Four Lectures on Aesthetics - Aesthetics - Section I. What is Aesthetics?

"Four Lectures on Aesthetics - Aesthetics - What is Aesthetics"

Lee Zehou

But first, is there an aesthetic?

The phenomena of beauty are extremely numerous, yet varied. Pine and sea, moon and flower, from clothing to housing, from the human body to art, from appreciation to creation ...... How vast, how alien, how complex, how marvelous! In such an all-encompassing and varied field, is there, can there exist a ****same thing as an object of thought or study? Can or should such generalized universal questions be asked? The world is so lively and varied, why do we have to find a "law" or "problem" that may not exist to govern, regulate and destroy it? Does such a "norm" or "problem" really exist? Is this some kind of "essentialist" fallacy?

This is the quandary that aesthetics encounters from the very beginning.

From the earliest times to the present, there has been a view, an opinion, or a tendency that there is no such thing as aesthetics. Beauty or aesthetics cannot and should not be a discipline, because in this field there are no intellectual or scientific problems such as recognizing the truth, and there are no universally necessary and valid laws or objective laws. Zhuangzi said two thousand years ago that each is beautiful in its own way. While people see Mao Wall and Li Ji as beautiful, fish and birds see them and avoid them. "A man who traveled against his will had two concubines, one of whom was beautiful and the other evil; the evil one was expensive while the beautiful one was cheap. Yangzi asked him the reason, and the rebellious traveler boy replied:His beautiful one is beautiful by herself, and I do not know her beauty, and her wicked one is wicked by herself, and I do not know her wickedness." Zhuangzi Shanmu beauty is subjective and relative, varying from person to person, where is there any *** same standard to be found? It is impossible and unnecessary to discover or establish rules, theories or sciences of beauty or aesthetics.

This is even more true as far as art is concerned. Hegel's Aesthetics begins with a list of "objections to aesthetics", among them "because artistic beauty, which appeals to sensation, feeling, perception, and imagination, does not belong to the sphere of thought, and knowledge of artistic activity and artistic products requires a function different from that of scientific thought. " Hegel, Aesthetics, Vol. I, p. 8, The Commercial Press, 1979 edition This is because, on the one hand, "imagination and its contingency and arbitrariness, - which is the function of artistic activity and artistic appreciation - cannot be be relegated to the realm of science", and on the other hand, "purely reflective research, if it intrudes", destroys the beauty of art and the state in which concept and reality are one. Hegel calls these objections to aesthetics "popular opinions" and says that "these opinions ...... are unreadable in some of the old writings (especially the French ones) on beauty or the art of beauty. " Hegel, Aesthetics, Vol. I, p. 9, The Commercial Press, 1979 To this day, such opinions persist strongly. The belief that aesthetics cannot be established, that art cannot or should not be the object of scientific research, is still popular among people in general (and among writers and artists in particular). Several writers and artists are not happy with the idea of people using discernment or logic to intrude into or question the world of creativity, which they themselves do not know the reason for.

At the same time, this opinion is expressed in various forms in certain philosophical-aesthetic theories themselves.

This is the case, for example, of the theory of emotion put forward by logical positivism in the fields of ethics and aesthetics since the thirties. The British philosopher A. J. Ayer argued back then that the so-called value judgments in ethics and aesthetics are in fact only expressions of an emotion, with no scientific truth or objective validity. The ethical judgment that "it is wrong for you to steal money" is actually only the same as saying "you have stolen money" plus an emotional attitude or an exclamation point. Stealing money is an empirically verifiable fact, but being wrong is not empirically verifiable, and thus has no objective truth. Your claim that stealing money is wrong is also nothing more than an expression of an emotional attitude. "The words of aesthetics are used in exactly the same way as the words of ethics. The words 'beautiful' and 'ugly', like those of ethics, are not statements of fact, but merely expressions of a certain feeling and evoke a certain reaction. Thus, as in ethics, it makes no sense to think that aesthetic judgments have objective validity. ...... Like ethics, it cannot be proven that aesthetics is a form of embodied knowledge." A.J. Ayer. language, truth and logic. pp. 113-114, London, 1950

