Open    Access



Capital and Aesthetics: How Could People’s Freedom be Possible under Modern Conditions?



Author(s)

SONG Wei

Full-Text PDF XML     636 Views

DOI:10.17265/2159-5836/2017.11.006

Northeastern University, Shenyang, China

In the age where capital becomes the most dominant, the most manipulating power, the current aesthetics has to face and solve the problems such as “capital versus aesthetics”, “matter nature versus mind nature”, “society versus culture” and has to answer the follow-up question—“How could people’s freedom be possible in modern conditions?” The reflections and criticism on “capital modernity” by Marx, Weber and Simmel all directly pointed to the issues of people’s value and the settlement of their spirit in the Age of Capital. Meanwhile, the salvation of the “aesthetic modernity” makes up the proper meaning of the solution in many thinkers’ mind to the predicament of the age. In this sense, the reflections on the Zeitgeist in the Age of Capital is certainly included in the pursuit of aesthetic freedom in this age.

contemporary aesthetics, Marxist aesthetics, capital modernity, aesthetic modernity