Create according to the laws of beauty. Electronic Library of the International Center of the Roerichs
Man also forms matter according to the laws of beauty.
Beauty is widely spilled in the world around us. Not only works of art are beautiful. Both a scientific theory and a separate scientific experiment can be beautiful. We call an athlete's jump, a virtuoso goal scored, a chess game beautiful. A beautiful thing made by a worker - a master of his craft. The woman's face and the sunrise in the mountains are beautiful. This means that in the process of perception of all these objects that are so different from each other, there is something in common. What is this?
It is incredibly difficult to define in words what exactly motivates us to recognize an object as beautiful. Beauty escapes us as soon as we try to explain it in words, translate it from the language of images into the language of logical concepts. “The phenomenon of beauty,” writes the philosopher A.V. Gulyga, - contains a certain mystery, comprehended only intuitively and inaccessible to discursive thinking. "The necessity of distinguishing "science" and "humanites" (the realm of science and the realm of values. - P.S.), - continues this thought L.B. Bazhenov, - inevitably follows from the difference between thought and experience. Thought is objective, experience is subjective. We can, of course, make experience the object of thought, but then it disappears as experience. No objective description can replace subjective reality experiences."
So, beauty is, first of all, an experience, an emotion, and a positive emotion at that - a kind of feeling of pleasure, different from the pleasures that are given to us by many useful, vital objects that are not endowed with qualities that can give rise to a sense of beauty. But we know that “any emotion is a reflection by the human brain of some actual need and the probability (possibility) of satisfying this need, which the subject evaluates by involuntarily comparing information about the means predictively necessary to achieve the goal (satisfaction of the need), with the information received at the moment” (see “Science and Life” No. 3, 1965).
If beauty is an experience, an emotional reaction to a contemplated object, but we are not able to explain it in words, we will try at least to find the answer to a number of questions leading to the solution of this riddle.
First question. In connection with the satisfaction of what need (or needs) does the emotion of pleasure delivered by beauty arise? Information about what exactly comes to us from outside world in this moment?
Second question. How is this emotional experience, this pleasure, different from all the others?
And finally, the third question. Why in the process of the long evolution of living beings, including the cultural and historical development of man, did such a mysterious, but, apparently, necessary for something, sense of beauty arise?
Perhaps the most complete listing distinctive features beauty was given by the great German philosopher Immanuel Kant in his Analytic of the Beautiful. Let's look at each of his four definitions.
“A beautiful object causes pleasure, free from any interest”
The first "law of beauty", so formulated by Kant, causes some confusion. Kant's statement comes into conflict with the need-information theory of emotions, which we referred to above. From this theory it follows that behind any interest lies the need that gave rise to it. According to Kant, the pleasure delivered by beauty turns out to be an emotion... without a need! Apparently, however, this is not the case. Speaking about freedom from "interest", Kant had in mind only the vital, material and social needs of a person in food, clothing, procreation, in social recognition, in justice, in observing ethical standards and so on. However, a person has a number of other needs, among which are those that are commonly called "aesthetic needs".
First of all, it is the need for knowledge, the craving for something new, still unknown, not seen before. Kant himself defined the beautiful as "the play of cognitive abilities." Exploratory behavior, free from searching for food, a female, nest building material, etc., can be observed even in animals. In man, it reaches its highest manifestations in disinterested cognition. However, is it disinterested? Experiments have shown that if a person is completely deprived of the influx of new impressions, while satisfying all his physical needs (food, comfortable bed, thermal comfort), he will very quickly develop severe neuropsychiatric disorders in such an information-poor environment.
The need for new, previously unknown information, the pragmatic meaning of which has not yet been clarified, can be satisfied in two ways: by directly extracting information from environment or by recombining traces of previously received impressions, that is, by means of creative imagination. Often both channels are used together. Imagination forms a hypothesis, which is compared with reality, and if it corresponds to objective reality, new knowledge about the world and about ourselves is born.
In order to satisfy the need for knowledge, an object that we evaluate as beautiful must contain an element of novelty, surprise, unusualness, must stand out against the background of the average norm of features inherent in other related objects. Note that not every degree of novelty causes positive emotion. In experiments on young animals and children, the American psychologist T. Schneirla found that only moderate novelty attracts, where elements of the new are combined with previously known signs. Excessively new and unexpected scares, causes displeasure and fear. These data are in good agreement with the need-information theory of emotions, since not only newly received information is important for an emotional reaction, but also its comparison with pre-existing ideas.
The need for knowledge, curiosity prompt us to contemplate objects that promise nothing to satisfy our material and social needs, give us the opportunity to see in these objects something significant that distinguishes them from many other similar objects. "Disinterested" attention to the subject is an important, but clearly insufficient condition for the discovery of beauty. Some additional needs must be added to the need for cognition, so that as a result an emotional experience of the beautiful arises.
Analyzing many examples of human activity, where the end result is evaluated not only as useful, but also beautiful, we see that in this case, the need for economy of forces, the need for armament with those knowledge, skills and abilities that lead to achievement of the goal.
On the example of playing chess, the aesthetic and playwright V.M. Wolkenstein showed that we evaluate a game as beautiful not when a win is achieved by a long positional struggle, but when it arises unpredictably, as a result of a spectacularly sacrificed piece, with the help of a tactic that we least of all expected. Formulating the general rule of aesthetics, the author concludes: "beauty is an expedient and difficult (difficult) overcoming." Writer Bertolt Brecht defined beauty as the overcoming of difficulties. In its most general form, we can say that beauty is the reduction of complexity to simplicity. According to the physicist W. Heisenberg, such a reduction is achieved in the process of scientific activity by the discovery of a general principle that facilitates the understanding of phenomena. We perceive such a discovery as a manifestation of beauty. Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences M.V. Volkenstein recently proposed a formula according to which the aesthetic value of solving a scientific problem is determined by the ratio of its complexity to the minimum research program, that is, to the most universal pattern that allows us to overcome the complexity of the initial conditions (see "Science and Life" No. 9, 1988).
Beauty in science arises from a combination of three conditions: the objective correctness of a decision (a quality that in itself has no aesthetic value), its unexpectedness, and economy.
With beauty as overcoming complexity, we meet not only in the activities of a scientist. The result of an athlete's efforts can be measured in seconds and centimeters, but we will call his jump and his run beautiful only when a record sports result is obtained in the most economical way. We admire the work of a virtuoso carpenter, demonstrating the highest class of professional craftsmanship, which is based on the maximum armament of the relevant skills with the minimum expenditure of effort.
The combination of these three needs - knowledge, armament (competence, equipment) and economy of strength, their simultaneous satisfaction in the process of activity or in evaluating the result of other people's activities cause us a feeling of pleasure from contact with what we call beauty.
"It's great that everyone likes it"
Since we cannot logically justify why a given object is perceived as beautiful, the only confirmation of the objectivity of our aesthetic assessment is the ability of this object to cause a similar experience in other people. In other words, empathy comes to the aid of consciousness as a shared, socialized knowledge, knowledge together with someone.
Kant, and after him the author of these lines, one can object that aesthetic assessments are extremely subjective, they depend on the culture in which a given person was brought up, and in general - "there is no arguing about tastes." The art historian will immediately give examples of innovative paintings, which were first called illiterate daubs, and then proclaimed masterpieces and placed in the best museums in the world. Without denying the dependence of aesthetic assessments on the historically established norms adopted in this social environment, on the level of intellectual development of a person, his education, conditions of upbringing, etc., we can offer a certain universal measure of beauty. Its only criterion is the phenomenon of empathy, which cannot be translated into the language of logical proofs.
It is wonderful that - is recognized as such by a sufficiently large number of people for quite a long time. A massive, but short-term passion or long-term veneration by a limited circle of connoisseurs cannot testify to the outstanding aesthetic merits of an object. Only wide public recognition for many years serves as an objective measure of these merits. Most clearly, the justice of what has been said is manifested in the fate of great works of art, to which people have been turning for centuries as a source of aesthetic pleasure.
“Beauty is the expediency of an object without a concept of purpose”
Kant's third "law of beauty" can be interpreted as follows. Since we are not able to define in words what qualities an object must have in order to be beautiful, we cannot set ourselves the goal of making a beautiful object without fail. We are forced to first make it (make a thing, perform a sports exercise, perform an act, create a work of art, etc.), and then evaluate whether it is beautiful or not. In other words, the object turns out to be relevant to the goal, which was not specified in advance. So what kind of conformity is Kant talking about? Conformity to what?
Every time the beauty of an object is discussed, the significance of its form is emphasized. “A work of art,” wrote Hegel, “which lacks a proper form, is not, precisely for this reason, a genuine, that is, a true work of art.” In a broader sense, not limited to the sphere of art, the philosopher A.V. Gulyga considers beauty as a "value-significant form". But in what case does the form become value-significant, and in general, what is “value”? Academician P.N. Fedoseev, formulating the problem of values, recalls that for Marxism "... the highest cultural and moral values are those that most contribute to the development of society and the all-round development of the individual." Let us remember this emphasis on development, it will come in handy more than once.
We can say that beauty is the maximum correspondence of the form (organization, structure) of a phenomenon to its purpose in human life. Such conformity is expediency. For example, an athlete's jump, despite a record result, we will perceive as ugly if the result is achieved by extreme effort, a convulsive jerk, with an almost pained grimace on his face. After all, sport is a means of harmonious development, physical improvement of a person, and only secondarily - a means of social success and a way to receive material rewards.
