Value - a concept that certainly reflects the positive significance of any material object or phenomenon in the spiritual life of people (an unconditional good). This concept combines a rational moment (awareness of something as good for a person or society) and an irrational moment (experience of the meaning of an object or phenomenon as important, significant, the desire for it). Value is for a person everything that has a certain significance for him, personal or social meaning (the significance of a person, the significance of things produced by a person, spiritual phenomena that are significant for a person and society). A quantitative characteristic of this meaning is an assessment (significant, valuable, more valuable, less valuable), expressing the significance of something verbally. Assessment forms a value-based attitude towards the world and oneself, leading to the value orientations of the individual. A mature personality is usually characterized by stable value orientations. Stable value orientations become norms. They determine the forms of behavior of members of a given society. The value attitude of an individual towards himself and the world is realized in emotions, will, determination, goal setting, and ideal creativity. Based on human needs and social relations, the interests of people arise, which directly determine a person’s interest in something. Each person lives in a certain system of values, objects and phenomena of which are designed to satisfy his needs. In a certain sense, we can say that value expresses the way of existence of an individual. The system of value orientations, formed under the influence of values, determines the spiritual structure of the individual and directly influences its development. Philosophical teaching about values ​​is called axiology. The main spiritual values ​​of society are moral, religious and aesthetic values.

Aesthetic values– these are the values ​​of universal humanity in the sphere of freedom. The main aesthetic values ​​are:

- beautiful(reflects the highest aesthetic value, unconditionally aesthetically positive, significant for all people, symbolizing the perception of those phenomena and objects that humanity has already mastered and which evoke only positive aesthetic emotions);

- sublime(reflects the perception of those objects, phenomena that go beyond the ordinary and which have potential positive aesthetic significance for all people, but which humanity does not yet freely possess, therefore the emotions of the sublime can be both positive and negative);

- tragic(reflects the death and, at the same time, the immortality of the beautiful, the emotion of the tragic combines grief and catharsis - spiritual cleansing and enlightenment, improving the inner world of the individual, concretization of the tragic - heroic);

- comic(reflects the denial of socially negative phenomena through laughter, passing an aesthetic verdict on these phenomena, creating opportunities for aesthetic and spiritual improvement of society and the individual);

Positive aesthetic feelings of the individual (expand a person’s humanistic horizon, make him thinner, more perfect, more humane);

- aesthetic ideal(reflects a synthesis of aesthetic values, a generalized idea of ​​beauty of a certain era and, at the same time, a universal human perception of beauty);

- masterpieces of world art, embodying the spiritual highs of the human spirit, human maxims of existence;

- aesthetic, artistic creativity(an unconditional aesthetic value expressing the very essence of man as an activity-transforming being, changing the world and himself in the process of changing the world).

It should be noted that aesthetic values ​​in the inner world of the individual, in the public consciousness, and in the course of human history are closely interconnected with moral, religious values, or with an atheistic perception of reality. Their concrete historical relationship forms the basic basis for the worldview of man and society.

