The discussion of aesthetic problems began with the articles published by Zhu Guangqian, Cai Yi and Li Zehou in People's Daily 1956. In the early 1960s, nearly 100 people participated in the discussion, with about 300 papers. Literary and Art Newspaper and New Construction Magazine have successively edited six episodes of Aesthetic Issues Discussion Collection. This is an unprecedented debate in the history of China's aesthetics. From the basic tendency, it can be summarized into three main factions.
Cai Yi advocates that beauty is objective, that is, the root of beauty lies in the attribute characteristics of objective things that have nothing to do with people. Cai Yi believes that "the beautiful image of an objective thing is related to the essence of the objective thing itself, ... and does not depend on the viewer's perspective". He put forward that "the essence of beauty is the typicality of things". It is also believed that beauty fully shows the commonness of kinds and the essence of such things, that is, typicality.
Zhu Guangqian advocates that beauty is the unity of subjectivity and objectivity. He believes that "beauty is the trait that some things, attributes and shapes in objective aspects are suitable for subjective ideology and can be integrated into a complete image". Zhu Guangqian used productive labor practice to explain aesthetic problems, thinking that art is productive practice, thus understanding subjectivity as the subject in practice, that is, subjective and dynamic aspects.
Li Zehou advocates that beauty is the unity of objectivity and sociality. He believes that "beauty, like kindness, can only be the product of human society, and they are only meaningful to people and human society" and "beauty is the product of social practice". Li Zehou explained the essence of beauty according to the viewpoint of "humanized nature" in Manuscripts of Marxist Economics and Philosophy 1844, and thought that "after hundreds of thousands of years of production struggle, nature is no longer an enemy that harms us, but has increasingly become our friend, and nature has changed from" freedom "to" for me ". He thus clarified that natural beauty is objectively endowed by human social life.
In addition, some people think that beauty is subjective, that beauty is an idea or that beauty is just a subjective feeling.
This academic discussion also combines literary creation and literary criticism to discuss theoretical issues such as thinking in images, artistic mode and creative methods. Introduction to Aesthetics, edited by Wang Chaowen, was completed on 1964. It attempts to systematically expound the aesthetic principles from the perspective of Marxism, and to some extent reflects the achievements of aesthetic research at that time. Wang Chaowen's new artistic creation theory and the theory of "taking one as ten" enrich the research of aesthetic psychology from the perspective of artistic creation and appreciation.
Since the late 1970s, aesthetic discussions have become more and more active, with an unprecedented number of articles and books, the scale of participation in discussions has been expanding, and various aesthetic journals have been published one after another. The aesthetic views of the above schools have deepened or developed in their persistence.
Li Zehou put forward the theory of historical "accumulation" on the basis of practical philosophy, and further explained "humanized nature" in his works such as Critique of Critical Philosophy-A Review of Kant and Aesthetics, and Sense of Form. He believes that the historical materialism centered on the development of human history is the core and theme of Marxist philosophy, and the subjective psychological structure of all human cognition, from feeling and perception to concept and thinking, is formed on the basis of this extremely long human labor practice. A variety of natural structures and forms are first preserved and accumulated in this practice, and then can be transformed into information systems of language, symbols and culture, and finally accumulated into human psychological structure, resulting in human subjectivity or human nature that is fundamentally different from animals. It is the unity of sensibility (naturalness) and rationality (sociality), or rationality is accumulated in sensibility. In his exposition of aesthetics and sense of form, he thinks that the form of objects and the sense of form of people are far from pure natural things. The correspondence and isomorphism between nature and people, things and feelings in natural quality and sense of form is also a crucial intermediate link that runs through the historical practice of human social life. The sense of physical and mental form in aesthetics still has social and historical factors and achievements. The physiological and psychological universality of aesthetic sense of form, the same sex is interrelated, intertwined and infiltrated with specific society, times, national habits, traditions, imagination and concepts. Therefore, in the so-called sense of form, there are actually things that are super-formal and super-perceptual. Therefore, formal beauty is not equal to form, and aesthetics is perceptual but not equal to sensibility. He believes that only from the perspective of formal sense can we see that Marx's theory of humanized nature is a theory that correctly expounds these unified basic philosophies.
