Abstract
Contemporary critical theory, based on a critique of Kantian aesthetics, transforms the theoretical form and problematic logic of traditional aesthetics. It develops an aesthetic politics through the conditional mechanisms of the relationship between sensation and politics. Sensory politics, event aesthetics, and biopolitics, as three ways contemporary critical theory reshapes Kantian aesthetics, propel the transformation of aesthetics from an originally objective and valid form of cognition in the primary sense of sensibility to the basic logic of political power operation. Aesthetic politics, with the social generation mechanism of sensation as its fundamental thread, initiates reflections on such specific issues as aesthetic liberation, aesthetic community, and aesthetic equality, thus providing new understanding of the conceptual connotations of Kantian aesthetics. Contemporary critical theory drives the structural transformation of epistemological aesthetics in terms of theoretical form, research problems, and paradigms of reflections, which inaugurates a critical aesthetics of action-intervention and expands the theoretical space and interpretive power of aesthetics.
Keywords
Kant, aesthetic difficulties, aesthetic politics, contemporary critical theory
First Page
179
Last Page
188
Recommended Citation
Liu, Chen. 2025. "Kant's Aesthetic Predicament and the Aesthetic Politics of Contemporary Critical Theory." Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art 45, (3): pp.179-188. https://tsla.researchcommons.org/journal/vol45/iss3/18
