by his composition of Chinese poetry in
kanbun as well as traditional Japanese verse forms such as waka and
haikuall interspersed throughout his highly ornate prose style. These
various poems, most of which attempt to depict the elusive figure of
the heroine called Nami from different points of view, reveal the aes-
thetic value of ygen: the beauty of hidden depths manifested through
poetic images of dim shadows and twilight darkness. One of these
poems reads (1972:40):

The shadows of a spring night interweave,

So blossoms and woman appear as one.
Is that a woman or phantom,
Standing in the misty moonlit eve?
248 Psychic Distance in Literature East and West
Chapter six ends with a breathtaking epiphany of ygen when the
gates of night open into the purple depths of heaven and the heroine
disappears into the surrounding darknessonly to reappear like a
phantom hovering shunyata-like between existence and nonexistence,
form and emptiness, or being and nothingness in the black void that
points to her origin.
In a remarkable scene that comes at the end of chapter seven,
Sseki explicitly uses the term ygen in the context of evoking the
mysterious and ethereal beauty that this term denotes. While soaking
in the public bath at a hot spring (onsen) resort, the painter unexpect-
edly encounters the heroine called Nami in the nude. He soon notes
that there is no trace of vulgarity about her naked form, however, in
that her body is partly veiled by a swirling haze of mist, vapor, and
steam rising up from the hot thermal bath. He thinks to himself:
The womans figure was not fully revealed like the usual nude but could
only be vaguely seen in an atmosphere of ygen [darkness and mystery]
that made everything within it appear ethereal. Her figure had a warmth,
atmosphere, and rhythm that were artistically perfect, like a sumie [black-
ink] painting in which one can imagine all that has been suggested by
the artists brush. [1972:83]

Hence in this scene the artist-hero of Grass Pillow inserts distance in

order to see the naked body of Nami as if it were a dimly visible figure
in a monochrome sumie inkwash painting characterized by the perva-
sive aesthetic quality of ygen.
Under the inspiration of Ssekis haiku-novel Grass Pillow, post-
Meiji Japanese writers have gone on to compose novels that evoke the
mystery and darkness of ygen. Tanizaki Junichiros In Praise of Shadows
(1977) is a treatise on the Japanese aesthetic preference for the beauty
of darkness and shadows functioning as a prolegomena to his own fic-
tion wherein he recreates the twilight atmosphere of ygen from the
medieval period in Japanese art and literature. He says that the Japa-
nese, in opposition to Western canons of taste, have cultivated an aes-
thetic preference, not for objects themselves as seen in the light of day,
but for the shadows they cast as they recede into the darkness of night,
conjuring in their stead an aura of mystery and depth. At the climax
of Tanizakis novella A Portrait of Shunkin (1963), for instance, a man
blinds himself by thrusting a needle into his eyesbut at that moment
achieves a sudden awakening when Shunkins face appears before him
like a mandala image of the Buddha surrounded by a halo of luminous
darkness. Mishima Yukios Temple of the Golden Pavilion (Kinkakuji) ends
 Modern Japanese Literature 249
with a striking vision of ygen wherein a Zen monk at last apprehends
the beauty of the Golden Pavilion in Kyoto when it fades into the
black void of twilight as a crystallization of the dark night of noth-
ingness in which it stands. Kawabata Yasunaris Nobel prize-winning
novel Snow Country (Yukiguni) culminates in the vision of a womans
transparent image floating on the train window in the foreground
against the vast expanse of twilight darkness of the moonlit snow in
the background symbolizing the positive emptiness of an Eastern
nothingness. All of these masterpieces of Japanese fiction are per-
meated with Zen aestheticism and culminate in an exquisite vision of
beauty as ygen. What distinguishes Ssekis Grass Pillow is that it ex-
plicitly thematizes the aesthetic attitude of disinterested contemplation
through insertion of psychic distance whereby the visionary apprehen-
sion of beauty as ygen appears in an epiphany of hidden depths.

Beauty as a Function of Artistic Detachment

In Origins of Modern Japanese Literature, as we have seen, Karatani Kjin
underscores how Ssekis writing of creative fiction began through the
composition of shaseibun or sketching literature. For Sseki, he notes,
the haiku technique of sketching involves an aesthetic attitude of de-
tachment from humanity. And this attitude was itself articulated in
Grass Pillow through the term hininj:
Sseki sought the basis of sketching in a certain disposition toward
the world. It was an attitude of detachment toward human affairs
(including those of the self), but it was neither cold nor lacking in
compassion. In the novel Grass Pillow, Sseki uses the term hininj, or
asympathetic. [1993:181]

Karatani traces the aesthetic attitude of detachment emphasized by

Meiji figures such as Sseki in literature and Nishida in philosophy to
its origins in Zen Buddhism. While at the beginning of the Meiji
period many former samurai warriors were converting to Christianity,
Karatani points out that there were others of course, a fewNishida
Kitar, Natsume Ssekiwho sought transcendence of suffering
through Zen, cultivating a spirit of detachment (p. 85). Earlier we
noted that Nishida Kitar, the founder of modern Japanese philos-
ophy, has articulated an aesthetic attitude theory of beauty grounded
in an East-West perspective unifying Kants notion of beauty as a
function of disinterested contemplation with the Zen idea of muga or
no-self. In Ssekis Grass Pillow, the Zen spirit of artistic detachment
250 Psychic Distance in Literature East and West
is thematized by means of his key notion of hininj, meaning non-
human, unsympathetic, or detachment from human emotions.
Ssekis unique concept of hininj reappropriates the history of Japa-
nese Buddhist ygen aesthetics including Shunzeis waka poetics rooted
in shikan or tranquility and insight meditation and Zeamis n
theory of the seeing of detached perception (riken no ken). Yet at the
same time Ssekis Zen notion of hininj, detachment from human
feeling, also approximates Kants idea of beauty as a function of dis-
interested aesthetic contemplation and its reformulation by Western
theories of artistic detachmentincluding Bulloughs psychic dis-
tance, Ortega y Gassets dehumanization of art, and Mnsterbergs
idea of art as isolation through framing.
The fundamental aesthetic doctrine of Ssekis Grass Pillow is that
the traditional Japanese sense of beauty as ygen, or mysterious dark-
ness, is itself a function of hininj: detachment from human emo-
tions. With his theory of hininj, Sseki is clearly reformulating
standard principles in the thousand-year-long ygen tradition of Japa-
nese aesthetics wherein detachment from emotions has always been
regarded as an essential element of art. Just as the beauty of ygen was
apprehended through the meditative practice of shikan (calm and con-
templation) in Shunzeis waka poetics and through riken no ken (psy-
chic distance) in Zeamis n theater, in Ssekis Grass Pillow it is dis-
closed through hininj, detachment from human emotions. By means
of the disinterested attitude of hininj the painter of Grass Pillow en-
deavors to distance himself from life in order to transform ordinary
scenes of nature into sublime events in a n drama, a haiku poem, or a
sumie paintingall of which manifest the traditional Japanese aes-
thetic ideal of ygen: the ethereal beauty of shadows and darkness.
The protagonist of Grass Pillow describes his sojourn into the tran-
quility and solitude of the mountains as a journey of hininj (hininj
no tabi) (1972:25)that is to say, a journey of detachment, which in
this context specifically refers to a poetic journey into nature under-
taken for the purpose of transcending all human emotions (ninj)
through artistic detachment so as to attain Zen satori: sudden enlight-
enment. Elsewhere, again underscoring his key notion of hininj, the
artist-hero of Grass Pillow states: The purpose of departing on this
journey was to achieve a detachment from human emotions (hininj o
shi ni dekaketa tabi [no] tsumori) (p. 14). The young painter-poet says
that at the age of thirty-five he is now exhausted by love, hate, anger,
sadness, and other human passions (pp. 1213). He complains that
Western plays, poems, and novels are like stimulants that arouse these
 Modern Japanese Literature 251
feelings. Hence while he enjoys such Western literary figures as Shake-
speare, Shelley, and Goethe, he finds them limited insofar as they are
unable to transcend the world of human emotions. In contrast, he
thinks that Eastern poets have achieved complete detachment from
human emotions and have therefore entered into a world of pure
poetry (p. 13). The Eastern poet, he says, has become completely free
of self-interest since he abandons all considerations of personal advan-
tage and disadvantage or profit and loss (p. 13). Thus the artist-hero
of Grass Pillow asserts: I would like to assimilate directly from nature
the atmosphere of Tao Yuan-mings and Wang-weis poetic world,
so as to wander, if only for a short while, through a realm of hininj
complete detachment from human emotions (p. 14). He goes on to
confess that since he is only human, he probably cannot abide contin-
uously in the realm of hininj (hininj no tenchi): after all, not even
Tao Yuan-ming could gaze at the southern hills year in and year out.
Nonetheless, he says, he will attempt to dwell in the sublime detach-
ment of hininj for as long as possible (p. 14).
Throughout Grass Pillow the theme of transforming life into art by
means of hininj or detachment from human emotions is developed
in terms of the notion of objectivity. By this view, artistic detachment
always involves a shift from self-centered to object-centered percep-
tion. Hence the painter of Grass Pillow states that anything can be-
come aesthetic material (bijutsu no zairy) or a subject for art (gei-
jutsu no daimoku) if one only becomes distanced from the self (onore o
hanareru) so that all events are seen objectively (kyakkanteki ni).
When seen objectively, he says, anything can become a poem (shi ni
naru) or turn into a painting (e ni naru). In the painter-poets words:
Although something might be frightening, if you stand back and observe
it simply as a shape, it can turn into a poem. If you become distanced
from the self, even something dreadful can turn into a painting. It is
exactly the same with lost love, when it becomes a subject of art. If
you can view them objectively . . . then you have aesthetic, literary
material. [p. 33]

