Revaluation Of Zhou Gucheng's Aesthetic Thoughts

During the 50 s and 60 s of 20 th century and the period after 1980 s,scholars in the academic cirlcle have discussed about Zhou Gucheng's aesthetic thoughts,but critiques abounded.It is worth mentioning that Zhou Gucheng was the main topic of aesthetic discussion,but there was no work about aesthetic history has ever mentioned him.After making a comprehensive survey of the attention on Zhou's aesthetic thoughts,it is found that there are two key phrases can be used to summarize: being criticized and being ignored.From the perspective of being criticized,all the ideas proposed by Zhou Gucheng have been denied,such as "The Source of Art","Two Situations","Time Spirit","The Ideal" and "The Aesthetic Principle-from Etiquette to Music" and so on.Particularly,the "Time Spirit" has even been classified as "Eight Black Theories".From the perspective of being ignored,not only the aesthetic works did not mention him,but some reasonable parts of his aesthetic thoughts had been overshadowed by the voice of critics.Therefore,it is needed to ponder over to questions: Did the ciritics over-criticize his thoughts? Is it reasonable to ignore his thoughts?To this end,this paper explored the core of Zhou's aesthetic thoughts,gained a deeper understanding of the main point of Zhou's aesthetic thoughts that caused him being criticized,and probed the reasonable parts of his thoughts by integrating the "core" and "critique",then made comments on Zhou's aesthetic thoughts.Therefore,except for the introduction,the paper is mainly divided into three parts.The first part mainly expounds the connotation of Zhou Gucheng's aesthetic thoughts.In his aesthetic thoughts,the discussion of art accounts for the most part,and he regarded the emotion as the source of art.Therefore,in this paper,emotion is defined at first,which is,as Zhou Gucheng advocated,a valuable emotion streamed from real life.From the perspective of the whole artistic creation,the situation of the artist is transformed from the non-differentiated situation(calm)to the differentiated situation(pain)and finally to the non-differentiated(calm).This is how Zhou discovered the aesthetic principle "from etiquette to music",which means,the artists formulates their ideals in order to solve contradictions and pains.They integrated the ideal and virtual reality into their works of art,and it made their mood comfortable.The perfect combination of emotion and art achieved the purpose of impressing people,meanwhile,it exerted three influences "filling the insuffic ient","co rrecting the mistake s","carrying forwa rd the a dvan tages".The second part mainly summarizes the academic critique of Zhou Gucheng's aesthetic thoughts.Many criticisms were proposed mainly under the influence of "subjective idealistic".The critics held that the ideas promoted by Zhou were all self-centered,such as like "emotion","two kinds of realm","ideal".The paper mainly summarizes the three major critiques: firstly,the critique of emotional aesthetics,which holds that Zhou Gucheng advocated the universal human nature of the bourgeoisie,and it is a manifestation of art.Secondly,the critique of the individual-centered concept of art,which holds that art is merely a vent to personal feelings,but not the expression of social contradictions.Thirdly,the critique of his outlook of class(the super-class outlook integrated with the times spirit)and his outlook of contradictions(the absolute static view in the non-differentiated situation).The third part mainly evaluates Zhou Gucheng's aesthetic thoughts.Although the works of aesthetics history did not mention him,Zhou Gucheng's emphasis on emotion is not only the inheritance of Chinese lyric traditions(such as "Peotry Shows Ideals","Poetry Created with True Feelings Are Beautiful" and "Writing Articles to Express Feelings",etc.),but also the transformation that fused a series of theories related to social reality like contradiction,revolution and struggle.It is so unique and outstanding that overshadowed four major schools of aesthetics,and highlights the features of original sensibility in aesthetics by discussing the relationship between emotion and art.By evaluating Zhou Gucheng's aesthetic thoughts,the reasonable parts of his aesthetic thoughts has been discovered among numerous criticisms.