美是有神性的——奥古斯丁美学思想新论

Beauty Be Sacred——The New View on the Aesthetic Ideology of Aurelius Augustinus

作为西方中世纪教父时期美学思想的最大代表,奥古斯丁把上帝当作美的本体,从基督教神学的角度思考美学问题。其关于上帝的美、精神美和物质美的思想为解决古希腊罗马美学中具体的、可变的、有限的美与普遍的、永恒的、无限的美之间的对立提供了崭新的思路;把“美与丑的对立统一、和谐、映衬”的观念引入美学中,给予丑一定的美学地位,从而丰富了西方美学史范畴的内涵。奥古斯丁论述审美经验专注于人的内心世界,这是其美学思想一个不同于古希腊罗马美学的重要之处,在许多方面决定了西方中世纪美学发展的基本方向;强调艺术应该具有形而上的价值,其使命在于歌颂上帝和为宗教神学服务,从而为西方中世纪美学对艺术的地位和作用的理解奠定了基础。

As the most important representative figure in the Godfather Period of Western Medieval, Aurelius Augustinus regards God as ontology of beauty and ponders aesthetic problem from the angle of the Christian theology. His ideology on the beauty of God, of spirit, of substance offers the completely new thinking for solving the oppose in the Aesthetics of the Ancient Greece and Rome between the concrete, changeful, limited beauty and universal, eternal, infinite beauty. He draws the idea into Aesthetics on The oppose, unity, harmony, setting between beauty and ugly, gives ugly the particular aesthetic status and enriches the categories connotations of the Western aesthetic history. He devotes his mind to mans bosom worlds as he expounds aesthetic experience. This is one of the most important points of the difference between his aesthetic ideology and the Ancient Greece and Rome. So he determines the elementary developmental headings of the Western medieval aesthetics from many aspects. He insists that the art should bear metaphysical values and its role consists in singing God or serving for religion theology; thereby he establishes the comprehends of the Western Medieval on artistic status and function.