Although the subject of aesthetics is very young, from the aesthetic point of view, we can see that the origin of Chinese and western aesthetic thoughts is very long, and it has accumulated extremely rich aesthetic thought resources with a long history and tradition. Plato and Aristotle in ancient Greece, Confucius and Mencius in pre-Qin China, Laozi and Zhuangzi in Taoism, and other hundred schools of thought all have rich aesthetic resources. China's aesthetic thoughts are very different from those in the west, and the resources in this field are very rich and excellent. Aesthetic theory is not only the birth of aesthetics for more than 200 years, but also the accumulation of the whole history. The question I want to talk about today is, what kind of discipline is aesthetics?
What kind of discipline is aesthetics? In the past, many people completely misunderstood, and some did not understand it accurately. We don't intend to define aesthetics directly, but talk about it in combination with some historical situations, because so far, there is no consensus on what kind of discipline aesthetics is. A definition is often difficult to gain universal understanding and recognition. This has a lot to do with the short history of aesthetics as an independent discipline. Some people have some misunderstandings about the course of aesthetics. For example, someone once asked me if aesthetics is an American subject. Of course, such misunderstandings are rare now; But there are still many people who think that aesthetics is a knowledge about art, and then I will talk about three questions.
First of all, there are several representative views on the object of aesthetic research in the history of aesthetics.
Generally speaking, the research object of a subject determines the nature, scope and boundary of this subject. The research object, scope and boundary of natural science are relatively clear, while aesthetics is not so clear. For example, the research objects of mathematics, physics and chemistry are clear and will not be confused with each other. However, the research object and scope of aesthetics can not be said to be clear up to now, and even in the field of aesthetics, a * * * knowledge has not been fully formed. There are different opinions about what the subject of aesthetics studies from ancient times to the present, so the understanding of the essence of aesthetics is also very different. Therefore, before putting forward our views on aesthetics, it is necessary to briefly summarize the views on the research object and scope of aesthetics in the history of aesthetics.
Here we first introduce some representative statements.
The first view holds that the research object of aesthetics is beauty and the law of beauty, so aesthetics is a subject to study beauty and the law of beauty.
This view is quite common in contemporary China, because according to our translation, "aesthetics" literally studies "beauty". In fact, this view appeared very early in western history. At that time, although aesthetics was not yet born as a discipline, people often regarded the questioning of the essence of beauty as an important aspect of their philosophical discussion. For example, Plato, an ancient Greek philosopher, expressed his views on beauty many times in his dialogues. In the famous Epifanie, he criticized Epifanie's view that beauty is equivalent to all kinds of beautiful things and utensils listed, such as beautiful women and beautiful soup pots. He put forward a question of "beauty itself", thinking that these concrete things of beauty are not equal to beauty itself. He wants to go beyond these concrete things and look for beauty itself, thinking that beauty itself is what makes beautiful things beautiful and is the reason for beauty. In his view, beauty itself has such a kind of beauty, and beautiful things are beautiful because they "divide" beauty itself. This kind of beauty itself is the highest beauty, and the source of all beauty is there. This has actually triggered a discussion about the nature of beauty in the West. According to our understanding today, the pursuit of beauty itself is also the core issue of his aesthetic thought, which is the main research object. Since Plato, the study of beauty itself and the essence of beauty has become the main problem and research object of western aesthetics. Related to it is the law of beauty. Since the founding of New China 60 years ago, the research object of aesthetics has basically focused on the essence of beauty. Since the new period, hundreds of textbooks and works on aesthetic theory have been published. Most of these textbooks and works focus on beauty, and take the theory of beauty as the core and starting point to explore beauty and its essence.
The second view holds that aesthetics is devoted to the study of art, that is, taking art as the main object of aesthetic research.