Basic aesthetic values ​​include: the aesthetic itself, beauty, harmony, art, the sublime, catharsis, tragic, comic, graceful. Of course, aesthetic values ​​are not exhausted by these categories. So, we can talk, for example, about touching, charming, graceful and other possible values ​​of the aesthetic order. To some extent, the main aesthetic values ​​absorb possible others. Aesthetic is a kind of meta-category. On the other hand, it is impossible to list all possible aesthetic values ​​(just as it is impossible to list all values ​​in general). Here we will consider the characteristic features of basic aesthetic values.
Since ancient times, beauty has been considered the main aesthetic category. And the meta-category aesthetic itself was associated precisely with the beautiful. This can be derived from the traditional harmonious relationship between man and the world. Initially, in ancient culture, a person is a contemplative being. It is known that the Greeks had a unique ability to feel and see beauty in the nature around them and in space as a whole. To this day, the statue of Samson is an example of male beauty.
However, at present, aesthetic and beautiful are not at all identical concepts, just as the relationship between man and the world is now rather disharmonious. Many of the greatest contemporary creators of art intuitively feel this and express it in their own work. Thus, one can often hear a reproach addressed to composers of the last century that their music is not melodic, that they abuse dissonances, and that, finally, in general, their works do not have a finished form (structural discontinuity is one of the features of modern art). Or it can be noted that in Western poetry (unlike domestic poetry, which still does not have the opportunity to overcome the external artificial smoothness of Soviet aesthetic norms) they have long ago abandoned what seemed like centuries of traditional rhyme and even the harmonizing rhythm has been replaced by a completely different, so to speak, disturbing rhythm.
Thus, the aesthetic is now associated not only and not so much with the beautiful, but with what is expressive. Apparently, it is necessary to admit that something disharmonious in our time is more expressive than something harmonious. The well-known phrase that it is absurd to write poetry after Auschwitz could be specified in this way: after Auschwitz it is absurd to write harmonious poetry. And this is not due to changes occurring exclusively within the sphere of the aesthetic, but to a change in a person’s attitude to the world and to himself. Note that expressiveness is manifested not only in the aesthetic, however, here expressiveness is important to the superlative degree. The aesthetic deals not simply with expressiveness, but, so to speak, with condensed expressiveness. The aesthetic is full of expressiveness.
On the other hand, over time there is an expansion of the aesthetic sphere itself. To modern man What seems aesthetic is what was previously taken beyond its boundaries. Roughly speaking, this happens precisely because the aesthetic has left the Procrustean bed of the beautiful and has become an independent value, not needing support from anything else.
So, we have differentiated the concepts of aesthetic and beautiful. Now it is important to distinguish between the aesthetic and the utilitarian, since since ancient times there has been a view that identifies these concepts. For example, Plato’s reasoning, which he put into the mouth of Socrates, is known: a skillfully decorated shield that does not protect a warrior from enemies cannot be considered beautiful (here the aesthetic and the beautiful are also identified). A beautiful shield, useful in battle, even if it is not decorated at all. This argument deliberately ignores the specifics of aesthetic value. Strictly speaking, what is aesthetic is not a decorated shield or a useful shield, but a shield that can withstand aesthetic evaluation. True beauty does not need decoration. Accordingly, we can say that the aesthetics of a shield does not consist in being decorated or even beautiful at all. The shield must be an expression of something. A completely unsightly shield that has been in battle, with scars from sword blows, perhaps even just a certain stub of a shield, expressing the fate not of this shield and not of the shield as such, but of the shield as an existing thing, much more expressive than just a decorated shield. But it is also more expressive than just a strong shield. Otherwise we would have to identify the aesthetic feeling with the feeling of utilitarian approval, and identify art with craft.
The most famous theorist of the uselessness of the aesthetic is the great German philosopher of the Enlightenment, Immanuel Kant, who argued that a person’s aesthetic taste is capable of recognizing values ​​that do not involve direct benefit for that person. Thus, the essence of the aesthetic attitude consists in disinterested enjoyment of a thing. Indeed, food satiates us, but why should we listen to such a strange, ephemeral thing as music? The pleasure received from delicious food is associated with the selfishness of satiation, and the pleasure from music is pleasure in its purest form. All living beings have a need for satiation, but only humans have the ability to receive aesthetic satisfaction.
Aesthetic value is associated more with form, while utilitarian value is associated with content. How does a house that can please not only the possessive instinct of its owner, but also his eyes, differ from an ordinary one? First of all, of course, the shape, since you can live in a house of any shape. However, only when the fragile line between mere goodness and aesthetics has been crossed will pure aesthetic appreciation begin. Roughly speaking, it is not only impossible to live in an aesthetically perfect house, but it is impossible to even imagine that someone can live in it.
Important in the system of aesthetic values ​​has the concept of beauty. Initially in ancient aesthetics the beautiful, beauty is objective and is perhaps the most significant feature that distinguishes everything that exists from the non-existent. And how can everything that exists be unbeautiful if it exists not anywhere, but in space itself? The word “cosmos” for the Greeks means at the same time the world as a whole, and decoration, and perfect beauty, and perfect order, and harmony established by the creator of the cosmos, the demiurge. And today the root of the word “space” has not yet lost all the richness of these meanings. Let us at least remember the word “cosmetics”, which is often used in the lexicon of many people.
Plato expressed a metaphysical and idealistic understanding of beauty: “The beautiful exists forever, it is not destroyed, does not increase, does not decrease. It is neither beautiful here, nor ugly there, ... neither beautiful in one respect, nor ugly in another.” The beautiful, according to Plato, is an eternal idea, and therefore it “will not appear in the form of any form, or hands, or any other part of the body, nor in the form of any speech, nor in the form of any science, nor in the form of existing in something else in some living creature either on earth, or in heaven, or in some other object...” In another way, such an understanding of beauty (or the beautiful) can be called ontological and non-subjective. From this point of view, beauty belongs to the ideal eternal world, and it is thanks to this belonging that it can be “identified” in changeable, contradictory things. Beauty stands out itself and highlights what it has ennobled from the circle of becoming, since it is from the circle of eternal being.
Aristotle put forward several outstanding ideas about the essence of beauty. Firstly, he connected the concept of beauty with the concept of measure: “neither an excessively small creature could become beautiful, since its overview, made in an almost imperceptible time, merges, nor an excessively large one, since its overview does not take place immediately, but unity and its integrity is lost." Such beauty depends on proportionality, symmetry, proportionality of parts in relation to each other and to the whole. Secondly, Aristotle connected the concepts of beauty and goodness. Beauty, in his opinion, is at the same time good. An unkind person cannot be beautiful; he is absolutely beautiful only when he is morally pure. Thus, the concept of not a self-sufficient aesthetic, but a certain ethical beauty arises. Aesthetics and ethics merge through this understanding of beauty. Until now, the word beautiful has a meaning that goes beyond the aesthetic. For example, we use the word beautiful to mean very good.
The ethical view of beauty became widespread in aesthetics until the modern era. Even in the Renaissance, beauty was identified with morality. However, at this time, anthropocentrism in the understanding of beauty was already emerging. The human body, hidden for so long in the Middle Ages, begins to become the standard of beauty.
In the era of classicism, the concept of grace arose. Graceful is, of course, also beauty, but a special kind of refined beauty; not natural beauty given by nature, but nurtured and ennobled beauty. Let us remember that classicism especially values ​​the park as nature, brought into a beautiful form by human hands and, above all, by the mind. After all, it is not the grass as such that is graceful. In order for the grass to acquire an elegant appearance, it needs to be trimmed from time to time (the same is with human hair: in order to make it into a hairstyle, it needs to be shortened in a special way from time to time). Thus, the park and the forest are as different as graceful and natural beauty. Apparently, in the new European aesthetic view, it is not enough to have beauty from nature, you also need to cultivate it, “refine” it.
Of course, it is no coincidence that the concept of good taste, including in relation to beauty, is becoming fashionable at this time. The subjectification of beauty begins. Voltaire, for example, clearly expressed the dependence of the idea of ​​beauty on taste as follows: for a toad, the embodiment of beauty is another toad. What can you object to such a statement? Plato would probably answer that man is more beautiful than a toad, since he has a soul as an eternal beginning, and a toad has none of this.
Thus, we can distinguish two main views on beauty in aesthetics. The first proceeds from the ontology of beauty, its independence from subjective tastes, and the second emphasizes the relativity of all ideas about beauty: one considers one thing beautiful, another – another. The second view can also come from the historicity of all tastes.
The concept of harmony also depends on the concept of beauty. This thesis can be turned in the opposite way: the concept of beauty depends on the concept of harmony. It was in this setting that the Pythagoreans spoke about beauty. In general, for the Greeks, the entire cosmos is a cosmos because it is structured naturally and expediently. If we look at the night sky, we will see that harmony reigns there. All planets rotate harmoniously around their stars, and this state of affairs has remained virtually unchanged for centuries. Is it not because of this harmony that the cosmos is beautiful?
Harmony means consistency. Harmony is born out of chaos, and not vice versa. An orchestra that perfectly performs a complex symphony at a concert, written for the simultaneous playing of various instruments by many musicians, becomes an orchestra through repeated rehearsals. The goal of rehearsals is for harmony to replace chaos, for consistency to triumph over inconsistency. Moreover, harmony should become more and more harmonious, until nothing more than beauty appears before us. Harmony makes it so that not just some part, particular, but the whole becomes noticeable. Thus, a more perfect performance of a musical work will, of course, be one in which we do not notice the quality and talent of individual orchestra members, soloists or conductor; all of it seems to fade into the background, “disappear” for the sake of the symphony itself, its immediate appearance before the amazed listeners. However, if it were not for the orchestra players (who actually represent only the particular), if not for their ideal coordination, then there would be no phenomenon, not even of the symphony as such, but of the music itself, in the element of which the listeners find themselves during the concert, forgetting which particular piece they are listening at the moment. So, harmony is a powerful means of aesthetic influence.
Above, attention was drawn to dissonance as something inharmonious. It should be clarified that dissonance is not chaos from which harmony is born. No, dissonance is born from harmony and makes sense only in a harmonic frame. Not even the most avant-garde music consists entirely of dissonance; such music would have no expressiveness. Dissonance can be compared to mythologization. It strives to become immediate chaos just as mythologization mythologizes something that is not a myth. However, intentional chaos and intentional myth are not the original chaos and not the original myth. Syncretism and synthesis are two different things.
If we notice that modern relationships between man and the world are more disharmonious than harmonious, this is because we distinguish between harmony and disharmony. However, if we dealt exclusively with chaos as such, then we would not know what harmony and disharmony are. Likewise, a person with a mythological worldview does not need any mythologization. A composer who does not know harmony does not need any dissonance for greater expressiveness of his music. If we see that modern serious music lacks melodies, then this means that we are spoiled by the melody of classical and romantic music in the person of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann and Wagner.
Thus, a person’s relationship with the world at the present time could otherwise be called post-harmonious or, if you like, post-antique.
The category of the sublime occupies a special place in the system of aesthetic values. The sublime itself stands on the brink of aesthetics and ethics. There is a concept of the so-called sublime style. Let us compare, for example, the words life and life. At first glance, it seems that the meaning of both words is the same, only the word life is fraught with something elusively sublime: not about every life you can say life. The word life itself seems to elevate what it speaks of.
Ancient rhetoricians wrote a lot about the sublime. Pseudo-Longinus saw the origin of the sublime from the combination of significant thoughts with the beauty of their formal expression. So, again the need for the category of beauty arises when justifying another aesthetic concept. Indeed, the sublimity of speech is given not only by the content, but also by the form. Sometimes even, as we know, outstanding speakers successfully abuse the influence of the form on the masses. However, this hypnotizing effect subsides as soon as it becomes clear that in fact there is no outstanding content hidden behind the form. Being an outstanding lecturer does not mean being an outstanding thinker or writer.
Nevertheless, two forms of the most sublime can be distinguished: external and internal. The external is embodied in grandeur and monumentality. Thus, the pharaonic pyramids sought to show by their enormity that the pharaoh belonged to the sphere of the sublime above the sphere to which his subjects belonged. But this is a more primitive sublime. The inner sublime is the subtle sublime achieved through the reserves hidden within everything that exists. Every creature can rise to the top - you just need to want to full meaning this word to herself. This thought perhaps expresses the true meaning of existence. Since ancient times, a phrase has been known that says that no external sublimity is needed, only internal sublimity is enough: “to be content with little is divine.” Beautiful words that fully express the essence of the sublime. Let us remember that for the selfishness of each of us, it is the most difficult thing to be content with little. This means that if the pharaoh had internal sublimity, then he would not have had the desire to build himself a pyramid going into the sky. On the contrary, the constructed pyramid was supposed to replace the internal absence of the sublime. This is form without content.
The sublime is associated with catharsis.
In aesthetics, Aristotle is considered the most famous interpreter of the category of catharsis. However, Aristotle describes catharsis extremely poorly. IN famous place from the sixth chapter of “Poetics” only a few words say: “tragedy, with the help of compassion and fear, achieves purification...”
The famous researcher of ancient aesthetics A.F. Losev offers an original noological interpretation of the essence of catharsis (from the Greek nous - mind). The mind, in fact, is a kind of focus of Aristotelian philosophy. According to Aristotle, all mental forces, gradually freed from the stream of formation in which they are only possible, turn into a single Mind. Nous, however, is not some kind of intellectual side of the soul or, if you like, the psyche. Nous is higher than the soul itself and represents the highest concentration of the entire spreading multitude of mental life into a self-sufficient stay in one. Concentration in the mind cannot be said to be dominated by feeling or intellect. Concentration in the mind is higher than the soul itself with all its individual powers. Therefore, catharsis as concentration in the mind, according to Aristotle, is beyond characterization from the point of view of individual mental acts. For example, catharsis is outside of compassion or fear, that is, with the feelings with which it is traditionally associated in aesthetics.
According to Aristotle, catharsis can only be experienced by getting used to what is being depicted, that is, the viewer imagines that what is being depicted is happening to him. Losev draws attention to the important difference between purification and inference. It is one thing to experience purification and another thing to draw conclusions exclusively by mental means, so to speak, intellectually.
The traditional interpretation of catharsis is as moral satisfaction (this is how Lessing understands it, for example). However, morality is associated with the concept of will, and the state of catharsis is taken beyond the boundaries of ethics and volition. The concept of norm is important in moral theory. A moral norm requires, first of all, mental life and volition. The will usually acts randomly and inexpediently, carried away by sensual impulses, and the norm speaks of how one should act in in this case and how one could and should treat sensory impulses.
Catharsis does without all this. In catharsis there is no volitional aspiration, but there is a norm for it. This state is spiritual and is above volitional acts. From this we can conclude that it does not need morality. Morality degrades, degrades the state of catharsis. Catharsis takes place not in the realm of the will, but in the Aristotelian mind.
In many Greek tragedies, as we know, morality is reduced to an extremely low level. Greek tragedies deal with numerous murders, outrages, etc. Moralism is one of the “discoveries” of the enlightened West; high ancient art managed without it.
Also, the Western state of moral calm (manifesting now, for example, in various forms of such false “virtue” as Western charity) is alien to ancient catharsis. Catharsis is not tranquility, but enlightenment, after the experience of which not only all our ideas about something and our worldview as a whole change, but we ourselves change as a whole. More precisely, we do not change, but “return” to our original state.
Thus, the category of catharsis occupies a significant place among other aesthetic categories.
