The Process of Establishment and Deduction of Culturalism in the Humanistic Tradition of European Literary History

Humanism is the Italian translation of the German word Anthropologismus, also translated as anthroposophy. The Greek etymology antropos and logos, meaning person and doctrine. It usually refers to anthropological materialism, a metaphysical materialist doctrine that objectifies life. It is represented by Feuerbach in Germany and Chernyshevsky in Russia in the 19th century. Feuerbach called his philosophy "humanism" or "the principle of humanism in philosophy" because he confused vulgar materialism with ordinary materialism and avoided adopting or even opposed the term "materialism". Chernyshevsky also referred to his philosophy as "humanism" or "the principle of humanism in philosophy". Chernyshevsky also called his materialist doctrine "humanism" and named his philosophical work "The Principle of Humanism in Philosophy". They both rejected the division of the soul and the body into two separate entities and the idealistic view of the soul as the first nature. But the human beings they understood were only natural human beings in the biological sense, only abstract, general human beings, not social human beings. They do not examine man in relation to concrete history, in relation to social practice, and thus do not see the social nature of man.

In modern Western philosophy, the term humanism has been distorted by certain idealist philosophers. For example, the German phenomenologist Scheele and the fascist theorist Klages, talk about "philosophical humanism" or "anthropology" or "characterology" with "the unity of body and soul" as the object. "characterology". Their "humanism" is an idealistic theory that promotes irrationalism and racism.

Five types of origins of humanism

First, historically humanism is a philosophical and literary movement that originated in Italy in the second half of the 14th century and spread to the rest of Europe, where it constitutes an element of modern Western culture. Humanism also refers to any philosophy that recognizes the value and dignity of human beings as the measure of all things, or that takes human nature, human finitude, and human interests as its subject matter. The former was a fundamental aspect of the Renaissance, when thinkers reintegrated man into the natural and historical world from this aspect and interpreted him in this light. In this sense humanism was one of the basic conditions that led to the scientific revolution of the 17th century, and thus to a certain extent to the birth of "scientism"; foundationalism since the 17th century and naturalism since the end of the 19th century were not opposed to the humanism of the Renaissance. The historical humanistic movement was opposed to supernatural beliefs and medieval Aristotelianism. Leaving historical humanism aside, we now discuss contemporary humanism. Contemporary anthropocentrism is often thought of as the "philosophy of the subject". Since philosophers do not agree on what they mean by "subject," in this sense "humanism" is polysemous. If the philosophies derived from Descartes' "I think" and Kant's a priori self are regarded as anthropocentric, then neo-Kantianism is a typical example of anthropocentrism. Without going into the question of whether individual neo-Kantians are philosophers in the humanistic trend, neo-Kantianism, as a whole, inherits Kant's program of laying the foundations for the sciences, especially for the natural sciences (Marburg School) and the cultural sciences (Freiburg School), and starts from the ego that is general, non-experiential, and non-personal, which is fundamentally different from the empirical ego that is emphasized by the humanists. Moreover, neo-Kantianism attaches special importance to the value of science, which is precisely the characteristic of "scientism", and is very different from humanism, which emphasizes the value of the individual.

Secondly, Husserl's phenomenology, as a school of "philosophy of the subject" or "philosophy of consciousness," can also be called humanistic. Like Kant, he took the self as his starting point and sought to lay the foundations of scientific knowledge. The difference is that he resorted to the "intuition of essence" and carried out his work of constituting objectivity in a descriptive way. Early anti-psychism led him to regard logical structures as "truth itself". Husserl's "I think," unlike Kant's, is not impersonal, but the a priori foundation of objectivity requires not a subject or subjectivity, but a pluralistic, intersubjective, atomistic foundation. Could it be that such a doctrine of foundation is humanistic? Yes, if we take any "philosophy of the subject" to be humanistic. But whereas humanism is characterized by the primacy of the human being, Husserl gives a phenomenological "reduction" to the "I" of everyday language and everyday life. He did not make a philosophical defense of the claims of the human being, but was concerned with making philosophy a rigorous science. In this way, idealistic phenomenology does not belong to the category of humanism.