This idea comes from Hegel, the master of German classical aesthetics. The content of Hegel's lecture at Berlin University is called Aesthetics Lecture Notes, which was translated by Mr. Zhu Guangqian as Aesthetics. At the beginning of the first volume of this book, when discussing the name of aesthetics, I think aesthetics should be an artistic philosophy, which is a part of philosophy that specializes in artistic beauty. The title of his English version of Aesthetics has been translated into "the artistic philosophy of beauty"
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Art). The reason why he limited the object of aesthetic research to art is because in his philosophy and aesthetic system, there is only the place where the mind (spirit) exists, but there is no natural position. In his view, art belongs to the field of mind, and the beauty of art is higher than the beauty of nature. Therefore, only artistic beauty is the object of aesthetic research, and natural beauty is excluded. Influenced by him, many western aestheticians equated aesthetics with philosophy of art for at least 100 years after him. The problem is that the study of art already has artistic science and artistic principles, so why aesthetics? The answer is to study art from a philosophical perspective, and to examine the beauty of art from a philosophical perspective, so that aesthetics has philosophical character and height, because aesthetics is a branch of philosophy. Therefore, many aestheticians believe that aesthetics is equivalent to philosophy of art,
The third viewpoint is different from the first two, and takes aesthetic experience as the main object of aesthetic research.
The first two viewpoints, whether focusing on beauty or art, focus on objective aspects other than people, but now this viewpoint focuses on subjective aspects. It is believed that aesthetics studies people's own aesthetic experience and takes people's aesthetic feelings, feelings and experiences as the object of aesthetic research. From object to subject, it also includes the psychological aspect of subject. In the west, this tradition began with 17 and 18 century British empiricism. Empiricists have great faith in the reliability of experience. In aesthetics, they think that aesthetics is the study of people's aesthetic experience, and there is no need to study the so-called objective beauty. Without subjective aesthetic experience, objective beauty does not exist. In the 20th century, more and more people think that it is almost impossible to find the universal essence and definition of beauty. Wittgenstein of Austria is a representative of analytical philosophy. He believes that metaphysical discussion of beauty is meaningless, and only concepts or propositions that can be confirmed by experience are meaningful. A meaningful concept or proposition can be proved or falsified by experience. The concept of "beauty" is meaningless because it can neither be proved nor falsified. Wittgenstein had a famous proposition in his later period: "The usage of words is meaning", and so is the word "beauty". "Beauty" is generally an adjective, but the content and meaning of the object it refers to are very different, such as the beauty of beauty and the beauty of clothes. Another example is listening to Beethoven's music, immersed in music, feeling beauty and enjoying beauty. At this time, using "beauty" to express this feeling is very different from the content and context of "beauty" used above; Another example is Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth. From choreography, dance and performance, the whole performance was very good and successful. In this case, "beauty" is also used to praise. Although the word "beauty" is used above, the context, content and meaning are different. How can we generalize and cover it with a unified definition of "beauty"? Therefore, empirical aesthetics opposes taking the abstract and unified "beauty" and the essence of beauty as the research object, and advocates taking concrete and practical aesthetic experience as the research object. In contemporary China, there are aestheticians and aesthetic schools that hold this view, and there are also some aesthetic works and textbooks that take aesthetic experience as the core concept and the main research object.
The fourth proposition is related to the third proposition, that is, to study aesthetic experiences from the perspective of psychological activities and why these aesthetic experiences come into being. In this way, the object of aesthetic research becomes the research on the psychological mechanism and structure of aesthetic feeling and aesthetic experience, and the problems that aesthetics pays attention to become such as "how aesthetic feeling is produced" and "how aesthetic experience occurs". Aesthetics becomes aesthetic psychology.
