In China, Confucius was the earliest thinker who advocated aesthetic education.

In the 20th century, Cai Yuanpei strongly advocated it in Peking University and the whole country, which had a great influence.

Aesthetic education belongs to humanistic education, and its goal is to develop a perfect life.

Schiller believes that people have two kinds of impulses, perceptual impulse and rational impulse. Both of these impulses will lead to people being forced (stressed). Emotional impulse makes people bear the pressure of natural requirements, while rational impulse makes people bear the pressure of rational requirements. Faced with these two impulses, people are not free. So Schiller put forward the third party impulse, that is, the game impulse. He believes that this third kind of impulse, the game impulse, can eliminate these two pressures and "make people free both materially and spiritually." Schiller believes that the object of game impulse is beauty (in a broad sense) and beauty is a "living image". So Schiller called the game impulse "the aesthetic impulse to create images".

Schiller said: "only when people are completely human can they play;" Only when a person plays, he is a complete person. "

The connotation of this proposition is that aesthetics is absolutely necessary for human spiritual freedom and the perfection of human nature. Without aesthetic activities, people can't achieve spiritual freedom, people can't achieve the perfection of human nature, and people are not real people.