Third, the anti-formalist philosophy of value of M. Scheler, which derives from the "philosophical anthropology" of phenomenology, seems to be consistent with humanism in its emphasis on personality as the center of moral action. But personhood does not make for a measure of good and evil. Some personhoodists understand personhood to be a philosophy in which human beings make regular protests against being reduced to levels of ideas or things and are fully attuned to the crises of contemporary culture. This change in the aims of personhood has brought it closer to humanism. But personhood still attaches less importance to the individual's ability to define himself than to his capacity to accommodate others and to open up to an order of values. So Personism is not yet fully humanistic. But the popular American form of personalism or spiritualism (centered at Boston University) is often called humanism. Fifth, the methodological hermeneutics of Dilthey and his successors emphasizes that the social and human sciences require an understanding of texts or socio-historical phenomena, which is clearly different from the natural sciences, which employ general laws to account for the phenomena under study. Understanding and explanation are two different scientific methods. However, naturalism insists on the continuity of scientific method, including human beings, all natural objects and phenomena can be applied to the general laws to give scientific explanation, that will obtain real scientific knowledge. In this way, methodological hermeneutics is in opposition to naturalism. Hermeneutics is also incompatible with epistemological foundationalism in its denial of the certainty of truth. So within the whole field of philosophy, early hermeneutics can be said to belong to the category of humanism, which is opposed to scientism.

Fourth, we find true and complete humanism in Sartre's existentialist philosophy. His work "The Haves and the Have-Nots" is a concentrated expression of the full development of humanism by smelting phenomenology, existential philosophy and humanism into one pot. Existentialists assert that "there is no other world outside the world of man, the world of human subjectivity." Existentialism as a typical humanism is incompatible with naturalism.

Fifth, the methodological hermeneutics of Dilthey and his successors emphasizes that the social and human sciences require an understanding of the text (text) or socio-historical phenomena, which is clearly different from the natural sciences, which employ general laws to account for the phenomena under study. Understanding and explanation are two different scientific methods. However, naturalism insists on the continuity of scientific method, including human beings, all natural objects and phenomena can be applied to the general laws to give scientific explanation, that will obtain real scientific knowledge. In this way, methodological hermeneutics is in opposition to naturalism. Hermeneutics is also incompatible with epistemological foundationalism in its denial of the certainty of truth. So within the whole field of philosophy, early hermeneutics can be said to belong to the category of humanism, which is opposed to scientism.

Humanistic psychology

Humanistic psychology (humanistic psychology) was an innovative movement in contemporary Western psychology in the United States after World War II. The movement developed considerably after the founding of the American Society for Humanistic Psychology in the early 1960s, and an international conference was held in the Netherlands in 1971, spreading its influence to Europe and Asia.

Humanistic Psychology

Humanistic psychologists believe that psychology should focus on the study of human values and personality development, and they oppose both S. Freud's psychoanalysis, which reduces conscious experience to a basic drive or defense mechanism, and behavior, which treats consciousness as a secondary phenomenon of behavior. On the question of human values, most humanistic psychologists agree with the idealistic views of Plato and Rousseau that human beings are good by nature, that evil is a derivative phenomenon of environmental influences, and that human beings can therefore be improved through education and that an ideal society is possible. In terms of the basic theory and methodology of psychology, they inherited the tradition of W. Dilthey and M. Wertheimer at the end of the 19th century, advocating a correct treatment of the specificity of the object of psychological research, opposing the use of the principles and methods of atomic physics and animal psychology to study the human psyche, and advocating a holistic theory instead of a reductionist one.

Humanistic psychology as a movement was initiated by a number of psychologists*** with similar views, notably: the personality psychologists Alpert, Murray, and Murphy; the neo-psychoanalysts Horney and Fromm; the existentialist psychologist May; the organismic theorist Goldstein; the developmental psychologists Biehler and Bugenta; and the comparative psychologist and social psychologist Maslow; Rogers, the counselor and educational reformer, among others. Of these, Maslow, Rogers and May are the recognized leaders of the movement.

