“I Know That on the Hao River”: Ādarśanajñāna or on the Art of Cognition

In the article, and based on the background of selected Zen Buddhist, Daoist, philosophical and artistic starting points, a specific problem of cognition as a form of human potential self-limitation and self-liberation will be phenomenologically unfolded. Such an approach will also require some comparisons between Asian and Euro-American epistemological models and dilemmas (subject-object, noetic-conative, symbolic-metasymbolic, etc.) and the necessity of their critical evaluation with regard to the extent of the related cognitive abilities. Special attention will be paid to the “concept” of ādarśanajñāna as a creative and artistic way of cognition, which in its radicalism, that is by no means limited to the Western tradition, undermines traditional patterns of cognition and at the same time opens the abyss of its emancipatory abilities.