Philosophical and theoretical foundations of classical aesthetics. Peace as the realization of beauty

M.I. Mikhailov

BASICS OF AESTHETICS

Nizhny Novgorod

Mikhailov M.I.

Basics of aesthetics. Study guide. N. Novgorod: VGIPU, 2011. p.

Reviewers:

Honored Scientist of the Russian Federation, Doctor of Philology, Professor of Nizhny Novgorod state university them. N.I. Lobachevsky I.K. Kuzmichev;

Candidate of Philosophy, Associate Professor, Nizhny Novgorod State University. N.I. Lobachevsky V.A.Belousov

In the textbook of Doctor of Philosophy, Doctor of Philology, Professor M.I. Mikhailov are covered the most important topics in an aesthetics course. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of the main aesthetic categories.

In the process of studying aesthetic problems, extensive literary and artistic material is used.

The manual is intended for university students and anyone interested in the problems of aesthetic science.

M.I. Mikhailov

VGIPU, 2011

PREFACE................................................... .................................... 4

INTRODUCTION Aesthetics as a science................................................... ............. 9

1. AESTHETIC CULTURE OF PERSONALITY.................................................... 12

1.1. The essence of aesthetic culture of the individual.................................... 12

1.2.Structure of a person’s aesthetic culture..................................... 13

1.3. The importance of aesthetic culture of the individual.................................... 18

2. MAIN AESTHETIC CATEGORIES.................................................. 24

2.1. TRAGIC................................................... ........................... 24

2.1.1. Origins and essence of the tragic.................................................... .... 24

2.1.2. On the relationship between dramatic, heroic, tragic... 47

2.2. BEAUTIFUL................................................. ................................ 53

2.2.1. The nature of beauty................................................... .................... 53

2.2.2. Beautiful, beauty, wonderful................................................... ........ 68

2.3. COMIC................................................... ........................... 88

2.4. UGLY................................................... ........................... 100

3. ART................................................... ........................................ 110

3.1. The concept of art................................................... ........................... 110

3.3. Artistic image................................................... ................... 139

3.4. Types of art................................................... ................................ 144

3.5. Main artistic trends in art.................................... 151

4. ARTIST: PERSONALITY AND CREATIVITY.................................... 162

4.1. What is creativity........................................................ ........................... 162

4.2. Artist: essence and structure.................................................... ....... 162

4.3. The problem of artistic and creative abilities.................................... 167

CONCLUSION................................................. .................................... 171

LITERATURE................................................. ........................................ 173

PREFACE

Recently, aesthetics have become out of fashion. People's needs increasingly began to be of a material (economic) rather than spiritual nature. And this is very bad. N.V. Gogol was a thousand times right when he stated (“Selected passages from correspondence with friends”): “Without awakening human soul nothing will help, neither economic nor social changes.” Jean Monnet, the father of European integration, summarizing his thirty years of experience in uniting Europe, said: “If I started downloading, I would start not with economics, but with culture.” It is worth mentioning here Academician N.N. Moiseeva: “...society is now on the verge of a catastrophe, which will require a restructuring of all the foundations of its planetary existence... Perhaps even on the threshold of a new stage in the history of the species homo sapiens, since the basis of human adaptation is his “soul,” to use the terminology of A.A. Ukhtomsky".

It is not difficult to understand that the future of humanity, if not to a decisive extent, then largely depends on how much it can rise, transform spiritually, and therefore aesthetically, how much it will be able to be imbued with a sense of beauty (beautiful). As I.K. rightly writes. Kuzmichev, “... only an aesthetically, artistically educated, that is, humanitarian society can cope with grandiose and immeasurable in its complexity new problems.” Words by F.M. Dostoevsky that “beauty will save the world” in this case is not empty words, not a “declaration”, but a great truth belonging to the Genius. And this truth must not be forgotten.

Accordingly, it is necessary to recognize that aesthetics should have a priority place in the system of social and human sciences studied in higher education.

It is important to say what distinguishes this training manual from this kind of work? This first of all the fact that the author’s focus is on the most important (fundamental) aesthetic categories that make up the “skeleton” of aesthetics as a science: the beautiful, the sublime, the tragic, the comic, the base, the ugly. The author's view of nature, i.e. the essence and specificity of these categories, is non-standard and distinguished by scientific novelty. This is primarily due to the fact that the analysis of one or another aesthetic category is not given in isolation from other categories (as a “thing in itself”), which, unfortunately, is still common in aesthetic literature, but within the framework of their systematization. Secondly, the author’s description of the main aesthetic categories is not given one-sidedly, but in different aspects: epistemological, social and psychological.

It should be noted that in modern aesthetics, especially foreign ones, less and less attention has been paid to this problem. The aforementioned traditional categories of aesthetics, including beauty as a central category, are gradually giving way to the so-called marginal (minor, side) concepts: intensity, novelty, irony, deconstruction, non-hierarchy, simulacrum, intertextuality, mosaic, rhizome, corporeality, paradoxicality, narratology and etc.

Some authors sometimes refuse to use the categorical apparatus of aesthetics altogether and write about certain aesthetic issues in the spirit of an essay. This involuntarily leads to the erosion of aesthetic concepts and categories, including the replacement of the beautiful with base and ugly ones. This state of affairs is scientifically unacceptable. After all, every science has the right to be called a science as long as it uses certain terms and represents a system of categories. Without this there is no and cannot be science as such. It was not by chance that the German physicist W. Heisenberg wrote: “...we need concepts with the help of which we could come closer to the phenomena that interest us. Typically these concepts are taken from the history of science; they tell us a possible picture of the phenomena. But if we intend to enter a new field of phenomena, these concepts can turn into a set of prejudices that retard progress rather than promote it. However, even in this case we are forced to use them and cannot succeed by abandoning the concepts handed down to us by tradition.”

Of significant interest here is M. Planck’s statement that “attempts to apply the principle of relativity outside of physics, for example, in aesthetics or even in ethics,” are untenable.” The often pronounced phrase “Everything is relative,” according to him, is incorrect and has no meaning within physics itself, since a relative value presupposes the existence of something absolute, i.e. always reduces to other, deeper-lying absolute values. “Without the prerequisite for the existence of absolute quantities,” he wrote, “not a single concept can be defined, not a single theory can be constructed.”

It can be said without exaggeration that the appeal to traditional fundamental categories is not outdated; it is another matter that our ideas about them need a certain semantic correction, to a certain extent filling with new, deeper content.