Art is the most complex aesthetic value, embodying the characteristics of various values, including extra-aesthetic ones. So, in Russia in the second half of the 19th century. art was considered more of an ethical value. And from this angle one can understand the famous phrase “A poet in Russia is more than a poet.” Even in Soviet times in our country, not only poets, but also prose writers acted as certain moral authorities. Since antiquity, art has also been understood as the revelation of truth, which was manifested, for example, in the thoughts of the 19th century romantic poet. Novalisa: “The more poetic, the more true.”
Yet art, naturally, also absorbs aesthetic meaning. Art is a unique, and from a pragmatic point of view, strange, aesthetic form of life, without which many of us cannot imagine ourselves. We will consider the main interpretations of the essence of art in the history of philosophy and aesthetic thought.
For a long time, art was interpreted as mimesis (imitation). The doctrine of imitation has been known since antiquity and until the 18th century occupied the main place in explaining what art is. What is this connected with? With ontological representations of these periods of human thought. The world was thought of as a hierarchy, at the top of which stands God, the demiurge, the creator of the world. Traditionally it was believed that he was an ideal artist who created the cosmos in the same way as earthly artists and craftsmen create their works. Therefore, earthly artists must imitate an already existing model - nature or its creator. Among the representatives of this teaching one can name Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Seneca, Lessing. The last great thinker who talks about imitation in his teaching about art was Schelling. After Hegel's criticism of the theory of imitation, the philosophy of art does not consider imitation to be the essence of art.
From Plato's point of view, the world in which we live is just a shadow of the world of ideas. Therefore, he characterizes art as imitation of imitation. Plato contrasts imitation, which he uses in a negative sense, with creation. In creation, a craftsman imitates the true idea of ​​a thing and therefore is the first imitator in order and, to some extent, a creator, since ideas are not in this world, and the artist in a work of art imitates not the true idea at all, but its imitation, that is, he is the second in order a copycat.
Therefore, Plato puts craft above art. The craftsman, according to Plato, creates things, and the poet is only the “appearance” of things, “ghosts”. The artist wants to pass off his ghostly image of a thing as a thing and, provided that he is a “good” artist, he can even “show it from afar to children or people who are not very smart, to mislead them.” The artist engages in deception because he does not have knowledge of true existence and does not master the creative craft, but knows only “appearance,” coloring it with the colors of his art.
As we see, Plato cannot justify art, while at the same time justifying craft, which is a completely serious matter, and art is just fun, though - a characteristic clause - pleasant fun. Plato “justifies” art only, as we would say, from an aesthetic point of view, admitting that he himself is fascinated by imitative art, but immediately notes that “to betray what you consider true is impious.”
From Plato's point of view, a creator of art is a creator who wants, but does not know how to create. To better understand what we are talking about, let us give an example not from Plato: once a Muslim (and the Muslim faith does not allow images or portraits) was shown a picture with painted fish. The Muslim was amazed and remarked: “When this fish comes against its creator (i.e. the creator of this picture) on the day doomsday and he will say: he gave me a body, but did not give me a living soul, what will he say in his justification? Here the specificity of art as a special artistic creativity.
According to Aristotle, imitation is a primordial, innate property of people and manifests itself already in childhood. By imitation, man differs from animals and through imitation he acquires his first knowledge. The basis of imitation, which is the essence of art, is the similarity of what is depicted with the image. However, we do not enjoy what the artist depicts, but how it is depicted. For example, a work may depict something negative and even ugly, for example, some human vices, but they can be depicted so successfully that the viewer or reader begins to derive pleasure from their successful reproduction. Let us remember that Plato saw all the art of artists in the fact that they strive to pass off the “ghosts” of things they created as the things themselves, and the more skillful they are, the more they succeed in this. Aristotle emphasizes that an artist may well depict something that is clearly inconsistent with reality, and this will not at all indicate a lack of his art: “Art cannot be criticized for depicting incorrect, impossible or incredible things. If, for example, a horse is depicted with two right legs, then someone who criticizes the painter for this is not criticizing the art of painting at all, but only the discrepancy between its reality. The subject of an artistic depiction may be objectively completely impossible.” Thus, Aristotle comes to the realization that art has its own artistic specificity. He already closely comprehends art within the framework of the Procrustean bed of the theory of imitation. Conclusion: According to Aristotle, the creator of art not only imitates, but also creates on his own.
During the Renaissance, the principle of imitation of nature continues to develop in aesthetics. The originality lies in the deepening subjectivity of imitation. The words of one artist can be considered as a motto: you need to create like God, and even better than him. Renaissance imitation is based on the artist’s own aesthetic taste, that is, natural phenomena that need to be imitated are subject to subjective selection. The concept of subjective fantasy appears. Leonardo da Vinci: “The mind of a painter should be like a mirror, which always changes into the color of the object that it has as an object, and is filled with as many images as there are objects opposed to it. So, you cannot be a good painter unless you are a universal master in imitating with your art all the qualities of forms produced by nature.”
The difference is in the understanding of creativity, in its subjectivization. If ancient thinkers understood creativity as the creation of real objects on the basis of a higher, existing outside of man idea of ​​these objects, now creativity is interpreted as the creation of this very idea, which arises in the artist’s head. The idea of ​​a work is not a divine root cause, but a product of human thinking.
The theory of classicism is based on the concept of imitation of beautiful or graceful nature. Boileau, the main theoretician of French classicism of the 17th century. was influenced by Descartes; he considered reason and common sense to be the main principles of a work of art, which should suppress imagination. He demanded the triumph of duty over human feelings. This resulted, as we know, in various rules of classicism, which creators of art had to strictly observe in their individual creativity. Even nature itself, as an object of imitation, was conceived not in its natural form, but in the form of artificial, orderly parks, where it was supposed to be reduced to elegance.
Baumgarten, the creator of aesthetics as a philosophical discipline, conceives of imitation as imitation not of natural phenomena, but of its actions. That is, the artist does not create the same thing as nature, but creates like nature, like nature (imitation of creative activity).
Hegel notes the formal nature of imitation. Guided by it, we do not pose the question of what is the nature of what should be imitated, but we only care about how to imitate correctly. Therefore, imitation, according to Hegel, cannot constitute either the goal, but the content of artistic creativity.
Hegel himself interprets art as direct sensory knowledge. From his point of view, art should reveal the truth in a sensual form, and final goal art consists precisely in this image and disclosure. This is also the limitation of art in comparison with religion and philosophy, as the first form of comprehension of the absolute spirit.
According to Hegel, art, as belonging to the sphere of spirit, is initially superior to nature. For example, landscape. An artist, when painting a landscape, does not copy nature, but spiritualizes it, so we are not talking about any imitation here. Compare the landscape drawn by an outstanding artist with a photograph.
The form of art, according to Hegel, provides direct and therefore sensory knowledge, in which the absolute becomes the subject of “contemplation and feeling,” that is, it is cognized not in a completely adequate form, it is objectified. Religion, on the contrary, has the form of its consciousness as a representation and subjectivizes the absolute, which here becomes the property of the heart and soul. Only philosophy, being the third form in which the objectivity of art is united, which here loses “the character of external sensuality and is replaced by the highest form of objectivity, thought, and the subjectivity of religion, which is here purified and transformed into the subjectivity of thinking.” Thus, only in thinking (philosophy ) the absolute is able to comprehend itself “in the form of itself.”
Hegel proclaims that art at the modern stage is no longer something necessary for humanity, since the absolute is accessible to it only in a special sensual form. For example, the ancient Greek gods corresponded to this form. Therefore, poets and artists became for the Greeks the creators of their gods. The Christian God can no longer be represented by art in an adequate form.
According to Hegel, contemporary art, submitting to the intellectual direction of the development of the spirit, loses its original essence. Thus, the modern writer includes more and more thoughts in his works, forgetting that he must influence the feelings of the reader. On the other hand, readers and spectators themselves are increasingly approaching art from the point of view of reason, not only to modern art, but also to ancient art. Hegel ends this remarkable argument in an unsurpassed way of expressiveness: “One can, however, have hope that art will continue to grow and improve, but its form has ceased to be the highest need of the spirit. We can find the Greek statues of gods excellent, and the image of the father of God, Christ and Mary worthy and perfect - this will not change anything: we still will not bend our knees."
During Hegel's time, the understanding of art as myth became popular. Schelling and the romantics (Novalis, the Schlegel brothers) thought so.
The great German composer of the twilight of Romanticism, Richard Wagner, well expressed the perception of art as a myth: “The lessons and tasks (in teaching musical literacy and composition) soon aroused displeasure in me, thanks to their, as it seemed to me, dryness. Music was and remained for me a demonic kingdom, a world of mystically sublime miracles: everything that was right, it seemed to me, only disfigured it. I looked for instructions more consistent with my ideas than the teachings of the Leipzig orchestral musician in Hoffmann's Fantastic Works. And then the time came when I truly immersed myself in. this artistic world of visions and ghosts and began to live and create in it"
For the romantics, the creative personality (whose creativity is understood ecstatically) is just a part of the eternally creating and becoming deity, and artistic creation is nothing more than a myth. The English researcher of romanticism S.M. Bauer saw the peculiarity of the romantics in the following: “The five leading poets of the romantic era, namely Blake, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Shelley and Keats, despite numerous differences, agreed on the main thing: that the creative imagination is closely connected with special insight behind the visible things of invisible laws."
Art, therefore, has a greater reality for romantics than external reality. Novalis wrote: “Poetry for me is absolutely real. This is the core of my philosophy. The more poetic, the truer.” A similar idea is developed by Percy Bysshe Shelley: “only superstition considers poetry an attribute of prophecy, instead of considering art an attribute of poetry. The poet is involved in the eternal, the infinite and the one; for his plans there is no time, place or plurality.” Myth appears as a kind of true sacred reality.
For a romantic, art is not a retreat into “dreams,” but a mystery, a merging with the absolute, and, as a consequence, the revelation of this absolute in a mythological work of art.
Schelling is very close to the theory of romanticism. He also places art above everything, including philosophy, since he considers it “the only and eternal revelation, a miracle, even a single accomplishment of which should assure us of the absolute reality of the highest being.” In the speech "On Attitude visual arts to nature" Schelling says that the idea of ​​​​the relationship of art to nature arose a long time ago (the theory of imitation). But basically it was assessed as a relationship to the “forms” of nature. According to Schelling, this is a delusion, since the artist who “slavishly copies” the external nature, produces only masks, and not works of art.
The task of art is to depict what truly exists, pure beingness, “vital eternity.” Imagination does not create anything anew, but only reunites something with the original image. This is not so much an imitation as an achievement of reality. However, this achievement, according to Schelling, does not belong to epistemology, since the root cause of art is not man, but the absolute, which manifests itself through genius.
For Schelling, as for the romantics, genius is a condition for creating a work of art. Moreover, according to Schelling, genius manifests itself exclusively in art, into which it introduces “objectivity”, thanks to its presence as unconsciousness in the subjectivity, the consciousness of the artist. Genius, being inherent in the identity common to everything individual, comes into conflict with the artist’s self, and in order to resolve this contradiction, the artist creates.
The interpretation of art as a game is characteristic of Kant and Schiller.
The specificity of understanding art as a game is well expressed by the words of Pushkin: “I will shed tears over fiction.”
Kant also argues that art does not simply deceive the senses, but it “plays” with them: “Appearance that deceives disappears when its emptiness and deceptiveness become known. But playing appearance, since it exists, is nothing other than the truth.” still remains in the phenomenon even when the actual state of affairs becomes known." That is, according to Kant, the poet makes the truth visible: “This visibility does not obscure the inner image of the truth, which appears before the eye as decorated, and does not mislead the inexperienced and gullible with pretense and deception, but using the insight of feelings brings dry and colorless truth to the stage, filling it with the colors of feelings.
In this “fullness of colors,” the German philosopher even sees the advantage of poetry over philosophy, since the mind is powerless to conquer a person embraced by the “unbridled power of feelings,” he must be conquered not by direct violence, but by cunning, for which the dry and colorless truth is filled with the colors of feelings. Thus, there is an interaction between poetry and philosophy: "Poetry returns those who have been attracted by its splendor and have overcome their rudeness, all the more to follow the teachings of wisdom."
According to Kant, “Poetry is the most beautiful of all games, since in it all the spiritual forces of man come into a state of play.” According to Schiller, art combines the seriousness of work with the joy of play. And thereby the unity of the general and the individual, necessity and freedom is achieved.
Recently, art is increasingly viewed as an autonomous aesthetic phenomenon, that is, art entirely belongs to the aesthetic sphere. For example, the Italian philosopher and esthetician of the early 20th century Croce believed that art is an expression of feelings, a simple act of imagination. And the fruit of this imagination - a work of art - has a primitive naivety. Art does not aim to reflect things as they really exist, or to moralize, and is not subject to any laws, rules or canons. Art has its own aesthetic reality and its value does not lie in the degree of approximation to external reality. Thus, here art finally moves away from being understood as imitation, and becomes not cognition, but exclusively creativity, and subjective creativity at that.
One theorist of modernism expressed the essence of painting this way: “Painting is not a large mirror common to everyone (remember the opposite words of Leonardo da Vinci), reflecting the external world or the internal world inherent in the artist himself; the task is to make the painting an object. To create a work means to create a new reality, which is not identical with nature, but with the artist, and which adds to both what each of them owes to the other. To create a work means to add to the repertoire of known objects some unforeseen thing, which has no other purpose than an aesthetic one, and no other laws than the laws of plasticity. On this path, the 20th century since Cubism found its most original expression.”
Although many Cubist artists believed that they showed the essence of things, art theorists often speak of Cubism as the first form of abstract art. According to Cubist scholar Seifor: “The Cubists destroyed the object and reconstructed it anew, freely improvising through the means of painting, regardless of objective reality. Thus, they discovered the uselessness of the subject and actually became the first representatives of abstract painting.”
The founder of abstract painting (our compatriot) Wassily Kandinsky seeks to move away from the principle of imitation of nature: “An artist who has become a creator no longer sees his goal in imitation natural phenomena, he wants and must find expression for his inner world.”
Indeed, art can have aesthetic value in itself. The process begun by Aristotle found its completion in modern art, the extreme expression of which was art for art's sake.
Contemporary art has followed the path of, so to speak, formal sophistication, the improvement of art itself, the skillfulness of art, that is, in its development it does not try to go beyond the limits, but remains within itself. The consequence of this is that serious art today is the preserve of connoisseurs (much more than ever), while the “masses” are content with entertaining art.
Contemporary art deliberately turns on itself. This is a consequence of the fact that art now occupies a place on the periphery of culture. Here is how the modern researcher K. Hübner speaks about it: “When in the middle of the last century the triumph of science, together with technology and industrialization, finally became undoubted, art found itself in a completely new situation that had never arisen in previous history. What subject area is still left for him, if science alone reserves access to reality and truth? If I and the world, subject and object, the ideal and the material can no longer be plausibly united in the idea, if, on the other hand, faith in the transcendent has faded, then how can it be? can fulfill its previous task - transformation into the image of this unity, the divine principle, thereby serving the enlightenment of sensuality or the essence of the world?
This approach finally “debunks” the theory of imitation; man no longer needs the support of nature, he becomes so independent that he can find support for artistic creation within himself. Art thus becomes a pure aesthetic value.

