Nietzsche (1844— 1900) is a famous German philosopher and poet. His achievements in aesthetics mainly lie in solving the fundamental problems of life with aesthetics and advocating an aesthetic attitude towards life. His aesthetics is a generalized aesthetics, in fact, a philosophy of life. He himself once said that traditional aesthetics is only the aesthetics of the receiver, and he wants to establish the aesthetics of the giver, that is, the artist. In fact, although Nietzsche's aesthetics is not valued by scholars who specialize in the history of aesthetics, it has great charm for artists, which has influenced the outlook on life and ideological content of a large number of writers and artists. In this respect, other aesthetic theories can hardly match it.
1. Apollo and Dionysus
Nietzsche's first book, The Birth of Tragedy, is the birthplace of his philosophy. In this book, he uses the symbols of Apollo and Dionysus to illustrate the origin, essence and function of art, and even the meaning of life. Understanding the exact meaning of these two symbols is the premise of understanding all Nietzsche's aesthetics and philosophy.
Greek art has always attracted great interest from aestheticians. Before Nietzsche, Goethe, Schiller and winkelmann, the representatives of the German Enlightenment, all explained the prosperity of Greek art with the harmony between man and nature, sensibility and rationality. Contrary to tradition, Nietzsche believes that the prosperity of Greek art is not due to the inner harmony of the Greeks, but to their inner pain and conflict. Because he saw the tragedy of life too clearly, he had two artistic impulses, Apollo and Dionysus, and wanted to use art to save lives.
The sun god is the god of light, and its brilliance makes everything look beautiful. Nietzsche said: "We use the name of the sun god to collectively refer to countless illusions of the appearance of beauty. In Apollo's state, art "as the driving force of illusion" dominates people, whether he likes it or not. It can be seen that Apollo is a symbol of beautiful appearance, and in Nietzsche's view, beautiful appearance is essentially an illusion of human beings. Dreams are the state of Apollo in daily life. In art, plastic arts is a typical Apollo art, and the images of Olympians in Homer's epic and Greek sculpture are Apollo's models.
Apollo's impulse is not only a compulsive impulse to create hallucinations, but also irrational. Some people think that the sun god symbolizes rationality, which is a misunderstanding. In fact, Nietzsche criticized euripides's principle of "understanding is followed by beauty" in The Birth of Tragedy, accusing him of replacing the intuition of the sun god with calm thinking, and distancing himself from this misunderstanding. We should remember that Nietzsche has always regarded reason as the power to kill instinct, and condemned Socrates and Plato's rational philosophy to kill Greek artistic instinct-including Dionysian impulse and Apollo impulse.
Dionysus symbolizes emotional indulgence. Nietzsche said: the Dionysian state is "the whole emotional system is stimulated" and "the total stimulation and release of emotions"; In the Dionysian state, art "as the power of indulgence" dominates people. But Dionysian emotion is not a general emotion, but a tragic emotion with metaphysical depth. The symbol of Dionysus comes from bacchanalia. On this secret musical instrument, people break all taboos, drink too much and indulge their sexual desire. Nietzsche believes that this is the pursuit of an experience of releasing the bondage of personality and returning to the original nature. For the individual, the disintegration of the individual is the highest pain, however, it relieves the root of all pain and obtains the highest joy of integration with the world ontology. So the Dionysian state is a crazy state of pain and ecstasy. Drunkenness is the Dionysian state in daily life. In art, music is a pure Dionysian art, while tragedy and lyric poetry seek the form of the sun god, but in essence it is also Dionysian art and an expression of the world's ontological feelings.
In a word, Apollo and Dionysus are rooted in the deepest human instinct. The former is the impulse of an individual to affirm himself through the illusion of appearance, while the latter is the impulse of an individual to deny himself and return to the world ontology. In a sense, the relationship between them is similar to Freud's life instinct and death instinct, both of which belong to the irrational field.
Second, art metaphysics.
Nietzsche often talks about "aesthetic metaphysics", "artistic metaphysics", "artist's metaphysics" and "art in a profound and extensive metaphysical sense", which endows art with metaphysical significance. Art metaphysics can be expressed by two interrelated propositions:
"Only as an aesthetic phenomenon, life and the world seem to have sufficient reasons."
"Art is the highest mission of life and the original metaphysical activity of life."
Art metaphysics is based on the lack of metaphysical significance in life and the world. Schopenhauer believes that the world is a blind will and life is a phenomenon of this will, both of which are meaningless. He came to a pessimistic conclusion. He denied the world and life. Nietzsche admits that the world and life are meaningless, but he doesn't want to be pessimistic. In order to affirm the world and life, he turned to art.