At other times, Ssekis artist-hero speaks of the detached, selfless,

and objective standpoint of hininj as the position of a disinterested
bystander (daisansha no chii). It is only from this disinterested stand-
point that one can really delight in the beauty of art, he claims, since
it is only from this position that self-interest is abandoned (jiko no
rigai wa, tana e agetiru). In the words of the painter from Grass Pillow:
In order to appreciate poetry, you must adopt the position of a dis-
252 Psychic Distance in Literature East and West
interested bystander. If one adopts the position of a disinterested
bystander, a play or a novel becomes truly enjoyable because all self-
interest is abandoned (p. 12). The term daisansha, which can be
translated as disinterested person, also denotes such closely related
meanings as third party, bystander, or onlooker. Hence the posi-
tion of a disinterested bystander is the third-person standpointor,
as it were, the perspective of a detached onlooker. Thus Ssekis notion
of daisansha signifies the detached resignation (teinen, akirame) of
the uninvolved onlooker or disinterested bystander (bkansha) in the
self-portrait-of-the-artist stories of Mori gai. Yet the difference is
that while gai usually thematizes the impartial onlookers detached
observation of human events in society, Ssekis novel focuses almost
exclusively on disinterested contemplation of beauty in nature.
Elsewhere Ssekis artist-hero describes the objective standpoint of
a disinterested onlooker (daisansha) as the position of a tanina
similar term that likewise denotes third party or bystander. At
one point the painter in Grass Pillow laments that although he had on
occasion been privileged to witness a poetic world of supreme ele-
gance, he had of late become excessively analytical and fallen from
the lofty realm of hininj to the level of an insensitive person of the
commonplace world who tramples on even the most delicate things
in nature possessing fry, elegant windblown beauty (p. 34). He
remarks: Because of this, my claim to having achieved detachment
from human emotions (hininj) was utterly without value. I would
therefore have to undergo more self-cultivation (shugyo) before an-
nouncing my qualifications as a poet or an artist (p. 34). Consonant
with the Japanese Buddhist religio-aesthetic tradition of geid or the
tao of art, the protagonist insists that an aesthetic experience of
ygen requires the artistic detachment of hininj and this state of de-
tachment itself requires shugyo (self-cultivation). The painter, now
wishing to regain the poetic standpoint (shiteki na rikkyakuchi)
acquired only through the detached attitude of hininj, must therefore
once again adopt the objective position of a tanin or third-party by-
stander. In the painters words: At that time I wondered how one
could return to the poetic standpoint. I decided that it could be
achieved only if you set your feelings in front of you, and then retreat-
ing from them to give yourself the space of a bystander (tanin), thereby
to inspect them calmly and honestly (p. 34).
At the end of chapter one, the artist describes one of his most spec-
tacular acts of hininj:
 Modern Japanese Literature 253
If I regard being drenched in the rain by countless diagonal silver streaks
in a vast black-ink-colored world as something which is happening to
someone else, then it would become an excellent poem. Only when I
completely forget myself and view myself from a purely objective stand-
point can I, as a figure in a painting, preserve the beautiful harmony
of my natural surroundings. However, the moment I become uneasy
about the falling rain or I begin to suffer from exhaustion while hiking,
then I am no longer a character in a poem or a figure in a painting, and
I go back to being an ordinary man in the street as before. I am then
even blind to the charm of the passing clouds, nor can I feel sympathy
with the scattering blossoms or the cry of birds, much less appreciate
the beauty of myself walking completely alone in the spring moun-
tains. [p. 17]
In this situation, the artist is feeling great displeasure from his exhaust-
ing hike up the steep mountain trails in the pouring rain. He then
remembers to adopt the disinterested attitude of a poetthrough the
detached, selfless, and objective standpoint of hininjwhereupon he
now transmutes the event into a vast monochrome sumie inkwash land-
scape painting so that the deluge is seen as a downpour of countless
silver streaks upon the canvas of nature. In the words of the painter,
he can observe this situation from an aesthetic point of view only when
he completely forgets himself (onore o wasuretsukusu) and views him-
self purely objectively (jun kyakkan ni) as if he were a character in a
poem (shich no hito) or a figure in a painting (gach no hito).
In a passage from chapter one, the protagonist of Grass Pillow ex-
presses his aspiration to transfigure all that he sees into the atmosphere
of a n drama through the detached contemplation of hininj. He muses:
I wonder how it might be if I were to regard the events arising on my
short journey as comprising the plot in a n play and the people I meet as
if they were n actors. Since this trip is essentially concerned with poetry,
I would like to approximate the atmosphere by abandoning all human
feelings (ninj) as far as possible, even if I cannot achieve the level of
complete detachment from human feelings (hininj). [p. 15]
Hence while the first chapter of Grass Pillow concludes with the
painter transmuting the mountain scenery into a vast monochrome
sumie landscape painting through the exercise of disinterested aesthetic
contemplation, in the opening of chapter two he once again adopts
the impartial, neutralized, and uninvolved attitude of hininj, detach-
ment from human feelings, now to metamorphose an ordinary tea-
shop into a n theater in which a sublime drama is about to unfold.
254 Psychic Distance in Literature East and West
After he has been waiting unattended in the teashop for a long time,
finally a screen door slides back and an old woman makes her entrance.
He thinks to himself: I found this detachment from human feeling
most interesting (Kokora ga hininj de omoshiroi). Moreover, I found the
old womans face delightful (p. 18). As the next few passages reveal,
the painter uses the detached, selfless, and objective standpoint of
hininj to imaginatively transform the old woman into a figure in a n
drama so that her face now appears as if it were an elegant and grace-
ful mask worn by a n actor. The painter now recounts his experience
of several years ago when he saw a famous n play by Zeami called
Takasago at the Hosho theater in Tokyo. He still has a vivid memory
of the elderly womans face on stage as she stood in front of an old
man holding a broom over his shoulder. Then he describes the exquis-
itely carved mask that made even an old woman appear beautiful:
From my seat I could clearly see the old womans face, and I thought how
beautiful she looked. At that moment her facial expression was indelibly
imprinted in the camera of my mind. The resemblance between the
old woman in the teashop and that picture in my mind was so close that
it took my breath away. [pp. 1819]

Just as he uses his capacity for artistic detachment to transform events

into moments in a painting, a poem, or a play, he now views the scene
before him as a black and white photograph: his memory of the old
womans face is a picture (shashin) imprinted in the camera of the
mind (kokoro no kamera). The painter continues gazing at the scene as
a disinterested spectator until the mental picture of a beautifully carved
mask worn by an actor in a n drama is superimposed onto the old
womans face in the teashop, whereupon they fuse into a single, com-
posite image. Through the detached contemplation of hininj, he
thereby reconstitutes his experience of a mundane teashop into a
grand performance of Zeamis play Takasago that is permeated with
the boundless hidden depths of ygen, the ethereal beauty of mystery
and darkness. The shift from human emotion (ninj) to detachment
from human emotion (hininj) in Ssekis novel becomes the functional
equivalent of what Zeami calls the transition from ego perception
(gaken) to detached perception (riken no ken). In such a manner,
then, Ssekis idea of hininj becomes a modern reformulation of
Zeamis principle of riken no ken: the aesthetic attitude of satori con-
sciousness required for the evocation of ygen or ethereal beauty
required both by the playwright as well as the n performers and the
audience.
 Modern Japanese Literature 255
There is another important side to Ssekis doctrine of hininjthe
element of humor, an aspect that is important not only to the con-
struction of Grass Pillow as a novel but also to Sseki as an author and
to the haiku tradition of Bash in the classic literary tradition of the
haiku travel diary from which this haiku-novel derives. Detachment
from humanity is not always achieved by austere discipline of Zen
practice; it can be attained, as well, through lightness, laughter, and
humor. Ssekis novel is filled with humoras when he imagines
Millaiss image of Ophelia drowning with a traditional Japanese shi-
mada hairstyle. Again, Nami the heroine meets a young priest who
falls in love with her. In front of everyone she throws her arms around
him and says: If you love me so much, lets make love here before
the Buddha! Humor is important to Sseki as an author, as well, in
that even today his most popular novels in Japan are Botchan (Little
Master) and Wagahai wa neko de aru (I Am a Cat): two comic, ironic, and
critical parodies of Japanese life written about the same time as Grass
Pillow. Indeed, the objective and literally nonhuman standpoint of
narration is first achieved in Ssekis I Am a Cat when the comic
aspects of Japanese academic life are critically observed through the
eyes of an animal, namely, the pet cat owned by a university professor.
Humor is emphasized in Bashs haiku theory by the notion of
lightness (karumi). Ueda Makoto writes: Lightness is the quality
that detaches a man from worldly concerns while he is immersed in
the mire, and that is precisely what makes humor possible (1967:
169). Elsewhere Ueda explains how lightness represents a dialectical
transcendence of that complete detachment from humanity signified
by Bashs aesthetic ideal of sabi or impersonal loneliness: Sabi urges
man to detach himself from worldly involvements; lightness makes
it possible for him, after attaining that detachment, to return to the
mundane world (1982:34). According to Ueda, poets like Bash who
have attained a high stage of enlightenment take suffering with a
detached, light-hearted smile (1967:169). On his exhausting haiku
journeys there were times when Bash became sad: But then he de-
tached himself from the sadness and composed a poem with light-
heartedness (1967:169). In the first chapter of Ssekis Grass Pillow
(p. 15), the wandering artist-hero makes reference to a famous poem
from Bashs haiku diary titled Narrow Road to the Deep North (Oku no
hosomichi), saying that Bash found even the sight of a horse urinating
near his pillow elegant enough to inspire a haiku. When Bash reached
Norigo hot springs in the Thoku area, he was forced to spend three
days and nights in a dull retreat due to bad weather. His haiku about
256 Psychic Distance in Literature East and West
a horse urinating near his pillow with fleas and lice all around is an
example of achieving detachment from suffering by way of light-
nessnot only a technique of poetry but a universal solvent for
human misery. It is at this point in the story that the painter of Grass
Pillow resolves to take after Bash. He will now begin seeing every-
thing with detachment as if it were a haiku poem, a sumie picture, or a
n playindeed, as if it were an unraveling picture scroll as he walks
along the mountain trails using an artistic attitude of detachment in
the imaginative transformation of life into art.

