The ancient aesthetics of yijing has played a crucial role in traditional Chinese philosophy, literature and art since the eighth century CE. Defined variously by early and contemporary writers, yijing links an artist's emotional domain to objects in the world. This article conceptualises yijing as an ecological aesthetics and distinguishes it from an environmental aesthetics. In particular, two aspects of yijing render it an eco-aesthetics: subject–object correspondence (or ‘engagement'); and empathic identification with the environment (or ‘bio-empathy'). Three brief case studies from urban planning, environmental conservation and the creative arts demonstrate the contemporary importance of yijing to ecological issues.
BennettJ.2010. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
2.
BerleantA.1993. Art and Engagement. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
3.
BerleantA.2010. The Aesthetics of Environment. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
4.
BerleantA.2012. Aesthetics Beyond the Arts: New and Recent Essays. Abingdon: Routledge.
5.
BonneyJ.1986. Wang Kuo-wei: An Intellectual Biography. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
6.
BradyE.2003. Aesthetics of the Natural Environment. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
7.
CallicottJ.B.1989. In Defense of the Land Ethic: Essays in Environmental Philosophy. Albany: State University of New York Press.
8.
CarlsonA.2009. Nature and Landscape: An Introduction to Environmental Aesthetics. New York: Columbia University Press.
9.
ChenW.2012. ‘Comparative concepts of natural beauty’. In ZhuL. and BlockerG. (eds), Contemporary Chinese Aesthetics, pp. 323–334. New York: Peter Lang Publishing.
10.
ChenW.2015. Chinese Environmental Aesthetics, trans. SuF., ed. CiprianiG.. Abingdon: Routledge.
11.
ChengF.1994. Empty and Full: The Language of Chinese Painting, trans. KohnM.H.. Boston: Shambhala.
12.
ChengX.1991. Chinese Environmental and Aesthetic Theory. Zhengzhou: Henan People's Press.
13.
ChengX.2009. A Study of Environmental Aesthetics in China. Zhengzhou: Henan People's Press.
ChengX.2013b. ‘On the four cornersones of ecological appreciation’. In EstokS. and KimW. (eds), East Asian Ecocriticisms: A Critical Reader, pp. 221–236. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
16.
ChiuC.-C.2005. ‘A cross-cultural study of Chinese yi jing aesthetic theory and ch'an philosophy applied to contemporary art: bright moon, tender wind’, PhD thesis. Newcastle: University of Newcastle. Available at: https://theses.ncl.ac.uk/dspace/handle/10443/516 (accessed 25 April 2016).
17.
EatonM.2008. ‘The beauty that requires health’. In CarlsonA. and LintottS. (eds), Nature, Aesthetics, and Environmentalism: From Beauty to Duty, pp. 339–359. New York: Columbia University Press.
18.
FanM.2010. ‘The significance of xuwu (nothingness) in Chinese aesthetics’. Frontiers of Philosophy in China5(4): 560–574. Crossref.
19.
GiblettR.2011. People and Places of Nature and Culture. Bristol: Intellect.
20.
GilpinW.1788. Observations, Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty, Made in the Year 1772, on Several Parts of England, Vol. 2. London: R. Blamire, Strand.
21.
HepburnR.1963. ‘Aesthetic appreciation of nature’. British Journal of Aesthetics3(3): 195–209. Crossref.
22.
HershockP.2005. Chan Buddhism: Dimensions of Asian Spirituality. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
23.
HusserlE.1999. The Essential Husserl: Basic Writings in Transcendental Phenomenology, ed. WeltonD.. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
24.
InadaK.K.1997. ‘A theory of oriental aesthetics: A prolegomenon’. Philosophy East and West47(2): 117–131. Crossref.
25.
JoyceP., and BennettT.. 2010. ‘Material powers: Introduction’. In BennettT. and JoyceP. (eds), Material Powers: Cultural Studies, History and the Material Turn, pp. 1–21. New York: Routledge.
