The origin of the aesthetic: essays on the relationship between the philosophy of art and the earliest signs of aesthetic activity

审美的起源：艺术哲学与审美活动最早迹象之间关系的论文

• 批准号: AH/G007888/1
• 负责人: Gregory Currie
• 金额: $ 5.1万
• 依托单位: University of Nottingham
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2009 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FG007888%2F1
• 关键词: origin; aesthetic; essays; relationship; between

Traditionally, philosophers and theorists, as well as non-specialist art-enthusiasts, have seen a close connection between art and beauty. One adjustment to this connection that philosophers have suggested is that we talk about 'aesthetic value', a category that would cover such things as the formal qualities of a poem or drama, as well as the balance, elegance and emotional power of a painting or statue, and of which beauty is merely a part. But more recently, and in the face of art-movements from the mid Twentieth Century onwards, theorists have been less willing to assert a close connection between art and either beauty or the aesthetic. This 'anti-aesthetic' turn is connected with such movements as minimalism, conceptualism, and post-object art, which sometimes prefer to see the activity of the artist as a kind of intellectual provocation, dedicated to challenging ideas in ways that may not involve the activity of conferring beauty or other aesthetic qualities on an object. Indeed, many artists pursue an 'anti-aesthetic' approach hostile to the very notion of beauty.Attempting to accommodate the anti-aesthetic movement, philosophers have turned to so-called 'historical' accounts of art, which emphasise a continuous artistic conversation taking place over the centuries that connects art-movements which may have radically different aims and values. But the emphasis on a connected series of stages, each influencing the next, means that we can no longer make room for historically isolated art.Do we need to make room for it? I believe that we do, and that many of the artefacts made between 35 and 10 thousand years ago deserve to be categorised as art. But these items may well be isolated from all but the most recent art and, if it were not for accidents of discovery, would not be known at all. This would not, I believe, be grounds for denying them the status of art. There are artefacts which are aesthetically interesting from much earlier periods that this even, including carefully worked stone implements made nearly one million years ago. Should we regard these as art? I believe not, though they may well be made for aesthetic display. So even an aesthetic theory of art needs to acknowledge the difference between art and that which is merely aesthetic. I argue that the difference is concerned with the sorts of community-wide uses to which the artefacts of 35 thousand years ago were probably put.Those who study the stone ages often invoke the idea of the symbolic as an explanatory tool, but are much less prone to treat the aesthetic in the same way. I suggest that the idea of the symbolic is often used in an imprecise sense and that we need an approach to Stone Age artefacts which is able to combine the symbolic (narrowly and usefully defined) and the aesthetic as complementary explanatory tools.Put in a broad perspective, this project questions the assumption that it is wrong--philosophically and historically--to speak of very ancient artefacts, far distant from our cultural concerns, as art or as aesthetic objects. Deploying the notions of art and the aesthetic in this context does not mean that we have to adopt the slogan 'art for art's sake', or suppose that very ancient people crafted these objects because they had nothing else to fill their leisure hours. It will illustrate how art and the aesthetic mesh with such notions as cultural evolution, sexual selection, and the emergence of symbolic culture to provide a powerful explanatory framework.

传统上，哲学家和理论家，以及非专业的艺术爱好者，都看到了艺术和美之间的密切联系。哲学家们对这一关系的一个调整是，我们谈到了“审美价值”，这个范畴涵盖了诗歌或戏剧的形式品质，以及绘画或雕像的平衡、优雅和情感力量，而美只是其中的一部分。但最近，面对二十世纪中叶以来的艺术运动，理论家们不太愿意断言艺术与美或审美之间的密切联系。这种反美学的转向与极简主义、概念主义和后物体艺术等运动有关，这些运动有时倾向于将艺术家的活动视为一种智力挑衅，致力于以一种可能不涉及赋予物体美或其他审美品质的活动来挑战想法。事实上，许多艺术家都对美的概念怀有敌意，采取了一种“反美学”的方式。哲学家们试图顺应反美学运动，转而对艺术进行所谓的“历史”描述，强调几个世纪以来持续不断的艺术对话，这些对话将目标和价值观可能截然不同的艺术运动联系在一起。但强调一系列相互关联的阶段，每个阶段都影响着下一个阶段，这意味着我们不能再为历史上孤立的艺术腾出空间。我们需要为它腾出空间吗？我相信我们有，而且许多在35至1万年前制造的文物都值得被归类为艺术品。但这些物品很可能与所有最新的艺术品隔绝开来，如果不是偶然发现，根本就不会为人所知。我认为，这不会成为剥夺他们艺术地位的理由。还有一些从美学上来说很有趣的早期文物，甚至包括近100万年前精心制作的石器。我们应该把这些视为艺术吗？我认为不是，尽管它们很可能是为了审美展示而制作的。因此，即使是艺术的美学理论也需要承认艺术与仅仅是审美的艺术之间的区别。我认为，这种差异与3.5万年前的文物可能被用于社区的各种用途有关。那些研究石器时代的人经常引用象征性的概念作为一种解释工具，但不太倾向于以同样的方式对待美学。我认为，象征的概念经常被用在不精确的意义上，我们需要一种能够结合象征(狭义和有用的定义)和美学作为补充解释工具的石器时代文物的方法。从更广泛的角度来看，这个项目质疑这样的假设，即从哲学和历史上讲，将非常古老的文物作为艺术或审美对象来谈论是错误的--从哲学和历史上讲，非常古老的文物与我们的文化关切相去甚远。在这种背景下运用艺术和美学的概念，并不意味着我们必须采用‘为艺术而艺术’的口号，或者假设非常古老的人制作这些物品是因为他们没有其他东西来打发他们的闲暇时间。它将说明艺术和美学如何与文化进化、性选择和符号文化的出现等概念相结合，以提供一个强大的解释框架。