Plato's aesthetic thought;
In the history of western philosophy, Plato first constructed a dualistic philosophical system.
Idealism: dividing the world in two. The real world is an individual, unreliable world, short-lived, changeable, impure, mixed and incomplete, so it is unreal; The world of "idea" is eternal, static, pure and complete, so it is real and general. Some related issues, such as generality and individuality, * * * and particularity, essence and phenomenon, concept and concreteness, have become a discussion center of western philosophy for thousands of years. Therefore, Nietzsche believes that the whole thousands of years of western philosophy is essentially Plato's way of thinking, that is, an extension of the binary opposition way of thinking.
Thierry, a historian of philosophy, said: "Plato is a poet and mystic, as well as a philosopher and debater." He combined the great power of logical analysis and abstract thinking with amazing poetic imagination and profound and mysterious feelings to a rare degree. "
Plato's aesthetics is an inseparable part of his philosophy. "The concepts of beauty and art have been brought into a great philosophical system for the first time." Plato's aesthetic thought is not the same as mysterious and poetic things in his philosophy. His aesthetic thoughts are mainly embodied in the following aspects:
First, the ontology of beauty-idealism
Plato agrees with Socrates' idea, firmly believes that reason can acquire true knowledge, and takes the pursuit of "truth", "goodness" and "beauty" as the purpose of philosophical exploration.
Real knowledge: it must be knowledge about real and eternal things, not about things that flow and change in a flash. Learning like physics deals with real-world knowledge, so it is impossible to grasp eternal things and existence. True knowledge is knowledge about "ideas".
What is eternal is the world of ideas, and the real world is the imitation or sharing of the world of ideas.
Plato believes that things that exist are divided into four levels: the highest level is the world of "ideas", which is absolutely static, pure and eternal, and is the most real; Secondly, mathematical objects, such as numbers and geometric figures; Thirdly, individual things, that is, individual "creatures", that is, animals, plants, artificial products and so on. , is constantly changing in nature; The second is portrait, "first refers to the shadow, then refers to the reflection on the water and the smooth body, and other similar things." The relationship between them is "idea", which is the blueprint of everything. Individual things are copies or shadows of the same name "idea". Portraits are also copies or shadows of individual things. Specific things "participate" in "ideas". To own something is to own a part.
Corresponding to the cognitive object, cognitive ability is also divided into two parts and four grades.
The first part is "comprehensible" and "knowledge world". It can be divided into two categories: ① understanding is related to reason (no-sis means "intelligence", "intellectual analysis" and "thinking"), and the object is "idea". Understanding doesn't need anything emotional, and you can grasp the "idea" only by the concept itself. Belonging to the cognitive activities of philosophy; ② Understanding is related to intellectuality (dianoia means "thinking" and "analysis"), and the objects are mathematical objects and geometric figures. Quantity and shape are often explained by numbers and things, and still have the perceptual color of specific things. In addition, the mathematical method is reasoning from premise to conclusion, and the premise has the nature of hypothesis. For example, "all numbers are odd or even" and "all numbers are omnipotent".
The second part is "visible" and "opinion world" (judgment). It is also divided into two categories: ① belief (belief), that is, daily experience and common sense, but it lacks certainty; (2) Guess that the object is portrait, fantasy is personal imagination and impression, and poetry and art belong to this stage.
Plato believes that what rational reasoning knows is always true and unchangeable, while the objects of opinions and irrational feelings are always unchangeable and unreal.
At the same time, the knowledge about "idea" is transcendental. He said: "If we acquire this knowledge before birth and take it with us, then we will not only know" the same ","bigger "and" smaller "before and after birth, but also know everything" itself ". Isn't it? Because our argument not only applies to "the same", but also to "beauty", "goodness", "righteousness" and "holiness". In short, it applies to everything marked "self" in the dialectical process of question and answer. So we should have mastered this knowledge before we were born. "
Sensory perception of individual things is not knowledge. If perception is regarded as knowledge and truth, it will lead to subjectivism like the wise school.
