Abstract:
A key term of Mencius poetics, the view of “undoing the goal with volition” is accepted as “the most intelligent interpretation of poetics in history” in efforts of Chinese literary criticism and theoretical construction. Also the statement has caused constant disputes for its verbal obscurity. The author of this paper thinks that under the continuous intrusion in the world of Chinese theoretical criticism, some scholars attempted to interpret the view of “undoing the goal with volition” in terms of criticism of reader reaction enlightened by Gadamer’s modern hermeneutics to seek similarity between them and even went so far as to regard them as the same critical school. This attempt has naturally extended an individual theoretical horizon and successfully satisfied the critical world’s psychology to introduce a revolutionary critical pattern. However, on the other hand, it is likely to lead disputes on this issue to a largerscale “critical circulation”. In fact, this theoretical orientation not only deviates from Mencius original intention and requirement, goes against the basic idea of his poetics and most importantly, violates the general interpretative principle of Chinese culture.
