First, the living environment, system and customs of the ancient Greeks
When discussing the ancient Greeks' view of nature, we should first understand the living environment, social system and customs of the ancient Greeks, because it is these social foundations that determine the formation of their view of nature.
About 300 years ago, more than 300 city-states appeared on the islands and coasts of the Aegean Sea. They were independent and practiced slave-owner democracy. Citizens have the right to directly participate in or decide on state affairs. Citizens are served, and the poorest have a housekeeper's slave. According to aristophanes's comedy, the life of citizens is very simple: on weekdays, three olives, an onion and a fish head can make a living; All the clothes are only a pair of sandals, a short-sleeved gown and a wide robe, which can be taken off with one hand. Even celebrities like Socrates only wear shoes at parties. Usually everyone walks around barefoot and bald. This is the life of the ancient Greeks, and everything goes well. Simple customs brought simplicity of thought, abandoned materialism and the ancient Greeks who were tired of life, and used their energy and talent to think about the innovation and development of culture and art, thus creating a large number of thinkers, artists and poets. The names of Socrates, Homer and Plato are forever engraved on the monument of the history of human civilization, occupying the lively, cheerful and never discouraged Greeks. It seems that they are only 20 years old forever. They believe that the universe is a kind of order and harmony, which enables them to freely gallop their imagination according to the laws of nature in their artistic creation, and no discipline can ever restrain their artistic imagination. Their free will is displayed in that relaxed and chic world, and their pure nature is developed.
Another important content of ancient Greek social fashion is war. In addition to holding public office, the duties of citizens also include safeguarding the independence of the country and the nation. At that time, wars between the city-states occurred frequently, and defeat meant that free people and even those noble and decent people would become slaves overnight, losing their wives, children and all their property. This unique era has produced special ideas. In their eyes, the ideal person is not only a thoughtful mind, but also a warrior with good pedigree, good development, well-proportioned figure, strong skills, courage and tenacity. Because of this, the ancient Greeks attached great importance to sports more than two thousand years ago. In many parts of Greece, sports competitions are held regularly, and the biggest one is the Olympic Games held in Olympia in 776 BC (which is the origin of the modern Olympic Games). At that time, being an excellent athlete and exercising a strong body were the most respected. According to the social fashion at that time, the citizens who won the sports competition could enjoy the highest honor: once winning the prize, giving a statue as a souvenir, and three times giving a statue, and its statue was placed inside and outside the temple as a venue for public activities. Therefore, citizens in ancient Greece had to be trained in gymnasiums. Plato, a famous idealist philosopher, was an athlete in his early years. The famous mathematician Pythagoras is said to have won the boxing prize; Euripides, a dramatist, also won a championship in the sports meeting. The famous sculptor Miron can carry a bull on his shoulder; When Chris Sinnis, the overlord of Sisioni, entertained people who proposed to his daughter, he gave them a playground to inspect their origins and education. In particular, due to the pleasant climate, abundant sunshine and moderate temperature in Greece, under such natural conditions, the ancient Greeks at that time were naked in training grounds, sports competitions and worship dances. Because of nudity, people's ideas have been changed. They are not ashamed of nudity, but proud of their bodybuilding, which has attracted the attention of aestheticians and the performance of artists. Aestheticism discusses the study of beauty, and artists create beauty. Perikles, a famous politician during the Greek occupation, once proudly said: We are people who love beauty. Due to the ethos, the ancient Greeks highly praised beauty, and this universal love for beauty penetrated into almost all fields. It is this spirit of advocating beauty that promoted the high prosperity of ancient Greek art.
Second, the ancient Greeks' view of nature
It is under the above social background that the ancient Greeks formed their own unique natural philosophy and view. Modern people's view of nature is different from that of Greeks. Modern people's understanding of nature is often carried out in the distinction and opposition between nature and society, nature and history, and nature and spirit. In people's eyes, nature is only the object of rational cognition and a "material" made by technology. For the Greeks, there are only differences between nature and technology, nature and natural objects, and nature and existence. Their understanding of nature is also the origin, elements, materials and forms. The Greek view of nature is unfamiliar to modern people, but if people want to understand their view of nature now, they must break the limitation of our own vision and return to them, as if they were examining their view of nature themselves.
