Marxist aesthetics

Many attempts have been made to develop a specifically Marxist aesthetics, one that would incorporate the Marxian theory of history and class consciousness and the critique of bourgeois ideology, so as to generate principles of analysis and evaluation and show the place of art in the theory and practice of revolution. William Morris in England and Georgy V. Plekhanov in Russia both attempted to unite Marx’s social criticism with a conception of the nature of artistic labour. Plekhanov’s Iskusstvo i obshchestvennaya zhizn (1912; Art and Social Life) is a kind of synthesis of early Marxist thought and attempts to recast the practices of art and criticism in a revolutionary mold. The ideology of “art for art’s sake,” Plekhanov argues, develops only in conditions of social decline when artist and recipient are in “hopeless disaccord with the social environment in which they live.” Drawing on Kant and Schiller, Plekhanov presents a theory of the origins of art in play; play, however, must not be understood in isolation. It is indissolubly linked to labour, of which it is the complementary opposite. An art of play will be the “free” art of the revolution, of humankind returned to social harmony, but only because play and labour will then be reunited and transcended. In place of their opposition will be a harmonious whole in which art is continuous with labour.

The aesthetic theories of the Russian Revolution owe something to Plekhanov; something to the school of Formalist criticism, typified by the proto-Structuralist M. Bakhtin; and something to the anti-aesthetic propaganda of the Russian Constructivists, who believed in an art expressive of human dominion over raw materials—an art that would be destructive of all existing patterns of subordination. The official approach of the Soviets to art, however, was typified, first, by the persecution of all those who expressed adherence to those theories, and, second, by the adoption under Stalin of Socialist Realism (the view that art is dedicated to the “realistic” representation of proletarian values and proletarian life) as the sole legitimate basis for artistic practice.

Subsequent Marxist thinking about art was largely influenced by two major central European thinkers: Walter Benjamin and György Lukács. Both were exponents of Marxist humanism who saw the important contribution of Marxian theory to aesthetics in the analysis of the condition of labour and in the critique of the alienated and “reified” consciousness of human beings under capitalism. Benjamin’s collection of essays Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit (1936; The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction) attempts to describe the changed experience of art in the modern world and sees the rise of Fascism and mass society as the culmination of a process of debasement, whereby art ceases to be a means of instruction and becomes instead a mere gratification, a matter of taste alone. “Communism responds by politicizing art”—that is, by making art into the instrument by which the false consciousness of the masses is to be overthrown.

Lukács developed a multifaceted approach to literary criticism in which the historical condition of society and the reality of class consciousness are singled out as the ideological agenda of works of literature and the major source of their appeal. This position is set forth in such works as Die Theorie des Romans (1920; The Theory of the Novel). Neither Lukács nor Benjamin produced a coherent aesthetics as defined in this article, although each was immensely influential on the practice of modern literary criticism whether Marxist or not in its ultimate inspiration.

Eastern aesthetics

India

The disparagement of the sensory realm as mere illusion (“the veil of Maya”), characteristic of much Indian religion, went hand in hand with a philosophy of embodiment (karma), which gave a distinctive role to art both as an instrument of worship and as an earthly delight. The legends of the great god Krishna abound in exaggerated fantasies of erotic and physical power; the art of the temples testifies to a sensuality that belies the mystical gestures of renunciation which form the commonplaces of Hindu morality. In providing theories of such art and of the natural beauty that it celebrates, Indian philosophers have relied heavily on the concept of aesthetic flavour, or rasa, a kind of contemplative abstraction in which the inwardness of human feelings irradiates the surrounding world of embodied forms.

The theory of rasa is attributed to Bharata, a sage-priest who may have lived about 500 ce. It was developed by the rhetorician and philosopher Abhinavagupta (c. 1000 ce), who applied it to all varieties of theatre and poetry. The principal human feelings, according to Bharata, are delight, laughter, sorrow, anger, fear, disgust, heroism, and astonishment, all of which may be recast in contemplative form as the various rasas: erotic, comic, pathetic, furious, terrible, odious, marvellous, and quietistic. These rasas comprise the components of aesthetic experience. The power to taste rasa is a reward for merit in some previous existence.

China

Confucius (551–479 bce) emphasized the role of aesthetic enjoyment in moral and political education, and, like his near contemporary Plato, was suspicious of the power of art to awaken frenzied and distracted feelings. Music must be stately and dignified, contributing to the inner harmony that is the foundation of good behaviour, and all art is at its noblest when incorporated into the rituals and traditions that enforce the stability and order of social life.

Lao-tzu, the legendary founder of Taoism, was even more puritanical. He condemned all art as a blinding of the eye, a deafening of the ear, and a cloying of the palate. Later Taoists were more lenient, however, encouraging a freer, more intuitive approach both to works of art and to nature. The philosophy of beauty presented in their works and in the writings of the Ch’an (Zen) Buddhists who succeeded them is seldom articulate, being confined to epigrams and short commentaries that remain opaque to the uninitiated.

The same epigrammatic style and the same fervent puritanism can be discerned in the writings of Mao Zedung, who initiated in the Cultural Revolution the most successful war against beauty that has been waged in modern history.