中介的隐匿与发现——亚里士多德媒介思想发微

The Concealment and Discovery of Medium——Clarification of Aristotle’s Media Ideology

论文探讨了亚里士多德的认识论与本体论思想中所蕴含的媒介观念。认为亚氏哲学中主要包含两种不同的媒介观念,一是早期古希腊哲学中作为实体和世界之表征的“影像”意义上的媒介,这一概念在德谟克利特和柏拉图那里得到了清晰表达;二是气、水、火、土等作为世界之构成实体的元素媒介。前者被亚氏融入到“形式”的理论中,构成了西方哲学中关于存在之“表象性”的核心内涵;后者在媒介学兴起之后才被重新发掘。亚氏不仅提出了关于元素媒介和形式媒介的观念,而且其形式与质料、潜能与现实等二元区分中蕴含着对认识和存在的媒介性的深刻领悟,对于当前的媒介学研究具有重要启示意义。

The paper examines the notion of medium in Aristotle’s epistemological and ontological thought. The paper holds that Aristotle’s philosophy contains two different conceptions of mediums: the first is the medium of “image” as a representation of the entity and the world in early ancient Greek philosophy, which is clearly expressed in Democritus and Plato;the second is the elemental medium of air, water, fire, and earth as the constituent entities of the world. The former was incorporated into the theory of “form” by Aristotle and constituted the core connotation of the “representationality” of existence in Western philosophy;the latter was rediscovered only after the rise of mediology. Not only did Aristotle put forward the concept of elemental media and the media of form, but also his binary distinction between form and material, potential and reality contains a profound understanding of the medium of knowing and being, which has important implications for the current media studies.