The title of the third letter is "Talk about People". This topic is too big to be discussed clearly in a letter. This letter contains a lot of information, involving many schools and figures in the history of aesthetics. Without relevant background, it is difficult to understand. The editor should, like the editor of "Native China", add relevant background knowledge to reduce readers' reading difficulties.
This article mainly discusses the issue of human nature. Different disciplines have given different answers to this question.
1. Answers from psychoanalysts
Freud and Jung are both psychologists of the psychoanalytic school, and Freud is the founder of the psychoanalytic school. , Jung founded the school of personality analysis based on Freud. The two of them gave their own answers from different psychological perspectives.
There are two human natures. One is animal instinct. This concept comes from Freud. This animal instinct includes two aspects, namely food and sex. Food solves the problem of human survival, that is, the survival instinct; color solves the problem of the continuation of species, that is, the sexual instinct. In order to survive, people have learned to conceal themselves; in order to survive, people have learned to express themselves. The need and ability to disguise and express gave birth to art. In order to exchange experiences, tribal members perform performances in a safe environment. Those who conceal themselves well or perform cleverly become artists, and their performances become art.
The other is the collective unconscious, which is the social habit described by Zhu Guangqian. This concept was proposed by Jung. After solving the problem of food and clothing, people's requirements for food will increase, such as food preparation, nutritional matching, and food etiquette. Therefore, a set of food culture will be developed. Later generations will follow this set of food culture norms, but they will not You know why, it’s the collective unconscious. In order to solve the problem of continuation of the species, incest within the blood relationship was initially involved. For example, Nuwa and Fuxi in Chinese mythology are brother and sister, and Gaia, the mother of the earth, and Uranus, the god of heaven, are mother and son in Greek mythology; later, in order to avoid This kind of incest has negative consequences for the continuation of the species, such as robbery among tribes; with the further development of civilization, a complete wedding and funeral culture has been formed. During various sacrificial activities during weddings and funerals, the professional performances of priests developed into art.
Therefore, from Freud’s perspective, art originates from animal instinct, that is, human animality; from Jung’s perspective, art originates from the collective unconscious, that is, human sociality.
2. Answers from sociologists
Marx, Grosse (Grosse), and Plekhanov are all sociologists. The nature of man is discussed.
In terms of human sociality, Marx believed that labor is the essential attribute of human beings, so art originated from labor. There are many such examples, such as the "Hangyu Hangyu" school mentioned by Lu Xun, which developed into "The Book of Songs·Binfeng·July"; for example, the chants shouted during fiber pulling developed into "The Tracker's" like".
Gurus (also translated as Grosse)'s "The Origin of Art" and Plekhanov's "Letter without Address" both hold the same view as Marx, that is, they believe that art originated from labor. Plekhanov believed that art originated from labor, not games, and was utilitarian and practical. This was to refute the view that art was non-utilitarian, game-oriented, and entertainment-oriented. Grosse also believed that art was closely related to productive labor, but he believed that the purpose of art was to create national unity. This point of view is very enlightening. The current state of social fragmentation we are facing is related to the decline of the influence of classic art. The general public is shaped by popular culture, which is short-lived and difficult to continuously shape the people's spirit; and national ideology, because it lacks classic artistic charm, makes it difficult to truly unify the national spirit. Fundamentally speaking, the unity of the national spirit still requires returning to classic art. In other words, our time needs to create great art.
Cai Yuanpei is an esthetician who studied in Germany. He should have been influenced by Grosse, so he put forward the idea that aesthetics should replace religion. Religion has the power to unite people's hearts, but in China, a country that lacks religious traditions, it is difficult to unite people's hearts through religion and promote national unity. But we are a country with a tradition of poetry and religion. Replacing religion with aesthetics and promoting the unification of the national spirit is an inevitable unification. But in the end, what we followed was not Cai Yuanpei’s aesthetic education line, but the political party’s ideological line. In the current situation where the ideological influence of political parties is weak, it is appropriate to revisit aesthetic education.
The above discussion about Grosse’s influence on Cai Yuanpei is just a conjecture. Later, I checked the evidence on the Internet and found this:
The German scholar Grosse mentioned by Cai Yuanpei more than once As well as Sweden's Siren and others, they have made significant achievements that cannot be ignored in the study of the origin and development of art. Cai Yuanpei's article "The Evolution of Art" is obviously written by absorbing and synthesizing these achievements. Although it seems too simple today, it is after all the first article by a Chinese scholar to discuss the origin and development of art. It was probably under the influence of Cai Yuanpei that Cai Muhui translated Grosse's famous book "The Origin of Art" from English and published it in 1937.