The Central Problematic: Detachment vs. Sympathy

At the conclusion of the first chapter the protagonist of Grass Pillow
says he has gone somewhat too far in the direction of hininj. Hence in
the final sentence of chapter one, Ssekis artist-hero asserts: It seems
that I had carried detachment from human emotions a little too far
(Hininj ga, chitto tsuyosugita y da) (1972:17). The painter of Grass
Pillow thereby comes to anticipate the final epiphany of the novel: the
realization that total detachment apart from human sympathy is anti-
thetical to art. The central problem here is the dialectical tension
between artistic detachment and human sympathy in aesthetic expe-
rience. This is made clear in chapter ten, where the painter again be-
comes interested in painting Nami when he sees her floating in a pond
filled with camellia blossoms. Although Nami is otherwise a perfect
subject for such a painting, he says that she is somehow missing some-
thing. Finally he comes to realize that her face is lacking an essential
factor: the emotion of awarehuman sympathy, pity, or compassion.
He thinks to himself: I had forgotten that among the many human
emotions there is one known as compassion (aware). Although it is
unknown to the gods, compassion is the emotion that can raise human-
ity closest to the level of a god. Yet there was not even the slightest
hint of compassion in Namis facial expression (p. 109). This insight
is fully realized only in the disclosure on the final page of Grass Pillow.
Although the painter knows of Namis extreme indifference to her
former husband, upon seeing him leaving for the Russo-Japanese War
she reveals for the first time a human feeling of pity. The painter ob-
serves the emotion of aware she had lacked and realizes that only now
can he complete a portrait of her ideal beauty (p. 149). Hence the epi-
phany at the end of Grass Pillow is this: while artistic detachment is a
necessary condition for aesthetic experience, it is not in and of itself
 Modern Japanese Literature 257
sufficient; beauty requires compassion just as art requires an element
of human feeling.
Ssekis problematization of the conflict between artistic detach-
ment (hininj) versus emotional sympathy (aware) in aesthetic experi-
ence draws upon a long history in traditional Japanese literature. The
Tale of Genji attributed to Murasaki Shikibu, perhaps the first novel in
world literature, is the source text of Japanese literary images, symbols,
and motifs. This work depicts the aristocratic court of the Heian
period as a world preoccupied with the aesthetic experience of miyabi
or courtliness as an aesthetic attitude of total detachment under-
stood in terms of a refined, elegant, and graceful beauty through the
cultivation of heightened artistic sensitivity. The eighteenth-century
Japanese scholar Motoori Norinaga (17301801) pointed out that the
central theme of The Tale of Genji is what in the Heian aesthetic of
perishability was termed aware (sympathy) or mono no aware (sympathy
with things). Although the character for aware or sad beauty of im-
permanent things is different from the aware or compassion of Ssekis
haiku-novel, phonetically it is the same and denotes a similar mean-
ing. Motoori Norinaga, developing his insight into a generalized aes-
thetic theory, argues that the essential function of Japanese literature
is to express mono no aware: sympathy with things. Norinaga explains:
For instance, if a man, viewing beautiful cherry-blossoms in full
bloom, appreciates them as beautiful . . . he is moved by it. That is, he
is sensitive to mono no aware (cited in Matsumoto 1970:4445).
Originally the Heian literary ideal of aware indicated an emotional
sympathy with events that move the heart-mind (kokoro) and the
creative expression of natural human feelings. Because impermanence
and death move the heart-mind most deeply, the idea of aware came
to denote especially the notion of pathosthe tragic beauty of
perishable things in the universal flux of becoming. Norinaga writes:
Aware is in essence an expression for deep feeling in the heart. In
later periods, this word has been used to refer merely to a sad feeling,
but that is only one facet of the term (cited in Matsumoto 1970:43).
In The Tale of Genji, the Heian aesthetic of perishability expressed by
this literary ideal of mono no aware is depicted through poetic images
of impermanencescattered cherry blossoms, fading autumn leaves,
dew falling from cloverall symbolic of the frailty of human life
itself. Although the idea of aware has an obvious affinity with the
Buddhist doctrine of muj, impermanence, Norinaga strongly criti-
cized Buddhist indifference as being antithetical to aware. As explained
258 Psychic Distance in Literature East and West
by Matsumoto Shigeru in his book Motoori Norinaga (1970), for Nori-
naga aware cultivates human sympathy with impermanent events
through aesthetic feeling, whereas Buddhism cultivates nonhuman
insensitivity to events through complete detachment. In this context
Norinaga undermined the otherworldliness of Buddhism as aiming to
transcend or repress natural feelings of the heart to the extent of total
dehumanization. Norinaga writes: The Way of the Buddha is a way
which cannot be practiced by one who is tender-hearted and sensitive
to mono no aware. Therefore, a monk pursues the way by cultivating
insensitivity to mono no aware (cited in Matsumoto 1970:54).
For Norinaga, the emotional sympathy of mono no aware as ex-
pressed by Lady Murasaki is a distinctly feminine ideal of beauty in
contrast to the masculine ideals of beauty appreciated through de-
tached contemplation developed later by Buddhist monks (see Matsu-
moto 1970:49). Norinagas basic criticism of this masculine ideal of
Buddhist indifference is that it is in disharmony with, or hostile to,
the natural human feelings involved in mono no aware (Matsumoto
1970:55). At the same time, Norinaga differentiated between the Bud-
dha and Buddhism itself. According to Norinaga, Buddhism origi-
nated with the Buddha, who, deeply sensitive to mono no aware, felt
pity for men tied up by the affections of the world and unable to escape
from life and death (cited in Matsumoto 1970:55). Therefore: Al-
though the Way of the Buddha is a way to abandon mono no aware, it
often reveals mono no aware (p. 55).
This shift from the Heian literary ideal of aware, or emotional sym-
pathy of the heart-mind, to the medieval Buddhist literary ideal of
ygen, or profound mystery evoked by an aesthetic attitude of disinter-
ested contemplation, and the dynamic tension arising between them
is expressed in a famous waka poem by Fujiwara no Teika:
miwataseba Gaze out far enough,
hana mo momiji mo beyond all cherry blossoms
nakarikeri and scarlet maples,
ura no tomaya no to those solitary huts by the shore
aki no ygure fading in the twilight of autumn dusk.

While the Heian poets express sensitivity to mono no aware with color-
ful images of transitoriness like cherry blossoms and autumn leaves,
the Kamakura poets suggest the profound mystery and depths of
ygen with monochrome images of twilight darkness. Through the
meditation practice of shikan, tranquility and insight, the poet cul-
 Modern Japanese Literature 259
tivates an aesthetic attitude of disinterested contemplation in order to
see beyond the color, form, and emotion of aware to the colorlessness,
formlessness, and detachment from emotion designated by ygen. Al-
though in the foregoing poem Teika evokes the standard classical Japa-
nese images of beauty for spring and fallcherry blossoms and maple
leavesthey do not elicit the pathos, gentle melancholy, and emo-
tional sadness of mono no aware. The observer in this poem does not
focus on the blossoms and maple leaves but gazes beyond (miwa-
tasu) them into the distance, so that the cherry blossoms and maple
leaves have vanished (hana mo momiji mo nakarikeri). In phenomeno-
logical terms, this poem involves a radical shift of attention from
focus to fieldaway from the colored blossoms and maples articu-
lated in the foreground to the monochrome darkness of the void in the
nonarticulated background.
Other waka poems manifesting the aesthetic quality of ygen reveal
the difficulty of transcending the melancholy feelings of aware. An
acclaimed poem by Saigy reads:
kokoro naki Thought I was free
mi ni mo aware wa of passions, so this melancholy
shirarekari comes as surprise:
shigi tatsu sawa no a woodcock shoots up from marsh
aki no ygure where autumns twilight falls.

As William LaFleur (1983:103) clarifies in his analysis of this poem,

although Saigy regards himself as a Buddhist monk who has tran-
scended all human feelings, emotions, and passions of mono no aware,
this pretentious posture collapses when a powerful feeling (aware),
undoubtedly of melancholy, rises within him.
Thus in the history of Japanese poetics the conflict between emo-
tional sympathy and contemplative detachment in aesthetic experi-
ence was represented by the inherent tension between the feminine
literary ideal of aware and the masculine literary ideal of ygen. It is
precisely this yin/yang (J. iny) polar contrast between the emotional
sympathy of tragic beauty and the artistic detachment of dark mys-
tery that is again taken up in Ssekis Grass Pillow. But at the same
time Ssekis haiku-novel represents a creative synthesis of Eastern
and Western literary themes so that the aware versus ygen conflict of
Japanese aestheticism is further developed in terms of the sympathy
versus detachment conflict elucidated in classic portrait-of-the-artist
novels of British aestheticism.
260 Psychic Distance in Literature East and West

Ssekis Theory of Psychic Distance

Sseki develops hininj or detachment from human feeling as the
key aesthetic notion of Grass Pillow in a letter to Morita Shei dated
30 September 1906 (1925:XII, 507510). This letter clarifies the
deeper theoretical dimension of artistic detachment portrayed so
dramatically through the images of literary imagination in Ssekis
haiku-novel. Sseki begins his letter by telling Morita that the idea of
hininj in Grass Pillow denotes a kind of sensuous beauty (kankaku-
teki-bi) devoid of all sympathy, emotion, or human feeling. He then
distinguishes the ordinary standpoint of ninj, human feeling, from
the artistic standpoint of hininj, detachment from human feeling.
Sseki writes:
1. Nature does not contain ninj [human feeling]. A person who
observes nature also does not contain ninj. There is only
beauty.
2. It is the same if we see the human being as part of nature.
3. When people become emotional, they exhibit ninj in abun-
dance. [p. 507]

Sseki proceeds to clarify the three basic attitudes (taido) for the spec-
tator of a theatrical drama:
There are three kinds of attitudes the audience manifests while see-
ing a play:
(a) One completely abandons ninj [human feeling] and sees the
play with the same attitude as one sees pine trees and apricot trees.
(When one sees a play, it is seen with the same attitude as when
seeing nature as described in numbers 1 and 2 above.)
(b) One cannot completely abandon ninj in that sympathy or
antipathy arise. Yet this sympathy or antipathy is different from
that in the real world. In other words, this sympathy or antipathy
is not related to ones self-interest; it is a situation in which one can
see the event with pure sympathy or pure antipathy without any
concern for personal gain or loss. (This is the case when we see an
ordinary play.)
(c) In this situation one sees the activity of human beings from
the point of view of sympathy and antipathy arising in the real
world. (Spectators in the theater sometimes jump on the stage
and attack the actors. There was an incident in France where some-
one in the audience shot the actor who was playing Othello.) [pp.
507508]
 Modern Japanese Literature 261
Thus Sseki develops an explicit aesthetic attitude theory wherein
a certain mental attitude (taido) on the part of the beholder is re-
quired for the experience of beauty in a work of art. Moreover, in his
distinction between three basic attitudes of the spectator of artin
this case a theatrical perfomancehe specifies that the first attitude
(a) is characterized by hininj, detachment from human feeling
or dehumanization. In other words: the highest level of aesthetic
attitude is completely disinterested. The second attitude (b) is still
attached to ninj or human feeling since it is related to sympathy
(doj) and antipathy (hand). Although it is not of the same exalted
level as hininj, it is nevertheless an aesthetic attitude insofar as it is a
human feeling of sympathy or antipathy without any concern for self-
interest (jiko no rigai). Hence the second attitude (b) is also to some
extent disinterested. The third attitude (c) is, strictly speaking, un-
aesthetic in that it is based on ordinary human feelings of sympathy
and antipathy accompanied by self-interest as concern for personal
gain and loss. Thus in his threefold analysis of the aesthetic attitude
in relation to the standard of hininj, Sseki clearly introduces a notion
of the degree or variability of distancing. Ssekis threefold scheme
represents a graduated hierarchy of distancing that ranges from low
distancing to mid-distancing to high distancing. Whereas the first
standpoint (a) is an aesthetic attitude that has completely distanced
itself from life and the second standpoint (b) is only partly distanced,
the third standpoint (c) has no distance factor at all.
Ssekis letter goes on to apply this scale of distancing to the pro-
tagonist of Grass Pillow. He states that the painter-poet in his novel
tries to see events of nature from position (a)namely, the aesthetic
attitude of hininj or complete detachment from human feelings. Even
if he is not always able to see events from position (a), he tries not to
stand in position (b). In position (b), one cannot completely transcend
ninj or human feelings since it is related to sympathy and antipathy
to events. Yet this is not the level of ordinary human feeling as repre-
sented by position (c) in that sympathy and antipathy are still to some
extent free of self-interest. Hence according to Sseki, the artist-hero
of Grass Pillow oscillates back and forth between positions (a) and (b)
(p. 508).
To clarify the dialectical tension between artistic detachment versus
emotional sympathy in his novel Grass Pillow, Ssekis letter next
examines the relationship between hininj (detachment from human
feeling) and aware (compassion). Specifically he applies the threefold
262 Psychic Distance in Literature East and West
scale of aesthetic distancing to the artists perception of aware or
compassion expressed by Nami on the final page of Grass Pillow.
When the artist-hero of the novel observes compassion on Namis
face, it comes in the form of an epiphanynamely, the realization
that he has brought the artistic detachment of hininj too far and
therefore has failed in his efforts to complete a portrait of Nami. He
thereby comes to the insight that while detachment is a necessary
precondition for aesthetic experience, it is not in itself sufficient: at
least some element of sympathy, human feeling, and compassion is
necessary to the act of artistic creation.
In this context, Ssekis letter presents yet another threefold anal-
ysis. (i) First, in accordance with position (a) Sseki describes the
artist-heros observation of aware or compassion on Namis face while
remaining in the purely disinterested, detached, or dehumanized stand-
point of hininj. He writes: Even if [the painter] is in position (a), he
can still see aware (compassion) appearing on the womans face. . . .
Although aware is a part of hininj (detachment from human feeling),
if the painter stays in this attitude, then his attitude of observation
is also pure hininj (p. 508). (ii) Second, in accord with position (b)
Sseki describes Namis feeling of aware or compassion as a kind of
sympathy without any concern for self-interest. He asserts: The ex-
pression of aware (compassion) appears on her face, and it is for her
husband so it is admirable. She is a woman that people should sym-
pathize with deeply. Therefore, the painter should also involuntarily
have sympathy for her. (Probably the painter in Grass Pillow did not
stand in this position.) (p. 508). (iii) And third, he describes a third
level of seeing aware in Namis face from a more worldly standpoint
characterized by sympathy and antipathy with regard for self-interest
(p. 508).
Sseki then compares the mental attitude of the artist-poet in Grass
Pillow with that of Shakespeare in relation to Hamlet. Here Sseki is
no doubt thinking about the Ophelia drowning motif in Hamlet as
it relates to problems of aesthetic distance in Eastern art, especially
Japanese drama. He writes:
I dont know Shakespeares thinking when he wrote Hamlet, but I am sure
that he was not in position (i) and, of course, not position (iii). Probably
he was in position (ii) (the same position as the audiences while watching
Hamlet). Therefore the attitude of the painter in Grass Pillow is different
from Shakespeares. One may not distinguish their standpoints clearly,
but the tendency of their viewpoints is different. Shakespeare had a ten-
dency to return to position (ii), while the painter [of Grass Pillow] had a
 Modern Japanese Literature 263
tendency to return to position (i). Draw (i) and (ii), showing the direction
with an arrow. Then the attitude of Shakespeare is signified by and
that of the painter by [(ii) Shakespeare in Hamlet; the painter in
Grass Pillow (i)]. Both sides want to establish a distance. [p. 509]