The term "aesthetics" (from Greek word"aisthetikos" - related to sensory perception) was introduced by the German philosopher A. Baumgarten in the 18th century. He also determined the place of this science in the system of philosophy. He believes that aesthetics is the lowest level of epistemology, the science of sensory knowledge, the perfect form of which is beauty. His contemporary I. Kant sees in aesthetics the propaedeutics of all philosophy. This means that the systematic study of philosophy should begin with the theory of beauty, then goodness and truth will be more fully revealed. If for Baumgarten the second fundamental category is art, then Kant turned to aesthetics, starting not from the problems of art, but from the needs of philosophy. Kant's merit lies precisely in the fact that he introduced the spirit of dialectics into aesthetics. The definition of “aesthetics” has been firmly established in philosophical terminology since the 18th century. it is beginning to be understood as a science that deals with the problems of “philosophy of beauty” or “philosophy of art.” It was in this regard that it was perceived by Hegel, and later by F. Schiller and F. Schelling.
The history of aesthetics goes back thousands of years. It was formed much earlier than the term aesthetics itself appeared. Aesthetic experience as a set of non-utilitarian relations to reality has been inherent in man since ancient times and received its initial expression in the proto-aesthetic practice of archaic man. Primitive proto-aesthetic experience was merged with proto-religious sacred experience.
The first mentions of the emergence of aesthetic practices and skills go deep into human history. These include rock paintings in the caves of primitive people, and the content of myths among different peoples of the world.
We can distinguish two main ways of the historical existence of aesthetics: explicit and implicit. The first includes the philosophical discipline of aesthetics itself, which only became self-defined in the mid-18th century as an independent science. Implicit aesthetics has its roots in ancient times and represents a free, unsystematic understanding of aesthetic experience within other disciplines (in philosophy, rhetoric, philology, theology, etc.). Implicit aesthetics existed (and exists now) throughout the history of aesthetics, but it is revealed only with of the late modern European period, in the process of dialogue with it by explicit aesthetics. Conventionally, three stages are distinguished in it (proto-scientific (before the mid-18th century), classical (mid-18th - early 20th centuries) and non-classical (proclaimed by F. Nietzsche, but which began its journey only in the second half of the 20th century).
In the European area, proto-scientific aesthetics gave the most significant results in Antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and within such artistic and aesthetic movements as classicism and baroque. During the classical period, it developed especially fruitfully in the directions of romanticism, realism and symbolism. Non-classical aesthetics, the foundation of which was the revaluation of all the values ​​of traditional culture, relegated theoretical (explicit) aesthetics to the background. Aesthetic knowledge in the twentieth century most actively developed within other sciences (philosophy, philology, linguistics, psychology, sociology, art history, semiotics, etc.). The identification of implicit aesthetics is associated with certain methodological difficulties, due to the fact that, relying on ancient primary sources, we are trying to find in them ideas about the subject of aesthetics, which did not yet exist at that moment. According to V.V. Bychkov, “this difficulty exists, but it is connected not only with the fact that antiquity did not know the science of aesthetics at the level of “rationality,” for already then there was an aesthetic reality, which subsequently brought into existence a special science for its study. In the 20th century This problem was resolved by G. G. Adamer, convincingly showing that in the process of interpreting a traditional text by a modern researcher, an equal dialogue is carried out between the text and the researcher, during which both participants in the dialogue equally influence each other in terms of achieving a modern understanding of the problem under discussion.”
Aesthetics studies sensory knowledge of the surrounding reality and deals with its different aspects: nature, society, man and his activities in various spheres of life. From the point of view of aesthetic value in everyday life, we appreciate beautiful flowers, majestic buildings, high moral actions of people, beautiful works of artistic culture. The various aesthetic attitudes that arise in a person towards everyday life can be attributed to the general definition of “aesthetic”. According to V. Bychkov, aesthetics is a science of a philosophical nature, dealing with some rather subtle and elusive matters at the rational level, and at the same time - something more than science in the usual modern European sense of the word. It would be more accurate to say that this is a kind of special, specific experience of being - knowledge, in which a person who has a specific focus on it can stay, have some kind of not permanent, but temporarily interrupting - time being, as if immersed in it for a while. time, and then again reach the level of everyday life - ordinary utilitarian life. As the history of aesthetics shows, defining this subject verbally turned out to be problematic. However, almost all major philosophers do not ignore aesthetic sphere. Aesthetics in their works was the final link of the philosophical system. Hegel writes about this: “I am convinced that the highest act of reason, which embraces all ideas, is an aesthetic act and that truth and goodness are united by family ties only in beauty. A philosopher, like a poet, must have an aesthetic gift. Philosophy of spirit is aesthetic philosophy.”
Due to the fundamentally limited level of formalization of the subject of aesthetics and its versatility, which requires the researcher to have fundamental knowledge in the fields of art history, religion, philosophy and almost all humanities, at a minimum, as well as a heightened artistic sense and highly developed taste, aesthetics still remains in all respects the most complex, time-consuming, controversial and least ordered of all disciplines.
Today, as at the time of its emergence, the focus of aesthetics is on two main phenomena: the totality of all phenomena, processes and relationships designated as aesthetic, i.e. the aesthetic itself as such and art in its essential foundations. In classical aesthetics, the most significant terms and categories were considered: aesthetic consciousness, aesthetic experience, aesthetic culture, play, beautiful, ugly, sublime, tragic, comic, ideal, catharsis, pleasure, mimesis, image, symbol, sign, expression , creativity, method, style, form and content, genius, artistic creativity, etc. Non-classical aesthetics, developing in line with Freudianism, structuralism, postmodernism, drew attention to marginal problems and categories (for example, the absurd, shock, violence, sadism, entropy, chaos , physicality, etc.). All of the above testifies to the diversity of the subject of aesthetics.
The peculiarity of aesthetics as a science is that it does not have its own empirical basis, but uses material from other sciences. The fact is that aesthetics is a special kind of science, and not only science: in some ways it coincides with science. And in some ways it goes beyond its limits. When talking about aesthetics as a science, we must not forget about its originality. “Aesthetics is the science of the historically determined essence of universal human values, their generation, perception, evaluation and development.” (Yu. Borev). In the process of development of this science, views on the problems of aesthetics changed. So in the period of Antiquity it was: part of philosophy and helped form a picture of the world (natural philosophers); considered the problems of poetics (Aristotle), came into close contact with ethics (Socrates). During the Middle Ages, it was one of the branches of theology. During the Renaissance, she considered the relationship between nature and artistic activity. Thus, for many centuries aesthetic problems were posed within the framework of one philosophical system or another. In fact, it is impossible to name a period of aesthetics when aesthetic issues were not associated with philosophy. Modern researcher Bychkov V.V. writes that “aesthetics is the science of non-utilitarian subject-object relations, as a result of which the subject, through the medium of an object, achieves absolute personal freedom and fullness of being, and very briefly: aesthetics is the science of the harmony of man with the Universe.”
All of the above confirms that aesthetics is a philosophical science, since it appeared in the depths of philosophy, namely its sections such as epistemology and axiology. If philosophy studies the most general laws of nature, social development and thinking, then aesthetics studies the most general laws of the development of art, as well as man’s aesthetic relationship to the world. Even after becoming an independent science, aesthetics continues to draw basic methodological principles from philosophy. It also interacts: with ethics, since morality is part of the very essence of a person’s aesthetic relationship to reality; is closely related to psychology, because the aesthetic perception of reality is sensory and emotional in nature; with pedagogy, sociology, history, logic, etc.
Aesthetics is most closely interconnected with art and serves as a methodology for art historical disciplines. Art as the fruit of artistic creativity becomes the subject of research in aesthetic science. Aesthetics studies the relationship of art to reality, the reflection of reality in art, artistic creativity, and reveals the laws governing all types of art. New directions are also based on the methodological basis of aesthetics, such as: technical aesthetics, aesthetics of everyday life, aesthetics of behavior.
Thus, aesthetics is the science of the aesthetic, the essence and laws of aesthetic cognition and aesthetic human activity, the science of the general laws of the development of art.
The structure of aesthetic knowledge. E.G. Yakovlev writes that “the modern definition of the subject of theoretical aesthetics includes the study of: the objective-aesthetic, understood as the natural-social and objective basis of aesthetic consciousness and aesthetic need; creative and transformative practice of the aesthetic subject, expressed through aesthetic activity and consciousness, as well as through theory and a system of categories; the most general laws of artistic creativity and art.” Thus, aesthetics is an integral system of scientific knowledge and includes three main sections:
1. about the nature of the object of aesthetic evaluation and types of aesthetic value;
2. about the nature of aesthetic consciousness and its forms;
3. about the nature of aesthetic activity and its types.
The structure of aesthetic knowledge also presupposes the presence of a system of aesthetic categories and definitions. Let us consider the various principles of organizing the system of aesthetic categories existing in modern Russian scientific literature. So, for example, M.S. Kagan believes that the category of aesthetic ideal (in its axiological aspect) must be placed at the head of the system. N.I. Kryukovsky claims that “in aesthetics, in the center of the system of categories there should be... the category of beauty...”. V.M. Zharikov bases this system on the correlation of “initial categories: perfection and imperfection” by A.Ya. Zis identifies three groups of aesthetic categories: specific (heroic, majestic, etc.), structural (measure, harmony, etc.) and negative (ugly, base). E.G. Krasnostanov and D.D. The average also offers three groups of aesthetic categories: categories of aesthetic activity, categories of social life, categories of art T.A. Savilova claims that “the basis of the aesthetic is the playful comparison of the measure of the comprehensive development of a person... and a phenomenon.” I.L. Matza considers harmony and beauty to be the main aesthetic categories, which were modified and changed in the process of evolution. In their initial moments, the principles of systematization should be of a philosophical and aesthetic nature. Then, when determining the structure of the system, the following are necessary: ​​ontological-phenomenological and social-epistemological aspects; it is necessary to determine the principles of subordination and coordination of aesthetic categories; highlight the main universal aesthetic category around which the entire system is organized.
In aesthetics there is a category that acts as a meta-category of aesthetics - this is the category of the aesthetic. The aesthetic is perfect in its own way. Perfection is a vital necessity of nature. It is spontaneous, from it the idea of ​​universal perfection is born. The property of the aesthetic is possessed not only by the harmonious (beautiful, aesthetic ideal, art), but also by the disharmonious (sublime, terrible, ugly, base, tragic), since in both of them the essence of this kind of being is most fully expressed. This approach to the aesthetic expands the boundaries of the subject of aesthetics, as it includes the study of all phenomena of reality that have perfection. However, in traditional aesthetics the fundamental categories are beauty. It is difficult to agree with this position, because the category of beauty has always had a strictly historical content, and this was clearly shown by V. Tatarkevich in his work “History of Aesthetics”. Consequently, the ontological significance of the aesthetic lies in the fact that it is the being of the perfect, the phenomenological - in the variety of phenomena that have this property as the fullness of existence, the sociological - in the fact that the subject of aesthetics in this case acquires greater breadth and depth, becoming, figuratively speaking, more democratic. Let us now examine the epistemological aspect of the category of aesthetic. The aesthetic as perfect appears as a result of the material and spiritual practice of humanity. It is not only a projection of an ideal onto an “extinct” nature, it is a completely new, real, specific formation, a kind of “second nature” that arose as an organic alloy of objective and subjective. The aesthetic is discovered, mastered and functions not only in the process of artistic activity, which is the basis of art, but in all spiritual, practical and material human activities. In it, the properties of the object are discovered and the capabilities of the subject are realized, objectified in the material and spiritual practice of humanity through the most complete disclosure of their properties and capabilities. This is the real existence of the perfect.
The dialectic of the relationship between the objective-aesthetic and aesthetic cognition also lies in the fact that social practice is the only process of influencing a person on the objective aesthetic aspects of reality and their disclosure and transformation according to the laws of beauty. The “second nature” that appears in the process of this practice also exists independently of man and becomes the object of aesthetic cognition and transformation. Man, creating according to the laws of beauty, at the same time objectifies and turns everything created into an object of aesthetic knowledge and improvement. The aesthetic is in fact not something frozen and unchangeable; it changes and improves in the process of the historical development of nature, and mainly of human society. The objectivity of the aesthetic is proven not only by the practice of social development, but also by the great achievements of social development modern science. A specific feature of aesthetic activity is that it is addressed to the entire human personality. In the structure of activity: goal - action - operation, aesthetic activity unfolds universally, since it goes from individuality to society.
Studying the subject and structure of aesthetics allows us to reveal its functions, the fundamental of which are ideological, cognitive, formative, and methodological.
First of all, aesthetics is necessary for the artist. It is the ideological basis of his activities. But an artist can, even without knowledge of aesthetics, apply its laws, relying on his intuition and experience. However, such comprehension, not supported by a theoretical generalization of artistic practice, will not allow for a deep and unmistakable solution to creative problems. Worldview not only guides talent and skill, it itself is formed under their influence in the process of creativity. The originality of the vision of the world, the selection of artistic material are determined and regulated by worldview. At the same time, the most direct influence on creativity is that side of the worldview that is expressed in the aesthetic system, consciously or spontaneously realized in images. The aesthetic principles on which the artist relies are interesting to us, since artists first of all create their works for people. The application of the laws of aesthetics in creativity promotes a conscious attitude towards artistic creativity, which combines gift and skill.
Aesthetics is needed not only by the artist, but also by the perceiving public - readers, viewers, listeners. Art provides one of the highest spiritual experiences - pleasure. It is this science that allows people to form aesthetic views, ideals, and ideas. This means that aesthetics deals with the process of education.
It also performs a methodological function. By summarizing the results of research in a field, for example art history, it has a reverse impact on its development. It makes it possible to study the dominant principles of epistemology of aesthetic objects and determines the path of their research. Among the variety of human sciences, aesthetics occupies a special place. “The sensory-value nature of aesthetic knowledge, its criterial nature in relation to ongoing cultural and artistic searches give reason to treat aesthetics as a specific axiology of culture, as its self-awareness, which has a direct relationship to the formation of cultural value standards and priorities.” Being in the world of culture, humanity exists in a variety of aesthetic values ​​and anti-values. Aesthetic norms and values ​​of culture are a very important guideline for the development of human society, protecting it from cultural expansion.
In the 20th century, the ability of culture to escape from human control and transform into a new type of element became obvious. Numerous threats to human existence have emerged, including environmental disaster and exhaustion. natural resources, and the spread of “mass culture”, accompanied by a general decline in the cultural level of people, standardization of their lives, and depersonalization of the individual. “In the phenomenon of the “mass man”, indifferent to beauty, truth and goodness, lie the dangers of new wars, mass destruction, and man-made disasters.
Our outstanding scientist-encyclopedist V.I. Vernadsky believed that man’s knowledge of the world around him proceeds in three mutually enriching directions: through science, art and religion. The single reality of existence, which man strives to understand, figuratively speaking, can be represented in the form of a multifaceted crystal, some of the facets of which are known by science, others by art, and others by the religious experience of mankind. To get closer to understanding this reality, it is not enough to consider its facets separately; you also need to be able to see, as it were, their mutual arrangement. Knowledge of the surrounding world and the expansion of human consciousness proceed as if in a spiral. First, there is an accumulation of knowledge and experience, then the synthesis of this disparate knowledge into a single idea of ​​the world around us, then, based on this qualitatively new idea, the accumulation of deeper knowledge and experience, etc.
Today is the time for synthesis. Right now it is necessary to be able to combine into a single whole all the knowledge and all the experience of mankind and thus obtain a qualitatively new, expanded understanding of the World and the laws of its Existence. At the same time, not a single experience of human knowledge of the Unified Reality can be ignored without damaging the holistic idea of ​​the World - neither scientific, nor philosophical, nor aesthetic, nor religious. Thus, we can say that the problem of the subject of specific aesthetics is constantly in the field of view of scientists. For example, in the twentieth century. Among the discussions around the subject of aesthetics, there was a point of view according to which “aesthetics should not study art, since this is the subject of the theory of art, while aesthetics is the science of beauty, of the aesthetic both in reality and in art.” This point of view is not generally accepted, but recently it has received additional meaning and arguments due to its widespread use various types applied and information and communication artistic and aesthetic activities that are not art in the traditional sense of the word. Consequently, if we have in mind not abstract structures and not hopelessly coded semiotic systems, but healthy realistic art in the context of the global development of media, design, aestheticization of the environment, and also take into account advances in the field of computer and virtual art, then is it possible to assume the prospect of development without art? in the true sense of the word.
Aesthetic consciousness. Aesthetic consciousness is a form of value consciousness, a reflection of reality and its assessment from the standpoint of an aesthetic ideal. The object of reflection of aesthetic consciousness, like all other forms of social consciousness, is natural and social reality, already mastered by the socio-cultural experience of mankind. The subject of reflection is society as a whole, through specific individuals and social groups.
In its epistemological nature, the aesthetic is similar to truth, but differs in its essence. If truth is rational knowledge, then aesthetic knowledge is not so much knowledge as it is an emotional experience when perceiving an object. Therefore, we can rightfully assert that the mental equivalent of the aesthetic is experiences.
