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There is an urgent need for a 2000-word paper entitled "What is beauty?" Please, 3Q.
Second, China's view on the essence of beauty in contemporary aesthetics 1. The representative figures of subjective beauty theory are Lu Ying and Gao Ertai. Some people think that beauty is a subjective concept. As early as 1953, Lu Ying pointed out that "beauty is a concept of people, not an attribute of things"; Gao Ertai clearly believes that "objective beauty does not exist, as long as people feel beauty exists, unless people feel beauty, beauty does not exist". What the subjectivist school should pay attention to is that it directly touches the essence of beauty and human nature, and touches the subjective initiative of aesthetic activities. However, it insists that beauty is the product of human mind and beauty is produced by aesthetic feeling, which fundamentally reverses the relationship between beauty and aesthetic feeling, confuses the boundary between beauty and aesthetic feeling, violates the basic principle that existence determines consciousness, and falls into subjective idealism, so subjectivism school has little influence in the discussion at that time. It didn't work during the Cultural Revolution, but it has something in common with emancipating the mind in the new period, so it is more active. 2. Cai Yi, the representative figure of the theory of "beauty lies in nature", believes that beauty is the natural attribute of objective things, and it does not depend on the subjective will of the appreciator and the aesthete. Later, Cai Yi further put forward the theory that "beauty lies in typicality", arguing that the essence of beauty is the typicality of things, that is, the commonness of classes appears in individuals. In fact, "beauty is in nature" and "beauty is typical" are two levels of problems. The beauty of nature means that natural things are beautiful in themselves, whether you admit it or not. The viewpoints of "beauty lies in nature" and "beauty lies in typicality" emphasize the objectivity of beautiful things, so they are called objectivism. However, this view is materialistic, mechanical and divorced from the content of social practice. 3. Zhu Guangqian is the representative of the theory that beauty is the unity of subjective and objective. It is believed that beauty is the unity of mind and matter, and beauty lies between subjective and objective. If beauty is defined, it can be said that beauty is the kind of characteristic that some things in objective aspect, nature and form are suitable for subjective ideology and can be integrated into a complete image. "Image" has absorbed China's main category "image", that is, "beauty is image". Beauty is related to objective things, but it is not entirely objective things. Objective things are only conditions that provide beauty, and are inevitably influenced by subjective consciousness. Therefore, the image of beauty is the unity of subjectivity and objectivity. Zhu Guangqian's theory of the unity of subject and object tries to overcome the one-sidedness of the unity of subject and object, which seems dialectical and comprehensive in theory and has certain rationality. But in his view, objective things only provide beautiful conditions, and they are not beautiful in themselves. Just because it is suitable for subjective consciousness, after subjective processing and emotional transfer, it is subjective that plays a subjective role. His so-called "unity of subjectivity and objectivity" is a subjective unity, so this view is not fundamentally divorced from subjectivism, but still subjective and idealistic, and then processed into "practice", but only spiritual practice. 4. Li Zehou, the representative figure of "unity of objectivity and sociality", believes that beauty is an objective existence, which is not transferred by human subjective will, but this objectivity is not pure natural objectivity, but the objectivity of social existence. Beauty objectively exists in human social life, and beauty is the product of human objective social life. Without human society, there is no beauty, and the essence of beauty reflects the essence of society and anthropology. Before human society, there was no distinction between beauty and ugliness in the universe, space and world, just as there was no distinction between good and evil at that time. In this way, beauty is objective, which is different from subjectivism and the unity of subjective and objective, and draws a clear line with idealistic aesthetics. At the same time, it is said that beauty is social and its objectivity is social, which is different from naturalism and mechanical materialism. Beauty is the product of human social practice and the elucidation of viewpoints. To say that beauty is the unity of sociality and objectivity actually means that beauty is the product of human social practice. Marx's "human social life is essentially practical", human beings survive through material practice activities, and materialize their own talents, wisdom, purpose, understanding and other essential forces into the object world, so that the original nature becomes "humanized nature", which Marx said is "objectification of human essential forces" and "non-organism of human beings", so that human beings can "visualize themselves" on it. The practice of human material society has become the root of beauty, that is, "beauty is the product of social practice", so the aesthetic school represented by Li Zehou has become practical aesthetics. This school has solved the problem of the origin of beauty, overcome the theoretical defects of the unity of subjectivism, naturalism and subjectivity and objectivity, and established the study of the essence of beauty on the scientific basis of Marxist practice view and historical materialism, which is close to the essence of beauty and conforms to the law of beauty. Therefore, it is regarded as one of the most important achievements in the study of the essence of aesthetic beauty in China, which has been recognized and affirmed by most people and has far-reaching influence. However, this school also has some shortcomings in theory: First, practical aesthetics is more convincing in explaining social beauty, but it seems far-fetched in explaining natural beauty, especially classifying the beauty of natural things as social, denying the unique position and role of material elements and attributes of natural things in the composition of beauty. 