In Ssekis comparison between the aesthetic attitudes of Shakespeare

and the painter of Grass Pillow, he underscores the point that both
seek at least some degree of distance from life. As he states in the pre-
ceding passage: Both sides want to establish a distance (Ryh tomo,
hanaretagatte iru). But according to Ssekis analysis, while Shakespeare
moves in the direction of the second level of aesthetic attitudethat
is to say, ninj or human feeling related to sympathy and antipathy
without concern for self-interestthe painter in Grass Pillow moves
in the direction of the first level of aesthetic attitudenamely, hininj
or complete detachment from human feeling. Yet when the painter
sees a trace of compassion (aware) on Namis face in the last scene, he
is close to Shakespeares position.
At the conclusion of his letter on hininj, Sseki summarizes his
discussion as follows:
The painter [in Grass Pillow] is hininj. Shakespeare is pure ninj. And
ordinary people who make a difficult living struggling for their meals are
vulgar ninj. . . . The painter scorns the vulgar ninj and especially
despises the vulgar ninj of the twentieth century. He even came to
dislike the extreme pure ninj of plays. He became completely
exhausted [of all human feeling]. Therefore he decided to take a journey
of detachment from human feelings (hininj no tabi), drifting here and
there for a little while. Even if he could not persist to the end in the
position of hininj, he tried to observe people in the closest position to
hininj. (This is the same feeling as when he watched a drama). [p. 509]

Establishing once again a sliding scale of aesthetic distance, he first

describes the ascending levels of ninj or human feeling, which moves
from the vulgar human feeling (zoku ninj) of ordinary people in the
commonplace world, to the pure human feeling (jun ninj), repre-
sented by Shakespeare, finally arriving at the wholly dehumanized
stage of hininj or detachment from human feelings, the lofty aes-
thetic attitude realized, if only sometimes, by the artist of Ssekis
own novel. The upshot is that for Sseki, while the greatest of Western
artists sometimes achieve artistic detachment, they never realize the
level of hininj representing total detachment from human feelings
attained by Eastern artistswhich is the ideal of the Japanese painter-
poet of Grass Pillow.
264 Psychic Distance in Literature East and West

Hininj and Western Theories of Psychic Distance

Having examined Ssekis doctrine of hininj it is now possible to ob-
serve parallels with various Western philosophical theories of artistic
detachment. Kants idea of beauty as disinterested pleasure influenced
Ssekis thought at least indirectly through the novelists study of
English literature. Hence Sseki often characterizes the aesthetic atti-
tude of hininj as being disinterested. Ssekis artist-heros standpoint
of hininj designates the third-person objective standpoint of a dis-
interested bystander (daisansha). It is only from this disinterested
standpoint that one can really delight in the beauty of art, since it is
only from this position that self-interest is abandoned (jiko no rigai
wa, tana e agetiru). In the painters words from Grass Pillow: In order
to appreciate poetry, you must adopt the position of a disinterested
bystander. If one adopts the position of a disinterested bystander, a
play or a novel becomes truly enjoyable because all self-interest is
abandoned (1972:12). Again, in his 1906 letter to Morita, Sseki
emphasizes that the ideal of hininj is complete detachment from
human emotions of sympathy (doj) and antipathy (hand) without
any concern for self-interest (jiko no rigai) through personal gain and
loss.
In a chapter titled Distance and Dehumanization from his anthol-
ogy A Modern Book of Aesthetics (1960), Melvin Rader includes selec-
tions from three works representing innovative developments of Kants
aesthetic attitude theory of the beautiful as a mental function of dis-
interested contemplation: Psychical Distance as a Factor in Art and
an Aesthetic Principle (19121913) by Edward Bullough, The De-
humanization of Art (1948) by Jos Ortega y Gasset, and The Nude
(1959) by Kenneth Clark. In a subsequent chapter he also includes the
reformulation of Kants theory in terms of isolation by framing as
articulated in The Principles of Art Education by Hugo Mnsterberg. It
is remarkable how Ssekis doctrine of hininj anticipates all these
major developments of Kants notion of disinterested beauty in twen-
tieth-century Western aesthetics.

Sseki and Bullough on Psychic Distance. Ssekis hininj theory of artis-

tic detachment, formulated in 1906, clearly anticipates the theory of
distance formulated by Edward Bullough in his classic article Psy-
chical Distance as a Factor in Art and an Aesthetic Principle in 1912.
Sseki not only anticipates Bulloughs celebrated notion that aesthetic
experience involves a specifiable mental attitude characterized by
 Modern Japanese Literature 265
psychic distance, but he also discusses the variability of distancing,
the degrees of distancing, and the fundamental problems of under-
distancing and overdistancing. As in Bulloughs theory of psychic dis-
tance, Sseki clarifies how the experience of beauty requires as its pre-
condition a certain attitude (taido) and claims that this aesthetic
attitude is characterized by distance. Just as Bullough argues that psy-
chic distance is a factor in all art and aesthetic experience, the painter
holds that art requires him to be distant from (hanareru) events in
life. He wants to establish a distance (hanaretagatte iru) from all
human emotions to see everything like a work of art. The artist must
always be distanced from the self (onore o hanareru) to experience
things objectively as one does a picture, a poem, or a play. Bulloughs
article on psychic distance has become famous not only for its theo-
retical contributions but also for its imaginative use of concrete
examples to illustrate the acts of transformation by distance as well
the loss of distance through overdistancing and underdistancing. In
his most celebrated example Bullough (1977:93) asks us to imagine a
fog at sea. For most passengers on a ship a fog at sea is a source of
acute unpleasantness if not dread or terror. But a fog at sea can also
be a source of intense relish and aesthetic enjoyment through inser-
tion of Distance . . . between our own self and its affections (p. 94).
Bullough adds: Thus, in the fog, the transformation by Distance is
produced in the first instance by putting the phenomenon, so to speak,
out of gear with our practical, actual self . . . in short, by looking at
it objectively (p. 95). He concludes: Distance is a factor in all
art (p. 95).
The artist-hero of Ssekis Grass Pillow makes exactly this same
point: Although something might be frightening, if you stand back
and observe it simply as a shape, it can turn into a poem. If you become
distanced from the self, even something dreadful can turn into a paint-
ing. . . . If you can view them objectively . . . then you have aesthetic,
literary material (1972:33). Here as elsewhere throughout Grass Pillow,
the protagonist explicitly asserts that in any situation, no matter how
unpleasant or frightening, if you become distanced from the self
(onore o hanareru) and view events objectively (kyakkanteki ni), any-
thing can become a poem (shi ni naru) or turn into a painting (e ni
naru). Moreover, like Bullough, Ssekis haiku-novel presents dramatic
examples of transformation by distance. At the end of chapter one, as
we have seen, the protagonist of Grass Pillow is suffering great unpleas-
antness from the downpour of a spring rain as he hikes up the moun-
tain trail: but upon regaining the detached, objective, and selfless atti-
266 Psychic Distance in Literature East and West
tude of hininj through insertion of distance between the self and its
affects, the pounding rain and ominous clouds are transformed into
the silver streaks and vast gray expanse of a sumie inkwash landscape
manifesting the boundless hidden depths of ygen. The novel provides
many such examples of ordinary events transformed by distance into
moments in a painting, a poem, or a play. Indeed, the central motif of
Ssekis Grass Pillow is precisely the transformation of life into art by
insertion of distance. Briefly stated: the theme of Ssekis haiku-novel
is transformation by distance.
One of Bulloughs major contributions to aesthetics was his recog-
nition that the factor of distance in art is not a fixed relation. Indeed,
he says there are degrees of Distance (1977:121), or a variability of
Distance (p. 102), including both the extremes of underdistancing
(p. 103) and overdistancing (p. 104). Bullough points out that while
terms like detachment and objectivity are inflexible and exclusive
of their opposites, the idea of distance admits of degrees (p. 100).
Likewise, we have seen how Ssekis theory of distance involves a slid-
ing scale ranging from hininj (complete detachment from emotion)
to jun ninj (pure human feeling without self-interest in personal ad-
vantage or disadvantage) to zoku ninj (vulgar human feeling with
self-interest in personal advantage and disadvantage). Hence for Sseki,
as for Bullough, there is not one correct mode of distance but vari-
ability and degrees ranging from low distance to high distance.
Moreover, both Sseki and Bullough examine the problem of over-
distancing and underdistancing. Ssekis illustration of the problem
of underdistancing by reference to a performance of Shakespeares
Othello makes the parallel all the more striking. Here we should recall
Bulloughs example of the jealous husband who, at a performance of
Othello, fails to insert the due amount of psychic distance into his expe-
rience of the play and therefore undergoes a reversalwhereupon he
no longer sees Othello apparently betrayed by Desdemona but sees
himself in an analogous situation with his own wife (1977:99). Accord-
ing to Bullough, insofar as the jealous husband suffered a loss of dis-
tance the aesthetic attitude was diminished or lost. That is to say,
while an onlooker who is concerned mainly with the technical details
of the plays presentation is overdistanced, the jealous husband at the
Othello performance is said to be underdistanced. Likewise, in his
1906 letter on hininj Sseki describes the complete loss of distance
by underdistancing that can cause spectators in the theater to jump
on the stage and attack the performers.
At the start of Ssekis haiku-novel, the goal of the painter is great
 Modern Japanese Literature 267
distance as represented by position (a); but he oscillates between the
great distance of attitude (a) and the mid-distance of attitude (b).
Usually the painter of Grass Pillow regards himself as having aban-
doned the complete artistic detachment of hininj resulting in under-
distancing: Because of this, my claim to having achieved detach-
ment from human emotions (hininj) was utterly without value. I
would therefore have to undergo more self-cultivation (shugyo) before
announcing my qualifications as a poet or an artist (1972:34). Yet at
other times the painter recognizes that he has overdistanced to the
point of dehumanization. At the end of chapter one, for example, he
says: It seems that I had carried detachment from human emotions a
little too far (Hininj ga, chitto tsuyosugita y da) (p. 17). This insight at
the end of chapter one anticipates the final epiphany on the last page
when he realizes that both compassion (aware) and detachment (hininj)
are required for art. He must now try to strike the mean between too
much distancing and too little. Or as Bullough puts it: the aesthetic
ideal is the antinomy of Distance, understood as the utmost de-
crease of Distance without its disappearance (1977:107).

