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What is the main thing to study in aesthetics?

Research object

The first opinion is that the research object of aesthetics is beauty itself. In the view of those who hold this opinion, the issue to be discussed in aesthetics is not the specific beautiful things, but the beauty itself that all beautiful things have in common, the fundamental reason that makes all beautiful things beautiful.

The second opinion is that the research object of aesthetics is art, and aesthetics is the philosophy of art. This view has been recognized by a considerable number of aestheticians in the history of Western aesthetics.

The third opinion is that the research object of aesthetics is aesthetic experience and aesthetic psychology. This opinion follows the rise of psychology in the 19th century, advocating the use of psychological perspectives and methods to explain and study all aesthetic phenomena, and placing aesthetic psychology and aesthetic experience at the center of aesthetic research.

》Baumgarten believes that the object of aesthetics is to study beauty and the perfection of perceptual knowledge. He said: "The object of aesthetics is the perfection of perceptual knowledge (taken by itself), which is beauty; the opposite is the imperfection of perceptual knowledge, which is ugliness." "Beauty refers to teaching how to behave in a beautiful way. To think is the task of aesthetics as a science that studies low-level cognitive methods, that is, as a low-level epistemology. "That is to say, as a low-level epistemology, its task is to study the perfection of perceptual knowledge, that is, beauty. Although Baumgarten believed that aesthetics is the study of beauty, he did not exclude art, and took art as the main content of his research. He said: "Aesthetics is the art of thinking in a beautiful way, and it is the theory of beautiful art."

》Hegel believed that the object of aesthetics is the art of studying beauty. He said: "The object of aesthetics is the vast field of beauty. To be more precise, its scope is art, or rather, the art of beauty." The beauty he talks about is not ordinary realistic beauty, but artistic beauty. He believes that the proper name of aesthetics is "philosophy of art", or more precisely, "philosophy of beautiful art". According to the name aesthetics as "the philosophy of beautiful art", natural beauty is excluded from the field of aesthetic research. But Hegel also studied natural beauty. The reason why he studied natural beauty was because natural beauty is a reflection of the beauty of the soul, that is, the beauty of art.

》While criticizing Hegelian aesthetics, Chernyshevsky placed great emphasis on the study of the beauty of reality and the aesthetic relationship between art and reality. But he believed that the object of aesthetic research was not beauty, but art. He wrote in Aristotle's "Poetics": "What exactly is aesthetics? Isn't it just a system of principles for art in general and poetry in particular?" When studying art, the meaning of aesthetics should be included. Beauty, but art is not limited to beauty, because the content of aesthetics should study art to reflect everything that interests people in life. He believes that if aesthetics only studies beauty, then sublimity, greatness, comedy, etc. will not be included. Aesthetic objects are greater than beauty, but should include the entire theory of art.

Aesthetics (Greek: Aesthetica) was first proposed by the German philosopher Baumgarten in 1750. Aesthetics is a discipline that studies the aesthetic relationship between people and the world, that is, the object of aesthetic research is aesthetic activities. Aesthetic activities are a kind of human beings who take the world of images as their object