Returning To The Domain Of Beauty Itself

This paper reviews diachronic changing of contemporary Chinese aesthetics in the view of beauty itself. It shows clearly that contemporary Chinese aesthetics, on the one hand, overcomes the drawbacks of the previous aesthetics, while on the other hand, it inevitably falls into a new misunderstanding, that is to say, it regards beauty as human knowledge or practice, or even as the highest form of human life. And as the result beauty has been covered up, suspended and enlarged. In order to eliminating this theoretical misunderstandings, the contemporary Chinese aesthetics must return to the domain of beauty itself, so that beauty can be meditated as an object of itself, as a limit and dimension of our pursuit.The contemporary Chinese aesthetics started in an intense debate on aesthetics in the fifties and sixties last century, but in the case of mode of thinking, it originated from "new aesthetics" advocated by Zhou Yang, and established by Cai Yi. "New Aesthetics" set up two modes of thinking for the contemporary Chinese aesthetic. One is that it indiscriminately applies materialism and idealism, which solve the philosophical relationship between thinking and being, to the field of aesthetics, and links with the political ideology, and consequently it regards feelings, ideas, emotions and consciousness as idealism which deviates from materialism, as something of subjective and idealism, and as decaying things of the bourgeoisie. The second is that it mechanically applies reflection principles of epistemology of Marxism-Leninism to the aesthetics, explaining beauty in framework of philosophical epistemology. Thus since the sense of beauty is the perception of beauty, beauty must of course be an objective thing, for the epistemology of dialectical materialism tells us that knowledge is the reflection of the objective world.Epistemological aesthetics overcomes the limitations of abstract metaphysical thoughts of traditional Western aesthetics; it has placed the contemporary Chinese esthetics on earth, paying close attention to social and human life, and having ample social contents. But epistemological aesthetic equates beauty with human knowledge; hence it has avoided the core issues of aesthetics, changed aesthetics themes and simplified the content of aesthetics. Furthermore, being restricted by above two thinking modes, epistemological aesthetics accepts the objectivity of beauty as an indisputable premise, so it resulted in just an activity to search for an objectivity of beauty in seemingly vigorously debate in 1950s and 1960s, moreover, the debate between the parties didn't at all developed on the basis of beauty itself, consequently the words about discuss deviated from beauty, and finally, beauty was covered.Practical Aesthetics developed in an argument with rigid objective aesthetics, though with traces of epistemology, its main emphasis of the significance of subject in aesthetic activities makes it perfect in content and form, so it has become a unique form in contemporary Chinese aesthetics. Practical aesthetics, which has applied the practice of Marxist conception to the field of aesthetics directly, thinks that the aesthetic subject is determined by the practice, aesthetic object is created by the practice, and aesthetic process is done through practice, so practice is the source of human aesthetic activities. The biggest mistake of Practical Aesthetics is that it equates Marxist Practical Philosophy with science of aesthetics, equates nature of the human with the essence of beauty, so the discussion of practical aesthetics was human nature and human generation in history rather than beauty problem, thus the question of beauty was suspended.As the result of critique and reflection on practical aesthetics, ontological aesthetics includes life aesthetics, transcendental aesthetics and existential aesthetics, which are called post-practical aesthetics. It uses western modern philosophy for reference in order to transcend the practical aesthetics; it also includes new aesthetics and practical ontology aesthetics, which defend the practical aesthetics stance. Ontological Aesthetics replaced the category of "practice" with life,existence, freedom, transcendence and so on, then by means of establishing think of ontological way, ontological aesthetics restore the human ultimate meanings to category of existence, freedom and transcendence etc., therefore, beauty becomes the highest form of the whole life. Ontological aesthetic expands the beauty to human's whole life, and ignored beauty itself, so beauty is, of course, impossible to get any solution.The historical transformation of aesthetics forms from rigid reflection aesthetics to practical aesthetics and ontological aesthetics indicates that the new aesthetics based on the criticism on the limitations of the previous one. This fully shows that contemporary Chinese aesthetics has a spirit of critique itself and potential enthusiasm of back to the domain of beauty itself, but due to social conditions of the times and the constraints of traditional culture, contemporary Chinese aesthetics can not avoid the mistakes once again. Now, in a multicultural context and in the post-modern cultural background, we should carry on the inherent spirit of reflection in contemporary Chinese aesthetics, and the enthusiasm of returning to beauty itself, so that we can re-start from the dimension of the domain of beauty itself.Returning to the domain of beauty itself has a definite historical basis and a solid content rather than an empty slogan. Kant has opened a new page for the three traditional fields:knowledge, ethic and aesthetics, with transcendental critical approach to principles of each field. Kant considers beauty as an independent thing presenting in the human mind for the first time, because he reveals the complex relationship between beauty, ethics and knowledge, in addition, he analyzes mechanism of beauty. Almost all of the following western aesthetics can be found origin and basis in Kant, for they have developed themselves just by, more or less, absorbing Kant' ideas. Kant's aesthetics therefore has the original meaning. Kant has found the boundary of beauty and showed its independence. That is the aesthetic norms and direction. Only in these norms and direction, can we truly distinguish beauty from knowledge, practice and social life, and can we deeply explore the relationship between beauty and knowledge, practice, and social life, and, finally, can we be closer to beauty itself and avoid the "non-beautification" in our research.After Heidegger saw the error of traditional metaphysics in studying "being", he raised the flag of Husserl's "to the things themselves". Finally, he backed to the era of the pre-Socratic philosophy and returned to the "being itself, and then he turned over the method of studying being. I think it is more meaningful to learn Heidegger's approach than to his some new concepts and expressions.