It's really useful because it's beautiful, said Antoine de Saint-Exupery. But he couldn't say: it's really beautiful, because... it's useful. There is no inverse relationship here.
We don't recognize beautiful thing utilitarian useless, a football player's blow past the goal, professionally illiterate work, an immoral act. But only the utilitarian usefulness of a thing, action, deed does not yet make them beautiful.
However, we were carried away by analysis and almost violated by our reasoning the fourth and last "law of beauty", namely, that
“The beautiful is known without the mediation of a concept”
Speaking in language modern science, this means that the activity of the brain, as a result of which there is an emotional reaction of pleasure from the contemplation of beauty, proceeds at an unconscious level.
Let us briefly recall that the higher nervous (mental) activity of a person has a three-level (consciousness, subconsciousness, superconsciousness) functional organization (see "Science and Life" No. 12, 1975).
As we mentioned above, consciousness is a specific form of reflection of reality, operating with knowledge, which, with the help of words, mathematical symbols, technology samples, images of works of art, can be transferred to other people, including other generations in the form of cultural monuments. By transferring his knowledge to another, a person thereby separates himself from this other and from the world, the knowledge of which he transfers. Communication with others secondarily generates the ability of a mental dialogue with oneself, that is, leads to the emergence of self-consciousness. The inner “I”, which judges my own actions, is nothing but the “others” that remain in my memory.
The subconscious is a kind of unconscious mental, to which belongs everything that was conscious or can become conscious in certain conditions. These are skills that are well automated and therefore cease to be realized, motivational conflicts ousted from the sphere of consciousness, social norms of behavior deeply assimilated by the subject, the regulatory function of which is experienced as the “voice of conscience”, “call of the heart”, “call of duty”, etc. In addition to such a previously realized experience that fills the subconscious with concrete, external in origin content, there is also a direct channel of influence on the subconscious - imitative behavior.
Imitative behavior plays a decisive role in mastering the skills that give human activity (industrial, sports, artistic, etc.) the features of art. It's about about the so-called "personal knowledge", which is not realized by either the teacher or the student and which can be transmitted exclusively in a non-verbal way, without the help of words. The goal is achieved by following a set of implicit norms or rules. Observing the teacher and striving to surpass him, the student subconsciously masters these norms.
Superconsciousness in the form of creative intuition reveals itself at the initial stages of any creative process, not controlled by consciousness and will. The neurophysiological basis of superconsciousness is the transformation and recombination of traces of previously received impressions stored in the subject's memory. The activity of the superconsciousness is always focused on satisfying the dominant vital, social or ideal need, the specific content of which determines the nature of the emerging hypotheses. The second guiding factor is the life experience of the subject, fixed in his subconscious and consciousness. It is consciousness that has the most important function of selecting emerging hypotheses: first, through their logical analysis, and later, using such a criterion of truth as practice.
To which of the spheres of the unconscious mentality - to the subconscious or to the superconscious - does the activity of the mechanism belong, as a result of which the emotional experience of beauty arises?
Here, of course, the role of the subconscious is great. Throughout their existence, people have repeatedly convinced themselves of the advantages of certain forms of organization and their own actions, and things created by man. The list of such forms includes the proportionality of the parts of the whole, the absence of unnecessary details that do not work for the main idea, the coordination of the combined efforts, the rhythm of repetitive actions, and much, much more. Since these rules turned out to be valid for a wide variety of objects, they acquired an independent value, were generalized, and their use became automated, applied "without the mediation of a concept", i.e. unconsciously.
But all the assessments we have listed (and others similar to them) testify to the correct, expedient organization of actions and things, that is, only to the useful. What about beauty? She eluded logical analysis again!
The fact is that the subconscious mind fixes and generalizes norms, something repetitive, average, stable, fair sometimes throughout the history of mankind.
Beauty, on the other hand, is always a violation of the norm, a deviation from it, a surprise, a discovery, a joyful surprise. For a positive emotion to arise, it is necessary that the information received exceed the previously existing forecast, so that the probability of achieving the goal at that moment increases significantly. Many of our emotions - positive and negative - arise at an unconscious level of higher nervous activity of a person. The subconscious mind is able to assess the change in the probability of satisfying needs. But the subconscious itself is not able to reveal, extract from the object something new that, in comparison with the “standards” stored in the subconscious, will give a positive emotion of pleasure from the perception of beauty. The discovery of beauty is a function of the superconscious.
Direction finder of creative thought
Because the positive emotions testify to the approach to the goal (satisfaction of the need), and negative emotions - to the removal from it, higher animals and humans seek to maximize (strengthen, repeat) the former and minimize (interrupt, prevent) the latter. According to the figurative expression of Academician P. Anokhin, emotions play the role of “bearings” of behavior: striving for the pleasant, the body seizes the useful, and avoiding the unpleasant, prevents the meeting with harmful, dangerous, destructive. It is quite clear why evolution "created" and natural selection fixed the brain mechanisms of emotions - their vital importance for the existence of living systems is obvious.
Well, what about the emotion of pleasure from the perception of beauty? What does she serve? Why is she? Why do we rejoice in something that does not satisfy hunger, does not protect against bad weather, does not promote rank in the group hierarchy, does not provide utilitarian useful knowledge?
The answer to the question about the origin of aesthetic feeling in the process of anthropogenesis and the subsequent cultural and historical evolution of man, we can formulate as follows; the ability to perceive beauty is a necessary tool for creativity.
Any creativity is based on the mechanism of creating hypotheses, conjectures, assumptions, peculiar “mental mutations and recombinations” of traces of previously accumulated experience, including the experience of previous generations. From these hypotheses, selection occurs - the determination of their truth, that is, their correspondence to objective reality. As we said above, the selection function belongs to consciousness, and then to practice. But there are so many hypotheses, the vast majority of which will be rejected, that checking them all is clearly an unrealistic task, just as it is unrealistic for a chess player to enumerate all options each next move. That is why a preliminary "sieve" is absolutely necessary to screen out hypotheses unworthy of verification at the level of consciousness.
It is this pre-selection that the superconscious mind, usually called creative intuition, is engaged in. What criteria does it follow? First of all, not formulated in words (i.e., unconscious) criterion of beauty, emotionally experienced pleasure.
Prominent cultural figures have spoken about this more than once. Physicist W. Heisenberg: "... a glimpse of the beautiful in exact natural science makes it possible to recognize a great relationship even before its detailed understanding, before it can be rationally proven." Mathematician J. Hadamard. “Among the numerous combinations formed by our subconscious, the majority are uninteresting and useless, but therefore they are not capable of affecting our aesthetic sense; they will never be realized by us; only some are harmonious and therefore both beautiful and useful; they are able to arouse our special geometrical intuition, which will draw our attention to them and thus enable them to become conscious ... Whoever is deprived of it (aesthetic feeling) will never become a real inventor. Aviation designer O.K. Antonov: “We know perfectly well that a beautiful plane flies well, and an ugly one does not fly well, or even will not fly at all ... The desire for beauty helps to accept, correct solution makes up for the lack of data.
The reader may note that all these arguments in favor of the heuristic function emotional experience beauty we borrow in the field of scientific and technical creativity. And what about beauty natural phenomena, with the beauty of a human face Or deed?
The world according to the laws of beauty
Here, first of all, it should be emphasized that perception, as a result of which a feeling of beauty arises, is a creative act. In each phenomenon, beauty must be discovered, and in many cases it is not revealed immediately, not at the first contemplation. The discovery of beauty in the creations of nature is a secondary phenomenon in relation to the creative abilities of man. “In order for a person to perceive beauty in the field of auditory or visual, he must learn to create himself,” A.V. Lunacharsky. This, of course, does not mean that only composers enjoy music, and only professional artists enjoy painting. But a completely uncreative person, with an undeveloped superconsciousness, will remain deaf to the beauty of the surrounding world. To perceive beauty, he must be endowed with sufficiently strong needs for knowledge, armament (competence) and economy of strength. He must accumulate in the subconscious the standards of a harmonious, expedient, economically organized, so that the superconsciousness discovers in the object a deviation from the norm in the direction of exceeding this norm.
In other words, a person discovers beauty in the phenomena of nature, perceiving them as creations of Nature. He, most often unconsciously, transfers to the phenomena of nature the criteria of his own creative abilities, his creative activity. Depending on outlook this person as such a "creator" he means either the objective course of evolution, the process of self-development of nature, or God, as the creator of everything that exists. In any case, a person's consciousness does not so much reflect the beauty that initially exists in the world around him, but rather projects onto this world the objective laws of his creative activity - the laws of beauty.
Animals have positive and negative emotions as internal guidelines for behavior in the direction of what is useful or in the elimination of what is harmful to their life. But, not being endowed with consciousness and sub- and superconsciousness derived from it, they do not possess those specific positive emotions that we associate with the activity of creative intuition, with the experience of beauty. Do not have a feeling of this kind of pleasure and children up to a certain age. Hence the need aesthetic education and aesthetic education as an organic part of the mastery of culture, the formation of a spiritually rich personality.
Education involves the amount of knowledge about the subject of aesthetic perception. A person completely unfamiliar with symphonic music is unlikely to enjoy complex symphonic works. But since the mechanisms of the subconscious and the superconscious are involved in aesthetic perception, it is impossible to confine ourselves to education, that is, the assimilation of knowledge. Knowledge must be supplemented aesthetic education development of the inherent needs of each of us for knowledge, competence and economy of forces. The simultaneous satisfaction of these needs can give rise to aesthetic pleasure from the contemplation of beauty.