Experiences are always emotional, but they cannot be reduced to emotions. Experiences are always a product, the result of subjective-objective relationships. In terms of the organic structure and content of the experience, “this formation is complex in its composition; it is always, to one degree or another, included in the unity of two opposing components - knowledge and attitude, intellectual and affective.”
The aesthetic as an experience is not necessarily based on intellectual knowledge. The reason for the affective in it can be both intuitive and unconscious, but always about something. The specific nature of aesthetic experiences is explained by two reasons: the characteristics of the object of aesthetic attitude and the correlation of the object with the aesthetic tastes, views, and ideals of a person, designated “aesthetic consciousness.” For example, color in itself, as a source of aesthetic experiences, does not yet determine the meaning of these experiences.
The specificity of aesthetic consciousness in comparison with other forms of spiritual life of humanity lies in the fact that it represents a whole complex of feelings, ideas, views, ideas; this is a special kind of spiritual formation that characterizes the aesthetic attitude of a person or society to reality: at the level of being, aesthetic consciousness exists in the form of social consciousness, which reflects the level of aesthetic, at the level of individuality - in the form of the personal characteristics of one person; is formed only on the basis of practice (the richer the aesthetic practice of an individual or society, the richer and more complex their aesthetic consciousness).
The structure of aesthetic consciousness. Like any form of social consciousness, aesthetic consciousness is structured in a variety of ways. Researchers identify the following levels:
. ordinary aesthetic consciousness;
. specialized aesthetic consciousness.
The ordinary aesthetic level is based on generalized empirical experience: aesthetic experiences, feelings, etc. Our daily experiences are variable and sometimes contradictory.
The theoretical level is based on general philosophical ideas about the world, man and his place in this world: aesthetic assessment, judgments, views, theories, ideals, etc. We must remember that the boundaries between these levels are conditional, since the specificity of aesthetic consciousness manifests itself at each level - everywhere we find both sensual and rational elements. This feature is most clearly manifested as an aesthetic need and aesthetic taste, where both the emotional and the rational are equally important, because they are realized in accordance with the aesthetic ideal.
In order to more accurately understand the structure of aesthetic consciousness, let us consider the interaction of its elements in the most developed form, namely the specialized contemplation of the artist. The basis of consciousness is an aesthetic need, a person’s interest in aesthetic values, his thirst for beauty and harmony, which historically developed as a social need for human survival in the world. From here the corresponding ideals are built. The phenomenon of the ideal can be clearly seen at all stages of cultural development. Starting with the “good” of Plato, Plotinus and Augustine, the ideal is studied as the “spiritual climate of the era” or “moral temperature” (I. Taine); or “the general form of contemplation of a certain era” (Wölfflin); or simply “the spirit of the era” (M. Dvorak), “the truth of life” (V. Solovyov), “ascetic truth” (P. Florensky); or more globally in the form of a “cultural pattern” or standard of values” (Munro), “proto-symbol of culture” (O. Spengler), etc. In some cases, more complex definitions are used to designate the ideal, such as “super-ego” (S. Freud), “archetype” (C. Jung), “meme” (Mono), “life horizon” (Husserl, Gadamer, etc. .) etc.
According to the modern Russian researcher V.E. Davidovich, value is associated with the concept of ideal; moreover, it is the result of the realization of some ideal. The system of ideal standards is a set of general requirements (“canons”) that must be satisfied by any transformation of reality during the transition from the actual to the desired.
Features of the aesthetic ideal: unlike any social ideal, it exists not in an abstract, but in a sensual form, because it is closely connected with emotions, a person’s sensual attitude to the world; determined different ways correlation of the aesthetic ideal with reality; associated with the nature of the reflection of reality ideally; consists in correlating the objective qualities of reality and the characteristics of a person’s inner world; determines the prospects for the development of society, its interests and needs, as well as the interests and needs of the individual; contributes to the formation of myths in the consciousness of a person or society, thereby, as it were, replacing reality itself.
In society, the aesthetic ideal performs the following functions: mobilizes human energy of feelings and will, showing the direction of activity; creates the opportunity to stay ahead of reality, indicates the trend of the future; acts as a norm, a model and for granted; serves as an objective criterion for assessing everything that a person encounters in the world around him. Thus, the aesthetic ideal as a standard for arousing and encoding artistic emotions is practically nothing more than an idea of ​​what a work of art should be like in order for it to correspond to a certain aesthetic ideal of a person.
The aesthetic ideal manifests aesthetic taste, which is based on an aesthetic attitude that leaves an imprint on the entire structure of the artist’s images and feelings and forms the basis of the artistic style of a particular author. In the aesthetic sense, the term “taste” was first used by the Spanish thinker Baltasar Gracian (“Pocket Oracle”, 1646), denoting one of the abilities of human cognition, specifically focused on comprehending beauty and works of art. It was then borrowed from him by thinkers in France, Italy, Germany, and England. “Taste,” wrote Voltaire, “that is, the sense of feeling, the gift of distinguishing the properties of food, gave rise to a metaphor in all languages ​​known to us, where the word “Taste” denotes sensitivity to beauty and beauty. to the ugly in the arts: artistic taste is as quick to analysis, which precedes reflection, as the tongue and palate, just as sensual and greedy for the good, just as intolerant of the bad...” By analogy with food taste, he distinguishes artistic taste, bad taste and perverted taste. Watching or listening to a work of art, we very often say at the end: “like it - don’t like it”, “beautiful - ugly”. The emotional reaction to a work is expressed in language in the form of aesthetic evaluation. It means a statement that describes the aesthetic feeling of the viewer when perceiving the work. Such a statement in aesthetics appears for the first time in the works of Immanuel Kant (“Critique of the Power of Judgment”) and is called “judgments of taste.”
There are four types of aesthetic evaluation: positive, negative, contradictory, uncertain. Let us consider the evolution of judgments of taste, both in positive and negative versions, and then analyze the effect of taste. The history of fine art shows that there are seven main stages in the development of negative evaluation: “cold and lifeless” (“does not touch”); “crackling and pompous”; “unprofessional and implausible”; “bad taste and vulgarity”, “nonsense”, “pathology”, “ideological sabotage”. There are also positive and negative effects of taste. An example of the positive effect of taste can be extreme cases: forgeries, thefts, “artistic attacks” (1985, Hermitage, USSR, Rembrandt’s painting “Danae” was poured with acid). The negative effect of taste can manifest itself in the refusal to admit a painting to an exhibition. The highest form of the negative effect of taste is the “artistic” auto-da-fe, i.e. burning of paintings at the stake, the inventor of this phenomenon is the religious figure Savonarola (Italy, 15th century)
Category "beautiful". For a long time, humanity has been looking for an answer to the question, what is beauty? Plato first put it in this form. What is beauty anyway? We know a beautiful basket, a beautiful mare, a beautiful woman, but what is beautiful anyway? And this is the merit of Plato. He transferred this question from the realm of phenomena to the realm of patterns. Is there any pattern in the existence of beauty? The very formulation of the question suggests that the ancient Greeks perceived the world as something natural. True, Plato has a wonderful idea of ​​a thing. A thing as such never achieves the perfection and fullness of being inherent in the world of ideas.” Therefore, true existence is the existence of the world of ideas. Even before Plato, Heraclitus saw beauty in harmony. Harmony is the struggle of opposite principles. The proportionality of opposites in this eternal struggle gives birth to harmony. Heraclitus imagined the world as a kind of harmonious whole, i.e. the world as a whole is a kind of unity of opposite and eternally fighting principles. Man lives in this harmony of the world. Fluid, by the measures of the igniting and by the measures of the extinguishing world. The Pythagoreans imagined the world as a kind of numerical harmony. Numbers are the soul of this world. It is numerical relationships that determine this world. Pythagoras even created a tool for studying musical intervals. And I discovered sound harmony. The world as a whole was created according to the same principles of musical harmony, and the seven spheres seem to create the harmonious sound of the world. True, we cannot hear this sound with our ears. But the musician brings this sound to us, and thus the person, as it were, joins the harmony of the entire world. Aristotle defines beauty as order, magnitude, correspondence. Neither too big nor too small can be beautiful. There must be proportionality to the world of things. But why do we perceive this proportionality, this harmony as beautiful?
In the Middle Ages, when religious ideology dominated, the opposition between spirit and flesh was absolutized. Mortification of the flesh in the name of elevating the spirit, in the name of ascent to divine spirituality was considered at that time the highest manifestation of the human spirit. And yet the point of view of the truth of spiritual beauty, albeit painful, had some basis. The ideas that a person forms influence him. Therefore, the world of ideas about what the human soul should be and how it should manifest itself in the world was of significant importance. Religious ideas about the ideal of a beautiful person had the disadvantage that they did not correspond to reality, but that they had a mystical form. However, this even contributed to the fact that religion had an impact on music, painting, and architecture. In all these areas, the ascent to the sublimity of the spirit affected the seriousness of these arts and the discovery of appropriate means of expression.
During the Renaissance, the existing image of ideas about beauty was preserved. The art of that period speaks about this. But at the same time, the man of the Renaissance seeks beauty in naturalness, in the very existence of man. Among the thinkers and artists of this time, God is not denied, but he seems to dissolve in this world, becomes humane, becomes human. And ideas about man seem to begin to approach ideas about God, about his capabilities. Pico della Mirandola says that “God has not determined for man what he should be, what place he should take in this world. He left it all to the man himself to decide.” In the era of classicism, ideas about beauty again go into the realm of the spirit. Only that in which rationality is manifested, in which the spirit manifests itself, can be beautiful. And the spirit in this era is understood more rationalistically. Like something laid out, ordered. In the era of classicism, when capitalism takes its first steps, a market appears over a vast territory, strong centralized states are formed, when the nobility has not yet ceased to play the role of the leader of society, but bourgeois relations are already beginning to take shape, in this era ideas about honor, patriotism, and service are formed to the king and the nation. A very chivalrous and rational beginning.
During the Age of Enlightenment, ideas about the naturalness of man were again formed. For the bourgeoisie has already gained strength, and now it does not need the patronage of kings, does not need the regulated life of feudal society. And the Enlightenment in this regard serves as a transitional bridge between everything that came before and German classical philosophy. I. Kant believes that a person receives pleasure when contemplating an object, from the coordinated work of reason and imagination. He connects beauty with the concept of “taste”. His philosophy of beauty is based on the subjective ability to judge taste. “What is beautiful is what is known without concept as an object of necessary pleasure.” At the same time, Kant distinguishes two types of beauty: free beauty and incidental beauty. Free beauty is characterized only on the basis of form and the pure judgment of taste. Incoming beauty is based on the specific purpose of the object and purpose. In ethical terms, for him the beautiful is “a symbol of the morally good.” Hence, he puts the beauty of nature above the beauty of art. Beauty for Schiller, Herder, Hegel and others before Heidegger and Gadamer, was a sensual image of truth. Thus, Hegel, who first introduced the terms objectification and disobjectification into philosophy, did not recognize beauty outside of art. Therefore, he did not recognize that, in his views, the beautiful is a sensually presented idea. But the idea is not inherent in nature itself. True, here Hegel somewhat changes his views, according to which for him the entire objective material world is the otherness of the Absolute Idea. According to Hegel, in an artistic image, a person makes his inner world sensually perceived. And therefore, the idea or ideal sensually presented in an artistic image is, in fact, an active human character, a human historical type, fighting for its substantial interests. But a person doubles himself in art because he generally doubles himself sensually in ordinary everyday reality. Therefore, human activity as such fits the idea of ​​beauty that Hegel develops in relation to art. If this did not exist in reality, in the everyday communication of people, then where would it come from in art? N. Chernyshevsky, polemicizing with Hegelian aesthetics, put forward the thesis: “the beautiful is life.” Heidegger saw in beauty one of the forms of “the existence of truth as unconcealment,” considering truth “the source of artistic creativity.” K. Marx writes that: “An animal builds only in accordance with the standards and needs of the species to which it belongs, while man knows how to produce according to the standards of any species and everywhere he knows how to apply the inherent measure to an object; because of this, man also builds according to the laws of beauty.”
V.V. Bychkov distinguishes between the categories of “beautiful” and “beauty.” He believes that “if beauty is one of the essential modifications of the aesthetic (characteristic of subject-object relations), then beauty is a category included in the semantic field of beauty and is a characteristic of only an aesthetic object. The beauty of an aesthetic object is a fundamentally non-verbalized adequate expression or display of the deep essential laws of the Universe, being, life, some spiritual or material reality, revealed to the recipient in the corresponding visual, audio or procedural organization, structure, design, form of the aesthetic object, which can evoke in the aesthetic subject feeling, experiencing the beautiful, realizing the event of the beautiful.” The beauty of the object of aesthetic relation is, as a rule, a necessary condition for the actualization of the aesthetic in the mode of beauty. If there is no beauty, there is no beauty.
Category "sublime". For the first time, this category was theoretically interpreted in the era of the Roman Empire by an author who entered science under the fictitious name of Pseudo-Longinus in the treatise “On the Sublime.” He writes: “After all, nature did not determine for us, people, to be insignificant creatures - no, she introduces us into life and into the universe as if for some kind of celebration, and so that we would be spectators of its entire integrity and respectful zealots of it, she immediately and forever instilled in our souls an ineradicable love for everything great, because it is more divine than we are.” From the above it is clear that the author manages to clearly grasp the moment of the relationship between man and the world in the sublime. He is a brilliant observer of human nature. An ineradicable love for everything great has truly infused into the human soul. Now it remains to explain why this should be so.
In the Middle Ages, the problem of the sublime appeared and naturally its understanding was associated with God and those feelings and creations that were created under the influence of thoughts about God. During the Renaissance, the rise of man occurs. Alberti’s man “stands at full height and raises his face to the sky. he alone was created for the knowledge and admiration of the beauty and richness of heaven.” And we meet the next step in an attempt to comprehend it only in the 18th century. Edmund Burke did it. According to Burke, the sublime is something huge, infinite, surpassing our ordinary understanding. This huge thing evokes in us a feeling of horror, makes us tremble, makes us shudder from our own powerlessness. It connects in our perception the external world and our human reaction to it to some manifestations of this external world.
A little later than Burke in the same century, I. Kant, in his work “Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime” (1764), also seeks to determine the nature of this feeling in humans. He completes his work on understanding the nature of this feeling in humans in his work “Critique of the Power of Judgment.” According to Kant, we must look outside ourselves for the basis for beauty in nature. But for the sublime it is only in us and in the way of thinking that brings the sublime into ideas about nature. Kant distinguishes two types of sublime in our relationship with the world: mathematical and dynamic. In the first, the ability of knowledge meets the immensity of the universe, and in the second, our ability of desire meets the immensity of man’s moral powers, his will. And he writes: “... two things always fill the soul with new and ever stronger surprise and awe, the more often and longer we reflect on them - this is the starry sky above me and the moral law in me. I don’t need to look for both and only assume as something shrouded in darkness or lying beyond my horizons; I see them before me and directly connect them with the consciousness of my existence.”
In Hegel's philosophy, the sublime is also overcoming the immediacy of individual existence, entering the world of freedom in the activity of the spirit. For a person, the sublime is natural, like bread and water. And cult architecture and cult art in general speaks about this.
Religion has been a harsh reality for many millennia. And the image of God in it is sublime. This is the state of mind when a person renounces the petty, insignificant, insignificant, when he perceives the world in its substantiality, in its substantial pathos, i.e. in universal passions. Through the worship of God in religion, a person ascends to his true self, even in a mystified form. In any case, a person feels through God his involvement in the affairs of the Universe. In Soviet art, no matter how much they try to humiliate and belittle him today, the man of labor ascended to the sublime. And this is the true pathos of the art of that time. You can also recall N. Ostrovsky with his “How the Steel Was Tempered”, recall S. Eisenstein’s “Battleship Potemkin” and much, much more.
Category "tragic". Works on aesthetics indicate that the tragic expresses, first of all, the dialectic of freedom and necessity. Indeed, human nature is determined by the law of freedom. But this nature is realized according to the laws of freedom in specific historical conditions, the objective framework of which does not allow us to reveal human nature and realize it in its entirety. It is obvious that this or that state of society is this or that state of the subject, the person. It is also obvious that the contradiction between freedom and necessity is resolved in human activity. The activity of the subject, the person, takes place in this contradiction. And therefore every subject lives in this contradiction, everyone lives in the resolution of this contradiction. Consequently, the tragic is objectively inherent in human society. I. Kant believes that the gap between what should and what is will never be overcome. He absolutizes the gap between freedom and necessity. Of course, overcoming this opposition is a process with no end in sight. But it would be a mistake to make this contradiction absolute. Because it is a mistake because in human activity there is a process of formation of his freedom. It is as if he is ascending from one stage to another. Tragically, the conflict is objective. It's right. For the forces of the old world order are making every effort to preserve it, to maintain their privileged position in this world. And this form must be destroyed; it hinders the economic, social, moral, and spiritual development of people. And very often those who fight for something new, for progress, are defeated. This is a tragedy.
The tragic personality gets used to the general state of the world, actively lives in the key contradictions of the era. It sets itself tasks that affect the destinies of peoples. Hegel emphasizes that a person drawn into a tragic conflict carries within himself the substantial pathos of the era, the main passions that define it. This person, through his actions, violates the existing state of the world. And in this sense, she is to blame. Hegel writes that for a great man to be guilty is an honor. He is guilty of what is still alive, but which must already die. By his actions he contributes to the coming of the future. The unity of the aesthetic and the history of mankind can also be seen in the fact that people fight for specific interests, not only material, but also social, human. But in reality, every step of human history, as K. Marx defines it, is a process of humanization of humanity.
There are several concepts of the tragic in aesthetics.
