| There are two traditions thoughts in the development of western classical aesthetics, one is the traditional aesthetics theory of knowledge which attaches great importance to the rational induction and logic reasoning, the other is the theory of soul transcendence aesthetics which pays attention to the inner experience and subjective faith. The last one finally has been the basis of European medieval aesthetics and modern romantic thoughts. It has been improved in Plato’s proposal, Neoplatonism’s initiative power in mind and St. Augustine’s integration of rationality and belief between the early Christian theology and Greek ideas.Plato changed the basic ideas in classical anthropology from the natural world to spiritual world. On the basis of the theory of rational man, he defined human essence of man is the soul, but he did not think the rational and exist can realize docking because of the distance between them. Rationality can only guides the behavior to correct direction or help people live valuably, but it’s not the exit. Plato’s concept of beauty is a transcendental nature, it is not the object of rational knowledge, but the power to guide the rational pursuit, there was a unbridgeable distance between the truth and the road. Although Plato proposed the transcendental properties of beauty, the problem that it’s difficult to correctly contact man’s rationality with truth soon became the source of popular skepticism and relativism in the Hellenistic Age.Aristotle continued to look for a perfect explanation of aesthetic issues from the anthropological perspective which Plato had used. He put the Plato’s concept of soul expanded to man’s reason and the body, in this way, the body and soul were all the essence of human, there is no special "soul" which can escape from the body, the truth can only be found in person’s intellectual ability and body’s perfect state. Aristotle transformed the beauty from the spirit of the transcendental objects into potential function so that the unity between reason and truth can be realized in the understanding of the interdependence and transformation of both. Beauty is not a spiritual belief but reality inevitability that resulted in a discouraging elimination of sanctity as the object of the soul. Beauty has been changed from a dynamic subjective existence into a static existence of objective universality. Plato’s aesthetics of existence starting from the inner link between beauty and life value had been obscured. But Aristotle still got thinking of Plato’s problem by catching the core of Plato’s aesthetic problem that how to solve the problem of the unity between rationality and belief.Plotinus, a center member of Neoplatonist,returned to the aesthetic problem in Plato’s thoughts many centuries later. He put forward the concept of "light" in aesthetics that reinterpreted the unified question between truth and the rational.He found that the light of "inner vision" in a state of introspection can help people improve their spiritual realm so that the rational efforts was in the truth rather than out of it. It has the ability to make people understand and accept the truth of "light" which people can rely on to contact directly with the truth. Plotinus, like Aristotle, solved the center point in Plato’s aesthetics problem, though he found the concept of "beauty" in "light" to develop a teleological way with introspective experience, but Aristotle transferred spirit concept of "beauty" to a physical concept of the "potential" to explores a epistemology way within an external experience. Plotinus’s idea of "light" obviously had been under the influence of "the light of god" in early Christian thoughts.Authors of the New Testament expressed the relationship between human and God in the Jewish religion idea. Traditional Judaism emphasizes the mandatory compliance from precepts with universal social rationality, but the early Christians represented by Jesus found the active power of faith, hope and love in individual spirit. In the context of theology, early Christian regarded people as the works of god that man and god is essentially the one so that the essence of man is thought to be inherent divinity, so the goal of life will be to seek inside rather than outward. "Incarnation" which is used to describe the intimate relationships between human and the truth in The Gospels, and Jesus’ crucifixion is an explanation for the testimony of god among our lives. On this basis, the Christian thinkers called beauty god then the purpose of both beauty and human existence were the same. It’s a perfect interpretation of the problem that how god and human rationality can be linked up, because god as the truth was not an objective knowledge, but the inherent value of life, not the empirical knowledge of inductive reasoning, but a speculative need to understand. Expression of beauty in the New Testament is one of the important theoretical resources in classical aesthetics thoughts. It’s a very important concept that beauty is the name of god which can lead human being see another invisible beauty beyond the visible beauty, and help man get rid of the limitation of objective necessity to make their chooses independently to live a good life freely.St. Augustine is the end of the classical aesthetics and the beginning of medieval aesthetics. He transformed the truth, a substantive existence, into a kind of entity with mixing objective transcendental subjective spiritual elements in Greek aesthetics traditional and the concept of inner vision in Neoplatonism. He developed the thought of "incarnation" in New Testament to think god as a spiritual ultimate existence rather than a physical presence. The city of god can’t be seen since it’s a spiritual state which can only be imaged. Augustine regarded the essence of man as faith and obedience to god, so beauty just was subjective value not an objective one. It is significant to be that beauty was described as faith in religious and it’s not a knowledge system but an attitude to guide people how to practice in life. Beauty is neither the external form of objective nor subjective moral assumptions, as a man’s ultimate value consciousness, it only rest in the development of one’s subjective understanding of the objective world.Beauty in the Greek classical aesthetics, even from empiricism and knowledge, is not to stay in the objective universality, but a kind of humanistic value of ultimate concern. Human being is not only a common, social existence, but also an individual, spirituality. We will not only face with sickness and death in nature, but also need to think how to make a valuable life by our own free choices. This is a real sense of humanism in classical aesthetics thoughts. Beauty is not the empirical knowledge of objects, but the product of people’s self-awareness. Beauty, as a sacred "self, can guide someone to transcend material interests in some divine means, then man would be the "one" what he wants to be.The development of classical aesthetics theory reveals the transcendence essence of man’s spiritual life step by step.It’s an awakening of people’s self-awareness and also a positive promoting in the history of western aesthetics. The theoretical resources of transcendental aesthetics thoughts should be important and meaningful for our contemporary life. |
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