The main form of development of superconsciousness in the first years of life is a game that requires fantasy, imagination, everyday creative discoveries in the child's comprehension of the world around him, the disinterestedness of play, its relative freedom from satisfying any needs of a pragmatic or socially prestigious order, contributes to the fact that the need for weapons takes a dominant place.
Here we come close to answering the question why a utilitarian object, a false scientific theory, an immoral act, an erroneous movement of an athlete cannot be beautiful. The fact is that the superconsciousness, which is so necessary for the discovery of beauty, always works for the dominant need, which steadily dominates the structure of the needs of a given person.
In science, the goal of knowledge is objective truth, the goal of art is truth, and the goal of behavior dictated by the social need “for others” is good. The expressiveness in the structure of the motives of a given personality of the ideal need for cognition and the altruistic need “for others” we call spirituality (with an emphasis on cognition) and sincerity (with an emphasis on altruism). Needs that are directly satisfied by beauty turn out to be inextricably linked with the motivational dominant that originally initiated the activity of the superconscious. As a result, "pure beauty", in Kant's terminology, is complicated by "accompanying beauty". For example, the beautiful in a person becomes a “symbol of the morally good,” since truth and good merge in beauty (Hegel).
It is the mechanism of the activity of the superconsciousness, "working" for the dominant need, that explains to us why beauty "free from any interest" is so closely connected with the search for truth and truth. A "beautiful lie" may exist for some time, but only at the expense of its plausibility, pretending to be true.
Well, what about those cases where the dominant need, for which the Superconsciousness works, is selfish, asocial or even antisocial? After all, evil can be no less inventive than good. Malicious intent has its own brilliance and creative insights. Yet "beautiful villainy" is impossible because it violates the second law of beauty, according to which beauty should please everyone.
Recall that empathy is by no means a direct reproduction of the emotions experienced by another person. We empathize only when we share the reason for the experience. We will not rejoice with the traitor who cunningly deceived his victim, and we will not sympathize with the grief of the villain over the failed atrocity.
The need-information theory of emotions also exhaustively answers the question of the depiction of terrible, ugly, disgusting phenomena of life by art. The need that art satisfies is the need to know the truth and the good. The emotions that arise in this case depend on the extent to which this work satisfied our needs and how perfect its form is. That is why a true work of art will evoke positive emotions in us even if it tells about the dark sides of reality. The face of Peter from Pushkin's "Poltava" is terrible for his enemies and beautiful as God's thunderstorm for the author of "Poltava", and through him - for the reader. So let's re-emphasize. Assessments of the “useful - harmful” type contribute to the preservation of physical existence by people in a broader sense - the preservation of it social status values created by it, etc., and “useless” beauty, being an instrument of creativity, is a factor of development, improvement, and forward movement. Striving for the pleasure that beauty brings, that is, satisfying the needs of knowledge, competence and economy of strength, a person forms his creations according to the laws of beauty and in this activity he himself becomes more harmonious, more perfect, spiritually richer. Beauty, which must certainly “please everyone”, brings him closer to other people through empathy with beauty, again and again reminds him of the existence of universal human values.
Maybe that is why “beauty will save the world” (F.M. Dostoevsky).
And the last. Is beauty the only language of the superconscious? Apparently not. In any case, we know another language of the superconscious, the name of which is humor. If beauty affirms something more perfect than the average norm, then humor helps to sweep away, overcome obsolete and exhausted norms. It is no coincidence that history moves in such a way that humanity cheerfully parted with its past.
We again met a beautiful object: a thing, a landscape, a human act. We are aware of their beauty and strive to draw other people's attention to it. But why is this object beautiful? It is impossible to explain this with words. The superconsciousness told us about it. In your own language.
Pavel Vasilyevich Simonov is an academician, a specialist in the study of higher nervous activity.
"Science and Life" No. 4, 1989.
Cities and districts 21.02.2019
Jury convicts killer
The jury of the Amur Region considered a criminal case on charges of a resident of the city of Zeya in the murder in May 2016 of police officer Taras Sokolyuk. The case was considered on the complaint of the convict, who did not agree with the earlier verdict.
As a result, the jury sentenced the accused of murder to eighteen and a half years in prison with a sentence to be served in a colony. strict regime. The verdict has not entered into force yet.
Counterfeiters Detained
Three banknotes worth five thousand rubles with signs of forgery were found in the outlets of the Skovorodinsky district. Suspicion of counterfeiting fell on two residents of Zeya.
According to the information received, the suspects were detained by officers of the Zeisky Defense Ministry of the Interior of Russia at their place of residence in the city of Zeya. The detainees are taken into custody. Their involvement in similar crimes committed on the territory of the Amur region is being checked.
Test for yourself
For the third time in the Amur Region, an all-Russian action will be held, when the parents of graduates will be able to change places with their children and go through the entire procedure of the Unified State Exam: from the frame of a metal detector to receiving the results. A single day for passing the exam in Zee will be held on February 24 at the Lyceum.
In addition to the parents of 11th graders, the opportunity to pass the exam is provided to officials, public and creative figures.
Quarantine lifted
Rabies quarantine has been lifted in all districts of the Amur Region. The resolution was recently signed by Governor Vasily Orlov.
According to the head of the department of veterinary medicine and livestock breeding of the Amur region, Sergei Samokhvalov, all the necessary measures have been taken in the outbreaks where cases of the disease were previously registered. No patients were identified this year.
Recall that rabies was recorded in four districts of the Amur Region: Mikhailovsky, Zavitinsky, Oktyabrsky and Konstantinovsky. In the last three, the quarantine extended to forests, as the virus was detected in foxes and raccoon dogs. The virus did not reach the Zeya region.
All domestic animals of the southern and central regions have been universally vaccinated against rabies. In general, as reported by the press service of the government of the Amur Region, the situation in the region is assessed as favorable.
The October hospital has its own water
In Oktyabrsky, specialists from the Amur Territorial Institute for Construction Surveys (AmurTISIz) drilled a well specifically for the needs of the hospital. Now the hospital will have its own water.
Initially, no one believed in the success of this event. It was believed that there was no water in the village, and wells had not been drilled before. Water was brought to the village from a spring located outside of Oktyabrsky.
In the process of drilling, before reaching the 30-meter level, the drill broke down, the employees of AmurTISIZ had to return to Blagoveshchensk to repair the equipment, and then resume work. As a result, the rock was drilled to a depth of 35 meters.
Of course, own well will solve several problems of the Oktyabrskaya hospital at once.
Voting for the proposed measures for the development of the Far East (FE) began on the portal dv2025.rf. The Ministry for the Development of the Russian Far East believes that thanks to this, it is possible to form a rating of the relevance of the measures that should be provided for by the National Program for the Development of the Far East until 2025. It will be ready by September 1st.
By February 20, about 63,000 users had registered on the site, who had made almost 15,000 proposals, 636 of which applied to the Amur Region.
As a reminder, from January 15 to
On February 15, the head of the city of Zeya, Sergey Gibadullin, met with the population, a survey was conducted, during which employees of organizations made their proposals for the development of not only our city, but the entire Far East.
Six-year-olds passed the tests
Preschoolers again passed the test of the All-Russian physical culture and sports complex "Ready for Labor and Defense" on the basis of kindergarten No. 14. Six-year-old pupils of the preparatory groups passed the standards for push-ups, long jumps from a place, and also tested themselves in exercises for flexibility, abs and throwing ball to the target. According to preliminary data, three children passed the tests for gold badges of distinction, ten for silver ones, and one child earned bronze.
The next stage will take place in the spring. Boys and girls will have to fulfill two mandatory standards: “kilometer run” and 30-meter run. Only after these tests can children be awarded badges of distinction.
« My sports mom
The sports event "My sports mother" was held in the sports and recreation complex in Zei. The competitions are organized within the framework of the All-Russian action “Father's Patrol. We are ready".
The participants of the competition were members of the women's basketball team with their children. Together with their daughters and sons, the mothers-athletes performed exercises on the press, did push-ups, jumped, tested themselves in speed and accuracy. At the end, all participants were given certificates.
(According to the correspondent “ZVS”).
News of the Amur region
The message of the President included several important economic projects for the Amur Region
Vasily Orlov commented on Vladimir Putin's speech: "The President's Address was devoted to topics that are very important for the Far East. A lot was devoted to demographic issues, support for low-income segments of the population and poverty reduction. These are key issues for us.
A large set of measures is envisaged with funding from the federal budget. Our task is to bring the regional legislation in time in order to bring all these initiatives to life."
Of the economic projects, the head of the region called the expansion of the capacity of the BAM and the Trans-Siberian railway and the need for a wider use of gas motor fuel as especially important for the Amur Region. "Taking into account our gas projects for our region, this opens up new opportunities for the use of such technology," the Governor of the Amur region explained.
Much attention is paid to the development of education, the provision of industry, trained by modern production personnel.
The President spoke about the need for a network of Quantorium technology parks for children, as well as about the development of a branch of the Sirius children's educational center. "In both directions, work is underway in our region. The Quantorium in Blagoveshchensk was opened at the end of 2018. In 2019, we will open the Quantorium in Svobodny. We will create a branch on the basis of the Kolosok children's health camp children's center Sochi Sirius. The agreement was signed at an investment forum in Sochi."
