As to this doubt, Jikang sets out his analysis of knowledge by saying the following.
Must he have repeated contact and exchange with them, and then get to know their language ? Or, will be blow on the pitch-pipes and play the bamboo tuning tubes and in this way examine their music ? Or, will he observe their manner and examine their facial expressions and in this way know thir minds ? This (the latter) would be a matter of knowing one’s mind naturally from his air and appearance. Even though he himself said nothing, you could still know his mind. Thus the way of knowing does not perhaps rely on words. If you can blow on the pitch-pipes and examine their music, and in this way know their minds, then even if someone had his mind on a horse but by mistake said ‘deer,’ the examiner would definitely know from ‘deer’ that he meant ‘horse’. This means that one’s mind is not related to what one says: and what one says is perhaps not sufficient to verify what is on his mind…. Language is not something that is by nature fixed. The five regions have different customs; the same thing has different designations. We simply select one name and use it as a sign. Now the sage exhausts the principles. This means that whatever is natural can be examined; there is no obscurity that cannot be illuminated. But if the principle involved is hidden, then you will not see it even if you are close by. Therefore, the language of a different land cannot be forcibly understood
In this round of thrust and parry, Jikang argues that mind does not have an essential relationship with language and even in some cases, language is not even sufficient to manifest mind. What this implies is that the presentation of language does not possess intrinsic meaning. In this case, one meaning can be expressed in an array of languages. Likewise, the proposition that a single thing can be expressed in other different languages signifies that language does not have a fixed correspondence to human mind. The claim that language is not essentially directed to one object, but that it chooses one naming and takes it as a criterion has a common ground with the explanation of lanuguage autonomy. The meaning and the presentation of the word are not essentially related, rather they are artificially tied to each other and are embedded in social custom and are often to be used in social context. If one applies this to music language, presentation of music language itself does not entail necessarily the intention of the composer. Hence, it is natural that a multiplicity of interpretations follow upon the heels of actually listening to music. However, this does not mean that the listener is inferior in his endowed aesthetic facility, such that he cannot grasp one secured motive of the composer.
The claim that there is no fixed relationship between the expected connotation relation between the presentation of words and the meanings of words is in keeping with what is called “Yanbujinyi-lun” (the doctrine that language cannot exhaust meanings). This is embedded in Wei-Jin XuanXue thought and carries an important implication: a recipient of art can draw more diverse and profound aesthetic impressions from an artist’s intended message. Further, the claim that language is deficient to reveal the human heart amounts to a recognition of the limitation of language, thus paving the way for a world of aesthetical intuition that draws on intuition only.
Jikang verifies the absence of a fixed correspondence between emotion and sound as follows ;
Different regions have different customs; singing and crying are the done all the same. If we mix them up and use them, some hear crying and are pleased; others listen to singing and become sad. But their feelings of grief and joy are the same. Now if you use the same feelings to produce completely different sounds, is this not because music has no constant relation to emotion.
Here Jikang uses different customs in different regions and even strains it to the extreme case where some hear crying and are pleased and others listen to singing and become sad. This explains how identical emotions can be expressed in different sounds. The inconstancy of sound, namely expression of sounds relative to certain emotions, has no constancy and hence proves that out of internal necessity sound does not express ceertain emotions. Though Jikang’s viewpoint is based on this premise, he does not contradict the traditional view that poetry and music are expressions of human emotion. Yet, two sounds whose main characters are harmony, “gung and shang,” are considered the most moving of the cords. Namely, sound is not constant, thus this chord is not indicative of any certain emotion, those who in grief will hear the grieved sounds being created. In harmony of sound there is no fixed form, but nothing but the grieved heart has something and this signifies that those who are in grief in their hearts will hear only grief from a chord. Here, Jikang raises the question of how to know and say one of Zhuangzi’s propositions, namely the proposition that all kinds of sound is identical with all chords created in nature. The phenomenon of hearing only grief from a chord dvelopes into custom and when it reaches the point of influencing politics, all become sounds of sorrow at this point. This explains the claim that the sound of a collapsing nation provokes sorrow. Those who feel sorrow hear some chords and take them only as sorrowful. This means that by knowing responses of people toward music you can know social customs. That a chord has no form means that there is no sorrow and joy in a chord and emotion of sorrow and joy is only contained in human heart. The idea that identical emotions can be expressed in various sounds is a consequence of the proposition that sound by itself contains no form. Identical sounds can express various different emotions, and there is no essential relation between sound and emotion. The sorrow and joy of a sound is determined by sorrow and joy of a person’s heart, not by the sound itself.
