论桑塔耶那自然主义美学

Comment on Santayana's Naturalism Aesthestics

从重新界定“美是什么”开始 ,桑塔耶那宣告了思辨美学的无效。他把感觉经验作为新美学的奠基石 ,将美与人的主观感觉紧紧相连 ,提出了美的“快感说”和艺术的冲动论。尽管桑塔耶那不同意传统思辨美学的客观主义立场 ,但是 ,把审美对象自然化、经验化 ,将诸种审美现象进行生物学和经验主义的诠释 ,使桑塔耶那的美学没能超越客观主义 。

Santayana's aesthetics begins with combatting speculative aesthetics. His theory based on how to answer the question of “what is beauty”, his definition of the word “beauty” is different from that of Plato and Hegel. He regards beauty as a kind of value or mood. That is to say, aesthetic judgement is not knowledge judgement. Nor moral judgement, Santayna thinks, moral value is passive, but aesthetic value is active. By this way, Santayana distinguishs aesthetics feeling with moral sense and thinks aesthetic feeling as a sense of pleasure. But Santayana confuses aesthetic feeling with pleasurable feeling, and this leads to hedonics,eventaualy direct his aesthetic theory towards biologism.