That is why, as it seems to us, the main aesthetic categories (and above all the beautiful) should become those absolute values, in accordance with which (or through the prism of which) relative values should be considered and assessed - marginal concepts of modern non-classical aesthetics.

It is also important to take into account that aesthetics as a scientific discipline should not trail behind art (contemporary art). Moreover, it must not only keep pace with artistic practice (often with undesirable practice), but in a certain sense serve as a basis, a support for artistic activity the creator, his aesthetic aspirations and goals, and this means fulfilling a value-normative role in relation to art. In this regard, one must largely agree with A.Yu. Bolshakova, when she, analyzing the state of modern literature, concludes: “... the subject of fiction itself has always been and remains not the notorious “reality”, but the aesthetic ideal hidden in its depths, unfolding depending on the specifics of the writer’s talent and the angle of the image chosen by him - the most different faces(aesthetic dominants). From the sublime and beautiful to the base and ugly. Once you understand this truth, everything falls into place.”

Consequently, the conclusion suggests itself: not only the esthetician is an assistant to the artist, and more broadly, the creator of aesthetic values, but also the artist, the creator of aesthetic values, is no less an assistant to the esthetician (as a scientist).

Unfortunately, aesthetics modern stage is losing its former mission - an evaluative-normative and “projective”-methodological function, and primarily because it is gradually turning from science into essayism, into the servant of various kinds of pseudo-artists and art dealers.

"Aesthetic attitude"

Aesthetic consciousness

Aesthetic culture

Art as a part of reality and a subject of aesthetics

Art as a sociocultural institution

Morphology of art as an aesthetic problem

Brief description of stylistic manifestations of art

Virtual aesthetics

Avant-garde art of the first half of the twentieth century

Classical and non-classical aesthetics

Aesthetics of fine arts, theater, literature, choreography

Aesthetics of spectacular forms in art

Aesthetic foundations for the interaction of different types of art

Section 1. Theoretical aspects of aesthetic knowledge

foundation of aesthetic knowledge

The aesthetic attitude reveals a special level of connection between subject and object. The essence of this relationship is that it includes both a utilitarian connection, which manifests the subject’s sensory reaction to an object, and a theoretical one, represented by the processes of comprehension. The aesthetic attitude itself arises as a transition from the sensory to the meaningful. An aesthetic attitude makes a person's feelings manageable.

Subject. Aesthetic categories: essence and types of systematization

Concepts used as special cases of basic aesthetic categories
beautiful	ugly	sublime	low-lying	tragic	comic
Beautiful Adorable Graceful Graceful Cute Pretty Cute attractive	Disgusting Repulsive Horrible Ugly Repulsive Unattractive	Romantic Amazing Fabulous Dazzling Fantastic Astounding Seductive	Disgusting Unworthy Humiliating	Dramatic pathetic	Humor Sarcasm Grotesque irony

Aesthetic categories:

Level 2

system of basic aesthetic categories: beautiful - ugly, sublime - base, tragic - comic and those concepts that reveal special cases of manifestation of basic aesthetic categories

Level 3

a complex of the most commonly used concepts of aesthetics, borrowed from other sciences: image, work of art, creativity, author, type of art, art, person, reality, style, etc.

The most general characteristics of the main aesthetic categories

Beautiful- the highest level of beauty, expressed through the perfect and harmonious unity of vital content and full-fledged, expressive form. The perception and experience of beauty is possible only under the condition of a person’s special spiritual development. Only a spiritually developed person is capable of experiencing truly beautiful things. A person’s spiritual development is manifested by the versatility of the aesthetic experience of beauty, which can be represented by a fairly wide range of facets of the emotional sphere.

The beautiful can be expressed using concepts that are close in meaning and have served in various historical eras as synonyms for the concept of beauty - this is beautiful (perfection of external form and emphasis on the external), graceful and graceful (as characteristics of the special qualities of living beings from the standpoint of lightness and harmony, fragility and tenderness), “charming” (perfection and harmony of small forms), poetic (the ability for subtle experiences, spirituality and dreaminess with a touch of slight sadness), captivating, flirtatious, bewitching, etc.

The beautiful is the individual, inherent in the plural and therefore has become universal.

In beauty there is a manifestation of the unity of objective merits and subjective conditions of perception. The physical beauty of the world, when coinciding with the spiritual greatness of a person, gives the person himself a state of peace, tranquility and a feeling of compliance of his existence with the laws of the world. Therefore, true perception and experience of beauty is impossible without the spiritual wealth of the individual. The richer a person’s inner world, the more complete and perfect his experience of beauty.

The beautiful reflects a measure of perfection that has reached equilibrium, but at the same time has the potential for change and dynamics. If we do not see the potential for dynamics in a perceived phenomenon, then the given thing is dead and cannot be supremely beautiful. Therefore, beauty is associated with dynamics, change, life.

Beauty is a manifestation of the ideal in art. By creating beautiful creations, masters express their ideas about the perfect ideal. The beautiful reveals our desire for satisfaction.

The beautiful in traditional aesthetics claimed the place of a meta-category. It was believed that all other categories "sublime, tragic, ugly, etc.) are different shapes manifestations of beauty. In the history of aesthetics, there was another extreme position, according to which beauty is a difficult concept to define, and, therefore, unscientific.

However, the category of beauty remains one of the key concepts of aesthetics to this day. But today the beautiful is seen as a mobile category in its definition. Each cultural and historical era creates its own definition of beauty, but such signs of beauty as measure and harmony, balance and dynamism, striving for ideal and perfection still remain its undeniable properties. First of all, ideas about ideal and perfection, balance and dynamics, degrees of measure and harmony change, but the aesthetic experience of beauty always remains unchanged for a person. A person’s ability to experience beauty, to highlight it for himself in the world around him, always remains one of the main human-forming characteristics of Man.

Ugly characterized by imperfection, conflict between content and form, essence and appearance in the perceived object. Songs of a patriotic nature, written or performed in the form of couplets, or ditties, or parodies, etc., are ugly for us. In the ugly there is not just an imbalance, but a complete break; the inadmissibility of a given content will be embodied in a given form.

Ugly is the opposite of beautiful, expressing complete disharmony, discrepancy between content and form, or vice versa. In aesthetics, there is an opinion that the category of ugliness cannot be considered an aesthetic category. However, this opinion is erroneous not only because any phenomenon we perceive appears brighter for us when its antipode is nearby. The ugly takes place not only in reality, but also in art, as evidenced by the enormous interest in this phenomenon of the world on the part of mankind (especially the art of the twentieth century).

