美与真:伽达默尔论艺术的真理问题

Beauty and Truth: Gadamer on the Truth of Art

伽达默尔《真理与方法》第一部分“艺术经验的真理问题”可谓对柏拉图“艺术即模仿”的回应。一方面,他需要应对现代自然科学对人类认识领域的绝对统治,为艺术等“精神科学”的真理性正名。另一方面,他认为尽管康德以及德国浪漫派的众位学者有效反驳了柏拉图的“艺术即模仿”论断,但“天才”等概念的提出极易让艺术陷入“主观性”的泥沼,远离真理。因此,伽达默尔以恢复艺术等“精神科学”与真理的联系为己任,他的代表作即以《真理与方法》命名,并首先探讨“艺术经验的真理问题”。伽达默尔结合从古典时期至德国浪漫派的文艺理论,在接受或批判前人的基础上提出自己的观点。择要而论,伽达默尔至少从“艺术即教化”“艺术即游戏”“艺术即存在方式”三方面论述艺术与真理的关系:教化的本质就是培养普遍共同的优美感觉(共通感),而对于情感教化,艺术的效果优于科学与哲学;艺术作为审美“游戏”,有其自身的主体性、规定性和结构,“游戏”自身的封闭性使其远离世俗世界的功利要求,自由地呈现存在的真理;借用普洛提诺的“流溢说”反驳柏拉图的“模仿论”,得出艺术作品并非远离真理的模仿。艺术是真理的显现,是一种存在事件,美即是真。

The first part of Gadamer's Truth and Method,namely,“The Problem of Truth in the Experience of Art”can be described as a response to Plato's“Art is imitation”.On the one hand,he needs to deal with the absolute domination of modern natural science over the field of human cognition to justify the capability of“Geisteswissenschaften”,such as the art of making the truth claims.On the other hand,he believes that although Kant and many German Romantic scholars effectively refuted Plato's assertion,the introduction of such concepts as“genius”can easily make art fall into the quagmire of“subjectivity”and stay away from the truth.Therefore,Gadamer takes it as his mission to restore the connection between the truth and“Geisteswissenschaften”.His masterpiece is named after“Truth and Method”,and the first part discusses“the problem of the truth in the experience of art”.Gadamer combines the literary theory from the classical period to the German Romanticism,and puts forward his own views based on accepting or criticizing the predecessors.Generally,Gadamer discusses the relationship between art and the truth from at least three aspects:“Art as Education”“Art as Play”and“Art is the way of being”,that is,the essence of education is to cultivate a common sense of beauty,while for emotional education,the effect of art is better than that of science and philosophy;as an aesthetic“play”,art has its own subjectivity,stipulation and structure,and the closure property of“play”keeps it away from the utilitarianism of the secular world,to present the truth of existence freely.Applying Plotinus's Emanation Theory to refute Plato's imitation theory,Gadamer concludes that art works are not imitations far away from the truth.Art is the manifestation of the truth,an existential event.Beauty is the truth.