The Somatic Turn in the Aesthetics and Its Significance——A Cross-cultural Perspective

Abstract

The entire history of Western philosophy and aesthetics is a history of struggle between the body and the soul. For a long time, the traditional western philosophy represented by Plato and Augustine insisted on a ideological path of separating the body and mind and restraining the body and raising the mind. In contemporary academic discourse, the sudden emergence of "body" is directly related to the modern trend of thought, and in fact constitutes a reflection and correction of traditional ideological aesthetics. Thinkers such as Nietzsche, Merleau-Ponty, and Foucault initiated this thought process, while Richard Shusterman established its basic orientation from the perspective of discipline construction. In response to this, Chinese scholars have also made more obvious theoretical contributions. As a paradigm of Somaesthetic, it sharply criticizes Logocentrism, insists on cultural comparison, highlights the practical function of theory, and implements the life care of aesthetics, which provides a meaningful value scale for the construction of contemporary aesthetics.