It is planned to allocate twice as much to prepare for the upcoming heating period in the Amur region
It is planned to allocate about 200 million rubles for the repair work of housing and communal services. This proposal was made by the head of the regional ministry of housing and communal services of the region Sergey Gordeev at a meeting of the regional government.
"Since the beginning of the heating season, 57 violations have been registered in the operation of communal infrastructure facilities, most of them in heating networks - 19 cases and water supply networks - 23 cases. Most of the violations are caused by dilapidated networks and equipment," the minister said.
The Ministry of Housing and Public Utilities has already begun to form a consolidated repair plan for 2019-2020. According to the minister, it will be prepared by May 1 following the results of the heating period. When forming it, not only the technological accidents that took place in the winter of 2018-2919 will be taken into account, but also the comments of the procurators.
First Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Polovaykina instructed to work out the option of forming a register of works by March in order to speed up work on the preparation of boiler houses and networks.
The fire season in the Amur region in 2019 may begin earlier than usual
At the next meeting of the Government of the Amur Region, the issue of organizing the preparation of settlements for the spring fire hazard period of 2019 was considered.
Minister of Forestry and Fire Safety of the region Aleksey Venglinsky drew attention to a number of meteor records and an unusually warm end of winter. In this regard, the fire hazard period in the region may begin as early as March 20-25. Taking into account the fact that the winter was not snowy, and the soil was not sufficiently moistened, preventive annealing will not be carried out. The main emphasis should be placed on the cleaning of hazardous areas in a fireless way. Given the tight deadlines, work on the preparation of settlements must be completed no later than March 20.
Aleksey Venglinsky noted that local governments have developed fire protection plans for the territories of municipal districts in general and detailed maps of the preventive measures to settlements.
“These documents determined the places for the creation of protective firebreaks, the annealing of dry vegetation, and the cleanup of the territory. Areas not cleared of dry vegetation are marked. The bulk of the firefighting activities were carried out in autumn period 2018. Planned to clear 12,447 "dangerous areas". To date, work has been carried out at 9,307 sites, which is 74.8% of all planned activities,” said Alexey Venglinsky.
Close to completion of work on the preparation of settlements in Tynda (100%), Belogorsk (94%), Svobodny (92%), Blagoveshchensk (91%), Raychikhinsk (91%), Seryshevsky district (92%).
On the territory of the region, 550 volunteer fire departments have been created in 517 settlements with a total number of 2288 people, including 157 voluntary fire brigades and 393 voluntary fire brigades.
Also, in order to extinguish natural fires and protect settlements from them, in 2019, 46 rapid response teams are being trained, created on the basis of the divisions of the fire and search and rescue services of the region with a total number of 230 people.
“Indeed, the weather this year makes its own adjustments to our plans. Therefore, the leadership of the cities and regions of the Amur region should not postpone work on preparing for the fire season, but start it now. The sooner we secure settlements and their inhabitants, the better. After all, the season this year may start much earlier than usual,” said Vasily Orlov, Governor of the Amur Region.
(According to reports from the site www.amurobl.ru).
Philosophy of art. What is beauty? Philosophy from Hegel to Nietzsche (XIX century)
2.1 Philosophy of art. What is beauty
Many philosophers at different times have defined the term "art" in different ways. At first they believed that art was born by the need to imitate, but later they realized that this was wrong, because even primitive man introduced fantasy into his work. Changes took place in the 23rd century, and the understanding of art also became different. The French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau defined art not as a description of the external world, but, above all, as an expression of human passions and emotions. A similar point of view was also held by German philosophers (Johann Herder, the poet Johann Goethe, and others). They believed that the main goal of art is by no means the reproduction of beauty and the display of external reality, but the depiction of the inner life of a person.
In the modern sense, art is the ability to express oneself in any material on the basis of aesthetic values. Also, the concept of "art" can be denoted artistic creativity generally. As you know, there are many types of this creativity or art: literature, architecture, sculpture, painting, graphics, arts and crafts, theater, music, ballet, cinema, dance, circus, etc. All these types of human creative activity reflect world in images. The image is a clot of artistic vision and experience, to which art gives expressiveness and aesthetic value. The specificity of artistic creativity lies in the fact that a person of art - an artist, creates new artistic forms in which his worldview, the depth of his thoughts is revealed. He thinks in these images.
Therefore, we can say that the value of art depends on the philosophical views of the artist - an artist.
The values of art are also directly related to technology. After all, for an engineer, designer, etc., the similarity between a work of art and a technical product is very significant. Both the artist and the technician are skillful craftsmen, only the goals of their activity are different.
The purpose of a work of art is to function as beauty, as a symbol of beauty. Art is a means that allows you to create the world according to the laws of beauty. Art and beauty are two closely related concepts.
We live in a world of beauty, it surrounds us. However, the concept of beauty is deeper than most people realize. Beauty is something beautiful, sublime, aesthetic.
Aesthetic is a feeling-value directed at the causative agent of this feeling and has reached the necessary degree of perfection.
Aesthetics is a Greek word meaning "pertaining to feeling". But this very feeling was considered only a moment of practical activity. The cosmos was recognized as the embodiment of beauty, everything else was considered beautiful to the extent that it was close to the harmony of the cosmos. Art also sought to imitate nature.
In the Middle Ages, everything beautiful was considered a reflection of the spiritual beauty of God, visible beauty was recognized as a manifestation of invisible beauty. The purpose of art was to bring man closer to God.
In the aesthetics of the New Age (the Renaissance), the person himself, his body, was proclaimed a model of beauty. At that time, classicism reached its peak, demanding harmonic clarity, logical simplicity and rigor of forms, nobility of style, fidelity to nature. Representatives of classicism in art were Schiller, Goethe, Mozart, Beethoven, Fonvizin, Derzhavin and others. They were replaced by the romantics, who rejected the straightforwardly rational understanding of art. These were such people as Hugo, Lermontov, Wagner and others. They sought to emancipate the diverse abilities of the individual.
In the twentieth century there were changes in philosophy, and, accordingly, in art. Romanticism was replaced by realism. In Russia it was socialist realism - a translation into aesthetic language of the philosophy of historical materialism.
Currently, our country is searching for new aesthetic landmarks.
From this history of aesthetics, we can conclude that the understanding of beauty is determined by the philosophy used, the philosophy changes, the idea of beauty also changes. Beauty is an aesthetic interpretation. Like all aesthetic values, it is associated with feeling, with emotion. The laws of beauty dictate the direction of art. Art, in turn, helps us to understand the world. It gives us a richer, more vibrant and colorful image of reality. Man by nature creates various ways of comprehending reality. In art, he expresses his own fantasy and the depths of human experiences. It is characteristic of human nature that he is not limited to one single approach to reality, but can choose different points of view and move from one aspect of reality to others.
The life of Socrates as an example of practical philosophy
Socrates is a true commoner, a faithful son of Athenian democracy. Its spiritual appearance takes shape in the era of Pericles, in the period of that unprecedented flowering of Athens, which gave the world Phidias, Sophocles, Euripides ...
Fundamentals of Philosophy
Reflecting the worldview of people, aesthetics remains one of the philosophical sciences, along with sociology, logic, ethics and many others. The most general philosophical questions of aesthetics are the problems of the relationship between subject and object...
Plato and his aesthetics
Beauty, which Plato strove for as an artist, began to appear to him estranged from all external form, or, rather, he himself tried to estrange it from form, to penetrate into its general essence, to find, to know it in complete abstraction ...
Understanding beauty in the 21st century
Understanding beauty in the 21st century
According to Levi-Strauss, the whole world around us is classified by us according to binary features. We unconsciously divide everything into big and small, cold and hot, ugly and beautiful...
Understanding beauty in the 21st century
The heirs of the nihilists - the "proletarian revolutionaries" - continued the work they had begun: aesthetics was crushed (along with all philosophy) in the name of the triumph of the ideas of Marx and Lenin soon after the revolution ...
A person with his rational consciousness, as V.S. Solovyov, [is] not only the goal of the natural process, but also a means "for a reverse, deeper and more complete impact on nature from the side of the ideal principle." To put it simply...
Russian religious philosophy of the 19th–20th centuries
This problem V.S. Solovyov also decides in the article “The First Step to Positive Aesthetics”, dedicated to the analysis of the aesthetic views of N.G. Chernyshevsky and the reflections of V.S. Solovyov on the relationship between art and reality...
Relationship between mythology and philosophy
What is philosophy? This question is asked by all philosophers throughout the history of the development of philosophical thought. Philosophy is a reflective introspection of the principles of a just and happy life, says Socrates...
Social philosophy as a methodology for the science of economic activity
General knowledge The term "organization" is derived from the word "organ" and has three different aspects of meaning, which explains the complex interaction of objective and subjective factors in public life. Firstly...
Medieval Christian philosophy
Philosophy (tsylyab - love, aspirations, thirst + uptsYab - wisdom > other Greek tsylpuptsYab (literally: striving for wisdom)) - discipline ...
Philosophy and art
Since the 19th century one of the main contradictions of art, which will later become the cause of its death, is clearly revealed: the contradiction between fiction and technology. More and more artists are beginning to share the view...
Philosophy of Truth
Let's go back to the origins, in order to remember on the basis of what, in what area we will draw our conclusions. Philosophy - (literally, as "the love of wisdom") is a systematic critical study of the way we judge, evaluate and act ...
Philosophy of beauty
The beauty of human life occupies a particularly large place in the composition of human aesthetic perceptions. But it is necessary to understand that the search for harmony, based on distrust in the perfection of the Whole, the cult of struggle, scientific knowledge, technology...
