Aesthetics, as a subject, is traditionally a branch of philosophy. This discipline did not exist in China, and it only emerged in the West in the 18th century. Developed within philosophy, it is an aspect and a branch of the philosophical discipline. The word philosophy is translated from Japanese. Since aesthetics is an integral part of the philosophical discipline, it will not be as beautiful as its name, but rather theoretically abstract. Of course, compared with pure philosophy, because it is combined with art and other human aesthetic behaviors, it will show a different form, but it is still a relatively abstract knowledge. As a subject, aesthetics itself does not have a very long history and is a relatively young subject. The word "aesthetics" was invented by the German rationalist philosopher Baumgarden. Its original meaning is sensibility, which is relative to the disciplines of rational cognition, logic and ethics. It has only been 260 years since Baumgarten founded this discipline in 1750, and aesthetics formed a discipline in China much later, only a century later. This knowledge was introduced to China at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. Chinese academic circles accepted it and transformed it based on their own academic and cultural backgrounds, and named it "aesthetics" (rather than "perceptual studies"). Later, this name convention became generally accepted by Chinese people, and gradually formed into a discipline, which went through a long process. Although the discipline of aesthetics is very young, if we summarize Chinese and Western thoughts from an aesthetic perspective, we can see that the origin of Chinese and Western aesthetic thoughts is still very long, and it has accumulated extremely rich resources of aesthetic thoughts and has a long history and tradition. There are great masters such as Plato and Aristotle in ancient Greece in the West, Confucius and Mencius as Confucians in Pre-Qin China, Laozi and Zhuangzi as Taoists, and other schools, all of which have a large amount of aesthetic ideological resources. China's aesthetic thought is very different from that of the West, and the resources in this area are rich and excellent. Aesthetic theory is not just something that comes from the birth of aesthetics more than 200 years ago, but also the accumulation of the entire history. The question I want to talk about today is what kind of subject is aesthetics? What kind of subject is aesthetics? In the past, many people completely misunderstood it, and some understood it incorrectly. We are not going to define aesthetics directly, but we are going to talk about it based on some historical situations, because up to now, the academic circles have not unified opinions on what kind of a discipline aesthetics is. It is often difficult for a definition to gain general public awareness and recognition. This has a lot to do with the short time when aesthetics as an independent discipline emerged. Some people have some literal misunderstandings about the subject of aesthetics. For example, someone once asked me if aesthetics is a subject that studies the United States? Of course, misunderstandings like this are rare now; however, people who think aesthetics is a knowledge about fine arts , there are still many people there. Next, I will talk about three questions. 1. Several representative views on aesthetic research objects in the history of aesthetics. Generally speaking, the research object of a discipline determines the nature, scope and boundaries of the discipline. The research objects, scope and boundaries of natural science are relatively clear, while aesthetics are relatively less clear. For example, the research objects of mathematics, physics, and chemistry are relatively clear and will not be confused with each other. However, the research objects and scope of aesthetics cannot be said to be very clear yet, and even in the aesthetics community, a complete understanding has not yet been formed. There have been many opinions on what the subject of aesthetics studies from ancient times to the present, so the understanding of the nature of the subject of aesthetics is also very different. Therefore, before putting forward our views on the subject of aesthetics, it is necessary to briefly summarize various views on the research objects and scope of aesthetics in the history of aesthetics. Here we first introduce some more representative statements. The first view is that the research object of aesthetics is beauty and its laws, so aesthetics is a discipline that studies beauty and its laws. This view is relatively common in contemporary China, because according to our translation, "aesthetics" literally means the study of "beauty". In fact, this view appeared very early in Western history. Although aesthetics as a discipline had not yet been born at that time, people often regarded questioning the nature of beauty as an important aspect in their philosophical discussions.

