伦理VS.审美:基于功能主义和后现代主义视角的设计批评(1)

The Battle between Ethics and Aesthetics:Design Criticism from a Functionalist and Postmodernist Perspective(1)

本文分析了"好"设计和"坏"设计在功能主义和后现代主义视角下的不同定义。首先,笔者尝试论证了功能主义这个主导了20世纪的设计范式,它深深植根于人文现代主义的世界观之中。人文现代主义世界观是20世纪的伪宗教,功能主义标准的"好"设计直接遵循了这种世界观,因此其本质是具有伦理意义的。这暗示着被其信徒所严格遵循的功能主义并不是"短暂的时尚"风格,而有着放之四海而皆准的普适性:功能主义的"好"设计被认为是可以超越时间和空间的局限而独立存在的。在20世纪的最后25年,后现代主义者成功地挑战了这种普适性,在他们看来,功能主义就是一种文化(如同其他的许多文化一样),它伴随西方世界启蒙运动的兴起而出现,在20世纪中叶时达到高潮,并从那时起(像其他所有文化一样,一段时间后)开始呈现衰败之势。虽然后现代主义对于功能主义"普适性主张"的这种破坏是基于其有利的论据而应被认真对待的,但我们不应忽视后现代主义批评的基础,它根源于对"什么是产品的本质特征"观点的根本转变。在功能主义那里--毫无疑问!--这个本质特征被认为是产品的功能性。而在后现代主义那里,这个本质是"意义",而"意义"是由文化所决定的。换句话说,后现代主义始于一种假设--产品的价值是由文化所决定的。因此,后现代主义在对什么是"好"设计和"坏"设计的判断上,从本质上是持有一种审美的而非伦理的观点。笔者认为,这意味着即使后现代主义对功能主义设计范式的批判有效地削弱了其普适性的价值观,然而却也付出了一定的代价。后现代主义的原则是:"意义"由文化所决定--这意味着同样的产品在不同的文化语境中会显示出不同的意义--意味着后现代主义可以被认为是"解释世界的广义相对论"。因此,可以推断后现代主义虽然有效地挑战了功能主义的范式,却没有提供给我们另一个如何分辨"好"设计与"坏"设计的准则。就长期以来我们对于功能主义原则的盲从而言,后现代主义以"怎样都行"取代了功能主义的"形式服从功能",这也许让我们睁开了双眼,但最后,它也让工业设计师们两手空空……

This paper analyzes the differences in what constitutes 'good' and 'bad' design from a functionalist and postmodernist perspective. First I try to demonstrate that functionalism, the dominant design paradigm for the greater part of the 20th century, is deeply rooted in the worldview of humanist modernism, presented here as a pseudo-religion. It appears that functionalist criteria for 'good' design follow directly from these roots, and are therefore essentially of an ethical nature. The implication of this is that functionalism is considered by its adherents, not as a 'temporarily fashionable' style, but as a universally valid system: The criteria for a 'good' product in the functionalist sense are thought to be independent of time and place. This claim of universal validity was successfully challenged by postmodernism since the last quarter of the 20th century. Postmodernists deny that functionalism holds a universal message for all mankind. In their view functionalism is a culture (like many others) that came up in the Western world together with the start of the Enlightenment, had her climax somewhere halfway the 20th century and since then (like all other cultures, after some time) showed signs of decadence and decay. Although this undermining of the functionalist 'claim of universal validity' has to be taken seriously, based as it is on sound arguments, it should not be overseen that the basis of the postmodernist critique stems from a fundamental change in what is considered to be the essential feature of a product. In functionalism - no great wonder! - this essential feature is supposed to be its function. In postmodernism it is its 'meaning', where 'meanings' are supposed to be culturally determined. In other words, postmodernism starts from the hypothesis that the appreciation of a product is culturally determined. So, postmodernism holds essentially an aesthetical viewpoint instead of an ethical one in its judgment on what is 'good' and 'bad' design. The implication of this is, I argue, that, although postmodernist critique thus effectively undermines the claim of universal validity of the functionalist design paradigm, there is a price to be paid for this. The postmodernist fundamental that 'meanings' are culturally determined - implying that one and the same product will radiate different meanings in different cultures - implies that postmodernism can aptly be seen as 'the general theory of relativity on the interpretation of the world'. For that reason, it can be concluded that postmodernism effectively challenges the functionalist paradigm, however, without providing us another solid, and clear cut set of rules on how to discern between 'good' and 'bad' design. As far as we have been blind for the relativity of the functionalist design paradigm, postmodernism, replacing the functionalist'Form Follows Function' by 'Anything Goes', may have opened our eyes, but in the end, it leaves industrial designers also pretty empty handed…