(A summary of aesthetics and aesthetic feeling
What is aesthetics? Simply put, aesthetics is to study the aesthetic relationship between man and reality. It is not only different from ordinary art, but also not a simple daily beautification activity.
The origin of aesthetics can be traced back to the ancient slave society. Ancient thinkers' philosophical discussion of beauty and art and their research and summary of artistic practical experience can be regarded as the germination and starting point of aesthetic theory.
Aesthetics, as an independent science, is a modern product. In the18th century, when bourgeois philosophy and science flourished, aesthetics began to be established as a special topic in German classical philosophy. Baumgarden [1] used the word "aesthetics" for the first time in 1750, and regarded aesthetics as an integral part of the philosophical system. Subsequently, Kant and Hegel endowed aesthetics with a more systematic theoretical form, which made it occupy an important position in its philosophical system. Under the domination of positivism, some bourgeois aestheticians in the19th century tried to make aesthetics get rid of philosophy and become the so-called "empirical science". Of course, the empirical aesthetics, which calls itself "the science of experience", is not and cannot be separated from the domination of philosophy, but aesthetics has developed more extensively and independently in this period.
The emergence of Marxist philosophy provides a truly scientific world outlook and methodology for aesthetic research and changes the face of aesthetic research. Marxist classical writers have also put forward many important principled aesthetic viewpoints, but they have not been systematized in time. Therefore, the establishment of a scientific Marxist aesthetic system is still a task to be completed. It should be said that the study of aesthetics from the perspective of Marxism is still in the exploratory stage.
Aesthetics, as a social science, is produced and developed on the basis of social material life and spiritual life, and it is a science that studies beauty, aesthetic feeling, beauty creation and aesthetic education law.
Aesthetic feeling is an emotional experience of the characteristics of external beauty or internal beauty of objective things. It is an emotion of affirmation, satisfaction, pleasure and admiration when people with certain aesthetic standards evaluate the beautiful characteristics of objective things. Aesthetic experience has two distinct characteristics: 1. Perception of the lines, colors, phonology, harmony, vividness and symmetry of aesthetic objects is the basis of aesthetic feeling. 2. Perception and power of beautiful things. Aesthetic feeling is a subjective attitude towards aesthetic objects and a reflection of the relationship between whether aesthetic objects meet the needs of the subject. Aesthetics means appreciating beauty and ugliness. Aesthetic feeling can only be produced through the activities of cognition, evaluation and appreciation. Because everyone's aesthetic needs, viewpoints, standards, abilities and cultural background are different, the aesthetic experience of the same object is also different. Not only the evaluation and appreciation of beauty and ugliness can arouse people's aesthetic feeling, but also the evaluation of good and evil will affect people's aesthetic feeling and experience.
(2) Beauty and aesthetic feeling
What is beauty? Nietzsche's understanding, in addition to "the illusion of representation" [2] and "the projection of vitality on objects", also needs to pay attention to the following points:
First, beauty is a strong desire. Nietzsche believes that since Kant, all aesthetic theories have been corrupted by the concept of "no interest". He hates the so-called "contemplation without desire" and advocates: "Where is the beauty? I must use all my will; There I am willing to love and die, so that the image is not just the image. Love and death: never change. The will of courtship: this is willing to die. "
Second, beauty is a powerful image expression. "When power becomes merciful and drops to visibility, I call this drop beauty."
Nietzsche's analysis of aesthetic psychology mainly includes the following contents:
First, Lenovo said. The judgment of beauty "endows it with a little magic, which is conditional on the correlation between the judgments of beauty, but has nothing to do with the essence of that object." The reason why an object is perceived as beautiful is that it activates the unconscious memory of all kinds of beautiful experiences in the past, and all these experiences are less motivated by the other side and gather around the object. Therefore, aesthetic feeling is an illusion based on unconscious association.
Second, the mixed theory of animal sexual pleasure. We have animal sexual pleasure states such as sexual arousal, drunkenness and cruelty. When an object is slightly excited by the areas contained in these pleasure States, "the mixture of these extremely subtle differences between animal sexual pleasure and desire is an aesthetic state."
Third, I feel the same way. In ancient times, people were trained by fear and saw danger in all strangers, so they learned the ability to guide their thoughts quickly and learn to imitate their feelings about the Lord, that is, they learned to empathize. People even extend this view from people and animals to natural things, thinking that all actions and lines contain intentions. Practicing empathy from fear produces all kinds of aesthetic feelings, including the beauty of nature. This theory is equivalent to empathy, but Nietzsche pointed out that empathy originated from the fear of primitive people.
Fourth, the theory of distance. Aesthetic feeling depends on a certain space or time distance.