In general, interest in the ugly in art appeared quite early. Even primitive people believed that ugly deformities were capable of arousing admiration. For example, representatives of the archaic tribes that inhabit the islands of New Zealand today use special devices that allow them to stretch their lips to enormous sizes. Some African tribes change the shape of the skull, making it “bottle-shaped”, stretching their limbs, etc.

In the Middle Ages, a fashion appeared for grotesque masks and fantastic creatures, which literally decorated buildings of a religious nature (just remember the famous devil figurines sadly looking at the world from Notre Dame Cathedral). Popular at this time are chimeras decorating gutters, the theme of sinners whose faces are distorted by the ugliness of suffering.

Artists also did not ignore human ugliness. For example, already Renaissance artists showed interest in human deformities. Particularly famous were the drawings of grimaces by Leonardo da Vinci, who said that the ugly is no less interesting for the artist, since it is just as difficult to find it in nature as the beautiful.

Durer and Goya showed interest in the ugly. In the 16th century, the ugly was popular as a motif in interior design. For example, it is fashionable to make fireplaces in the shape of the mouth of a terrible monster, and to decorate furniture with scary heads of fantastic animals.

In the 18th century, there was a fashion for ugly grimaces and deformities, made in the form of small sculptures and intended to decorate the facades of residential buildings (Messerschmidt, A. Brouwer). Sometimes such sculptures decorated the parks of noblemen in France.

In the 19th century, the first experiments in portraits of mentally ill people appeared (T. Gericault, Zanetti, P.-L. Ghazi, G. Bernini, G. Piccini). It is interesting that for the artist of this time, the ugliness in a person is no longer associated with a deviation from the physical norm, as it was for the artists of the Renaissance, but is due to the manifestation of spiritual devastation, death during life.

The 20th century showed a new interest in the ugly. Suffice it to recall such names as A. Giacometti (sculpture), E. Ditman (installations), R. Magritte (artist), M. Shamyakin (artist).

The 21st century, which brought computer technology, creates its own understanding of the ugly. An example of this is the creative experiments of M. Shamyakin, who creates artistic cycles based on images of insects ("Carnival of Venice"), remaking ancient masks and sculptures in the style he called neo-Gothic ("St. Petersburg Carnivals").

Today there is a special interest in the ugly, which not only confidently enters the sphere of art, but is increasingly claiming to be one of the main categories. For example, A. Petlyura, a fashion designer who calls himself an “artist-dermatologist,” presented to the sophisticated public of Paris a collection of models created on the basis of things collected from the trash heap. The demonstration of these models was carried out not by professional fashion models, but by people “selected” by the master from the “lower classes of society” and trained in a special way. These are those who were homeless or alcoholics in the past, and therefore potential owners of the collected things. The exhibition itself was demonstrated in the spirit of a theatrical show, accompanied by music and a parallel screening of a film about Petliura on the big screen. The show's aesthetic is clearly aimed not at the beautiful, but at the ugly. The main thing in it turns out to be not taste, chic, but an elementary craving for trash and base perception. The most interesting thing is that the Parisian public received the Russian “maestro of costume” with delight. This show turned out to be quite entertaining.

Perfection can also manifest itself in the spiritual sphere. In this case, beauty gravitates towards the moral principles of man. As a result of such interpenetration of aesthetic and ethical principles, the category of the sublime is formed. The sublime cannot be expressed in finite sensory forms. According to Hegel's ideas, the sublime manifests itself exclusively in symbolic forms of art.

If the beautiful is associated with harmony, then the sublime manifests disharmony. We are talking about complete disharmony, demonstrating the unity of natural and social principles in man. When human desires and aspirations correspond to society’s ideas about the ideal activity of an individual for the benefit of society, and are able to bring a person satisfaction from the actions he performs, they speak of the manifestation of the sublime.

The sublime gravitates toward the spiritual. It demonstrates the aspiration of the human personality towards self-improvement and compliance with social ideals. As an objective manifestation, the sublime characterizes the object of aesthetic perception from the position of its social and human significance.

The inconsistency of the sublime is manifested in the fact that in it “the general essential prevails over the special phenomenal” (N. Kryukovsky).

The sublime in art is characterized by a special content that is associated with global and universally significant meaning (for example, themes of love, goodness, peace, beauty, which, due to their breadth and diversity, are simply not possible to be fully disclosed in one form). The sublime is always grandiose, but not fully revealed. The idea that clearly prevails in significance and perfection, i.e. the content cannot be fully expressed in the form that exists for it. Form is the beginning that limits the heightened and rushing to infinity idea. The special richness of the content is due to its extraordinary human significance. In art, the reflection of the sublime requires from the artist special intensity and brightness of the means of artistic expression.

The aesthetic experience of the sublime evokes delight, admiration, and sometimes even fear or surprise. But, as a rule, the sublime always has an attractive effect for a person. The perception of the sublime allows the subject of an aesthetic attitude to feel the superiority of the perceived object over himself.

The sublime can be presented as pompous (glorifying the sublime), formidable (frightening the sublime), extravagant (when the form pretends to be significant for the content), romantic (highlighting experiences of a personal or more subtle nature), elegiac (sublime with a tinge of sadness and tenderness), etc. d.

Lowland shows imperfection, but unlike the ugly, it gravitates towards the spiritual level of man. The base reveals the qualities of a person from the standpoint of his personality. A person’s act can be ugly and base, but in the first case there is no conscious attitude towards action. It reveals the weakness of the spiritual principle in man and the predominance of the sensory-physical pole in him. Therefore, the base is, first of all, the spiritual imperfection of man. It may well coexist with the physical beauty of a person, his real perfection.

The base is one of the categories that represents enormous opportunities for critical disclosure in art. In the base, flesh and spirit fight, but the flesh, the physical, the corporeal turns out to be stronger. Here there is a confrontation between the individual and the social. After all, the base in an individual often manifests itself when his desires are opposed to the social ideal. The base can kindle a strong passion in a person, what in the Christian world is called lust.

The vile has not only a social basis for its manifestation, but it is also an aesthetic property of formidable negative forces that pose a universal danger to mankind. Varieties of the base are demonic (emphasis on the absence of divinity), vulgar (unworthy of human ideals), vulgar (vulgar with elements of a scandalous challenge to society), prosaic (the importance of the spiritual is diminished).