Art metaphysics consists of Apollo spirit and Dionysian spirit. Apollo and Dionysus came to Nietzsche's aesthetic stage as two lifesavers.
Apollo spirit teaches people to stay on the surface and not to pursue the truth of the world and life. This involves an important thought of Nietzsche, namely the opposition between art and truth. Plato has already put forward the viewpoint that art and truth are opposite, but his standpoint is opposite to Nietzsche's. He believes that the world of ideas is the real world and the truth; The real world is only its shadow and imitation; Art is the shadow of the shadow, imitation of imitation. Therefore, he opposed art with truth. Nietzsche denied the existence of the conceptual world. He believes that there is only one world, which is the real world we live in. He believes that there is only one world, that is, the real world in which we live, which is an eternal generation and change. The world is cruel and meaningless to people, so pessimism is the truth However, truth is not the highest value standard, and art is more valuable than truth. In order to survive, we need to cover up some terrible truths with artistic "lies". "The truth is ugly. We have art, and we will not be destroyed by it. " This is the "metaphysical beautification purpose" of art. Therefore, from the perspective of Apollo spirit, the metaphysical significance of art lies in its value to life, and art metaphysics is essentially a kind of value metaphysics.
However, this is only one aspect of art metaphysics. Metaphysics is to trace the source and ask the ontology; Just staying on the surface violates the original meaning of metaphysics. Therefore, a more important aspect of artistic metaphysics is Dionysian spirit.
Third, the tragic world outlook.
Apollo spirit indulges in the illusion of appearance and opposes the pursuit of noumenon, while Dionysian spirit hopes to break the illusion of appearance and communicate with noumenon. The former covers the tragic face of life with the veil of beauty, while the latter lifts the veil and looks directly at the tragedy of life. The former teaches people not to give up the happiness of life, while the latter teaches people not to escape the pain of life. The former is obsessed with life, while the latter is detached from life. The former is obsessed with the moment, while the latter yearns for eternity. Compared with Japanese spirit, Dionysian spirit is more metaphysical and full of tragedy.
Once the illusion of appearance is broken, the world and life reveal the terrible truth. How can we reaffirm life? This is exactly the problem that Dionysian spirit wants to solve.
Nietzsche started with the analysis of the art of tragedy. Tragedy shows people the pain and destruction of individuals, but it also makes people feel happy. Where does this pleasure come from? Schopenhauer said that tragic pleasure is a sense of resignation caused by the illusion of realizing the will of life. Nietzsche put forward the theory of "metaphysical comfort" to explain that tragedy "liberates us with the metaphysical comfort of a god: no matter how the phenomenon changes, life based on things is still indestructible and full of joy." When watching the tragedy, "a metaphysical comfort makes us temporarily escape from the interference of world changes." We really turned into the primitive creature itself in a short moment and felt its irresistible desire for survival and happiness. "That is to say, through the destruction of individuals, we feel the richness and indestructibility of the will to life in the world, so we feel happy. From "resignation" to "metaphysical comfort", the nature of the will to life as an ontology has changed, from a passive force of blind struggle to an infinite creative force.
However, Nietzsche once accused Aristotle's theory of "purification" as a non-aesthetic explanation of tragic pleasure, and demanded to find the unique pleasure of tragedy in the pure aesthetic field. Then, how does "metaphysical comfort" become an aesthetic explanation? Nietzsche's method is to make the noumenon world that tragedy shows us artistic, treat the eternal generation and change process of this meaningless world with aesthetic eyes, and give it an aesthetic significance. The world constantly creates and destroys individual lives, which is "an aesthetic game in which the will entertains itself in eternal happiness". We might as well regard the world as a "Dionysian cosmic artist" or a "world primitive artist" and look at our own pain and destruction from his standpoint. In this way, the actual suffering has become aesthetic happiness, and the tragedy of life has become a human comedy.
Nietzsche believes that the affirmation of life achieved in this way is the highest affirmation, while tragedy is "the highest art of affirming life". Affirming life, along with its inevitable pain and destruction, playing with pain and getting aesthetic pleasure from the tragedy of life are Nietzsche's tragic world outlook derived from tragic art and the essence of Dionysian spirit.
No matter how aesthetic, "metaphysical comfort" is religious after all Later, Nietzsche asked to throw it away as a romantic disease along with all metaphysics, and instead advocated "worldly comfort." This shows his dilemma in finding the metaphysical basis of life.
Fourth, aesthetic life.