(C) Aesthetic concepts derived from aesthetic feeling
This is all the inspiration provided by Fechner's "bottom-up" aesthetics. Now that we have the real aesthetic experience of human beings as the logical starting point of the aesthetic theoretical framework and the most primitive basis for discussing all aesthetic issues, the assumption about the objective existence of beauty immediately becomes a luxury, and it is definitely a luxury that hinders us. From the perspective of aesthetic feeling, the most important issue facing aesthetics is no longer the so-called essence of beauty, or whether beauty is the ontological proof of objective existence, but the essence of aesthetic feeling, the essence of aesthetic feeling process, and the process itself in which human subjects perceive and grasp objects aesthetically. This means that aesthetics has changed from a science about beauty to a science about beauty and aesthetics, and the foothold of aesthetics has rapidly changed from ontology to epistemology, from the metaphysical study of ontology to the metaphysical study of cognition.
A philosopher once said that when people praise the beauty of an object with one voice, they may say something completely different. Everyone's psychological feelings have their own unique personal characteristics, and the psychological feelings of the same person are always in an uninterrupted process of change. What's more, people judge objects with different values in aesthetic activities, and they will have different feelings when facing the same object, which is not worth making a fuss about. However, if we put this issue in a broader context and examine it in the whole history of aesthetic development, we will find that the differences in aesthetic experience of different individuals are not only due to their different values. Of course, the ease and pleasure we feel when observing a peaceful scenery is always called "aesthetic feeling" by aestheticians, but can we also call it "aesthetic feeling" when we watch Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet in the theater? Also, should we also call the grotesque and complicated feeling we experienced when reading the One Hundred Years of Solitude by the South American writer Marquez "aesthetic feeling"?
We can't find a satisfactory answer to this question from the voluminous literature of aestheticians in past dynasties. People always talk about beauty, but it seems that they rarely talk about the specific feelings that human beings call "beauty".
The second chapter is the aesthetic feeling produced by aesthetics.
(A) aesthetic feeling
Aesthetics is a kind of human spiritual activity, a kind of spiritual activity that endows subjects with rich and complex psychological feelings, and also an activity that obtains its meaning through the psychological feelings of these subjects. Therefore, the first thing in aesthetic research is to study all kinds of psychological feelings obtained by human beings in this special spiritual activity, which is called "aesthetic feeling".
Studying "aesthetic feeling", it is difficult for us to define "aesthetic feeling" in one or two sentences. This is not only because there have been many arguments and objections in the long history of aesthetic development, but also because the definition of aesthetic feeling, like the definition of beauty, involves almost all important issues in the aesthetic field. The theoretical definition of "aesthetic feeling", like the definition of beauty that aestheticians have devoted themselves to before, is actually one of the limited core issues in aesthetics.
All arguments about different theories and viewpoints in aesthetics, as long as they are of theoretical significance, can only be based on two basic differences. First, because of different tastes, and second, because of different or even opposing theoretical starting points.
Representatives of different styles and schools often attack each other. Classics look down on Rococo style, realism uglifies romanticism, Tolstoy dislikes Shakespeare very much, and there is nothing clear about the right or wrong between them. Even if we can find a lot of theoretical evidence to prove that one artistic style is more vital than another, or that a certain style is more suitable for a certain occasion, our personal aesthetic feeling does not seem to be affected by these rational proofs. It seems that it transcends rational thinking and directly collides with the objects in the mind. In the face of this aesthetic feeling that is not controlled by reason, if we don't want to be tyrants in the perceptual field, we can only say that there is no right or wrong feeling caused by different tastes, as long as the aesthetic experience is true rather than hypocritical, it is correct. In the real aesthetic field, there are no mistakes. Because of this, Hume said that "there is no dispute about interests", because what is really worth arguing in the aesthetic field is not the authenticity of feelings, but whether a certain feeling belongs to the aesthetic category, which psychological feelings should be included in the aesthetic category and what psychological feelings should be excluded from the aesthetic field. However, such discussions have long gone beyond the differences in interests.
This difference is fundamentally different from the aesthetic difference caused by different tastes. To use a metaphor that may not be appropriate, the aesthetic debate caused by different tastes is just like Europeans in the era of geographical discovery looking for sea routes to the East in order to break the Muslim blockade of East-West trade. They never really reached the legendary mysterious and attractive capital of gold along different roads, but in the course of this expedition, people from all directions got more or less the wealth they dreamed of; Disputes arising from different theoretical bases are described in ancient legends as blind people touching an elephant. The blind man who touches the legs says that the elephant is cylindrical, the blind man who touches the ears says that the elephant is like a cattail leaf fan, and the person who touches the elephant's belly says that it is like a flat plate ... Different explorers will deduce their own different theories according to their respective positions, so it is inevitable to produce the "column theory" and "cattail leaf fan theory" about the shape of the elephant.
However, just like solving the argument that blind people touch elephants, the most fundamental solution we can reach is to find out their respective theoretical starting points and compare what these different starting points mean to a complete elephant. Just like a syllogism, if an absurd conclusion is finally reached, and its reasoning process itself is correct, we should go to its premise to find the root of the error. If a self-complete theoretical system finally comes to the wrong conclusion, then it is very likely that its fault lies in its theoretical starting point.
