Modern Aesthetics and Its Paradoxes: A Study on Agnes Heller's Theory of 'Sensus Communis'

摘要

According to Agnes Heller, as an independent subject, aesthetics was a product of the epoch of bourgeoisie. Aesthetics became a universal philosophy to describe and comment aesthetic field, aesthetic, objectification of beauty, and the arts of its own framework, with its common ideology and universal theory of preference based on its own system. In modern society, aesthetics is necessary and will never be reformed. Heller affirmed the unshakable status of aesthetics as an independent subject, and she also realized that there were paradoxes that couldn't be eradicated in aesthetics itself. Heller holds that the legitimacy of modern aesthetics is based on a "Sensus Communis" about value. However, it was doubted that such kind of a "Sensus Communis" of modern society belongs to historical philosophy category, which was presupposed and lack of absolute universality. At the same time, it was of a strong subjectivity and variability. Heller admitted that it was the source of the paradoxes of aesthetics and it can never be eradicated, but it was neither proved that aesthetics should be canceled.