Tragic- a category characterizing a significant discrepancy between the desired ideal and real possibilities, as a result of which painful suffering or death occurs. The tragic aims to evoke compassion and participation. This category characterizes the disagreement between particularly significant content and a lightweight, superficial form. Content here clearly prevails over form.

Varieties of the tragic can be the concepts of pathetic (tragic with the manifestation of the sensual in the form of crying, screaming, etc.), dramatic (the predominance of suffering over death), heroic (emphasis on the special significance of the act), etc.

The tragic characterizes the transition of a person’s death into resurrection, his sorrow into joy. It is associated with the presence of optimism, the inevitability of the victory of good and bright principles. Aristotle believed that in tragedy there is a cathartic process of transition of a negative into a positive for a person. If a person is afraid of death in reality, then fear in this case is a negative reaction. The art of tragedy reveals to a fearful person the opportunity not only to die fearlessly, but also to die, realizing his victory over death and experiencing the joy of it. After all, ancient tragedy shows a person that death for the sake of other people brings the opportunity to become a hero, and a hero for the Greeks is someone who becomes a demigod, receiving immortality.

In philosophy, the problem of the tragic is closely related to morality and death. The tragic helps a person come to terms with non-existence after life. The tragic death of a person is different in that it reveals good and morally beautiful principles in him. On the other hand, tragic death is possible only when the concept of a person as self-worth exists in society. If a person lives in a society, then his interests must coincide with the interests of the people around this person. Only in this case does the dying hero find a continuation of life in society.

There is a cultural and historical dynamic in understanding the tragic. The Buddhist tradition has practically no tragic in its personal understanding, since Buddhism views death as a continuation of life in a different form. The Greek (and, consequently, the European tradition) considers the tragic as heroic.

In the Middle Ages, the tragic acts as a martyr, since the main thing in it is not the act of death and its motive, but the process preceding it. The moment of the supernatural occupies a large place in the medieval understanding of the tragic.

The Renaissance considers the tragic as a collision of a person with circumstances external to him, called fatal. Tragedy is the result of the manifestation of human activity and the manifestation of his will.

In subsequent eras, the tragic characterizes different manifestations discord between man and society. The tragic becomes diverse: severe suffering and death of a person; the irreplaceability of the loss of an individual personality for a person and society; higher problems of existence and the meaning of life; tragic human activity in relation to opposing circumstances; insoluble contradictions, etc.

Comic- a category expressing the conflict between reality and ideal, what is and what should be. In the comic, the real perishes: the ugly and insignificant expression of form clearly prevails over the idealized content. The idea turns out to be too distant from the real possibilities of the prevailing form. Therefore, a shade of irony and sarcasm arises. The comic can have several varieties: humor (when censure does not cause offense and an angry reaction), irony (filled with causticity and containing no goodwill), satire (a conscious and open fight against evil), sarcasm (a special exaggeration of the evil element) and grotesque (exaggeration of ridicule ).

The comic occurs when the harmonious integrity of the beautiful is violated towards the predominance of the phenomenal, individual in the object.

The comic as a category is associated with an assessment of the value of a given phenomenon. The second defining moment of the comic is laughter. It ridicules what is assessed by society as a disadvantage. Therefore, the comic manifests itself more intensely in mass audiences (theater, cinema, circus). On the other hand, laughter in the comic is a manifestation of democracy: it is a force hostile to all forms of violence, autocracy and inequality. Before laughter, everyone is equal - both the king and the jester.

Relevance is especially important for the comic, since the target of laughter is always specific. It reveals the contradiction of two principles associated with positive and negative. The positive in the comic turns out to be attractive, which in reality turns out to be false. For example, a person wants to see something significant or beautiful in something, but in reality he saw something empty or ugly. In this case, we can say that the comic contains not only positive, but also negative experiences for a person.

Comic is impossible without a sense of humor. This feeling is associated with the development of intelligence and spirituality in a person. Only under these conditions is the comic connected with good. Otherwise, comedy may acquire a shade of vulgarity, cynicism, skepticism and obscenity. We are talking about the humor of a person who is able to respond kindly to the comical and about the wit of a person who is able to create comical things.

The ability to laugh and joke in history was most often associated with the special intelligence of a person. Only a smart person can truly laugh. As an example, we can cite one of the heroes of Russian folk tales, Ivan the Fool. It is the fool who always ends up “on horseback” at the end of events. In this case, the manifestation of the “reversal” of the situation, so characteristic of the comic, is obvious.

The cultural forms of wit and ridicule are very diverse: French puns, Enlightenment grotesques, 19th-century jokes and 20th-century jokes.

In general, the comic is aimed at condemning imperfection and gaining joy from realizing it.

Subject. Aesthetic consciousness and human activity

Aesthetic consciousness influences the nature of all types of human activity. Human activity, in all its diversity, in turn develops and complicates a person’s aesthetic consciousness.

The forms and types of human activity are varied. A special place among types of human activity belongs to aesthetic activity. Aesthetic activity is an activity of a spiritual nature that takes place in the human soul and is associated with the comprehension and transformation of a person’s sensory experience. This is an activity to implement catharsis - the transition of the sensory to the spiritual. Aesthetic activity is connected with human activity, so it can be directed and controlled by him.

Aesthetic activity is unique due to the fact that it accompanies other types of activity. For example, we are talking about the presence of aesthetic manifestations in artistic activity, religious activity, scientific activity, cognitive activity, educational activity, educational activity, everyday activity, etc.

Subject. Aesthetic culture

The aesthetic culture of a person is determined by three main indicators: the variety of aesthetic experiences, the formation and stability of the aesthetic ideal and the ability to correlate what is perceived with the ideal, i.e. presence of aesthetic taste.

The aesthetic culture of a society is determined by the presence and specificity of the aesthetic ideals of society, reflected in people’s worldview, the diversity of cultural and artistic traditions and their embodiments in specific objects or processes, as well as the nature of the prevailing criteria in the assessment of aesthetic values.

Society contributes to the formation of the aesthetic ideal of each individual through various channels, but the most effective is art education and family upbringing.

The individual interacts with the culture of society through aesthetic education and artistic creativity, when the individual acts as a customer, and society fulfills this order.

A person influences the culture of society through his own activities.

When we talk about an already formed personality, then we're talking about not so much about the formation of aesthetic culture, but about its dynamics. Then another channel arises and becomes predominant - self-education.

