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"Aesthetic Confluences between the Everyday and Nature’s Experience"

No. 72 (2025): Thémata Revista de Filosofía

Exploring New Ways of Dwelling on Earth: Confucianism and Aesthetic Emotion

DOI
https://doi.org/10.12795/themata.2025.i72.07
Submitted
September 12, 2025
Published
2025-12-31

Abstract

This article brings classical Confucianism into dialogue with Arnold Berleant’s environmental aesthetics as alternative frameworks for rethinking the relationship between humanity and nature. In contrast to the limitations of the sustainability paradigm and its anthropocentric bias, Confucian humanism conceives human beings as integral parts of a cosmos in continuous creation and promotes a harmonious interaction with the environment grounded in aesthetic emotion. In conclusion, the paper suggests that this perspective offers new ways to cultivate a sensitive and participatory ecological awareness, as well as to foster discourses oriented toward harmony rather than domination of the natural world.

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