Artistry as Methodology: Aesthetic Experience and Chinese Philosophy 1

Although aesthetics has been to some extent marginalized in western philosophy, within the Chinese philosophical tradition aesthetics plays a key role. This article explores Chinese aesthetics as a site of valuable resources for rethinking the ways in which we conceptualize philosophical activity. After introducing a few distinct features of the Chinese aesthetic tradition, the article examines aesthetic distance in terms of guan , he , and ying , Chinese conceptions of artists and participants, and aesthetic suggestiveness or the inexhaustibility of a work of art, in order to suggest that the Chinese philosophical tradition might contribute its sense of connection between style or method of doing philosophy and aesthetics to a contemporary metaphor of philosophy as aesthetic experience.