For example, Fechner, a German aesthetician in the19th century, wrote Experimental Psychology. He studies aesthetic feeling from the perspective of experimental psychology, and determines what kind of psychological state can produce aesthetic feeling through psychological experiments. They carried out some experiments, such as letting some subjects watch the geometric figures prepared in advance, letting them judge which one is the most beautiful, and summarizing the characteristics of "beauty" by statistical methods. Now it seems that these experiments are too simple and almost worthless, but after all, they have opened up a way to pay attention to people's aesthetic psychological structure and mechanism. Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, discovered the unconscious level of psychology and the sexual instinct as the dominant unconscious, and used it to explain the psychological problems in literature and art, such as the right to reach? Freud interpreted Finch's famous painting Mona Lisa from his Oedipus complex. His student Jung, like him, thought that he overemphasized universality, so Jung deviated from his teacher, turned Freud's individual unconsciousness into a collective unconsciousness and removed universality. Jung put forward the prototype theory, which holds that the prototype is a collective unconscious, which has been produced in the living environment since early human beings and passed down from generation to generation through genetic mechanism. This is another psychological explanation. Later, psychoaesthetics used other methods to study aesthetic experience, such as Bloch's distance theory and arnheim's gestalt psychology.
The above-mentioned parties' different understanding of the object of aesthetic research also forms their different understanding and understanding of the aesthetic subject in their minds. So how should we know the subject of aesthetics? Objectively speaking, this is a difficult problem because there is no unification so far, and everyone is still discussing it. One of the questions is what is the essence of beauty. I don't think I can answer this question yet. Plato once said at the end of The Great Hippocampus: "Beauty is difficult". I think this is really an absolute wisdom. Since ancient times, how many people, including many great aestheticians, have given countless definitions of beauty, but none of them are successful and none of them are recognized by everyone. Similarly, how to reach a * * understanding of the object of aesthetic research, that is, the nature of aesthetic discipline, has also become a difficult problem in the field of aesthetics. An important reason why it is difficult to determine the object of aesthetic research and the nature of its subject is that the subject of aesthetics is still young and has not been fully developed, and many basic concepts and propositions have not been confirmed and reached, which has certain uncertainty. Although philosophy is also developing, as an urban discipline, most of its basic concepts, categories and propositions have been determined.
Second, contemporary China's representative views on beauty and aesthetics.
In 1950s and 1960s, an important aesthetic discussion took place in the history of China's aesthetic development, which decided the basic pattern of contemporary aesthetics in China. Among them, there are four main aesthetic schools. At that time, the focus of discussion was the essence of beauty and the orientation of aesthetics. This also shows that there was no unified view on what kind of discipline aesthetics was in China at that time. As far as the essence of beauty is concerned, there are the following viewpoints, namely, several factions.
The first school, represented by Galtai and Lv Ying, thinks that beauty is subjective.
Later, Gao Ertai was more influential. He is a man with artistic temperament and talent. Why is beauty subjective? They often take beauty in the eye of the beholder as an example to illustrate their views. They believe that it is impossible to achieve a universally recognized beauty, and there is no eternal and universal beauty. Only when people regard things as beautiful in their subjective consciousness can things be beautiful. This view was immediately labeled as subjective idealism, and people often refute this view with natural beauty, the so-called objective beauty.
The second school is the objectivism school, which believes that beauty is objective, represented by Cai Yi.
This school believes that beauty is an objective existence that is independent of people's subjective will, and that beautiful things are beautiful because they have objective beauty attributes. The reason why people can feel beauty is because people's brains reflect objective beauty and form aesthetic feeling. Mr. Cai Yi is the first aesthetician to construct the basic principles of aesthetics from the Marxist point of view. He wanted to study some basic problems of aesthetics from the viewpoint of materialism, and wrote "New Aesthetics" in the late 1940s. Because of his materialism, his theory meets the requirements of mainstream ideology. Starting from some recognized beauty phenomena, he infers that there is eternal and objective beauty and puts forward the theory that "beauty is typical". But many aesthetic phenomena are difficult to explain, such as natural beauty. It is difficult for him to explain some natural phenomena that are now considered as natural beauty, but not in the past. His theory that beauty is typical has also been criticized. The famous literary work A Dream of Red Mansions, Anna? The beautiful characters in Karenina are typical, which extends him to aesthetics. If you think the beauty of Huangshan lies in the unity of sex and personality, it lies in its typicality. This view can't stand the question, such as the typical barren land, is it also beautiful? More ironically, someone gave an example of a toad, a typical toad. Isn't it beautiful, too? Someone asked me.