As for the theme of the birth of tragedy, Nietzsche later repeatedly pointed out that it was to create a pure aesthetic evaluation for life, aesthetic value was the only recognized value in the book, and "God of a completely non-speculative and immoral artist" was the only recognized "God" in the book. He also clearly pointed out that the aesthetic evaluation of life is fundamentally opposed to the religious, moral and scientific evaluation of life. Nietzsche later put forward "revaluation of all values", in fact, the idea of "revaluation" has long been included in his early aesthetic theory. At that time, he declared: "What we call culture, education and civilization today will one day be brought before the just judge Dionysus." Later, it was pointed out: "Our religion, morality and philosophy are all decadent forms of human beings. Opposing movement: art "shows that the standard of" revaluation "is art in a broad sense, and its essence is to oppose ethical attitude and utilitarian (scientific) attitude towards life with aesthetic attitude towards life.
Re-evaluating all values focuses on criticizing Christian morality, and aesthetic attitude towards life is immoral attitude towards life first. Life itself is immoral, everything belongs to the eternal "whole" of nature, and there is no distinction between good and evil at all. Christianity evaluates life ethically, regards life instinct as evil, and produces universal guilt and self-repression. Aesthetic life requires us to get rid of this sense of guilt, transcend good and evil, and enjoy the freedom of mind and the happiness of life.
Secondly, the aesthetic attitude towards life is a non-scientific and non-utilitarian attitude towards life. The essence of scientific spirit is utilitarianism, aiming at increasing the value of human material interests, floating on the surface of life and avoiding the fundamental problems of life. Nietzsche believes that the scientific spirit is a kind of shallow optimism, which avoids looking at the tragic face of life, so it is the opposite of the tragic world view. The consequence of the vicious development of scientific spirit is that modern people have lost the necessities of life, their souls are empty, they are homeless and live in constant fear.
Nietzsche does not deny the role of morality and science in human practice. He opposes using them to guide life. The intangible foundation of life is deliberately avoided by science, while morality tries to pretend such a foundation, but the result is to deny life. Therefore, if we must find a metaphysical basis for life, we should choose art, and aesthetic meaning is the best meaning we can get in life.
Nietzsche was once influenced by positivism and showed a tendency of advocating science and suppressing art. In fact, before and after this, Nietzsche was always skeptical about whether art could give life fundamental meaning. He has repeatedly said that it is always doubtful whether art can give life a fundamental meaning. He repeatedly said that art is a "lie", that poets lie too much, and that he is tired of poets. However, the question is: "If people are not poets, fans and occasional saviors, how can I stand being human!" ("Zarathustra said": "save" so he had to ask for all kinds of art. The subtext of Apollo spirit is: Even if life is a dream, we should dream with relish and not lose the emotion and fun of the dream. The subtext of Dionysian spirit is: Even if life is a tragedy, we should play this tragedy to the fullest, and don't lose the magnificence and comfort of the tragedy. This is the true meaning of Nietzsche's aesthetic attitude towards life.
Five, drunk and strong-willed
Nietzsche used Schopenhauer's concept of "will to life" to refer to the ontological world in his mind-the eternal process of formation and change, but there are positive and negative differences in understanding compared with Schopenhauer. Later, in order to draw a clear line with Schopenhauer's pessimistic philosophy, it was renamed Strong Will. "Strong will" is actually a kind of "life will" of Dionysian spiritual transformation, emphasizing the richness and surplus of life in nature. This world is not a negative process in which everything strives for survival, but a positive process in which everything strives for vitality expansion. After putting forward the theory of "strong will", Nietzsche more and more connected various aesthetic phenomena with the strength of vitality in aesthetics, and put more emphasis on the strength of life when advocating aesthetic attitude towards life.
In Nietzsche's later aesthetics, "drunkenness" is a key concept. In the past, drunkenness was just another name for Dionysus. Now, Nietzsche clearly attributed the state of Apollo and Dionysus to drunkenness, and regarded them as different types of drunkenness, confirming that drunkenness is the psychological premise of all aesthetic behaviors and the most basic aesthetic emotion. The essence of drunkenness is "excessive strength", "sense of promotion and overflow of strength" and "high sense of strength". Energetic drunkenness produces a variety of aesthetic states. The aesthetic feeling of Apollo is the result of projecting abundant vitality into things. Dionysus's tragic pleasure is a strong vitality and a sense of victory that dares to contend with pain and disaster. Art is a rich impulse to change things, and it embodies its vitality through things. Artists are extremely energetic people, forced by their inner wealth, and have to pay. On the contrary, people with exhausted vitality have no sense of beauty and have no connection with art. Nietzsche concluded: "Whether the judgment of' beauty' is established or not is a matter of strength (of a person or a nation)." Therefore, whether a person can hold an aesthetic attitude towards life, whether to affirm or deny life, comes down to the rise and fall of internal vitality.
