From the 6th century BC to the 5th century BC, Greece entered the heyday of slave society. The democratic movement initiated by industrial and commercial slave owners promoted the development of literature and art, and tragedy, comedy, music and sculpture all reached a high level of prosperity. At the same time, it promotes free debate and attaches importance to knowledge, and the combination of philosophy and natural science has achieved unprecedented development. Philosophical reflection and thinking on beauty and art produced and formed the earliest aesthetic thought in Greece. It led the development of western aesthetic thought in the future.
Philosophers who study the composition of the universe first put forward systematic aesthetic thoughts. They believe that the universe is made up of certain elements in a certain order; The human mind is also made up of the same elements, so people can understand the world. The Pythagorean school in the 6th century BC believed that the order, proportion and scale of numbers not only constituted everything in the universe, but also constituted the harmony of the universe. Beauty comes from harmony. For example, the beauty of music is the harmony formed by different sounds of different lengths in proportion to the number. The whole universe is a harmonious music. They have the expression of "natural happiness", and other aesthetic concepts such as "golden section" and "pluralistic integration" are also put forward in numerical order. Formal concepts such as rhythm, symmetry and harmony are the theoretical basis of Greek aesthetic thought.
Heraclitus inherited Pythagoras' view of harmony, but he thought that harmony was not caused by "the combination of similar things" but by "the combination of mutually exclusive things", thus "creating the most beautiful harmony", and harmony came from struggle. Democritus put forward two important aesthetic concepts in literary and artistic creation: inspiration and imitation. By Socrates, the focus of Greek philosophy shifted from cosmology to political ethics, and aesthetic thought also emphasized the utility to human society. Socrates believes that the same thing is beautiful as long as it is suitable for the purpose and useful to people; On the contrary, it is ugly if it is not suitable for the purpose and useless to people.
Plato and Aristotle made a truly systematic philosophical thinking on beauty and art and established a complete system, thus becoming the founders of western aesthetic thought in the future.
Plato integrated aesthetic thoughts into philosophical thoughts in dialogues such as National, Drinking, Yi 'an, Hippocrates and Fa 'an, and discussed the issues of beauty and art extensively ... In his view, the root of the world is "idea", the real world comes from the world of ideas, and the beauty of things also comes from the idea of beauty, and the idea of beauty is "beauty itself". Reality is beautiful because they share "beauty itself". He left the beautiful things and thought that there was another concept of beauty on them, which was idealistic. However, it is a historic contribution for him to lead aesthetic research from phenomena to the essence of beauty and from the beauty of individual things to the universal law of beauty. The debate about the essence of beauty in the history of western aesthetics began with Plato. Plato systematically put forward the theory that "art is imitation". He believes that the real world is an imitation of the conceptual world and art is an imitation of the real world. Therefore, art is "imitation" and "shadow". Thus denying the value and significance that art can know the truth. He thinks that poetry often stirs up feelings, corrupts human nature and desecrates sacredness, so he wants to drive the poet out of his "ideal country". However, he did not completely deny art. In the national seal, he used music as an important means to cultivate children's spiritual beauty. Legally, he believes that the art approved by "legislators" should still be welcomed. He strongly advocated the idea of beauty, and explained that he saw the material beauty of the world from the point of view of soul memory, so he recalled the idea beauty he saw before his death and had a fanatical love and pursuit. For literary and artistic creation, he put forward the famous theory of ecstasy. He also expressed some important views on aesthetic issues in the form of proportion and scale.
Aristotle is a student of Plato. Legend has it that he wrote many works on aesthetics and art, and only two books, Poetics and Rhetoric, have survived. Other viewpoints can be found in Politics, Ethics of Nicholas Kyle and Metaphysics. He criticized Plato's "theory of ideas" in philosophy and put forward the "theory of four causes". For example, as far as architecture is concerned, building materials are material reasons, architectural design is formal reasons, architects are dynamic reasons, and architecture itself is the purpose reason. Only when the four factors are unified can everything in the universe be formed. He believes that there is no ideal world divorced from the real world, and art is not "shadowy", but reflects the essence through phenomena and the general through individuals. Because art reflects the essence through phenomena, it is more real and universal than history. The imitation of art itself is "seeking knowledge". Ugly things can also arouse people's happiness after vivid imitation. Aristotle also disagrees with Plato's view that art arouses lust and corrupts morality. He believes that the role of tragedy can purify people's two most fundamental feelings "pity" and "fear", so as to achieve peace of mind and restore mental health. Aristotle not only discussed the philosophical problems in art, but also discussed the psychological problems in art. He often discussed the influence of art on psychology in connection with politics and morality. In Poetics, he talked about the arrangement of form, and thought that the volume should not be too big or too small, but should be an organic whole in structure. In rhetoric, he talks about beauty from the value of things themselves and the pleasure they produce. In Ethics, he gave a more specific description of aesthetic experience.
