It is the major concern of Mou Zongsan the representative of the 20th century NeoConfucianist criticism of Kant and also the footstone of his theory of mental noumenon whether the free noumenon of moral volition does present itself and whether one has “intellectual intuition” to this noumenon. The argument focuses on whether mental noumenon can substitute the “DANG XIA DUN WU (sudden comprehension)” for the belief in the future. Mou's “YUAN DUN” of mental noumenon was actualized as a feeling of aesthetic bourn in mind for lack of a medium of practice and reconstructed Kant's Critique of Judgment with a more selfconscious and more forceful modernistic view of time. Both Mou's moral philosophy and Chinese traditional philosophy of mind were essentially aesthetic. Therefore, Mou's moralidealistic theory of mental noumenon has represented and developed ethical aesthetics, which is in essencej representative of Confucianist aesthetics in China whereas aesthetic studies in China have long taken Taoist aesthetics and artistic study as their major areas of interest. Mou's extensive and intensive studies on predisposition of mental noumenon in terms of ethical aesthetic bourn made an objective supplement for the 20th century aesthetic study in China and established a metaaesthetics based on Chinese traditions.

Mou Zongsan; theory of mental noumenon; moral noumenon; aesthetics bourn; neoConfucianism; justification of goodness