审美自由与伦理义务:重审利奥塔的崇高理论建构

Aesthetic Freedom and Ethical Obligation: A Review of the Construction of Lyotard's Theory of the Sublime

利奥塔将康德的审美理论放在当代文化语境中进行检验,发现在意识形态、技术科学等宏大叙事的作用之下,美感已经不再是知性和想象力之间的自由游戏状态,对美的审美也变成了"被准许的"和"现实主义的"。利奥塔因而致力于对宏大叙事的批判,要求艺术只有超越可辨认的表象,表现"不可表现之物",才能突破宏大叙事的结构。于是,他与先锋派艺术联合,并求助于多种理论资源,阐发出一套后现代崇高美学。利奥塔相信,当代文化中的审美活动只能在后现代的崇高美学中恢复。而以审美为代表的反思也是人类所特有的不同于技术的思维方式,它既是美学也是伦理学的基础,只有它才能使人类保持思想的自由。因此,利奥塔将崇高感视为一种伦理情感,并在美学的基础上建立了关于义务的伦理学理论。

Applying the aesthetic theory of Immanuel Kant into contemporary cultural context,Jean-Franqois Lyotard finds that due to grand narratives such as ideology and technological sciences,aesthetic feeling is no longer a free play of understanding and imagination,and aesthetics has become something "permitted"and "realistic".Lyotard criticizes grand narratives,claiming that art could break up the framework of grand narratives only if it jettisons the limits of recognizable representations and presents "the unpresentable".Lyotard therefore integrates avant-garde art as well as other theories into his postmodern aesthetics of the sublime.He believes that free aesthetic activities of contemporary culture could only be realized with the postmodern sublime. Moreover,reflection represented by aesthetic activities,according to Lyotard,is a unique human mentality different from techno- science,which,as he holds,is the basis for aesthetics and ethics,and could keep human thoughts free.Hence Lyotard regards the sense of the sublime as an ethic feeling,and forms his ethic theory about obligation based on aesthetics.