Study On Jean-Francois Lyotard’s Sublime Aesthetic Thought

As an integral part of post-modernism,sublime aesthetics is Lyotard’s profound thinking on how culture and art can maintain sublime sentiment under the dual oppression of science and technology and the market.In the course of the development of Lyotard’s thought,he never neglected the study of aesthetic issues and the discussion of literature,painting and other works of art,which is prominently reflected in the sublime aesthetics that Lyotard put forth efforts to develop after the 1970s.He spared no effort to emphasize the importance of "sublimity",and reinterpreted the theory of sublimity from the post-modern standpoint,thus developing a unique post-modern sublime aesthetics.This kind of sublimity has replaced the transcendental and overall purport of the.classical sublimity,paying more attention to human senses,emphasizing sensibility,paying attention to the subject’s self feelings,and pursuing differences.Therefore,compared with the classical sublimity,Lyotard’s postmodern sublime is not only a concept relative to "beauty",but also pays more attention to the soul and becomes an important proposition related to society and survival.This paper mainly constructs the structure of the article with "sublime" as the core keyword,"events" as the main clue,and "expressiveness" as the theme,from sorting out the ideological source of "sublime" to clarifying its basic core concept,and then to summarizing and analyzing the research on the aesthetics and art theory of Lyotard.Fundamentally speaking,Lyotard’s sublime aesthetics always revolves around "events".In Lyotard’s view,all critical works begin with the analysis of the concept of events.It should be said that the event is the root of all the postmodern thoughts of Lyotard,and it runs through the whole process of the development of Lyotard’s thoughts.In terms of the essence of an event,Lyotard defined it as a "sudden",that is,to emphasize a contingency,occurrence and unpredictability.The event is beyond human consciousness,and it is a kind of material that human consciousness can not give meaning to.Therefore,the "event" mentioned by Lyotard refers to the direct occurrence of events,which is beyond our description ability and scope and is full of strong mystery that cannot be captured.Therefore,his sublime aesthetics can be regarded as a kind of sublime aesthetics based on events to a certain extent,and its purpose is to highlight the uncertainty and non expressiveness of sublime aesthetics through the instantaneity of events.Focusing on this "non expressiveness",the full text is divided into five parts,the main contents are as follows:The first part mainly discusses the historical tracing and ideological basis of Lyotard’s sublime aesthetics.Lyotard inherited the transcendental essence of classical sublime and applied it to the exploration of post-modern sublime.Moreover,Lyotard investigated the western social culture and found the crisis of human existence in the modern society.This exploration of silent discourse not only became the origin of Lyotard’s post-modern thought,but also laid a certain ideological foundation for the essence of the non expressiveness of sublime aesthetics.The second part mainly discusses Lyotard’s desire aesthetics.The desire of libido that Freud advocated has not been controlled by reason has become an important basis for Lyotard’s resistance to traditional theoretical discourse.Therefore,in the stage of desire aesthetics,the uncertainty and non expressiveness of libido became the initial expression of Lyotard’s sublime aesthetics.The third part mainly discusses the essence of Lyotard’s sublime aesthetics.What Lyotard proposes to express is actually an uncertain feature,that is,to present something that cannot be shown,and what cannot be shown is an important weapon for Lyotard to challenge totality and resist traditional rationalism.At the same time,Lyotard’s sublime aesthetics is a kind of sublime with critical significance.It focuses on the contemplation of life,and its essence is an existential sublime aesthetics.The fourth part mainly discusses the carrier of Lyotard’s sublime aesthetics,that is,avant-garde art.In Lyotard’s view,each avant-garde work is an opportunity to produce sublimity,so we need to constantly use new works to express the things that cannot be expressed.The fifth part mainly discusses the contemporary evaluation of Lyotard’s sublime aesthetics.For Lyotard,a noble aesthetics based on the value of individual life always advocates an inclusive and diversified value pursuit.However,this post-modern sublime is also inevitably faced with the possibility of moving towards nihilism and decadence.It should be said that Lyotard’s sublime aesthetics puts forward more problems for the future study of sublime aesthetics,and further expands the research space of sublime aesthetics.