Claim. When the subject finds joy in an object that supplies what the subject lacks (e.g., a man finds grace in a woman), this complementarity is itself a deeper form of resemblance — resemblance to the subconscious image of what completes the subject — because no joy can arise from mere differences without an underlying commonality of purpose.
Elaboration. Lee anticipates an obvious objection to the resemblance theory of joy: aren’t we often delighted by what is unlike us? His answer (Complementarity) is that complementarity is resemblance, just operating at a deeper layer. Two reasons are offered.
First, ontological: ‘A human being alone can not become a complete being.’ Humans were created in pairs — man with God’s Yang characteristics, woman with His Yin characteristics — and their union resembles the harmony of God’s dual-characteristics. So complementarity restores the original creational pattern. Moreover, everyone has within the subconscious an image of what one lacks; when an object matches that image, joy arises because the object resembles the image-of-what-completes-me, not despite difference.
Second, individual-image: God created humans such that each possesses one of God’s Individual Images, so finding what one lacks in another is finding another facet of God. The example given is a desk and chair — two separate things that become a ‘perfect being (set)’ by complementing each other; their unity fulfills the purpose-of-creation and produces joy.
Lee then states the limit case explicitly: ‘No beauty or joy can arise from mere differences without commonality, namely, a common purpose or resemblance.’ Difference alone is alienating; difference within a shared purpose is complementary; the shared purpose is the deep resemblance that makes the surface difference joyful rather than disturbing.
This is theoretically clever — it preserves the resemblance principle while absorbing apparent counter-examples. It also has wide implications: marriage as the paradigm case of complementary joy explains why the family is the school of beauty (a claim Lee makes explicitly in section IX, where all types of beauty derive from familial love-types). Critics will note that ‘common purpose’ is doing a lot of work — almost anything can be redescribed as sharing some common purpose at some level — which lets the resemblance theory absorb counterexamples by retreating to ever-deeper levels of commonality. But it lets Lee maintain a unified theory of aesthetic joy that does not fragment into resemblance-joy vs. complementarity-joy as separate mechanisms.
See also. joy-arises-from-resemblance-between-subject-and-object, man-yang-substantial-woman-yin-substantial, men-and-women-not-equal-in-rights-but-equal-in-love