Paper Title
History, Natural Beauty, and Education: T. W. Adorno's Aesthetics of Nature and its Implications on Aesthetic Education
Abstract
T. W. Adorno is a famous philosopher and aesthetician of Critical Theory of German. He claimed that enlightenment reason turns to instrumental reason, domination, violence and genocide, instead of good society. It came from the domination of enlightenment reason to the nature. The history of human was a history of conquering nature and backed to barbarian and regression, not civilization and progress. Human understand nature by science and therefore distort nature. Nature became a pure object can be manipulated and destroyed, not a vivid subject. Human nature gone wild, arrogant and turn back to destroy people. Adorno’s aesthetic of nature affords the another possible redeem under the foundation of interweave philosophy of history and nature. He said we need keep critical memory oriented toward the preservation of historical suffering. The intersection of nature and history are “transience”, and some present in the allegories. The transience or fragment is the mark of the forgetting of body suffering. So we need sensitive to the transience in history and interpret some allegories and disclosure it’s meaning of non-identity. Natural beauty is the trace of non-identity. We can feel feeling and wisdom of nature by mimesis to nature. History interweave with nature. We can remember historical suffering by appreciation of natural beauty. Accordingly, for aesthetic education, we can teach students how to read allegories, and to reflect what is progress of history and problems of capitalism, instrumental reason and civilization from appreciation of nature, include any cultural landscapes. This research intends to inquire the aesthetics of nature of critical-history approach of Adorno, and affords some implications for aesthetic education.
Keywords - Philosophy of History, Natural Beauty, Non-Identity, Aesthetics of Nature of Critical-History Approach , Aesthetic Education