Jikang sees that sound has a materialistic nature and so is distinguished from the subjective emotions of human beings. In his third debate, the assertion that “eating acrid things brings on hysterical laughter; smoke in your eyes causes grief-struck sobbing” is a case in point. In both cases, “tears are produced. But even if you have a Yi Ya taste them, he definitely will not say that the happy tears are sweet and the sad tears bitter” Jikang compares the materialistic nature of sound to wine. And a question arises this way ;“The tissues secrete water and it beads up in the flesh; when pressure is applied it comes out. It is not controlled by grief or joy. It is just like the process of straining wine through a cloth sack. Although the device used to press it through may differ, the flavor of the wine is unchanged. Musical sounds are all produced by one and the same source. Why must they alone contain the principles of grief and joy?”
How can we explain the situation where emotion is roused simply by listening to music? The answer lies not in the proposal that a chord contains any symbolic content, but rather in the idea that human subjective emotion causes the production of feelings. The following passage condenses this point and elucidates this line of thought.
When it encounters harmonious sounds, only then is it released. Harmonious sounds have no sign, but the grieved heart has its essence. If you make the grieved heart that has an essence depend on the harmonious sounds that have no sign, then you understand sounds and listen to them. The heart is moved by harmonious sounds, the feelings touched by anguished is the grief. How could you know? Those who labor sing of their woes; those who are happy dance about their achievements. If one’s heart is pained and grieved inside, then words bitter and sad are aroused. Words in sequence become poetry; sounds in sequence become music. We blend the words and chant them, put together the words. The grieved heart is stored inside. When it encounters harmonious urther, does it blow differently through the ten thousand things but causes each to be itself?
In this above passage, Jikang explains that sound has no content in orgin, but when sound arouses heart, people insert their own emotion into it. Due to this, people’s emotions are differently affected by hearing the same music.
Historically it had been thought that not few people understood this Jikang’s refutation of the idea that specific sounds inspire specific emotions. Most, in fact, took his viewpoint for a misunderstanding. But we would do better to read Jikang’s view as follows: there is no constancy between emotion and sound and thus identical sounds produces varying emotions. Further, a subject’s emotional state plays an important role in appreciation of art and the aesthetic, asthetic feelings are taken to be spontaneous and different from person to person.
All of this is reduced to Jikang’s view about a certain kind of “uncertainty” in musical expression, an uncertainty which is in fact a defining characteristic of art. If music is partial and is determined to be fixed, simple and devoid of changes, then even if it can express certain special feelings, it cannot express various feelings and multiple thoughts.
II-D. Separation thesis: heart and sound are distinct
So far I have delineated the main characteristics of Jikang’s critique of the claim that sound has a fixed form. Next we will examine the proposition that heart and sound are different objects. This proposition is a necessary implication of the contention that “sound has in it neither sorrow nor joy.” Because sound is already unrelated to sorrow or joy, and because sorrow and joy are just what our hearts are meant to feel, it follows that heart (xin) and sound are two different objects. Hypothetically speaking, if heart and sound is correlated to each other, namely sorrow and joy of heart are expressed in their corresponding counterpart in sound, it does not follow that Jikang’s claim of nonemotinal nature of sound proves to be a success. Hence, to shore up the claim that sound has in it neither sorrow nor joy, he should draw the logical conclusion that heart and sound are two different things.
Following Jikang’s assertion, it is fair to say that the sound of music will move a human heart in certain ways. Feelings or emotions of human beings are formed by words of music, thus making a clear distinction between sound of music and human emotion. Jikang refutes the Confucianist assertion that sound has in it sorrow or joy. In music, sound is an external expression thereof and feelings constitute its internal content, but they do not have constant correspondence. It is like “making sound by stimulating breath hard and making an old wind instrument produce sound by filling it with breath.” In other words, the sound of music carries natural and therefore objective responses. The following passage provides rich insights in conformity with this line of thought:
That the good or evil of the sound of a cry does not come from the good or bad fortune of the baby’s mouth is just like the fact that the turbidness and limpidity in the sound of a lute or zither does not lie in the skill or clumsiness of the player. That the mind can distinguish principles and carry on skilled conversation but still cannot make a flute play smoothly, is just like the fact that a musician can be skilled in rhythms but cannot make his instrument sing pure and clear. An instrument is good with no dependence on the refined musician; the flute is harmonious but not because of the intelligent mind. This being so, then heart and music are clearly two separate things. Since the two are truly this way, then one who is seeking to know someone else’s feelings does not spend time observing his appearance and form, and examining the mind does not rely on listening to sounds and tones.