What is philosophy and why is it
Ortega y Gasset considers philosophy social manifestation social activities. Modern man acquaints himself with philosophy through ubiquitous literary sources...
1. Aesthetics - the doctrine of beauty and art. This is the simplest definition. Beauty has always existed, the perception of it by the human mind is designated as "beautiful". Art also originated a very long time ago (rock paintings, ritual dances), so we can say that the subject of aesthetics has existed for as long as human society has existed. However, the term "aesthetics" was introduced into scientific circulation by the German philosopher Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten in 1750.
2. Aesthetics is the science of beauty in life and art. This definition emphasizes that the beautiful exists in life, so we can talk about the aesthetics of work, the aesthetics of everyday life, the aesthetics of thinking, the aesthetics of communication.
3. Aesthetics is the philosophy of beauty and the philosophy of art. This formulation emphasizes the philosophical nature of aesthetic knowledge. The creators of aesthetic concepts are the same authors who entered the history of philosophical teachings, because the question of beauty is not some kind of private issue. The answer to the question about beauty depends on the answer to fundamental philosophical questions: what is a person, what is his place in this world, what abilities does he possess. The ability to understand the beautiful is the specificity of human existence, because only a person can perceive beauty and create beauty. And vice versa: a real person is one who can see and create according to the laws of beauty. Aesthetics deals with the philosophical substantiation of beauty and the philosophical interpretation of art.
4. Baumgarten formed the term "aesthetics" from the Greek word "esthesis" (sensation, sensory perception) and defined aesthetics as the science of sensory knowledge, about "the rules of sensibility in general." The feelings that the German thinker wrote about differ from simple sensations; they are emotional experiences developed with the help of the fine arts. Philosophy of the 18th century divided human abilities into reason, will and feelings, and in accordance with this, distinguished three main philosophical sciences: logic, ethics and aesthetics. The need to single out the beautiful in a special sphere appeared when science supplanted art in social practice. Aesthetics has become a reminder of the fullness of life, the need for not only a rational, but also an aesthetic attitude to the world.
5. Aesthetics - a philosophical doctrine of an aesthetic attitude to reality and art as highest form aesthetic activity. This modern synthetic definition shows that the aesthetic relationship is among other types of man's relationship to the world. In addition, it is not reduced to the beautiful, the aesthetic attitude is expressed in such categories as the sublime, tragic, comic, base and even ugly. The beautiful remains an aesthetic ideal, but not everything in life and art is ideal.
The essence of the aesthetic attitude to reality becomes clear in comparison with the cognitive and moral attitude to the world. The cognitive attitude is characterized by such parameters as: the repeatability and universality of its results, the evidence of knowledge. The object of the cognitive relation appears impersonal, and the cognizing subject also abstracts from his personal properties. In contrast to this, the aesthetic attitude is extremely personal, in which subjectivity not only does not interfere, but allows one to reveal the laws of beauty. The aesthetic attitude gives a sensual comprehension of the laws of the world. The moral attitude to reality is distinguished by normativity (it is built in accordance with the rules), rigorism (moral rules are not chosen by the participants, but are prescribed by them), the presence of sanctions for non-fulfillment of norms. In contrast, the aesthetic attitude is free, harmonious and is a way of self-expression of the individual.
Aesthetic teachings in antiquity(IV-V centuries BC) From an aesthetic point of view, the ancient Greek treated the world as a plastic body, sculpture, therefore the visible form became the subject of aesthetics, the harmony and measure of which corresponded to the harmony of the universe. As a result, all philosophy was, as it were, aesthetics, the ancient Greek philosophers believed that the essence of the world is revealed in “contemplation” as the highest form of spiritual activity. .e. beauty, harmony, proportion, measure, in the first place were the properties of the universe.
Aesthetics of the Pythagoreans The main category of Pythagorean philosophy is number, number is the origin of being, the basis of cosmic measure. The Pythagoreans discovered the same numerical principle in music, and therefore the whole cosmos was conceived by them as a musical-numerical harmony. Cosmic spheres tuned to a certain tone give rise to “the music of the heavenly spheres.” The Pythagoreans revealed the connection between music and mathematics, in particular, they established the relationship between the length of the string and the tone of the sound and came to the conclusion that the correct mathematical combinations of such strings also give harmonic consonances. In the aesthetics of Pythagoras, music was also associated with religion. The right music was supposed to purify the soul for religious ecstasy. Moreover, music is something more than art, it is part of the religious experience.
The teaching of the Pythagoreans also contained thoughts about the moral significance of music: just as good (cosmically harmonious) music educates the soul, so bad music spoils it. The religious significance of music did not allow it to be treated as a pleasure, but made music lessons a high form of spiritual practice. The use of Pythagorean aesthetics in artistic practice was the work of Polykleitos, who created the sculpture "Canon", and the treatise of the same name on the mathematical proportions of the human body. From his point of view, art does not imitate nature, but the norm. Like the structure of the cosmos, it must be harmonious, proportionate, proportional. The period of the Middle Classics in the philosophy of Ancient Greece is characterized by a transition from cosmologism to anthropologism in aesthetics.
Aesthetics of the Sophists The Sophists proclaimed that "man is the measure of all things", including the aesthetic attitude. The source of beauty is not the world, but a person with his ability to perceive something as beautiful. According to Gorgias, "beautiful is that which is pleasing to the eye and ear." Such is the subjectivist (beauty is a subjective matter), relativistic (beauty is a relative thing), hedonistic (beauty is what you like) approach to understanding beauty. Art for sophists is an illusion, the creation of an “elevating deception”. In contrast to the Pythagoreans, the sophists believed that the images of art are created by a person, they are not a reflection of reality.
Aesthetics of Socrates Socrates shared the thesis of anthropologism that the idea of beauty should be correlated with a person, and not with the cosmos. The beauty of things is indeed relative (a beautiful monkey is incomparable with a beautiful person, and even more so a beautiful god), so you should find the beautiful in itself, the general definition of beauty. According to Socrates, the general principle of beauty is expediency. Since the world is arranged rationally and harmoniously (the world is a cosmos), every thing in it is intended for some purpose, which makes it beautiful. So beautiful are those eyes that see better, that spear that flies and pierces better. Expediency, at the same time, does not mean usefulness (this would make Socrates's position pragmatic), expediency is the involvement of a thing in the good. The good for Socrates is an absolute value, due to the structure of the universe, the good is both truth, and goodness, and beauty. Socrates put forward the ideal of kalokagátia (from the Greek calos - beauty, agathos - good), i.e. coincidence of goodness and beauty in man. An evil disposition is manifested in a disharmonious appearance, and inner kindness is manifested in external attractiveness. Since the beautiful itself is conceived by Socrates as ideal perfection, the task of art is to imitate this prototype, and not nature. The artist selects the best, perfect features in the objects around him and combines them into an ideal image. To isolate the prototype and capture it is the main goal of art.
Aesthetics of Plato Following his teacher, Socrates, Plato believed that the task of aesthetics is to comprehend beauty as such. Considering beautiful things (a beautiful girl, a beautiful horse, a beautiful vase), Plato concludes that beauty is not contained in them. The beautiful is an idea, it is absolute and exists in the “realm of ideas.” You can get closer to understanding the idea of the beautiful by going through a series of steps: examining beautiful bodies; admiring beautiful souls (Plato rightly shows that beauty is not only a sensual, but also a spiritual phenomenon) ; passion for the beauty of sciences (admiring beautiful thoughts, the ability to see beautiful abstractions); contemplation of the ideal world of beauty, the idea of beauty itself. Plato's aesthetics is rationalistic aesthetics. Man's desire for beautiful Plato explains with the help of the doctrine of Eros. Eros, the son of the god of wealth Poros and the beggar Pénia, is rude and untidy, but has lofty aspirations. Like him, man, being an earthly being, desires beauty. Platonic love (eros) is love for the idea of beauty; Platonic love for a person allows you to see in a particular person a reflection of absolute beauty. In the light of Plato's idealistic aesthetics (aesthetics that believes that beauty is an ideal essence), art has little value. It imitates things, while things themselves are the imitation of ideas, it turns out that art is “imitation of imitation”. Poetry is an exception, because at the moment of creation the rhapsodist is seized with ecstasy, which allows him to be filled with divine inspiration and partake of eternal beauty. In his ideal state, Plato wanted to abolish all the arts, but left those that have educational value, educate the civic spirit. In turn, only perfect citizens are capable of enjoying such “correct art”.
Aesthetics of Aristotle for Plato the beautiful is an idea, for Aristotle the beautiful is an idea presented in a thing. The idea of a thing is its form, when matter takes shape, a beautiful object is obtained (thus marble, having accepted the idea of an artist, becomes a statue). Proceeding from this, Aristotle interprets art as an activity, through art those things arise, the form of which is in the soul. According to Aristotle, the essence of art is mimesis (imitation), art imitates reality, has a mimetic nature. However, this is not blind copying, but a creative identification of the typical, general, ideal, with its obligatory embodiment in the material. Based on the theory of mimesis, Aristotle divided the arts into imitative and complementary to nature. The latter include architecture and music, which the philosopher did not value very highly. Those arts that reflect reality are of the greatest value. They, in turn, are divided into arts of movement (temporal) and arts of rest (spatial). Types of art can also be distinguished by means of imitation (color, movement, sound). Highly appreciating poetry, Aristotle singled out epic, lyrics and drama in it, and divided dramatic works into tragedy and comedy. The goal of tragedy is catharsis, the purification of the soul through empathy with the heroes; passing through a crisis contributes to the upliftment of the soul. The doctrine of the cathartic nature of dramatic art was widely recognized in aesthetics. Unlike Plato, who recognized art only as an educational role, Aristotle also considered the hedonistic function of art, considered it as a means of obtaining pleasure.