For example, the ancient Greek philosopher Plato expressed his views on beauty many times in his dialogues. In the famous Hippias, he criticized Hippias for equating beauty with the listed He raised the issue of "beauty itself" and believed that these specific beautiful things are not equal to beauty itself. He wants to go beyond these specific things and look for beauty itself. He believes that beauty itself is what makes beautiful things beautiful and is the cause of beauty. He believes that there is such a kind of beauty itself, and the reason why beautiful things are beautiful is that they "participate" in beauty itself. This beauty itself is the highest beauty, and the source of all beauty lies in it. This actually started the Western discussion on the essence of beauty. According to our understanding today, the pursuit of beauty itself is also the core issue of his aesthetic thought, taking it as the main research object. Starting from Plato, studying beauty itself and the essence of beauty has become the main issue and object of Western aesthetics. Related to this is the issue of the laws of beauty. In the 60 years since the founding of the People's Republic of China, the research object of aesthetics has basically focused on the essence of beauty. Since the new era, hundreds of aesthetic theory textbooks and works have been published, most of which take beauty as the main research object and the theory of beauty as the core. and starting point, focusing on the discussion of beauty and the essence of beauty. The second view is that aesthetics is a specialized study of art, that is, art is the main object of aesthetic research. This idea comes from Hegel, the master of German classical aesthetics. The content of Hegel's lectures at the University of Berlin is called "Lectures on Aesthetics" and Mr. Zhu Guangqian translated it as "Aesthetics". When discussing the name of aesthetics at the beginning of the first volume of the book, it was believed that aesthetics should be the philosophy of art, a part of philosophy that specializes in the study of artistic beauty. The title of the English version of his "Aesthetics" is translated as "philosophyoffineart". The reason why he limited the object of aesthetic research to art is that in his philosophy and aesthetic system, there is only a place for the soul (spirit), but not for nature. In his view, art belongs to the realm of the soul. As much as the soul is higher than nature, artistic beauty is higher than natural beauty. Therefore, only artistic beauty is the object of aesthetic research, while natural beauty is excluded. Influenced by him, many Western aestheticians equated aesthetics with art philosophy for at least 100 years after him. The question is, why do we need aesthetics when we already have art science and artistic principles to study art? The answer is to study art from a philosophical perspective and examine the beauty of art from a philosophical perspective, so that aesthetics has a philosophical character and height, because aesthetics It is originally a branch of philosophy. Therefore, many aestheticians believe that aesthetics is equivalent to art philosophy. The third view is different from the first two, taking aesthetic experience as the main object of aesthetic research. The previous two views, whether they take beauty or art as the main research object, focus on the objective aspects other than people as the object, while the current view focuses on the subjective aspect. It believes that aesthetics is the study of people's own aesthetic experience. It takes people's aesthetic feelings, emotions, and experiences as the objects of aesthetic research. From the object to the subject, but also to the psychological aspect of the subject. In the West, this tradition began with the British empiricists in the 17th and 18th centuries. The empiricists strongly believe in the reliability of experience. In terms of aesthetics, they believe that aesthetics is the study of people's aesthetic experience. There is no need to study the so-called objective beauty. Objective beauty does not exist without the subject's aesthetic experience. By the 20th century, people increasingly believed that it was almost impossible to find a universally applicable essence and definition of beauty. Austrian Wittgenstein is a representative figure of analytical philosophy. He believes that metaphysical discussions of beauty are meaningless, and only concepts or propositions that can be verified by experience are meaningful. A meaningful concept or proposition can either be confirmed by experience or falsified by experience. The concept of "beauty" can neither be verified nor falsified, so it is meaningless. In the later period, Wittgenstein had a famous proposition: "The usage of words is their meaning", and the same is true for the word "beauty".

