On Zhu Guangqian’s Marxist View Of Aesthetics

Zhu Guangqian was one of the most important aestheticians of the 20 th century in China.He learned from both the East and the West,and he blended the ancient and the modern.After the founding of New China,Zhu Guangqian shifted from subjective idealism,with Croce’s "intuition" as the core,to Marxism.The fundamental transformation of his late aesthetic thought was mainly due to three reasons,namely,the changes in the domestic social environment after the founding of New China,his own long-standing conscious exploration of academic pursuits,and his own cultivation of Chinese and Western cultures.After accepting Marxism,Zhu Guangqian studied the original Marxist canon and,after careful consideration,creatively interpreted Marxism in his own unique way,applying Marxist principles and methods to solve important problems in aesthetics,making unique and profound expositions on the essence of beauty,the theory of artistic production,and the theory of literary and artistic development.Regarding the essential theory of beauty,Zhu Guangqian uses the views of Marxist ideological theory and practice as the theoretical basis to explain and argue that beauty is the unity of subject and object,and criticizes the mechanical materialist view of aesthetics of the objective school such as Li Zehou and Cai Yi according to the basic principles of Marxism.Zhu Guangqian tries to solve the problem of the essence of beauty from the practical viewpoint of Marxism,and his "unity of subject and object" is richer in materialistic dialectic than those aestheticians who start from the intuitive viewpoint.Regarding the theory of artistic production,Zhu Guangqian explained the consistency between material and spiritual production based on the practical viewpoint.Emphasizing that art is a kind of productive labor and attaching importance to the practical significance of art,Zhu Guangqian intended to break through the epistemological frame of mind of previous aestheticians and expand the vision of aesthetic research.Regarding the theory of literary development,he pointed out that the development of literature and art and the all-round development of human beings are dialectically related,and that art is an indispensable component for realizing the all-round development of human beings.In addition,Zhu Guangqian attached great importance to the aesthetic subject "man" in his later years.With great academic courage,he advocated breaking through the forbidden zone of "human nature" and "humanitarianism" in literary and artistic creation.These important aesthetic propositions and views put forward by Zhu Guangqian enriched the level of Marxist aesthetic research in China and made groundbreaking contributions to the construction and development of Marxist aesthetics in China.Judging from Zhu Guangqian’s later aesthetic research,Zhu Guangqian always adhered to the guidance of Marxist methodology,studied aesthetic and artistic activities from a dialectical,historical and developmental point of view,gradually abandoned thinking about aesthetics from abstract concepts,and instead focused on the concrete literary and artistic practices in life,paying more attention to the aesthetic relationship between people and reality.This is an important inspiration for the study of aesthetics in China.However,his aesthetic thought also has theoretical defects and problems that need further exploration.For example,his theory of "subject-object unity" has theoretical flaws,and his understanding of the connotation of Marxist "ideology" is ambiguous.His idea of "anthropology" needs to be further strengthened and deepened today.