Kant said, “There are two things in the world. The more deeply and persistently I think about them, the more and more lasting the admiration and awe they arouse in my soul will be. One is The vast and brilliant starry sky above our heads is the lofty moral law in our hearts. They confirm to me that God is above my head and in my heart.” In this sentence, we can draw his virtues towards nature and people. Pursuit, it was these two pursuits that allowed him to appreciate and feel beauty, and then put forward his own great aesthetic concepts. At its origin, aesthetics is closely related to people's life situation and soul destination. It transcends physical desires, intellectual activities and utilitarian purposes, and is the highest level of spiritual pursuit in life. Aesthetics reveals the poetic existence contained in art and life through intuitive perception and life experience, so that the poetic existence of life is revealed to us, so that we can understand the existence of this life. Mystery. When we use these two concepts to understand Kant's aesthetic concepts and read literary works, we will discover the greatness of Kant, that is, aesthetics is also thoughtful and profound. In addition, Kant also talked about the necessary conditions for aesthetics, that is, a certain degree of appreciation. Noble taste relies on the ability to judge a certain object and the method of expression based on pleasure and displeasure without any serious relationship. In other words, appreciation has no specific purpose, it is just a perception when we see beautiful things, and the pleasure of freedom without any stakes obtained from it.
If classical aesthetics is a bridge from Western aesthetics to modern aesthetics, then Kant’s aesthetics is an important turning point in the history of the development of Western aesthetics. His ideological system is rich, profound and contains contradictions, leaving countless questions to future generations and providing countless enlightenments. There are many seeds that may grow into great aesthetic trees. These seeds may give rise to new aesthetic ideological systems, which may be expanded into specific theoretical viewpoints, or directly influence the era, or indirectly exert a huge influence on the development of aesthetics in the 20th century. This is especially true for his aesthetic concepts.
Kant's "aesthetic concept" theory summarizes the unique characteristics of all successful Chinese and Western literary and artistic works from the perspective of appreciation, and explains the relationship between the various psychological functions of artists in artistic creation from a creative perspective. . It had an important influence on the theoretical formation of later generations' "image thinking" theory and "image theory". His theory of aesthetic concepts is rich, profound, contradictory, complex, and has "infinite existence", which we need to keep reading and understanding.
From Kant’s aesthetic concept, we can get two points. On the one hand, Kant's aesthetic concept summarizes the same characteristics of all successful artistic images in ancient and modern times, both at home and abroad, which are typical in narratives and dramas. On the other hand, Kant’s aesthetic concept is the “artistic conception” of traditional Chinese aesthetics. As a unique category of Chinese classical aesthetics, "artistic conception" was first proposed by Wang Changling, a poet in the Tang Dynasty. At that time, he only put forward the three realms of objective lens, situation and artistic conception in parallel: there are three realms in poetry. One is the objective lens: If you want to write a landscape poem, then the landscape of Zhang Quan, rocks, clouds and peaks is extremely beautiful. The spirit is in the heart. Being in the landscape, seeing the landscape in the heart, shining in the palm of your hand, and then using your mind to understand the landscape, so Must be similar in shape. The second is the situation: entertainment, sorrow and resentment, all with the mind open and in the body, and then thinking about it, deeply feeling it. The third is artistic conception: if you open it to your mind and think about it in your heart, you will get its truth. It is also appropriate to use this expression of "artistic conception" in Wang Changling's "Poetry" to explain Kant's aesthetic concepts.
There are a large number of successful artistic images in Western narrative works and dramatic works. Each of these images is a model, and each of them does not have a clear and unique definition.
There are many interpretations of Shakespeare's "Hamlet". For example, Hamlet is more emotionally attached to his father. This attachment reflects the general will of people during the Renaissance and reflects the strong characteristics of the times; Hamlet's emotional love-hate relationship with his mother is not an Oedipus complex, but a consciousness of original sin; Hamlet's complex and changeable emotions towards Ophelia make the character's personality colorful, etc. Another example is Stendhal's novel "The Red and the Black" Julien, the protagonist, we cannot understand his life. Just like his heart, Julien is complex, contradictory, and cannot be clearly defined. From the most original positioning, he is a provincial youth of civilian origin; at the same time, he is pale, Beautiful, intelligent, eager to learn and think deeply, averse to manual labor, unwilling to be inferior to others, determined to stand out... Like Hamlet, we cannot give him a specific definition of all these. But it is these unspecific images that well confirm Kant’s aesthetic concepts. It is also these unspecific images that give us free imagination and bring us all kinds of spiritual enjoyment and pleasure. These seemingly messy and complicated characters and events But it creates all kinds of indescribable beauty in the hearts of readers.