Treatise Pseudo-Longinus "On the Sublime" The treatise "On the Sublime" was written in the III century. AD, however for a long time attributed to the Roman rhetor Longinus, who lived in the 1st century. AD The treatise is remarkable for highlighting the sublime as an independent aesthetic category. Man has always been fascinated by grandiose objects, sublime in the literal and figurative sense: high mountains, volcanic eruptions, great rivers, the light of the planets. Similarly, in art, along with the beautiful, calm and harmonious, there is the sublime, the task of which is not to convince with arguments, but to lead to a state of delight. In addition, the sublime in art is “an echo of the greatness of the soul”, delight is caused not only by external objects, but also by spiritual movements.
Aesthetics of Byzantium (IV-XV centuries) The Byzantine Empire was a Christian state whose culture had a great influence on the formation of the culture of the Eastern Slavs. The aesthetics of Byzantium is religious in nature, i.e. first of all, the beauty of the divine is considered, and art is thought of as a way to comprehend the divine. The absolute beauty of the divine world is the model, cause and goal of earthly beauty. In the treatises of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, for example, three levels of beauty are considered: absolute divine beauty; beauty of celestial beings; beauty of objects of the material world. The main modification of beauty in Byzantine aesthetics was revered by light: divine light, the rays of which permeate all being, make the world beautiful. The basis of this teaching was the gospel tradition of the Light of Tabor, physical and spiritual, which illuminated the face of Jesus at the moment of the transfiguration on Mount Tabor. “Smart light” is also needed for a person to see mental things and merge with the light of a deity. Another modification of beauty is color. Byzantine aesthetics developed a pictorial canon that assumed the symbolic meaning of color: purple symbolizes the divine; blue and blue - transcendent, heavenly; white - holiness; red - life, fire, salvation and blood of Christ; golden - light. A feature of Byzantine aesthetics is its symbolic character. Since God cannot be comprehended by the human mind, one can approach him through an image, a symbol. For the same Dionysius the Areopagite, the whole earthly world is a system of symbols through which the deity shines. The symbol does not depict spiritual reality, but points to it, allows you to contemplate supersensible objects. In the struggle between iconoclasts and iconodules, the latter won, since then the theory of the icon as an image-symbol leading to the prototype, God, has developed. An icon-painting canon was compiled, suggesting that the bogomaz (artist) should paint not the external, but the innermost; not a personal vision, but a universal spiritual content. The Christian theologian John of Damascus identified three main aspects of icon veneration: didactic (the icon is a book for the illiterate); psychological (the icon inspires religious feelings); dogmatic (the icon acts as documentary evidence of a transcendent reality, a source of grace) The religious aesthetics of Byzantium had much in common with the aesthetics of the European Middle Ages permeated with Christianity.
Aesthetics of the European Middle Ages In the aesthetics of the European Middle Ages, a religious approach to aesthetic problems dominated. God is the highest beauty, and earthly beauty is only a reflection of the divine. Since God, who created this world, is the highest artist, the artistic activity of people has no independent significance. Secular spectacles as devoid of religious meaning are rejected. The images of religious art are valuable in that they act as intermediaries between the world and God. The main aesthetic achievement of the art of the Middle Ages was the formation of two great styles: Romanesque and Gothic. Since all forms of art were concentrated around worship, these styles appeared in the architecture and decoration of cathedrals. The Romanesque style was dominant in the 6th-12th centuries. The term itself was introduced in the Renaissance, to the thinkers of which this art seemed like a kind of "Roman" style (Roma - Rome). The Romanesque style is distinguished by massive forms, powerful walls, overwhelming the grandeur of the volumes of buildings. The temple in this case appears not so much as the abode of God, but as a receptacle for parishioners. Sculpture and reliefs are inscribed in the space of the temple and demonstrate the predominance of spirit over physicality. The Gothic style (XII-XIV centuries) was formed when the functions of the cathedral changed. It became not only a religious building, but also the center of social life, a symbol of the wealth of the city, the power of its power. The term "Gothic" was again invented by the ideologists of the Renaissance, because in comparison with the Romanesque, "classical" style, it seemed "barbaric" (the Goths are one of the barbarian tribes). Gothic is characterized by the aspiration of the building upwards, which was achieved due to the special design of the architecture. The building was supported by a system of supports: support arches inside and buttresses outside. As a result, the load on the walls decreased, they could be built very high. Gothic architecture is richly decorated: carved turrets, balconies, stained-glass windows, rosettes, sculpture inside and outside the building made the temple an exquisite work of art.
Aesthetics of the Renaissance The term Renissance (Renaissance) belongs to Giorgio Vasari, author of the Lives of Famous Painters, Sculptors and Architects (1550). Vasari considered antiquity an ideal example of art and considered it necessary to revive its samples. As in antiquity, the main theme in art is not God, but man, aesthetics acquires an anthropocentric character. Even to understand divine beauty human senses, especially sight, are best suited. Thus, God became closer to the world, an interest was formed not in transcendent (“beyond”), but in natural beauty. was not the subject of the image, but only the conditional environment in which the characters were placed). Leonardo da Vinci considered painting to be the queen of all sciences. Such a convergence of art and science assumed that art was able to give true knowledge about the essence of things, it highlights this essence, makes it obvious. For art to give knowledge, images must be based on mathematical patterns. In particular, Albrecht Dürer developed the doctrine of the numerical proportions of the human body, Leonardo pursued the same goal with his drawing of a man inscribed in a circle and a square. In their constructions, they were guided by the rule of the "golden section". Renaissance artists discovered the secret of building direct perspective, i.e. images of the volume on the plane. So, the creators of the Renaissance strove to develop clear, almost scientific rules for the artist, "to believe harmony with algebra." At the same time, they avoided blind copying of reality, their artistic method is idealization, the image of the real as it should be. One should imitate nature, but only the beautiful in it. In essence, this approach is very close to Aristotle's idea that art, imitating nature, should capture the ideal form in the material. The aesthetics of the Renaissance paid considerable attention to the category of the tragic, while medieval thought tended to analyze the category of the sublime. The philosophers of the Renaissance felt the contradiction between the ancient and Christian foundations of their culture, as well as the instability of the position of a person who relies only on himself, his abilities and reason.
Aesthetics of classicism. This direction was formed in the 17th century under the influence of the rationalistic tradition in the philosophy of modern times, according to which the world is arranged logically, in proportion to reason, and therefore comprehensible with the help of reason. In particular, R. Descartes believed that artistic creativity should obey the mind, the work should have a clear internal structure; the task of the artist is to convince by the power of thought, and not to influence feelings. Nicolas Boileau, who wrote the treatise "Poetic Art", became the theorist of French classicism. In it, ancient art was proclaimed an aesthetic ideal, it was recommended to follow the plots of Greek mythology, because they reflect life in its ideal form. The term "classicism" means "exemplary style", which was attributed to ancient culture. The style of the work should be high and graceful, simple and strict. In accordance with the rationalist attitude, Boileau believed that in art, fantasy and feelings should be subordinated to reason. The character of the hero in classical works was regarded as unchanged and devoid of individual features. Each character must be a holistic embodiment of some qualities, be a complete villain, or an example of virtue. Another sign of the classical style was the principle of the unity of place, time and action, which was especially strictly traced in dramatic art. Pierre Corneille, Racine, Jean-Baptiste Moliere made a great contribution to the creation of plays in the spirit of classicism. him to the fulfillment of the universal laws of life. It should be noted that the art of that time existed primarily as a court art, classicism owes its heyday to the reign of the French king Louis XIV and his love for decorating his court.
Baroque- another artistic movement of the 17th century, widespread in Italy and in Russia (since many Italian architects worked in it). The name comes from the concept of "irregular pearl", thus, it is implied that the baroque is something pretentious. The term was coined by aesthetes of the 18th century in a mockery of the style of the 16th-17th centuries, the baroque was considered a decline in beauty and good taste. Therefore, it is sometimes believed that every culture has its own baroque, decline, attraction to strange forms to the detriment of the content (it included the architecture of the Roman Empire of the 3rd-4th centuries; late, “flaming” Gothic; the famous Sistine Chapel). Baroque is an obvious antithesis classicism: the goal of art is to create the wonderful and amazing, the unusual and the fantastic. Art is contrary to science, it is based not on reason, but on inspiration, the play of the imagination. Of all the intellectual faculties, wit is closest to art; not a harmonious and logical mind, but a sophisticated one that connects the incompatible. Baroque artistic techniques include metaphor, allegory, emblem; this style allows you to depict the grotesque and even ugly, mixes various visual techniques. The Baroque put forward the idea of a synthesis of the arts, the main achievement of which was the emergence of opera. An excellent demonstration of the synthesis of arts was the work of Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini, who built and decorated many buildings in the Vatican. Baroque theorists put forward the idea that architecture is frozen music, and artists practiced creating architectural illusions with pictorial means. In general, Baroque art is distinguished by pomp and decorativeness, intricate forms and passionate expression. In its social functions, it turned out to be a means of glorifying the Catholic Church and royal absolute power. If the achievements of classicism are mainly associated with literature and theatre, then the baroque found its greatest expression in architecture and sculpture.
