身体美学视域中的审美与认识

Aesthetics and Cognition from the Perspective of Body Aesthetics

在鲍姆嘉通那里,审美是感性认识。然而审美的认识性被康德抹掉了。伽达默尔指出,康德将审美变成了纯粹的主观体验而无法陈述真理,这对美学是灾难性的。因此,今天的美学应当恢复审美的认识性,而身体美学为此提供了有益的视角。如果将审美视为具身认知或身体认知,那么审美的认识性和情感性就能并存。身体认知在语言中的突出表现是隐喻。隐喻是诗的本源,诗是身体认知的产物。扩大来说,审美也是一种身体认知。身体有身、心、灵三个层次,审美经验也有知觉、情感、领悟三个层次。审美经验介于科学知识与神秘经验之间。三者的关系表现为:科学知识是必须言说的、体现在命题中的“客观知识”;审美经验是难以言说但可以争取表达的“主体间性的知识”;神秘经验是无法言说的、不可分享的主观体验。在波兰尼揭橥了“默会知识”理论之后,审美经验的认识论地位才第一次有可能获得安顿。可以说,作为知识的审美经验就是一种默会知识。

Baumgarten thinks that aesthetics is sensitive cognition.However,the epistemic nature of aesthetics is erased by Kant.Gadamer points out that it is a disaster for aesthetics when Kant cleansed the epistemic nature of aesthetics and turned aesthetics into a purely subjective experience without being able to state the truth.Therefore,today’s aesthetics should restore its epistemic nature,and body aesthetics provides a useful perspective for this study.If aesthetics is considered as embodied cognition or body cognition,then the cognitive and emotional aspects of aesthetics can coexist.The prominent expression of embodied cognition in language is metaphor.Metaphor is the origin of poetry,and poetry is the product of body cognition.On a large scale,aesthetics is also a kind of body cognition.The body has three levels:body,mind and spirit,and aesthetic experience also has three levels:perception,emotion,and apprehension.Aesthetic experience is between scientific knowledge and mystical experience.The relationship between those three is:scientific knowledge is“objective knowledge”that must be spoken and expressed in propositions;aesthetic experience is“intersubjective knowledge”that is difficult to speak but can be sought to be expressed;mysterious experience is an unspeakable and unshareable subjective experience.The epistemological status of aesthetic experience becomes possible on the base of Polanyi’s theory of“tacit knowledge”.It can be said that the aesthetic experience as knowledge is a kind of tacit knowledge.