Jikang takes music as one form of “qi” and thus assumes that it distinguishes sound as natural sound and sorrow and joy as the subjective feelings or emotions in human hearts. Given this, sound of nature and human heart are clearly two separate things.
His basic argument that heart and sound are separate things is as follows: Taste is composed of bitterness and sweetness whereas humans have both stupidity and perspicacity. Sweet taste makes people happy while bitterness makes people angry. Wise people others whereas stupid people hate others. Yet, happiness and anger lie within me, sweetness and bitterness lie in taste, and love and hatred stems from me while perspicacity and stupidity come from without.
When one cannot call sweet taste “sweet,” call bitterness “bitter,” call wise people that he loves “wise,” nor call stupid ones “hateful people,” it is because external objects (sweetness, bitterness, perspicacity and stupidity) and internal human feelings (happiness, anger, love, and hatred) are different from each other. Moreover, it is because original sweetness, bitterness, perspicacity and stupidity attributed to external objects are distingushible from human beings’ subjective feeling or emotions such as happiness, anger, sorrow, and pleasure. Sorrow and pleasure are matters of human feelings and thus are not related to sounds. This implies the conclusion that name is separable from reality. In other words, naming of sorrow and pleasure is not related to actual sounds thereof. Jikang does not rule out that happiness and anger is caused by wine, love and hatred is engendered by how wise or stupid people are, and sorrow and pleasure are created by sounds. The issue at stake here is that because of this, tastes are called sweet or bitter, people are called loving people or hating people, and sound is differentiated into sorrowful sound or joyful sound.
Herein, human’s subjective emotional judgment of things is clearly different from objective natural world. According to Jikang, these two are clearly distinguished from one other. One of the startlingly rational aspect of Jikang’s thought lies in its emphasis on the distintion between two different judgments. As described above, “sweet taste,” “bitter taste,” “people to love” and “people to hate” are not correct terms because this distintion grasps dispositions of two different tastes such as “sweetness and bitterness.” This is also true of two different dispositions claimed by human beings such as “love and hatred.” This is caused by the confusion that mistakes subjective emotional judgment for judgment of objective characters of things. The sound of grief and the sound joy sound are normally used. But grief and joy do ultimately refer to human feelings and this does not mean that they depart from human emotional dimension and contain grief and joy on their own. Sound can express emotions of both grief and joy and thus it can be said that sound contains grief and joy. Yet, to be exact, sound only makes the expression of feelings or emotions possible. Sound itself does not contain either grief or joy. Jikang’s contribution lies in its attempt to distinguish between a person’s subjective emotional judgement of things and her judgment of the objective natures of things.
Concluding remarks
The contention that the sounds of music are based on the natural world and should be distingshed from human’s subjective feelings is the core of Jikang’s critique of the Confucianist theory of music. The Confucianist view is motivated by a theory of art which purports to make the intended value of a ruler via music a universal value of a whole society. The Confucianist belief that human feelings or emotions are attributable to subjective value judgments contained in nature’s sounds is a result of an illusion – an illusion based on the conflation of the natural world of things with the social order of human beings. The very simple belief that music is an expression of humanity entails an interpretation of music only in the context of social custom and thus fails to appreciate music as a harmonious form of beauty alone. Jikang refutes the magicalistic assumption that sound can predict a certain state of affairs. Based on a scientific knowledge of lulu that was used as the basic sound and measure criterion at the time, he criticizes the unscientificness of magicalism and political intentions embodied in it.
Further, he also refutes the claim that music reflects political virtue. Not only does he pinpoint the internal contradictions of Coufucianism on this issue, but he distinguishes the words of music from the meaning of music and thus acknowledges mutual autonomous principles between the two. He also broadens the gamut of music as a source of enjoyment and promotes the view that music can be interpreted in multiple ways. The claim that there is no corresponding relation between sound and feeling or emotion lends itself to a further assertion that sound carries an objective
”materialistic nature” which is separated from subjective emotions. This explains how one’s feelings can be aroused merely by listening to music. When human beings listen to sounds, sounds are a finely tuned body with no particular content. Sounds arouse the human heart by giving a person to insert his own subjective emotions. Jikang’s theory that music has in it neither sorrow nor joy has an ontological agenda: it purports to distinguish the sounds of nature from human heart. Thus it is demanded that listener should hear sounds as such according to his viewpoint. When people transcend the human emotions of grief and joy, a true sense of the beauty of the form of music will be reached.