“由行动而生出情感”:杜威美学表现观解读
作者简介:陈佳,复旦大学哲学学院教师(上海 200433)
摘要: 杜威拒绝接受传统美学表现论,反对在主体精神世界中寻求审美与艺术表现的奥秘,而是把视线转向现实的自然与人之生活,从作为“活的生物”的人与自然的长期的、动态的相互作用出发,提出生存论路向的美学表现观。杜威强调艺术表现首先是人在环境之中的一种行动,是对情境的积极回应,是当下的感觉激发了来自先前经验的态度与意义、新旧相互作用后产生的应变量。作为表现行动的结果,是借助媒介创造了一个新的经验,使得那些原先沉默的、未成熟发展的对象的意义得到了澄清与浓缩。杜威艺术表现观以行动中心论取代了流行的表现主义美学的情感中心论。审美情感不是先行存在的某种神秘实体,而是由情境所暗示,由行动而生出,由天然情感经变化而成。杜威更从社会心理学层面,揭示出表现打破了将人与人隔开的障碍,是一种积极的、建构性的社会文化改造力量。
“Does the Deed that Breeds the Emotion”: An Interpretation on John Dewey’s Aesthetic Theory of Expression
- Available Online:
2019-06-01
Abstract: Dewey refuses to accept the traditional aesthetic theory of expression, and opposes seeking the mystery of artistic expression exclusively in the subjective spiritual world. Instead, he turns his attention to the reality of nature and human beings. Based on the long-standing and dynamic interactions between human beings as " the live creature” and nature, Dewey puts forward his aesthetic theory of expression with an existential orientation. He emphasizes that artistic expression is first of all an action of human beings in the environment, i.e., a positive response to the situation. It is the feelings of the present that inspires the attitude and meaning from previous experience, producing the variables due to the interactions between the old and the new. As a result of an expressive action, it creates a new experience by means of the media, which clarifies and concentrates the meaning of those objects that are otherwise silent and inchoate. Dewey’s argument of artistic expression replaces the popular emotion-centered aesthetics of expressionism with an action-centered theory. Aesthetic emotion is not a mysterious entity that exists in advance, but is " implicated in a situation” and bred by an action. It is also developed from the natural emotion. Besides, Dewey reveals from the perspective of social psychology that aesthetic expression breaks the barrier of separating people from each other and is therefore a positive and constructive force of social and cultural transformation.