1 as the growth and essence of nature
This is just a very common word in Greek everyday language. Nature is truly separated from this daily use, and its meaning is truly recognized and discovered by the Greeks. It is time for the Greeks to think deeply about the origin of the world and everything and explore the original things. With the evolution of society, industry is separated from agriculture, skills are developed, and man-made and man-made things are gradually increasing. With the development of technology and the growth of man-made things, people further realize that technology is also a kind of origin, the origin of man-made things, and man-made things come from technology. But technology is only limited to primitive people, because it is limited by the materials it uses. Obviously, the materials it uses to make are not what it can make. At the same time, art itself is a kind of imitation, imitation, its need for raw materials makes it close to natural objects, its specific production can only imitate specific natural objects, and art makes natural objects appear. People see in front of them what they naturally grow. And what is the origin of this thing? As things that emerge by their own strength, it is obvious that their origin can only come from their own nature. Of course, it is philosophy that discovers that "nature is the source". In the early Greek philosophy from Thales to Heraclitus, the most talked about is origin, while the most talked about is nature, because in their view,' origin is nature', and nature and origin are synonymous: nature always means that something belongs to it within or very closely, so it becomes the root of this thing's behavior. This is the only meaning in the minds of early Greek writers, and it is also the standard meaning throughout the history of Greek literature. Therefore, when the early philosophy put forward the question of what is the origin, that is, what is nature, the answers of water, fire and gas were only the specific provisions of the origin of nature. The discovery of natural elements is very important to philosophy. The discovery of nature actually marks the birth of philosophy. The reason why analytical science can break away from the myth and religion about God-nature depends on the discovery of nature: once nature is discovered, a philosophy different from myth appears, and the first philosopher is the first person to discover nature.
2. Natural and natural objects
In the Greeks, nature is not only different from skill, but also from nature. The original meaning of nature is the origin, and natural things are things that come from and take nature as the origin, while the sum or collection of natural things is nature and the universe, so nature is not equal to nature. But when modern people talk about nature, they only refer to natural objects or nature, which are often equivalent. It is this equivalence that blurs the original meaning of nature as a primitive person, making it impossible for people to understand whether early Greek philosophy refers to primitive people when talking about nature or to nature itself when talking about primitive people. What they say about nature refers to the primitive things, that is, the oldest things, but this does not' change the meaning of the word about nature', that is, change the original meaning of nature,' all that has changed is its application'. The reason for this situation is that the rise of modern natural science has changed the concept of nature.
3. Man and God in Nature
Understanding the relationship between man and God in the ancient Greek view of nature is also of great significance to our correct understanding of ancient Greek art. In ancient Greece, there was a very common view that man and God were similar. The original religious concept of ancient Greeks was characterized by the unity of man and God or "immortal mortals". The creation of myth shows the characteristics of semantics. In their mythological pedigree, the names of gods are directly named by semantic words. God shows the character and temperament of human beings and gives them the power of nature. The power of these gods plays a great role in the world, controlling the success or failure of war, dominating people's destiny and serving mankind at the same time. The Greeks regarded the perfection of the body as a feature of the gods. In Homer's epic, we can see that the gods have the same bodies as mortals, have invulnerable and lovely bodies, and shed deep red blood. Have the same instinct, anger and lust as us; Even heroes in the world can be lovers of goddesses, and gods in the sky will have children with women in the world. There is no insurmountable gap between Olympus and the world. God can come down and we can go up. They are superior to us only because they are immortal, their bodies heal quickly after being injured, and because they are stronger, more beautiful and happier than us. Besides, they eat, drink and be merry like us, and have all the desires and attributes of the body. Therefore, it can be said that Greek religions and myths are full of human feelings and personify various phenomena in nature, unlike Christianity, which later abstracted human spiritual strength and worshipped it as the opposite of human beings. Feuerbach once mentioned in an article criticizing religion that the religion of ancient Greece was a natural religion, while Christianity was a spiritual religion. Natural religion personifies inhuman power, while Christianity dehumanizes human power. It can be seen that the gods in Greek mythology are the highest expression and reflection of the Greek view of nature.
Third, imitate the artistic concept of nature.
