There has always been aesthetic thinking in China, although not as a philosophical discipline. It was only established as a field under Western influence during the course of the 20th century. Its Chinese name meixue is a foreign word from the Japanese and is deceptive, since aesthetics in China is certainly not at all a matter of the "study of beauty." The cosmic and cosmological always stood at the center of an aesthetic perspective in traditional China, and this is sometimes still the case in modern China (cosmology).

Zong Baihua (1897-1986) and Zhu Guangqian (1897-1986) can be…