"From Being to Living" is François Jullien's critical summary of his lifelong engagement with Chinese thought and language. Through twenty pairs of concepts, he unfolds the differences between Western and Eastern cultural and intellectual spaces. For instance, in highly original essays, he contrasts "coherence" with "meaning," "persistence" with "will," "reliability" with "sincerity," and "upsurge" with "stagnation." However, Jullien does not content himself with illuminating one concept through the other to understand the associated culture. In this book, he takes a step further, attempting to distance himself equally from both the West and the East to gain a third position that allows him to develop his own philosophical framework. This book is for anyone who wants to understand China without indulging in exoticism, and for those who have not lost the joy of independent thinking.