书法临摹：体现礼仪 Copying Calligraphy: It is About Observing Ritual Propriety

孔子推广礼乐文化。儒家传统看法把艺术当作实工具来现两个互相关联的社会目的：修身养性与社会和谐。他们相信当我们把自己投入礼与乐的节奏中并得到欢乐时，我们会因此而获益。

艺术实践中的一个重要德行是礼仪之适当应用。但是，一个人不能盲目地追随礼仪，因为应用礼仪就是要把它据为己有，使它们个性化 - 以特殊方式来呈现。我们应该知道如何产生归为己有的拥有感，这是修身养性过程的一个重要组成。

在发展艺术技术中，艺术家获得了美学应用的具体知识。好的书法家深知笔法，了解每一个字的空间安排逻辑，了解章法原理，也晓得各个书体的异同。这些都是适当应用的不同部分。

吸取书法礼仪的办法就是持续临摹古代大书法家的作品，把難写的字解剖为个别元素，然后以流畅与有节制的动作把它们结为整体。这个过程为书法家与传统建立了形体关系。通过临摹，学生可以对大书法家的形态有深入的了解；就是说，大书法家行动的姿态体现了每一个字的节奏与形式。学习者对他们所学习传统的领悟并不限于反省，通过具体与仪式化的临摹动作，学习者亲密地体验传统。他们的动作所得的是深沉的，因为这些动作是在传统的具体技巧中领悟与建立起来的。

但是，比如在临摹《千字文》时，我们不能盲临，而应该想个办法把它据为己有。很多时候，一帖法书被临摹久了，文字的内容本身会消失于书法之中，就是说，内容已经被当成理所当然，很少会成为关注点，只当成是呈现书法技巧的格式。

所以，学习艺术的一个重要方向是进入传统，吸取传统丰富的养料，然后找个方法把它真实地为己所用。就书法而言，进入传统就是忠实地临摹古代大书法家的法帖。

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Confucius promotes the culture of rites and music. The Confucian tradition views arts as instrumental in actualising two interrelated social ends: self-cultivation and social harmony. It is believed that one stands to be improved by the enjoyment found in attuning oneself to the rhythms of ritual propriety and music (arts).

A virtue essential to artistic practice is the appropriation of ritual propriety. However, one cannot follow the ritual propriety blindly, because to appropriate the ritual is to make them one’s own, to personalise them by developing a characteristic style of enacting them. One must learn how to produce a sense of authorship that is an essential component of the self-cultivation process. In developing techniques of arts, artists gain an embodied knowledge of aesthetic appropriateness. Good calligraphers master brushwork, understand the spatial logic of individual characters, understand the principles of composition, and are aware of stylistic variations. All these are a part of appropriate execution.

The way to absorb calligraphic ritual propriety is to repetitiously copy the work of past masters, to break down difficult characters into their constituent and to put them together again in fluid, controlled movements. This process establishes a somatic relationship between calligrapher and tradition. Through copying, a student gains growing insight into the master’s corporeality, that is, the manner in which the master’s movements inform each character’s rhythm and form. Students’ awareness of the tradition they work within is not limited to reflection; through embodiment and ritualised action, students appropriate the tradition in an intimate way. Their actions acquire significance since they are informed by and build upon a tradition of embodied technique.

Hence, in reproducing the ‘Thousand Character Essay’, one must avoid blind repetition and find a way to make it one’s own. Many a time, a model calligraphic work can be transcribed so often as a writing exercise that the text itself may be thought to have disappeared into the calligraphy, that is, the text is so well known that it is doubtful that anybody paid much attention to what it says, accepting it simply as a format for the display of calligraphic skill.

Therefore, one of the most important aspects of taking up an art is participating in a tradition, drawing upon the richness of the tradition and finding a way to appropriate it authentically. In the case of calligraphy, the only means to participate in tradition is by copying faithfully the master works of the great calligraphers in history.