The rise of humanistic psychology had a long gestation process. The studies of personality psychology, neo-psychoanalysis and organismic theory in the United States in the twenties and thirties were early theoretical preparations. Olport believed that human beings are a unity constituted by the interaction of many factors, and that each adult is different from others and approaches the world in his own unique way of inner harmony, a view that is in direct opposition to the behaviorist theory that excludes conscious experience. Based on personality theory, Alpert went on to become a key figure in the creation of Harvard's Department of Social Relations, which set the stage for the separation of humanistic and experimental psychology in the academy. Murray and Murphy, who also published important works on personality theory during this period, laid the groundwork for the development of humanistic theory by combining the biological and social elements of personality. Horney and Fromm disagreed with Freud's exaggeration of the role of sexual factors and viewed the social problems arising from the development of industrial society in the U.S. as social factors leading to mental disorders, which was one of the major disagreements between Humanistic Psychology and traditional psychoanalysis.The publication of Goldstein's "Theory of the Organism" in 1939, which is regarded as the cornerstone of the major theory of that psychology, namely, the theory of self-actualization, is the first time that he discussed self-actualization from the perspective of the potentiality of organismic The first time he discussed self-actualization in terms of the fulfillment of the potential of the organism, he used empirical research in psychology to strengthen this concept, which had originally been proposed by philosophy.

The first systematic discussions of humanistic psychology were published in the 1940s and 1950s, including Maslow's A Theory of Human Motivation (1943) and Motivation and Personality (1954); Rogers's Patient-Centered Therapy (1951) and The Growth of the Human Being (1961); and May's Existentialism: New Perspectives in Psychiatry and Psychology (1959), ed. Perspectives in Psychiatry and Psychology (1959). Maslow proposed that human needs and motives are a hierarchical structure, with the emergence of higher-level motives dependent on the fulfillment of lower-level needs. He also used information from comparative psychology to argue that basic needs and motives, whether low or high, are instinctive or instinct-like in nature, i.e., they all have a tendency to spontaneously seek gratification, and that high-level needs and motives such as friendship, cognition, aesthetics, and creative gratification, i.e., the fulfillment of human values or the self-actualization of human nature. Rogers used his experience in psychotherapy and counseling to argue for the inherent constructive tendency of human beings, arguing that although this inherent tendency can be impaired by environmental conditions, it can be restored to mental health through the practitioner's unconditional concern for the patient, empathic understanding, and positive induction to remove the impediment. He also applied this theory to educational reform, emphasizing the importance of building a close relationship between teachers and students in education and relying on students' ability to be self-directed. May introduced European existential psychology and existential psychotherapy into American humanistic psychology, arguing that the human condition, though tragic in nature, can lead to a brighter future through the cultivation of courage, the overcoming of anxiety, and self-selection.

Since the 1980s, the humanistic movement has deepened further. Within it are the self-actualization theory of Maslow and Rogers on the one hand and the self-choice theory of May and other existentialist psychologists on the other. After Maslow's death, May and Rogers began a public debate on the question of human nature, and May disagreed with Rogers's statement that evil is caused by the environment, and he believed that both evil and goodness are present in the nature of human beings, and that they are both human potential, and that failure to face up to evil has had a deep and harmful effect on the humanistic movement. deep and harmful effects on the humanistic movement.

In addition, the self-actualization theory, which represents the mainstream of humanistic psychology, has developed in different tendencies. Rogers' school still insisted on individual psychology-centered research, but others have begun to study transpersonal psychology, exploring how individual consciousness transcends itself and merges with the wider world.

Finally, there is the construction of methodology. Maslow has suggested that the traditional scientific method is insufficient to address the complexities of the human psyche, and that humanistic methodology does not exclude the traditional scientific method but rather expands the scope of scientific research to address human beliefs and values that have been excluded from the scope of psychological research in the past.There has been an attempt in the late 1970's to strengthen humanistic psychology with a scientific methodology, represented by Richke, who argues that The reintroduction of purposivism into psychology by humanism is replacing the old paradigm with a new one, but the scientific nature of humanistic psychology must be enhanced with dialectical methods and rigorous logic to accomplish this transformation.

"The Aesthetic Ideology of Literature"

The ideological nature of literature and the aesthetic character of literature are organically combined to produce a "qualitative change", and the "aesthetic ideology of literature", which is the fundamental nature of literature, is produced. Its specific connotation is that, from the nature of the group tendency and human ****common; from the subject to grasp the object of the way to see, is the understanding and emotion; from the purpose of the function of the non-utilitarian and utilitarian; from the literary reflection of life in the form of the hypothetical and the authenticity.