From the 3rd century BC to the 3rd century AD, the Roman Empire replaced the Greek city-state and became the political, economic and cultural center of the West. Aesthetic thought is basically inherited from ancient Greece, taking Greece as a model and calling it classicism. The aestheticians in Roman period were mainly represented by Horace, Longanas and Plotinus.
The main work of Horace (65 ~ 8 BC) is The Art of Poetry. He inherited the Greek view that "art is imitation" and thought that imitating Greece is imitating nature. He advocated "entertaining" and "persuading readers to like", and regarded typology as the universal law of literary and artistic creation.
Plotinus's position is very special. He deepened some of Plato's aesthetic thoughts, and at the same time developed Plato's theory of ideas in the direction of mysticism, and established neo-Platonism which influenced the Middle Ages. In his Nine Chapters Collection, there are two chapters about beauty. He inherited Plato's ideas, but thought that the highest ideas were "Taiyi" and "God". "Taiyi" is perfect and complete, from which "reason" overflows, "soul" overflows, and then the material world overflows. When ideas flow into chaotic things and make them present a unified form, beauty arises. Like Plato, he thinks beauty is a surreal spiritual thing. But he is different from Plato. He admits that the material world is presented with the beauty of the senses, although the source of the beauty of the senses is still the idea. Plotinus disagreed that the beauty in Greek legends was proportional and symmetrical. He believes that some symmetrical things are beautiful, but some single things, such as sunlight, are also beautiful. And the same symmetrical face, sometimes beautiful, sometimes ugly, the reason for beauty is not symmetry, but the mind that can give things shape, from God. Plotinus led aesthetics to theological idealism, which initiated the aesthetic thought in the Middle Ages.
Medieval aesthetic thought
The Middle Ages in Europe began with the demise of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century and ended with the rise of bourgeois culture in15th century. In the history of 1000 years, religion and theology dominated the ideological field, and art and beauty were regarded as the enjoyment of the perceptual world, so they were rejected and attacked as pagan things. Francis (1181~1226) said that God sent him to flatten the beauty of the world in order to make people understand that beauty comes from God. A. In Confessions, Augustine condemned almost all the arts in the world, and said that those who praised the gods written by Homer and those written in Roman plays as examples should go to hell. Thomas? Aquinas and other medieval theologians, without exception, were hostile to the beauty and art of the world. The aesthetic thought in the Middle Ages has the following characteristics: ① Beauty in the name of God. According to Christian doctrine, God is the only real existence, and only the beauty of God is real. God himself is beautiful, and all kinds of objects he created are also beautiful to varying degrees; The beauty of the real world is the result of God, as the creator of all things, reflecting his own image in his works. Legend has it that "On the Name of God" written by Dionysus-Ario padgett regards beauty as a name of God and thinks that beauty is an attribute of God. ② Oppose art, but actually admit the existence of art. The Middle Ages inherited Plato's condemnation of art, and thought art was a kind of deception and a kind of sensation. But Augustine said that the purpose of artistic deception is to seek truth. People in the mirror are just unreal, so they can become real images; Emotion can't be totally negated. In order to make Christian teachings convincing, it is necessary to stimulate emotions, and things like exaggeration and metaphor are allowed. ③ Pay attention to form. Form comes from God. Augustine said: Beauty is "the symmetrical and pleasant color of each part". Thomas? Aquinas also said in The Complete Book of Theology that beauty has three elements: first, completeness or perfection, and anything incomplete is ugly; Secondly, proper proportion or harmony; The third is bright, and bright colors are recognized as beauty. There are layers of beauty. Plato classified beauty, and Neo-Plato paid more attention to beauty. They lead from the perceptual beauty of material to the inner beauty of morality, and even reach the highest beauty of God. The more material, the lower the status; The more energetic, the more advanced. This not only reflects the hierarchical feudal system in the Middle Ages, but also reflects the fundamental nature of theological idealism in medieval aesthetic thought, which emphasizes spirit over material.
