A Comparative Study On Confucius And Aristotle’s Music Education Concepts

Confucius and Aristotle, as the most representative synthesizers in China and west, Their prolific philosophical concepts, educational concepts, political concepts have been always shining the light of wisdom and researched by posterity in human history. In that era, they both published their concepts about music education in the same time.Confucius and Aristotle were living in China and west, which had quite different history and culture environment, their cogitations would have many differences. However, The author find that their music education concepts have a lot in common. This article tries to compare Confucius and Aristotle’s music education concepts, including background, functions and purposes, contents, objects and approaches. Through these comparisons, we can analyze the similarities and differences between China and west in music education. The author tries to analyze and understand their concepts of music education, to bring some inspiration and acquire new knowledge and ideas for our contemporary general music education of school.Confucius and Aristotle both affirmed the social function of music, affirmed music education is an important role in the character training. Therefore, they both believe that music education is an essential and important part of a country’s education system, music education has long way to go. This article will use ancient and modern concept of public music education as the core, take Confucius and Aristotle’s music education concepts as a clue to compare the theory and practice of music education, aim to inspire contemporary school music education in our country to write this article. This article consists of four chapters:The first chapter is the introduction, mainly elaborate the research background, significance and relevant concept. The second chapter is sort out literature. The third chapter is the key part of the article, including the comparisons about background, functions and purposes, contents, objects and approaches of Confucius and Aristotle’s music education concepts. The fourth chapter disserts the development of China’s contemporary general music education of school. Then through Confucius and Aristotle’s concepts of music education, we can find out problems about it, to bring some useful inspiration for today’s general music education of school in our country.