Marcuse And Habermas Accepted The Letters Upon Aesthetic Education Of Man

The Frankfurt school is an important school of Western Marxism,which places the primacy of individual development,to explore and reflect on the relationship between art,life,and society.Letters upon Aesthetic Education of man is one of the aesthetic theory works of Schiller.In the book,Schiller proposed to use art and aesthetics to connect the divided human nature,shape a complete person,and solve the crisis of modernity.Therefore,Letters upon Aesthetic Education of man has become an important theoretical resource of the Frankfurt school's representative figures in Marcuse and Habermas.The high level of technological development realized the disenchantment of the secular and brought the bureaucratic social control in the late capitalist society.With the development of technology,the symbol of freedom and liberation has evolved into instrumental rationality restricting the development of human nature,which has increasingly penetrated every corner of social life.Marcuse and Habermas accepted Schiller's Letters upon Aesthetic Education of man in the process of thinking about the crisis and outlet of modern society.Marcuse shows solicitude for the force of the aesthetic liberation contained in Letters upon Aesthetic Education of man,who thinks that Schiller's ‘game impulse' is the carrier of political liberation.The restoration of perceptual rights can explore the various potentials of human beings,while aesthetics is a revolution in the way of feelings,which promotes the establishment of human non-repressive order.From the perspective of modernity critique,Habermas believed that Letters upon Aesthetic Education of man is the first programmatic document of modernity to criticize aesthetic.Schiller emphasized the public nature of art,and art was regarded as the ‘intermediary form' that penetrated the subjectivity relationship of humans.Through the interpretation of Letters upon Aesthetic Education of man,Marcuse and Habermas inherited and developed the critical theory of Schiller.Schiller thinks that modern society is a mechanical society of clocks and watches and that people have become synonymous with expertise.Both of them accepted Schiller's criticism of alienation.Marcuse criticized one-dimensional society and one-dimensional people;Habermas starts from the realm of the living world,discovering alienation ofcommunication.Schiller's analysis of the causes of fragmented people implies a reflection on the excessive expansion of rationality in modern society.Both of them consider that management is hierarchical and rationality has developed into instrumental rationality controlling people's lives with the development of science and technology.They sharply criticized instrumental rationality.Schiller tried to realize the free liberation through art saving humanity,both of them developed the aesthetic redemption thought of Schiller.Marcuse insisted that transform human sensibility,constructing the aesthetic dimension in a new sensuous way,eliminating the divided human nature and establishing a new society;Habermas starts from the realm of the living world,looking forward to building a rational world of communication.By accepting Letters upon Aesthetic Education of man,Both of them strengthened the political potential of aesthetics,laid the foundation for the construction of modern political aesthetics,formed an influential theory of aesthetic liberation,and also promoted people's re-understanding of art and society.But this acceptance also has limitations: they overemphasize the political potential of art and aesthetics,who ignore Schiller's understanding of the transcendence of art and beauty;whether Schiller or Marcuse and Habermas,their ideological colors are prominent,which is an aesthetic Utopia divorced from social reality.