The aesthetic thought in the Middle Ages is complex and contradictory. It is not only a vassal of theology, but also an anti-theological thing. The aesthetic thought of Renaissance was conceived in the embryo of medieval aesthetic thought.
The aesthetic thought of the Renaissance began in Italy in the14th century, and then extended to the Renaissance in Germany, France, Britain, the Netherlands and other countries, reaching its climax in the16th century. This is a period of European culture and thought development, which is called the Renaissance. The most fundamental feature of aesthetic thought in the Renaissance is to walk out of the fog of theology, face realistic people and praise people's rationality, wisdom and strength, as well as their secular beauty and joy. Scari Jie, an Italian scholar, believes that beauty no longer comes from the gift of God, but from the choice made by human beings to create a "second nature" symbolizing human strength. Human wisdom and technology, human creativity and invention enable human beings to create organic harmony from the complicated nature through choice and arrangement. At that time, although most paintings still used religious themes, they showed the thoughts and feelings of secular life. In order to improve the status of art, philosophers and artists strongly claim that art is a tool to serve God and can participate in God's wisdom. Fight theology in this special way.
Aesthetics in the Renaissance advocated that art should rise from human skills to the height of philosophical wisdom. Artists in this period not only had practical experience in art and science, but also had extensive knowledge. Most of them are educated by scientists and philosophers. They know natural science and mathematics, study anatomy and perspective, and exercise their artistic skills hard. Castel Violleau said in his book Annotations on Aristotle's Poetics: "Appreciating art means appreciating and overcoming difficulties, and a painting conquers the audience with its obvious skills". However, they are not satisfied with skill, what they want is wisdom, which is the explanation of the form and reason of things. Da? In Notes, Finch directly called it painting philosophy, saying that a painter not only looks at nature with his eyes, but also "thinks about everything he sees".
In the relationship between nature and art, although the mirror images of Plato and the Middle Ages were still used in this period, the meaning changed fundamentally. Nature is no longer the coat of God, and art should be like a mirror, which truly reproduces the objective nature. In this way, observing and imitating nature and realistically reproducing nature became the basic requirements of aesthetic thought for literary and artistic creation at that time. Da? Finch said: "A painter should study all-encompassing nature, study everything he sees in his heart, and make use of the best ingredients of every species in front of him. In this way, it is like a mirror that truly reflects everything and makes it second nature. "
Renaissance aesthetics found man in the opposition between man and God, and led art to man. But the understanding of people is still abstract, and I don't know that people themselves are the opposite of contradictions. I don't know that the unity of reason and existence, cognition and emotion, thinking and feeling, individual and group is realized through contradictory movement.
French neoclassical aesthetic thought Neoclassicism is a bourgeois literary trend of thought in Europe after the Renaissance. /kloc-in the 0/7th century, under the centralized monarchy, France established the French Academy, formulated many rules and regulations, and formed neoclassicism. On the one hand, it worships Greek and Roman classics, on the other hand, it respects reason and order. Its founder in philosophy is R Descartes, and its "legislator" in aesthetics is N Boylaud Despuli (1636 ~1711).
Descartes is the founder of the dualism of mind and body. He believes that people have six primitive emotions: surprise, love, hate, lust, joy and sadness, and other emotions are derived from these six primitive emotions. When people appreciate works of art, they feel a kind of rational joy, which is different from the love and hate of other things and belongs to a kind of spiritual emotion. Descartes expounded several simple integer ratios involved in music harmony in detail with the clarity and proficiency of mathematicians.