Ayer is an earlier stage of this view, and analytic philosophy, dominated by the later writings of L. Wittgenstein, argues that the controversy between the various theories of aesthetics, just as the personal arguments between appreciations are really just a matter of employing semantics, "The concise and correct answer to the question of what beauty is is this:Beauty is many different things, but it is not yet well understood that the term 'beauty' is applied to them." Quoted in Thomas Murno, Toward Science in Aesthetics, p. 265 "The stupidity of aesthetics lies in the attempt to construct a title that was not there in the first place. ...... The truth may be that there is no such thing as aesthetics at all, and that only the The truth may be that there is no such thing as aesthetics, but only the principles of literary criticism and music criticism.W. Eiton, ed. Aesthetics and Language, p.50 Since art is difficult to speak of as an emotional exclamation, the only thing that can be analyzed with textual evidence is criticism. Thus aesthetics can only be meta-criticism or analytic aesthetics. These views and arguments against traditional aesthetics or for the abolition of aesthetics are of course not entirely consistent, for example, Iyer thinks that aesthetics can still study the psychological and sociological reasons for aesthetics, for example, some think that historical theories of aesthetics emphasize a certain aspect of the arts under certain circumstances, and that they still have a positive role to play, etc. But in general, this school of thought has a very different approach. But in general, this school of philosophy denies that aesthetics can exist as a theoretical discipline or philosophy of value judgment, and that philosophy itself, in their case, is a linguistic analysis, as Wittgenstein puts it: "Most of the propositions about philosophy are not false, but merely meaningless, and because we cannot answer such questions at all, we can only speak of their absurdity. Most of the questions and propositions of philosophers come about because we do not understand the logic of our language." Wittgenstein, A Treatise on Logic and Philosophy, p. 44, The Commercial Press So, according to Wittgenstein, it is "ludicrous" to think of aesthetics as a science that explains what beauty is. Cited in Xue Hua, Hegel and the Conundrum of Art, p. 131, China Social Science Press, 1981 edition, both aesthetics and ethics belong to the realm of non-definition. The analytic aesthetics of M.C. Beardsley and others then caught on in this philosophical trend.

It should be recognized that analytic aesthetics of art appreciation and criticism of a variety of complex issues, through the language analysis, made a detailed discussion and scientific cleanup, the problem prompted more clearly, so that people can no longer stay in the vague generalizations of the general talk. In particular, it has contributed to exposing the ambiguity and ambiguity of some basic concepts in aesthetics, such as beauty, ugliness, art, simulation, expression, formalism, realism ...... and so on. Some basic concepts and vocabularies in philosophical humanities are mostly derived from everyday language, where polysemy, metaphor and ambiguity are prominent. Many propositions and debates in aesthetics and literary theory, and especially the confusing nature of such debates, owe a great deal to this. For example, the very lively discussion on image thinking in the past few years is quite typical. After half a day's debate, it is not clear what the word "image thinking" actually means, and what kinds of different meanings it contains. Analytic philosophy can indeed help people to do some very necessary clarification, so that people are accustomed to a more rigorous, scientific attention to the use of concepts, words and phrases. This is especially worth advocating in today's Chinese academic world. And the study of words, phrases, usages, meanings, etc., in the fields of aesthetics and art is still a huge job.

But, on the other hand, there is no need to choke on the existence of aesthetics because of the ambiguity of semantic concepts, just as there is no need to deny the possibility of studying the aesthetic field of art at all because of its outstanding individuality and freedom of subjectivity. Indeed, in spite of all the skepticism and opposition that has persisted, no theory has so far been able to rigorously confirm that aesthetics in the traditional sense cannot be established or does not exist. Nor has analytic aesthetics been able to truly abolish any of the traditional aesthetic problems. On the contrary, from ancient times to the present, philosophical explorations, discussions, and researches on beauty, aesthetics, and art have always been endless, and in many cases quite flourishing. It is evident that there is still a need and demand for such explorations, for an understanding of what beauty is, and for an understanding of the problems or factors that generalize aesthetic experience and artistic creation and appreciation.

Why is this so? That is an interesting question. Is it that the human heart will always have metaphysical pursuits? Or is it the variety of artistic phenomena that prompts people to "think economically" and care about **** the same laws? ......

