Aesthetic Education and Human Life

Cai Yuanpei's valuable idea that aesthetic education can help improve human life is still of great enlightening significance nowadays. When Schiller first put forward the concept of Aesthetic Education, he mentioned the relationship between aesthetic education and human life, though indirectly. While Confucius held that aesthetic education was one of the main approaches to human achievements, Zhu Xi closely combined aesthetic education with the human development of beautiful soul and life. And Wang Yangming emphasized aesthetic education by adopting the special way of imperceptible influence. According to Wang's thought, aesthetic education, like spring rain silently moistening everything, could nurture and influence people's personality and purify their minds, ensuring their healthy development on the road of life. Though Marx did not a specific book or essay to address aesthetic education, he regarded human freedom and all-round development as the ultimate goal of realizing human emancipation and communism, which exactly formed the basis for the theory of Marxist aesthetic education. Therefore, aesthetic education is an inevitable pathway to personal improvement, growth and achievement.