In his long-standing engagement with the language, thought, and intellectual history of China, the sinologist Jean François Billeter increasingly confronted the question of what could enable us to see and understand both the commonalities and differences of the two worlds more clearly. He wonders, among other things, whether a conception of the human subject could be found that would make accessible the common ground on which both traditions necessarily stand. A Paradigm is an initial attempt to not only use such a conception of the subject as a hermeneutic tool for exploring China but also to present it as an independent philosophical approach.