Dana pointed out in Philosophy of Art: "To understand a work of art, an artist and a group of artists, we must correctly imagine the spirit and customs of their time. This is the final interpretation of art and the basic factor that determines everything. In other words, some arts are closely related to the spirit and customs of certain times, and art is the product of the spirit of the times and the reflection of social real life. The living environment, social system and customs of the ancient Greeks determined their view of nature. It is this view of nature that gave birth to the artistic concept of learning from nature in ancient Greece.
As early as more than two thousand years ago, ancient Greek thinkers began to think philosophically about beauty:
Pythagoras believes that "number" is the origin of all things and a higher level of existence. Everything imitates numbers, and things look beautiful because of numbers.
Heraclitus believes that the origin of all things is "eternal living fire", and all things in nature are harmonious from opposing things, as he said: "Without treble and bass, there will be no harmonious melody. Without men and women, there would be no animals, and everything is the opposite. " It is precisely because everything in nature is harmonious because of opposition that art should faithfully express and reflect this harmony. To do this, we must imitate nature, and only by imitating the harmony of opposites in white can we form works of art.
When discussing artistic creation, Democritus also thinks that art imitates nature. For example, he said, "In many of the most important things, human beings are students of animals: we learned knitting and sewing from spiders, building houses from swallows, and singing from songbirds such as swallows and nightingales. These are imitations." Heraclitus' original art imitated the idea of nature and expressed it as a clear point of view.
Socrates, whether it is the theory of art imitating and reappearing nature or the theory of imitating ideas, discusses the appearance and essence of art imitating nature (here he calls it "idea").
Plato profoundly expounded this imitation-centered art in The Republic. Plato believes that the rational world is the prototype and ideal of the perceptual world, the perceptual world is the model and shadow of the rational world, and art is the image of the perceptual world.
On the basis of inheriting the imitation theory, Aristotle not only thinks that art imitates reality, that is, it plagiarizes reality, but also moves towards the freedom of reality. He also called skills practical art for the first time, and distinguished the art we talk about today from skills, calling it imitation or imitation art. He believed that all art is imitation, and the difference lies in the different objects, media and ways of imitation. When talking about the imitation of tragedy, he said that tragedy is the imitation of action, mainly not imitating nature, but imitating life. Obviously, it broke through the limitations of materialistic world outlook and ontological aesthetics to some extent and explored the perspective of entering social life. However, Aristotle is an ontological philosopher after all. Therefore, he advocates that imitation is first an imitation of human activities, and then imitation gradually becomes an imitation of nature.
It can be said that looking at the aesthetic thoughts of many great philosophers in ancient Greece, we can see that they generally believe that there is the origin of everything in nature, and they are committed to discussing it, thinking that art is an imitation of the origin of nature. Under the influence of this view of nature and art, ancient Greek art advocated a natural and idealized aesthetic tendency, creating an artistic peak that was regarded as a model by later generations.
Fourth, summary.
In the environment of democracy, freedom and fierce competition, the ancient Greeks not only created gods and myths, but also discovered, cultivated and created beauty. In the eyes of the Greeks, the most perfect person is God, so the Greeks respect people and raise them to the height of God to affirm them. God and man are the same. They think that a strong body is the origin of all kindness and beauty. Unlike modern people who subordinate the body to thoughts, the Greeks believe that the body has the dignity of the body. What they show is a pure body, dignified, peaceful and serene, emitting a quiet brilliance. A perfect human body naturally embodies the holiness and simplicity of the soul and the nobility and greatness of the spirit. The art of ancient Greece is the imitation of divinity, that is, the imitation of nature in its mind.
The famous sculpture Venus of Milo, which was completed in the Hellenistic period (about the first century BC), is a model of Greek sculpture. This statue is elegant, solemn and elegant, which reflects the aesthetics of the Greeks 2000 years ago: striving for the unity of external physical beauty and internal spiritual beauty. Venus's shy body, dignified appearance and natural behavior embody the virtues of youth, bodybuilding, vigorous vitality and purity and holiness. Rodin said, "She is still alive. Touching such a statue, you can obviously feel her body temperature. " Although the statue has a broken arm, its vivid and beautiful body still gives people a complete sense of beauty and fresh vitality, so that many later generations' replicas of the sculptors who repaired her arm are eclipsed by the original. This is by no means incomplete beauty, but perfection in a higher sense, a kind of pure beauty that eliminates all redundancies. This is the shadow of the ancient Greek sculptor looking for the perfect nature-"God" in the model books of thousands of people in Qian Qian.