On The Role Of Reflection In Art Criticism

This paper takes Benjamin's doctoral thesis "The Concept of German Romantic Art Criticism" as the main research object,aiming to illustrate the role of "reflection" as a key factor in the construction of Benjamin's theory of art criticism.This paper will start from a core understanding that art is both a medium and a manifestation of reflection.According to the Romantic understanding of the relationship between art works and form,the reflection of art can be regarded as the reflection of form.It is the self-restriction of reflection that constitutes the self-regulation of art form and constructs the concept of art work.Works of art criticism's task is to cause reflections on its own or in the form of its own limitations,so as to realize the liberation and growth of art,art criticism and the identity of the concept of art itself has intrinsic reflection,only with the aid of art criticism have art concept,art can enter romantic quest of transcendent dimension.In essence,works of art are the concrete representation of human mind and the crystallization of "thinking".Human understanding of art works(including performance)and form induction is "thinking of thinking"--reflection.However,we must be aware of the risk of "emptiness,rigidity and death" in the formal regulation of art works.So,how should we preserve the life of an art work?--Reinvigorate "thinking".Through the form of reflection on the reflection to the reflection,let the thought of freedom,the creation of thought,thought of adventure to increasingly empty form,fill in the form of sublating the content,reflection(thought of thought)jettisoned curing form plump up again,it completed its own salvation in higher level and reconstruction,all this power will never comes from other text,and is the result of a work of art itself,is the result of human vitality of present-"think",the end of the work basically depends on whether the human "check" in this.Therefore,in the art criticism with reflection as the core,art,art works and art criticism can obtain their own objective independence--"new life" by the continuous evolution and extension of the concept of reflection and the transcendence of the idea as the root of reflection.The birth of a new essential-people who have apparently is itself to the establishment of its existence,the distinction between subjective and objective is in hold a relevant connections,rather than a "critical" in the sense of level,through the "experiment" and "observation","medium" to participate in art criticism shows in the process of destruction and create reflection between inversion and maneuver-in the center of art as a reflection on history and the relationship between the truth,trying to level off,in a religion atmosphere realizes the person's own transcendence and perfect that Benjamin to "save".This paper is divided into four parts.The first part is the introduction,which mainly summarizes the art criticism thought presented by Benjamin in his doctoral thesis and makes a brief review of the relevant literature related to this text,aiming to prompt the understanding of the concept of "reflection" by some researchers.The second part intends to sort out the evolution of the concept of "reflection" from Kant to Fichte and then to the Romantic,in order to clarify Benjamin's advance of the concept on this basis.The third part deals with Benjamin's understanding and interpretation of the "reflection related concepts" such as art,art works and forms on the basis of the concept of reflection.The fourth part will show that Benjamin re-established the standard of art criticism,which is the rejection and criticism of aesthetic dogmatism.He expected to construct an internal criticism with a "calm" temperament,destroy the surface aesthetic feeling displayed by "real content",and make the "truth content" with complete objective independence reproduce.