Plato thinks that the transcendental nature and inevitability of reason are two concepts. Necessity is a blind force that existed before Genesis, and it is disorderly and worthless. Reason represents the power of God. It puts goodness into the universe and makes it orderly and valuable.
Plato's "theory of ideas" is a leap in the history of human cognition. For the first time, the most fundamental problem in philosophical epistemology is clearly and profoundly put forward, that is, how to grasp the true essence of things in the flowing, changing and transient phenomenon world, so as to achieve a rational understanding of the world.
However, the world of "ideas" is not recognized by ordinary people. General knowledge can only stay in the daily and real world, and is often confused by the real world, so it is impossible to acquire real knowledge. Only rational people can see the "idea" through memory, that is, the ontology of things. Philosophers belong to "people who think about the essence of things wholeheartedly" and "people who like to know the truth" People who live in the "visible world" are like living in a cave, and people who live in the "knowledge world" are like living in the sun. This is the "cave metaphor" he discussed. The so-called "cave metaphor", Plato thought like this: a group of people have lived in caves for generations, locked in a fixed place by chains, and even locked their necks, and can only look straight at the scene before them. There is a fire behind them. There is a low wall between the fire and the prisoner. Behind the wall, people walked by holding various statues. The fire projected these statues on the cave wall facing the prisoners, forming diverse and changing images. A prisoner's life is like watching a shadow play. They think that the images shaking in front of them are real things and call them by different names. So, someone walked out of the cave, fainted and finally saw something in the sun.
Consistent with the theory of ideas, Plato repeatedly demonstrated in the chapter "The Great Hippocampus" that "what is beauty" and "what is beauty" are two different issues. Beauty is not something beautiful, but "beauty itself". At the same time, Plato disagrees with the views of the wise men and Socrates, and thinks that this kind of "beauty itself" is inappropriate, beneficial and pleasant, nor is it good, and goodness is not beauty. Beautiful things are beautiful because beauty itself endows them with beauty and because it "divides" beauty itself-the "idea" of beauty.
What is this beauty itself?
Plato said: "this kind of beauty is eternal, without beginning or end, without birth or extinction, without increase or decrease." This is not beautiful, and the other is ugly; The beauty at this time is not beautiful at another time. On the one hand, it is beautiful, on the other hand, it is ugly; It doesn't vary from person to person. It's beautiful for some people and ugly for others. Not only that, this beauty is not manifested in a certain face, a certain hand, or some other part of the body; It does not exist in an article, knowledge or any other object, such as animals, the earth or the sky; It just exists in itself forever, and it is the same as itself in the form of a whole; All good things are based on it, and only with it can all good things become beautiful. "
And to understand this "beauty itself" needs to go through a series of stages:
His first step should be to love only a beautiful body and use this beautiful body to breed beautiful truth. Secondly, he should learn to understand that one form or another of beauty is related to all other forms of beauty. This is the form of seeing physical beauty in many forms of individual beauty. Assuming this is the case, only a fool will not understand that all forms of beauty are just the same beauty. After understanding this truth, he should spread his love to all beautiful forms, instead of focusing on one beautiful form too enthusiastically ... Further, he should learn to see the beauty of behavior and system, and see that this beauty is everywhere ... From then on, he will enter all kinds of knowledge and see their beauty under the guidance of the guide. So looking at the vast field of beauty that has passed, he will no longer be like a humble slave, focusing his love on an individual object of beauty, a child, an adult, or a certain behavior. At this time, with the beauty of the sea in Wang Yang, I gazed intently and felt infinite joy in my heart, so I gave birth to countless beautiful and lofty truths and gained rich philosophical gains. After such an energetic contest, he finally suddenly understood the only all-encompassing knowledge, the knowledge with beauty as the object, and understood the ontology of beauty.
This beauty itself belongs to the same category as philosophical knowledge and truth. The way to know beauty itself is essentially a way to explore truth.
