A Theory of Oriental Aesthetics: A Prolegomenon

Different traditions, East and West, have come up with different ways to treat the subject or nature of aesthetics, from the bare perceptual data to the sophisticated logical forms, from the emotional to the psychological, and from the imitative to the highly abstract quality of things. All of the theories have presented us with some sense of what aesthetics is all about, but at the same time none has captured that sense with absolute certainty and universality. At this moment, to be sure, we are unable seriously to engage aesthetic elements that are absolutely certain or universal in either the East or the West, but here I would like to narrow the field by concentrating on the East, especially aesthetics as it has evolved in the unique fusion of Buddhist and Taoist principles of experience. Once the task is done, the discussion of aesthetics could move on to the more lucrative and interesting realm of comparative aesthetics, a discussion worthy of another essay. Suffice it to say here that it is time to take stock of things and correct misguided views on aesthetics, especially where it is relegated to a secondary status in Western philosophy. My essay, in a way, is a critical examination of aesthetics as a legitimate field of philosophy, indeed as a most basic part of it, especially as seen in Eastern thought and culture. The heights of cultural achievement in many respects reflect directly on the profundity of a philosophy of life based. on the aesthetic nature of things. I shall attempt to justify this statement.