The aesthetic ideology of literature is the characteristic that distinguishes literature from other ideologies. The aesthetic ideology of literature, as a unique system of thought, is not what some people now call "pure aestheticism" or "aesthetic centrism". It is also different from the theory of literary emotional expression. The aesthetic ideology of literature has rich and complete connotations, and in general it is a kind of composite structure. This can be roughly illustrated from the following points:

First, the aesthetic ideology of literature, from the nature of both group tendency and human ****common. Literature as an aesthetic ideology, does show a group, group tendency, this is no need to say. The groups and communities mentioned here include classes but are more than classes. For example, workers, peasants, merchants, officials, intellectuals, etc., are all different groups and communities in society. Writers of different groups and groups represent different interests due to their different positions, so that they are bound to permeate the aesthetic depiction of literature with the consciousness of their different groups and groups, thus showing the consciousness of different groups and groups and the tendency of their thoughts and feelings. For example, in a commercial society, bosses and employees have different positions, and they each have their own interests. If a writer depicts their lives and relationships, then the writer's consciousness will naturally have a tendency to whoever he or she wants, and if he or she expresses this in the literary depiction, he or she will naturally have a tendency to a group or a group of people.

But no matter which group or group the writer belongs to, his thoughts and feelings will not always be bound to the group or group tendency. Writers are also human beings, and will inevitably be human beings and human beings with the human nature, will inevitably be human beings have a sense of life, will inevitably be concerned about the survival of human beings **** the same problem. If embodied in the aesthetic depiction of literature, it is bound to show the universal **** common human feelings and aspirations, so as to transcend a certain group or group tendencies. For example, works depicting the feelings of men and women, fathers and sons, mothers and sons, brothers and sisters, and friends tend to show the universal feelings of mankind. A large number of works depicting landscapes, flowers and birds also tend to show the universal feeling of human love for nature. These truths are obvious and need no further elaboration.

What is particularly important here is that in the aesthetic depiction of a work, it often contains both the consciousness of a certain group and community, and at the same time permeates the consciousness of the human ****tongue. That is to say, the consciousness of a certain bloc or group is not always incompatible with the ****common consciousness of mankind. In particular, the consciousness of the lower classes is often compatible with the universal consciousness of humanity. The good and beautiful emotions of the lower classes are often expressions of the ****common emotions of mankind. For example, the following song "Bodhisattva Barbarians":

The pillow before sending a thousand wishes, to rest and wait for the green mountains to rot, the surface of the water scales floating, until the Yellow River completely withered.

The white sun will appear, and the Big Dipper will return to the south. I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do that, but I'm going to wait until the third day of the week to see the sun.

This is a ballad of the lower class people, but the kind of feeling that expresses the lovers' fidelity to love not only belongs to the lower class people, but also belongs to the ****same beautiful feeling of the whole mankind. It is in this sense that we say that the unity of group tendency and human ****commonness is an important manifestation of the ideological nature of literary aesthetics.

Secondly, the aesthetic ideological nature of literature, functionally, it is both cognitive and emotional. Literature is a reflection of social life, and undoubtedly contains the realization of society. This determines that literature has a cognitive element. Even those works that claim to be "anti-rational" also contain knowledge of reality, only that their knowledge may be illusory and fallacious. Of course, there are works whose awareness is expressed in the critical analysis of reality, such as the works of Western critical realism, which are expressed in the evaluation and awareness of all the immoral shortcomings of the capitalist world; and there are works whose awareness is expressed in the prediction and expectation of the development of reality, as is the case with many works of Romanticism. Some works seem to be very objective, calm and precise, as if the author did not express any opinion about reality at all, which is not the case. These works are nothing but "cold-eyed deep feelings" or, in Lu Xun's words, "hot-to-cold passions", and it is impossible that they do not contain a realization of reality. However, when we say that the reflection of literature contains cognition, it cannot be equated with philosophical epistemology or scientific cognition. Literary awareness is always expressed in the form of emotional evaluation. Literary cognition is completely intertwined with the writer's emotional attitude. For example, we say that the works of the French writer Balzac have a high epistemological value, that they profoundly reveal the laws of the development of the French society of the time in which he lived, but we must note that this revelation of his regularity is not in the form of a discourse or a thesis, but is revealed to us through the portrayal of the various characters and their destinies in the French society, through the depiction of the details of the various social scenes and the details of the life, through the environment, and through the setting of the atmosphere, which is implicitly revealed. The atmosphere is secretly revealed. Or rather, the author permeates his emotional evaluation of the social reality in the specific artistic descriptions, thus expressing his own views and understanding of life. Here, awareness and emotion are fully integrated.

