中国古典美学中的身体及其映像

The Body and Its Images in Classical Chinese Aesthetics

身体是中国古典美学的重要范畴,以此为基点介入美学史研究,为许多经典命题的重新阐释确立了物性的根基。首先,与西方灵肉二分、以灵摄肉的观念不同,中国美学中的身体既建基于肉体,又是形神志气合一的有机生命形式。它的“身体—整体”和“身体—主体”观念影响了对人体美的判断。其次,人体与万物均被视为自然之气的凝聚。在此,所谓的“自然人化”与“人的自然化”,最根本地体现为身体与对象世界之间的互生和互化。再次,身体与世界的一体同气关系,使理解人体成为理解世界的便捷方式,也使以身体为范式重构美的自然和艺术成为可能。这种被身体建构的自然和艺术,使自然因身体化而成为审美对象,使艺术因对身体的摹拟而获得形式结构。因此,中国古典美学对自然美和艺术美的鉴赏,其真实的指向并不在自然和艺术本身,而在于从中发现了人体的映像。

Body is a very important category in classical Chinese aesthetics.The studies of history of aesthetics based on this have paved the way for the reinterpretation of many classical propositions.First,body in Chinese aesthetics,different from the Western conception of body which separates body from soul and privileges soul over body,is based on flesh on the one hand,and on the other,is taken to be an organic form of unity which subsumes form,spirit,intention and breath.This idea of body-unity and body-subject affects one's judgment of the beauty of human body.Second,the human body and all things in the world are taken to be the aggregation of natural air.Here,the so-called personalization of nature and naturalization of humans are fundamentally embodied in the symbiosis of body and its object,the world.Third,the unity between body and the world makes the understanding of body an easiest access to the world,and also makes possible the reconstruction of the natural beauty and art.This nature and art reconstructed by the human body makes the personalized nature the object of aesthetics,and art thereby acquires its form and structure by imitating the body.It is in this sense that we can say the appreciation of natural and artistic beauty in classical Chinese aesthetics aims not at nature and art themselves but at the discovery of body images in them.