Knowledge Aesthetics and Life Aesthetics——Basic Differences Between the Chinese & Western Aesthetics by Comparing Plato's Aesthetics with Confucius' Aesthetics

In Plato's aesthetic thought, is looked at and analysed in a rational way as an objective, cognitive subject existing in an independent world away from the real life, and aesthetics is termed knowledge aesthetics that studies “beauty itself. Knowledge logic, used indiscriminately in aesthetic logic, makes Plato's world of beauty fall into sharp contradiction and conflict with the life world. But Confucius' aesthetic thought does not analyse the essence of beauty, but only explains how to behave as a human to reflect beauty. Beauty is not an analysable subject of knowledge, but part of human life. Therefore, Confucius' aesthetics is full of strong secular flavor and human vitality.