Sseki and Ortega y Gasset on the Dehumanization of Art. Ssekis doc-

trine of hininj also shares many points in common with Jos Ortega y
Gassets theory of artistic detachment. When Ssekis notion of hininj
is translated as nonhuman or unhuman, it at once signifies a de-
humanization of art similar to Ortega y Gassets view. In his English
translation of Ssekis haiku-novel under the title The Three-Cornered
World, Alan Turney often renders hininj by detachment, although
at times he also translates it by nonhuman (Sseki 1965:12). Turneys
translation distinguishes the term nonhuman (hininj) to denote the
objective, impartial, and detached attitude of an artist from the in-
human (funinj) or coldheartedness of a ruthless person (p. 124).
Indeed, Ssekis Kusamakura was first translated into English by Taka-
hashi Kazutomo under the title Unhuman Tour (1927)thereby ap-
proximating the title of Ortega y Gassets work appearing decades
later, The Dehumanization of Art (1948). Takahashis title, Unhuman
Tour, is intended to reflect the central purpose of the artist-heros pil-
grimage into the tranquility of nature as a journey of hininj (hininj
no tabi) (1972:25), which can alternatively be translated as a journey
of detachment, a nonhuman voyage, or an unhuman tour. The
aim of this unhuman tour is to achieve Zen satori by entering the
realm of pure poetry far beyond human emotions of sympathy and
antipathy. The hininj or nonhuman art of Ssekis novel is precisely
268 Psychic Distance in Literature East and West
what Ortega y Gasset calls dehumanized art. The hininj or non-
human style of beauty, like the dehumanized art of Ortega y Gasset,
is art purged of all human emotion, feeling, or sympathy.
In contrast to Bullough who advocates an antinomy of distance
understood as the utmost decrease of Distance without its disappear-
ance, Ortega y Gasset defends the extreme increase of detachment in
modern art. For the protagonist of Grass Pillow, as for Ortega y Gasset,
the goal of art is absolute distance, distancing to the point of de-
humanization, a complete removal of the human component of art. In
The Dehumanization of Art, Ortega y Gasset gives a phenomenological
description of varying degrees of emotional distance placed between
various persons, a wife, a doctor, a reporter, and a painter, and the
tragic event they all witness (1948:1318). Starting from the minimal
distance of the wife, the distance continues to increase until it arrives
at the maximum distance of the painter. Ortega y Gasset asserts: In
the painter we find a maximum of distance and a minimum of feeling
intervention (p. 17). He says that the painter who observes the event
with maximum distance is so uninvolved, impersonal, aloof, and un-
feeling that to others he appears inhuman (p. 16). But for Ortega y
Gasset this absolute distance to the point of complete dehumaniza-
tion is the ideal of abstract modern art and the high point of modern
civilization (p. 26).
For Ssekis artist-hero, as for Ortega y Gasset, there is a range of
distancing from low to high. And since Ssekis artist-hero is himself
a painter, he upholds the ideal of dehumanized art distanced to the
maximum degree with minimum intervention of feeling. As we shall
see, there is an even closer proximity to Ortega y Gassets dehuman-
ization theory of art in that the painter of Grass Pillow is preoccupied
with achieving maximum distance from death by viewing it as a non-
human picture with all tragic feelings of sorrow, fear, or pity removed.
But of course the difference is that Sseki develops his theory of de-
humanized art with critical irony in the form of a novel and is aware
from the very start that such a view is inadequate. Hence the final
epiphany of Ssekis haiku-novel leads the painter of Grass Pillow to
radically modify his hininj or nonhuman ideal of art as something
completely detached, uninvolved, and impersonal. For with the real-
ization that great art needs compassion (aware) as well as detachment
(hininj) comes the insight that the ideal picture must itself be pro-
foundly human.
The dehumanized perspective of Ssekis artist-hero is deeply linked
to the haiku poetics of Bash. Indeed, the very concept of Ssekis
 Modern Japanese Literature 269
haiku-novel (haikuteki-shsetsu) is inspired by the classic haiku diaries
of Bash and others. Likewise, the unhuman tour (hininj no tabi) of
the painter-poet in Ssekis haiku-novel (1972:25) is also reminiscent
of Bashs archetypal haiku journey of detachment from emotion in
the solitude of nature. Hence in the first chapter of Ssekis Grass
Pillow (p. 15) the artist-hero cites a famous poem from Bashs Narrow
Road to the Deep North and says that like Bash he would from now on
like to view everyone from the detached, objective, impersonal, or non-
human standpoint of hininj so that they appear as figures in a haiku
poem, a n drama, or a sumie painting against the canvas of nature.
Ueda Makoto emphasizes precisely this unhuman element in Bashs
poetry. According to Ueda, Bash takes detachment from human
emotion to the point of complete dehumanization not only in his
poetry and literary theory but also in his own life. Ueda (1967:149)
explains that while Bashs poetic ideal of sabi means loneliness, it
is not a personal emotion but an impersonal atmosphere: an objec-
tive, nonemotional loneliness. He adds:
Such a dissolution of personal emotion into an impersonal atmosphere
constitutes the core of Bashs attitude toward life. . . . Bash was quite
determined in keeping this attitude, so much so that he at times looked
coldhearted, even inhuman. . . . It was not that Bash was inhuman;
rather, he was un-human. He tried to overcome his grief by transforming
it into something impersonal. [p. 151]

In the Heian poetic ideal of aware or sympathy there is an expression

of personal human feelings like gentle melancholy, bittersweet sorrow,
or enjoyment of transitory beauty tinged with sadness. In Bashs un-
human poetic ideal of sabi, however, the feeling of sadness is univer-
salized (p. 154) or depersonalized into an object of nature (p. 156).
The poetic ideal of sabi is evoked through a process whereby human
feelings of grief or sadness are universalized, impersonalized, and de-
humanized into the atmosphere of impersonal nature, and not an
emotion of human life (p. 153). In Bashs technique of verse compo-
sition, total detachment from human emotions is achieved through a
process whereby personal feelings of sorrow are universalized into an
impersonal atmosphere of sabi: loneliness. The Japanese haiku poetics
of Bash is therefore analogous to the classical Indian poetics of Abhi-
navagupta: aesthetic experience (Skt. rasa) requires an artistic attitude
of disinterested delight achieved through a universalization process
(sdhranikarana) whereby personal emotions are deindividuated into
an aesthetic emotion that is impersonal, universal, and general.
270 Psychic Distance in Literature East and West
In Bashs idea of poetic inspiration one must achieve complete
detachment from the self and enter into the heart of a thing to sympa-
thize with its unique qualityfollowed immediately by the sponta-
neous expression of that quality in a verse. Bashs most famous state-
ment about poetic inspiration is recorded by his student Doh: The
Master said: Learn about a pine tree from a pine tree, and about a
bamboo plant from a bamboo plant. What he meant was that the poet
should detach the mind from his own self . . . enter into the object,
perceive its delicate life, and feel its feeling, whereupon a poem forms
itself (cited in Ueda 1967:157). Ueda emphasizes how Bashs theory
of poetic inspiration requires complete objectivity, impersonality, and
detachment: Here is a strong plea for objective, impersonal poetry.
The poets task is, not to express his emotions, but to detach himself
from them and to enter into the object of nature (p. 158). Further-
more, Ueda underscores the unhuman standpoint of Bashs theory
of poetic inspiration in that it requires detachment from human feel-
ings to the extent of complete dehumanization of art. Ueda writes: It
is no easy matter to enter into the innermost life of an external object.
It presumes the poets complete dehumanization, the dissolution of all
his emotions. . . . The poet could dehumanize himself, but only for a
brief period of time, perhaps only for a few moments at most (p. 157;
italics added). Thus Ssekis haiku-novel Grass Pillow must finally be
understood against its literary background in the classic Japanese haiku
journals of Bash and others that recorded the quest for Zen enlight-
enment through detachment from personal emotions in an unhuman
tour to a world of pure poetry achieved by deindividuation of human
feelings into an objective, impersonal, and nonhuman art.
Ueda Makoto clarifies the eighteenth-century scholar Mootori Nori-
nagas criticism of medieval Buddhist poetics that attempts to deny
mono no aware in order to become unhuman. The medieval Buddhist
ideal of dehumanized art is the polar opposite of the Heian-period lit-
erary ideal of mono no aware, which aims to express the spontaneous
overflow of natural human feelings from the inmost depths of the sen-
sitive open heart when moved by the elegant beauty of events in life.
Ueda writes:
Buddhism rejects mono no aware. . . . It aims at the unhuman, precisely
the opposite of human feelings. It renounces grief over death, love
between men and women, and anything else that is human. But here lies
the weakness of Buddhism, for no man can be completely unhuman. As
Norinaga says, even the most holy priest cannot but be moved at the
sight of a beautiful cherry blossoms, or of a lovely lady he happens to
 Modern Japanese Literature 271
meet in the street. If there is a priest who has no such feeling, Norinaga
writes, he is more heartless than birds and insectshe is, we should say,
no better than a rock or a tree. This is a view diametrically opposed to
that of the medieval Japanese. [1967:201]

It can therefore be seen how the thematic conflict between hininj

(detachment) versus aware (compassion) in Ssekis Grass Pillow is a
reworking of precisely the same problematic addressed by Mootori
Norinaga in terms of the unhuman medieval Buddhist ygen poetics
versus the Heian literary ideal of mono no aware.
On the Eastern side, the ideal of Ssekis haiku-novelhininj as
an aesthetic attitude of detachment from human emotions represent-
ing the dehumanization of arthas itself appropriated a long Japa-
nese tradition expressed in the unhuman ideal of sabi (impersonal lone-
liness) in Bashs haiku poetry. Motoori Norinaga undermines this
Zen tradition of dehumanized art by holding that the Japanese ideal
of beauty is mono no awarethe antithesis of unhuman art purged of
feeling. Although Ssekis novel seems at first to advocate total detach-
ment from human emotion, it goes on to show the limitations of this
idea by arguing that true beauty involves both detachment and sym-
pathy. Hence while Ortega y Gassets notion of beauty as dehuman-
ization of art has been exhaustively investigated by Ssekis novel he
comes to see the limitations of this idea and ultimately argues for a
Japanese notion of beauty as polar tension between two extreme states:
hininj as artistic detachment, resulting in the dehumanization of art,
and aware as compassion resulting in maximum intensity of human
feeling.

