Kant traditionally divided people's psychological functions into three aspects: knowledge, emotion and will. His Critique of Pure Reason, Critique of Practical Reason and Critique of Judgment are devoted to studying the functions of knowledge, will and emotion respectively.
Kant believes that "pleasant things make people satisfied, beautiful things simply make people love, and beautiful things are respected (praised) ... Among these three kinds of pleasure, aesthetic pleasure is the only unique pleasure that doesn't care about interests." The characteristic of beauty is that it does not involve interests, so it does not involve desires and ideas.
Kant put forward the famous distinction between "pure beauty" and "subordinate beauty". He proposed that the ideal beauty should be based on rationality, so only the beauty of dependence is the ideal beauty.
In his view, there is a difference between natural beauty and artistic beauty in judgment. When judging natural beauty, it is not necessary to consider whether it meets the purpose, but to consider the unity of performance and purpose when judging artistic beauty, "because art always assumes a purpose as its origin (that is, reason)."
Kant believes that "beauty is generally pleasant and does not involve concepts", and he puts forward that the source of aesthetic pleasure is not simple sensory satisfaction, but an estimation of the universal transmission of aesthetic mood, which is based on human empathy. From this "universal emotional communication", Kant found an empirical standard of aesthetic interest, namely "the standard of beauty" and "the ideal of beauty".
From this, Kant also noticed the sociality of aesthetic feeling: "Only in society can people think that they are not only a person, but also an excellent person according to human standards (this is the beginning of culture). To be considered an excellent person, he must have the desire and ability to convey his happiness to others, and he will not be satisfied with an object unless he can take out the happiness he gets from that object and enjoy it with others. " At the same time, everyone asks others to pay attention to this universal communication. ..... The evaluation of all kinds of feelings should also be based on whether they can be generally conveyed. "Kant looks at the universal transferability of aesthetic feeling from a social point of view. Whether a person's aesthetic feeling is valuable depends on whether this aesthetic feeling can be generally conveyed to others and appreciated by others.
British empiricism equates "beauty" with "pleasure", and aesthetic activities only bring sensory pleasure; German rationalists equate "beauty" with "perfection", and aesthetic activity is only a low-level cognitive activity. ... he combined the pleasure of empiricism with the "purposiveness" of rationalism, forming the harmony between empiricism and rationalism in the aesthetic field.
Kant's view of artistic genius holds that genius lies not so much in forming aesthetic images as in describing or expressing them. He said, "in order to judge the object of beauty, what is needed is aesthetic taste;" But the art of beauty itself, that is, creating such things, requires genius. " Thus, Kant's focus is not on the formation of aesthetic images, but on the expression of aesthetic images. In artistic creation, "knowledge" does not necessarily guarantee "ability", but the skill of technical training is the most important, but "ability" should be based on "knowledge". In his view, whether a work of art has life or soul depends on whether it shows "aesthetic image", and the ability to express aesthetic image belongs to genius.
Kant said, "The aesthetic image I'm talking about is a form of image expression formed by imagination, which can remind people of many things, but it can't be fully expressed by any clear thoughts or feelings ... With the help of imagination, we try to reach a' highest state' and let these things get such a perfect perceptual manifestation that they can't find in nature." Kant defines aesthetic image as "the most perfect perceptual image expression of a rational concept". Because of its highest generality, aesthetic image can express infinite meaning (rational concept content and countless related thoughts it may cause) with various words (individual concrete images), and can attract people from limited to infinite, from perceptual world to super-perceptual world; It can make people feel the freedom beyond natural limitations.
Kant's "aesthetic image" is a typical example of art, which shows that art is based on nature and transcends nature, emphasizing the richness and creativity of art.
Goethe talked about his differences with Schiller. He said: "There is a big difference between a poet looking for the special for the sake of the general and showing the general in the special. The first procedure produces allegorical poems, the particularity of which is only valuable as an example or model, but the second procedure is particularly suitable for the essence of poetry. It shows a kind of particularity. Whoever grasps this particularity vividly will get the general at the same time but didn't realize it at the time, or realized it afterwards. " What is pointed out here is the difference between starting from concept and starting from reality.
The so-called "looking for the special for the general" means starting from the general concept, starting from the general concept to be expressed in the poet's mind, and then looking for individual concrete images as examples and explanations; As for "the special shows the general", it is based on special cases. The poet first grasps the vivid concrete image of the individual in reality, and because it is true and complete, it is bound to express universal or universal truth. Therefore, this difference is actually the difference between "writing completely subjectively" and "starting from the objective world".
Goethe said: "We should start by expressing our characteristics in order to achieve beauty", adding: "Art does not directly imitate what people see with their eyes, but should trace back to what nature is made of and what its activity basis is." It can be seen that art should show the characteristics of things, that is, grasp the essence and inevitable law of things and show their rationality.
