The Augustin Aesthetic Thought

Aurelius Augustinus ( 354-430 ), was an outstanding Latin Godfather and Christianity theologist in Ancient Rome. He has so many literatures in his life. During his devotional convert and rational enquiry, he becomes an expert with a comprehensive expression of"patristic philosophy". His profound thought has a continuous impact on the Western history process. From the point of Western aesthetics history, he is the last theologist of Ancient Greece and Rome and the first one of Middle Ages, a path breaker of Western Christianity theologist. He focused on Christianity belief and made thorough and dialectical exposition on aesthetics viewpoint, art viewpoint, Bible thought and Pagan culture and so on from the height of theology. However, for a long time, because of bias we have an unfair inspect and not thorough research. Therefore, the digging and analysis for aesthetics thought of Augustine is an important part of viewing Christianity aesthetics.According to the EBSCO database search, the thesis and writings about aesthetics thought of Augustine abroad countless, and some of them made aesthetics analysis from text aspect, morality aspect and ecology. However, according to the thesis data of"CNKI", the author found although there are so many researches about theological and philosophical thought of Augustine, but few about his aesthetics thought, only 10, none from Master or Doctor Thesis.Regarding works, the typical aesthetic history reading books of Bosanquet, Gilbert, Wladyslaw Tatarkiewicz and Zhu Guangqian already include thought referrals. Beauty is the name of God: theological aesthetics of Middle Age(Yan Guozhong: version 2003, Shanghai Academy of Social Science Press ) and Western Literature and Arts Masterpiece(editor in chief by Hu Jingzhi, version 2004, Peking University Press) also have some exposition.By analysis of above thesis and works, we find that some thesis mainly make introducing review on aesthetics thought of Augustine, but some already involved the works of Augustine, and focus on sophisticated and thorough exposition-the scholar Yan Guozhong emphasizes aesthetic analysis, and Li Yongyin emphasizes text survey.From the height of theological philosophy, this thesis adopt the aesthetic research method of"from top to bottom"to describe the establishment of aesthetics thought of Augustine, the main content of his aesthetics thought, the guide function of his theological philosophy on his aesthetics, and the aesthetic generalization to the extension of text and body. This thesis is divided into five parts, the introduction mainly for the research situation of aesthetics thought of Augustine home and abroad, the cutting point and research method and writing frames. The 1st part mainly describes the establishment of aesthetics thought of Augustine. The 2nd part mainly shows the contribution of aesthetics thought of Augustine and the guide function of his theological philosophy on his aesthetics. The 3rd part mainly describes the aesthetic generalization to the extension of text and body. The 4th part mainly shows the value orientation and historical meaning of aesthetics thought of Augustine. And the ending part briefly mentions the inquiry point of his aesthetics thought.