The Study Of Liang Qichao’s Political Aesthetics

In his life, Liang Qichao has not only experienced ups and downs in his political pursuits but also rich and colorful life in literature. As a politician, Liang Qichao’s performance is not successful; as a political thinker behind the scenes, Liang Qichao has stood in the forefront of the Chinese political theory on the one hand and lagged behind the times on the other. As a scholar politician, he wrote the first chapter of political aesthetics in the history of Chinese modern aesthetics which leaves us too much thinking and reflection.It is generally acknowledged by the academic circles that Wang Guowei constructed the first chapter of Chinese modern aesthetics from the pure aesthetic perspective of regarding politics and aesthetics as two opposites. This research has ignored the achievements of Liang Qichao and other political scientists, and does not conform to the historical reality of Chinese modern aesthetics. From the perspective of the integration of politics and aesthetics, the transformation and development of Chinese modern aesthetics not only witnessed the construction of pure aesthetics but also the integration of politics and aesthetics which constituted the theory and history of Chinese modern aesthetics. In this sense, the first chapter of the Chinese modern aesthetics is not Wang Guowei’s pure aesthetics, but Liang’s political aesthetics.At present, the research on Liang Qichao’s aesthetic thought has formed three research models: The political criticism from Cai Shangsi that focuses on class labelling rather than academic study, which is surely unacceptable. Li Zehou’s enlightening criticism tries to lift the shackles of politics on aesthetics by introducing enlightening as the medium, which is doomed to not to go far. Jin Ya and other researchers’ aesthetic criticism opens a new stage for Liang’s aesthetic thoughts from perspectives within aesthetics. However, whether it is political critics, enlightenment critics and aesthetic critics, though different in political attitudes, they share the same way of thinking: all of them regard politics and aesthetics as two opposites. In fact, there exsists a basic reality of the integrestion of politics and aesthetics with regard to imagination of a better life. Liang Qichao’s aesthetic thoughts are built on the integration of politics and aesthetics. His aesthetics is in essence the aesthetics of the integration of politics and aesthetics. From the perspective of the connotation of politics, his early construction is party political aesthetics, and later Utopian political aesthetics. From the standpoint of the main body of politics, he has been holding the position of folk political aesthetics. Only through the perspective of the integrationof politics and aesthetics can we truly grasp the unique nature of Liang Qichao’s political aesthetics from pure aesthetics. Xia Xiaohong, Jin Ya and Hong Mei fang’ s study on Liang’s aesthetic thoughts from the perspective of pure aesthetics with their theoretical starting point being political and aesthetic dual opposition is, of course, not approaching the right way to Liang Qichao’s political aesthetics.Liang Qichao is a scholar politician, his political aesthetics contains three elements of politics, enlightenment and aesthetics. First, the construction of Liang Qichao’s political practice or political ideology contains the aesthetic thinking, forming a kind of aesthetic politics. Second, Liang Qichao is first a politician, his aesthetic construction has a strong political purpose, thus forming a kind of political aesthetics. Third, not only a politician, but also a thinker transforming from traditional times to modern times, Liang constructs his political aesthetics with a noticeable concern on enlightment. And, as time changes, Liang Qichao also changes in his political thoughts, thus the priority of the three elements in his political aesthetics has been changing. Druing the reform period, politics went first, englightment came next and then aesthetics. After the failure of the Reform Movement of 1898 and his flee to Japan, Liang quickly accepted the modern western political theory put enlightment first, then politics and aesthetics at the end. Influenced by Rousseau’s Social Contract and Bluntchli’s State Theory, Liang turned to politics again, the importance of englighment ceded to politics, and aesthetics went the last. As he returned to homeland after the Revolution of the 1911, he is mainly engaged in political activities as a plitician. The priority orders was politics, enlightment and aesthetics. After withdrawal from political scenes, Liang was mainly engaged in social education activities and aesthetics quickly became top priority, then englightment, and politics wents the last.Political aesthetics is a cross discipline between politics and aesthetics, and a proper medium is indispensable for its way to matrurity. Liang Qichao’s political aesthetics is the aesthetics of emotion as the medium. His early artistic aesthetics uses emotional content and emotional impact as an intermediary to connect politics with aesthetics; later aesthetic taste and emotion generation became an medium to connect tastes and art.Liang Qichao’s political aesthetics of emotional mediation is reasonable in that political emotion and moral emotion are people’s basic emotional needs leading to the realization of social security elf realization.But only attention to the political emotion makes Liang Qichao’s political aesthetics have inherent crisis, that is, it depressed and castrated the individual’s emotional and natural feelings, pumping out the foundation of human nature. On the other hand, too much focus on the literature thought and content instead of the uniquneness of literature images may lead literature to be the political mouthpiece. The gains and losses of the construction of Liang Qichao’s political aesthetics illastrate that political aesthetics may truly establish only emotoion mediation is facilitating artistic mediation.As an independent discipline, political aesthetics must bear its independent function. The most important function of Liang Qichao’s political aesthetics is enlightening people. From the point of view of enlightening object, they were mainly monarch, officials, gentry, and comrades during the reform period. After the failure of the Reform Movement of 1898 and his flee to Japan, he turned his eyes on ordinary people. After turning to Bluntchli’s State theory by from Rousseau’s Social Contract, in addition to ordinary people, Liang was actively ingaged in debate and struggle with Sun Yat-Sen’s revolutionary fraction. After withdrawal from political scenes, the objects were oridinary people, socilalist revolutionists and New Culutrue Movement acitivitists.In terms of enlightening content, He insisted political reform in the Reform Movement of 1898. After the failure of the Movement, he turned to the study of political theory of western modern countries. After withdrawal from political stages, he preached moral salvation, theory of national movement and so on. In terms of enlightening means, there were writng letters to government, lobbying during he reform period, opening newspapers and school, giving speeches and writing books in modern times. His newspapers and books in perticular greatly inspired people to follow his path.