"The first and last requirement of a genius is to love the truth." "A specific situation has become something universal and poetic through the poet's handling. All my poems are improvised poems, which come from real life and gain a solid foundation from real life. " "The artist is creating an object at the moment he grabs it, because he gets something meaningful, unique and fascinating from it, which makes it more valuable."
? "The real life of art lies in grasping and describing individual special things."
Schiller said: "Although the ideal beauty is inseparable, it shows different characteristics in different situations: melting and exciting."
Hegel said: "Beauty is the perceptual manifestation of ideas." It affirms the importance of ideological content in art, but the disadvantage is that his starting point is general rather than special, abstract concept rather than concrete real life, and "seeking special for general" rather than "expressing general in special". Here "appearance" and "existence" are opposites, and the result of appearance is a work of art, in which people directly realize the infinite universal truth from the perceptual image of a limited thing. People often say that art is infinite and limited.
He said: "When we meet a work of art, we first see what it directly presents to us, and then we will examine its meaning or content. The former factor-external factor-is valuable to us, not because it is directly presented; We assume that there is something in it-a hint, a hint to inject life into the external form. The use of external shapes is to guide this meaning. " This means that works of art are the unity of rationality and sensibility, that is, the unity of content and form.
Hegel affirmed that artistic beauty is higher than natural beauty. Think that nature is just "comfortable" and it can't realize its existence. As an absolute spirit, the concept is characterized by "self-awareness", self-awareness, self-care, self-thinking and self-existence.
Hegel adopted the view that "beauty is mixed with the whole". Stone piles are just mixed, and only living things can see the whole (such as horses). It is the integration of "life", "spirit" or "idea" that makes the mixed whole, that is, Hegel's internal concept unity. The peak of natural beauty is the life of animals.
Belinsky said that all the best works "should be branded with their times in spirit and form, and meet the requirements of their times".
"The immortality of poetry in each era depends on the importance of the ideals of that era and the depth and breadth of the thoughts expressing the historical life of that era. The longest-lived works of art can express the truest, most realistic and most distinctive things of that era in the most perfect and powerful way. "
"Thought melts in emotion, and emotion melts in thought: a high degree of artistry comes from the mutual melting of thought and emotion."
"Tendency itself should exist not only in the author's mind, but also in his heart and blood. It should be an emotion, first an instinct, and then maybe a conscious thought. " The "tendency" here is the unity of emotion and reason, and it is an "ideal". It is the result of the "spirit of the times" or the education of artists in real social life.
Like Hegel, belinsky regards typicality as an individual image that conceptually embodies universal thoughts. He said: "to idealize reality is to embody universal and infinite things in individual limited phenomena." This typicalization is "looking for the special for the general", not "seeing the general from the special".
Belinsky: "Poetry is a creative expression of possible reality." The possible reality is not necessarily the existing reality, but the reality assumed according to the inevitable law. This clearly distinguishes not only the reproduction of reality and the reproduction of reality, but also the truth of art and the truth of life.
Is beauty content beauty, formal beauty or the unity of content and form? Belinsky said; "There is no doubt that art should be art first, and then it can become the expression of social spirit and tendency of a certain era. No matter how beautiful the thought of poetry is, no matter how powerful it reflects contemporary problems, if there is no poem in it, there can be no beautiful thoughts and any problems; What people can see in it is only that the intention is very good and the execution is very bad. " The consistency of ideology and artistry is, in the final analysis, the consistency of content and form.
Belinsky affirmed that "life is always higher than art, because art is only a manifestation of life." He added: "Life in poetry is more life than reality itself." It can be seen that as far as reality as the source of art is concerned, reality is higher than art; Art is higher than reality, which means that art puts aside accident, reveals the essence of things and promotes the image to be typical. This is in line with Chairman Mao's dialectical judgment on the status of life beauty and artistic beauty.
Belinsky said: "Without typology, there is no creation."
Chernyshevski said: "Beauty is life, first of all, it is the kind of life that reminds us of people and human life. ...... The beautiful things in nature only have a beautiful meaning as a hint to people. " Natural things imply human life and look beautiful. This view was developed by Fischer and his son, and later became the "empathy" theory in German aesthetics.
Chernyshevski affirmed that real life is the source of art, reality is higher than art, and that art depends on imagination, "the image of imagination is dim and powerless compared with the impression of feeling".
Chernyshevski said that artists "need the ability to distinguish between major and non-major features".
"The extent to which a person's life is full of beauty and greatness depends entirely on himself. Only in the eyes of plain people, life is empty and plain. "
Most western aestheticians believe that the purpose of art is to create beauty, while Tolstoy and Chernyshevski agree that the purpose of art is to deny beauty. Tolstoy said: "It is an artistic activity to awaken an emotion that you have personally felt in your heart, and then convey that emotion with actions, lines, colors or words, so that others can feel that emotion."