The Function Of Suffering Factors In Aesthetic Experience: On The Characteristics Of John Dewey 's Experience Aesthetics

John Dewey’s empirical aesthetics transformed the connotation of "experience", and gave it the ontological status.He pointed out that the experience is life,which was the fundamental starting point of his aesthetics. Because of the positive affirmation of secular life, he did not ignore the suffering factor which we cannot be avoided in daily life. The traditional Western philosophy considered it as the phenomenal world,even the British Empiricism as well.However, Dewey explained the inevitability and necessity of its existence,which is the important part of his transformation of philosophy.Accordingly, owing to the pursuit of stability, traditional Western aesthetics often focused on the harmony of aesthetic experience.On the contrary, Dewey emphasized the function of suffering factor,which is an indispensable part of aesthetic experience. He transformed the connotation of "aesthetic experience", and thought it is a kind of prominent experience of daily life and the perfect end of the experience.It is the aesthetic experience that meets the mode of "an experience".His theory greatly enriched the connotation of " aesthetic experience",and affirmed the aesthetic potential of everyday life. Meanwhile, suffering is an essential factor if you want to obtain the aesthetic experience,because it plays an irreplaceable role in the occurance, meaning and beauty of aesthetic experience.The most attractive power of Dewey’s empirical aesthetics is that the warm care of real life, especially it fully affirmed the value and significance of the everyday life by analyzing the function of suffering factor in the aesthetic experience. Meanwhile, it also helps people to comprehensively treat the suffering of life,which makes us obtain the aesthetic experience from the suffering and hold the happiness from the unstability.