Sixth, art physiology.
Nietzsche wrote in Nietzsche against Wagner: "Of course, aesthetics is just applied physiology." He also drafted an outline of 18 entitled "Art Physiology", and prepared to devote a chapter to this issue in "Strong Will". The plan didn't come true. However, the idea of "artistic physiology" can still be found in his later works and "Strong Will" edited by his sister. The following points are worth noting:
First, the vitality of the body is the motive force of art, and the aesthetic state depends on meat.
Physical vitality.
Second, in the vitality of the body, the power of sexual desire takes the first place. Both men and women are drunk
Estrus is the strongest. On the one hand, sex makes the lover stronger, on the other hand, it beautifies and idealizes the beloved. The biological purpose of beauty is to stimulate reproduction. A great artist must be a man with strong sexual desire. The era of artistic prosperity in history is rooted in the soil of sexual interest. A person's energy consumption in artistic creation is the same as that in sexual behavior, so artists should keep relative chastity to save energy.
Thirdly, aesthetic value is based on biological value. Humans come from the deepest race.
Instinct makes a "beautiful" judgment on the object of improving racial vitality and an "ugly" judgment on the object of inhibiting racial vitality. Therefore, aesthetic judgment is a kind of generalized biological value judgment.
Fourth, art pathology. Genius = psycho. Artists are gods.
Menstrual patients. But there are two situations: one is "healthy neurosis" caused by excessive strength, such as Greek tragic actors; One is pathological neurosis caused by exhaustion of strength, such as romantic pessimists in Germany.
Seven, beauty and aesthetic feeling
What is beauty? Nietzsche's understanding, in addition to the above-mentioned "illusion of representation" and "projection of vitality on objects", has the following noteworthy formulations:
First, beauty is man's self-affirmation, and there is no "beauty of freedom". "'the beauty of freedom' is purely empty talk and has never been a concept. In beauty, people regard themselves as a perfect measure; On certain occasions, he worships his own beauty. Without this, a species can't determine itself ... Man believes that the world itself is full of beauty-he forgets the reason for his beauty ... In the final analysis, man reflects himself in things, and he regards everything that reflects his image as beauty: the judgment of "beauty" is his racial vanity ... Man humanizes the world, that's all. " Man is not only the only aesthetic subject, but also the only aesthetic object. "Nothing is beautiful, only people are beautiful: all aesthetics are based on this simple truth, which is the first truth of aesthetics. We immediately added the second truth of aesthetics: nothing is uglier than a declining person-the field of aesthetic judgment is therefore limited. "
Second, beauty is a strong desire. Nietzsche thinks that since Kant,
All aesthetic theories are corroded by the concept of "uninteresting". He hates the so-called "contemplation without desire" and advocates: "Where is the beauty? I must use all my will; There I am willing to love and die, so that the image is not just the image. Love and death: never change. The will of courtship: that is, willing to die. "
Third, beauty is a powerful image expression. "When power becomes merciful and declines,
For the time being, I call this decline beauty. "
Nietzsche's analysis of aesthetic psychology mainly includes the following contents:
First, Lenovo said. The judgment of beauty endows the object that inspires it with a magic power, which is conditional on the correlation between the judgments of beauty, but has nothing to do with the essence of that object. Feeling that an object is beautiful is because it activates the unconscious memory of all kinds of beautiful experiences in the past. All these experiences inspire each other and gather around this object. Therefore, aesthetic feeling is an illusion based on unconscious association.
Second, the mixed theory of animal sexual pleasure. There are animal sexual pleasure States such as sexual impulse, drunkenness and cruelty in us. When an object arouses the excitement of the area contained in these pleasure States, "the mixture of these extremely subtle differences between animal sexual pleasure and desire is an aesthetic state."
Third, empathy. In ancient times, people were trained by fear and saw danger in all strangers, so they learned the ability to quickly understand and imitate each other's feelings in their hearts, that is, they learned empathy. People even extend this view from people and animals to natural things, thinking that all actions and lines contain intentions. Practicing empathy from fear produces all kinds of aesthetic feelings, including the beauty of nature. This theory is equivalent to empathy, but Nietzsche pointed out that empathy originated from the fear of primitive people.
Fourth, the theory of distance. Aesthetic feeling depends on a certain space or time distance.