| As an influential intellectual in the 20th century, Susan Sontag played an important role in both the academic and common fields. She was praised as "The Conscience of Americans" and "The Last Intellectual of America". She was not only an outstanding essayist, novelist and critic, but also a unique director of four films. In addition, she actively took part in varieties of cultural, political and charitable activities. Her researches covered a wide range of fields, such as philosophy, literature, fascism, modernism, Marxism, pornography, photography, painting, dancing, film, music, drama, cancer, AIDS and so on. She was famous for her critique on post-modernism, consumerism and political atrocities without the slightest hesitation. She did her utmost to pursue the firm values advocated by her and exerted every effort to reconstruct a new spiritual life.Theorists paid great attention to Sontag as soon as she became a new writer. In the 1960s, her works, such as "Notes on 'Camp' ", "Against Interpretation", "On Style" and "One Culture and the New Sensibility" and so on caused heated discussions. Her death on December, 2004 brought about a new turn of researches on her thoughts and works. Although scholars from home and abroad have studied her from different perspectives, general researches on her thoughts still are vacant. Lack of comprehensive researches, one can never reveal how significantly and profoundly the values she advocated function to the present world.Strictly speaking, without any complete or systematic writings on theories, Sontag was not a theorist. Her thoughts scattered in the literary works and criticism of her different stages, as well as in her social activities. In someone's eyes, it is a defect of her creative life, but I think it may be a best way for Sontag to express herself without limitations of the traditional principles. Impressive rising and falling in intensity, natural flowing of passion and heroic spirit in words, together with the clever aphorisms and epigrams reflect her outstanding wisdom. Like Benjamin, she combined different positions into one. Therefore, she loved Avant-garde Art whereas she admired Aristotle and Shakespeare; she sang high praise for the creative ability of mass culture whereas she defended the dignity of the high culture. She was in pursuit of the unique tastes and values that made her temper utterly alien from her contemporaries. She would really like to fight with the superficiality of the whole epoch and saw herself as a newly minted warrior in a very old battle: against Philistinism, against ethical and aesthetic shallowness and indifference. So to speak, the weapon with which Sontag fight for her values was the new sensibility."New sensibility" came into being as an outcome of Sontag's general sense and exact summary of the new epoch, which based on her comprehensive understanding of the new culture of capitalism. It refers to not only the sensuous experience of body and the sharp sensibility of organs, but also the internal conscience and the complexity and sensitivity of the mind. It consists of the comprehensive experience and reflections of both body and mind that shows the "generality" of senses. It is not limited to a certain field (such as the autonomic world of aesthetics). Nor does it rely on the sense or understanding of the certain existence. It is not a closed experience of self, either. On the contrary, it is the general experience and sense in the new age covering all areas of the existence. It opens to all things, including the senses of the outside world and the senses of images. As a matter of fact, it also includes the senses of both the new mass culture and the old high culture, and even the senses of both the morality and the old humanism values and calls for the responsibility and conscience in the practical world.It is a new request of the old values. New sensibility not only alters the direction of our thoughts, but also changes the field of theory and the function of arts and criticism. It focuses on forms and styles instead of content and meaning stressed by the traditional thinkers. It advances a way to be against interpretation and to reach sensibility immediately instead of to adhere to the old means of attaining meaning through interpretation. Beyond the area of literature and arts, it covers all the fields of culture. Generally speaking, it is a form of aesthetics rather than traditional literary theory. The most important is that the old model—" the sense of something"—turns into a new one—"the ability to sense something". In other words, it attaches more importance to the ability to see, to listen and to feel rather than what we see, what we hear and what we feel. In order to reach such a goal, we should possess radical negation and independent spirit, keep our mind free and open in a great sense, abandon any metaphysical leading model, and refuse to impose external orders on our thoughts. Hence, the new sensibility is both aesthetical and critical. The two aspects of it form a complete system of thoughts.The fundamental point of my dissertation is that we should regard Sontag's thoughts as a whole system and regard the aesthetics of new sensibility as Sontag's "General Question". In essence, the aesthetics of new sensibility is not the request of theory, but the very request of reality. First of all, it is Sontag's answer to practical social questions of capitalism. The economic development and expansion of capitalism has brought about a rich material life and a comfortable livelihood. At the same time, it has also brought about new aggressions and more victims. However, a lot