ABSTRACT
In traditional Chinese thought, Heaven cannot be conceived independently from Earth. The same applies to the natural environment and human beings; both should be in harmony with each other. As already mentioned, this ideal is expressed in the familiar concept of tianren heyi (Ҏড়ϔ) from ancient Chinese philosophy and cosmology – a unity of life found in our experience of the environmental beauty of nature. In the course of history, the meaning of the character ‘tian’ () has changed several times, but here the word refers specifically to ‘nature’ (literally: sky or heaven), and, by extension, the environment.1 Indeed, the latter has often been understood as the material world surrounding human beings, but such is not the case from a traditional Chinese philosophical and aesthetic point of view. If the environment and human beings are conceived dualistically as separate and even antinomic entities, they also have to be thought as unity, simply because human beings live in the environment. Both unavoidably influence each other and both reside in each other’s sphere. This sense of unity – a fundamental motif in traditional Chinese philosophy – is reflected in the expression ‘jiaogan hexie’ (Ѹᛳ䂻), namely, a state of harmony and mutual dependence.2 The experience of the unity of life by virtue of environmental beauty is thus not only ecological, that is, about nature; there is also a cultural and therefore human dimension involved. That is, overall, what the ‘sense of home’ means.
