Connaître la beauté d’une chose dans une autre

Abstract

In this article, I first discuss the related notions of opposition and complementarity, median Void and the «authentic Three», the Man-Earth-Heaven relationship and human destiny, which I submit play an important role in François Cheng’s Chinese Poetic Writing and Empty and Full. The Language of Chinese Painting. On the basis of this discussion, I then argue that the rich aesthetic experience cultivated by the Chinese poetic and artistic traditions profoundly helps cross cultural wanderers such as Cheng to appreciate the beauty as conceived in the French tradition and Western tradition generally. Cheng’s work invites us to bring together the aesthetic experiences that have developed in different cultures and discover how they can illuminate each other, whereby we come to the recognition of the deep-rooted aspiration in our shared nature for spiritual elevation and transcendence.