The Contribution And Limitations Of Zhou Laixiang's Aesthetic Thought

As an important aesthetician in Chinese contemporary Aesthetics, Zhou Laixiang is known for his Harmonious Aesthetics in the academic community. After the Grand Aesthetic Discussion in mid and late 20 th century, Practical Aesthetics has become the trend of Contemporary Aesthetic. As one of the most important branches of Practical Aesthetics, Zhou`s ideology mainly focused on the essence, features and laws of Aesthetics, based on the dialectical thinking method and aesthetic relationship. Zhou started his Harmonious Aesthetics in 1960 s by bringing up the idea "beauty is harmony" for the first time, and systemized it in the following ten years when he was teaching and researching. In the 1980 s, with the publication of monographs related to Harmonious Aesthetics, its academic system was maturing. Harmonious Aesthetics was finally accepted as a branch of Aesthetics after its thoughts and ideas being valued by academic circle. In 1980 s, Zhou improved and perfected his ideology by drawing on beneficial elements from the western contemporary Aesthetics and the contemporary Art. Development and breakthroughs have been made in the new era, as Harmonious Aesthetics always keeps pace with the time; researches and explores from concrete and practical issues.As Zhou's aesthetic system is extremely large and complex, it is essential for researchers to grasp the leading clue and stick to it. Taking the structure of Zhou`s Aesthetic ideology as the leading clue, the present author divided his research into three parts. The first part is the introduction of Zhou`s aesthetic thoughts with focus on the structure of the system. Methodology serves the foundation for researching Zhou`s ideology, it is also a key that generates value as well as imperfection. In the second and the third part, the author of the paper mainly discussed contributions and limitations of Zhou`s the research methods, features and theoretical influences in Aesthetics, respectively. This paper illustrated the contributions and limitations of Zhou`s aesthetic system by contrasting the three parts mentioned above. Theoretical analysis always started from a certain perspective which decides the stand of point. There are different views over the same theory in the academic circle. The value of debate over theories not only lies in the seek of truth, but also in the inspirations and impetus that drive academic development.In conclusion, the author of this paper argue that, by researching Zhou Laixiang's aesthetic ideology, we can find out significant research questions in each stages of contemporary Aesthetics and how Harmonious Aesthetics improved and perfected itself in dispute and contributed greatly to the academic community. This is of great importance to our academic research. However, as all theories are confined to social and historical conditions, none of them is immune to limitations from which we can learn lessons and accumulate experiences to promote academic development. In another word, limitations in theories are special academic contributions.