Sseki and Clark on the Nude as Art. Ssekis hininj theory of artistic
detachment can also be related to Kenneth Clarks The Nude. In this
work Clark argues that dehumanization is an extreme notion insofar
as no one can wholly divest themselves of their essential humanity or
cut themselves off from their body and its natural instincts (and no
one should try). For Clark the erotic appeal of the nude form heightens
its aesthetic value as a work of art. Summarizing Clarks study of the
nude as an art form in relation to the aesthetic attitude of psychic dis-
tance, Melvin Rader writes: The ideal of the oneness of the spirit and
body stimulated the Greeks to their highest artistic achievements.
The esthetic attitude, so interpreted, is neither an intense participa-
tion nor an absolute detachmentit is neither low nor high distance
it is a balance between the two, a synthesis of contraries (1960:393).
272 Psychic Distance in Literature East and West
A similar rejection of dehumanized art as an aesthetic ideal is to be
seen in Ssekis depiction of a womans nude figure at the hot-spring
bath in chapter seven of Grass Pillow (1972:83). Like Bulloughs theory
of psychic distance, Ssekis theory of hininj accounts for the variability
of distance based on the distancing power of the artist and the char-
acter of the object. Too much formalism leads to overdistancing; too
much naturalism results in underdistancing. From this standpoint
Sseki is able to create a remarkable effect in the bathhouse scene
where the artist is contemplating a woman in the nude yet sustaining
a degree of distance. The voyeuristic description of a nude woman dis-
robing in the hot spring while the artist quietly watches is intended
to evoke an erotic mood. Yet because the womans figure is not fully
revealed like most nudes, but partly concealed by the atmospheric
haze of swirling mist, a degree of distance is established. Moreover
the artist himself makes a further effort to insert psychic distance into
the event, though not to the point of total dehumanization. By strik-
ing a golden mean between low and high distance, the painter thus
conjures up this extraordinary scene of the heroine in the nudeyet
surrounded by an aura of mystery and darkness as if she were a figure
in a sumie inkwash painting that manifests the Buddhist ideal of beauty
as ygen: hidden depths.

Grass Pillow and British Aestheticism

The themes of British aestheticism, as noted earlier, were codified by
the portrait-of-the-artist genre of literature: Roderick Hudson by Henry
James, Marius the Epicurean by Walter Pater, The Picture of Dorian
Gray by Oscar Wilde, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James
Joyce, and others. Ssekis Grass Pillow can be regarded as a novel in
this genre based on an East-West literary synthesis of British and Japa-
nese aestheticism. Indeed, Sseki was Japans foremost Meiji-period
scholar of English literature and from 1900 to 1903 spent three years
studying in London. Like portrait-of-the-artist novels in British aes-
theticism, Ssekis work emphasizes such recurrent themes as art for
arts sake, the imaginative transformation of life into art, the cultiva-
tion of an aesthetic attitude of detached contemplation, the achieve-
ment of artistic detachment through isolation by framing, psychic
distance as an essential factor in art, the recording of satori-like epi-
phanies as moments of illumination evoked by disinterested contem-
plation, the problem of overdistancing to the point of alienation, the
dehumanization of art, the elevation of art to a religion of beauty, the
 Modern Japanese Literature 273
conflict between aesthetic detachment versus human sympathy, and
integration of the negative or inhibitory elements of distance, detach-
ment, and dehumanization with the positive or constructive act of
creative imagination.
In the tradition of British aestheticism in general and the portrait-
of-the-artist genre in particular, the mechanism for transmuting life
into art is that of cultivating an aesthetic attitude of disinterested
contemplation by an insertion of psychic distance. Thus British aes-
theticism can be traced back directly to Kants notion of beauty as
disinterested pleasure. To repeat the words of M. H. Abrams: Aes-
theticism, or the Aesthetic Movement, was a European phenomenon
during the latter nineteenth century. . . . Its roots lie in German theory,
proposed by Kant (1790), that the pure aesthetic experience consists
of a disinterested contemplation of an aesthetic object (1981:2).
Like the classic novels of British aestheticism, the protagonist of
Ssekis Grass Pillow attempts to imaginatively transfigure everyday
life into art through the aesthetic attitude of detached contemplation.
The difference is that Ssekis haiku-novel is a portrait of the artist in
Japan. Thus the cultural ideal of beauty is that of ygen, profound
mystery, while the aesthetic attitude of hininj, detachment from
human emotions, is systematically cultivated through Zen-like dis-
cipline of equanimity devoid of craving or aversion. Ssekis idea of
hininjthe dehumanization of artis an exercise in ironic detach-
ment, disinterestedness, and distancing from life that is summarized
by Miyoshi Masao (1974:35):
When Sseki called [Grass Pillow] a haiku novel, he was thinking of a
narrative movement . . . reinforced by the narrators actual and metaphor-
ical journey from Tokyo and his real life involvement with noise and
paradox to an obscure mountain village and an aesthetic experience of
uninvolvement. . . . He will keep his distance and irony in relation to
life: the non-human tour will be an exercise in disengagement.

Miyoshi underscores that Ssekis theme of nonhuman art through

maximum distance from life inevitably leads to the problem of over-
distancing:
Thematically, it is a familiar story. The English Romantics and post-
Romantic writers Sseki quotes in Pillow of Grassfrom Shelly to
Wildehave argued time and time again: art needs distance from life.
Like Latmos in Keats Endymion, Nami will give the protagonist a
glimpse of Ideal Beauty. . . . To grasp it, however, the artist must first
forgo life. Although this position is almost always reversed in the end
274 Psychic Distance in Literature East and West
as it is in Pillow of Grass, toowith the disinterested artist turning back
into the thick of paradox, at the beginning at least, distancing to the
point of alienation is the sine qua non of modern art. [1974:66]

As Miyoshi Masao point out, Ssekis concept of aesthetic distance

along with the related problem of overdistancing to the point of
alienation derives partly from various British romantic and post-
romantic writersincluding those quoted in Grass Pillow, like Shelley,
Wilde, and Keats. Just as on the Asian side Ssekis notion of hininj
has been deeply influenced by the Japanese ygen tradition of art and
literature running through the shikan aesthetic consciousness of
early Kamakura-period waka poetics and the riken no ken or seeing of
detached perception of Zeamis n drama, so on the Western side he
received inspiration from the closely linked British movements of
Pre-Raphaelitism, aestheticism, and romanticism. As in the tradition
of British aestheticism, the protagonist in Ssekis Grass Pillow acquires
distance from life through isolation by framing: each event is seen as a
moment in a painting, a poem, or a play. Through insertion of dis-
tance the protagonist moves through life as an indifferent bystander
who views everything like a work of art in a museum, an exhibit in a
gallery, or a performance in a theater. But insofar as Ssekis haiku-
novel represents an original synthesis of both Japanese and English
forms of aestheticism, the imaginative transfiguration of life into art
through insertion of distance is diversified to include both Asian and
European ideals of beauty. Hence in Grass Pillow the commonplace
events of life are on some occasions transformed by the disinterested
attitude into a sumie inkwash landscape painting by Sessh, a haiku
poem by Bash, or a n drama by Zeami; on other occasions they are
metamorphosed into a Neo-Raphaelite painting by Millais, a romantic
nature poem by Shelley, or a tragic drama by Shakespeare, resulting in
the total aesthetic recreation of experience into an exotic international
gallery of art.
The central motif from British aestheticism used to illustrate the
function of hininj in Ssekis novel is the image of drowned Ophelia
floating downstream in an elegant gown with an expression of sub-
lime tranquility on her face. The motif of Ophelia drowning has its
origins in the greatest tragic play of Elizabethan drama, Shakespeares
Hamlet. Ophelia, it should be recalled, was the daughter of Polonius
and sister of Laertes; forced to obey her father and brother, she rejects
Hamlets advances, though she loves him; after Hamlet kills her father,
she goes mad and drowns herself (Hamlet 1.3). The English painter Sir
 Modern Japanese Literature 275
John Everett Millais (18291896), a founder of the Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood, precursor to the British movements of aestheticism and
romanticism, depicted this tragic event in his most famous painting:
Ophelia (1852). Moreover, inspired by Shakespeares play and Millaiss
painting, the Pre-Raphaelite writer Algernon Swinburne composed
a well-known poem on the death of Ophelia. In turn, this image of
Ophelia drowning becomes a leitmotif in Ssekis Grass Pillow.
Throughout Ssekis haiku-novel the painter-poet gradually builds up
a montage of juxtaposed images of the heroine called Nami as he tries
to capture her ideal beauty from multiple points of view. The painter
first hears about Nami in chapter two during a conversation between
the teahouse woman and the packhorse driver in which they remi-
nisce about her wedding. In a sequence of imagistic transmutations
the painter visualizes the bridal procession and expresses it in a haiku
that suddenly turns into an image from Millaiss painting of Ophelia
drowning, although humorously depicted by Sseki in Oriental
fashion with a high geisha-like shimada hairstyle worn by traditional
Japanese brides (1972:24). The teahouse woman then compares Nami
to the legendary maiden of the ancient Manysh anthology who cen-
turies earlier, unable to choose between suitors, had drowned herself.
In chapter three, when the painter arrives at the hot-spring inn, he
enters a surrealistic flow of reverie and dreams of the legendary maiden
in a bridal gown, again in the form of Millaiss Ophelia (p. 30). Later
in chapter seven, when the painter is soaking in a hot-spring bath, he
describes the feeling of blissful detachment, tranquility, and self-
forgetfulness as he floats in the waterand again is reminded of
Millaiss painting as well as the poem on Ophelia drowning by Swin-
burne. The painter now thinks to himself:
From such a point of view even the idea of drowning has refinement and
elegance. It was Swinburne who, in one of his poems, describes a drowned
womans feeling of joy at having attained eternal tranquility. When
observed in this way, Millaiss Ophelia, which had always been troubling
to me, becomes a thing of great beauty. I used to wonder why Millais had
painted such a disturbing scene, but now I understood that it was after all
a good subject for a picture. The vision of a woman floating along with
the current is indeed aesthetic. [pp. 7778]

