Abstract

Our starting point is a remark made by an art historian, Charles Carman, to the theorist of art Norman Bryson regarding his interpretation of the Japanese philosopher Nishitani Keiji's standpoint of emptiness. Bryson claims that Nishitani's standpoint supports his contrast between Western and non-Western gaze. On the contrary, Carman sees Nishitani's standpoint closer to the Renaissance theory of vision as found in Alberti and Nicholas von Cues and so not as opposite to Western tradition as a whole but to a major trend of it. Our suggestion here is that while Nishitani's standpoint illustrates an Asian way of thinking, at the same time it sheds light upon Western assumptions. Therefore, it constitutes a demonstration of how much it can be significant to integrate non-European cultures into the philosophical and art theory discussions in order to broaden our understanding of the discipline of aesthetics.