This monograph proposes and systematically constructs Authentic Perception Theory (APT), an original cross-cultural theoretical framework rooted in cross-poetics, comparative aesthetics, Eastern spiritual philosophy, and Western philosophy of language. Centering on the proposition that genuine human perceptual experience is pre-conceptual, unmediated, and trans-linguistic, the study draws on Huineng's Zen enlightenment, Ezra Pound's intuitive grasp of Chinese characters, and Wittgenstein's demarcation of linguistic boundaries as core cross-cultural evidence. It diagnoses a deep crisis in contemporary literary and aesthetic inquiry: the dominance of rational analysis and excessive interpretation has fractured the primordial resonance between subject and object, alienating human beings from poetic, natural, and spiritual truth. Synthesizing Zen and Taoist thought, phenomenology, modern poetics, and linguistic philosophy, the research clarifies the meaning, essential attributes, and operational structure of authentic perception, distinguishes it from traditional aesthetic perception and contemplative models, and explores its concrete manifestations in cross-poetic communication and religious experience. It further defines the legitimate boundaries of textual interpretation, advances a principle of interpretive restraint, and outlines practical pathways for cultivating authentic perceptual capacity. Breaking with the logocentric orthodoxy of mainstream humanities, Authentic Perception Theory establishes a new universal paradigm for cross-cultural aesthetic dialogue, poetic reception, and spiritual understanding. It fills a significant gap in the systematic theorization of trans-linguistic perception and offers a critical remedy for the predicament of over-interpretation in contemporary humanistic studies.
Bo Xia (Wed,) studied this question.