What, then, is the form of such a combination of cognition and emotion? Hegel called it Pathos, which Mr. Zhu Guangqian translated as "emotion". Hegel said:

Emotion is the true center and proper sphere of art, and its expression is the main source of effect both for the work and for the spectator. Emotion strikes a chord that echoes in the heart of every man, and every man knows the value and rationality of a true emotion and can easily recognize it. Emotion can move people because it is, of its own accord, a powerful force in human existence. [2]

Hegel means that sentiment is the interpenetration of two aspects: on the one hand, the individual mood, which is concrete and sensual and moves people, but on the other hand, value and reason, which can be regarded as cognition. But these two aspects are fully integrated and cannot be separated. Therefore, for those works whose moods are particularly subtle and profound, it is often impossible to convey them simply in words. The Russian critic Belinsky, playing on Hegel's "mood", also said:

Art does not contain abstract philosophical ideas, much less rational ones, but only poetic ideas, and these poetic ideas are not trinitarian, they are not dogmas, they are not aphorisms, they are living! passion, is passionate ...... and therefore the distinction between abstract thought and poetic thought is clear: the former is the fruit of reason, the latter is the fruit of love as passion. [3]

This is supposed to be the truth of what Belinsky grasped in his literary-critical activity. It is true that the aesthetic consciousness of literature, as a combination of cognition and emotion, takes the form of "poetic thought". Therefore, the aesthetic consciousness of some outstanding works in the history of literature is often difficult to explain. For example, what is the consciousness of Dream of Red Mansions can only be understood but not expressed. So far, there is still no satisfactory "interpreter" of the thematic ideas of Dream of Red Mansions (Cao Xueqin: "All the authors are obsessed with it, but who understands its flavor?"). This is because the thematic idea of Dream of the Red Chamber has not yet been satisfactorily solved. This is because the aesthetic ideology of A Dream of Red Mansions is very rich, and people can gradually understand it, but cannot qualify it with abstract words. Goethe was asked what the thematic ideology of his Faust was, and Goethe refused to answer, believing that one could not narrow down the complex, rich, and splendid life written in Faust and illustrate it with a tiny wire of thought. All these show that the aesthetic consciousness of a literary work is difficult to illustrate in abstract terms because it is affective, a mingling of cognition and emotion, and cognition is like salt dissolved in the water of emotion, without trace or flavor.

Thirdly, the aesthetic ideological nature of literature, in terms of purpose and function, is non-utilitarian and utilitarian. Literature is aesthetic, then in a certain sense it is the game, is entertainment, is leisure, seems to have no practical purpose, on second thought, it seems to have utilitarian, and has a deep social utilitarian. That is, it is not utilitarian (Disinterested), but also utilitarian (Interested), is the interweaving of the two.

In literary activity, both creation and appreciation, both the writer, and the reader, generally have no direct utilitarian purposefulness in the moment of creation and appreciation. If a writer is describing the beauty of a scene, but is thinking of the mind to "possess" the scene, then his creation will be due to this "distraction" and can not be artistically depicted, so that the creation of the failure. A man who is enjoying Othello in the theater, if the excitement of the play reminds him of his wife's affliction of having an affair, then he will leave the theater angrily because of this consideration. At the moment of creation and appreciation, considerations of utilitarian gain and loss must be excluded in order to enter the world of literature. Diderur 1713-1784, the French thinker of the Age of Enlightenment, said:

Do you compose a poem of lamentation when your friend or lover has just died? No, I don't. Whoever goes about exercising his poetic talent at that very moment is out of luck! It is only when the intense pain has passed, when the extreme sensitivity of the senses has diminished, when the calamity has passed away, only then can the person concerned recall the happiness he has lost, only then can he estimate the loss he has suffered, only then does memory and imagination combine to recall and magnify the sweet times of the past. Only at this time can he control himself and make a good article. He says that he wept bitterly, but in fact, when he was arranging the rhythms of his verses by heart, he could not afford to weep. If his eyes were still watering, the pen would fall from his hand, and the person would be driven by his feelings and would not be able to write. [4]