Aesthetics of the French Enlightenment. XVIII century - the century of Enlightenment, the time of the activities of Diderot and other encyclopedists, the period of ideological preparation for the Great French bourgeois revolution. In this era, many problems were posed that became an obligatory component of aesthetic knowledge and, in particular, the problem of taste. Voltaire, analyzing the cultural heritage of mankind, found that art changes in accordance with historical events, art imitates social reality (and not nature, as was believed many). And since life is tragic, tragedy is the most moralizing genre of literature, causing compassion and the rise of moral feelings. However, with all due respect to Greek art, Voltaire did not share the idea of catharsis. In the article “Taste”, written for the Encyclopedia, Voltaire calls taste “the ability to recognize food”, as well as “a sense of beauty and error in all arts”. Thus, he reveals the specifics of aesthetic evaluation: its instantaneous and sensual nature, when in experience a person enjoys the order, symmetry and harmony in the world. Diderot believed that the nature of taste consists in combining three components: sensory perception, rational idea and emotion of experience. Thus, Diderot moves away from crude rationalism, trying to build a more harmonious concept of aesthetic perception. In French aesthetics, the problem of a plurality of tastes was posed (“there is no comrade for the taste and color”), which was solved due to the fact that the spoiled aristocratic taste must be opposed to the “enlightened” taste, based on knowledge. Enlighteners were confident in the existence of unchanging criteria for good taste, which, meanwhile, needs to be educated, because it arises as a result of the experience of recognizing the true and good.
Aesthetics of the German Enlightenment and Romanticism. The merit of the German thinkers of the XVIII century is the creation of aesthetics as an independent philosophical discipline. Based on the enlightenment concept of man as a being with three abilities (mind, will, feelings), Baumgarten called aesthetics the science of sensory knowledge.
A significant contribution to aesthetics was made by the literary and artistic movement "Storm and Onslaught", to which F. Schiller joined in his younger years. The main tendency of young German intellectuals was to break with classicism. Unlike the latter, who proclaimed unchanging perfection as an aesthetic ideal, they proclaimed a historical approach to art. The work should not be abstractly perfect, but should correspond to the "spirit of the times", for the first time the idea arose of "progressive", and not "correct" art. Culture should be imbued with the national spirit, and not the desire for "classical" models. This artistic movement showed interest in German folk art, as well as in the medieval heritage that left its mark on the German character. The Sturm und Drang movement became a prerequisite for the formation of a powerful artistic movement - romanticism, which developed in the Jena romantic circle, in the works of Novalis, Tiek and others. Theorists of romanticism believed that art is the fruit of the artist's creative activity, and not an imitation of anything, so the artist's feelings become the main subject of the image. In this creativity, a person is infinitely free, can put forward any ideals, create any images. At the same time, the romantic worldview fixes an insoluble contradiction between high ideals and base reality. The subjective elevation of the artist above the vulgar reality has become a stylistic device of "romantic irony". From the heights of the aesthetic ideal of romance, they criticized the petty-bourgeois morality of their time. Art became the highest reality for romantics, it is in art that the soul lives to the fullest, creating a “beautiful appearance”, art gives an outlet to the innermost aspirations of man. In the 19th century, romanticism resulted in the heyday of the arts in Germany, and then in France. An example is the work of such composers as Chopin, Liszt, Berlioz, Schubert, the novels of Dumas and Hoffmann, the canvases of Delacroix.
BEAUTIFUL- the most significant and broadest aesthetic category. Term beautiful sometimes acts as a synonym for aesthetic. It is no coincidence that aesthetics is often defined as the science of beauty. In Russian, beauty is close to the term beautiful. Unlike the beautiful, beauty characterizes objects and phenomena mainly from their external and not always essential side. The beautiful refers to concepts in which the object and phenomena are revealed from the point of view of their essence, the regular connections of their internal structure and properties. The category of the beautiful, however, reflects not only its objective foundations, but also the subjective side, expressed in the nature of the perception of these objective foundations, in relation to them, in their assessment. In this sense, one speaks of the beautiful as a value, because it is perceived as positive a phenomenon that evokes a whole range of feelings, ranging from calm admiration to stormy delight.
The struggle between materialism and idealism in aesthetics is primarily a struggle between the materialistic and idealistic understanding of beauty, since it occupies a central place in the structure of aesthetic consciousness. The sense of beauty, that is, the sense of form, volume, color, rhythm, symmetry, harmony, and other elementary manifestations of objective aesthetic consciousness, has developed as a result of labor activity man on the basis of his psychobiological evolution. Chronologically, this refers to the Middle and Late Paleolithic (more than forty thousand years BC). This conclusion is made by historians, archaeologists on the basis of an analysis of the beginnings of the artistic and aesthetic activity of a person of that time. The genesis of the sense of beauty cannot be represented as the emergence of the most beautiful. Its objective foundations and laws existed even before a person acquired the ability to perceive, correctly realize and evaluate them.
The first attempts to comprehend the category of beauty are found among the peoples of Ancient Egypt, Babylon, etc. However, only in Ancient Greece there are scientific ideas about beauty. In the epic, the terms "beautiful", "beauty", "harmony" are found. Further, these concepts are operated by the Pythagoreans. For them, harmony acts as a "consent of those who disagree." It is identical to the concepts of "perfection" and "beauty". Harmony is a universal category, since it is manifested in the structure of the cosmos, in all objects and phenomena of reality and in art. It rests on regular quantitative relations, which can be calculated strictly mathematically. They illustrated their idea by the example of the analysis of the mathematical foundations of musical intervals.
The founder of ancient dialectics, Heraclitus of Ephesus, like, sees the objective basis of beauty in harmony, but he does not reduce it to numerical relations, but sees it in the objective properties of material things. Beauty, according to Heraclitus, is a relative property. Thus, the most beautiful ape is ugly in comparison with the human race. The relativity of the beautiful is determined by belonging to different kinds. The naive-materialistic nature of this concept is obvious. Democritus, the founder of materialistic atomism, has an even more distinct materialist tendency in the interpretation of beauty. In his opinion, the essence of beauty lies in the measure, symmetry, harmony of objects and phenomena of reality.
Starting from , in the interpretation of beauty, relativistic and subjectivist tendencies are found. For Socrates, the beautiful is no longer an absolute property of an object and phenomenon. Beauty appears only in relation, in particular in relation to the purposeful activity of man. A beautiful thing is a thing suitable for something. “Everything is good and beautiful in relation to what it is well adapted for, and, on the contrary, bad and ugly in relation to what it is badly adapted for” (Xenophon).
The objective-idealistic theory of the beautiful is formulated. Beautiful for him is absolute, that is, it is “beautiful for everyone and always”, does not change, does not decrease and does not increase. This is something supersensible, a certain idea, and therefore it is comprehended not by the senses, but by the mind. There is a metaphysical-idealistic approach to this category. The philosophical and aesthetic theory of Plato was criticized by Aristotle. Aristotle considers the main signs of beauty to be "coherence, proportion and certainty." Among the signs of beauty, he also includes integrity and "the size is easily visible." Here, for the first time, the conditions for the perception of beauty are taken into account.
Further V relativistic and idealistic tendencies are intensifying. Mystical ideas were especially clearly manifested by Plotinus, who influenced the aesthetic thought of the Western Middle Ages. According to the medieval thinker Augustine, God is absolute beauty. In the sensory world, it manifests itself as unity, proportionality, correspondence of parts, together with a certain pleasantness of color (the question of color is raised for the first time). Thomas Aquinas, like Augustine, sees the source of beauty in God. He considers the following as its sensually perceived signs: wholeness, or perfection, for a flaw makes an object ugly; due proportion, or consonance; clarity is that which has a brilliant color. It is easy to see that Thomas follows in the footsteps of Aristotle, but unlike the Greek thinker, he interprets this category from purely theological positions.
representatives of the arts and aesthetics of the Renaissance, despite the well-known differences in approach, on the whole give a materialistic interpretation of the category of beauty. So, L. Alberti sees the objective foundations of beauty in consonance, agreement of parts, harmony. The latter is conceived by him as the primary, absolute principle of nature. Similar views are held by Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, L. Ghiberti and others.
Beauty, therefore, is regarded as an objective property real world.
IN aesthetics of classicism we are witnessing a departure from the materialistic traditions of the Renaissance. So, Poussin directly points out that the beautiful has nothing to do with matter. Harmony, which streamlines matter - the spiritual principle, is introduced from the outside. This harmony is absolutely invariant. Idealistic normativism in the interpretation of beauty is also characteristic of other representatives of the aesthetics of classicism, especially Boileau.
During the Age of Enlightenment various concepts of beauty are put forward. The English Enlightenment is characterized by a sensationalist-empirical interpretation of this category. True, the speculative tendencies that found expression in Shaftesbury also persist here. Form as an ordering principle is understood like Platonic ideas. Beauty appears in three forms: dead forms (statues, buildings, human body); forms that create forms (mind); forms that create form-creating forms. The latter are something analogous to the ideas of Plato.
E. Burke shows the most consistent materialistic line in the interpretation of the category of beauty. He denies those views that the foundations of beauty see in proportionality, usefulness, perfection, etc. The true foundations of beauty, in his opinion, are:
1. comparative smallness of objects;
2. smooth surface of objects;
3. gradual transition of changes in objects;
4. objects should not be angular;
5. delicate structure;
6. clean, light, but not sharp coloring of objects.
