Sheng wu ai yue lun 聲無哀樂論

Sheng wu ai yue lun 聲無哀樂論 "The tones of music do not carry emotions" is an essay on music philosophy and aesthetics written during the Three-Empires period 三國 (220~280 CE) by the poet Ji Kang 嵇康 (223-263). The text is written as a dialogue between Qin Ke 秦客 "The Guest from Qin" and Dongye Zhuren 東野主人 "The Host from the Eastern Plain".

Ji Kang holds that music can only be divided into harmony (he 和) and disharmony (bu he 不和), or "good" (shan 善) and "not good" (bu shan 不善). They are determined by the grade of mastery of the rules of rhythm and harmony (pai he 拍和), and are a natural harmony (xiediao 諧調) that has nothing to do with subjective emotions of sadness or happiness. Since the sound of music does not express emotion, it is "imageless" (wuxiang 無象), and there is no definite emotional content such as sadness in music. The reason why "imageless" sounds cause different emotions in listeners lies in the psychological state at the time of performance (xian gou yu xin 先遘于心). In this way, the same piece of music can be experienced differently by different persons depending on their individual emotions. Music and the heart were two wholly different things (xin zhi yu sheng, ming wei er wu 心之與聲，明為二物).

Ji thus renounces the Confucian proposition that music was an expression of emotion, as expounded, for instance, in the text Yueji 樂記. He likewise rejects the educational function of music in the sense of instigating politically useful moral behaviour in listeners. For Ji, music has a didactic function, but a much more practical one than the state-bearing one in Confucian philosophy.

The aesthetics of music lies in its objective, natural harmony (ziran zhi he 自然之和) and is in Ji Kang's eyes independent from the feelings of the listeners. "Music and the heart go different paths that do not cross" (sheng zhi yu xin, shu tu yi gui, bu xiang jing wei 聲之與心，殊途異軌，不相經緯), he concludes.

The text is included in Ji Kang's collected works, Ji Kang ji 嵇康集 or Ji Shuye ji 嵇叔夜集.