Boylaud's Poetic Art Theory is a copy of Aristotle's Poetics and Horace's Poetic Art Theory in the new era. It stipulates some complicated rules that poetry and tragedy must follow, advocates the trinity of nature, reason and truth, and holds that reason is the master, that beautiful things must conform to reason, and that reason must be universal, and the aesthetic standard of literature and art is based on this universality. All works of art must gain value from rationality. Boylaud emphasizes that art should imitate nature, but his so-called "nature" does not refer to nature or social life, but to idealized types of characters. Thus, the principle of neoclassicism imitating the beauty of nature was established. He formulated the "three unifications" of drama, that is, the complete consistency of action, time (day and night) and place, and described it as an unchangeable creative law. This had an important influence on French drama at that time.
Edit this French enlightenment aesthetics.
The Enlightenment is an anti-neoclassical movement in the ideological and literary fields. After the Renaissance, it further attacked feudal rule and church theocracy ideologically.
The most famous representatives of the French Enlightenment are Voltaire, Diderot and Rousseau.
Voltaire opposed classicism, but he held a rather conservative traditional attitude. He wants to turn the content of the new enlightenment into the old classical form. Rationalism is still his artistic standard. He believes that "the real tragedy is the theory of virtue. The only difference between tragedy and exhortation is that tragedy teaches people with plots. "
Voltaire bravely exposed the feudal darkness in his literary and artistic creation, and at the same time exposed the compromise of his thoughts. He always writes epics and tragedies in classical form, and despises new comedies reflecting citizens' life. He failed to shake off the old aesthetic standards.
In addition to being scattered in many papers, Diderot's aesthetic views are the most important monographs written for the encyclopedia: Philosophical Research on the Origin and Essence of Beauty (1750), Painting Theory (1765) and Salon (17 1 65433).
Diderot's aesthetic thought is based on materialist epistemology. He put forward the argument that "beauty is relationship" and thought that only the essence of "relationship" can make things beautiful. He also distinguished between "true beauty" and "relative beauty". The former is an objective beauty independent of people, while the latter is related to the personal beauty of aesthetics. In terms of aesthetic standards, he put forward the unified theory of truth, goodness and beauty, and the specific content of truth, goodness and beauty he said was bourgeois humanism. He believes that art comes from life and advocates that art imitates nature. He also raised the issue of thinking in images in artistic creation. He said in the article "Dorval and I": If a person can accept abstract ideas from things, he is a philosopher. Another person gives thought, body and action. This is a poet. In a letter to a friend, he said, "Poets are good at imagination, while philosophers are good at reasoning."
Diderot struggled with the classical literary trend of thought in the field of literature and art, especially in drama. He tried to break the classical dogma and advocated the establishment of a new type of serious comedy or civic drama. His "illegitimate son" and "head of the family" are examples.
In plastic arts, he tried to reverse the flashy and exquisite atmosphere of painting, opposed neoclassical painting that catered to the tastes of aristocratic society, and advocated a new painting style that enthusiastically described third-rate life themes.
Rousseau profoundly exposed the contradiction of capitalist civilization. He hated the whole social system at that time and fantasized about returning to the original natural state. From the comparison between civilized society and primitive society, he proved that the more developed science and art are, the worse moral fashion is, and thus came to the conclusion that science and art can not change customs, but only corrupt them. Rousseau's thought of denying art is aimed at neoclassicism serving the ruling class. He believes that art should describe citizens' heroic behavior and moral example, and reflect people's demands and interests. Rousseau disapproved of the establishment of modern theaters. He appreciated ancient Greek dances and competitive performances, and advocated replacing drama with folk festivals and mass entertainment activities. He believes that only these recreational activities are beneficial to the people.
The question of beauty and goodness is the focus of all Rousseau's works. Rousseau believes that hatred of slavery and dedication to freedom are the contents of true virtue. Beauty and virtue are inseparable. Artistic beauty must reflect the content of virtue.
Rousseau's famous novel A New Love for Lois has played a great role in modern European literature and art, especially in romanticism. His aesthetic thought also had a far-reaching impact on later generations.
British empiricism aesthetics18th century British empiricism aesthetics is an important stage in the history of western aesthetics and the beginning of the transition from traditional aesthetics to modern aesthetics. Its most striking feature is that it emphasizes the importance of perceptual experience and takes empirical facts as the starting point for studying aesthetic problems. Except for Platonists like A.A.C shaftesbury (1671~13), most of the British empiricists at that time were deeply influenced by J. Locke's philosophy, emphasizing that perceptual experience is the source of all knowledge, and all human knowledge can be explained by sensory experience. Its main representatives are J. Addison (1672 ~1719), F. Hutchison (1694 ~1747) and Ali (1757 ~).
