Rowman & Littlefield Publishers / Rowman & Littlefield International
Pages: 148
•
Trim: 6¼ x 9½
978-1-78660-337-1 • Hardback • January 2018 • $117.00 • (£90.00)
978-1-78660-338-8 • Paperback • January 2018 • $37.00 • (£30.00)
Francois Jullien, Professor, Universite de Paris-Diderot and Chair of Alterity, Fondation Maison
des Sciences de l'Homme
Francois Jullien is Professor and Chair of the Department of Oriental Studies at Universite de Paris-
Diderot and Chair of Alterity at the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l'Homme. He is also
President of the College International de Philosophie in Paris. His previous books on aesthetics
have all been translated into English, including The Strange Idea of Beauty (2015), The Great Image
has No Form, or On the Nonobject Through Painting (2009) and The Impossible Nude (2007).
Pedro Rodriguez, translator
Prologue / 1. Land – Landscape: Expanse, View, Cut-Off / 2. "Mountain(s)-Water(s)" / 3. From a Landscape to Living / 4. When the Perceptual Turns Out to Be Affectual / 5. When "Spirit" Emanates from the Physical / 6. Tension-Setting / 7. Singularization, Variation, Remove / 8. Connivance / Epilogue / Index
Francois Jullien's rich exploration of what he calls "landscape thought" raises awareness of the cultural conditioning that obscures understanding and renders new thought impossible. Through his focus on environmental aesthetics in China and Europe he provides us with a philosophical method for productive possibilities of global engagement at all levels. This is a comparatist scholarship for a globally articulated time.— Pradeep Dhillon, Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Illinois
Although the appearance of any book by Jullien merits celebration, this work is especially precious. Retrieving the Chinese tradition of shan shui (山水) or mountain(s) and river(s) “landscape” painting, which deploys the polar vitality of emptiness and form, he challenges the European landscape tradition and exposes “connivance” as another way of living with the “ spirit” of the singular “milieu” of a place. What could be more important in our age of ecological crisis and “impending uniformity”?— Jason Wirth, Seattle University
While the author is highly critical of traditional European approaches, the insights offered by this enchanting work will help readers rediscover the meaning and value of landscape and break away from customary perception by allowing them to wander through nature as depicted by classical Chinese poets and painters, while at the same time inspiring them to find new approaches to solving issues in contemporary urban design, and sustainable environmental development.— Xiaoyan Hu
With immense intelligence and reflexivity, François Jullien does the seemingly impossible: peeling off layer by layer the opaque cultural sediments that pre-condition our landscape-thought even when we struggle to escape from them. Living Off Landscape is a thought thriller; it demonstrates yet again that no one comes close to Jullien in terms of insights and relevance of cross-cultural thinking. Jullien shows us the form of the twenty-first century mind.— Shiqiao Li, Weedon Professor in Asian Architecture at the University of Virginia
Jullien’s main merit with this book ... lies not (only) in the explanation of the differences of the cultural tradition and their landscape-interpretation, and not even merely in the fact of presenting his method of investigating the concepts through the divide, but that through his observation of the tradition he manages to propose novel ways of being engaged with the landscape that have multiple further consequences not only in interpreting past art products and cultural phenomena but also in offering new answers to contemporary environmental and ecological issues.
— Zoltán Somhegyi, Assistant Professor of Art History and Cultural Studies, University of Sharjah; The Nordic Journal of Aesthetics