"Beauty" is generally an adjective, but when used specifically, the content and meaning of the object it refers to are very different. For example, if it refers to the beauty of a beautiful woman or the beauty of clothes, the two are very different; another example is listening to Beethoven's music and being immersed in it. In music, you feel pleasant and beautiful, and you get the enjoyment of beauty. At this time, using "beauty" to express this feeling is very different from the content and context of "beauty" used above; another example is watching Shakespeare's tragedy "Macbeth" ", from the director, stage design to performance, the whole performance was very good and successful. In this case, it was also praised with "beauty". Although the word "beauty" is used in all of the above, the context, content, and meaning are different. How can they be summarized and covered by a unified definition of "beauty"? Therefore, empiricist aesthetics opposes abstraction. , unified "beauty" and the essence of beauty as the research object, and advocates taking concrete and practical aesthetic experience as the object of aesthetic research. In contemporary Chinese aesthetic research, there are also aestheticians and aesthetic schools who hold this view. There are also some aesthetic works and textbooks that regard aesthetic experience as the core concept and main research object. The fourth proposition is related to the third one, which is to study aesthetic experience from the perspective of psychological activities and why these aesthetic experiences occur. In this way, the object of aesthetic research becomes the psychological mechanism and aesthetic psychological structure of the sense of beauty, aesthetic experience. With the study of aesthetics, the issues that aesthetics focuses on become such as "how does beauty arise", "how does aesthetic experience occur", etc., and aesthetics becomes aesthetic psychology. For example, Fechner, the 19th-century German esthetician and author of "Experimental Psychology," studied beauty from the perspective of experimental psychology and used psychological experiments to determine what psychological states can produce beauty. They conducted some experiments, such as asking some subjects to view prepared geometric figures, asking them to judge which one was the most beautiful, and using statistical methods to summarize the characteristics of "beauty". Now it seems that these experiments are too simple and hardly of any value, but after all, they have opened up a way to pay attention to the structure and mechanism of people's aesthetic psychology. Freud, the founder of the school of psychoanalysis, discovered the unconscious level of psychology and the sexual instinct as the dominant unconscious, and used it to explain psychological issues in literature and art. For example, Freud interpreted Leonardo da Vinci's famous painting "Mona Lisa" from the perspective of the Oedipus complex, believing that this work embodies the Oedipus complex. His student Jung, unlike him, thought that he overemphasized pansexuality. Therefore, Jung deviated from his teacher and changed Freud's individual unconscious to collective unconscious and removed pansexualism. . Jung proposed the theory of archetypes, believing that archetypes are the collective unconscious, which originated from early humans in their living environment and are passed down from generation to generation through the genetic mechanism of human groups. This is another psychological explanation method. Later, psychological aesthetics used other methods, such as Bulow's distance theory and Arnheim's Gestalt psychology, to study aesthetic experience. The above groups have different understandings of the objects of aesthetic research, which also form their different understandings and understandings of the aesthetic disciplines. So how should we understand the discipline of aesthetics? Objectively speaking, this is a difficult question, because it has not been unified so far, and everyone is still discussing it. One of the questions is, what is the nature of beauty. I don't think I can answer this question yet. Plato once said at the end of Hippias: "Beauty is difficult." I think this is truly a wise saying. From ancient times to the present, how many people, including many great estheticians, have given countless definitions of beauty, but none of them have been successful or recognized by everyone. Similarly, how to achieve a complete understanding of the object of aesthetic research, that is, the nature of the aesthetic discipline, has also become a difficult problem in the aesthetics community. An important reason why it is difficult to determine the object of aesthetic research and its subject nature is that the discipline of aesthetics is still relatively young and has not yet been fully developed. Many basic concepts and propositions have not yet been confirmed and reached a certain level of understanding. Uncertainty. Although philosophy is also developing, as an urban discipline, most of its basic concepts, categories and propositions have been confirmed. 2. Representative views on beauty and aesthetics in contemporary China In the 1950s and 1960s, a very important aesthetic discussion in the history of Chinese aesthetics took place. This discussion determined the basic pattern of contemporary Chinese aesthetics. Among them, four main aesthetic schools emerged. The focus of the discussion at that time was the essence of beauty and the positioning of the aesthetic discipline. This also shows that at that time, the Chinese aesthetic community did not have a unified view on what kind of discipline aesthetics was.

