On Li Zehou's Practical Aesthetics Thought

Li Zehou's practical aesthetics, formed between 50s and 60s in 20thcentury, attaches great importance to practice and thinks highly of humanization; his aesthetics outlook on the unity of objectivity and socialization has broken the triangular deadlock of CaiYi, Zhu Guangqian and LuYing in the field of aesthetics at that time and led Chinese aesthetics towards the direction to develop a new matericalism. In 70s and 80s LiZehou set out to construct the practical philosophy of subjectivity and aesthetics (the ontology of anthropology), and put forward a series of brand-new categories and propositions such as "nature humanization", "tools ontology", "psychology ontology", "the construction of cultural psychology", "accumulation" and "new perception " etc. the practical aesthetics represented by LiZehou, with the aim to build up "subjectivity" and call on "the emancipation of human being", has a great influence in academic field becomes the main stream of Chinese aesthetics, for which, Mr.Li himself won the honor of "the reservoir of thoughts ". In the late 80s, facing Chinese modernization, Mr.Li further built up "individual subjectivity ","the ontology of emotions" and other aesthetic Utopias for the hope of adding some true humanism care to the future social construction of China.Mr.Li is an aesthete, a philosopher and a thinker, for which his aesthetic study contains the enthusiastic sensitivity of an artist, the extensive horizon of a philosopher and the intensive thoughts of a thinker. In his aesthetics, the integration between the Chinese and the western or the ancient and the present, can be found everywhere and he not only has the courage and wisdom to make a great use of others' works but also has the initiative spirit of not breaking others' ideas without his own creative thoughts. Unlike the scholars of ivory tower to give empty talk, he always faces the trend of times and considers the society and the theme of life; he studies western philosophy ( like Marxist philosophy and Kant's ) for the reason of applying them into Chinese and studies traditions ( like Confucianism and Taoism ) for the purpose of putting them to current use. To some degree, the exploration progress of Mr.Li's practical aesthetics in fact, reflects the whole development of Chinese aesthetics in the late 20th century and his practical aesthetics is so important that so far no other aesthetics could replace it. Believe it or not, it has actually constituted the skeleton of aesthetic body in current China. In other words, to study Mr.Li's practical aesthetics is almost to study the whole Chinese current aesthetics. So it goes without saying that to study the thought of Mr.Li's practical aesthetics becomes very important. Mr.Li's practical aesthetics is both intensive and extensive and is developed and renovated continually with persistence and this makes it difficult to grasp it cross wise and staticly. So this thesis is to expound it both in length and breadth mainly according to the dgnamic logical progress of his aesthetics thought development. As far as the length is concerned, it can be roughly divided into three periods: the early time — founding the practical aesthetics, the middle time — constructing the practical aesthetics of subjectivity and the late period — building the ontology of emotions. furthermore, each period is horizontally divided into three levels : the philosophy of beauty, the psychology of aesthetics and the sociology of art. After expounding the above concepts, the thesis further discusses the academic contributions and the deficiencies in Mr.Li's practical aesthetics in order to explore the core part of his thoughts dialectically. Finally, the thesis summarizes some basic characteristics, approaches and current meanings from the studies of Mr.Li's practical aesthetics for the hope of paving the way to explore and use more effectively the resources of Mr.Li's practical aesthetics thought.