王国维在中国小说批评史上,率先打破中国传统学术中索隐、考据等旧的研究范式,彻底改变了以往《红楼梦》批评研究畏葸不前的局面,将叔本华的悲剧思想运用于文学批评,为中国文学批评引入了西方哲学理念,建构了比较系统的文学批评理论,从根本上改变了中国文学批评缺乏思辨的抽象概括能力的状况。但《(红楼梦)评论》毕竟是王国维尝试性的论著,其美感的凸显与意义的揭示也表现出一定的历史局限性,这或许与他急于开拓一条批评之路的时代使命密切相关。
In the history of Chinese novel criticism, WANG Guo-wei broke the old paradigm in the tradi- tional Chinese academic researches, and radically changed the previous critics of the study on Dream of the Red Chamber. He used the tragedy thoughts of Schopenhauer to literature criticism, and introduced a Western philosophical concept to construct the systematic theory of literature criticism, thus fundamentally changed the status of Chinese literary criticism. Commentaries on "Dream of the Red Chamber" after all is the tentative work of WANG Guo-wei that showed some historical limitations, which is closely related to the mission he is keen to develop.