关键词: 刘熙载, 《艺概》, 审美表现, 审美思维, 审美辩证法

Abstract: Liu Xizai in his General Principles of Arts proposed a paradoxical idea about exhausting the inexhaustibility of meaning with the inexhaustible, and this paper claims that his idea points at the fundamental function of aesthetic creativity. The ideas developed in Liu's book cover two sides. On the one hand, the book explicates the concept of the inexhaustibility of meaning from three aspects: the infiniteness of the macro and the micro dimensions, the incompatibility between language and meaning, and the infiniteness in the finiteness. On the other hand, the book explains the approaches to exhaust the inexhaustible from three aspects: writing from the sides, referring through metaphors, and implying by comparing and arousing. It can be concluded that three important aspects of Liu Xizai's aesthetic creativity: aesthetic expression through primary and comprehensive phenomenal representation, aesthetic thinking through categorical similarities between heterogeneous objects, and aesthetic dialectics in binary oppositions to achieve artistic effects.

Key words: Liu Xizai, General Principles of Arts, aesthetic expression, aesthetic thinking, aesthetic dialectics