Social Sciences in China

Vol. 34, No. 3, 2013

An Exploration of Major Factors in the Cultural Ecology of the German

Aesthetic Discourse of Modernity

(Abstract)

Zhang Zhengwen

The German aesthetic discourse of modernity is the self-manifestation of German historical development from early modern times. German cultural ecology, comprising German natural, historical, social and intellectual factors, has determined the historical fate of the German aesthetic discourse of modernity and also, realistically, its essential characteristics. The Protestant spirit is the soul of the national consciousness, intellectual concepts, cultural understanding and life experience of the Germans, who take culture as the foundation of their nation. German civic cultural ecology—the social structure, way of life and cultural institutions that originated and developed in civil society—to a great extent determined the form of the German aesthetic discourse of modernity. The three salient features of German enlightenment thought, i.e., the establishment of perception and the independence of beauty, the adjustment of rationalism and the birth of value rationality, and the establishment of the public character of art, are the constituent elements of German cultural ecology.