François Jullien's 'Cette étrange idée du beau' traces how the definite article 'le' created Western metaphysics

In his latest essay, 'Cette étrange idée du beau' (Grasset), philosopher François Jullien argues that the addition of the definite article 'le' to the adjective 'beau' in ancient Greece—transforming 'beautiful' into 'the Beautiful'—was a pivotal linguistic event that gave rise to Western metaphysics, philosophy, aesthetics, and morality. Jullien traces this conceptual revolution from Homer through Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Plotinus, Saint Augustine, Hegel, Diderot, and Baudelaire, showing how this abstraction enabled dualisms such as good/evil, just/unjust, pure/impure, singular/universal, concrete/abstract, spirit/matter, form/substance, and the notion of Being. He contrasts this with Chinese thought, where the language lacks articles and does not morphologically distinguish adjectives from nouns, making it impossible to substantialize 'beauty' as a concept. Citing 11th-century Chinese painter Mi Fu, Jullien notes that Chinese connoisseurs describe paintings as 'superior,' 'living,' or 'successful' rather than invoking a transcendent 'Beauty.' He compares Chinese painting techniques—focused on transformation, transition, process, and energy—with European drawing and painting (e.g., Leonardo da Vinci), and quotes painter Shi-tao on emptying the self to let things be. Jullien concludes by critiquing 20th-century European attempts to 'exit beauty' and the globalized market's imposition of Western contemporary art on China, producing what he calls a 'dérisoire copie.'