The third school, represented by Mr. Zhu Guangqian, believes that beauty lies in the unity of subjectivity and objectivity.
He thinks that beauty is completely subjective and meaningless, and it is meaningless to say it mechanically and objectively like Cai Yi. He tried to unify the two. He explained his basic understanding of beauty in such a way, that is, by using the dialectical relationship between matter and consciousness of Marxism, he put forward the theory that things are A things and things are B. Object A is an objective thing, which mainly refers to the material form of this thing, such as perceptual factors such as shape, material and color. Object B refers to the image of object A in people's minds, which is the objective basis. Object B is the subjective processing of object A by human beings, which contains subjective factors, is independent of object A, and is the unity of subjective and objective, and beautiful things are the object B with the unity of subjective and objective. He often takes Huangshan pine as an example to show that when pine trees are viewed from a scientific or utilitarian perspective, it doesn't matter to beauty; Only by getting rid of utilitarian considerations can Huangshan Songqing be beautiful. For example, if a businessman comes, calculate its value, so that the tree can't see beauty, but only see economic value; A carpenter came and thought that this tree could be used as a bookcase and wardrobe, and how to arrange and use wood. Of course, he can't see the beauty of pine trees. When botanists come to study the botanical properties of trees, they will not feel beautiful about this tree; Finally, an aesthetic person came, without any utility, just to see. He ignored the actual existence of this pine tree and only noticed the external image (object B) of this pine tree-its tall and straight posture and vigorous branches stood on Huangshan Mountain under the blue sky and white clouds, and the viewer was immersed in the aesthetic pleasure of the pine tree image. Only when the viewer regards Huangshansong as an "intuitive image" (object B), and only when people's subjective feelings are projected on it, it is beautiful. So beauty is the unity of subjective and objective. Cai Yi's criticism of this view is: on the surface, it affirms the objective existence of object A, but in fact it means that beauty is only object B that projects people's subjective feelings, so it is still subjective idealism and a false unity of subject and object.
The fourth school advocates the unity of objectivity and sociality, and the representative figure is Li Zehou.
His theoretical basis is Marx's Paris Manuscript, which was just translated at that time and has not been widely understood and deeply studied by academic circles. Li Zehou replaced Zhu Guangqian's subjectivity with sociality in the unification of subject and object. On the one hand, he believes that beauty is objective and independent of individual will; But at the same time, beauty is a social phenomenon, not purely subjective. It is recognized that beauty exists objectively, but this objectivity exists in pure nature except human beings and only in human society. Beauty is created on the basis of human social practice, which has the value and significance of beauty. Only human society can be beautiful. Beauty is a social phenomenon. Man is the sum total of social relations in reality. Beauty is not important before the emergence of human society. The view of this school does not think that beauty is irrelevant and eternal, as objectivists say. It is also acknowledged that beauty has subjective factors, but it is considered that this subjectivity is human, social, or contemporary and national, not personal. In a certain era, there are still stable standards and standards of beauty. Li Zehou's criticism of Mr. Zhu Guangqian is abstract and subjective, which does not conform to reality, does not consider the changes of social relations, and does not combine people's production and practice activities; However, he also criticized Mr. Cai Yi for simply emphasizing the objectivity of beauty without combining beauty with social practice and ignoring the sociality of beauty. Of course, it also criticized Gao Ertai's pure subjectivism. It should be said that Li Zehou's viewpoint was the most theoretical at that time, and it was also the most consistent with Marxism. Among the four schools, his influence was the greatest later.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, with the end of the "Cultural Revolution" and the development of the ideological emancipation movement, there was an "aesthetic craze" all over the country, which was rare all over the world. Aesthetics has become a prominent and "hot" science, so hot that even Wen Wei Po has devoted a whole page to the national aesthetic knowledge examination, and everything in society has to be about aesthetics. In addition, there is an understanding of the aestheticization of life, which holds that life can be aestheticized, and everything in life is linked to aesthetics, resulting in the "generalization" of aesthetics. If someone puts forward furniture aesthetics, advertising aesthetics and even toilet aesthetics, I think this is not an aesthetic honor, but an aesthetic sorrow. Mr. Jiang Kongyang thinks that aesthetics can't be generalized, and aesthetics should maintain its philosophical character. Looking at the hundred-year history of China's aesthetics, to sum up, aesthetics has gone through the process of "cold"-"hot"-"pan". Compared with this fanaticism, aesthetics is a "cold" science in the world. In this contrast between cold and hot, some characteristics of contemporary China aesthetics are reflected. In the 1990s, aesthetics seems to have returned to the normal state and embarked on the road of discipline development.
