On Body Issues In Marx’s Aesthetics

As a new discipline, Body Aesthetics not only studies the relationship between body and human being, but also the basic questions of Aesthetics from the point of human embodied being. From the view of Body Aesthtics, we can see that the nature of western classical Aesthetics is Spirit Aesthetics, because it stipulates human being as spiritual being, and only spirit has rational ability and can cognize the transcendental Existence which being as beauty itself in an invisible world. As far as human body and its sensibility, western classical Aesthetics has no choice but to have related to it, though making little of it. Although extremely talking about body and its sensibility from the view of spirit, Hegel who as the synthesizer of western classical Aesthetics, focuses on the perceptualization of spirit, instead of the human perceptual being itself. Though reversing Hegel’s train of thought, and talking about human perceptual being starting from body that turns Spirit Aesthetics into Body Aesthetics, Feuerbach still not surpass Spirit Aesthetics because of the absence of historicity and sociality. In the process of accepting and surpassing Romantic Aesthetics, Ego-consciousness Aesthetics and Naturalism Aesthetics, young Marx gradually gets rid of the abstract understanding about human being, and thinks about the full realization of human perceptual being in the visible world starting from body.Marx thinks that human being in the visible world may not be a real one, because that individual in the visible world named burgher society or bourgeois society is defined as a purely natural being. Though that emphasizing on natural being means affirming to the body of individual, for that body is human nature and the basic of individuality, body of individual is differ from flesh of animal. The need, labour and consciousness from body are not only natural but also social, so that the embodied being of individual are not only natural being but also social being, and the individuality is not only naturality but also the unify of naturality and sociality. That separating naturality and sociality of human being and isolating human as an self-interested individual from society, seemingly making persons in the visible world named bourgeois society free, lets them be free slaves in fact, because that the bourgeois society itself is nothing but more complete slavery. The illiberality of human being in the visible world focuses on the labourer where the whole body of labourer is divided into body as producer, body as interchanger and body as consumer. For the reason that labour is the definition of human being, the dividing of the labourer body proves that the political emancipation by bourgeois revolution is still not liberation of mankind, and the visible human in the visible world is still not real human.Marx’s communism proves that only with the practice especially material production practice that making the visible world into the real one, the real human will be born. The real world is the communist world, which is not the one being in conflict with individual, but the one being the objectification of individual, and the one where human coexists with nature, other man and self. The real human is communist, who is the one realizing the individuality that means the unitify of naturality and sociality, and the one historically realizing the liberation and generation of body in perceptual activity, body in sensation and body being percepted. Taking the alienation of human perceptual body as starting point, and the liberation and generation of perceptual body as finishing point, Marx’s thought manifests itself as Aesthetics, and Body Aesthetics.The body issues in Marx’s Aesthetics show themselves not only as the issue of the relationship between body and human being, but also the one of the relationship between body and Aesthetical basic questions. As the part of western modern Aesthetics, Marx’s Aesthetics raises and resolves Aesthetical basic questions such as beauty, sense of beauty and art with a special way that should not be Epistemology or Reflectionism, and not be Anthropology Ontology or Existence Ontology, but be Practice Ontology. Practice Ontology talks about Aesthetical basic questions from the body ingaged in material production practice, thinking that beauty is the realization of the human free being in perceptual world, sense of beauty is the sense of free that is experienced in the vital movements including material production practice, art activity and individualized perceptual activity, and art is a structure of phenomenon including artist, art production, work of art and art consume which is not a illusional world where man escapes into it, but a Aesthetical world that inspires people understanding, criticizing and changing the visible world. These answers to the Aesthetical basic questions make Marx’s Aesthetics different from western classical Aesthetics, and other western modern Aesthetics.As a part of the whole Marx’s thought, Marx’s Body Aesthetics focuses on the criticizing against bourgeois society that makes the body of labourer alienated, the art production hired labourized, commodity fetishized and so on. Because of the various misinterpretation and misapplication, the Marxism Aesthetics named with Marx suffers suspicion, critique and negation from various modern and post-modern theories in the history. Because that the capital logic in the modern society unfolded by Marx can not be surpassed, these theories could not do anything but mixing Marx with Existencialism, Freud, Phenomenology, Structuralism or Post-structuralism, but the most important is mixing with Nietzsche. Though Nietzsche’s issues about nihilism, the natural instinct of body and art illution inspecting orher modern and post-modern theories, and saving the body dimension of Marx’s Aesthetics from Soviet Marxism Aesthetics, attch more and more Nietzsche’s style to Marx’s body Aesthetics, such as from body criticizing to body worship, from art criticizing to art worship and from commodity criticizing to commodity worship which are the reason that makes Marx’s Aesthetics not the total criticizing against visible world, but so called pure Critique of Aesthetic modernity whose root happens to be the Romantic Aestheics from where Marx has walked away. Because of the incorporated by the capital logic, Critique of Aesthetic modernity has lost its criticalness for a long time, and become gradually to Post-modern Body Aesthetics who compromise with the visible world. If we want to ensure the criticalness of Marx’s Body Aesthetics, we must make Marx’s Aesthetics returning Marx’s thought itself.Since the introduction into China, Marxism including Marxism Aesthetics has been influencing the historical course of Chinese society. In order to explain and resolve the problems of times, Chinese people always return classical Marxist writers time and again to find inspiration that can be useful to form new Marxism which meeting the times need. After thirty years reform and openness, the market economy dominated by capital logic has been creativing unparalleled flourishing of contemporary Chinese society, meanwhile making sharp contradictions between human and other man, human and nature, human and self, and making serious alienation of individual embodied being. The wisdom to understand and resolve these problems is not Devotion Aesthetics, Struggle Aesthetics, Subject Aesthetics or Existence Ontology Aesthetics, but Practic Ontology Aesthetics which returning Marx’s thought itself, aiming to the harmonious coexistence between human and other man, between human and nature,between human and self, and aiming to the thorough liebration of human embodied being.