Second, the relationship between beauty and love, goodness and life itself
Plato believes that the highest goal people pursue is immortality: "I believe that people do their best to gain immortal prestige and win the love of future generations;" The higher their moral quality, the more they should do so. They love immortality. "
There are two ways to pursue immortality: one is to pass on one's essence and blood to future generations through childbirth, so that one's life can continue in future generations; The second is to create spiritual works, pass on their ideas to contemporary and future generations, and leave a name in history. This way is related to wisdom and virtue. For example, Solon gave birth to the laws of the polis, and philosophers gave birth to various virtues. Comparatively speaking, people are more willing to produce spiritual products. "As long as we look at great poets such as Homer and hesiod and envy their beautiful children who have won them eternal fame in the world, then people will be willing to choose children with souls instead of children with bodies."
The pursuit of immortality is related to wisdom and kindness. Wisdom and beauty are related: "because wisdom belongs to the most beautiful thing, and love is love for beauty, so love must be love for the wise." "Love is the hope that beauty will always belong to you." So, this is also a kind of love. Fertility is related to secular love and sex. "The reason why all creatures have such fanaticism and love is to pursue immortality." "Beauty is the god of fate or the goddess of reproduction that dominates fertility." The love of beauty is also related to immortality. Because of the pursuit of immortality, people must love, love beauty, love wisdom and love goodness. Love is intrinsically related to truth, goodness and beauty.
Tata Kevic, a famous aesthetic historian: "The famous trinity theory of beauty, wisdom and goodness originated from Plato, which embodies the highest value of human beings. Plato put beauty in the same position as other highest values, but not above them. "
What is the relationship between truth, goodness and beauty? Both beauty and goodness are "ideas", noumenon and truth. However, are beauty and goodness the same or different? Is it parallel or subordinate in the world of "ideas"?
Beauty is not good, and goodness is not beauty. In Drinking, Plato thinks that we can grasp the truth by observing beauty, and regards the knowledge about beauty as "the only knowledge that covers everything". So, is beauty itself the highest "idea"? Is it the highest truth? In the knowledge world, the last thing to see, and the most ugly thing to see, is the concept of kindness. In order to understand it, we must explain why it is really all kinds of beautiful and just things, the father of light in visible things and the highest source of reason and truth in the knowable world. Anyone who wants to handle his official and private life reasonably must pay attention. Here, goodness is obviously regarded as the highest "idea". Goodness is the cause and foundation of everything, including beauty and justice.
For this problem, Plato put forward his "sun metaphor": he thinks that the noblest, greatest and most beautiful thing in the perceptual world is the sun. Vision and visual objects alone are not enough for the naked eye to see objects. Goodness also occupies the same position as the sun in the knowable field. The sun is not only the creator of the visibility of all visible things, but also enables them to generate, grow and breed; Although it is not self-generated. The object of knowledge not only obtains its knowability from goodness, but also obtains its own existence and essence from goodness, but goodness itself is not essence, but something beyond essence, which is more dignified and powerful than essence. Giving the object of knowledge the truth and the ability of knowing knowledge is the concept of goodness. The sun is the source of understanding perceptual things, and it makes perceptual objects appear. Similarly, goodness determines what the knowable objects are and makes them appear in the mind. Therefore, goodness is not only the highest "phase", but also a unique "phase", because everything else becomes useful and beneficial only if it is related to goodness. If there is no goodness, then everything else is worthless. If you don't know what is good, you don't know that other things are worthless without good. The pursuit of beauty can approach goodness itself. The pursuit of beauty is related to goodness and eternity: this kind of beauty itself is the most worthy realm of life for a person.
Plato finally restored the love, beauty and goodness of human life itself, which is related to eternal life. It can also be said that immortality is the ultimate goal of mankind. The concept of beauty is not only related to aesthetics and art, but also a way of life and ideal of people, and it is one of the highest realms of philosophy. From the reading and appreciation of Homer's Iliad, we can have a profound understanding and experience of Plato's thought from the life and spiritual world of the Greeks.
