Abstract

This article gives a brief analysis of the concept of aesthetic profundity, and gives examples of its deployment in European Romanticism, and in various important works of Indian, Chinese and Japanese aesthetic theory. It is srgued that the idea of profundity is most readily deployed in the context of metaphysics which regard the real as having a non-obvious but inexhaustible depth. This is a case of a major logical similarity between European and oriental aesthetic beliefs.