Nihilism, intertwined with anarchist thought, was introduced to China in the late Qing Dynasty and attracted widespread attention. Although Lu Xun was not a nihilist in the strict sense, his philosophical outlook exhibited clear nihilistic tendencies. Zhu Qianzhi, a representative nihilist during the May Fourth period, radically rejected and resisted all established norms, asserting that “knowledge is stolen goods”, a position Lu Xun satirically critiqued. Despite their shared engagement with nihilist ideas, these two followed fundamentally different intellectual trajectories: Lu Xun represents a mature engagement with nihilism, marked by appropriation, critical reflection, and eventual transcendence, while Zhu embodies the impulsive radicalism of the newly awakened May Fourth youth, asserting individuality through a wholesale rejection of tradition. Their divergence illustrates what Friedrich Nietzsche called “negative nihilism”, characterized by Lu Xun's strategic grappling with despair through ironic gamesmanship, and “positive nihilism” expressed by Zhu Qianzhi through a feverish drive to “shatter the void and level the earth.” Together, they exemplify the dual expressions of nihilism in modern Chines thought, representing two unique adaptations of Yevgeny Bazarov's nihilist legacy within the Chinese context and revealing the diverse ways in which Chinese thinkers assimilated nihilism.

Lu Xun's firm critique of Confucianism is well known, yet framing their relationship as strictly oppositional overlooks its complexity. A deeper exploration requires overcoming disciplinary limitations and rejecting narrow views that either measure Lu Xun through Confucian standards or Confucius through Lu Xun's critique. Instead, a sympathetic investigation into their respective historical contexts and the rationale behind their ideas reveals a more nuanced connection. Moreover, research should advance from purely historical or empirical methods to a theoretical cultural perspective, uniting their diverse intellectual stances and reconciling their historical roles. This approach reveals that Lu Xun's disagreements with Confucius occur within the realm of “second-order Dao,” a plane of conflicting ideas and doctrines. At the more fundamental level of “first-order Dao,” representing the core of Chinese humanistic spirit, their underlying spiritual logic aligns rather than diverges. Both figures reflect and embody the Chinese national ethos of resilience, vitality, and self-reliance. Their intellectual and historical roles converge in the shared inner dynamics of Chinese cultural evolution, driven by renewal, innovation, and the adaptation of tradition to new circumstances.

The concept of “great beauty without words” has been integral to Chinese literary theory since ancient times. Since the late 20th century, the aesthetics of atmosphere has gained increasing attention in academic research, which provides a new perspectives for appreciating, evaluating, and interpreting works of literature and art. Lu Xun excels at creating unique artistic aesthetics through the construction of diverse atmospheres in his fiction. In his works, Lu Xun utilizes specific hallucinations and visions to present ineffable aesthetics, revealing characters' unconscious layers. At the same time, Lu Xun also integrates different psychological sensations and impressions through artistic techniques such as synesthesia and employs linguistic ambiguity to transcend the boundaries between internal and external languages, portraying the intricate psychological states of his characters. Investigating the role of atmosphere in Lu Xun's fiction offers a precise lens through which to explore the intricate and often concealed intellectual and emotional structures that underpin his work.

During his stay in Japan, Lu Xun connected the spiritual evolutionary origins in Haeckel's theory with Nietzsche's conceptualization of “savage” as well as the idea of “ancient people”. This thread of spirituality was ultimately articulated through the concept of the “voice of heart”. Moreover, summoning the “voice of heart” from the people became a crucial aspect of Lu Xun's exploration of the national character reform. However, unlike the “evolutionary teleology” centered on Christian theology in the West, Lu Xun's version of “evolutionary teleology” emphasized the decisive role of the will to life in the process of summoning the “voice of heart”, a theme clearly demonstrated in his Japanese-period translation Silence. Nonetheless, the premise of relying on the will to life to summon the people's “voice of heart” proved difficult to implement in reality. In The True Story of Ah Q, written after a series of setbacks, Ah Q, in the face of execution — a situation resembling the extreme condition in Silence — fails to generate an abundant “voice of heart”. Indeed, in the face of pervasive darkness, the neatly framed “evolutionary teleology” loses its efficacy. The vitality of Lu Xun's literature lies precisely in his profound engagement with and sober acknowledgment of darkness itself.