The painter continues his reflections. If Ophelias expression in Millaiss

picture or Swinburnes poem was that of agony, he thinks, it would
have ruined the whole aesthetic effect. But since her face is peaceful
and devoid of any outward expression of human emotion, it is exquis-
276 Psychic Distance in Literature East and West
itely beautiful (p. 78). Finally, still floating in the hot-spring bath, he
composes a poem of his own to depict the aesthetic quality of drown-
ing when viewed from a stance of disinterested observation (p. 78).
The idea underlying this motif of Ophelia drowningboth for
Ssekis haiku-novel and for works of British aestheticismis that
even the sorrow of death becomes an occasion of elegant beauty when
seen from the objective standpoint of a disinterested onlooker who
perceives it with calm detachment. The tragic sight of a drowned
woman floating down a stream would ordinarily arouse horror, fear, or
pity in the observer. But if one becomes an indifferent bystander and
sees it as a moment in a play, a painting, or a poem, then even death
itself is transformed into an experience of aesthetic delight, a perfect
subject for literature and art. Through insertion of psychic distance,
the tragic drowning of a young woman can be aesthetically recreated
into a work of art so as to become a theatrical scene from a drama by
Shakespeare, a painting by Millais, or a poem by Swinburne. By maxi-
mum distancing, one sees death itself as a nonhuman work of art
purged of all human emotions like pity, sorrow, or sadness. Thus the
Ophelia motif at once raises questions about overdistancing to the
point of dehumanization. This issue is clarified by another reference
to the Ophelia motif in one of the major works of British aestheti-
cism: The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. Sseki was thoroughly
familiar with the writings of Wilde and even refers to them at the
outset of chapter twelve of Grass Pillow (1972:126). We have already
seen how the conflict between sympathy versus detachment in aes-
thetic experience is a fundamental motif of Wildes novel. When the
Shakespearean actress Sibyl Vane commits suicide, Dorian remains
indifferent and explains that her death can be transformed into an act
of great beauty if observed with detachment as a moment in one of
Shakespeares tragic dramas. Referring to the suicide of Ophelia in
Hamlet, he asserts: Mourn for Ophelia if you like. . . . But dont waste
your tears over Sibyl Vane (1985:116). Those listening to Dorian are
shocked by his lack of pity (p. 122). In this way, the Ophelia motif
reflects a fundamental theme in the literature of aestheticism both
East and West: the dialectical tension between psychic distance and
human sympathy in the aesthetic attitude of an artist. In the case of
Ssekis Grass Pillow, Ophelia drowning comes to designate the fun-
damental conflict between the artistic detachment from human emo-
tions represented by hininj versus the emotional sympathy of aware.
If one traces this detachment versus sympathy theme back to its
source in the Western novel, it must be Walter Pater. As we noted
 Modern Japanese Literature 277
earlier, it was Paters novel Marius the Epicurean that became the proto-
type for the portrait-of-the-artist novel in British aestheticism. While
at the outset of this work Marius adopts the philosophy of aestheti-
cism (Cyrenaicism) as a Stoic religion of beauty, in a later chapter
titled Second Thoughts he undergoes a dramatic reversal and
now says that aestheticism is a philosophy of youth: narrow, one-sided,
fanatical, limited to one aspect of experiencethe beauty of life (1985:
181). Through preoccupation with the aesthetic, the imaginative, the
beautiful side of things, they sacrifice of a thousand possible sympa-
thies, of things only to be enjoyed through sympathy, from which
they detached themselves (p. 185). The major insight of the novel is
that the philosophy of aestheticism based on artistic detachment must
be enlarged to include moral sympathy: It defined not so much a
change of practice, as of sympathya new departure, an expansion, of
sympathy (p. 188). Thus in Marius the Epicurean we find the Western
archetypal pattern underlying Ssekis haiku-novel with its funda-
mental conflict of aware versus hininj.
Ssekis effort to integrate compassion and detachment within a
unified act of psychic integration, realized by the aesthetic attitude of
his artist-hero, parallels the ideal of a disinterested observer presented
by Henry James in his fiction, essays, and letters. And as is clearly
demonstrated by his collected works, Sseki was very familiar with
the writings of Henry James. James ideal aesthetic attitude is perhaps
best represented by Lambert Strether in The Ambassadors, who is de-
scribed as having a double consciousness. . . . There was detachment
in his zeal and curiosity in his indifference (19071917:XXI, 5). We
have seen, too, how in Ivory Towers and Sacred Founts (1964), Maurice
Beebe uses the titles from two of James novels as archetypal ideals of
the artist-hero: the Ivory Tower symbolizing detachment, disinterest-
edness, and distance; the Sacred Fount symbolizing participation,
sympathy, and involvement. As Beebe (pp. 197231) points out in
his chapter on Henry James: The Ideal of Detachment, both the Ivory
Tower and the Sacred Fount are combined in James twofold aesthetic
ideal of an artist-hero with a double consciousness of disinterested
curiosity or detached engagement. Furthermore, as James explains in
one of his famous letters, an attitude of detachment adopted by an
artist of genius results in transmutation of ordinary life into moments
of revelation by alchemical imagination: There is . . . no beautiful
report on the novelists or painters part unless a particular detach-
ment has operated, unless the great stewpot or crucible of the imagi-
nation, of the observant and recording and interpreting mind in
278 Psychic Distance in Literature East and West
short, has intervened and played its part (1920:II, 181182). From
this it can be guessed that Ssekis artist-hero, like Henry James
ideal, represents a dual consciousness of artistic detachment and moral
sympathyor, as it were, the disinterested contemplation of the Ivory
Tower and the emotional involvement of the Sacred Fount.
Just as Natsume Sseki is regarded as the foremost novelist of
modern Japanese literature, so James Joyce is considered to be the
master of modern English literature. Although at the time Grass Pillow
was published in 1906 Sseki was familiar with such masterworks of
British aestheticism as Paters Marius the Epicurean, Wildes Portrait of
Dorian Gray, and James Roderick Hudson, Joyces Portrait of the Artist
as a Young Man had not yet been published. Yet insofar as both novels
incorporated the tradition of British aesthetics in similar ways, it is
most illuminating to consider them in juxtaposition. Grass Pillow by
Natsume Sseki and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James
Joyce are both classic portrait-of-the-artist novels that embody their
own aesthetic, religious, and cultural heritage. Both novels describe
the process of becoming a creative artist through progressive detach-
ment from life and meanwhile formulate their own aesthetic theories
wherein beauty is a function of detachment.
Ssekis artist-hero develops the profound atmospheric beauty of
ygen as a function of hininj or detachment from human emotions
thereby reappropriating the tradition of Japanese Buddhist literary
arts including Shunzeis waka poetics, for which a vision of ygen re-
quires the tranquility and insight of shikan meditation, and the n
drama of Zeami wherein the aesthetic experience of ygen requires the
detached perception of riken no ken. Joyces protagonist Stephen
Dedalus, by contrast, develops an aesthetics based on the Catholic
doctrine of Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologica, Part I, Question 39,
Article 8), wherein beauty is described as having three elements:
wholeness (integritas), harmony (consonantia), and radiance (claritas)
(1981:212). The radiance in the disclosure of its whatness (quid-
ditas) (p. 213), which in Joyces Stephen Hero is also called an epiphany
(p. 288). Moreover, the mental attitude whereby an object achieves its
epiphany of beauty is a luminous silent stasis of esthetic pleasure (p.
213). Stephen asserts: The feelings excited by improper art are
kinetic, desire or loathing. Desire urges us to possess, to go to some-
thing; loathing urges us to abandon, to go from something. . . . The
esthetic emotion (I use the general term) is therefore static. The mind
is arrested and raised above desire and loathing (p. 205).
Hence just as Sseki distinguishes the vulgar attitude of ninj
 Modern Japanese Literature 279
(human feeling of sympathy and antipathy) from the aesthetic atti-
tude of an artist as hininj (detachment from human feeling of sym-
pathy and antipathy), Joyces theory distinguishes the attitude of kinesis
(based on feelings of desire and loathing) from the aesthetic attitude
of stasis wherein the mind is elevated beyond all feelings of desire and
loathing. While for Sseki the artistic detachment of hininj results in
a holistic vision of the beauty of ygen as an epiphany of hidden
depths, for Joyce the luminous silent stasis of esthetic pleasure
culminates in a perception of beauty as the wholeness, harmony, and
radiance whereby an object achieves its epiphany. Whereas Ssekis
protagonist seeks Zen satori by transforming everyday life into art,
Joyces protagonist abandons his ambition to become a Jesuit and elects
instead to become a priest of eternal imagination, transmuting the
daily bread of experience into the radiant body of everliving life (p.
121). The painter of Ssekis novel induces myriad satori-like epipha-
nies as he transfigures the heroine into poetic images via the insertion
of distance. In his new vocation as artist-priest, Stephen Dedalus
beholds his first epiphany when through detachment and imagination
a girl is transmuted as if by magic into an angelic figure (p. 171).
Both protagonists are thus artist-priests of imagination whose goal is
aesthetic recreation of life into art through transformation by distance.
Both Sseki and Joyce, it must be noted, shift away from the aes-
thetic to the social-psychological dimensions of human existence in
their subsequent writings. Wayne Booth (1981:464) points out that
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was not recognized by its first
readers as an ironic work. It was only after the appearance of Ulysses in
1922, where Stephen Dedalus is depicted as the fallen Icarus with his
wings clipped, that readers came to understand its critical, satiric, and
ironic character. In James Joyce: The Citizen and the Artist (1977:345),
C. H. Peake demonstrates how it is only upon reading Joyces Ulysses
as a sequel volume to Portrait that it becomes clear how the detach-
ment of Stephens narrow aestheticism leads to moral bankruptcy unless
it is accompanied by human sympathy. The transition from Portrait to
Ulysses thus reveals that the Artist must also become a Citizen in the
process of self-realization through achievement of psychic wholeness
by union of opposites. In the vocabulary of Maurice Beebe (1964), it
is this shift from Portrait to Ulysses that reconciles the Divided Self of
the artist through unification of the Ivory Tower representing detach-
ment from life and the Sacred Fount representing participation in
life.
In a letter to Suzuki Miekichi dated 26 October 1906, Ssekis
280 Psychic Distance in Literature East and West
critical attitude toward the narrow aestheticism of his artist-hero is
stated explicitly: To live aesthetically, that is, to live poetically, may
be a part of life but I still think it is a trivial part. It is therefore no
good to be like the hero of Grass Pillow (1925:XIV, 429). An internal
critique of aestheticism is already implicit in the overall narrative
structure of Ssekis haiku-novel insofar as it ends with a realization
that art requires sympathy (aware) as well as detachment from human
emotions (hininj). But for Sseki, as for Joyce, the critical and ironic
content of his early novel on aestheticism is disclosed by his later
fiction, especially in retrospect. Grass Pillow is Ssekis only work focus-
ing on the Japanese sense of beauty. In later works Sseki is best known
for his detailed psychological depictions of neurotic characters and
their complex interpersonal relationships as in Sore kara (And Then,
1909), Mon (The Gate, 1910), Kokoro (Heart, 1912), and Meian (Light
and Darkness, 1916). In his article The Concept of Nature in the
Works of Natsume Sseki, V. H. Viglielmo (1975) points out that in
contrast to the narrow aestheticism of Ssekis haiku-novel Grass Pillow,
which focuses almost exclusively on the beauty of nature, in his final
work, Meian, he returns to the social world of human nature. Viglielmo
concludes that in Meian Sseki has rediscovered the sublime world of
Kusamakura [Grass Pillow] in the unlikeliest of places, the true nature
of man, from whom he had fled with such aversion a decade earlier
(1975:153).
Hence like the transition from Portrait to Ulysses in the writings of
James Joyce, the transition from Kusamakura to Meian in Natsume
Ssekis fiction represents a parallel shift from the aesthetic to the social
dimensions of human experiencethereby showing that beauty re-
quires not only artistic detachment but also moral sympathy, that the
Artist must also become a Citizen, and that the calm Apollonian atti-
tude of disinterested contemplation must be supplemented by the
emotional Dionysian attitude of intoxicated rapture. Psychic distance
from life, as symbolized by the Ivory Tower, must be paired with full
participation in life as symbolized by the Sacred Fount.
Glossary

akirame (= teinen): resignation

aware: pathos; sad beauty
aware: compassion
bigaku: aesthetics w
bitai: eroticism Z
bokansha: onlooker; bystander T
chanoyu: the tea ceremony
datsuzoku: detachment E
do: the way (Ch. tao)
fuga: windblown elegance
furyu: windblown elegance
geido: the tao of art |
hininjo: detachment from
human feeling; nonhuman l
hishiryo: without-thinking v?
iki: chic
ikuji: pride; valor Cn
ku: emptiness; voidness; openness
ma: negative space
miyabi: courtliness; gracefulness
mu: nothingness
muga: no-self; non-ego; selessness;
ecstasy
mukanshin: disinterested S

281
282 Glossary
mukanshin-sei: disinterestedness S
mushin: no-mind; empty mind;
non-ego; the unconscious S
mushujaku: detachment
ridatsu: detachment E
riken no ken: seeing of detached
perception
sabi: impersonal loneliness
sado: the tao of tea
shibumi: subdued elegance; astringency;
understatement a
shikan: tranquility and contemplation ~
shikanteki biishiki: shikan aesthetic
consciousness ~I
shiori: subdued beauty
sotaiteki mu: relative (negative)
nothingness I
teinen: detached resignation O
wabi: rustic beauty
wu-wei: not-doing; noninterference;
letting-be
yojo: overtones of feeling ]
yugen: beauty of shadows and darkness
or mystery and depth H
zettai mu: absolute (positive) nothingness
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Index of Names

