理想与现实:爱默生与马克思诗性思维的分途

Ideal and Reality:The Divergence of Emerson and Marx's Poetic Thinkings

作为生活于同一时代的思想家,爱默生与马克思都展露出一定的诗性追求。爱默生从自然事物中看到了诗性本原,希望个体凭借想象力,在与环境交互中不断扩大感知、逼近精神本质,进而达到个体的精神自由。与爱默生不同,马克思不赞同诗性想象创造历史,他要在现实生产活动中融入审美、诗意之维。马克思的策略是将感性概念置于资本社会具体实践中,并在其间揭示制约个体感性的生产方式,发现克服感性局限的力量,从而实现人的解放,也就是实现美,恢复人的诗性之维。在对二人的比照中,可以感受到爱默生的诗化策略缺乏行动力,更接近空洞的主观理想,而马克思的诗性寓于现实生产实践中,具有切实的社会历史价值。

As thinkers of the same era,Emerson and Marx both showed certain poetic pursuit in their writings.Emerson found the origin of Poetic essence in natural objects.He hoped that individuals can rely on their imagination to continuously expand their perception and approach the spiritual essence in interaction with the environment,so as to achieve individual spiritual freedom.In Marx's strategy,the concept of sensuality is applied to analyze the real activity of capitalist society,to reveal the mechanism it used to restrict individual sensuality and consciousness and find a way to overcome the constraints.In this way,freedom,here in other words,the poetic dimension,of human beings can be realized.Compared to Marx,Emerson's thoughts are more of an empty subjective ideal than a strategy of action.On the contrary,Marx's theory of poetic essence is based on real production activities and thus has concrete social historical significances.