By the 1980s, many researchers in Chinese aesthetics and art theory had become very interested in studying the origins of art. ? ——Liu Gangji "The Spread and Influence of German Aesthetics in China"
3. Answers from behaviorist psychologists
Stimulus-response theory was proposed by behaviorist psychologists Regarding the understanding of human nature - learning, representatives of this school include Thorndike, Watson, Skinner, Hull and others. They attach great importance to the study of human external behavior, use stimulus-response models to explain all behaviors, and then predict and control human behavior.
Behavior is the reaction of human cognition under the stimulation of the environment. People respond to environmental stimuli based on their own understanding. If the reaction brings positive results, people's understanding will be strengthened; if the reaction brings negative results, people will adjust their understanding. Regardless of positive or negative results, people will have emotional reactions, which is perceptual knowledge; after a period of precipitation, reflection, and summary, people will understand the positive or negative results more objectively and find the truth that led to the results. The reason is rational understanding.
Aesthetic activities are the cognitive process from perceptual to rational, and it is also a cyclic and spiral process of "practice-knowledge (perceptual and rational)-re practice-recognition". Mr. Zhu Guangqian agreed with this school's proposition. On this basis, he put forward the view that aesthetics is the unity of subjectivity and objectivity.
4. Philosopher’s Answer
From Plato to Descartes, philosophers of this school all advocate that human nature is rational, and human rationality is transcendental. The so-called transcendental refers to the nature that a person has before he is born, rather than arising from experience, and is not subject to the test of experience.
Rationalist philosophers generally reject human senses and perceptual knowledge, believing that perceptual knowledge is false and unreliable.
However, empiricist philosophers do not agree with the views of rationalist philosophers. They "replace rational knowledge on the basis of perceptual knowledge and regard rational knowledge as a further development of perceptual knowledge."
Through criticism of Feuerbach, Marx put forward his own understanding of human nature. Feuerbach emphasized perceptual intuition, which is the direct presentation of the beauty of the object, but ignored people's subjective cognitive abilities. On the basis of Feuerbach, Marx proposed the unity of opposites between subject and object. As a subject, people can understand and transform the object. In the process of understanding and transforming the object, the person as the subject also transforms (or shapes). ) himself. In a word, labor creates man himself.
Of course, labor created primitive people, but modern people were not created by labor. This is the point made by Arendt in "The Human Condition". Arendt distinguished three activities from the perspective of human freedom, namely labor, work and action. Labor is attached to the land and there is no freedom at all; work is attached to the unit, which is an employment relationship. People have a certain degree of freedom, that is, they can freely choose which unit to attach to. During this period, the enemy of human freedom is the system, and the system provides Security, but at the cost of freedom; movement is completely free, it is true freedom that transcends existential dependence and relational dependence. This is also the highest freedom that we modern people should pursue.
Kant and Croce had the greatest influence on Mr. Zhu Guangqian. If it were not for subsequent changes in the times, Zhu Guangqian might have been a follower of Kant and Croce throughout his life. Kant advocated that aesthetics is a subjective non-utilitarian pleasure, which is brought about by the form of the object. Kant divided beauty into two types: pure and dependent. He mainly discussed pure beauty, that is, beauty is a form that brings people a pure non-utilitarian pleasure.
According to the relationship between subject and object, Kant divided art into three categories, namely classical art, symbolic art and romantic art. Classical art is about the harmony of subject and object, symbolic art is about the alienation of subject and object, and romantic art is about the spirit of the subject overriding all objects, and all objects are the externalization of the spirit of the subject. This is the fundamental reason why we call Li Bai and Guo Moruo romantic. Chinese classical poetry emphasizes gentleness and honesty and pursues harmony. This is the style of classicism. Symbolism pays attention to the form of poetry, letting the form speak while hiding the emotion.
Schopenhauer and Nietzsche made powerful refutations of Kant. Schopenhauer is the founder of voluntarism, and Nietzsche is the founder of the will to power. Nietzsche's aesthetic masterpiece is "The Birth of Tragedy". In this book, he proposed the Dionysian spirit and the Apollonian spirit. Art was produced under the tension formed by these two spirits. Dionysus is irrational, Apollonian is rational, and art is the restraint of reason from irrationality.
Regarding the understanding of human nature, there is another important philosopher and philosophical viewpoint that Mr. Zhu Guangqian did not mention, and this is Cassirer. Cassirer believed that humans are animals of symbols, and discovering and using symbols is the essential attribute of humans. People understand and communicate with the world through symbols. Without symbols, it becomes difficult for people to even think, let alone understand and transform the world. From this philosophical point of view, all art is inseparable from symbols. The origin of symbols is the origin of art.