Wittgenstein argued that "the mystery of aesthetics is the mystery of what the arts do to us". Art is not a private psyche, it is a public **** game (game), which has no laws, but has rules that the participants must follow. And such rules of art are closely connected with a certain life and culture. Wittgenstein said, "In order to understand aesthetic expression, it is necessary to describe the way of life," and "the words we use as aesthetic judgments have a complex, but of course definite, role in what we call the culture of a period. In order to describe them, or in order to describe what one means by cultured interest, one has to describe a culture." That is to say, many of the words and concepts in the aesthetic realm, and the rules of their use in this language, are closely linked to a certain culture, to life (what Wittgenstein calls "practice"). Therefore, it is necessary to study culture and life specifically in order to understand many words and phrases about aesthetics and art and the rules and meanings of their use.

It is evident that, from the point of view of analytic philosophy, the darling of modern philosophy, the analysis of discourse will also go towards or come down to the analysis of culture, life, and society. As a result, today's aesthetics has not only become "metacriticism", i.e., the linguistic study of the principles of criticism, on the one hand, but on the other hand, the specific study of art history and the sociology of art has far exceeded the aesthetics, and occupies a primary position. Therefore, although analytic aesthetics or metacriticism is still needed, the fact is that it cannot replace all of aesthetics, and cannot replace or outlaw the empirical scientific study of art and aesthetic phenomena. This is as Thomas Munro described it earlier:

Aesthetics has developed rapidly over the past half-century along scientific, naturalistic lines: it has included general theories of art, and it has attempted to synthesize factual reports about art and related experience and behavior from a variety of useful sources, including psychology, cultural history, and the social sciences. Factual reporting. ...... Historians and psychologists are increasingly seeing the great variability of artistic interest and what is beautiful to different cultural groups and individuals.Toward Science in Aesthetics, p. 263......< /p>

But is aesthetics the sociology of art?

Talk about or depictions of beauty and art have been made since ancient times, yet they are not necessarily linked. In ancient Greece, it was possible to talk about art without involving the concept of beauty, and to talk about beauty without mentioning art. The same is true in China. Today, the aesthetic pleasure of enjoying a landscape and the aesthetic criticism of a work of art can also be unrelated to each other. Whether beauty and art are necessarily linked, this itself is a question that remains to be investigated, then, the aesthetics is completely reduced to, and equated with, the sociology of art, is not also too hasty or too one-sided?

So what is aesthetics?

The Chinese word "aesthetics" came from Japan in the early twentieth century (translated by Shiu-Min Nakae) and is a translation of the Western word Aesthetics. The word was first used in the eighteenth century by Baumgarten, who adapted the Greek word for sensation to refer to the discipline of perceptual awareness. Therefore, if we use a more accurate Chinese translation, the word "aesthetics" should be "aesthetics", which refers to the study of people's awareness of beauty and perception of beauty. But the convention has been established, and now it is difficult to go back to the "right name". On the definition of aesthetics, there are currently three popular in China: (a) aesthetics is the study of beauty; (b) aesthetics is the study of the general principles of art philosophy of art; (c) aesthetics is the study of aesthetic relations of science. In my opinion, (i) and (iii) have the problem of homonymic repetition. The former ("Aesthetics is the study of beauty") is a tautology in Chinese, which is the same as not saying it. The latter (Aesthetics is "the science of aesthetic relations") is also true in the Western language. Aesthetic relationship is an extremely vague and ambiguous concept. What is meant by "aesthetic relations"? It is not clear, and this is precisely the problem that aesthetics needs to explore, and using it to define aesthetics makes people feel even more confused. (ii) It is too narrow and too broad. Real life, natural beauty and many aesthetic phenomena do not belong to the arts, but still in the scope of aesthetics research, for example, aesthetic education is not only the problem of art education, science and technology also has aesthetics, and so on. On the other hand, some problems of art, some general principles of art, such as the relationship between art and politics, etc., are not the object of aesthetic research. It can be seen that these three statements and three definitions are incomplete and inaccurate. As for saying that aesthetics is the study of sensual pleasant discipline, aesthetics is the study of the science of image, aesthetics is a philosophy of value ...... and so on, it is even more vague, and even more unable to explain the problem.