3. Aesthetics is a subject about aesthetic phenomena (aesthetic relations and activities)? Comprehensive humanities.
Aesthetics is, in the final analysis, a comprehensive humanities discipline about aesthetic phenomena (aesthetic relations and activities). Starting with our understanding of aesthetics doesn't mean that we don't recognize several understandings introduced earlier. On the contrary, these understandings have given us great inspiration. The development of aesthetics is a very long process. In this process, every school and theory that once existed and had a great influence has its own reasons and values, and will play a greater or lesser role in the overall development of aesthetic history. There are always some new theories that absorb and transform the original ideas and become relatively perfect and influential theories. For example, the fifth theory we mentioned, aesthetics is a theory that studies the aesthetic relationship between man and the world. We believe that aesthetics can neither study the so-called pure object aesthetics nor study the aesthetic psychological structure of our subject. These two aspects are insufficient and one-sided. We should still study the basic problems of aesthetics from the relationship, because it integrates the reasonable aspects of the first four theories and overcomes their one-sidedness, so it is more enlightening to us. Therefore, I absorb the fifth proposition more to think about the research object and subject nature of aesthetics.
Accordingly, I summed up the disciplinary nature of aesthetics in one sentence, that is, we believe that aesthetics is a comprehensive humanities discipline about aesthetic phenomena. This sentence includes three levels: (1) The object of study of aesthetics is "aesthetic phenomenon"; (2) the humanities; (3) Aesthetics is a comprehensive humanities subject.
In a word, aesthetic phenomenon is actually or essentially a phenomenon in aesthetic relations. There are many relationships. Only when there is an aesthetic relationship between people and the world can aesthetic phenomena occur and exist. For example, how do natural phenomena change from pure natural phenomena to natural beauty? The mountains in Yangshuo and the water in Lijiang River are beautiful only if they have an aesthetic relationship with people. The staff who live there every day are often concerned about the practical utility of daily life, but have no intention of aesthetics and can't feel the beauty there. Guilin landscape is not a realistic aesthetic object (beauty) for them, and it has no aesthetic significance. Here, it is not a simple objective beauty, nor a simple aesthetic subject, but an aesthetic phenomenon as a whole or a phenomenon in an aesthetic relationship, and it is the object of aesthetic research.
Therefore, we believe that the subject of aesthetics studies aesthetic phenomena, which is the central issue of aesthetic research. The concrete development of aesthetic relationship is the aesthetic activity of human beings. Aesthetic relationship and aesthetic activity are two sides of the same coin. In this way, the topics of "aesthetic relationship" and "aesthetic activity" are introduced from "aesthetic phenomenon". This aesthetic phenomenon is a common phenomenon in aesthetic relations and activities. As long as there are people, there are aesthetic phenomena. Aesthetic factors are included in many daily activities. Such as advertising, room decoration, beauty and so on. Of course, I don't agree to generalize aesthetics and treat them as aesthetics. However, there are indeed aesthetic phenomena everywhere in daily life. In a word, aesthetic phenomenon actually reflects the aesthetic relationship between man and the world. If it does not reflect the phenomenon of aesthetic relationship, it is not an aesthetic phenomenon. Let's look at various aesthetic phenomena.
First look at the aesthetic phenomenon in art, that is, artistic beauty.