Tired of the strict force of laws and the gloomy concentration of thought, we seek peace and freshness of life in artistic images...

G. Hegel

Beauty is life... N.G. Chernyshevsky

AESTHETICS AS A SCIENCE

SUBJECT AND OBJECTIVES OF AESTHETICS

Aesthetics translated from Greek means sensory, emotional perception. This is the science of sensory knowledge of beauty in reality, art, nature, the physical and spiritual state of man. “As a designation for a certain field of knowledge, the term “aesthetics” was introduced into scientific circulation by the German philosopher Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714 -1762) in the middle of the 18th century, from which, however, it does not follow that aesthetics as a science originated from him. Its history goes back to ancient times."

The Russian sentimentalist writer Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin (1766-1826) wrote: “Aesthetics is spider of taste. She treats sensory knowledge in general. Baumgarten was the first to propose it as special, separate from other sciences, which, leaving to logic the formation of the highest abilities of our soul, i.e. mind and understanding, deals with the correction of feelings and everything sensory, i.e. imagination with his actions. In a word, aesthetics teaches us to enjoy the graceful.”

In the course of studying the discipline “Fundamentals of Aesthetics,” students must become familiar with genuine art, which has neither historical time nor geographical space; get acquainted with the masterpieces of world art and the national experience of many peoples of the world; learn to use aesthetic categories when analyzing works of art; have an understanding of the concept of aesthetic taste, which is necessary for the ability to resist the “disposable spiritual values” of a mass consumer society.

The ancient Greek philosopher Democritus believed that the original form of knowledge is sensations. He called such cognition through sight, taste, smell, and touch “dark.” When a person has to cognize something that is inaccessible to sight, hearing, etc., the “true” type of knowledge comes to his aid - thinking. The sense organs are connected with perceived things through “images” (“eides”). Images are the forms of things; they penetrate the senses. Human feelings are the environment in which natural bodies and phenomena are reflected: “Sensations and thinking arise due to the fact that images come from outside.” Democritus said that man learned art from animals. The art of weaving is an imitation of a spider, the art of singing is an imitation of songbirds. Having learned from experience to help each other, people were able to pronounce words, “learned to express in speech the knowledge of all things.” The beautiful thing in a person is “harmonious life”, balance of physical and spiritual forces, measure in everything. “The bodily beauty of a person is something bestial if there is no intelligence hidden under it,” wrote Democritus. Art, like wisdom, must be learned.

Building his aesthetic concept, Aristotle wrote: “The goal of virtue is the beautiful... The indispensable task of virtue is to set beautiful goals.” “All human activity is directed partly towards the necessary and useful, partly towards the beautiful,” Aristotle believed. Aristotle's "Poetics" - a fundamental work devoted to the problems of aesthetics - consisted of two books, only the first of which has reached us. The main forms of beauty: order in space, proportionality and certainty; beauty lies in size and order. Art "imitates" real life, whereby the images that art provides help people “learn and reason.” The “pleasure” arising from the contemplation of works of art is two-sided. Firstly, it arises along with the knowledge of life obtained from art. Secondly, what the artist depicts is a product of captured human abilities. This “product of imitation” is valuable simply because it is skillfully decorated, plays with colors or gives the impression of “some other reason of the same kind.” Example: we look at a disgusting animal depicted by an artist with pleasure.

Art interprets events, actions, characteristics. An artist must create his ideal by selecting beautiful features from various people. Painting gives an idea of the ethical properties of a person, reflected in his appearance. Music expresses the very feeling, the inner state of the individual: “As for melodies, they themselves contain the reproduction of characters.” Deepest penetration into inner world found in fiction (poetry). The artist does not copy events, but is their creator. The poet is looking for patterns, objective reasons for certain actions of the heroes. Tragedy, evoking fear, anger, compassion through lively, intense, dramatic action, makes the viewer experience emotional excitement, thereby accomplishing a “purification” (catharsis) of his soul, elevating and educating him.

In the history of mankind, views on aesthetics have changed several times. As we see, the ancient philosophers Democritus and Aristotle used it to form a holistic picture of the world. During the Middle Ages, aesthetics was closely intertwined with theology. True wisdom and beauty is God, asserted such Christian thinkers as Augustine the Blessed and John of Damascus. During the Renaissance, aesthetics was a tool for understanding beauty both in nature and in art, showing the titanism of man (Alberti, Leonardo da Vinci). Figures of the Enlightenment considered aesthetics as one of the directions of the mind, the key to perfection (Denis Diderot, A.N. Radishchev). Since the 19th century, aesthetics has formed the laws of creativity, equally paying attention to both its subjective and objective sides. Currently, aesthetics actively explores the processes of artistic creativity, the language and style of literary masters. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900-1944), French philosopher and writer, believed that “returning people their spiritual appearance, their spiritual anxieties” is the task of true art. The author of “The Little Prince” addressed his readers, people of the 20th century: “I want them to love spring water. And a smooth carpet of green barley under the cracked blanket of summer. I want them to celebrate the changing seasons. I want them to ooze like ripening fruit, silent and slow. I want them to mourn their losses and honor the dead for a long time, for the inheritance slowly passes from generation to generation.” Saint-Exupéry, who saw firsthand the horrors of fascism and gave his life in the fight against it, wrote: “Why should we hate each other? We are all at the same time, carried away by the same planet, we are the crew of one ship. It’s good when something new, more perfect, is born in a dispute between different civilizations, but it’s monstrous when they devour each other.”

Aesthetics includes the sphere of art, the harmony of man with nature, the perfect and the ugly in work and everyday life. Aesthetics shapes ideas about the eternity of works of art and makes it possible to awaken and develop the need for creativity. Constantly enriching, the subject of aesthetics is open and dynamic, because in all human affairs there is a share of aesthetic significance. Therefore, it is inappropriate to identify aesthetics only with the theory and practice of art. A special science, art history, deals with the analysis of the beauty of works of art. It includes sections examining individual types of art: literary criticism, film studies, musicology, art criticism (we are talking about fine arts) and g.d. It is clear that the field of art criticism is inferior to aesthetics but in the breadth of coverage of sensory issues.