Tragedy of fate. Some researchers define ancient Greek tragedy as a tragedy of fate or a tragedy of fate, characterizing it as a tragedy of fate, they emphasize that all those events, and with them the experiences of the heroes, are, as it were, prescribed in advance, determined that the hero is not able to change the course of events. This course of events is also known to the audience and readers of the tragedies. The subordination of the will of people to the prescribed course of events at the same time does not mean that the will and energy of people ceases to play a role here. It is through their actions that people seem to stumble upon a predetermined course of events. They can even know in advance all the consequences of their actions, as Prometheus knew that he would be punished by the gods for giving people fire, teaching them crafts, but would still do what corresponds to their ideas about duty and honor. The tragedy of fate does not remove the responsibility of the individual, does not even deny choice. We can say that here conscious choice your destiny.
The tragedy of guilt. Hegel defines the tragic as the coincidence of fate and guilt. A person is guilty because he lives in society, is responsible for his actions, bears full responsibility for them, and it is his responsibility that is evidence of his freedom and its measure. Only great character can take upon itself full responsibility. He concentrates in himself the real contradictions of the century, he is a personality who carries in his passion the trend of the era. The pathos of which is substantial. This person interferes in the course of events, disrupts some balance of the world, although he is guided by good and noble motives.
The philosophy of existentialism interprets the problem of tragic guilt differently. For her, a person is guilty simply because he was born. Fate dissolves into universal guilt. Man is doomed to freedom; it is his nature. But this freedom is divorced from necessity and opposed to it. And this isolation becomes absolute. Therefore, a person is subjectively free, but objectively he is helpless in front of blind and powerful natural and social forces. The hero is doomed in advance to the fatal inevitability of the world. There really is a contradiction, but there is no fatality in human struggle. Through their struggle, man, people, classes, estates achieve freedom, destroy the old state and establish a new world order. Man achieves freedom through his practical activities. In this sense, the tragic character reflects the real contradictions of the era, is responsible for it, lives in unity with the era. Humanity is aware of itself in aesthetic consciousness. We perceive the tragic content of life. Aesthetic feeling includes a sensory awareness of the tragic. But comprehension of the nature of the tragic is not given sensually.
Christian consciousness also interprets the tragic as the guilt of a person who is sinful from birth. The death and rebirth of Christ, a myth that has its origins in older myths associated with the constant rebirth of life in plants, is an optimistic tragedy. Hope to overcome the injustice of the existing world order. Having gone through suffering, death brings Christ into the world hope and spiritual healing.
The perception of the tragic is contradictory. Grief over death and confidence in victory, fear of meanness and hope for its destruction. Aristotle drew attention to the inconsistency of the aesthetic perception of the tragic. The experience of the tragic, according to Aristotle, is a purification of the soul, which is achieved through the confrontation of feelings of compassion and fear. Through compassion for those terrible, difficult experiences that befall the heroes of the tragedy, we are cleansed of the petty, insignificant, secondary, selfish and rise to the essential, significant, outstanding. Aristotle creates a theory of the cathartic effect of art, i.e. experiences in which the contradictory nature of existence is reproduced. As a result, the human soul enters a new state. It is as if she is cleared of petty things and enters a state of unity with the fate of the heroes. These heroes are the fate of the people. And the soul enters a state of overcoming. Humanized. Elevated.
Category "comic". The comic category also captures the confrontation between the parties. There is also a conflict here. But this conflict is the opposite of tragic. This is a joyful conflict. It represents the victory of the subject over the object, its superiority over what happens outside of it. Here the subject has won even before he has addressed the object. He feels superior to what he sees and what he deals with. His inner world is more vital, more correct, more true, in contrast to what is happening before his eyes. He intuitively senses the lifelessness, unreliability, and incorrectness of this and intuitively feels his superiority, intuitively rejoices in his human truth. In aesthetic literature, this conflict is described as the contradiction between an insignificant and false content and a form that seems full of significance. As we see, this aesthetic category also captures the process commensurate with the subject, man himself, his internally subjective human logic, the logic of holistic subjectivity, and the movement of human reality. Movement in which the subject resides with all the fibers of his soul. One can probably define the comic in the structure of human consciousness as one of the moments of the logic of self-determination, as one of the mechanisms of sensory self-determination in this boundless world of man. The subject’s feeling of what is wrong, untrue as a subject, and at the same time a mechanism for intuitively overcoming the frenzy, immobility of being, a mechanism for the sensory straightening of one’s subjectivity. Therefore, the mechanism of laughter is the most complex psychological mechanism that is formed in a social person.
What is the key in the cathartic mechanism? What is the fundamental difference between laughter and crying? Aristotle clearly pointed this out. “Funny is some mistake or ugliness that does not cause suffering or harm,” he says, defining comedy. Let us also quote the important and rarely remembered conclusion of A.F. Losev, comparing the Aristotelian understanding of comedy and tragedy: “if we understand by structure a single integrity, in abstraction from the content, then this structure in Aristotle is absolutely the same for both comedy and tragedy. Namely, here and there some abstract and untouched idea is embodied in human reality imperfectly, unsuccessfully and defectively. But only in one case is this damage final and leads to death, and in the other case it is far from final and only causes a cheerful mood.”
In other words, the main thing in the occurrence of laughter or crying is the recognition of the reversibility or irreversibility of what happened. It is the participation in the cathartic mechanism of laughter of semantic identification (establishing the reversibility of the gap) that makes laughter a specifically human phenomenon. Restoring semantic integrity is a necessary condition for cathartic release. This can explain the situation of a “misunderstood joke.” A person perceives an anecdote as a gap, but cannot eliminate it, “reverse” it; Instead of laughter, bewilderment arises. Thus, the experience of the funny has a four-part structure: in terms of meaning, the reaction to the gap, the identification of reversibility; joy, relaxation, in external expression, freezing of the facial muscles; inhibition of freezing, smiling, laughter, and in terms of localization, the experience represents a narrowing of the significance of the source of the experience.
The duration and intensity of laughter are determined by the semantics, syntactics and pragmatics of the funny. They can vary depending on the significance that the emerging semantic gap is given in the person’s unconscious. In a large number of cases it cannot be rationally explained. A person falling out of a chair often produces a more powerful reaction than a subtle pun.
The existence of archetypal sources for the generation of the funny is indicated by the very existence of the aesthetic category of the comic and its genres. K. Jung noted that the archetypal is recognized by the unusually strong emotional reaction that accompanies it. The effect of funnyness can be increased by the structural distribution of tension within a single funny event, or by its inclusion in a chain of funny events, or by contrasting contextual surroundings.
Finally, the very act of perceiving the funny is of great importance. For example, in a group of people the effect of contagion by laughter appears when the object of laughter expands or switches, because a laughing person is in himself funny, because he is also a break in semantic integrity. The most difficult to analyze are complex, historical, sociocultural phenomena, where “system effects” appear that distort cause-and-effect relationships and make it impossible to unambiguously explain why people laugh. Systemic effects require special methods of description and analysis.
The most famous example of “systemic laughter” is “folk laughter culture”, studied in the classic work of M.M. Bakhtin about Rabelais. The funny in life is not artistic, but to a large extent it is already potentially artistic. The most ingenuous retelling of a funny event in everyday life is an actualization of the talent and skill of the storyteller. And, if we leave aside cases where a work is funny against the will of the author, any work that causes laughter can already be considered more or less successful. In the entire arsenal of artistic means created by the world's pre-author and author culture, laughter has no competitors in its ability to attract and retain an audience.
The comic is a means of struggle, a path to victory over what interferes with life, a means of realizing what has already become obsolete, or is still full of life, but has no right to life. One might even say, a means of transforming this obsolete thing, which has no right to life, into something felt, perceived, and at the same time a means of affirming something truly human, corresponding to the highest ideals. Let us remember N.V. Gogol defined the genre " Dead souls"like a poem. The ridiculed enemy has already been defeated. He is defeated spiritually, overcome as something low, unworthy, and having no right to life. Let us remember “Vasily Terkin” by A.T. Tvardovsky. Its true meaning lies precisely in the spiritual victory over the enemy. A joyful awareness of one's authenticity, one's truth in this harsh struggle. In a fight that had no equal in the history of mankind. “Terkin” is one of the components of the Great Victory. The comic is characterized by national coloring. You can talk about French, English, Georgian, Tatar, Russian laughter... For the spiritual make-up of each nation is unique and unique.
The aesthetic nature of art. The diversity of the world and human social needs gives rise to a variety of forms of social consciousness. Art appeared to solve specific problems of mastering and transforming the world. The key to understanding the specifics of artistic thinking and the characteristics of art must be sought in the structure of social practice, in the structure of people’s socio-historical experience. Art is an indispensable component of civilization throughout its existence and development. Having captured in its “memory” the history of mankind, its past experience, art reveals an image of its fate, striking in its authenticity.
There are many definitions of art. Let us list the main approaches to understanding this definition.
Firstly, art is a specific type of spiritual reflection and mastery of reality, “aimed at the formation and development of a person’s ability to creatively transform the world and yourself according to the laws of beauty.” The fact that art has a purpose is controversial, and the concept of beauty is relative, since the standard of beauty can vary greatly in different cultural traditions, be affirmed through the triumph of the ugly, and even be completely denied.
Secondly, art is one of the elements of culture in which artistic and aesthetic values ​​are accumulated.
Thirdly, art is a form of sensory knowledge of the world. There are three ways of human cognition: rational, sensory and irrational. In the main manifestations of human spiritual cultural activity, in the block of socially significant knowledge, all three are present, but each of the spheres has its own dominants: science - rational, art - sensual, religion - intuitive.
Fourthly, art reveals a person’s creative abilities.
Fifthly, art can be considered as a process of a person’s mastery of artistic values, giving him pleasure and enjoyment.
If we try to succinctly define what art is, we can say that it is an “image” - an image of the world and a person, processed in the mind of the artist and expressed by him in sounds, colors and forms.
You can often hear from people who cannot draw, play, or sing that they have no ability for art. And at the same time, these people are greedily drawn to music, theater, painting, and read a huge number of literary works. Let's remember our childhood: almost everyone tries to draw, sing, dance, write poetry. And all this is the beginning of art. In childhood, everyone tries their hand at different types of art. It’s not without reason that they say that there is an artist in every person. Where does art begin? The answer to this question lies, paradoxically as it may sound, not in art itself, but in the life of every person, in his attitude towards other people and himself. Art is usually judged by the finished product. But let's ask ourselves this question: what makes a person create works of art? What force drives him, the creator, and those art lovers who are so eagerly drawn to his creations? Thirst for knowledge, need to communicate with other people. But the desire to discover the mysteries of life, as well as the desire to know oneself and others, is one side of the matter. The other side lies in the artist’s ability to experience life in a special way, to relate to it in his own unique way - passionately, interestedly, emotionally. Only in this way can he, according to L.N. Tolstoy, to infect other people with feelings, perceiving his art, looking at life through the eyes of an artist. Life is a kind of bridge connecting the artist and the viewer, art and the public. And the beginning of art lies in how we relate to it, how we understand our surroundings, how we evaluate the actions and deeds of other people.
The main social functions of art. Art is multifunctional. We will list and give brief description functions of art, which are interconnected, due to the fact that works of art exist as an integral phenomenon: socially transformative and compensatory functions (art as activity and as consolation); cognitive-heuristic function (art as knowledge and enlightenment); artistic-conceptual function (art as an analysis of the state of the world); function of anticipation (“Cassandrian principle”, or art as prediction); information and communication functions (art as message and communication); educational function (art as catharsis; formation of a holistic personality); suggestive function (art as suggestion, influence on the subconscious); aesthetic function (art as the formation of the creative spirit and value orientations); hedonic function (art as pleasure).
The object of art cannot be reduced to either an object of reflection or an a priori invention of the artist - it is the result, the product of the interaction of the objective and the subjective in the consciousness and experiences of the artist himself. Understood in this way, the object of art has an aesthetic essence.
According to M.S. Kagan, the basis for explaining art in its relation to reality is Lenin’s theory of reflection, in the light of which it can be understood as “a special social form of reflection and assessment of reality.” But we won't stop there. We need this theory to reveal the features of art as social form reflection of reality, the specificity of its functions as a practically spiritual development of the world in relation to civilization in comparison with other types of such development. To do this, we will use the concept of M.M. Bakhtin. A fundamental analysis of the art of the Middle Ages and the classical heritage of the 19th century, a deep historical retrospective allowed the scientist, with scientific and philosophical thoroughness, to trace the successive connection in their development, to identify the invariant core of art, which is preserved despite all its “attachment” to its time. MM. Bakhtin defines it as an “event of being” (co-existence of being). His concept consists of an analysis of art from the perspective of: the theory of reflection, the social significance of art, its unity and historical conditionality.
Let's try to check the lapid formula of M.M. Bakhtin for universality and applicability both to the most representative theories of art, past and modern, and in relation to non-European concepts. The eventful world of art, according to Bakhtin, is the reflected world of everyday reality, but ordered and completed around a person as his value environment. “Aesthetic activity collects the world scattered in meaning and condenses it into a complete and self-sufficient image, finds for the transitory in the world (for its present, past, its presence) an emotional equivalent that enlivens and protects it, finds a value position from which the transitory acquires a value-based event weight receives significance and stable certainty. The aesthetic act gives birth to being in a new value plan of the world, will be born new person and a new value context - a plan for thinking about the human world" (M.M. Bakhtin).
This kind of compaction of the world around man and his value orientation towards man determines the aesthetic reality of the world of art, which is different from the cognitive reality, but, of course, not indifferent to it.” The aesthetic position of the artist is not limited to his participation in the affairs and accomplishments of the existential world, but presupposes extra-practical activity in relation to it. This activity is expressed in the “value completion of the world”, i.e. in transforming the world in accordance with the ideal. The basis of such a value transformation of being is the attitude “towards the other”, enriched by the excess of vision of this “other” from the position of the artist’s “extra-location”.
The artist is involved in both worlds - the world of being and the world of events of his heroes; in the world of being, he himself acts as an “other”, whose existence remains completely unknown to him. But it is in this world that he comprehends the fullness of life and the incompleteness of existence, dissatisfaction with which gives rise to a desire in him to streamline its image and complete it. “The world does not satisfy man, and man decides to change it through his actions” (V.I. Lenin). In this case, the practical change of the world is preceded by the consciousness of its imperfection, a clear idea of ​​what it could be by necessity or probability, etc. finally, determination, readiness for practical action. But only by escaping for a while from the world, from incomplete being, and taking the position of “outsideness,” can the artist, based on his own experience and knowledge “about the other,” overcome this incompleteness of being, complete it in a holistic picture of the world, which, separated from the artist, acquires objective meaning. The completeness of the eventful world of art gives it an objective significance, more universal and accessible to direct contemplation than the significance of the fluid existence of an unfinished life in which an individual is immersed. An example of the above is Hegel's analysis of Dante's Divine Comedy in Aesthetics.
Participants in the creation of this new world of art, eventful existence, are always two: the artist (viewer) and the hero, i.e. “another person”, around whom the eventful world of art is concentrated. But their positions are fundamentally different. The artist knows more about his hero and his fate than he knows about himself, because the artist knows the “end” of the event, while human existence is always incomplete. Moreover, the artist sees and knows more about his hero not only in the direction in which the hero himself, a practical subject, sees, but also in a different projection, which is fundamentally inaccessible. The artist sees the actions and fate of the hero not only in real life, but also in the past, which exists unknown (the situation of Oedipus), and in the future, which has not yet existed. The position of the artist’s “extra-location” in relation to the existence of the world allows him to clear an event from the unimportant moments of a single, random (existential) experience and elevate it to an ideal, to which in ancient times a magical meaning was attributed. The artist can thus embrace and present in the form of a holistic picture of the world, the position of a person in the world, the reflection of the world in the consciousness of a person (hero), his auto-reflection about his own position in the world, the reaction to this position of “others” and the reaction of these “ others" on his self-esteem.
However, connecting these very different projections of the world into an integral single picture, universally significant for everyone, and at the same time focusing contemplation on one of the layers without losing sight of the others, which gives multidimensionality to this picture and objective significance, allows the artist to express his own view of the world. At the same time, the artist is by no means limited to imitation of nature (being), especially in the corrupted sense of this word that opponents of realism or its vulgarizers give it. He acts in an active and productive role of co-creation of the co-existential world of art. This special position of the artist in relation to the world of art can be invisible to the viewer, when the event develops seemingly by itself, or open, when the artist is openly tendentious in his attitude towards the event and judges it from the standpoint of an ideal, or declaratively stated, when the artist consciously demonstrates his power over the material to the point of absurdizing the event, which is characteristic of modern modernist art. The redundancy of vision puts the artist in the position of a creator, a demiurge of his heroes and their world. However, he turns out to be truthful only if he does not insist on the “purity” and superiority of his value vision in relation to the world, and the excess of his knowledge about the world does not turn into arbitrariness. Thus, the “extra-location” of the artist, according to Bakhtin, is a special position that allows him to make transitions from the existential world to the eventful world of art, thereby realizing “a special type of participation in the event of existence.”
