Author ｜
Chih-huang Chou
Abstract ｜
The concept of Gestalt entered the field of Chinese academia in 1926. The German school of psychology to which Gestalt belongs was born around 1912. Through the translations and introductions on newspapers and periodicals in China, the Chinese reception of Gestalt-related theories was arguably synchronized with the development of Euro-American academia. The translated terms of Gestalt include geshita 格式塔, wanxing 完形, wanjie 完結, jisita 基斯塔, xingshi 形勢, etc. The thought cluster with which Gestalt can be associated involves wholeness, vitality, organism, function, force, intuition, creative evolution and so forth. As far as the Euro-American school of psychology is concerned, the Gestalt psychology, opposing the prevailing mechanical formula of “stimulusresponse” by constructivist element theory and behaviorism, emphasized that the whole is not equal to the sum of the parts. After the May Fourth New Cultural Movement around 1919 and the debate between science and metaphysics in 1923 in early Republican China, Chinese/Western cultures and their corresponding perspectives on life (metaphysics)/ science have their own advocates in Chinese intelligentsia, an issue that existing research has paid much attention to. After the debate; however, some returned intellectuals who studied in Europe and the United States not only introduced the academic trends in the West, but also tried to make comparison and mutual explanation between those foreign theories and Chinese thought and culture. As discussing Gestalt, Chinese intellectuals after 1926 mostly illustrated the concept with literary aesthetic ideas such as “intuition” as well as theories that entered China earlier, such as Bergson (1859-1941)’s “creative evolution” and Driesch (1867-1941)’s “vitalism.” The appropriation of these concepts is not just to introduce the professional knowledge of psychology, but more of the discussion focusing on the concept of Gestalt as a counterpoint to the modern Western mechanism and analytical method, so as to show that experience and meaning are interdependent and cannot be separate. It also emphasizes how one can achieve the realization of and the unification with the vital universe through dynamic life experience and holistic intuitive comprehension.
keywords ｜
Gestalt, vitalism, wholeness, intuition, philosophy of life