Comparison Of Literature Aesthetics Ideas Between Zhu Guangqian And John Dewey

Zhu Guangqian and John Dewey are the outstanding persons in the aesthetics history of Chinese and western. Although there are some common grounds in literature aesthetics ideas between them, but there are many differences also. It is very importance to compare the advantage and disadvantage of their views, and grasp their souls critically, and learn more about their literature aesthetics ideas, and account for some problem in literature aesthetics.The comparison of literature aesthetics ideas between Zhu Guangqian and John Dewey will be deployed as the following:First, whether material gain and purpose are involved in aesthetics? Whether the experiences of aesthetics should be separated from cognize and practice? These two points were discussed base on the aestheticization of daily life.At the conference of aesthetics in YangZhou, 2000, there was a debate on whether aesthetics is necessary in daily life, whether daily life will give persons the sense of aesthetics. Actually, the literature aesthetics ideas of Zhu Guangqian and John Dewey were involved in the debate. At the views of Zhu Guangqian, there is no beauty at daily life for its material gain; aesthetics are not involved in material gain and purpose; a person will not get the beauty until he separate from material gain and purpose; the reasons why literature give a person the beauty sense is because it free him from the reality, and give him the"aesthetic distance"; at the same time, a person get the beautiful sense from intuition, not the famous, ethic or principles. On the contrary, at the view of John Dewey, art as experience, the experience of daily life with hard material gain is included in this experience also, John Dewey protested to combine aesthetics experience and daily experience together, and aesthetics experience is equivalent to daily life experience. Indeed, the viewpoints of Zhu is disproved those of John Dewey, that regard the experience of aesthetic and daily life as the same, and extend the beautiful sense of daily life. So, it is clear that the viewpoints of Zhu and John Dewey are the core of the debate at the aesthetics conference in YangZhou. Some actual debates of aesthetics will be solved if the differences of viewpoints between Zhu Guangqian and John Dewey are clear. How do we treat with this problem? At the sight of author, it is not rational of Zhu Guangqian to separate the experiences of daily life and aesthetics, separate the experiences of aesthetics and recognize, practice, and it should be modified by John Dewey's rational viewpoints of literature aesthetics. But it is also not rational of John Dewey to regard daily life experiences as literate aesthetics experiences, because it will bring on the Philistinism of literate. At this point, it must be modified by the reasonable viewpoints in literature aesthetics of Zhu Guangqian too. In summary, comparing the viewpoints of literature aesthetics of John Dewey and Zhu Guangqian will help us imbibe the reasonable viewpoint from them, overcome their disadvantage, and treat with the problem that whether beautiful taste in daily life is necessary or not.Second, the viewpoints of Zhu Guangqian and John Dewey are all pay attention to the relationship of literature and life, that is their homology. However, there are also some differences in the homology. Because the earlier Zhu Guangqian was influenced by Chinese classical culture, he ignored the relationships between art and the matter level of person, material gain level and practice (social) life, but he pay more attention to person's (individual) spiritual life, and the relationship between art and the life of spiritual level, such as the culture and sentiment of person; but John Dewey was influenced by the social background, characteristic of culture of his homeland, he pay more attention to the relationship between art and the matter level, material gain level of person, and practical (social) life, but seldom he involved the relationship between art and person's (individual) spiritual life. Further more, when the later Zhu Guangqian searched the relationship of art and life, he was influenced by the aesthetics of Marxism and noticed the relationship of art and the matter level, material gain and the practical (social) life of person, in this regard, it seem as if the viewpoints of Zhu Guangqian are the same as John Dewey's, however, there are essential difference of them, because the base of former is Marxism while the latter is pragmatism. In a word, although the aesthetics viewpoints of Zhu Guangqian and John Dewey are similar, there are many differences of them also, the reasons are not only their social background, cultural atmosphere are different, but also the origin of their thoughts are different.Third, Zhu Guangqian and John Dewey are all pay attention to the problem of art and the emotion of people, the"objective emotion"and the difference of emotion of aesthetics and non- aesthetics. At the same time, they also pay attention to the amalgamation and relationship of subject and object, against the opposite of them. However, for the problem of art and people's emotion, the states of their contents and view of sight are different. Zhu Guangqian stated from the sight of aesthetic intuitionalism and practical aesthetics of Marxism; while John Dewey's states is based on his pragmatism empirism and Darwin's biologic evolutionism. The research on the uniform and different of Zhu Guangqian and John Dewey's literature aesthetics ideas at these aspects, will help us grasp their standpoint, viewpoint and thing manner, and help us understand the important problem of art and people's emotion deeply.