Shaftesbury basically stood on the position of rationalism and opposed to empiricism. He believes that only by loving goodness for the sake of goodness can goodness be truly good. True good deeds are "selfless" activities that are opposite to interests. A virtuous person is a person who loves art and only looks at things from the aspects of shape, color, dynamics and proportion. Virtue is the love of order and beauty. Shaftesbury thinks that aesthetic activities, like moral activities, can't aim at "profit", but he thinks that the non-utilitarian attitude in aesthetics is not contradictory to some utilitarian values of artistic works. Contrary to Locke's opposition to the concept of nature, shaftesbury believes that people are born with an "inner feeling" that can distinguish good from evil, beauty from ugliness. Although this statement is unscientific, it still has considerable influence until now.
Addison believes that beautiful things can arouse the fun of imagination, and novel things can also arouse the fun of imagination, but beauty is the most touching thing. He also believes that beauty is intuitive and can judge beauty and ugliness without thinking. He believes that the desire for possession should not be mixed in aesthetics: an imaginative person can often feel more satisfied than the possessor when looking at fields and pastures.
Hutcheson, a student in shaftesbury, divided beauty into absolute beauty and relative beauty on the basis of the two concepts of beauty and virtue. Absolute beauty means that a thing is beautiful only by its own existence, which mainly includes works such as nature, figures, scientific laws and music in art. Relative beauty refers to the beauty recognized from objects, which mainly refers to the beauty in imitation art. This beauty is based on the coincidence or unity of blueprints and replicas. He also inherited shaftesbury's view that aesthetic feeling and sense of interest should not be confused, otherwise it would destroy the consistency of aesthetic feeling and morality. The important feature of aesthetic judgment is that it has nothing to do with utilitarian concepts.
Alison believes that beauty and sublimity ultimately come down to the expression of things in the mind, and the mind directly or indirectly becomes the symbol of the essence of the mind. He particularly emphasized the role of association. Before Ali was born, the proposition of aesthetic indifference often refers to an organizational way of aesthetic attention, and after him, it developed into a special aesthetic state of mind. He advocates that all factors including desire satisfaction, such as usefulness, desirability, suitability and convenience, are excluded from aesthetics. But he also believes that it is not enough to make something an aesthetic object, but also to adapt the spiritual temperament of the subject to the aesthetic object.
Willianm Hogarth, a British painter, once suggested that winding lines are the most beautiful lines because they can express movement. He believes that beauty can be produced by properly mixing six factors: appropriateness, change, consistency, simplicity, complexity and quantity.
Hume believes that beauty lies not in the thing itself, but in the subject's mind. Beauty and value are only relative, both of which are contained in happy emotions. But he also believes that things do have certain attributes, which are suitable for those special feelings because of the proper arrangement of nature. Hume hovered between the two. He equated pleasure with beauty and regarded pleasure and unhappiness as the essence of beauty and ugliness. Hume believes that most of the beauty comes from utilitarian ideas. For example, a field can make people feel happy because it is associated with the concept of high yield, and high yield is a kind of utility. The value of beauty must be related to utility. It is precisely because beauty involves utilitarian ideas, and people's utilitarian ideas are different, which will lead to aesthetic inconsistency. Hume suspects that aesthetics is truly universal, and all kinds of feelings caused by the same thing are correct, because feelings do not reflect the internal essence of things, but only mark the consistent state of heart and heart. On the other hand, Hume believes that although aesthetic taste is unpredictable, there are still some universal principles of praise and criticism to follow. The general principle of taste is that human nature is the same. If different people make different judgments on the same work, the root cause can always be found in the defects of appreciation.