Artistic image. Art is, first of all, the fruit of hard work, the result of creative thinking, creative imagination, based only on experience. It is often said that an artist thinks in images. An image is a real thing or object imprinted in the mind. An artistic image is born in the artist’s imagination. The artist reveals to us all the vital content of his own vision. Images are born only in the head, and works of art are artistic images already embodied in material. But in order for them to arise, you need to think artistically - figuratively, i.e. be able to operate with impressions of life that would form the fabric of a future work.
Imagination as a psychological process allows you to imagine the result of work before it begins, not only the final product, but also all the intermediate stages, orienting a person in the process of his activity. Unlike thinking, which operates with concepts, imagination uses images, and its main purpose is to transform images to ensure the creation of a new, previously non-existent situation or object, in our case a work of art. Imagination is activated when the necessary completeness of knowledge is lacking and it is impossible to get ahead of the results of activity with the help of an organized system of concepts. Operating with images allows you to “jump” over some not entirely clear stages of thinking and still imagine the end result. This means that the work is a dream come true. An embodied feeling, an experience, it merges life observations and creative fantasy, images of reality and images of art. Reality and sincerity are the main features of art, and art is a property of the human soul. In art, in order to say something new, you need to suffer this new thing, experience it with your mind, feeling, possessing it. Of course, the skill of execution.
In each type of art, the artistic image has its own structure, determined, on the one hand, by the characteristics of the spiritual content expressed in it, and on the other, by the nature of the material in which this content is embodied. Thus, the artistic image in architecture is static, but in literature it is dynamic, in painting it is figurative, and in music it is intonational. In some genres the image appears in the image of a person, in others it appears as an image of nature, in others it appears as a thing, in others it combines the representation of human action and the environment in which it unfolds.
Stages of artistic creativity. Let us list the main stages of artistic creativity: the first stage is the formation of an artistic concept, which ultimately arises as a consequence of a figurative reflection of reality; the second stage is direct work on the work, its “making”. Art, which arises as a means of existence for the spiritual world of man, carries within itself the same pattern. Our consciousness in its interaction with the world is a certain integrity and at the same time there is each time a certain completed spiritual action that reproduces the objective action of the subject in the objective world. Therefore, let’s say, in a poem we read a clearly defined mood, precisely this, defined and at the same time, complete in time. V.G. Belinsky, determines that in a work of art everything is form and everything is content. And that only by achieving perfection of form can a work of art express one or another deep content. I. Kant writes that aesthetic pleasure is given to us, first of all, by form. He is accused that this statement of his served as the basis for all sorts of formalistic movements. But Kant is not to blame here. Yes, form. But which one and why? If we keep in mind that one of the essential moments of human objective activity is the formation of forms, then, as a subjective manifestation of this moment of human objective activity, any form should give a certain pleasure to a person. As a manifestation of his subjective ability in relation to an objective process. But here Kant is not talking about art, but only about the aesthetic as such.
The element of our existence, that elemental, natural process for us, in which humanity and, along with it, I find myself, is the process of formation. But what is the content? - this is a very difficult question. If we take the entire objective world of man, then we can and must here reveal the content of formation through the most abstract representation. The content will be the life of humanity. Regarding each specific item that we create. A chair, a table, a bed, a pillar, a parquet floor, an interior... But in a work of art this boundless sea of ​​form-building is concretized: the content will be the process of the subject’s experience of the objective human world. In other words, the semantic immediacy of the subject as a process.
L.S. Vygotsky in his “Psychology of Art” writes that in art the form overcomes the content. Both in the creation of an artistic image and in the perception of works of art. This conclusion is also valid for the existence of the spiritual world of man. At every step in our interaction with the world of people, we create images and are forced to create something complete in order to grasp the meaning of what is happening. Naturally, we form images of reality in our consciousness, we carry out the action of formation, and overcome content with form. It may be that at the same time we leave something outside the subjective image that appears in our head. But this already depends on the depth of the semantic content of our consciousness. Or, to put it in computer language, the program on the basis of which images are formed in us is still far from perfect. The entire creative process is characterized by a dialectical interaction between content and form. The artistic form is the materialization of content. A true artist, revealing the content of a work, always proceeds from the possibilities of the art material. Each type of art has its own material. So, in music these are sounds, for example, tone, duration, pitch, sound strength, and in literature this is a word. Inexpressiveness, “hackneyed” words and expressions reduce the artistry of a literary work. Correct selection the artist of the material provides a truthful image of life that corresponds to a person’s aesthetic perception of reality. In general, any work of art appears as a harmonious unity of artistic image and material.
Thus, art form- this is not a mechanical connection of elements of the whole, but a complex formation that includes two “layers” - an “internal” and an “external” form. The “elements” of the form located at the “lower” level form the internal form of art, and the elements lying at the “upper” level form its external form. The internal form includes: plot and characters, their relationship - there is a figurative structure of artistic content, the way of its development. External form includes all expressive and visual means of art, and it acts as a way of materially embodying the content.
Elements of form: composition, rhythm - this is the skeleton, the backbone of the artistic-figurative fabric of a work of art, they connect all the elements of the external form. The process of materialization of artistic content in form comes from the depths to the surface; the content permeates all levels of the form. The perception of a work of art goes the opposite way: first we grasp the external form, and then, penetrating into the depths of the work, we grasp the meaning of the internal form. As a result, we have mastered the entirety of artistic content. Consequently, the analysis of the elements of form allows us to give a clearer definition of the form of a work of art. Form is the internal organization, the structure of a work of art, created with the help of expressive and visual means of this type of art to express artistic content.
Each era gives birth to its own art, its own works of art. They have pronounced distinctive features. This includes the subject matter, the principles of perception of reality, its ideological and aesthetic interpretation, and the system of artistic and expressive means with the help of which the world around a person is recreated in works of art. Such phenomena in the development of art are usually called artistic method.
The artistic method is a certain way of understanding reality, a unique way of assessing it, a way of reverse modeling life. The initial and determining factor in the emergence and spread of an artistic method is concrete historical reality; it forms, as it were, its objective basis on which this or that method arises. Hegel also argued that “the artist belongs to his own time, lives by its mores and habits.” But materialist aesthetics holds a different opinion: the richness of creativity depends on the integrity of the worldview. Therefore, within the framework of one socio-economic formation, different methods of artistic creativity can coexist. The time limits of artistic methods should not be taken literally. The germs of new methods usually appear in works created on the basis of old methods. At the same time, something else is obvious: groups of artists within the same artistic method are closer to each other according to a number of basic characteristics of creativity and its practical results. This phenomenon in art is called style.
Artistic style is an aesthetic category that reflects a relatively stable community of the main ideological and artistic characteristics of creativity, determined by the aesthetic principles of the artistic method and characteristic of a certain circle of art creators. Yu. Borev notes a number of factors characteristic of style: the factor of the creative process; factor of the social existence of the work; artistic process factor; factor of culture; factor of artistic influence of art.
The concept of “art school” is most often used to designate national and provincial branches of an artistic movement. An important aesthetic category that reflects artistic practice is artistic direction. This category is practically not developed in the literature and is often identified with the method of creativity, style. However, the creative method is a way of understanding reality and its artistic modeling, but in itself it is not yet an aesthetic reality. Only the fruits of artistic creativity, works of art created by one or another creative method have reality.
Consequently, the main unit of the dynamics of the development of art history is not the creative method, but the artistic direction, i.e. a set of works that are close to each other according to a number of significant ideological and aesthetic features. In other words, the artistic method materializes in the artistic direction. The development, formation and confrontation of artistic methods is refracted in artistic direction. But it is closely related to style.
An artistic direction is the largest and most comprehensive unit of the artistic process, spanning eras and systems of art. It allows us to judge an entire historical period in artistic culture and an entire group of artists. It refracts the artistic, ideological, worldview and aesthetic features of artistic development. An artistic movement is an artistic movement that is formed in certain national and historical conditions and unites groups of artists who stand on different aesthetic principles within the framework of one artistic method and one type of art, in order to solve specific creative problems. The distinctions within an artistic movement are relative. The main artistic movements include: mythological realism of antiquity, medieval symbolism, Renaissance realism, baroque, classicism, educational realism, sentimentalism, romanticism, critical realism of the 19th century, realism of the 20th century, socialist realism, expressionism, surrealism, existentialism, abstractionism, pop art, hyperrealism, etc. Thus, the historical development of art appears as historical process the emergence and change of artistic methods, styles and trends.
Morphology of art. The problem of identifying types of art and clarifying their characteristics has worried humanity for a long time. Many philosophers, cultural figures, and artists tried to finally resolve this issue. However current state this problem is not clear enough. The first classification of types of art, carried out by Plato and Aristotle, did not go beyond the study of the specifics of individual types of art. The first holistic classification was proposed by I. Kant, but not in a practical, but in a theoretical plane. The first system for presenting the relationship between specific types of art was given by Hegel in his lecture “The System of Individual Arts”, the foundation of which he based on the relationship between idea and form, creating a classification of types of art from sculpture to poetry.
In the twentieth century, Fechner classified art forms from a psychological point of view: from the standpoint of the practical usefulness of the art form. So he classified both cooking and perfumery as art, i.e. types of aesthetic activities that, in addition to aesthetic values, also perform other practical functions. T. Munro held approximately the same views and counted about 400 types of art in total. In the Middle Ages, Al Farabi held similar views. The diversity of art has evolved historically as a reflection of the versatility of reality and the individual characteristics of human perception of it. Consequently, when highlighting any type of art, we mean the form of art that has developed historically, its main functions and classification units.
Types of art - literature, fine arts, music, choreography, architecture, theater, etc. have a relationship to art as something special to something general. Specific features, representing a specific manifestation of the general, are preserved throughout the history of art and manifest themselves differently in each era in different artistic cultures.
There are two trends in the modern art system: the desire for synthesis and the preservation of the sovereignty of individual types of art. Both trends are fruitful and contribute to the development of the art system. The development of this system is decisively influenced by the achievements of modern scientific and technological progress, without which the emergence of cinema, holography, rock opera, etc. would have been impossible.
Qualitative characteristics of the arts and their interaction
Architecture is a type of art whose purpose is to create structures and buildings necessary for the life and activities of people. It performs not only an aesthetic function in people’s lives, but also a practical one. Architecture as an art form is static and spatial. The artistic image here is created in a non-representational way. It displays certain ideas, moods and desires using the relationship of scales, masses, shapes, colors, connections with the surrounding landscape, that is, using specifically expressive means. As a field of activity, architecture originated in ancient times. As a field of art, architecture took shape in the cultures of Mesopotamia and Egypt; it flourished and received authorship in Ancient Greece and Rome. During the Renaissance, L.B. Alberti writes his famous treatise “On Architecture,” in which he defines the development of Renaissance architecture. From the end of the 16th to the 19th centuries. In European architecture, replacing each other, the dominant architectural styles are: Baroque, Rococo, Empire, Classicism, etc. It was from this time that the theory of architecture became the leading discipline in the Academy of Arts of Europe. Architecture in the twentieth century appears in a new capacity. Directions and trends are emerging associated with the emergence of new types of buildings: administrative, industrial, sports, etc. All this required new solutions from the architects: creating a building that is easy to use, includes an economical design and contains an aesthetically complete artistic and expressive form. New types are also appearing: “architecture of small forms”, “architecture of monumental forms”, “garden and park culture or green architecture.
Fine Arts. Fine arts are a group of types of artistic creativity (painting, graphics, sculpture, artistic photography) that reproduce specific life phenomena in their visible objective form. Works of fine art are capable of conveying the dynamics of life and recreating the spiritual appearance of a person. Its main types are painting, graphics, and sculpture.
Painting is works that are created on a plane using paints and colored materials. The main visual means is a system of color combinations. Painting is divided into monumental and easel. The main genres are: landscape, still life, subject-themed paintings, portrait, miniature, etc.
Graphic arts. It is based on a monochromatic drawing and uses a contour line as the main means of representation. Dot, stroke, spot. Depending on its purpose, it is divided into easel and applied-printing: engraving, lithography, etching, caricature, etc.
Sculpture. It reproduces reality in volumetric-spatial forms. The main materials are: stone, bronze, marble, wood. According to its content, it is divided into: monumental, easel, and small-form sculpture. According to the shape of the image, they are distinguished: three-dimensional three-dimensional sculpture, relief-convex images on a plane. The relief, in turn, is divided into: bas-relief, high relief, counter-relief. Basically, all genres of sculpture developed during the period of antiquity.
Photo. Today, a photograph is not just a copy of the external appearance of a phenomenon on film. An artist-photographer, by choosing the subject of photography, lighting, and special tilt of the camera, can recreate an authentic artistic appearance. At the end of the twentieth century, photography rightfully took its special place among the fine arts.
Decorative and applied arts. This is one of the oldest types of human creative activity in creating household items. This art form uses the most different materials: clay, wood, stone, metal, glass, fabrics, natural and synthetic fibers, etc. Depending on the chosen criterion, it is divided into specialized areas: ceramics, textiles, furniture, dishes, painting, etc. The pinnacle of this art form is jewelry making. Folk crafts make a special contribution to the development of this art.
Literature. Literature is a written form of word art. With the help of words she creates a real living being. Literary works are divided into three types: epic, lyric, drama. Epic literature includes the novel genre. Tale, short story, essay. Lyrical works include poetic genres: elegy, sonnet, ode, madrigal, poem. Drama is meant to be performed on stage. Dramatic genres include: drama, tragedy, comedy, farce, tragicomedy, etc. In these works, the plot is revealed through dialogues and monologues. The main expressive and figurative means of literature is the word. In literature, it is the word that gives rise to the image; tropes are used for this. The word reveals the plot, shows literary images in action, and also directly formulates the author’s position.
Music. Music is a type of art that, expressing various emotional states, influences a person with the help of specially arranged sound complexes. Intonation nature is the main expressive means of music. Other components of musical expressiveness are: melody, mode, harmony, rhythm, meter, tempo, dynamic shades, instrumentation. Music also contains a genre structure. Main genres: chamber, opera, symphonic, instrumental, vocal-instrumental, etc. D. Kabalevsky also called song, dance and march musical genres. However, musical practice has many genre varieties: chorale, mass, oratorio, cantata, suite, fugue, sonata, symphony, opera, etc.
Contemporary music is actively included in the system of synthetic arts: theater and cinema.
Theater. The fundamental element of a theatrical spectacle is stage action. V. Hugo wrote: “The theater is the country of the true: on the stage there are human hearts, behind the scenes there are human hearts, in the hall there are human hearts.” According to A.I. Herzen’s theater is “the highest authority for resolving life’s issues.” Theater has had such a social significance since its appearance in Ancient Greece, citizens resolved public problems in theatrical performances. Theater is an art form that helps to reveal the contradictions of time, the inner time of the human world, ideas are affirmed through dramatic action - performance. In the process of theatrical action, events unfold in time and space, but theatrical time is conditional and is not equal to astronomical time. The performance in its development is divided into acts, actions, and these, in turn, into mise-en-scenes, pictures, etc.
The theater combines a variety of genres of performing arts - be it drama or ballet, opera or pantomime. For a long time, the main figure in the theater was the actor, and the director was destined for a secondary role. But time passed, the theater developed, and the demands on it grew. A special person was needed in the theater to be responsible for everything. This person was the director. The first mature director's theater appeared in Russia. Its founders were K.S. Stanislavsky and V.I. Nemirovich-Danchenko, then V. Meyerhold and E. Vakhtangov. In the 20th century theatrical practice was replenished with many experimental forms: the theater of the absurd, chamber theater, political theater, street theater, etc. appeared.
Cinema. Cinema is considered the most effective form of art, because the reality that cinema creates is no different in appearance from real life. Cinema is similar to theater in many ways: synthetic, spectacular and collective. But having found editing, film artists were able to create their own film time, film space; in the theater these possibilities are limited to the stage and real time. There are different genres of cinema: fiction, documentary, popular science, animalistic.
Television is the youngest of the arts. Its social value is audio and video informativeness. A television screen exposes the image to light, so it has a slightly different texture and different laws of composition than cinema. Light is the most powerful means of expression in television. Television, with its factuality and closeness to nature, has great potential for selecting and interpreting reality. At the same time, it contains a threat to the standardization of people's thinking. An important aesthetic feature of television is the transmission of synchronicity of events, direct reporting from the scene of events, and inclusion of the viewer in the modern flow of history. Television is fraught with, on the one hand, rich social opportunities, and on the other, threats and good prospects. It may turn out to be both a Trojan horse and a great teacher of humanity.

