"Is Aesthetic Salvation Feasible?": Marcuse's Study Of Aesthetic Political Thought

Herbert Marcuse(1879-1979)was an important builder of social critical theory and one of the representatives of the early Frankfurt School.In order to more fully understand Marcuse's critical theory,this article focuses on the core and fundamental of Marcuse's critical theory and studies Marcuse's aesthetic political thought in order to enrich the study of the political philosophy of Western Marxist representatives.This article revolves around Marcuse ' s “ Why Should I Perform Aesthetic Salvation?” and “Why Would I Choose Aesthetics as the Path to Salvation?”,“How Does the Aesthetic Redemption Program Begin?” and “How to Estimate the Thought of Aesthetic Salvation?” The problem of deduction began,which in turn discussed Marcuse's aesthetic political thought's realistic background,thought evolution process,specific salvation path,and made an objective evaluation of his thoughts.The realistic background of Marcuse's aesthetic political thought is the all-round control of technical rationality on capitalist society,including the construction of false demand in the economic field,the shaping of totalitarian society in the political field and the advancement of integration in the cultural field.In the face of the morbid state of the full control of technological rationality in developed industrial societies,Marcuse,on the basis of absorbing and developing Heidegger,Marx,and Freudian ideas,set forth the path of salvation of aesthetic political ideas from the standpoint of art.Its aesthetic political thought takes "art form" as the starting point and new sensibility as the important condition for the realization of "human" liberation,and finally leads to the emergence of "new society".The criticality of Marcuse's theory still has important enlightening significance to the construction of a new social critical theory in later generations.Its aesthetic political thought itself also has a salvation function on the human spirit level.However,its aesthetic political ideas have inherent contradictions in the view of technology,and there is a certain degree of misreading of Marxism,which is a Utopian imagination.