Instead of seeking a definition of aesthetics in the first place, it would be better to look at the specific history and current status of the discipline. Although so far, about the object, scope, content of aesthetics, there has been a variety of different views and debates, but no matter what, but also no matter how late the term aesthetics (in the West to the eighteenth century, in China to the Xinhai and the "May Fourth" before and after the emergence of the term), from the historical point of view, as I just said, from antiquity, there have been philosophical debates and theoretical discussions on the beauty of the arts. Historically, as mentioned earlier, since ancient times, there have been philosophical discussions and theoretical discussions about beauty and art, and there are objects, fields and contents that are studied and included in today's aesthetics. And this content can basically be divided into three aspects or two factors, which correspond precisely to the three definitions above and indeed constitute the two components of aesthetics to this day. It has been argued that modern aesthetics is composed of German philosophy, English psychology, and French literary criticism (J. Stonitz). Some people think that aesthetics includes three kinds of studies: philosophy, psychology, and objective object analysis (H.S. Lang feild), or that aesthetics can be divided into three kinds of studies: metaphysical (defining beauty), aesthetic psychology, and sociology. ...... I think that all these views are in line with the history and current situation of the discipline of aesthetics. Much of what is called aesthetics has always been some form of combination of the philosophy of beauty, the psychology of aesthetics, and the sociology of art. The more complete form is a fusion, otherwise it is a mixture or a patchwork. In these various combinations and mixes, there are often different emphases, such as more philosophy, more art theory, more aesthetic psychology, and so on and so forth. Thus, various aesthetic theories, schools and phenomena are formed.

In today's world, Europe and the United States are popular and predominantly analytic philosophy of aesthetics and art ontology of aesthetics, mainly in the discussion, research, and interpretation of what art is, including the emergence of Germany's hermeneutics (hermeneutics) and the United States of America's current practice theory (institutional theory). In the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, it is mainly Marxist reflective aesthetics and literary theory, including the famous Lukacs. In the East, Japan seems to have been mainly influenced by the dominance of German aesthetics, while China has been under the dominance of "Marxist-Leninist aesthetics" from the Soviet Union for decades.

What, then, is our basic view of the discipline of aesthetics?

Pluralism. I have argued that "truth is a whole composed of many aspects. Thus, it can be approached from different angles, different ways, different problems, different requirements; the levels and sides of the approach can be different, and the goals sought to be achieved can be different"; "Multiple levels, multiple sides, multiple angles, multiple ways, multiple goals, multiple problems, multiple requirements, and multiple methods complement and perfect each other. "

The same should be true of aesthetics.

Pluralism marks the permanent disappearance and no longer establishment of some kind of unified and complete system or system, including philosophy, which is no more than providing a viewpoint or concept, and will no longer be a complete system that encompasses and explains everything. Philosophy and aesthetics should not and will not be set in one place, and thus, there can and should be aesthetics that departs and proceeds from a variety of different perspectives, levels, paths, and methods, and aesthetics that is different in all kinds of ways. This is not only a difference in theory, but also a difference in type and form. There is a relationship between differences in form and type and differences in theory, but they are not the same thing; there are still fundamental theoretical differences in the same type or form of aesthetics. When we talk about pluralism here, we mainly mean differences in type and form. For example, aesthetics can be divided into different categories according to the different forms of this pluralism, there are the following two tables:

(Omitted)

It should be very careful that any classification has only a relative significance, which is always far-fetched, incomplete, uncertain and ill-considered. Between the various types of interpenetration, constraints, differentiation, synthesis and other relations, extremely complex, more than charts can be expressed or summarized. Practical aesthetics and basic aesthetics, the field and object are vast and huge, and there will be further differentiation, refinement, specialization, and will form a number of special disciplines or sciences that only a few experts can enter or understand, they will produce a set of vocabulary, language, concepts and formulas of their own, far from being able to participate in a wide range of the public to understand and be interested in.

As can be seen, there is no longer any unified or single aesthetics. Aesthetics has become a web of proliferating and interlocking games; it is an open family.

Thus, the pursuit or search for a unified definition of aesthetics becomes futile or meaningless. My previous statement that "aesthetics is the study of beauty and art centered on the experience of the sense of beauty" is only a description and specification of the current phenomenon of aesthetics from a philosophical point of view. In comparison, it still has some applicability.

But philosophy should be popular, philosophical aesthetics is precisely not a specialized aesthetics. For philosophy is not science, nor does it merely analyze language; it goes primarily to the truth of life or the poetry of life. Anyone who has a life, so anyone can go to seek the truth of life, to understand the poetry of life.