The subject of aesthetics emphasizes its interdisciplinarity. For example, when interpreting this or that artistic image, one cannot do without psychological data. The characteristics of the feelings and emotions of literary characters are combined with moral assessments of their actions (connection with morality). A special place is occupied by aesthetic education - instilling in a child the principles of beauty, the ability to experience, the development of an associative and metaphorical series (connection with pedagogy). The connection between aesthetics and history is undeniable. Remembering this or that page in the life of mankind, we pay attention to people’s attitude to beauty, fashion, tastes, preferences in the field of art. For example, in Soviet times, the dominant method in art was realism.

Aesthetic coloring is present in the production and technical sphere. For this purpose, the term “technical aesthetics” was first used, which was later replaced by the term “design” (from English- “project”, “drawing”, “construction”). Today, design is one of the most promising areas, combining artistic design and technical implementation of a utilitarian (useful) and pleasant-looking thing. Using aesthetically designed things, a person gets pleasure. It's nice to pick up a chocolate candy in a beautiful wrapper. The typical layout of apartments, dirty carriages, intrusive advertising, rough shapes of park benches, etc. have a devastating effect on the consciousness. Satisfying the ever-growing needs of consumers, designers change the external features of objects and try to achieve a synthesis of comfort and beauty. If we talk about our everyday life, then aesthetic assessments and ideas play an important role in career and personal life: we pay attention to how a person is dressed, how his tie is tied, whether he uses cutlery beautifully or not, and even how he sits in a chair.

Thus, the subject of aesthetics includes the sphere of art, aspects of humanitarian and technical knowledge, is integral part human worldview.

The objectives of aesthetics as a science are as follows:

1) creation of philosophical and worldview foundations for aesthetic analysis of art, nature, and man;
2) familiarization with the artistic treasures accumulated by humanity over many millennia;
3) development of the theory and practice of aesthetic education of the individual;
4) formation of an aesthetic concept and improvement of the appearance of consumer goods, development of the design sphere;
5) instilling respectful and careful attitude to the phenomena of Russian and world spiritual culture.

Teaching a course in aesthetics solves the following problems: to form students’ ideas about the patterns of development of art as the creative activity of people, about the role of art in various areas of the life of states; give students an idea of the importance of art in the formation moral standards person.

Aesthetics: dictionary / under general. ed. A.A. Belyaeva. M., 1989. P. 416.
Monuments of world aesthetic thought. In 5 vols. T. 2. M„ 1956. P. 794.
See in more detail: Shubina NA. Fundamentals of aesthetics: a sample program of the discipline. M.: ITiG, 1999.
Aristotle. Essays. In 4 vols. T. 4. M., 1984. P. 316,317.
Cnt. by: Bukovskaya A. Saint-Exupery, or Paradoxes of Humanism / trans. from Polish M„ 1983. P. 10.

The term “aesthetics” (Greek Aisthetikos “sentient, perceived by the senses”) was introduced into science by the German philosopher A. Baumgarten in the middle of the 18th century.

According to the definition of Yu. Borev, aesthetics is “a philosophical science about the essence of universal human values, their birth, existence, perception and evaluation, about the most general principles of aesthetic development of the world in the process of any human activity, and above all in art, about the nature of the aesthetic and its diversity in reality and in art, about the essence and laws of creativity, about the perception, functioning and development of art.” The author calls the subject of aesthetics “the whole world in its aesthetic richness, considered from the point of view of the universal human significance (aesthetic values) of its phenomena”

The simplest and most correct definition is given by V.A. Nikolaev: “In our time, aesthetics is defined as the science of the nature and laws of the aesthetic development of reality, of the essence and forms of creativity according to the laws of beauty.” From this position, the natural environment should be recognized as primary in the formation of a person’s aesthetic perception, followed by art, because art is a secondary phenomenon that only reflects reality.

Thus, in general, aesthetics considers two interrelated circles of phenomena:

The aesthetic-value attitude of a person to reality,

And the artistic practice of people (summarizing the world artistic experience).

There are six problematic areas of aesthetics:

1. Aesthetics of reality. The nature and essence of the aesthetic, the historical conditionality and variability of its forms and their significance in the artistic and aesthetic life of society, the universal meaning of the category of beauty...

2. Aesthetics of art. Artistic creativity in its aesthetic relation to reality and in its meaning for humanity.

3. Information-theoretic aesthetics (including sociocommunicative aesthetics).

4. Receptive aesthetics.

5. Technical (industrial) aesthetics –

theory of design, theory of mastering the world according to the laws of beauty using industrial means.

6. Practical aesthetics - everything that is not created in the form of art.

The basis of aesthetics lies in the meta-category “aesthetic”. According to Yu. Borev’s definition, “the aesthetic is a diverse reality, taken in its meaning for humanity as a species and taking into account the degree of its development by society, in the light of the highest capabilities of the individual and society for a given stage of historical development.” “This gives aesthetics a worldview character and makes it a philosophical discipline. Unlike philosophy, which focuses on the problem of the human meaning of being and on comprehending the essence of nature, society and thinking, aesthetics focuses on the problem of the human meaning of being and its diverse manifestations (comprehension of their value).”

There are five known aesthetic models:

1. Objective-spiritual, objective-idealistic: aesthetic is the result of the spiritualization of the world by God or an absolute idea.

2. Subjective-spiritual, personalistic, subjective-idealistic: aesthetic - projection of the spiritual wealth of the individual onto aesthetically neutral reality.

3. Subjective-objective, dualistic: the aesthetic arises through the unity of the properties of reality and the human spirit. Those. beauty is the result of correlating the properties of life with a person as a measure of beauty, or with his practical needs, or with our ideas about a beautiful life.

4. Materialistic, “natural”: aesthetic is a natural property of objects, the same as weight, color, symmetry, shape.

5. “Social” concept: aesthetic is an objective property of phenomena, due to their correlation with the life of mankind (universally significant in phenomena).

In accordance with the above, another important category of aesthetics is understood in a similar way – the beautiful. There are several dozen different understandings about beauty. Our study supports the opinion of Western European aesthetics late XIX-XX centuries, which “gave preference to the views according to which a person, in the process of perception, spiritualizes the aesthetically neutral world and makes it radiate beauty. Nature lies “beyond the beautiful and the ugly,” it is “extra-aesthetic,” as well as “extra-moral” and “illogical.” Man brings beauty to nature."

Publications on geography >>>

Global problems of human health
Global problems are problems that cover the whole world, all of humanity, pose a threat to its present and future and require united efforts and joint actions of all...

The role of transport in organizing the economic space of Russia
Russia is, first of all, a huge space that requires a sufficient number of transport communications to connect this space, prevent it from turning into some kind of amorphous mass, deprived...