As far as the essence of beauty is concerned, there are the following views, that is, several factions. The first school is the subjective school that believes that beauty is subjective, represented by Gao Ertai and Lu Ying. Later, the more influential person was Galtai, who was a man of great artistic temperament and talent. Why is beauty subjective? They often use the example of beauty being in the eye of the beholder to illustrate their point of view. They believe that it is impossible to achieve a universally recognized beauty that everyone agrees on. There is no eternal and universal beauty. . Beauty only exists when people regard things as beautiful in their subjective consciousness. This view was immediately labeled as subjective idealism. People often use the beauty of nature, the so-called objective beauty, to refute this view. The second school is the objective school, which is opposite to the first school and believes that beauty is objective. Its representative is Cai Yi. This school believes that beauty is an objective existence independent of human subjective will. Beautiful things are beautiful because they have objective attributes of beauty. People can feel beauty because their brains reflect objective beauty and form a sense of beauty. Mr. Cai Yi was the first esthetician to use a Marxist perspective to construct the basic principles of aesthetics. He wanted to use a materialist perspective to study some basic issues of aesthetics, and wrote "New Aesthetics" in the late 1940s. Because it takes materialism as its banner, his theory is in line with the requirements of mainstream ideology. Starting from some commonly recognized phenomena of beauty, he deduced that there is eternal objective beauty, and put forward the theory of "beauty lies in the typical". However, there are difficulties in explaining many aesthetic phenomena, such as natural beauty. Some natural phenomena that are now regarded as natural beauty were not considered beautiful in the past, so it is difficult to explain them. His theory of "beauty lies in typical examples" has also been criticized. The beautiful characters in the famous literary works "A Dream of Red Mansions" and "Anna Karenina" are typical, and he expanded from this to aesthetics. For example, it is believed that the beauty of Huangshan lies in the unity of uniqueness and personality, and that it is a model. This view cannot withstand questioning. For example, is a typical example of poor mountains and rivers also beautiful? What is even more ridiculous is that someone gave the example of a toad. Is a typical toad also beautiful? I was asked. The third school, represented by Mr. Zhu Guangqian, believes that beauty lies in the unity of subjectivity and objectivity. He believes that it makes no sense to say that beauty is completely subjective, and neither does a mechanical and objective theory like Cai Yi's. He sought to unify the two. He used such a method to illustrate his basic understanding of beauty, that is, using the Marxist thought on the dialectical relationship between matter and consciousness, he put forward the theory of object A and object B. Object A is an objectively existing thing, mainly referring to the material form of the object, such as form, material, color and other perceptual factors. Object B refers to the image of object A formed in people’s concepts. Object A is the objective basis of object B. Object B is people’s subjective processing of object A. It contains subjective factors and is independent from object A. , it is the unity of subjectivity and objectivity, and beautiful things are things that are the unity of subjectivity and objectivity. He often uses Huangshan Green Pine as an example. When pine trees are viewed from a scientific or utilitarian perspective, they are not beautiful; Huangshan Green Pine can only appear beautiful if it gets rid of utilitarian considerations. For example, a businessman comes and calculates its value. In this way, he does not see the beauty of the tree, but only its economic value; a carpenter comes and considers how this tree can be used as a bookcase or wardrobe, and how to arrange and use the wood. Of course, he Nor can one see the beauty of the pine tree; a botanist comes to study the botanical properties of the tree, etc., but will not have an aesthetic feeling for the tree; finally, an aesthetic person comes, without any utilitarianism, just to appreciate it , he ignored the actual existence of the pine tree as object A, and only paid attention to the external image of the pine tree (object B) - its tall and straight posture, the strength of the branches, standing on Huangshan Mountain under the blue sky and white clouds, admiring it. The reader is immersed in the aesthetic pleasure of the image of green pine. Only when the viewer regards the green pines of Huangshan Mountain as an "intuitive image" (object B), and only when people's subjective emotions are projected onto it, is it beautiful. So beauty is the unity of subjectivity and objectivity. Cai Yi's criticism of this view is: On the surface, it affirms the objective existence of object A, but in fact it refers to the beauty of object B that only projects people's subjective emotions. Therefore, it is still subjective idealism and a false unity of subject and object. The fourth school advocates the unity of objectivity and sociality, and its representative is Li Zehou. His theoretical basis was Marx's "Paris Manuscripts". This book had just been translated at that time, and the academic community had not yet widely understood and studied it in depth. Li Zehou replaced subjectivity in Zhu Guangqian's unity of subjectivity and objectivity with sociality. On the one hand, he believes that beauty is objective and does not depend on personal will; but at the same time, beauty is a social phenomenon and is social, and sociality is not purely subjective.

