Light Of Athena

Upbraided as a valueless "aesthetic Utopia", the Frankfurt School's aesthetic thoughts has been ignored by researchers for a long time due to it's distinct functional orientation and omni-directional aesthetic views. This ignore can't but to be a defect of the study on the Frankfurt School theory at present. The author tries to improve the situation by giving an objective and overall description of the Frankfurt School's aesthetic Utopia thoughts. On the basis of adapting the limitation of aesthetic Utopia thoughts and adopting "chasing layers step-by-step" method, the author analyzes the backgrounds, clarifies the conceptions and straightens the relationships of the thoughts and makes deep analysis on the theory's positive aspects.The article is divided into six parts.Part I: Brief Introduction. In this part, relative information is provided, such as the origination of the topic, the meaning of the research and the situation of such research at present, etc.Part II: "Utopia" and "Aesthetic Utopia". In this part, the author clarifies different forms of Utopia prior to the Frankfurt School thoughts, analyzes the characteristics of Utopia and discusses the relationships between Utopia and Aesthetic Utopia."Utopia" was originally an island country described by an English writer Moll in one of his novels. Because of the etymology of the word "Utopia" itself and the influence of the novel, a lot of different Utopia forms have derived from then on. Due to the characteristics owned by "Utopia" as a philosophy category, such as surmounting-nature, subverting, and relativity, etc, an idea which is impossible to realize is usually called "Utopia" by representatives of certain classic in order to maintain their own benefits.Aesthetic Utopia thought was raised by those disappointed philosophers who were not satisfied with the capitalist society but had no methods to reform it. Facing the alienating capitalist society, they suggested save the alienated world by "aesthetics", that is, make people who had lost their instincts of freedom and harmony regain the uniform of perception and rationality under the influence of aesthetics, and then, make the society more harmonious.Part III: Frankfurt School and "Aesthetic Utopia". In this part, the author explains the theoretical backgrounds of the Frankfurt School, analyzes the destination of their change from society-criticism to Aesthetic Utopia thoughts, and indicates the important status of Aesthetic Utopia thoughts in Frankfurt School theories. The Aesthetic thought isthe further development of Frankfurt School's society-criticism theory and serves for it. The emphasis of the Aesthetic thought is not to undertake abstractive study of aesthetics and arts, but to put aesthetics on the position of "society criticizer", when artists finally took the task of saving the world, the focus of Frankfurt School theories turned from social political to aesthetics arts, the society-criticism theory turned from revolutionary political theory to aesthetical theory accordingly. We can say, the Frankfurt School theories began with society-criticism theory, but earned great success with Aesthetical theory.Part IV: the "Aesthetic Utopia" of Frankfurt School. In this part, the author explains the reason why there are two thoroughly different opinions on "Aesthetic Utopia": the different understandings of "Utopia" induce different understandings of "Aesthetic Utopia", from the researchers' point of view, "Aesthetic Utopia" is the whole summery and comments of the Frankfurt School's aesthetical thoughts; while from the Frankfurt School theorists' point of view, "Aesthetic Utopia" is a kind of define of aesthetics itself.According to Frankfurt School theorists, "Utopia" is not a political entity unreachable, but a realizable historical concept. To them, aesthetics is a kind of circuitous strategy, or is a kind of self-adjustment after suffering fractures on the way to social politics directly. As to the operating mechanism of Aesthetic Utopia, the Frankfurt School theoris...