Abstract

Modern China's acceptance of Dewey's legacy of aesthetic thought is divided into three main periods. In 1906–49, Dewey's _Art as Experience_ was noticed, but due to the fact that China was more concerned with the social realities and national crisis at that time, its aesthetic thought appeared as an accessory to Dewey's social philosophy and educational thought, and its rich significance was properly realized only within the practice of aesthetic education. From 1949 to 1978, Dewey's aesthetics was effectively suppressed through China's ideological storms. From 1978 to the present, benefitting through China's policies of reform and opening, Dewey's aesthetics gradually gained the attention of Chinese academics and found expression in considerable research that develops the book's legacy in distinctive forms of contemporary Chinese aesthetics: life aesthetics, somaesthetics, and ecological aesthetics.