Artistic beauty is the result of human creation and refinement, which is higher than nature and the expression of human spirit. But only when we appreciate works of art can works of art present realistic beauty. Ingarden, a Polish phenomenological aesthete, believes that aesthetic objects and works of art are not the same thing, they can be separated. In the 1980s, when I translated one of his articles entitled Art and Aesthetics, I was very shocked. He believes that works of art are not ready-made and natural aesthetic objects, and our aesthetic objects are produced by the interaction between readers and works. Therefore, artistic beauty is an artistic image (aesthetic object) generated in aesthetic activities, rather than a purely objective and fixed phenomenon of beauty.
Secondly, look at the natural beauty.
The emergence of artistic beauty is well understood, but a difficult and controversial point is about the aesthetic phenomenon in nature, that is, natural beauty. As mentioned above, before human beings came into being, everything in nature existed, but there was no beauty, because beauty was only valuable and meaningful to talents. Once a person is born, there will be many relations with nature, but when he first appeared, the relationship between man and nature was mainly survival, not aesthetic, not harmonious. Only after the affinity between man and nature begins can the aesthetic relationship gradually emerge. The process of aesthetic relationship between man and nature is a history of struggle full of human blood and tears. In the most basic sense, the beauty of nature is meaningful because of talents. For example, the beauty of Huangshan is for people to see. No one can tell whether the phenomenon of Huangshan is beautiful or not. Suzhou gardens restore artistic things to natural things, giving us a sense of beauty that returns to nature. Then, without our participation, can nature or natural scenery become beautiful independently? I don't think so. In fact, these natural landscapes can not always become aesthetic phenomena. They have a long history in the occurrence of human aesthetics. The natural beauty we just quoted will not be denied today, and it is all considered as natural beauty. But they are not always regarded as natural beauty.
In short, apart from the aesthetic relationship between man and nature, there is no independent and eternal natural aesthetic object, that is, natural beauty. This is a great turning point in modern aesthetics.
In addition, there are a lot of aesthetic phenomena in daily life. We seldom mentioned it in the past, but it is actually the most common one. We will meet beauty all the time in our life. People pay attention to the beauty of food, clothing, housing and transportation. This is especially true in modern life. Modern mass media and Internet have penetrated into every aspect of daily life, which is actually the aestheticization of daily life. In the commodity economy society, in addition to practicality, commodities also emphasize aesthetics. It is not uncommon that "packaging" even exceeds practical value. Many times, the boundaries between art and life are blurred. Art is integrated into life, art is life, life is art, life is art and art is life. Art goes to the people peacefully. This is also a new change in the aesthetic relationship between people and real life.
The above points show from one side that there is beauty where there are people. Whether in nature or in artistic creation, whether in daily life or in science and technology, there are beauty and aesthetic phenomena.
In modern society, we can say that without aesthetic activities, human beings can hardly survive, and aesthetic activities have become an indispensable part of people's lives. It is impossible to imagine what life would be like without aesthetics. In modern life, aesthetic activities have become an extremely important way of life, and human lifestyles and leisure activities contain a large number of aesthetic activities. Aesthetic phenomenon is essentially a phenomenon of aesthetic relationship, which can be further said to be a phenomenon developed in aesthetic activities. The aesthetic relationship between subject and object, subject and the world can only be formed in aesthetic activities. Therefore, aesthetic phenomenon and aesthetic relationship are the objects of aesthetic research, that is, aesthetic activities are the objects of aesthetic research. Only in aesthetic activities will there be an aesthetic relationship between man and the world, and there will also be the aesthetic phenomenon just mentioned.
In aesthetic activities, we should regard artistic activities as the most central activities, because artistic activities are the most advanced and typical forms of aesthetic activities. The nature of aesthetic activities may not be typical in general aesthetic activities, so studying artistic activities can also help us understand other aesthetic activities. It can be said that aesthetics is a subject that studies aesthetic activities, but it is centered on artistic activities. These two views can be unified. This is our definition of aesthetics from the perspective of things.
In a word, my view on aesthetics is that aesthetics is a comprehensive humanities discipline about aesthetic phenomena, that is, a discipline that studies people's aesthetic relationship and aesthetic activities.