Zhu Guangqian further elaborated his basic viewpoint in On Beauty and Selected Works of Aesthetics, that is, beauty is the unity of subjective and objective. He believes that from a practical point of view, Marx regards spiritual production activities and material production activities as unity, both of which are practical processes for people to transform the objective world, thus embodying themselves and transforming themselves. Unlike animals, people have self-awareness, that is, consciousness. He realized that he was a member of mankind and was born according to this understanding; Animals are only produced unilaterally according to the direct needs of the body, while people are completely free to produce according to the more far-reaching needs of people. This affirmed the broad theme and social function of literature and art, and he pointed out that art is a kind of productive labor, and literary and artistic creation activities, like material production, involve various forces of the whole person's spirit and body. It involves self-awareness, thinking in images and rational thinking restricted by purpose; It involves will and emotion, as well as dynamic organs and concentration under high tension. Both literary and artistic creation and material production can produce aesthetic feeling, that is, from labor, I feel the pleasure of using various physical and mental forces. Practice is the action of social people to transform nature and society with their "essential strength" or function, which is mainly seen in sports production and social revolutionary struggle. When applied to aesthetics, literature and art are also a kind of spiritual labor, which is not divorced from physical labor. It not only actively reflects nature and society, but also transforms and promotes nature and society. Man and nature (including society) are by no means two unrelated opposites, but constantly promote each other. So there is a natural influence between people. Nature also embodies the essential strength of human beings.
The Outline of Aesthetic Principles, edited by Cai Yi, further clarifies the objective essence of beauty, and holds that the essence of beauty exists objectively in the real thing itself, so we should explore the essence of beauty in the objective reality. This book is based on the argument that "human beings are also shaped according to the law of beauty" put forward in Marx 1844 economic and philosophical manuscripts, and holds that everything that conforms to the law of beauty is beautiful. The essence of beauty is the law of beauty. Law refers to the essential and inevitable relationship between things, phenomena of things, or attribute conditions of things. Therefore, the law of beauty, like all laws, must be objective. Whether it is the beauty of natural things, the beauty of social things or the beauty created by people, it has the objective attribute of the law of beauty. He further pointed out that the law of beauty refers to fully expressing the essence of things with very prominent phenomena. It strongly expresses the universality and distinctive personality of things. This actually refers to the typical law, so the law of beauty is the typical law.
The research on the history of Chinese aesthetics has been rather weak. Since 1980, monographs, papers and materials have been selected and published. Among them, Li Zehou's The Course of Beauty explores the laws and characteristics of the development of China's aesthetic consciousness from the ancient times when art originated to the Qing Dynasty. The History of Chinese Aesthetics, the first volume (pre-Qin and Han Dynasties) edited by Li Zehou and Liu Gangji, was published in 1984. It puts forward the objects, tasks, characteristics and stages of the history of Chinese aesthetics, and regards Confucianism, Taoism, Sao and Zen as the four branches of ancient aesthetics in China. This is the first systematic work on the history of Chinese aesthetics. In addition, there are many papers on the aesthetic thoughts of Confucius and Mencius, Laozi, Liu Xie, Si Kongtu, Su Shi, Yan Yu, Shi Tao, Li Yu, Ye Xie, Cao Xueqin, Wang Guowei, Cai Yuanpei and Lu Xun.
The introduction and research of western aesthetics have been strengthened, and Zhu Guangqian's History of Western Aesthetics, Jiang Kongyang's German Classical Aesthetics and Ruxin's Series of History of Western Aesthetics have been published. Some scholars' works and translations in this field are being published one after another.