Aldridge's Study Of Aesthetic Thought

Aldrich(Virgil C.Aldrich,1903-1998)takes phenomenology as the philosophical basis and puts forward the objective theory of aesthetic experience.In his view,the objectivity of aesthetic experience refers to the objective way of seeing things,instead of thinking and the objective way of explaining things.Aldrich emphasizes rely on prehension and observation to distinguish the aesthetic experience and non-aesthetic experience.From this we can know that aesthetics is a vital part of his thoughts,but it didn't get the academic circles the attention they deserved.Aldrich's aesthetic thoughts concentrated expression in his monograph "Philosophy of Art","Philosophy of Art" is a book of the first batch of aesthetic translation books whose editor is Li Zehou after the reform and opening.It serves to show the importance of “Philosophy of Art”.In addition to the Chinese translation in China,the research of Aldrich is only limited to the important points and a few articles.Up to now there is no academic dissertation do system research.In order to grasp the Aldrich panorama of aesthetic thought,this paper tries to use the method of layer upon layer depth,from the theoretical background to the core content to generalize Aldrich's aesthetic thoughts and make a reasonable evaluation.The full text is divided into five parts.Preface: this part introduces the Aldrich's life,aesthetic works and research present situation,meantime puts forward the idea of this essay.The first part: the theoretical background of Aldrich aesthetics thought.This part includes two aspects.One is aesthetic experience as the starting point.The research of Western aesthetic experience has a long and winding process,which provides rich theoretical resources to Aldrich.On the basis of analyzing various theories sects,Aldrich established his own unique aesthetic ideology.The second is that takes phenomenological philosophy as the foundation.Phenomenological philosophy provides a possible to break through the tendency of binary opposition.Phenomenological as a kind of philosophy and philosophical thinking,its basic principle has been widely used in the field of aesthetics.Under the influence of phenomenology,Aldrich regards it as a kind of descriptive metaphysics and believes it will inspire us to use a new way to look at things.So the Aldrich based on the philosophy of phenomenology to study the aesthetic perception of a particular way.At the sametime,Aldrich takes analytical philosophy to clarify the confusion of talking about art.He believes talking about art can be divided into three levels,art description,explanation and evaluate.The second part: the core of Aldrich aesthetic thoughts.This part mainly includes two aspects.One is theory of aesthetic experience.This part summarizes the origin of the concept of aesthetic experience,although cannot cover all the specific views of aesthetic experience,but we can grasp the meaning of the aesthetic experience is a dynamic development.Aldrich makes the research of aesthetic experience is placed in the analysis of the Cartesian dualism.He thinks aesthetic experience must have objective object of beauty that can show the aesthetic features and aesthetic experience objectivism.And Aldrich advocates aesthetic experience is different from daily experience.Aesthetic experience is a full and comprehensive property on the external things.Because of the present social,aesthetic experience from the self-discipline to a heteronomy,this part also involves the relationship between aesthetic experience and daily experience.The second is the aesthetic perception theory.This part firstly gives an overview of the development history of the concept of aesthetic perception,in hope of a longitudinal understanding.Aldrich takes the theory of the change of“aspects” of Wittgenstein and Gombrich as a theoretical basis to discuss the existence of the special way of aesthetic perception.About the problem of the relationship between the daily perception and aesthetic perception,this paper argues that the daily consciousness is the foundation of aesthetic perception,the aesthetic perception is based on the content of the sublimation of daily consciousness.The third part: the thought of art and the art of Aldrich category theory.This part mainly includes two aspects ?One is the thought of art.This part first mainly discusses the research and the relationship between the art and aesthetic experience,and different answers about the properties of the works of art.Aldrich argues that we should through material things to reveal the nature of the work of art.And Aldrich through his own thought and theory to analyze the several elements of art,including material and media,expression and representation,content and form,etc.Art criticism has different way of logic.Aldrich using the methods of language philosophy tries to find out the art to talk about the chaos phenomenon and carry on the three levels of partition to talk about art,embodied in: evaluation,interpretation and descriptionof art.The second is the art of category theory.This part is the Aldrich aesthetic thought concrete used in the field of art.With these specific art categories to prove the rationality of his thought.The fourth part: the evaluation of Aldrich aesthetic thoughts.Content of this part includes two aspects.One is the value and significance of Aldrich aesthetics.This paper argues that the value and significance lies in three aspects: the aesthetic perception in creative research way,the connotation of the aesthetic experience of philosophical investigation and aesthetic thought in the context of the interactive reality.The second is the drawback and controversy of Aldrich aesthetics.This paper tries to summarize the three aspects:look down on the study of natural beauty,the philosophy theory foundation is idealism tendency and aesthetic consciousness by doubts about whether there is any.After this section,we hope to have a comprehensive understanding of Aldrich aesthetics.