It is recognized that beauty is objective, but this objectivity is not pure nature outside of people, but only exists in human society. Beauty is created on the basis of human social practice, and then it has the value and meaning of beauty. Only with human society can there be beauty. Beauty is a social phenomenon. In reality, human beings are the sum of social relations. Before the emergence of human beings, that is, human society, it does not matter whether they are beautiful or not. This view does not believe that beauty is independent of people and eternal, as the Objectivists say. It also admits that beauty has subjective factors, but believes that this subjectivity is human, social, or the era. sexual, national, rather than individual. In a certain era, there are still stable standards and standards of beauty. Li Zehou criticized Mr. Zhu Guangqian for being abstract, subjective rather than realistic, not considering changes in social relations, and not integrating it with people's production and practice activities; but he also criticized Mr. Cai Yi for simply emphasizing the objectivity of beauty without Combining beauty with social practice ignores the social nature of beauty. Of course, it also criticized Galtaire's pure subjectivity. It should be said that Li Zehou's views were the most theoretical and most consistent with Marxism at the time. Among the four factions, his influence was the greatest later. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, with the end of the "Cultural Revolution" and the development of the ideological emancipation movement, an "aesthetic craze" emerged nationwide. This kind of aesthetic craze was rare in the world, and aesthetic achievements It has become a prominent and "hot" science, so popular that even Wenhui Po used an entire page to conduct a national aesthetic knowledge test. Everything in society must talk about aesthetics. In addition, there is also an understanding of the aestheticization of life, which believes that aesthetics is in life, and life can also be aestheticized. Everything in life is linked to aesthetics, and the "generalization" of aesthetics appears. If someone proposes furniture aesthetics, advertising aesthetics, or even toilet aesthetics, I think this is not an honor for aesthetics, but a sorrow for aesthetics. Mr. Jiang Kongyang believes that aesthetics cannot be generalized and aesthetics should maintain its philosophical character. Looking at the century-old history of Chinese aesthetics, we can sum up that aesthetics has gone through a process of "cold" - "hot" - "extensive". Compared with this kind of enthusiasm, aesthetics is a "cold" science internationally. In this contrast between hot and cold, some characteristics of contemporary Chinese aesthetics are reflected. By the 1990s, aesthetics seemed to have returned to normal and embarked on the path of disciplinary development. 3. Aesthetics is a comprehensive humanities subject about aesthetic phenomena (aesthetic relationships and aesthetic activities). In the final analysis, aesthetics is a comprehensive humanities subject about aesthetic phenomena (aesthetic relationships and aesthetic activities). Now we start to talk about our understanding of the subject of aesthetics. This does not mean that we do not recognize the several understandings we have introduced before. On the contrary, each of these understandings has given us great inspiration. The development of aesthetics is a very long process. During this process, every school and theoretical doctrine that has ever existed and had a great influence has its reason for existence and value, and will have a certain impact on the overall development of the history of aesthetics. Large or small effects. Among them, there are always some new theories that absorb and transform the original views and become relatively complete and influential theories. For example, the fifth type we mentioned earlier is the theory that aesthetics is the study of the aesthetic relationship between people and the world. It believes that aesthetics can neither study the so-called pure aesthetics of objects nor the aesthetic psychological structure of our subjects. , these two aspects are insufficient and one-sided. It is still a view that we should study the basic issues of aesthetics from a relational perspective. Because it synthesizes the reasonable aspects of the previous four theories and overcomes their one-sidedness, it is of great significance to us. The inspiration is bigger and more direct. Therefore, we absorb the fifth proposition to think about the research objects and the nature of the subject of aesthetics. Based on this, I can summarize the subject nature of aesthetics in one sentence, that is, we believe that aesthetics is a comprehensive humanities discipline about aesthetic phenomena. This sentence includes three levels: (1) The research object of aesthetics is "aesthetic phenomena"; (2) It is a humanities subject; (3) Aesthetics is a comprehensive humanities subject. In short, aesthetic phenomena are actually or essentially phenomena in aesthetic relationships. There are many relationships. Only when there is an aesthetic relationship between people and the world can aesthetic phenomena arise and exist.

For example, how can natural phenomena be transformed from pure natural phenomena into natural beauty? The mountains of Yangshuo and the water of the Li River are beautiful when they have an aesthetic relationship with people; and the staff who live there every day are often concerned about their daily lives. They live a practical and utilitarian life, have no intention of aesthetics, and cannot feel the beauty there. For them, Guilin's landscape is not a realistic aesthetic object (beauty) and has no aesthetic significance. Here, it is not the purely objective beauty, nor the pure aesthetic subject, but the aesthetic phenomenon as a whole or the phenomenon in the aesthetic relationship, which is the object of aesthetic research. Therefore, we believe that the subject of aesthetics studies aesthetic phenomena, which is the central issue of aesthetics research. The specific aesthetic relationship is people's aesthetic activities. Aesthetic relations and aesthetic activities are two sides of the same coin. In this way, we have derived the topics of "aesthetic relations" and "aesthetic activities" from "aesthetic phenomena". This aesthetic phenomenon is a phenomenon in aesthetic