Medieval aesthetics

During the period of dominance of the religious worldview, aesthetic views were based on the denial of pagan ones, i.e. ancient ideas. Not only carnal, physical beauty was denied, but beauty in general natural world. And at the same time, religious philosophical aesthetics used the philosophical language and those concepts that were developed in the era of antiquity. Late antiquity also moved away from the materialistic ideas of the ancient Greeks.

Neoplatonism already combined elements of mysticism and the idea of the supersensible. From this there was one step to the idea of the world as the embodiment of the divine plan, to the supersensible beauty of God. According to the views of religious philosophers, eternal, supersensible, absolute beauty is God. Plato's thoughts about the supersensible world of ideas were here taken to their extreme. But Plato, through this mystification, took a step towards understanding human nature.

To understand that a person lives in a world of ideas, his activity is based on ideas, on the implementation of ideas. And therefore, human interaction with the objective world is based on the perception of the relationship between an idea and a sensory individual object. Religious aesthetics further absolutizes the ideal world of man, turning it into the transcendental world of God. And it completely contrasts the ideal and the material. Both in cognition and in creativity, a person has the opposition of an idea and a thing, but only in interrelation. Religion, by absolutizing the spiritual principle, perhaps reveals its real significance in the life of mankind, but at the same time it distorts the real interaction of the spiritual and material in human nature.

Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) actually summed up Western medieval aesthetics. He transferred the emphasis of beauty to sensually perceived, natural beauty, appreciating it in itself. For him, a thing is beautiful only when it appearance its nature and essence are expressed to the utmost. Thomas defines beauty as the totality of its objective and subjective characteristics. Objective characteristics: “proper proportion or consonance, clarity and perfection.” He saw subjective aspects in the relationship between beauty and cognitive ability, which is realized in the act of contemplation, accompanied by spiritual pleasure. By art, Thomas understood any skillful activity and its result.

Renaissance aesthetics

The worldview of the Renaissance can be imagined from the following excerpt from the famous “Speech on the Dignity of Man” by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. Mirandola (1463-1494) writes that God, having created man and placed him at the center of the world, addressed him with the following words: “We do not give you, O Adam, neither a specific place, nor your own image, nor a special duty, so that and the place, and the person, and the duty you had at will, according to your will and your decision. The image of other creations is determined within the limits of the laws we have established. You, not constrained by any limits, will determine your image according to your decision, into the power of which I represent you.” The Renaissance is considered to be a return to antiquity. But it differs from antiquity radically in its understanding of man, in the ideal of man. Antiquity forms the idea of a person whose boundaries are limited and determined by his nature. The worldview of the Renaissance realized for the first time that this world did not set any limits to human development. Begins to feel the limitlessness of human creative powers. Renaissance - the era of early capitalism. The Middle Ages prepared the development of productive forces, the population grew, crafts improved, and man began to comprehend the laws of nature. And he himself began to change. His thinking, will, interest, and needs developed. His own development became a necessity.

Early capitalism brought the need for personal activity and entrepreneurship. And a person reconsiders his attitude towards himself, his understanding of himself. Renaissance thinkers believe that man is good by nature, not inclined to evil, noble, and most importantly, that man makes himself great by his deeds. The Renaissance is rich in titans of the spirit. The ideal of the era is the master. And the titans of the Renaissance speak several languages. They are proficient in several types of arts. Leonardo da Vinci was a sculptor, an engineer, a poet, an architect, a painter, a philosopher, and an art theorist. At the center of Renaissance art is a natural, sensual person who lives by earthly joys. But at the same time, the Renaissance creates the ideal of a person of honor, dignity, high spirituality and morality. Dante in The Divine Comedy goes through the centuries lived by humanity and surveys the moral state of these eras using the example of fate historical figures who went to hell. Boccaccio in The Decameron is full of irony towards the ostentatious piety of church ministers. In fact, he opposes the universal hypocrisy that is characteristic of believing humanity. And seeks the true purity of the human spirit.

The philosophy of this era is more occupied with the problems of art. Art in this era has a basic ideological function. It creates the sensual ideal of the era and at the same time it is the creation of man’s sensuality. Your human sensuality. Theorists of the era consider art a form of knowledge of nature. And this is true, because human nature as a sensually perceived nature is not given to a person hereditarily. He creates this nature and appropriates it. Creates with the power of imagination.

Aesthetics of the era of classicism

The era of the formation of a single economic market in large areas. Strong centralized states emerge. Because of this, nations emerge with a single language and a single psychological make-up. The development of sciences and the scientific way of thinking is taking place. The general requirement of the era is the subordination of the individual to civic duty. And at the same time, there is a need to strengthen the role of the state in the relationships between individuals, since the strengthening of bourgeois relations is fraught with a war of all against all. Aesthetic views of the era

are influenced by their time. The rationalistic worldview gives rise to the aesthetics of Nicolò Boileau (1636-1711). In his work “Poetic Art,” written in poetic form, Boileau pursues the idea of regulating genres and types of art. According to his views, the spiritual principle makes the external, material beautiful. But for him the spiritual principle is ratio, reason. There is no beauty outside truth. The strict definiteness of the genres of art, say, in drama, the principle of the unity of time, place and action, comes from the understanding that rationality is, first of all, the organization, according to the logic of reason, of clear logical forms. A striking example of such an understanding of art is the garden of Versailles, where the principle of bringing beauty into nature is professed. Not wildlife beautiful, but only ennobled by the human mind.

Aesthetics of the Age of Enlightenment

The next stage in the development of capitalist society is characterized by heated hostility to serfdom. The idea of communion with God, elevation to the divine is replaced by the idea of enlightenment, education of the people. The leaders of education defend the interests of the masses and peasants. They believe that the abolition of serfdom will bring with it general prosperity. During this era there are early bourgeois revolutions. The bourgeoisie acts as a progressive class that brings liberation to the people. The ideas of the bourgeoisie in this era are progressive. Its spiritual leaders fight ignorance, obscurantism, religious dope, medieval pseudoscience, inhumane feudal morality, religious art and aesthetics.

The aesthetics of this era is an integral part of the ideology of the third estate before the Great French Revolution. This aesthetics develops the idea of art that is accessible to everyone, which is democratic, professes the principle of reproducing life and judging it, truthfully and ideologically. Denis Diderot comes to the idea that art reproduces typical characters, that each class has its own characteristic features, their human types. Almost all figures of this era write and argue about the educational role of art. And the French philosopher E. Caudillac (1714-1780) saw main reason the emergence of art in the need for communication between people.

