“China Form” and the Question of the Frankfurt School

Theories of the Frankfurt School were introduced into aesthetics studies in China at the end of the 1970s. After more than 40 years of theoretical journey, the ideas of the Frankfurt School have undergone a process from "criticism/query/opposition" to "recognition/acceptance/approval," and have also substantially completed "theoretical linkage" with Chinese aesthetics. As a Western discourse, the theories of the Frankfurt School, like other theories, are faced with scrutinization in the Chinese context. China's acceptance of the School plays an objective role in promoting the transformation of its contemporary aesthetic discourse, making contemporary aesthetic research in China more obvious in its problem awareness, enhancing realistic criticism of aesthetic theory, However, in the process of entering into the narrative of Chinese aesthetic theory, the Frankfurt School has also experienced theoretical reconstruction in an aesthetic sense, and hence has objectively become a "China form" of the Frankfurt School.