Aesthetics is a science that studies aesthetic categories such as beauty, ugliness and sublimity, people's aesthetic consciousness and experience, and the emergence, development and law of beauty from the perspective of the aesthetic relationship between man and reality. Aesthetics is a subject with the theme of studying the essence and significance of beauty. Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy. The main object of research is art, but it does not study the concrete expression in art, but studies the philosophical problems in art, so it is called "artistic philosophy of beauty". The basic problems of aesthetics include the essence of beauty, the relationship between aesthetic consciousness and aesthetic object, etc.

Aesthetics and philosophy

Among the disciplines related to aesthetics, aesthetics is most closely related to philosophy. Aesthetics itself is a philosophical discipline. This is because the basic problem of aesthetics is a philosophical speculative problem. The formation and nature of any theory depends on the way it asks questions. Aesthetics originated from Plato's question: "What is beauty?" Beauty here is not the concrete thing of beauty, but the fundamental reason that makes all beautiful things beautiful. This leads people's attention from the complicated perceptual phenomenon to the abstract essence that dominates everything, from the eternal beauty to the eternal beauty itself, which obviously follows the metaphysical philosophy tradition of ancient Greece. At the same time, the construction of aesthetics discipline system was deeply influenced by philosophy at that time, and its discipline framework, theoretical paradigm and way of thinking were all branded with contemporary philosophy. Another interesting phenomenon is that almost all the great aestheticians in history are great philosophers, and there are fewer writers or artists. Finally, the complex relationship between western modern aesthetics and philosophy also proves the inseparable relationship between aesthetics and philosophy from another side. On the surface, western modern aesthetics rejects philosophy, but what it rejects is actually only western traditional philosophy, which is still attached to western modern philosophy.

Aesthetics and ethics

The relationship between beauty and goodness determines the relationship between aesthetics and ethics. Truth, goodness and beauty are the ideal realm of life, and they are indispensable. Historically, all objects of beauty are also good in ethical sense, especially in the field of social beauty. In a sense, the content of social beauty is to express goodness in the form of beauty. Although beauty and goodness are closely related, they cannot be equated. Beauty is not good. For example, the bell ringer in Hugo's novel Notre Dame de Paris is ugly in appearance and kind in heart. Good things pay more attention to people's spiritual pleasure, so they are super-utilitarian, and the object of goodness is often directly related to people's utilitarian purpose.

Aesthetics and psychology

Liu Xie said: "Mountaineering is full of emotion, while watching the sea is full of meaning"; Keats, an English poet, said: "Beauty is an eternal happiness"; American aesthetician Santayana said: "Beauty is formed in the objectification of pleasure, and beauty is an objectified pleasure"; People's aesthetic activities are always accompanied by various psychological activities-emotion, pleasure, imagination and so on. Li Bai's poem: "Cold Mountain is full of sadness", in which "coldness" and "sadness" are not purely objective descriptions, but expressions of feelings. In a sense, we can even say that beauty cannot happen without the participation of human psychological factors. So aesthetics and psychology are closely related. /kloc-the emphasis of western aesthetics on aesthetic experience and psychological function since the 0 th and 9 th centuries, as well as the influence of various schools of psychology on aesthetic research, also show that aesthetic research depends on psychology to a certain extent.

Aesthetics and literature and art

The research objects of aesthetics and literature and art are the same, both of which are literature and art. Therefore, the problems they study are often intertwined, such as aesthetic consciousness, aesthetic ideal, aesthetic creation and general law of aesthetic appreciation in literary and art works, which are both aesthetic research and literary research. However, compared with literature and art, aesthetics is more general. It discusses the origin of literature and art and provides a theoretical paradigm and way of thinking for literature and art. On the other hand, literary theory pays more attention to specific literary experiences and phenomena, which can provide rich empirical materials for aesthetic research.