Third, the function of art.
The beauty noumenon that reason can achieve. Art is only the imitation of individual things, belonging to the category of portrait painting, and only corresponding to the psychological state of speculation. Therefore, art is not the object of reason. Through art, we cannot achieve perfection. Plato therefore put forward the idea of anti-art
First, from the perspective of knowledge, art is an imitation of perceptual things, a "shadow of shadow", separated from "truth by three layers". In ancient Greece, art was generally regarded as a kind of "poisis", and Plato thought that all "works" could also be described as poems: in terms of original intention-even if something that did not exist originally became existence-there was more than one kind of poems. Therefore, every artistic creation is a poem, and every craftsman is a poet ... even so, we can't call them all poets, can we? We use different nouns to refer to different skills, and only give the title of "poem" to one of them. His work objects are music and beats, although this title is acceptable as long as it is produced. We just call this skill "poetry", and people who do this kind of work are "poets". A poet is a craftsman, and his products are even lower than those of other craftsmen. People are interested in poetry, painting and other arts because painting has color and rhythm, which can confuse the masses. If the color of music is washed away from the poet's works, then this poem is like a flower, and the brilliance of youth has withered.
The real world is an imitation of "ideas". The imitation of poets and painters not only failed to make imitations close to "phase", but lost materiality. It is impossible for people to learn real knowledge from it. Therefore, in the relationship with truth and knowledge, Plato completely denied art, saying, "Since Homer, all poets have been imitators. Whether they imitate virtue or all the subjects they write, they just get images and never grasp the truth. "
Politically and ethically, art will have a very bad negative impact on human nature. As for the "Republic", Plato thinks that the laws of the city-state are much more perfect than the tragedy.
He believes that the negative impact of art on human nature is mainly manifested in the following aspects: First, blasphemy. Some poems and tragedies directly describe gods sighing, crying, reveling and losing their dignity, which leads to god's disorderly behavior and makes people lose respect and admiration for God and lose their role models. The second is to cater to the despicable elements in human nature. Tragedy makes people feel sympathy and pity, which can often satisfy people's sentimentality, while comedy can cultivate people's clown habit. When watching a comedy, … you can't help laughing at the words and deeds of the clown you don't want to perform. Don't you think it's vulgar, just like how you feel when you experience sadness? Here, the situation is the same, you release the feeling of trying to be a clown who is usually afraid of being condemned and banned, so that you can express it vividly. The result of laissez-faire usually becomes a private comedian before you realize it.
Art provides opportunities and reasons for people's indulgence. People may do something stupid in the theater that is impossible at ordinary times. In this way, people will become misbehaving and emotionally fragile. In addition, poetry increases the intensity of desire, irrigates and nourishes people's feelings of resentment, sexual desire and pleasure or pain, weakens the power of reason and destroys psychological balance. Therefore, Plato wants to expel those imitative poets and artists from his "Utopia".
This shows that Plato's negation of art does not mean that art has no function. On the contrary, he thinks that art plays a very important role. His view of art is entirely from the perspective of educating people, especially from the perspective of cultivating successors of rulers. Plato not only did not object to some poetic arts that were beneficial to people's physical and mental health and city-state law, but also welcomed them very much. There are poems praising God, poems praising good people, music and so on. In order to ensure the normal production of this kind of poetry, Plato thought it necessary to supervise the poets, "forcing them to describe only beautiful things and images of beautiful things in their poems, otherwise they will not be allowed to write poems in our city-state."
Therefore, Plato put forward a two-pronged approach to art: one is to ban unhealthy and blasphemous art, and the other is to encourage and manage artists who create works that are beneficial to the education of young children. However, it is not so simple in real life. The most difficult thing to determine is how to grasp the degree between the two.
