Feuerbach’s Happiness And Aesthetics

Feuerbach plays an important role in the German classical philosophy,he also had a profound effect on later philosophy research. However, domestic research on his theory is not enough especially about the analysis of his aesthetics thought which needs to be analyzed deeply,what is more, the research on the relationship between his happiness and aesthetics in China is rare.Therefore, it is necessary to make a detailed research and analysis about the relationship between his theory of happiness and aesthetic in order to have a better understand of the philosophy of Feuerbach.The theory of happiness is deeply influenced by and constitutes an important part of Feuerbach’s humanism philosophy which is created on the basis of criticizing theology of religion and Hegel’s speculative philosophy. The three factors, namely God, Reason, Human, are the foundation of Feuerbach’s philosophy. Feuerbach’s philosophy is very complected since it undergones the process of "God-Reason-Human". He changed his primary belief in theology to the pursuit of Reason and becomed a Hegelian, then, he gave up his rational theory and focused on perceptual and reality person. Feuerbach’s happiness is a route of materialism. Based on the perceptual nature, it affirmed the great function of realistic life, living and morality on happiness. He severely criticized the value of Happiness for religious theology and rationalism,so as to help others to pursuit happiness in the real world other than in the virtual world.His value can be divided in to three parts. First, life itself is happiness. Feuerbach affirmed the close relationship between happiness and life, and even equaled life with happiness. He thought that the most basic and original activity of all living creatures is to pursue happiness. Thus, he called on people to turn to pursue the happiness in real life from the virtual spiritual happiness in religious theology,Which is a great blow to the traditional religious theology.Second, living itself is happiness which is the further development of the value " life itself is happiness". Feuerbach thought that all activities of people are the pursuit of happiness, that is, living is happiness. He listed four examples to illustrate it, namely,"Pursuming materials is happiness","Commiting suicide is to pursue happiness","Having a religious belief is the pursuit of happiness","Having sex is also the pursuit of happiness". His value made great progress at the time because he not only closely linked happiness to real life but also claimed that people’s desire should be satisfied which affirmed the importance of perceptual thought on one’s happiness. His values help people to get rid of relying their happiness on inexistent god, and overly emphasizing the decisive role of rationality for happiness, and then focus on real life. Third,"the principle of morality is happiness", Feuerbach analyzed this respectively from moral principles of egoism, obligations, conscience, virtue and so on.He thought that one can obtain happiness on the condition that one act with reasonable egoinsm which means that others’right to pursue happiness should be guarenteed when pursuming ours. Duty which is in accordance with the goal of protect and respect ourselves refelcts our desire to pusure happiness. And conscience is the bridge between our happiness and others’which are closely related. When our conscience makes others happy, we obtain happiness in return.Happy person can make his or her conscience clearer. At the same time, a conscientious man can help him to achieve happiness. Morality and happiness are also closely linked because moral behavior can bring one with happiness. happiness can help people achieve their moral behavior.The happiness is also closely linked to aesthetics, because they are both the reflection of life itself and its existence. On the relation between "the theory of happy life" and aesthetic, it relfects which shows to take care of the value of life and to carry forward the value of the individual subject, it has in common with life aesthetics; In the relationship between "the theory of happy life" and aesthetic,it shows the attention to real life, advocates that people need pay attention to real life, then to obtain happiness and beauty. It also had a great effect on chernychevsky’s theory about "beauty is life" and Marx’s aesthetic thoughts; on the relationship between "the theory of moral happiness" and aesthetic, it is a reflection of basic relationship or thinking between "I" and" YOU " and a reflection of morality as a means to analyze the relationship between happiness and beauty.