The One’s Metaphorical Meanings And Its Aesthetic Features

The Chinese character "One", which is the most simple but also the most complex, was an important concept in the ancient Chinese philosophy. There are many tracts of it in the Confucianism, the Taoism, the Buddhism, and it had some important impacts on the national aesthetic and cognitive.In the history, whether the China or the West, has experienced the phase in which the scholars used the numbers to explain the world, and the numbers played important roles in philosophy and culture. However, only a few numbers retained finally. The One was one of them. There were many reasons of its retention. For example, it has important mathematical sense and is in first place in the number. The second, there are barriers between the symbols and meanings, maybe just as the saying said, "The more you retain the farther you leave, the more you reduce the closer you are. When you reduce almost to be empty, you get it." (Wang Bi, The Comments on Lao Tzu, Chapter 42) The third, the social developed to unification. The last but not the end, there was an same old idea about creation that the world was from a mass of chaos then to fission.From one of numbers, the One developed to a philosophical terms with special meaning. There was clear road of its development whether in the China or in the West. The Chinese One started from The Book of Changes and Tao Te Ching, and from the mysterious providence to the key to control the overall situation, to one of the sources of the world, then to the only source of all things. It intertwined with "Tao", caused the debates about the being and not-being, the dynamic and static, the virtual and real, while the Western One started from the Pythagoras One to the God, to the Good, and then was replaced by the Ideal, the Being, the Logos, the absolute Geist, and so on.Unlike the Western One, the Chinese One always maintained a strong vitality. A large part part of the reasons were their difference. The Chinese One "was from the ancient fortune-telling, and meant the creation of the world"(Ding Fubao, The Comments collections on Origin of Chinese Characters), and came with abstract and mysterious, while the Western One came from its mathematical sense. They had different origins, different locations, so there were significant differences in their specific contents and aesthetic properties.The Western One payed attentions to the constant nature, for it began at its inseparable as a number, so the One was "a single substance with various types and attributes". At the same time, the Chinese One insisted on diversification, for it came from changes. As a result, they had different paths.The ancient culture has long-term effects on the later times and decides how the scholars understand the Chinese One. So the Chinese One is like a large box which can hold anything. For example, "the Source, the Initial and the Pole", "the Root and the Tree", "Being and Not-being", "Huge and Tiny", "Whole and Specific", "Chaos and Pure", "Together and Another", "Overall and Certain", and so on. They are different, even, contradictory, so the Chinese One is very complex in translations.There are special national aesthetic features and cognitive characteristics in the Chinese One’s metaphorical meanings. According to them, Shi Tao, the famous artist in the Qing Dynasty, put forward the important aesthetic theory named "Yi Hua". This theory also proved the aesthetic features in the Chinese One’s metaphorical meanings.The Chinese One had some important impacts on national aesthetic and cognitive. By analyzing them, we would find that, there was an same core in the vastly different theories, and this core, more or less, was associated with the Chinese One.