尼采：美学最可能替代宗教 Nietzsche: Aesthetics, the Most Promising Alternative to Religion

尼采场被认为是后现代主义之父。作为十九世纪德国三个大哲学家的最后一位 – 其他两位是黑格尔与马克思，他为随后的思维作出了决定性的陈述。对于那些尝试把道德世俗化而从基督道德中分离出来，尼采鄙视他们，并宣称上帝已经死亡。初看是十分令人不快的。可是就如那在水里被慢慢加温的青蛙那样，他的思想却慢慢地爬进了我们。原来被认为不可思议与荒谬的，现在已经被普遍接受。

但是，他对于当每一个人对上帝之死的含义完全了解后会产生的后果感到恐惧。对尼采而言，上帝之死为人生旋开新章，这‘肯定人生’哲学的新章代替了‘否定生命’的基督道德。由此，他转向人类价值的这个中心问题。在他寻找价值的新基础，当上帝不再是人生目标与认可人类行为的那一天到来时，尼采相信美学最有可能替代宗教。

他说，唯有作为一种审美现象，人类的生存与世界永恒才能有正当的理由。他相信原本是希腊发现人类努力的意义。他从希腊阿波罗与狄俄尼索斯的概念中对人性得到了基本的领悟。他相信审美价值来自于这两个希腊神所代表的原理的融合。

酒神狄俄尼索斯象征有活力的生命溪流，没有约束与障碍，挑战所有限制。另一方面，太阳神阿波罗是秩序、约束与体制的象征。从另一个角度来看，酒神代表灵魂中负面与有破坏性的黑暗力量，如果不被抑制，会导致令人恶心的肉感与残忍的混合物，一种典型的未开化的动物的本性。相反的，太阳神代表的是一种能够处理高涨活力的力量，利用有破坏性的力量并把它们转换为有创造力的行动。

对尼采而言，人性的最高成就出现于希腊文化，在那里酒神与太阳神的元素互参，而不是只对太阳神的崇拜。事实上，人的生命无可避免包含了感情中的黑暗与激情两种力量。他相信宗教信仰之所以被冷落，就是因为基督道德里主要否认生命的消极性。

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Friedrich Nietzsche is often called the father of postmodernism. Being the last of the three great German philosophers of the nineteenth century - the other two being Hegel and Marx, he made the definitive statement that set the stage for what was to follow. Contemptuous of those who tried to secularize morality by divorcing it from Christianity, Nietzsche pronounced God dead. Perhaps offensive at first, his thinking, like the proverbial frog on the stove, has crept up on us. What was once thought of as incomprehensible and absurd has now become widely accepted.

However, he was appalled at the consequences that would follow once everyone fully aware of the implication of the death of God. The death of God meant for Nietzsche the opening of a new day – a day when the life-denying ethics of Christianity could be replace with a life-affirmation philosophy and this turned him to central question of human values. In his search for a new foundation for values in a day when God no longer be the goal and sanction of human conduct, Nietzsche believed that aesthetics was the most promising alternative to religion.

Only as aesthetic phenomenon, he said, are human existence and the world eternally justified. The Greeks, he believed, originally discovered the true meaning of human effort. He drew his fundamental insights about human nature from the Greek conceptions of Apollo and Dionysus. He believed the aesthetic value results from a fusion between two principles, which are respectively represented by the two Greek gods.

Dionysus symbolised the dynamic stream of life, which knows no restraints or barriers and defies all limitations. Apollo, on the hand, was the symbol of order, restraint, and form. From another point of view, the Dionysian represents the negative and destructive dark power of the soul, which when unchecked, will culminate in that disgusting mixture of voluptuousness and cruelty typical of the most savage beasts of nature. The Apollonian, by contrast, represents the power to deal with the powerful surge of vital energy, to harness destructive powers, and to transmute these into creative act.

For Netzsche, the supreme achievement of human nature occurred in Greek culture where the Dionysian and Apollonian elements were brought together, rather than respecting only the Apollonian spirit. The fact is that human life inevitably includes the dark and surging forces of passion. What disqualified religious faith, he believed, was the essentially life-denying negativeness of the Christian ethics.