Theatricality, as a core concept in drama and theatre studies, has continually evolved as its meanings have been shaped by theatrical practices, socio-cultural contexts, and academic discourses. Over time, its scope has expanded beyond the field of theatre into cultural studies and philosophy. Historically, theatricality was often stigmatized in popular perception due to its associations with artifice, exaggeration, and imitation. However, through the successive innovations of realist drama, modernist theatre, and postmodern performance, the concept has been reconstructed, acquiring renewed theoretical and aesthetic value. Since the twentieth century, scholarly engagement with theatricality has developed along two primary trajectories: the theatrical mode, which emphasizes its distinctive features as an artistic and formal property of theatre, and the cultural mode, which investigates its metaphorical and symbolic functions in everyday life, social behavior, and political culture. From an interdisciplinary perspective, theatricality has become a critical tool in contemporary art philosophy, anthropology, and media critique. While theatricality has experienced growing theoretical sophistication and expanded applicability, it has also encountered conceptual overlap with and theoretical tension against the emerging concept of performativity.

Although the controversy over the translation of postdramatic theatre and the debate on whether juchang (剧场) can replace xiju (戏剧) in Chinese were sparked by Hans-Thies Lehmann, the idea can be traced back to Peter Szondi. Szondi proposed the concept of a historical category of drama for the study of modern drama— an ideal dramatic paradigm that does not correspond to Renaissance or Classicist dramas. Lehmann expanded on Szondi's concept by dividing drama into three stages: predrama, drama, and postdrama. However, this model does not align with the actual historical development of theatre. Some scholars have adopted Szondi's concept of drama and Lehmann's three-stage model, coining new terms such as pre-xiju and post-xiju, and replacing xiju with juchang or xiju juchang. This has led to conceptual confusion in the Chinese context.

Contemporary intermedial studies primarily focus on the analysis of aesthetic forms, yet the political dimension of intermediality remains underexplored. While intermediality is not inherently political, its intentions and modes of articulation can carry a profound political logic within specific socio-historical contexts. In the aftermath of World War II, confronted with the panoramic dominance of capital, neo-avant-garde art in Europe and North America exhibited a tendency to make art a matter of everyday life, with intermediality as a fundamental form. Through processes of integration, collaboration, and conflict, the diverse attributes of artistic and everyday media structured distinct yet interwoven intermedial formations that opened multiple pathways into postwar Western everyday life. These formations parodied, critiqued, and restructured the spectacle of late capitalism. The intermediality of the neo-avant-garde was thus not only a formal resistance to the aesthetic discourse of modernism, but also a means of political critique of late capitalism.

As the most influential selection of vernacular stories in late imperial China, The Spectacles of Ancient and Modern Times remains understudied compared to other venacular works. To date, no dedicated research article has examined its commentary. The commentary in the Wujun Baowenlou edition is highly innovative and distinctive, making it worthy of further study. This article examines the engraving time of this edition and proposes that it was published in the late Ming dynasty. Through literary statistics, this study analyzes its commentary forms, explores its commentary methods (including comparison, irony, and quotation), and examines its linguistic style (such as repetitive locution, word usage, and sentence structure) to reveal the unique regional characteristics of Suzhou reflected in the commentary. By highlighting the distinctive features of this edition, this article tries to enrich the study on the story-teller's scripts and novel commentary of the Ming dynasty.

Ancient Chinese novel commentaries exhibit three critical dimensions. The first dimension is academic criticism, which began during the Wei and Jin dynasties. Commentators determined the meanings of words and texts through exegetical interpretations. They also evaluated the authenticity of events and supplemented historical materials through textual research and annotations. Additionally, they expressed their opinions through lunzan (appraising remarks) and marginal notes. The second dimension is literary criticism, which focuses on literary appreciation. This type of criticism emerged with the criticism of classical Chinese novel during the Song and Yuan dynasties, and culminated in Jin Shengtan's annotated edition of A Book of the Fifth Talented Scholar. The third dimension involves the use of popular commentaries, through which critics transformed the style of novels to make them more accessible to a wider readership. These three dimensions developed over time and coexisted for extended periods, collectively shaping the history of ancient Chinese novel commentaries.

The official policy of “popular education” during the early Republican period produced a significant impact on the landscape of fiction, particularly historical fiction. Some novelists contributed to “popular education” by writing extensive historical fiction, striving to avoid “absurdity and wickedness” for the sake of “popular education”. Influenced by the cultural perception of fiction, these authors also tended to prioritize reality over imagination in their narratives. They intended to “borrow the genre of fiction to write about the contemporary situation”; in their novels, they sought to “instill common legal knowledge in the general citizenry,” criticize such social ills as foot-binding and opium smoking, or implement political enlightenment. This method imbued their works with a distinct character of the era. Historical fiction writers of the early Republican period emphasized the role of fiction in popular education and relied on the official history. Under the influence of a strong sense of their readership, they constructed the textual form of fiction, which resulted in an obvious lack of artistic “flavor”. To accurately understand the creative features of historical fiction from this period, it must be viewed as a product of the specific cultural policy of “popular education”.