The function of art first involves the value of art itself, but also involves the social responsibility and artistic ethics of art, which is also a long-debated issue in the history of aesthetics.
This problem is not only the focus of aestheticians, but also the crux of the confrontation between art critics and politicians. Artists maintain the freedom of creation and the value of art itself, while politicians mainly consider social influence and effect. Modern politicians do not simply reward and suppress the art that is beneficial to them for their own ruling interests. However, they have taken various measures for art, but generally they only "block" and "guide", and the effects have their own advantages and disadvantages. So far, there is no conclusion.
IV. Inspiration and Charm —— On Artistic Creation
It is generally believed that artists are supported by inspiration when they create. What inspiration is this? Where did it come from? Democritus once suggested that the inspiration of art comes from a kind of crazy enthusiasm, Socrates also had a similar view, and Plato further put forward the theory of "fanaticism" in artistic creation.
He said, "Your explanation of Homer's skill is not skill, but inspiration, as I said. There is a divine force that drives you away, just like euripides's magnet, which is what most people call the "Hercules Stone". Magnets can not only attract the iron rings themselves, but also transfer the attraction to those iron rings, so that they can attract other iron rings like magnets. ..... Poet God is like this magnet. She gives people inspiration first, and those who get this inspiration pass it on to others, so that others can connect and hang into a chain. All brilliant poets, whether epic or lyric, do not make their beautiful poems by skill, but because they are inspired and have divine power to attach themselves. "
Inspiration is compared to a magnet here. The poet God transmits inspiration to the poet, and then infects the audience of poetry through the poet.
The article "Federico" described this inspiration as "ecstasy". Generally speaking, there are four kinds of ecstasy: one is the folk "ecstasy", which seems to be the predecessor of "prophecy"; Second, witchcraft drives away diseases, and prayers enter a state of ecstasy; The third is the ecstasy of "the poet's possession": "It (the poet) is attached to a gentle and chaste soul, feels it, leads it to the realm of ecstasy, reveals it in various poems, praises the great achievements of ancient heroes, and hangs it as a lesson for future generations. Without this ecstasy, no matter who knocks on the door of poetry, he and his works will always stand outside the door of poetry, even though he fantasizes that he can become a poet only by the art of poetry. His sensible poems are dim when they meet crazy poems. "
In addition, there is a fourth fascination-the theory of "soul memory".
People are divided into soul and body.
He thinks the soul is like "a pair of flying horses and a rickshaw driver". The horses and rickshaws used for fascination are good in themselves, and their pedigree is also good. Horses and rickshaws used by the souls of all living things except God are complex and impure. The human soul, a rickshaw puller should ride two horses, one docile and the other stubborn. Whoever has a perfect soul will fly to the upper bound and dominate the universe. If the soul is not perfect, it will fall until it falls on something hard and adheres to an earthly body.
On the journey of ascension, the soul will enter the eternal realm of God. "There is a real entity in the outer world, which is colorless, invisible and unpredictable. Only reason-the helmsman of the soul and the balance of true knowledge-can be observed. " Even if the human soul is imprisoned in the body, it still longs to see the eternal world of "phase" again. However, not all souls can realize their wishes. Anyone who can follow hard and be closest to God can also make rickshaw drivers cocky and move with the sky, but they are often dragged down by horses, so they rarely see the essence of things clearly. There are also some souls that rise and fall. If they can't control the stubborn horse, they can only see part of the story. The poet's soul is unique and perfect, and can fly to the upper bound. In the process of its operation, it is obvious that what it sees is true justice, virtue and true knowledge, not the way they appear in the world, nor the heterogeneous image-these are what we mortals think is true-but true, absolute justice, absolute virtue and absolute true knowledge. Later, when poets see beautiful things in the secular world, they will recall the real beauty in the eternal world seen by the soul and look up at everything they saw at that time in the eternal ontology. "He described these things and became a wonderful and unusual poem that touched the soul. This kind of poet is actually a philosopher, that is, a true lover of beauty and wisdom.