Abstract: "Looking" is an important process through which men understand the object, know themselves and construct the world. The analysis of looking can be unfolded in the following three aspects. The first aspect takes looking as seeing. Looking is an action while seeing is a result. However, "looking" does not necessarily means "having seen." Seeing reveals the object, when the object originally not focused on is presented by visual selecting and focusing. This is a process from invisibility to visibility. The second aspect takes looking as "seeing-in" or finding out. "Seeing-in" embodies the meaning of the depth model in the visual cognition theory. It is not only a perspective but a visual presentation in which the viewer accomplishes by means of imagination and empathy. In this process, the mind's eye plays a more important role than the physical eye by capturing the potentialities, the intangible vitality and even the absence of the object. The third aspect takes looking as seeing-as or taking-for or treating-as. When an object is seen as something, the process embodies the function and mechanism of subjective projection by the viewing subject, and the process also requires the attention to the relevance between the logic of language and the level of verbal wisdom. Seeing-as leads the viewer into the world of impossible from the world of possible.

Key words: looking, seeing, seeing-in, seeing-as