Comparative Study Between Ancient Greek And XianQin Aesthetics

Ancient Greek aesthetics and XianQin aesthetics are origins of western and Chinese aesthetics respectively. Through the comparative study between Ancient Greek and XianQin aesthetic theories, the consensus on development of aesthetics can be obtained. The ambiguity, intuition, integrity and nature-human harmony reflected by XianQin aesthetics, as well as logic and comprehensiveness reflected by Greek aesthetics are of great reference value for each other and the construction of modern aesthetics. This Thesis tries to find out the differences and similarities between them through comparison and to grasp the basic feature of Chinese and western aesthetics at their initial stages.This Thesis comprises four sections:Introduction elaborates the definition of comparative aesthetics put forward by Chinese modern esthetician, Mr. Jiang Kongyang, as well as the possibilities to compare Chinese and western aesthetics in the early stage; Chapter one mainly expounds the development history and main contents of Greek aesthetics and Xianqin aesthetics; Chapter two mainly discusses the similarities between Ancient Greek and Xianqin aesthetics, namely, both of them were born in cultural integration period and against the cultural background of "A Hundred Schools of Thought Contend"; both of them had experienced the transition from concerning nature to concerning human; both of them had advocated "achieving the acme of perfection" and affirms the identity between beauty, truth and good; both of them had reviewed arts with non-art perspective and had opposed vulgar art and put forward its own art criterion; both of them had acquainted the education and enlightenment of arts; Chapter three mainly sets forth the differences between Ancient Greek and Xianqin aesthetics; firstly, they have different requirements on arts. Ancient Greek aesthetics focuses on "truth", while Xianqin aesthetics focuses on "good"; different requirements had formed different aesthetic concerns; Ancient Greek aesthetics pays more attention to expression of truth while Xianqin aesthetics pays more attention to social ethics; secondly, they have different aesthetic theories, including the comparison between "harmony idea" of Greek aesthetics and "He theory" of Xianqin Confucian aesthetics, "imitation theories" and "poems expressing wills", as well as their "katharsis idea"; Chapter four makes a conclusion on the dissertation of this Thesis; in spite of differences and similarities, Ancient Greek aesthetics pays more attention to cognition on beauty at the aspect of rational cognition and studies beauty by separating beauty away from human immanence; while Xianqin aesthetics views beauty by combining human immanence and studies human aesthetics; although both Greek aesthetics and Xianqin Confucian aesthetics take harmony as the criterion to measure the beauty, western early aesthetics pays more attention to studies on harmony of external forms and between forms and contents; Chinese early aesthetics pays more attention to "He'between people and the "He" between human and society; Greek aesthetics mainly contains the aesthetic ideology from the subjective and objective angles; Xianqin Confucian aesthetics advocates the state and experience of "nature-human harmony". The differences of these two kinds of academic thoughts are mainly caused by differences in regional characteristics, lifestyles and social cultures of Ancient Greece and Xianqin.