of intellectuals who lead a good life become insensitive and numb. They lost their conscience, responsibility and critical mind. In addition, the over-saturated culture accompanied with consumerism of capitalism and instrumental reason ruling everything at present result in the numbness and deterioration of people's sensibility. From the point of Sontag's view, that was a nihilistic age, as she said that we had entered, really entered, the age of nihilism. Her combat directed to the nihilism so as to rescue the values of humankind and reconstruct our spiritual life. It is the ultimate task of the aesthetics of new sensibility, too.Of course, it is a great and difficult task we still have to try to accomplish nowadays. At present, we are still confronted with the problems recognized by Sontag. The more colorful the consumerism capitalism culture gets, the more insensitive and emptier people feel. We are facing a difficult position caused by culture production. In fact, Sontag had already realized such a dilemma since her mid-stage. She supposed we solve the problem from two aspects. On one hand, we should stress on the recovery of our ability to sense the old values of humankind, such as morality, justice and responsibility. On the other hand, we should confront the excellent culture and artworks of the old days in a new way, with which we can recover our ability to sense their values. Only by doing so, can what died in the post-modernism gain a new life in the aesthetics of new sensibility and the excellent legacies of The Enlightenment be inherited and enhanced. Sontag became a member of The New Enlightenment since her criticism presented more and more humanism thoughts. However, what were just thoughts in The Enlightenment became firmly related with everyday life—especially with her own everyday life—in her aesthetics of new sensibility. So to speak, the aesthetics of new sensibility changes from a unique system of thoughts to criticism and understanding of the practical life. It even becomes a part of the practice in everyday life.My dissertation consists of 8 parts. The introduction briefly outlines the history of researches on Sontag both at home and abroad. It then analyzes three main models of the contemporary researches and points out the defects of them. Based on such an analysis, it puts forward the fundamental point of the whole dissertation. That is to regard the aesthetics of new sensibility as the "General Question" of Sontag's thoughts in order to represent and master her thoughts generally and accurately. Such a way of study on Sontag distinguishes from the present researches. In the end, it compares the aesthetics of new sensibility with the autonomic aesthetics, the modern aesthetics and the consumerism aesthetics to reveal the unique values of the former. The first chapter focuses on the 'new sensibility'. First of all, it analyzes the process of advancing the concept of it by Sontag and discusses the basic connotation of it. Then it deeply analyzes the cultural background of the new sensibility and the body-mind question of it to show the tension of Sontag's thoughts.The second chapter explores the basic connotation of the aesthetics of new sensibility and the relationship between "against interpretation" and "new sensibility". Then it reveals the values and meaning of the former in the respect of aesthetics of new sensibility by the concepts of form, style and energy. Finally, after analyzing The Benefactor, it explains how "against interpretation" becomes the means of "new sensibility" in Sontag's thoughts.The third chapter studies the aesthetical forms of the sensibility and mainly remarks on "Camp Aesthetics" advanced by Sontag in her early life, "Aesthetics of Silence" discussed in Styles of Radical Will, "Extreme Aesthetics" presented by Artaud, and "Sublime Aesthetics" showed in The Volcano Lover. Such researches aim at revealing the meaning of the aesthetics of sensibility from different aspects.The fourth chapter mainly explores the cultural and political connotation of the new sensibility. It includes the following topics: Firstly, the counter-attitudes are the cores of culture criticism of the aesthetics of new sensibility. Secondly, how had the pornographic imagination subverted the traditional conception of culture supported by the bourgeoisie. It is just like a real case in point of criticism of Sontag. Thirdly, Sontag fiercely criticized the consumer culture of capitalism. Fourthly, we should find out the political implication of Sontag's culture criticism by regarding the general victims.The fifth chapter pays attention to the significance of moral sensibility of Sontag. It tries to approach Sontag's critique on photography through analysis on the theoretical problems following the image world. Then it explores her moral request and the effect of ethical sensibility through her melancholic meditation on photography.The sixth chapter aims at interpreting the basic meaning of body sensibility of Sontag. Beginning with Sontag's illness, it analyzes the legitimacy of the ill body at present. Following that, we can explain how the discourse and imagination make illness heavier and understand Sontag's criticism on illness as metaphor. Finally, it reveals the basic meaning of body sensibility and the metaphors' destructive effect on sensibility.The last part is an end of the whole dissertation. It analyzes the position and significance of humanism in Sontag's thoughts which based on the aesthetics of new sensibility and draws a conclusion that Sontag is a general intellectual of humanism.
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