Burke believes that the objective basis of aesthetic judgment lies in human physiological structure, in which feeling is the most important factor. In his view, the reason of beauty lies in relaxing and comfortable human body tissues. In his view, things that are small and smooth, with various directions changing, without edges and corners, exquisite and delicate, with clean and bright colors and full of changes are the characteristics on which beauty depends. Bok's greatest contribution to aesthetics lies in the division between sublime and beautiful. In his view, various concepts that can leave a strong impression on the mind can be divided into "self-preservation" and "social interaction". The sense of sublimity involves the former point, and the sense of beauty involves the latter point. The sense of sublimity is transformed from pain, and the sense of beauty is transformed from pleasure. They have completely different psychological roots. Lofty objects in nature cause a feeling of surprise and terror, but not any object that can cause surprise and terror can produce a sense of loftiness. If danger and pain get too close, there will be no sense of loftiness. Therefore, the appreciator must keep a certain distance from this danger and pain. An object can only become a noble object if it can cause danger and pain without putting people in the actual situation of danger and pain. In explaining the origin of sublimity, Bok emphasized the psychological reaction of the object to the subject. He even explained the source of sublimity from the perspective of pure physiology, thinking that pain and fear are contained in the unnatural tension of nerves. Bok's exposition of sublimity broadens people's horizons in the field of aesthetics.
18th century German rationalism aesthetics represented by G.W. Leibniz, C.Wolff and A.G. Baumgarton (17 14 ~ 1762) is a trend of thought opposite to British empiricism aesthetics. British empiricism emphasizes experience and holds that beauty and ugliness come from people's subjective psychological experience. Leibniz believes that sensory experience is unreliable and cannot bring eternal truth to people. The eternal truth with universality and inevitability should come from "eternal rational law" The "eternal rational law" comes from the "natural concept" in people's minds. They were "potential" at first, just like the lines of marble, and were endowed with this stone in some way. After the sculptor's "processing" and "pondering", it changed from "potential" to "reality" and clearly appeared. People's understanding is to let the "contingency" of feeling and experience trigger the original "natural concept" and reach a clear understanding from a hazy understanding. "Understanding" can be divided into "chaos" (sensibility) and "understanding" (rationality). "Understanding" should go through logical thinking and distinguish the relationship between different parts of things clearly; Although "chaos cognition" is very vivid, it has only a rough shape and cannot clearly identify the relationship between the parts. Aesthetics belongs to this kind of "confused understanding". People only know that there is a little or a little "something we can't say" in that object.
Wolff popularized Leibniz's philosophy. In terms of aesthetic thought, he especially put forward the concept of "perfection", believing that beauty lies in the perfection of a thing and can arouse people's pleasure. To be perfect, a thing must conform to its concept. The reason why it can produce pleasure lies in that it conforms to people's subjective purpose.
Baum Tong Jia accepted Leibniz's statement that man's understanding was from "chaotic understanding" to "clear understanding", and thought it was from perceptual understanding to rational understanding. According to the traditional view, he divided people's psychological activities into three parts: knowledge, intention and emotion. Knowledge is rational knowledge, which has been studied by logic; Meaning is a moral activity, and ethics has been studied; Emotion, even perceptual knowledge, should be studied by a special discipline. He called this subject "perception", that is, "aesthetics", and determined its research object and scope as human perceptual knowledge. He elaborated this in his doctoral thesis "Philosophical Thinking on Poetry" written by 1735. Aesthetics, published by 1750, further develops this idea, emphasizes the necessity of establishing aesthetics, and refutes the objections from 10. Although his aesthetic works written in Latin have little influence, people call him the founder of aesthetics.
Baum Tong Jia unified Leibniz's perceptual knowledge with Wolff's concept of "completeness" and thought that "beauty is the perfection of perceptual knowledge". The understanding of beauty is a perceptual knowledge. Although it is "chaotic", it has reached the level of "perfection". The so-called "perfection" is a harmonious and orderly whole. When perceptual knowledge is "perfect", it reflects the harmony and order of objective things, which makes people clear at a glance and get pleasure, so it is beautiful. He regards the understanding of art as a chaotic understanding and a ladder to a clear understanding of logical thinking. At the same time, perceptual knowledge is inseparable from the image of specific things. However, the image of concrete things is always individual and full of emotion. Therefore, he believes that "the concept of individual things can best see the essence of poetry." This shows that romanticism attaches importance to the aesthetic thought of personality characteristics.