Beauty Burke, thus, identifies with the specific material properties of objects and phenomena.
The well-known theorist of painting and artist Hogarth considered the harmonious combination of unity and diversity to be the basis of beauty. He saw an example of this unity in the serpentine line.
That., in the aesthetics of the English Enlightenment materialistic tendencies were clearly manifested in the interpretation of the category of beauty. But idealistic views on this category were also formulated here. Indicative in this regard are the concepts of D. Hume and D. Berkeley. Hume denies the existence of c.-l. the objective foundations of beauty, it is nothing but human experience. A similar position is taken by Berkeley, one of the founders of the subjective idealism of modern times.
From the French Enlightenment D. Diderot expresses the most consistently materialistic view of the beautiful. “... I call everything outside me beautiful,” he writes, “that contains what awakens the idea of relationships in my mind, and everything that awakens this idea in me is beautiful for me.” Concretizing his thought, Diderot reveals the concept of relation. It finds expression in order, proportion, symmetry, wholeness. Thus, as its basis, the beautiful has various natural connections of reality.
In German classical aesthetics First of all, the concept of I. Kant deserves attention. He is not interested objective signs beauty, but the subjective conditions of its perception and the nature of aesthetic judgments. Aesthetic judgment is characterized by the following features: disinterest in the real existence of the object, admiring the pure form; generality and necessity without rationale; expediency without presenting some purpose. Kant rejects the beautiful from truth, goodness, usefulness, as a result of which it becomes something purely formal. True, along with “free” formal beauty, the philosopher admits the existence of “incoming” beauty, which has a substantial character. But this is no longer pure beauty.
F. Schiller criticized Kant's subjectivist interpretation of beauty. He recognizes the existence of an objective basis of beauty: proportionality, correctness, and other forms of order. By themselves they do not create beauty, but they are necessary conditions. Schiller defines beauty as "freedom in appearance". The category of beauty is analyzed in the most detailed way by Hegel. He defines it as the sensuous expression of an idea. In nature, the idea of beauty is revealed in correctness, symmetry, conformity to law, harmony, purity of material, color, sound, etc. Since nature is devoid of a spiritual ideal, natural beauty is a secondary, lower form. Only in art does it act adequately to the idea of beauty, as an ideal. The Hegelian concept of beauty contains rational thoughts, but in general it is unacceptable, which was well shown by the great Russian thinker N. G. Chernyshevsky. He sharply opposed the idealistic interpretation of the beautiful. According to Chernyshevsky, in nature “there is nothing to look for ideas; it contains heterogeneous matter with heterogeneous qualities. He seeks to understand the beautiful not as abstract harmony, abstract unity in diversity, or disparate material properties of things and phenomena, but as a kind of integrity that accepts the most various forms. This integrity is life in its highest manifestation - in human life. In the category of life, Chernyshevsky synthesizes the concepts of measure, regularity, harmony, expediency. Ideas about beauty, tastes and ideals of people are formed depending on the lifestyle of people. At the same time, the ideals of beauty are not at all equivalent. The great Russian thinker not only reveals the real foundations of beauty, but also reveals the determinism of the perception of beauty depending on social conditions. Chernyshevsky's concept is the highest achievement of pre-Marxist aesthetic thought. Further progress in the theoretical development of aesthetic categories is carried out in Marxist-Leninist aesthetics.
Marxist-Leninist aesthetics considers the category of beauty as one of the most general aesthetic concepts, in which, on the one hand, the real properties of objects and phenomena of reality are fixed, on the other hand, the attitude towards them is expressed. The beautiful contains a positive assessment of objects and phenomena, properties, aspects, processes of reality, both natural and social, including products of material and spiritual production, as well as works of art. In the category of beauty, human dreams of triumph over chaos, of harmony and perfection of life, of the victory of good over evil, truth over lies, the desire to build life on the principles of humanism are embodied.
Speaking of beauty, one should distinguish between its ontological, epistemological and axiological aspects. First of all, the ontological aspect is important. The beautiful is objective in its genesis and content, because it reflects certain aspects, properties, relationships, patterns of objects and phenomena of the real world. It characterizes objects and phenomena in terms of their essence, the main types of connections, in relation to other objects and phenomena. The beautiful is associated with inner harmony and the integrity of objects and phenomena, with their perfection, progressive development, with the affirmative principles of life. Since, speaking of a beautiful person, we mean not only external beauty, but above all a moral spiritual principle, it is quite understandable why truth, goodness, progressive social aspirations, and high ideals are included in the category of beauty.
The anatomical and physiological nature of a person potentially contains the ability of a person's aesthetic attitude to Reality, the perception of beauty. However, the ability to enjoy the beauty of form, the harmony of sounds and colors arises in the process of mastering the real world by a person, primarily in the process of labor activity. The feeling of beauty is characterized by the fact that it rises above the narrowly utilitarian, purely pragmatic attitude to objects and phenomena of reality, to the products of human creativity. Man in this case is no longer guided only by the need to fight for survival, but rather freely relates to an object and phenomenon, takes into account their objective measure, the laws of their existence: orderliness, expediency, proportionality, unity of form and content, proportionality, symmetry, harmony and other types of objective regular connection within objects and phenomena and between them. At first, intuitively, vaguely, then more and more clearly, a person was aware of these objective patterns. This opened the way for him to free himself from the omnipotence of the laws of nature. He gradually learned them and used his knowledge to change the environment, turning the knowledge of patterns into tools of his activity. The very process of cognition, which ultimately led to an increase in man's power over the laws of nature, evoked a positive emotional reaction in him. The joy of knowledge and the feeling of freedom ultimately in the course of evolution give rise to a special human feeling- a sense of beauty, give rise to the need for beauty. A person begins to create not only necessary, practically useful, but also beautiful things, that is, he begins to create according to the laws of beauty.
Thus, proportionality, proportionality, perfection, orderliness, harmony of the phenomena of reality is the objective material basis of beauty. Expediency must also be included here. However, these objective properties of nature are only the basis of beauty. They can be perceived and evaluated only by a person who has been formed in the process of labor activity, when he not only cognizes laws, measure, essential connections and relationships, but also makes these cognitions the principles of his activity in accordance with the laws of beauty. Thus, two sides of the issue cannot be confused: the existence of objective foundations and laws of beauty and their perception, their use by a person in his activity and their assessment. The ability to perceive beauty, create according to the laws of beauty, correctly evaluate the beauty of nature, social phenomena, art is a historical product, and the objective foundations of beauty are rooted in the very foundation of matter, in its structure, in the laws of its development.
Discussions are usually about the beauty of nature. Some aesthetes believe that nature is aesthetically neutral. In fact, nature also needs to be considered as an aesthetic value, especially now that it has become important question protection and rational use of natural resources.
Speaking about the objective foundations of beauty, primarily the beauty of inanimate and living nature, we also find its simplest manifestations: measure, symmetry, harmony, optimality. Symmetry can be observed in crystals, in the structure of insects, plants, animals. In living organisms, beauty is manifested in their perfect, purposeful organization. The evolutionary ladder leads us to a deeper and more comprehensive awareness of the beauty of nature. At the top of the evolutionary ladder is man as the highest embodiment of beauty. A person gradually penetrates into the existing harmony of the world, into its orderliness, shape.
At first, a person does not always catch this world harmony right away. Some forms of wildlife may seem ugly, despite the fact that they are expedient and optimal. This is partly due to the fact that some of them can be dangerous to humans. And it creates negative feelings. But to a greater extent this is due to the limited knowledge of nature as a whole. We often tear living forms out of common system development, and then we are inadequately aware of the individual links of the general chain. Therefore, historically changing ideas about beauty cannot be identified with the very objective foundations of natural beauty. Here the action of social factors is also manifested, which affect the process of human cognition in different ways.
The objective laws of beauty are also manifested in the creative activity of the artist. The artist masters these laws and creates in accordance with them. Of course, a person perceives the beauty of nature not as a biological, but as a social being. Nature is mastered by man through practical activities, and the latter is determined by social factors. In the process of practical attitude to nature and to other people, conditional connections are formed in the mind between the phenomena of nature and the phenomena of social life. In this case, certain phenomena of nature can be perceived allegorically in aesthetic terms. This aspect of the beauty of natural phenomena is based not on the very properties of nature, but on the associations formed between natural and social objects and phenomena. However, this natural-social, or, more precisely, social, beauty cannot be universalized, because man himself is a part of nature, the general rhythm of the universe pulsates in him. The laws of nature, as well as social ones, determine aesthetic creativity. Man creates not only as "the totality of all public relations', but as a force of nature. These are the natural and social aspects of the category of beauty.
In relation to art, beauty appears in three aspects. A work of art is beautiful if it meets the following requirements: it contributes to the establishment of the harmony of social relations, that is, it is progressive in content; is a true reflection of reality and thereby contributes to the establishment of the harmony of social ties; has a significant content, expressed in an adequate form, expressively, expressively, masterfully.
Contemporary bourgeois aesthetics actually excluded from consideration the problem of the beautiful. On the one hand, this is due to the decline of philosophical thought, on the other hand, it is due to a pessimistic assessment of the prospects for the development of mankind. Hence the aestheticization of the ugly, the ugly, even the admiration of the negative, the negative, the ugly.
The art of socialist realism affirms the great ideals of the beautiful and the perfect. The highest embodiment of beauty is a comprehensively and harmoniously developed personality.
