A New Understanding Of Marxisrn

As a famous Marxist literary critic, aesthetician and cultural theorist, Terry Eagleton plays an important role in contemporary western humanistic and academic fields. This thesis is centered upon the study of his aesthetic ideology, which is quite creative, rather than on the research into the entirety of his theoretical system. His aesthetic ideology looks upon objectively-existent being-body-as its material foundation, meanwhile Marxist anthropology, historical materialism and dialectics as its theoretical foundation. The theory observes and analyzes aesthetic activities as they develop in value relationship. It also reveals the developing process and inner discrepancy of aesthetic ideology. Eagleton assumes that body is the foundation of culture, and that the historical development of capitalism is characterized by the division of body, which is divided into three parts, the body of labor, the body of will and the body of desire. This division is represented by the split of values, i.e. the value of cognition, the value of ethics, the value of aesthetics, and the self-disciplining among themselves. Based on the mediate function of ideology, Eagleton probes into complex relationship among body and economy, politics, history, ethics and so on. It also reveals the historical contradiction of aesthetics itself. Aesthetic ideology made oppression and coincidence natural and rational, while it cultivated into the body the feeling and strength of emancipation.Eagleton's theory of aesthetic ideology originates from Marxism, widely absorbed the achievements of psychoanalytical aesthetics, offers a historical materialistic amelioration to Althusser's ideology and William's British empiricism. From the idea of body, i.e. the particular material foundation of aesthetics, Eagleton attempts to explore the possibility of and approach to the subject's obtaining enlightenment and accomplishing liberation from the reality. Eagleton is one of those most creative western Marxism theories who have come back to classical Marxism. His theory of aesthetic ideology provides illuminating research into the combination of aesthetic study and historical materialism, the development of Marxism and the aesthetics beyond post-modernism. He puts aesthetic activities into the frame of economy, politics and reality. This approach to aesthetics gives bearings to our construction of cultural theories which aretailor-made for China.