26.
KleinerF.S.2010. Gardner's Art Through the Ages: Non-Western Perspectives. Boston: Wadsworth.
27.
LiB.2002. ‘Drinking alone beneath the moon’. In HintonD. (trans.), Mountain Home: The Wilderness Poetry of Ancient China, p. 81. Washington, DC: Counterpoint.
28.
LiR.2015. ‘Taoist data visualation: An embodied aesthetic approach to data visualization through gesture-based technology’. Humanities and Technology Review34: 1–33.
29.
LiZ.2010. The Chinese Aesthetic Tradition, trans. SameiM.B.. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
30.
LiaoT.-L.2011. ['Yijing: Mr. Wang Meng-ou's aesthetic of language']. [Danjiang Chinese Journal] 25(1): 13–172.
31.
MartinM.W.2007. Albert Schweitzer's Reverence for Life: Ethical Idealism and Self-Realization. Aldershot: Ashgate.
32.
Merleau-PontyM.2005. Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge.
33.
MortonT.2013. Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
34.
NagelT.1974. ‘What is it like to be a bat?’ Philosophical Review83(4): 435–450. Crossref.
35.
PengF.2010. ‘On the modernisation of Chinese aesthetics’. In SasakiK., (ed.) Asian Aesthetics, pp. 139–154. Singapore: National University of Singapore Press.
36.
PohlK.H.2006. ‘Chinese aesthetics and Kant’. In HussainM. and WilkinsonR. (eds), The Pursuit of Comparative Aesthetics: An Interface Between the East and the West, pp. 127–136. Aldershot: Ashgate.
37.
RowleyG.1959. Principles of Chinese Painting. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
38.
RuanG.1995. ['The discussion of Wang Changling's contribution to yijing theory']. Journal of Guangdong Institute for Nationalities2(34): 1–8.
39.
RueckertW.1978. ‘Literature and ecology: Experiment in ecocriticism’. Iowa Review9(1): 71–86.
SmithR.J.2012. The I Ching: A Biography. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
42.
StueberK.2010. Rediscovering Empathy: Agency, Folk Psychology, and the Human Sciences. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
43.
TangY.2014. ‘Translating across cultures: Yi jing and understanding Chinese poetry’. Intercultural Communication Studies23(1): 187–202.
44.
TregearM.1980. Chinese Art. London: Thames & Hudson.
45.
VischerR.1994. ‘On the optical sense of form: A contribution to aesthetics’. In MallgraveH.F. and IkonomouE. (trans.), Empathy, Form, and Space: Problems in German Aesthetics, 1873–1893, pp. 89–123. Santa Monica, CA: Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities.
46.
WangC.1976. ‘The myriad-year tower’. In FrankelH., The Flowering Plum and the Palace Lady: Interpretations of Chinese Poetry, pp. 114–115. New Haven: Yale University Press.
47.
WangD.2008. ‘Observing from below the waterfalls of Mount Lushan’, trans. DaoyuWang (). Available at: http://article.yeeyan.org/view/25125/11279 (accessed 28 April 2016).
WAQI (World Air Quality Index).2016. ‘Beijing air pollution: Real-time air quality index (AQI)’. Available at: http://aqicn.org/city/beijing/ (accessed 25 April 2016).
50.
WuW.2005. The I Ching: The Book of Answers. Malibu, CA: Power Press.
51.
YeL.1995. ‘Modern Chinese aesthetics’. In ZhuL. and BlockerG. (eds), Contemporary Chinese Aesthetics, pp. 239–252. New York: Peter Lang Publishing.
52.
ZongB.2005. Yijing. Beijing: Beijing University Press.
53.
ZongB.2014. ‘The birth of Chinese art's yijing’. In Collected Works of Zong Baihua, Vol. 2, pp. 328–341. Hefei: Anhui Jiaoyu Press.