10. Philosophical concepts of Fichte and Schelling. Anthropological materialism of Feuerbach.

11. Marxist philosophy.

14. Russian religious philosophy of the second half of the 19th century.

15. Russian religious philosophy of the 20th century. Philosophy of Russian cosmism.

16. Neo-Kantianism and neo-Hegelianism. Phenomenology e. Husserl. Pragmatism.

17. Historical forms of positivism. Analytical philosophy.

18. Irrationalism as a direction of philosophy of the 19th-21st centuries.

19. Modern Western religious philosophy.

20. Modern Western religious philosophy.

21. Hermeneutics, structuralism, postmodernism as the latest philosophical movements.

22. Scientific, philosophical and religious pictures of the world.

24. The concept of material and ideal. Reflection as a universal property of matter. Brain and consciousness.

25. Modern natural science about matter, its structure and attributes. Space and time as philosophical categories.

26. Movement, its main forms. Development, its main characteristics.

27. Dialectics, its laws and principles.

27. Dialectics, its laws and principles.

28. Categories of dialectics.

29. Determinism and indeterminism. Dynamic and statistical patterns.

30. The problem of consciousness in philosophy. Consciousness and cognition. Self-awareness and personality. Creative activity of consciousness.

31. The structure of consciousness in philosophy. Reality, thinking, logic and language.

32. General logical methods of cognition. Methods of scientific theoretical research.

33. Epistemological problems in philosophy. The problem of truth.

34. Rational and irrational in cognitive activity. Faith and knowledge. Understanding and explanation.

35. Cognition, creativity, practice. Sensory and logical cognition.

36. Scientific and extra-scientific knowledge. Scientific criteria. The structure of scientific knowledge.

37. Patterns of development of science. The growth of scientific knowledge. Scientific revolutions and changes in types of rationality.

38. Science and its role in the life of society. Philosophy and methodology of science in the structure of philosophical knowledge.

39. Science and technology. Technology: its specificity and patterns of development. Philosophy of technology.

40. Methods of scientific knowledge, their types and levels. Methods of empirical research.

41. Forms of scientific knowledge. Ethics of science.

41. Man and nature. The natural environment, its role in the development of society.

43. Philosophical anthropology. The problem of anthroposociogenesis. Biological and social in society.

44. The meaning of human existence. Ideas about the perfect person in different cultures.

45. Social philosophy and its functions. Man, society, culture. Culture and civilization. Specifics of social cognition.

46. ​​Society and its structure. Basic criteria and forms of social differentiation.

47. The main spheres of society (economic, social, political). Civil society and the state.

49. A person in a system of social connections. Man, individual, personality.

50. Man and the historical process; personality and masses; freedom and historical necessity.

51. Free will. Fatalism and voluntarism. Freedom and responsibility.

52. Ethics as a doctrine of morality. Moral values. Morality, justice, law. Violence and non-violence.

53. Aesthetics as a branch of philosophy. Aesthetic values ​​and their role in human life. Religious values ​​and freedom of conscience. Philosophy of religion.

54. Global problems of our time. The future of humanity. Interaction of civilizations and future scenarios.

55. Philosophy of history. The main stages of its development. Problems of progress, the direction of historical development and the “meaning of history.”

56. Traditional society and the problem of modernization. Industrial and post-industrial society. Information society.

57. Spiritual life of society. Social consciousness and its structure.

2. Structure of social consciousness

53. Aesthetics as a branch of philosophy. Aesthetic values ​​and their role in human life. Religious values ​​and freedom of conscience. Philosophy of religion.

Aesthetics is the science of a person’s sensory-value attitude towards the world and the methods of its spiritual and practical development. The universality of the aesthetic attitude and the sphere of aesthetic experience: nature, culture, society, man. The trinity of the subject of aesthetics: subject - object - value.

A variety of approaches to defining the subject of aesthetics. Aesthetics as philosophical knowledge about the structural-semantic laws of existence, expressed in forms, about the methods of their comprehension, about the qualitative characteristics of sensually comprehended phenomena in their relationship to the actual human essential forces, abilities and goals.

Ontology of the aesthetic: the ability to distinguish and choose “according to one’s own appearance” is an essential characteristic of consciousness; the object of aesthetic attitude is the revealed essence, the meaningful form. Aesthetic epistemology: sensory cognition as the first stage of mastering the world. Features of sensory experience: aesthetic intuition of meaning, “breakthrough” through form to essence. Aesthetic axiology: mastering the world in the form of values. Aesthetic aspects of philosophical knowledge as a condition for the completeness and integrity of the worldview. Aesthetics and ethics: differences in subject matter, ways of obtaining knowledge and functions in culture. Aesthetics and religion: aesthetic and mystical experience; hierarchy of values; life meaning guidelines; role in cultural creativity.

Aesthetic values ​​and their role in human life.

The word “aesthetics” comes from the Greek aisthetikos - feeling, sensual. The sphere of practical application of aesthetics is artistic activity, the products of which - works of art - are subject to evaluation in terms of their aesthetic value. In the process of education, a person develops various aesthetic values ​​(taste), corresponding to ideas about goodness and beauty, the beautiful and the ugly, the tragic and the comic.

Beauty is a measure of the correspondence between the essence of a thing and its external appearance, its sensory image. A thing that fully expresses its nature in its present, sensually perceived existence is called “beautiful” (otherwise it is considered “ugly”).

The principle that balances opposites is harmony, which serves as a measure of aesthetic values. In ancient philosophy, harmony meant order and coherence of the cosmos, accessible to human understanding and feelings through music, i.e. sequence of tones. During the Renaissance, the search for harmony was associated with the study of the structure of the human body, a recognized standard of beauty and proportion.

Currently, a relativistic view of the categories of aesthetics and artistic values, which are considered in relation to individual needs for beauty, goodness, and truth, prevails, which significantly complicates their understanding and philosophical explanation.

Religious values ​​and freedom of conscience.

Religion is a special form of human self-awareness, i.e. a kind of “mirror” in which a person sees himself, his own appearance. Religion is also considered as a special type of spiritual development of reality, the earliest in the historical time of its origin and stable in the scale of its spread. In science and philosophy there is no consensus on the reasons for the origin of religion, but there is a fairly traditional opinion about its evolution from the earliest primitive beliefs (family cults) to the emergence of the institution of priesthood in monotheistic beliefs (recognizing only one deity as supreme, these include: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, etc.) and polytheistic beliefs (with a large pantheon of gods, including: Hinduism, Shintoism, Buddhism, etc.). A characteristic feature of religion is its conservatism, understood as traditionalism - the constant adherence to sacred tradition.

Religious thinking is characterized by irrationality and belief in the supernatural, it is deeply symbolic and does not need formal logic to understand and explain the sacraments. The religious principle of culture is opposed to the secular, which recognizes the exceptional position of the human mind, capable of overthrowing belief in the supernatural. A side manifestation of religious thinking is fanaticism of faith, a product of secular thinking is militant atheism. Freedom of conscience regulates religious and secular confrontation in culture, declaring equal value both belief in the supernatural and belief in its absence. Religious beliefs and atheism, in turn, form an antagonistic system of values. Religious values ​​are associated with worship, atheistic values ​​are associated with its debunking.

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

Since the emergence of philosophy, religion has become one of its themes. The fact is that most of the questions that philosophy tries to answer - questions about the origins of the world, the position of man in space, the foundations of human actions, the possibilities and limits of knowledge - have simultaneously become topics of religious worldview. Therefore, throughout its history, philosophy has needed a critical distinction from religion. The very name “philosophy of religion” appeared quite late - in the 18th century, but already in ancient philosophy one can find certain ideas about the deity, about the relationship between the divine and ultimate reality. The history of the philosophy of religion is most closely related to the history of European philosophy. Philosophy of religion is philosophical thinking that has religion as its subject. Not only a believer, but also an atheist and an agnostic can philosophize about religion. The philosophy of religion belongs to philosophy, not theology (for an example of a philosophical consideration of the issue of religion, see Reader 11.1). This is philosophical thinking that clarifies the essence and way of being of religion, answers the question: “What is religion as such?” The philosophy of religion as a cultural phenomenon arose within the framework of the Judeo-Christian tradition. We will consider not a universal definition of religion, but the understanding that has developed in the process of complex relationships between European philosophy and Christian doctrine.

Religion is older than philosophy and obviously has its own roots. It is rather something “other” in relation to philosophy, since here we are dealing with a reality that exceeds the boundaries and capabilities of the human mind. This situation was especially clearly felt in the era of early Christianity, which did not see the slightest need for philosophical justification. And the further history of Christianity provides many examples of the fact that religion treats philosophy as its opposite. But at the same time, in its origins, religion is realized as a human event, as a form of human existence. There is always a person who believes, prays, and participates in a cult. Therefore, the philosophy of religion considers theological concepts primarily as phenomena of religious experience.

Religious experience is carried out in close connection with human self-understanding and understanding of existence. People try to understand themselves and their belief in God by asking themselves the question: “What does my belief mean?” Moreover, religion is fulfilled in human language, forms and categories of human thought. This explains the fact that religion changes along with historical changes in the understanding of man and existence. Religion has a human history, although God, as the source of religious understanding, is unchanging and above history. This means that a philosophical question about religion is possible, even if what is being asked turns out to be completely different in relation to philosophy (the ways of possible scientific study of religion are discussed in Reader 11.6).

Now we can try to define religion in order to clarify what philosophical thought has to deal with. Since ancient times, religion has been understood as man's relationship to God or the realm of the divine. This definition could be interpreted in different ways, but the basic terms - God, man, relationship - remained unchanged. We come to questions about God as the principle of religion, about man as the bearer of religion, and about the relationship between man and God, which forms the basis of the wholeness called religion. The philosophical development of these issues differs from the dogmatic constructions of traditional religions. Philosophy proceeds from the natural conditions of human existence without involving revelation. Already in the era of early Christianity, apologists of the 2nd century asked whether God exists. This question presupposes an understanding of “what” God is, and an understanding of reality that justifies the ability of reason to answer these questions. In medieval scholasticism, philosophical knowledge of God is called natural theology and is contrasted with the theology of revelation. The justification for the possibility of natural theology in medieval thought was based on a fragment of the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans (1:18), according to which man was able to achieve religious truth by using the natural powers of discursive thought. If the origin and purpose of man is determined in his relation to the absolute, man must have knowledge of this absolute. The possibility of such knowledge arises from the dependence of creation on God. God becomes the object of philosophical knowledge of God, since He is knowable through His creations, the human soul in its freedom and immortality, and through natural law.

Aesthetic values.

The famous expression of F. M. Dostoevsky - “Beauty will save the world” - must be understood not in isolation, but in the general context of the development of the ideals of humanity. The term “aesthetics” appeared in scientific use in the middle of the 18th century, although the doctrine of beauty, the laws of beauty and perfection goes back to ancient times. Aesthetics is a philosophical discipline that studies sensory knowledge, the highest goal of which is beauty. Hence, aesthetic is a sensually expressive being, which is realized through artistic activity.

Aesthetic feeling is a spiritual education, which means the level of elevation of the individual’s needs to truly human ones. Aesthetic feeling arises on the basis of direct sensuality + awareness and comprehension of one’s feeling + evaluation. A developed aesthetic sense makes a person’s personality individually unique.

The formation of a person’s aesthetic taste and aesthetic ideal is inextricably linked with aesthetic feeling. Aesthetic taste is a person’s ability to determine the aesthetic value of an object by direct feeling; the evaluation criterion here is a person’s attitude to beauty. The aesthetic ideal is the idea of ​​​​the highest harmony and perfection.

An aesthetic attitude is understood as a special type of connection between a subject and an object, when, regardless of external utilitarian interest, a person experiences deep spiritual pleasure from the contemplation of harmony and perfection. As O. Wilde noted, all art is completely useless and the perception of beauty evokes, first of all, a state of disinterested joy, fullness of strength, a feeling of man’s unity with the world. In this sense, the objective content of aesthetic value and its subjective side are distinguished, depending on the established ideals of beauty, tastes, artistic styles and so on. Aesthetic values ​​can appear in the form of natural objects (for example, landscape), the person himself (remember Chekhov’s phrase that everything in a person should be beautiful - face, clothes, soul and thoughts), as well as spiritual and material objects, created by man in the form of works of art. In the theory of aesthetics, they study such categorical pairs as the beautiful and the ugly, the sublime and the base, the tragic and the comic, etc.

All of the above gives grounds to formulate the concept of human spirituality. Spirituality is a synthesis of Truth, Beauty and Goodness with an emphasis on the latter, because a person is able to create it himself. In Christian philosophy, this is expressed by the triad of Faith, Hope, Love and Sophia embracing them - i.e. wisdom. Any value is self-contradictory and contains its own negation. It is enough to recall the problem of the origin of evil in the world and theodicy, i.e. justification of God as the creator and ruler of the world despite the existence of evil and dark forces. The deceit in the verbal expression of any ideal (secular and religious) was understood a very long time ago, which gave rise to teachings about the silent comprehension of Truth and God (hesychasm, Zen Buddhism, etc.) That is why the fate of many beautiful ideals is so tragic. When transmitted through generations, they often lose their original meaning, and when “introduced” into practice, they produce such results that the founders of these ideals would recoil from them in horror. Here lies the core of the old debate - what or who is to blame - bad ideals or bad people who perverted beautiful ideals? Since a weak point can be found in any ideal, and people are not angels, the implementation of ideals, as a rule, refers either to the distant earthly future or to the heavenly world. With all the zigzags of world history, humanity is moving along the path of humanizing people's relations, establishing a universal system of values, and recognizing the leading role of the individual in progress. Thus, the concepts of personality, freedom, and values ​​enrich and expand our understanding of man, his past, present and future.