ABSTRACT
LING: Applying dialectics, whether Hegelian or Daoist or both, to challenges in the environment-or any kind of conflict resolution-is a worthy project, indeed! I highly applaud such
But first, perhaps we could further our thought experiment? Let us celebrate this dialogic of
dialectics by reaching beyond established images and metaphors for Hegelianism and Daoism,
respectively. In particular, aesthetics can help us imagine what’s possible, not just what’s avail-
able. We are thus compelled to think and act creatively, whether by an individual or a commu-
nity. Bleiker has noted the same:
Indeed, the dao upholds aesthetics as yin to hegemony’s yang. ‘To be fully integrative’, writes
Ames on the Zhuangzi, ‘individuals must overcome the sense of discreteness and discontinuity
with their environment, and they must contribute personally and creatively to the emerging
pattern and regularity of existence called dao’ (Ames, 1998, p. 4). The enlightened life must
feel right in addition to knowing and doing right: ‘[A]ny ‘ethical’ judgments in the narrow
sense are going to be derived from aesthetic sensibilities – the intensity, integrity, and appropri-
ateness that one detail has for its environing elements as interpreted from some particular per-
spective’ (Ames, 1998, p. 5).