(A) aesthetic value and evaluation
The aesthetic value of art is based on practical value and has objectivity. In appreciation, due to cultural differences such as regions and nationalities, there will be differences in values and even completely different value standards. But this does not mean that aesthetic value is not objective, because value is not equal to evaluation, and they can be unified or opposed. Cultural customs and personal special experiences are the main reasons for the disunity. In the actual evaluation of a work, different subjects will have different feelings. For example, when a person loses a loved one, the warm and pleasant form will not be perceived as a happy thing. On the contrary, a happy person will feel the atmosphere of celebration in rainy weather. Due to the differences in cultural habits, a China landscape painting is also difficult to be accepted by westerners. Whether the evaluation of the subject conforms to the objectivity of value depends on whether the appreciation media operated by the subject conforms to the appreciation habit of the subject. A person who can't play Go, no matter how much aesthetic knowledge and experience he has, can hardly perceive the formal beauty in the chessboard. At the same time, it also depends on whether the subject can sublimate ordinary emotions into aesthetic emotions under the action of rationality. A person with an appreciation level can perceive and experience the aesthetic phenomena of various media, and even can transform daily information into aesthetic information for experience.
In art appreciation, the aesthetic feeling of works has social utility. On the one hand, aesthetic images and information not only stimulate the subject's aesthetic experience, but also stimulate the individual's realistic consciousness, that is, interest judgment lurks in aesthetic judgment. For example, when the color and shape of the apple in the painting are very beautiful, it can also be used as an emotional experience of "looking at the plum to quench your thirst". Even a universal emotion conveyed by pure geometry can arouse the individual's unconscious interest judgment. On the other hand, aesthetic feeling contains contents that are beneficial to human society. If the spectacular war scene is regarded as a whole art, then people will not want to see that art ... because the judgment of aesthetic value is restricted by cognitive value and ethical value, that is, the content beneficial to human society restricts the judgment of aesthetic value. For example, works with times and regional styles, or formal norms recognized by a group's personal feelings, can all be used as standards for aesthetic evaluation.
(3) Aesthetic analysis
After 1990s, the discourse of practical aesthetics, which once dominated China's aesthetics, began to decline. Aesthetic circles either reject metaphysics and turn to empirical study of aesthetic culture, or still advocate life aesthetics or post-practice aesthetics, and replace practice foundation with life ontology in traditional mode. However, the real development of aesthetic basic theory ultimately lies in the transformation of ideological paradigm. Cao Junfeng's Introduction to Meta-Aesthetics is the initial achievement of this change, and it is undoubtedly one of the most creative works on aesthetic principles since the 1990s. On the basis of criticizing the defects of traditional aesthetics and contemporary aesthetics, the author finds that the reasons for their similarity are vague semantics and concepts, inaccurate understanding of the essence of aesthetic statements, and lack of conscious logical consciousness when discussing aesthetic issues. Therefore, he put forward that language analysis is a "better diagnosis and treatment" of aesthetic ills, and his so-called "meta-aesthetics" is essentially the aesthetics of language analysis. "It takes general aesthetic statements as the object and makes semantic and logical analysis of aesthetic statements at a higher level of language". According to his diagnosis and treatment plan, we should first change from the analysis of aesthetics and beauty to the analysis of terms, taking aesthetic sentences or sentences as the analysis object, and then examine the internal logic of aesthetic sentences. Obviously, this methodology comes from the philosophy of language analysis from Frege, Russell to Wittgenstein in Europe and America, which embodies the efforts of localization of this thinking paradigm in the aesthetic field. In the concrete operation, the author starts with the stratification of aesthetic concept (object description layer, psychological description layer, artistic skill evaluation layer, aesthetic evaluation layer and aesthetic principle layer), and uses aesthetic psychology to investigate the semantic ambiguity, uncertainty and openness of this appreciation concept. Then the semantic analysis of different aesthetic propositions is made, and a series of conclusions are drawn: all aesthetic object description sentences are subjective and emotional, and there is no objective and accurate description. The more unprovable, the more aesthetic; Aesthetic psychological description sentences can't summarize the description of personal introspection experience. And so on.
Undoubtedly, Introduction to Meta-Aesthetics is deeply influenced by the overall "linguistic turn" of modern western philosophy. It breaks through the tradition that the study of aesthetic principles (deeply influenced by hegelianism) is limited to humanism, and tries to construct the theoretical outline of meta-aesthetics on the basis of linguistic analysis philosophy, which points out a brand-new way of thinking for the diversified development of China's aesthetics.
Conclusion: For thousands of years, people seldom really study aesthetics from the real feelings of specific people, but from the perspective of human nature. Without human feelings, humanity and its development and change process, beauty will always be a mystery. This kind of research can never see that art and people's aesthetic feelings are constantly changing with the changes of people themselves, with the changes of people's natural and social background and with the changes of people's spiritual needs. So I can only say that since we were born in this era when people's ideological level is not high, we can only strengthen our so-called aesthetics through a considerable definition. However, how I hope that what we call aesthetics is not only the beauty in the eyes of artists, but also can enter thousands of households and ordinary people! Aesthetic activities symbolically face and surpass the world.