2. Generally speaking, beauty is the product of social labor practice, but it is also lost in the fact that the connotation of this proposition is too broad to explain that some labor products are beautiful and some labor products are beautiful. Generally speaking, since the process of modern industrialization, on the one hand, human beings have created great material civilization and wealth, on the other hand, they have also destroyed the natural environment and ecological environment on which human beings depend. This is a paradox. Ecological aesthetics will replace practical aesthetics as a new subject of aesthetics. Scientific Outlook on Development did not regard GDP as the only criterion of social development. Third, human labor practice often has a clear practical utilitarian purpose, is an activity that emphasizes the value of "goodness" and is the most basic labor practice for survival needs, while beautiful things often have no clear practical utilitarian purpose and are not the objects that directly meet people's material needs and survival needs. Therefore, practical aesthetics easily confuses the boundaries between "beautiful" things and "good" things and "true" things, and cannot answer the unique essence of beauty. In a word, practical aesthetics has relatively more reasonable elements in solving the problem of the origin of beauty, but there are still many shortcomings, especially the problem of confusing the origin of beauty with the essence of beauty, which requires us to make new explorations. The view that beauty is harmony and freedom was put forward by Mr. Zhou. First, beauty lies in the aesthetic relationship. As a special object, beauty does not exist in all subjective and objective objects in general, but in the concrete aesthetic relationship between people and things. The subject grasps the object with an emotional essential force, and the object is presented to the subject as a beautiful object. In this sense, the essence of beauty objectively exists in the specific aesthetic relationship formed by aesthetic subject and aesthetic object. The definition of beauty in aesthetic relationship means that beauty is not a simple object attribute, but a relational attribute, which is an objective attribute corresponding to aesthetic subject and aesthetic object stipulated by aesthetic relationship. In the aesthetic relationship, the subject grasps and cares about the beauty of the object with the essential power of emotional feelings, so on the one hand, although it contains some understanding and some rational factors of the object, the way of grasping it is non-conceptual, intuitive and empirical, so it is not dominated by the objectivity and inevitability of the object, and conforms to the law in a non-conceptual way, so that not only the object is free, but also the subject is free; On the other hand, although the aesthetic relationship also contains the subject's practical desire and certain will purpose, the way to treat the object is non-utilitarian and detached, so it is aimless and in line with the purpose without sacrificing the interest of the object, so that not only the subject is free, but also the object is free. Therefore, in the aesthetic relationship, there is no contradiction and conflict between subject and object in essence, and they are all harmonious and free. The essence of aesthetic relationship is harmony and freedom, which determines that the essence of beauty is also harmony and freedom. Beauty is harmony and freedom, which is not only a logical and comprehensive concept, but also a historical and flowing category. Harmony is not a static state, but a developing and flowing state, which is the inevitable trend of the development of beauty. Therefore, at a certain stage of its internal structure and development, there may sometimes be some disharmonious, contradictory and even ugly factors, but the overall nature and basic trend are harmonious. Third, the overall thinking Throughout the history of aesthetic development, the idea that beauty is harmony runs through. From Pythagoras School to Marx, harmony is an unchangeable ideal of beauty in all historical periods. Classical period is primitive harmony, simple harmony, emphasizing the unity of miscellaneous things, mostly formal harmony. In the capitalist period, the alienation of human nature, man and his products, subject and object, man and nature, subject and object, necessity and freedom has led to disharmony in art. With the gradual disappearance of alienation, the dialectical unity of subject and object, man and nature, necessity and freedom will inevitably appear, and a new type of beauty of harmony and unity of opposites will return to classical beauty. This kind of beauty is not a simple return, but a negation of negation, which is a harmonious beauty beyond simplicity. The Pythagorean school first proposed that beauty is harmonious, but they only gave the figures of natural science. Plato and rationalist aesthetics try to link the harmony of form with objective concepts and transcendental rationality, while Aristotle combines the harmony of form with the unity of biological organisms, while empirical aesthetics discusses it on the basis of the phenomenon characteristics of beauty and physiological and psychological feelings and experiences. But on the whole, they all attribute beauty to an objective attribute, or a natural attribute of things, or a transcendental concept, or a rational attribute. Diderot put forward the theory that beauty is a relationship, which sprouted a new trend of linking things with people. German classical aesthetics began with Kant, trying to reconcile the opposition between empiricism and rationalism, combining the nature, sensibility and object of empiricism with the man, reason and subject of rationalism, and defining the essence of this combination as harmonious freedom, which is the free relationship between man and object. Chernyshevski combined beauty with people and human social life, reaching the highest level of materialistic beauty theory before historical materialism. Marx's view of practice unifies the harmony and freedom of beauty with the essence of harmony and freedom of human beings. The essence of human harmony and freedom is rooted in the universal freedom and conscious essence of social production practice. The harmonious unity of subject and object, man and nature, man and man, purpose and regularity has become the simplest, most abstract and most scientific regulation of the essence of beauty. It is the earliest historical form of beauty created by human beings (the unity of logical category and historical category), and it is the most abstract and universal provision applicable to all societies and all forms of beauty. The idea that beauty is harmonious in this way means that it has the rationality of existence on the basis of practice, and at the same time, it realizes freedom without concept and utility in aimless purpose, which is neither attached to the object nor the subject, but connects the aesthetic relationship between the two, thus achieving a kind of harmony.