What Nature Is Beautiful For? Cai Yi's Aesthetics Of Ecological Perspective

Cai Yi is one of the most important aestheticians after the founding of the People's Republic of China. His aesthetic ideas, beginning with "new aesthetics", once mighty, have undergone a lot of blame and denounce. Going through scouring and washing of times, the valuable things in Cai Yi's aesthetic ideas have renewed academic attention in the new century, especially under today's booming eco-discourse of academic background, his views and opinions of the natural beauty are particularly valuable. This paper intends to cut over the eco-Marxist perspective and discuss the problem of the aesthetics of the natural beauty of CAI Yi.The paper firstly reviews the developing process and logical framework of Cai Yi's theory of natural beauty, then discusses similarities between the aesthetics of Cai Yi and the Western Formalism on philosophical basis and aesthetic concepts. The author believes that, as one important part of modern Chinese aesthetic theory, the emphasis on the objective reality of natural things, concerns on the essence of life and the overall scientific understanding of nature in Cai Yi's theory of natural beauty are quite similar with the argument of "relationship between man and nature" of today's ecological aesthetics. It shows that, as a representative of contemporary in China, Cai Yi's theory of aesthetic has certain transcendence and forward-looking, which sets a good convergence point for the fusion of Ecological aesthetic and Chinese aesthetics and also provides a fulcrum for further development of theory. Restudying Cai Yi's theory of natural beauty has significant sense to the promotion of Chinese contemporary aesthetics to science and the integration and innovation of Chinese contemporary aesthetics and foreign aesthetics.