The Research On The Matter Of Body In The Perspective Of Aesthetic Ethics

"The matter of body" is a hotspot issue at the leading edge of current humanities and social science. The way of thinking, the research approaches as well as the value judgment have seen enormous change, which is believed to be attributed to the so-called "the body turning". The change has turned out to be an important theoretical question of modern knowledge science, but also a new realistic question in social life and aesthetic activities in the context of consumption era. How to establish the legitimacy and validity of the research on this question in the aesthetic ethics dimension, especially on the basis of the comparative studies of the body question in the perspectives of Chinese and the West philosophy, aesthetic and ethics both, however, leaves large room to go. Therefore, there exists a sharp contrast between the urgent concern with the body reality and the unequal interpretation of its aesthetic ethics. It is the unbalanced condition that leads me to the investigation.This thesis consists of five parts and the conclusion. In the first part, the emergence and importance of the aesthetic ethics of the matter of body is briefly discussed, and the research status home and abroad is surveyed. The second part mainly clarifies the concept of body and the varied ideas about it so that the connotation of the concept is clearly displayed in the theoretical frame of modernization and modernity. In the third part covers the related questions between body and ethic. To be specific, body, as the primordium of ethics, set rules for itself; however, ethics, as the disciplinary of body set rules for body. On the basis, the body practice is fully discussed in the consumption ethics perspective. In the fourth part, the discussion, starting from the realistic situation, touches the body aestheticism in consumption context, and then in order to seek a theoretical guide, the discussion turns to Marx’s Manuscript of Economics and Philosophy in 1844 and analyzes the ideas about body in Marxism aesthetics. The discussion in this part is put an end by interpreting Merleau-Ponty and R. Shusterman’s thoughts thinking upon this matter. In the fifth part, the aesthetic ethics of body is finally set up through the comparative studying on Kant and Sadd. The conclusion is, of course, the last part of the dissertation, but it doesn’t necessarily mean the end of the discussion, since all the discussion above can be summed up into one sentence, that is, it is not the body that we talk about, but we are thinking in body. And then the possible promising future of body study is predicted.The basic idea of this thesis is to put forth the questions and claim the writer’s standing ground, then trace its history and undertake discussion, finally come to a conclusion and reflect the reality. To be specific, standing on body’s position to view body’s location in Chinese and Western thinking domains, social scene and aesthetic activities, and discuss the reasons of the over-interpretation ignore and absence of body in aesthetic history in hope of establish the validity of the body aesthetic ethics. What’s more, on the basis the writer relates the ideas about body from the angel of question history, body activities from the angle of life history, and body’s liberation from the angel of aesthetic history.This dissertation adheres to the following three principles:the principle of historical materialism and materialist dialectics, the principle of unity of aesthetic and history, and the principle of sticking to ethical analysis and, however, giving up moral trial.The points of the dissertation can be listed as follows:Firstly, body is a obscure battlefield in the history of thoughts. Without body, man can do nothing in understanding themselves; with body, can man do everything in understanding themselves? Thus, the disenchantment of body is a hard mission in the historic process of modernization and modernity.Secondly, the research on body is a key link of current aesthetic development. Because of the change of contemporary aestheticism ideas, the matter of body is highlighted, so an opportunity is offered. It is time to take this opportunity to solve the body question that has been ignored for a long time. But the so-called solution is by no means an eternal end, but merely a new start. Therefore, the writer abandons the either-this-or-that mode of thinking, underscores that spirit does not dwells outside body, but in body, and tries to find out a possible solution for the unity of body and spirit.Finally, as for the body reduction and incarnation truth and other issues caused by the body turning, the dissertation puts forth such an idea that the natural body does not have adequate and complete significance, the body significance is not a pure text question, but a social-historical question in practice. Just because of this, Marx’s viewpoint of practice should be the theoretical foundation for the discussion of body question, an internal core of aesthetic ethics as well. Any research on this question is likely to fail without this foundation and core.