Abe Kb, 234 Bullough, Edward, 7, 9, 10, 12,

Abe Masao, 125, 127, 143, 144, 194 15, 24, 29, 41, 5053, 55,
Abhinavagupta, 1315, 182, 269 57, 62, 76, 77, 8891, 94,
Abrams, M. H., 30, 167, 199, 200, 95, 174, 178, 182, 250, 264
203, 273 268
Addison, Joseph, 27, 32 Burke, Edmund, 27, 50, 130
Aitken Roshi, 143 Buson, Yosa, 243247
Akutagawa Ryunosuke, 234
Aldrich, Virgil, 174, 180, 182 Carlson, Allen, 69, 9698, 245
Ananda, 14 Cassirer, Ernst, 88
Aquinas, Thomas, 209, 278 Castaneda, Carlos, 187
Chaudhary, Angraj, 15
Barthes, R., 97 Chekhov, Anton 221
Baso, 145 Chih-i,, 107, 118
Bash, 126, 149, 150, 152, 182, 188, Chikamatsu, 12
189, 192, 196, 229, 243, 245, Chmei, Kamo, 20, 103, 117, 118,
247, 255, 268271, 274 173, 187
Batchelor, Stephen, 71 Chuang-tzu, 17, 150
Baudelaire, C., 22, 123, 159, 167, Clark, Kenneth, 271
201 Confucious, 59
Beebe, Maurice, 200, 206, 212, 236, Conrad, Joseph, 200
277, 279 Croce, B., 84
Bell, Clive, 91
Bergson, Henri, 7, 22, 61, 62, 157, Dale, Peter, 22, 144, 167, 168
158 dAurevilly, Barbey, 22, 123, 167,
Bharata, 14 168, 201
Blyth, R. H., 135 Daushyu Yekai, 145
Bodhidharma, 144 Derrida, J., 97
Boothe, Wayne C., 5, 11, 12, 239, Dewey, John, 10, 65, 69, 7888, 92,
279 93, 188
Bowring, R. J., 229, 231 Dickie, George, 69, 9496
Brecht, Bertholt, 12, 90, 182, 220, 227 Dilworth, D., 218, 238

291
292 Index of Names
Dgen, 20, 105, 109111, 144, 173,
182, 184, 187, 191195
Doi Takeo, 164166, 238
Eckhart, Meister, 121, 127, 195
End Shsaku, 234
Fichte, J. G., 40
Flaubert, Gustave, 7, 11, 201
Foucault, M., 97
Freud, S., 88
Fry, Roger, 91
Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 49
Goenka, S. N., 105
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 7, 9,
11, 12, 23, 30, 40, 45, 129, 132,
182, 215, 216, 225, 251
Hampshire, Stuart, 7, 84
Hartmann, N., 216, 227229
Hasegawa Izumi, 215, 217, 218, 222,
223
Hegel, G. W. F., 44, 84
Heidegger, M., 7, 9, 12, 22, 31,
4549, 7174, 120, 132, 157,
158, 160, 161, 167, 171,
174, 182, 185, 186, 192, 195,
196
Heine, Steven, 109, 116
Herrigel, Eugen, 157
Hisamatsu Senichi, 158
Hisamatsu Shinichi, 21, 22, 121
125, 128, 135140, 142, 143,
154, 155, 159, 163, 173, 183,
187, 196, 229
Hobbes, Thomas, 29
Humboldt, W., 40
Hutcheson Francis, 27
Ihde, Don, 46, 47, 176, 177, 181,
186, 187
Ingarden, Roman, 7, 5558, 189, 190
Ippen, 20
Izutsu Toshihiko, 99, 247
James, Henry, 7, 11, 12, 23, 201, 202,
205208, 212, 234, 239, 272,
277, 278
James, William, 10, 62, 64, 85, 136
Joyce, James, 7, 11, 12, 23, 182, 184,
188, 199, 202, 209213, 234,
239, 242, 272, 278280
Jung, C. G., 88
Kant, I., 14, 612, 2123, 3042,
4446, 4951, 5672, 81, 84, 85,
88, 92, 114, 117, 119, 120, 122,
123, 128131, 134, 135, 137,
138, 154156, 165, 167, 170,
174, 176180, 182, 196, 199
205, 209213, 215, 219, 229,
249, 250, 264, 273
Kapleau, Philip, 143
Karatani Kjin, 97, 244246, 249
Kasulis, T. P., 191193
Kawabata Yasunari, 23, 103, 219, 234
Keats,, 273274
Kenk, 118
Kerouac, Jack, 143
Konishi Jinichi, 107
Korsmeyer, Carolyn, 69, 7578
Kuki Shz, 2224, 121123, 125,
128, 156169, 183, 194, 196
LaFleur, William R., 107, 247, 259
Langer, Susanne K., 7, 1012, 69,
8894, 188
Lao-tzu, 150, 170, 182
Laycock, S. W., 184
Lewis, C. I., 7, 10, 6467, 8586,
88, 92
Light, Stephen, 157
Mainlaender, Philipp, 228
Marra, Michele, 117120
Marshall, H. R., 130, 131

Masaoka Shiki, 97, 243, 245, 246
Mathur, Dineth, 15
McClellan, Edwin, 238
Mead, G. H., 10, 85
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 185
Millais, John, 274276
Misaki Gisen, 19, 104, 106, 109, 111,
117, 190, 191, 194
Mishima Yukio, 23, 103, 219, 232
234, 248, 249
Miyoshi Masao, 273, 274
Moore, G. E., 7, 60, 84
Mori gai. See gai, Mori
Moritz, Karl Philipp, 7, 3134, 45,
134
Motoori Norinaga, 3, 119, 165, 257
259, 270
Mumon, 192
Mnsterberg, Hugo, 7, 10, 12, 62
64, 67, 101, 182, 250
Murasaki Shikibu, 257, 258
Mus, 20
Nakae Chomin, 124
Natsume Sseki. See Sseki, Natsume
Neville, Robert C., 173
Nietzsche, F., 9, 30, 45, 46, 49, 69
73, 79, 85, 216, 219222, 228,
232, 233, 237
Nishi Amane, 124, 216
Nishi Minoru, 113
Nishida Kitar, 21, 99, 121124,
127136, 138, 140, 142, 143,
152, 154, 155, 157, 161, 165,
183, 194196, 214, 219
Nishitani Keiji, 21, 32, 121, 125
127, 143, 195196
Northrop, F. S. C., 87
Nose Asagi, 113
e Kenzaburo, 234
gai, Mori, 23, 122, 124, 183, 214
240, 252
Ogden, C. K., 10, 58, 60, 77
Index of Names 293
nishi Yoshinori, 108, 124
Ortega y Gasset, J., 7, 10, 12, 24,
5354, 62, 73, 74, 182, 250,
267271
Ozaki Yoshie, 217, 224
Ozu Yasujir, 238, 239
Pater, Walter, 7, 11, 23, 200, 201,
207, 212, 272, 276, 277, 278
Peake, C. H., 213
Peirce, C. S., 10, 65, 85
Pepper, S. C., 10, 65, 85, 92, 188
Pilgrim, Richard B., 112, 113, 141,
153
Pirsig, Robert M., 87, 88
Plato, 40
Polanyi, Michael, 7, 10, 12, 6668,
100, 101, 182
Prall, David W., 7, 10, 69, 86, 88, 92
Proust, M., 200
Pyrrho, 170, 221
Rader, Melvin, 53, 96, 180, 264, 271
Richards, I. A., 7, 10, 12, 5860, 68,
77, 101, 182
Rickert, Heinrich, 157
Rikky, 183, 243
Rimer, J. T., 23, 215, 218, 220, 222,
225, 237
Rorty, Richard, 84
Royce, Josiah, 62, 64
Ruskin, J., 244
Rykan, 110
Saich, 108
Saigy, 107, 150, 243, 259
Santayana, George, 7, 62, 64, 81
Sartre, Jean-Paul, 157
Saso, Michael, 109
Saxena, Sushil Kumar, 94, 96
Schiller, F., 7, 9, 30, 4042, 45, 50,
58, 62, 90, 91, 219, 229
Schopenhauer, Arthur, 7, 9, 12, 19,
30, 4246, 49, 61, 62, 7073, 91,
294 Index of Names
95, 120, 132, 135, 174, 182, 216,
219, 220, 228
Schusterman, Richard, 84, 85
Sextus Empiricus, 170, 221
Shaftesbury, Lord, 7, 8, 2732
Shakespeare, W., 52, 251, 262, 263,
274276
Shaner, David E., 193
Sherburne, Donald W., 93
Shunzei, Fujiwara, 20, 103, 105, 107,
117, 152, 173, 182, 187, 243,
250, 278
Small, Ian, 199, 203
Sseki, Natsume, 2325, 97, 103,
122, 173, 183, 184, 187, 214,
215, 219, 234, 240280
Spinoza, B., 219
Stolnitz, Jerome, 7, 8, 11, 2731, 74,
95, 134, 174
Starr, R., 232, 233
Stone, Lynda, 73
Strawson, Peter, 7, 60, 61, 84
Suzuki, D. T., 17, 21, 22, 113, 121
123, 125, 128, 134, 136, 138,
141156, 183, 187, 196, 228, 237
Suzuki Miekichi, 279
Swinburne, Algernon, 275, 276
Takeuchi Yoshinori, 125
Takuan, 150, 151
Tanabe Hajime, 125, 157
Tanizaki Junichir, 23, 103, 185,
219, 234, 248
Tao Yuan-ming, 247, 251
Teika, Fujiwara, 20, 107, 117, 123,
187, 243, 258
Toshimitsu Hatsumi, 102
Turney, Alan, 241, 267
Ueda Makoto, 112, 124, 218, 229,
246, 255, 269, 270
Ueda Shizuteru, 125, 127
Van Gogh, V., 74
Viglielmo, V. H., 143, 280
Vivas, Eliseo, 54, 55, 66, 95, 174,
182
Wang Kuo-wei, 16, 18, 135, 182
Watsuji Tetsur, 125, 194
Watts, Alan, 143
Whitehead, A. N., 10, 11, 65, 66, 85,
88, 9294
Wilde, Oscar, 7, 11, 23, 200202,
208, 209, 212, 272274, 278
Wittgenstein, L., 180
Wolfe, Thomas, 199
Wolff, J., 69, 7375
Wood, James, 10, 58, 60, 77
Woodmansee, Martha, 3133
Wordsworth, H. L., 7, 12, 65, 99,
174, 182, 199
Yasuda, K., 188190
Yeats, William Butler, 212
Yusa Michiko, 114116, 142, 153,
154
Zeami, 20, 21, 103, 105, 110117,
142, 152154, 182, 187, 243,
250, 254, 274, 278
Zenchiku, 103, 111, 112
About the Author

Steve Odin is professor of philosophy at the University of Hawaii at

Mnoa, where he teaches Japanese and comparative philosophy. He
has spent five years studying in Japan and one year in India. He is also
the author of The Social Self in Zen and American Pragmatism (1986)
and Process Metaphysics and Hua-yen Buddhism (1982).

295