On the Pioneering Work in Aesthetic Education of Non-aesthetic Professional Intellectuals

Looking back at the centennial development of Chinese aesthetics and aesthetic education,you will find team of non-aesthetic professionals made up of intellectual elites like sinologists and politicians. Some of them delivered speeches on aesthetic education,some wrote textbooks,and others worked in the forefront of aesthetic education. They believed that aesthetic education can liberate humanity,transform culture,and promote and reshape the national character. Thus,in the orientation of aesthetic values,they had utilitarian conviction,that is to say,to achieve through aesthetic education utilitarian purposes like transforming human nature,reconstituting morality and rectifying social tendencies to achieve prosperity for both people and country. For our part,contemporary intellectuals should inherit the enlightenment spirit and the social responsibility of their predecessors and launch a second enlightenment,as it were,for the reconstruction of the national spirit,making distinctive contribution in the name of beautyand made possible by beauty.