自然美“可生长性”的形上追思

Growth Potentiality of Natural Beauty: A Metaphysical Reflection

自然美的问题一直以来被认为是美学研究的“阿喀琉斯之蹱”,同时也是美学研究中的关键问题。在主体性精神高扬和当代西方分析美学占据主导地位并将艺术作为研究对象的语境下,为自然美的“可生长性”梳理出一条知识谱系成为当下美学研究的重要理论课题。“自然”作为美学范畴,其内涵和外延在不断变化,自然审美观念也发生了数次变革。在古希腊,自然美是艺术美的摹本;中世纪的自然美是上帝创造的产物;近现代的自然美是通过艺术性的“如画”原则确立的,艺术美成为自然审美欣赏的基础,从而也导致了自然美的遮蔽和艺术美的高扬。与此同时,面对“自然何以存在”问题,我们既要对自然存在的根源和意义进行形而上层面的追问,也要对自然存在的具体表现进行形而下层面的分析。该问题也涉及“本体论意义上的自然”“演化论过程中的自然”“人化过程中的自然”三个维度。自然美的真理性话语不仅可以从语义学的角度进行阐释,更可以借助艺术经验中真理的呈现视角进行分析,并包含“无蔽的敞开”与“主体本源性的审美经验”两方面内容。进入后现代文化语境,自然美开始向景观、环境、生态领域蔓延,自然美学体系由之得到了系统的建构。

Natural beauty,as a critical issue of aesthetic studies,has long been regarded as an “Achilles’ heel”. In the context where the spirituality of the subject is much favored and the dominant contemporary Western analytical aesthetics takes art as its focus in study,a genealogy of knowledge for the study of growth potentiality of natural beauty has become sorted out as an important theoretical subject of contemporary aesthetic studies. The aesthetic conception of nature has changed several times with the ever changing intension and extension of nature,as an aesthetic category. In ancient Greece,the beauty of art was believed to be a copy of the beauty of nature;In the Middle Ages,natural beauty was taken as the endowment from God;And in Modern times,natural beauty is recognized through the principle of picturesqueness of art,and artistic beauty becomes the basis of natural aesthetic appreciation,which in turn leads to the covering of natural beauty and the exalting of artistic beauty. At the same time,in front of the question of“why nature exists”,we should be not only in metaphysical quest for the source and meaning of natural existence,but also in physical analysis of the concrete manifestation of natural existence. And there are three dimensions in this question: “nature in the ontological sense”,“nature in the evolutionary process”and “nature in the humanization process”. The true discourse of natural beauty can be analysed in the perspective of not only semantics,but also the revelation of truth in artistic experience,which includes “unmasked openness”and “aesthetic experience of a subject’s origin”. In the context of postmodern culture,natural beauty is spreading to the fields of landscape,environment and ecology,and the knowledge discourse of natural beauty is thus expanded and enriched.