On Beardsley’s Theory About Aesthetic Object

Aesthetic object as a basic topic in Aesthetics has gained considerable attention and thorough discussions whether in China or the west, including its modes of existence, its range, its constitutive elements, etc. Phenomenology aesthetics in continental Europe has made brilliant achievements on this topic, in the United States and in England, although Analytic Aesthetics has done its utmost to criticize the traditional proposition, the issue of aesthetic object is still in a key position in the work of its founder Beardsley.Beardsley’s discussion of aesthetic object exhibited mainly in his Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism and his numerous essays collected in Aesthetic Point of View. Although these discussions didn’t give aesthetic object a precise definition and an overall description, a rough sketch may be seen indistinctly, this enables us to clarify a definite mode of Beardsley’s aesthetic object and on this basis analyze and estimate its meaning, its gain and loss.This essay consists of four parts, in introduction, we affirm Beardsley’s important position in the field of Aesthetics and the necessity of the study on Beardsley’s theory about aesthetic object by means of comparing researches on him home and abroad. In the first chapter of the first quarter, we ascertain the unique approach adopted by Beardsley in his aesthetics and theory about aesthetic object, including language as focus, the combination of analysis and construction and the combination of both topics of analytic aesthetics and traditional aesthetics. The second chapter presents the basic characters and logical system of Beardsley’s Aesthetics:Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism, and reveals the fundamental role the inquiry of aesthetic object played in his entire aesthetic system. The second quarter draws an outline of Beardsley’s theory about aesthetic object, distributing our expositions on three parts, that is, the ontology of aesthetic object, the component of aesthetic object and the relation of aesthetic object with other aesthetic topics. In the first chapter we explore in what mode does aesthetic object exist, and adopt the approach of key words sorting out to expound questions such as aesthetic object as perceptual object, aesthetic object presenting itself in presentation, aesthetic object existing as production in art need to be performance, etc. The second chapter investigates the basic components of aesthetic object and its three qualities, namely unity, complexity and intensity that can be employed as criterion of aesthetic value, which paved the way for the relation between aesthetic object and other aesthetic topics discussed next chapter. The third chapter focuses on the relationship between aesthetic object and aesthetic experience, aesthetic value, social and life, which shows the complex connections aesthetic object has with other aesthetic issues and the restrictive role aesthetic object played, together with the former two presenting the full screen of Beardsley’s theory about aesthetic object. On the basis of first two quarters, the third quarter summarizes the gain and lose and the significance of Beardsley’s theory about aesthetic object, pointing out that although faced with some predicaments like the disharmony of the phenomenological method and objective tendency, the narrowness of the scope of aesthetic object, the disjuncture with criticism practice caused by the bold act of construction, etc, still Beardsley’s theory about aesthetic object has important theoretical significance and historical significance on the insisting upon the aesthetic essence of art, offering another voice beyond the contextualism of art and transcending the binary division between subject and object by language analysis, etc.