relationships and aesthetic activities, and is ubiquitous and ubiquitous. As long as there are people, there will be aesthetic phenomena. Aesthetic factors are involved in many daily activities. For example, advertising, home decoration, beauty, etc. Of course, I do not agree with the generalization of aesthetics and regard these as aesthetics. However, aesthetic phenomena do exist everywhere in daily life. In a word, aesthetic phenomena actually reflect the aesthetic relationship between people and the world. If it does not reflect the aesthetic relationship, it is not an aesthetic phenomenon. Below we look at various aesthetic phenomena separately. First, let’s look at the aesthetic phenomenon in art, that is, artistic beauty. The beauty of art is the result of human creation and refinement. It is higher than nature and is the manifestation of human spirit. But it is only when we appreciate the work of art that the beauty of the art becomes real. Polish phenomenological aesthetician Ingarden believes that aesthetic objects and artworks are not the same thing and can be separated. I was greatly shocked when I translated an article of his entitled "Art and Aesthetics" in the 1980s. He believes that works of art are not ready-made, natural aesthetic objects. Our aesthetic objects are generated by the interaction between readers and works. Therefore, artistic beauty is an artistic image (aesthetic object) generated in aesthetic activities, rather than a purely objective and fixed phenomenon of beauty. Secondly, look at natural beauty. The generative nature of artistic beauty is relatively easy to understand, but a difficult and controversial point is the aesthetic phenomenon in nature, that is, the issue of natural beauty. As mentioned earlier, before humans were born, although everything in nature existed, there was no beauty, because beauty is only valuable and meaningful to humans. Once humans are born, they will have various relationships with nature. However, when humans first appeared, the relationship between humans and nature was mainly a survival relationship, there was no aesthetic relationship, and humans and nature were not yet a harmonious relationship. Only when man and nature begin to have an affinity relationship can aesthetic relationships gradually emerge. The process of aesthetic relationship between man and nature is a history of struggle full of human blood and tears. In the most basic sense, the beauty of nature is meaningful because of the presence of talents. For example, the beauty of Huangshan Mountain is for people. Without people, the various phenomena in Huangshan Mountain are not beautiful or not; Suzhou gardens combine artistic things Reducing things to nature gives us an aesthetic feeling of returning to nature. So, can natural or natural scenery become beautiful independently of our human involvement? I think not. In fact, the reason why these natural landscapes can become aesthetic phenomena is not always the case. They have a relatively long history in human aesthetics. The natural beauties we just mentioned would not be denied by anyone today. They are all considered to be the beauties of nature. But they were not always considered naturally beautiful. All in all, apart from the aesthetic relationship between man and nature, there is no independent and eternal natural aesthetic object, that is, natural beauty. This is a big shift in modern aesthetics. In addition, there are a large number of aesthetic phenomena in daily life. We rarely mentioned it in the past, but in fact it is the most common. We encounter beauty all the time in our lives. People pay attention to beauty in their food, clothing, housing and transportation. This is especially true in modern life. Modern mass media, the Internet, etc. have penetrated into every aspect of daily life, which is actually the aestheticization of daily life. In a commodity economy society, in addition to being practical, commodities also pay attention to aesthetics. It is not uncommon for "packaging" to even exceed practical value. On many occasions, the boundaries between art and life are blurred. Art integrates into life, art becomes life, life becomes art, life is art, art is life. Art goes peacefully to the people. This is also a new change in the aesthetic relationship between people and real life. The above points illustrate from one side that wherever there are people, there is beauty.

Whether in nature or in artistic creation, whether in daily life or in science and technology, there is beauty and aesthetic phenomena. In modern society, we can say that without aesthetic activities, human beings can hardly survive. Aesthetic activities have become an indispensable part of human life. It is impossible to imagine what life would be like without aesthetics. In modern life, aesthetic activities have become an extremely important way of survival, and human lifestyles and leisure activities contain a large number of aesthetic activities. Aesthetic phenomena are essentially phenomena of aesthetic relationships. To a further level, they can be said to be phenomena in aesthetic activities. Only in aesthetic activities can the aesthetic relationship between the subject and the object, and the subject and the world be formed. Therefore, saying that aesthetic phenomena and aesthetic relationships are the objects of aesthetic research is equivalent to saying that aesthetic activities are the objects of aesthetic research. Only in aesthetic activities can there be an aesthetic relationship between people and the world, and can there be the aesthetic phenomenon just mentioned. Among aesthetic activities, we should regard artistic activities as the most central activity, because artistic activities are the most advanced form and the most typical form of aesthetic activities. The nature of aesthetic activities may not be typically displayed in general aesthetic activities, so studying artistic activities can also help us understand other aesthetic activities. It can be said that aesthetics is a discipline that studies aesthetic activities, but it is centered on artistic activities. The two views can be unified. This is our definition of aesthetics from an object perspective. All in all, my view on the discipline of aesthetics is: Aesthetics is a comprehensive humanities discipline about aesthetic phenomena, that is, the study of people's aesthetic relationships and aesthetic activities.