The “Preface to Selections of Refined Literature” is a seminal text in the history of Chinese literature and literary criticism. Since the Qing dynasty scholar Ruan Yuan (17641849), it has been the subject of extensive study by both Chinese and international scholars, with interpretations appearing in Chinese, Japanese, and English. Even the phrase “The matter arises from deep thought and the meaning is expressed through elegant prose” has been rendered in more than ten different ways, none of which are entirely satisfactory. This difficulty stems from a lack of critical reflection on the theoretical foundations of interpretive methods. The framework of “closedistant reading”— a concept whose name is adapted from Western literary criticism but whose substance is rooted in Chinese scholarly traditions — offers a productive approach. Applying this method to “Preface to Selections of Refined Literature” not only generates fresh insights into canonical texts nit also highlights the importance of theory and methodology in literary studies.

During the Song dynasty, Liu Yong's ci-poetry enjoyed widespread and enduring popularity among the common people and served as a creative model. However, it never gained recognition from the high culture of the upper class and its political authority. Thus, his work was considered a folk classic rather than a scholar-official classic. From the Yuan and Ming dynasties to the early Qing dynasty, his ci-poetry remained popular in the lower-class cultural spheres, while receiving a relatively lukewarm reception in the upper-class cultural spheres. From the late Qing to the Republican period, the canonization of Liu's ci-poetry was comprehensively advanced within literary circles. Scholars produced meticulous and positive commentaries on his work, composed ci-poetry that echoed and emulated his style, and collated Collected Ci-Poetry of Liu Yong. These activities promoted the elevation of Liu's ci-poetry from a folk classic to a scholar-official classic. This ascent was closely related to the “discovery” by the Changzhou School of ci-poetry and the development of the style-worship (zun ti) movement. The process by which Liu's ci-poetry achieved the status of literary classics shows that culture possesses distinct strata and that classics should also be understood as stratified. Classics can move between cultural levels, but not all folk classics can become scholar-official classics. Certain conditions are required for this transformation.

During the “Great Ritual Controversy” of the early Jiajing reign (15221566), the new elite faction used classical resources to address contemporary issues that aligned with the emperor's preferences. This strategy influenced the themes and styles of contemporary literature. Praise for human feelings and filial piety, as well as the prevalence of poetry under imperial order, showed the influence of the “Great Ritual Controversy” on literature. As a lingering effect, the style of the eight-legged essay during the Wanli reign also shifted from one of peace and placidity to one of sharp severity. This suggests that by returning to the historical context, an examination of the motives, features, and strategic choices in literary change — amid the collision of literature with political, ideological, cultural, and traditional factors — may stimulate more creative topics of inquiry.

In the Ming dynasty, the Ministry of Rites established three key regulations governing the literary style of the eight-legged essay. First, the essay was required to adhere to the doctrines of Cheng Yi (10331107) and Zhu Xi (11301200). Second, its tone had to imitate that of a sage. Third, it was to adopt a form of parallelism or dual structure. These requirements, through prescriptive, remained relatively flexible. From the second year of the Shunzhi reign to the nineteenth year of the Qianlong reign, the Qing government successively introduced a series of prohibitions: “Do not write ideas other than Confucian ones,” “Abolish lengthy concluding remarks,” and “Do not cite events or books after the Warring States period.” These restrictions curtailed the space available for personal expression in the eight-legged essay and discouraged students from reading works beyond the Warring States period. Consistent with the authoritarian political culture of the early Qing, such prohibitions ultimately transformed the eight-legged essay into a rigid genre that constrained both thought and emotion.

The painting Feeding Cranes by Lin Binri, Lin Zexu's father, was passed down in the family. Lin Zexu carried it around seeking accompanying inscriptions and poems for over 20 years and turned it into a display of the self-images of two generations in the Lin family. Feeding Cranes integrates two layers of image codes of the pine and stone as well as the white cranes to express personal aspirations. The additional images and poems by later generations paid tribute to the original, while adding a layer of tension between the paintings and the texts. Feeding Cranes focuses on the crane as its main subject, which undergoes in poems a transformation from expressing the thought of seclusion to the idea of serving the people as an official. Such transformation implies the political significance and the influence of the times. The three peaks of adding inscriptions on Feeding Cranes are tied to Lin Zexu's career experiences, which also show the spiritual connotation of a generation of intellectuals in the reform period. The reminiscence of relatives and the past, the expression of emotions between the owner and the literary circle around him, and the record of historical events around the Opium War are all presented in Feeding Cranes. The cultural significance of this kind of picture scroll is worth investigating.