What Diderot means is that when a friend or lover has just died, full of considerations of gain and loss, as well as dealing with the actual funeral, etc., this is the time when utilitarianism is at its strongest, and it is impossible to write. It is only after the death of a friend or lover has been distanced for some time, and considerations of gain and loss have been greatly diminished, that the memory can be recalled, the imagination can be brought into play, and creative work is possible. This statement is completely in line with the reality of creation. Indeed, it is only in non-utilitarian aesthetic activities that the beauty of things can be discovered, that poetry can be found, and thus the world of literature can be entered. The Danish literary historian G. Brandes (1842-1927) gave a very illustrative example:

We observe everything in three ways-practical, theoretical, and aesthetic. A man who looks at a forest from a practical point of view asks whether it is beneficial to the health of the region or how the owner calculates the value of the fuelwood; a botanist who looks at it from a theoretical point of view carries out the scientific study of the life of the plant; and a man who has no other thought than the appearance of the forest, and who looks at it from an aesthetic or artistic point of view, asks what is its effect as a part of the landscape. How. [5]

The merchant is concerned with money, so he counts the value of timber; the botanist is concerned with science, so he cares about plant life; but the artist is unprofitable, so that he cares about the beauty of the landscape. As Kant puts it, "That which prescribes the pleasure of appreciative judgment has nothing at stake." "A judgment about beauty that has a very little sense of profit mixed in with it is a favoritism, not a purely appreciative judgment."[6] Kant's theory may be one-sided, but in terms of the aesthetic ideology being utilitarian in its immediacy, he is right. In fact, the ancient Chinese literary theory of literary creation and appreciation of "virtual silence" is also a theory of aesthetic non-utilitarianism.

However, when we say that the aesthetic sense of literature is utilitarian in its directness, we do not mean that it is absolutely utilitarian. In fact, both the writer's creation and the reader's appreciation of utilitarianism lurks behind the utilitarianism, indirectly, the creation of life, society, is the so-called "utilitarianism" is actually an attitude towards life, society, not to mention that literary creation often has a strong realistic side, or to criticize society, or to reveal the significance of life, or to reveal the significance of life. Not to mention that literary creation often has a strong realistic aspect, either criticizing society, revealing the meaning of life, expressing people's aspirations, or looking forward to the ideal of mankind, etc., and its utilitarianism is very obvious. Even those works which are relatively light in social nature can cultivate people's temperament, and "cultivating temperament" is also a kind of utilitarianism. So Lu Xun said: literature "gives people pleasure and rest. It is the preparation for labor and battle."[7] Lu Xun also said that literature is "useless". This means that the direct non-utilitarian nature of literary consciousness is precisely to realize the indirect utilitarian nature.

Fourthly, the aesthetic ideology of literature is hypothetical but real in its way. Literature as aesthetic consciousness is different from scientific consciousness. Although art and science are both two sisters beloved by mankind, both are creation, both are the pursuit of truth, but the fruits of their creation are different. Consciousness, as recognized by science, is not allowed to be fictional; scientific conclusions are solid revelations of objective laws. Literary consciousness is aesthetic consciousness, and while it also seeks truth, it is truth revealed in artistic hypotheses. Here science and literature part ways.

Although literature has different ways of grasping reality, some works use myth, legend, absurdity, fantasy, etc. (such as Journey to the West) to reflect life, and some works "according to the original face of life" (such as Dream of the Red Chamber) to reproduce life, but no matter what the difference in the way of grasping, literature is hypothetical by its nature. But regardless of the different ways of grasping, literature by its nature is hypothetical. The so-called hypothetical means the virtual nature of literature. Therefore, the truth of literature is revealed in its hypothetical nature. It can be said to be "seeking truth in falsehood". On the one hand, it is hypothetical, it is not life itself, it is pure fiction; but on the other hand, it comes from life, it reminds people of life, and makes people feel more real than real. Literary works show the aesthetic consciousness is the unity of this assumption and the real.