上海世博会展示中国的软实力 Shanghai World Expo 2010 Showcases China's Soft Power

中国的2101上海世博会于五月一日开放。这是一个继承了1851年大不列颠的‘大展览’的传统，结合了爱国宣言与环球抱负。它希望在六个月内会接待七千万的访客。

可是为什么中国要举办这样一个世界展览，它要发出怎样的讯号？

中国名作家韩寒显然对中国政府的促销方式不以为然。他说：‘我觉得不是世博会会给中国带来什么，而是中国会给世博会带来什么。因为本来世博会并不是一个规模如此大的展会，随着信息的流通越来越便捷，世博会正在渐渐式微，是中国将世博会升格了。如果一定要比喻的话，有点像某些在国内非常火的品牌，经过了宣传，你穿在身上觉得牛逼的不行，奢华的不行，出国一打听，原来是二线的。’

但西方的一些人明显有其它看法。

美国加州大学欧文分校历史系教授杰弗里．瓦萨斯特罗姆在赫芬顿邮报评论这个世博的规模，尝试解释为什么中国在2008年北京奥运会不久后就举办这次的世博：‘把2008年奥运与2010世博当作联合事件来看，一种想法是中国希望发出这样信号，中国在这百年内走了多远，与它已经把‘亚洲病夫’这个称号抛弃得多远。它的意图是要坚定地让世人知道，中国不只有一个城市，而是有二个城市有能力举办世界级的项目。’

美联社显然认为这是中国为了展示其软实力而做出的努力之一。它在四月二十五日的报道中指出：

‘正如在2008年北京奥运的几个星期中显示了中国与日俱增的经济与地区政治的影响力，这个世界上前所未有的大型世界游乐场让中国共产党领袖在六个月内展示它的设计、旅游、文化外交。

中国并不是第一个大国或潜在大国以博览会来宣告它们进入世界舞台。

1851年伦敦的‘大展览’标志着工业革命的到来。1964年东京奥运会接下来的1970年的大阪世博会显示日本提升成为工业大国。’

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China's Expo 2010 Shanghai opened on 1 May, is a world fair in the tradition of Britain's Great Exhibition of 1851, combining statements of patriotism and global ambition. It is expected to attract 70 million visitors in six months.

But why is China producing a world fair, and what messages is it trying to send?

Han Han, a famous writer in China obviously is not impressed with the way the Chinese government promote it. He says, ‘I think it is not how World Expo can bring benefits to China, rather, it is how China brings benefits to World Expo. With easy communication brought about by the information technology, the interest in World Expo is actually waning, and it is actually not necessary to hold the event in such a large scale. But China upgrades the World Expo. If you want me to give you an analogy, then it is like some of the brand names in China, they become red hot after good marketing. But when you use them on your body, you do not feel they are as good and as luxurious as they should be. Then, only when you are overseas, you discover that they are actually all second-rate brands.’

But some westerners obviously have other views.

University of California, Irvine history professor Jeffrey Wasserstrom, writing at The Huffington Post, comments on the sheer size of the event, and tries to explain why China is hosting it so soon after the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing: ‘One way to think of the 2008 Games and 2010 Expo is as a combination of events that China hopes will signal how far it has come in the course of a century or so, and how far behind it has left its former reputation as the "sick man of Asia." Its intention is to leave no doubt that it is now a place with not just one but two cities where great global events can be held.’

The Associated Press obviously think that it is part of China’s effort to showcase it soft power. It reported on 25 April:

‘Just as the Beijing Olympics showed China's growing economic and geopolitical influence for a few weeks in 2008, the biggest World's Fair ever will let China's communist leaders showcase design, tourism and cultural diplomacy over six months…

China is far from the first power or would-be power to use an Expo to announce its global arrival.

The Great Exhibition of 1851 in London marked the coming of the Industrial Revolution. The 1970 Expo in Osaka, following the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, showed Japan's rise as an industrial power.’