This study contests the prevalent perception of graffiti writing, especially tagging and bombing, as meaningless vandalism. It contends that graffiti is a form of expression with intrinsic political implications. Leveraging the notion of spatial justice and Jacques Rancière's philosophy, I demonstrate how graffiti reclaims urban visibility against the commercial monopoly of visibility in public spaces and challenges the inequitable allocation of opportunities for self-expression in modern cities. Despite writers' common denial of political motives, their actions may be interpreted as manifestations of resistance within wider socio-spatial conflicts. This study situates graffiti within discussions of political art, spatial commodification, and everyday resistance, proposing a normative framework for viewing the art of the urban signature as an activity that redefines “the community that speaks.”

How to develop landscape criticism after the “cultural turn” has received significant critical attention in recent years within Western academia. Contemporary British geographers, notably Nigel Thrift, have explored ways to address the methodological challenges faced by cultural geography. After examining the limits of representation in the production of knowledge, Thrift advocates for a “non-representational” turn in cultural geography. Drawing on Latour's “Actor Network Theory” and Deleuze's elaboration of Spinoza's concept of affect, this approach challenges the binaries inherent in representation, such as reality versus appearance, interior versus exterior, materiality versus discourse, presence versus absence. It shifts the focus to the role of bodily senses in shaping the experience of landscape. As a “weak theory,” non-representational thought aims to provide reparative descriptions, rather than critical diagnoses, of local landscapes, in order to illustrate how subjects and environments are continuously constituted through landscape practices. Although representation and non-representation may appear oppositional, they do not demand an either-or choice in landscape criticism. Instead, these two approaches offer complementary perspectives for contemporary landscape criticism and cultural geography, and inspire diverse forms of social practice and political engagement.

Fichte’s and Schiller’s “Horenstreit” marks a significant event in the history of aesthetics . This dispute primarily addresses three fundamental questions within aesthetics: whether philosophy and aesthetics arise from distinct spirits, whether an independent aesthetic drive exists, and how the relationship between image and concept should be understood. Analyzing these three questions helps clarify the position of Fichte’s aesthetics within his broader philosophical system and enables a reinterpretation of Fichte’s aesthetic theory. Based on this, it becomes possible to explore the potential for constructing an independent transcendental aesthetic system. Such a system differs from Kant’s aesthetic judgment, which serves as an intermediary between theoretical and practical reason, and from Hegel’s view of beauty as a sensuous manifestation of the Idea. Rather, it is an aesthetic system founded on imagination, sharing a common origin with philosophical spirit and possessing equal theoretical standing.

While the “art ethics” shaped by the “ethical turn” typically focuses on the positive correlation between artistic value and moral virtue, the school of so-called “immoralism” shifts attention to a “negative correlation” between ethical and aesthetic values, asserting that moral defects can be essential to the achievement of artistic values. As a significant trend in Western art ethical criticism, immoralism has introduced several theoretical innovations. However, it remains controversial and warrants critical scrutiny. By tracing its intellectual genealogy, analyzing the arguments of its key proponents, and clarifying the core disputes between the opposing positions, this paper reveals the underlying logical fallacy in “in praise of immoral art.” Immoralism provides a counter-argument that reinforces the significance of “art ethics” in today's world, where “autonomism” remains dominant, and the ultimate pursuit of truth, goodness, and beauty in art endures.

The impact of literary theorists’ transnational mobility on their academic production remains an understudied topic. The experiences of the Frankfurt School in the United States during World War II played a crucial role in shaping their critical theories. Therefore, the Frankfurt School should not be viewed solely as a branch of German social philosophy or Western Marxism, but also a product of “Americanization.” Focusing on the Frankfurt School's “American period” (ca. 19341949), this article conceptualizes the “Americanization of the Frankfurt School” in three stages: Germany, the United State, and a partial return to Germany. This framework illuminates how their experiences in the United States catalyzed the development of their innovative cultural theories. The argument proceeds in three aspects. First, upon arriving in the United States, the Frankfurt School engaged in various debates with the indigenous American schools from different theoretical standpoints. Second, their research underwent a paradigm shift from political-economic critique to socio-cultural critique. Third, following their “partial return to Germany,” the American themes within their work continued to evolve into diverse theoretical and practical applications. These three aspects chart the gradual deepening of the “Americanization” of the Frankfurt School from perspective encounters and paradigm shifts to development divergences.

Emerging since the late 1990s, new materialism has become one of the most influential philosophies and critical theories in the contemporary West. With its anti-anthropocentric and anti-constructivist stances, new materialism advocates for the agency and vitality of matter and things, thereby proposing a relational ontology. From the perspective of new materialism, humans and nonhumans are materially embedded and entangled. At the same time, nonhuman matter, not unlike its human counterparts, are participatory actants in ecology, society, and politics. Despite its inherent re-enchantment of matter and anthropomorphism, new materialism, as an epistemological-ontological-ethical philosophical framework, can serve as both a new ontology and ecological ethics for the Anthropocene.