“神性”与艺术理想——中西文论中的审美理念之比较

The Divine and Artistic Ideal:Ideas and Insights in Chinese and Western Thought

不同民族文化里,艺术都无不与"神性"密切相关。倘若没有"神性"作为参照,今天的审美理念和艺术创作不知会是怎样一种境况。这是因为"神性"作为一种终极审美理想深深地植根于文化传统的土壤之中,这一审美理想集结并包蕴了各种相互关联的概念、思想,是一个取之不尽、日用日新的理念泉源。可以说,终极审美理想一旦缺席,艺术批评或审美教育将旦夕之间一败涂地。尽管古代文论对于艺术中的"神性"并不乏探讨,但大多见之于印象式、直觉式的点评和表述中,不免失之模棱、草率。有鉴于此,本文首先将从中西古代文论中提取论述艺术表现中神性、神创及神韵的相关理论及批评资料,并据此考查中西文化是如何将神性的理念糅合于艺术理论和美育之中的。其次,在中西传统审美理念异同比较的基础上,笔者将深入挖掘艺术创作和神性之间关系的一系列理论洞见并加以逻辑分析。最后,笔者将对这些散见于中西古代文论中的洞见进行重新构架,探索神性对当今美学产生了怎样的影响,揣摩艺术所表现的审美理想如何才够得上"神性"的层次,而艺术作品应该具备什么样的品质才能抵达"入神"的理想境界。

Across cultures,art has been related to the divine.The divine used to be viewed as the ultimate aesthetic ideal,and aesthetics is full of notions,ideas,and concepts related to it,without which artistic criticism and aesthetic education would be in a much impoverished state.The divine in art,however,is a slippery category in aesthetics that has been intuitively explored since high antiquity.In this article,I will examine some critical and theoretical data on the divine,divine creation,and divine spirit in artistic representation from the Chinese and Western traditions and explore how the Chinese and Western traditions employ ideas of the divine for artistic conceptions and aesthetic education.On the basis of comparison and contrast,I will try to obtain some rational insights into the relationship between artistic creation and the divine in terms of logical analysis.Finally,I will make some efforts to reconceptualize the insights drawn from both traditions,and explore to what extent the divine is still relevant to present-day aesthetics,how an aesthetic ideal may be conceived on ideas of the divine in artistic representation,and in what ways an art work may be considered to have entered the divine realm of artistic ideal.