Abstract
The concept stepping-out-of-oneself concerns a process by which things manifest themselves and make themselves present. This process does not depend on subjective influence but on the power of the thing itself. In this respect, the value of the thing itself and its impact on the sensory experience are brought to the foreground. From an aesthetic point of view, this concept corresponds to a new orientation of contemporary aesthetics of nature, which reflects the programmatic weakening of the subject-centered approach, the estrangement from the substance ontology as well as the phenomenological interest in the power of things. In this article, I attempt to argue that traditional Daoist thought can also provide a point of contact for the exploration of stepping-out-of-oneself. The focus on my study is on two issues: 1. under what circumstances is stepping-out-of-oneself possible? 2. how is it possible to perceive stepping-out-of-oneself?