Contemporary Central European aesthetics

By the beginning of the 20th century, under the influence of the natural sciences, and also partly as a result of psychological research and the developed classification of mental elements, an idealistic methodology of phenomenology was formed. Considering non-experiential structures of consciousness, freed from naturalistic attitudes, it removes the division into subject and object, reduces the activity of reflection of consciousness exclusively as subordinate to self-knowledge. One of the founders of phenomenology is F. Brentano. E. Husserl was a student of F. Brentano and began his philosophical career when the most influential trends in Western philosophy were positivism and neo-Kantianism, and in general empiricism, individualism, scientism, and conventionalism “dominated.” Skepticism and relativism, according to E. Husserl, destroying human knowledge, aroused a sharp protest in his soul and he finds a new, logically reliable basis in the form of phenomenological reduction. “Husserl attached great importance to his discovery of the world of objects possessing absolute existence. great value. It was here that, in his opinion, a truly extensive apodictic foundation was discovered on which human knowledge could be built. Phenomenological reduction leads to a change in point of view, attitude, person: having carried out the reduction, he moves from the natural attitude of consciousness to the phenomenological one.

With a natural, natural attitude of consciousness, the existence of objects of study is relative and subject to doubt; with a phenomenological attitude, it is absolute and undeniable”4. E. Husserl’s new position attracted many young philosophers, such as M. Scheler, N. Hartmann, A. Pfender, M. Geiger, A. Reinach, O. Becker, including M. Heidegger, who formed a phenomenological movement. The aesthetic theory of the 20th century receives in phenomenology all the necessary means for its development and existence in the context of a rather complex spiritual picture of Western Europe. The reduction method makes it possible to explore the understanding of the subject of knowledge not as empirical, but as transcendental, which is fundamentally important for aesthetics. Man appeared as (a kind of whole) world of designated truths located above the empirical-psychological consciousness and giving it meaning.

Husserl's method of identifying a priori structures of human existence was actively used in aesthetics by such phenomenological scientists as M. Merleau-Ponty, M. Dufresne, R. Ingarden and others. In his philosophical concept, Maurice Merleau-Ponty interprets the human attitude to the world through such a characteristic of consciousness as intentionality. Raising the category of perception to the “supreme and central”, the philosopher finds that “neutral field” where human intentions (intentions) communicate with the world. Dealing with problems of a linguistic nature, M. Merleau-Ponty creates a number of prerequisites for the analysis of artistic and aesthetic phenomena and their existential interpretation. A phenomenological connection with aesthetics, art and literary criticism was shown by a scientist of a later generation, Mikel Dufresne.

In his views on the content, state and prospects for the development of art, he expressed a number of fundamental additions to new European aesthetic thought in such works as “Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience”, “Poetic”, etc., as well as in the articles “Aesthetics and Philosophy” /I967/, “Philosophy in the West” /I973/. The scientist proposes to take into account in relation to contemporary art such indicators as internationalization, the prevalence of art in reproductions, the reasons for the aggressiveness of anti-art, the ratio of “new means” of artistic production,” standardization of industry and the creative freedom of the artist. The philosophical and anthropological tradition in the form of classical psychoanalysis attracted the widest interest of artists not only in Europe, because the psychoanalytic approach greatly contributed to avoiding not so much artistic collisions as psychological isolation into oneself. Complete emotional openness did not occur immediately, and the embodiment of Freud’s ideas in works of art led to the desociologization of art and a decrease in its universal significance.

However, S. Freud himself was most likely aware of what stage of spiritual maturity humanity is at, in any case, what are the reasons for its anxiety, unhappiness and anxious moods. “It seems to me,” Freud writes, “that the question of the fate of the human race depends on whether the development of culture, and to what extent, will be able to curb the human urge of aggression and self-destruction, which disrupts the coexistence of people. In this regard, perhaps just modern era deserves special interest." The human personality in all the fullness of its essential characteristics is at the center of the teaching of personalism, which also proceeds from the correlation of the human will with God as the highest principle. Personalists give human activity not so much a rationalistic, but an aesthetic and poetic character. Thus, Emmanuel Mounier, through poetic images, made tangible concepts and thoughts about the spirit and body, about the biological, physical and existing in time. The personalists enclosed the “magical language” of transforming the world in poetry and art, protesting against some trends of modernism and counterculture. E. Mounier speaks in a romantic manner and with deep sadness in his observations on the means of art and the fate of personalist aesthetics in general: “Being incorporeal, poetry also cannot be reduced to either the pure contemplation of an idea or the creative power of the spirit. All along human history it acts as a sensual expression of the inner groundlessness of existence; she tends to debunk conventional points of view, direct divine light onto ordinary objects and bring the exciting presence of the ordinary to the sublime spheres.

It is also true that many use games of abstraction to cover up their inability to comprehend the limits of the human, while others, disappointed in all kinds of intricacies, are consoled by external beauty or what is in fashion today. It is also true that all kinds of deformations in art are a sign of the deep nihilism of the era.”8 The thinker’s remark cited is also valuable in that it seems to predict the modern situation, when the aesthetic in the structure of human existence does not find a conceptual analogue in theory, as this is reflected (albeit hierarchically) in classical epistemology. Philosophical understanding of art in its relation to consciousness acquires a cosmic dimension, which they try to integrate into the worlds of historical realities and social forms human life. Indeed, the ontology of art requires a sociocultural dimension, but does this mean that we need to completely abandon classical foundations methodology, will this allow us to reach new level understanding the nature of art as a unique phenomenon of human existence? As long as the question remains open, there is always hope for some kind of “breakthrough” that would capture the attention of social anthropology in the direction of “aesthetic expertise” on humanity and humanity. Indeed, in the tradition of philosophical anthropology there is such experience.

On the eve of the 21st century, the “self-reflection” of aesthetic theory is becoming increasingly important; various aspects of the formation and existence of this science are still of constant interest to scientists. Moreover, an objective, essentialist (essential) theory of art is necessary and possible. Another thing is that at the stage of postmodernism, where everything turns out to be in the past and this is a normal situation in which not only world culture finds itself, but to a certain extent ours too: “... A new situation arises in which cultural studies as a metascience becomes the only way of adequate description and analysis of this type of relationship, while traditional aesthetics, due to its hierarchy, is powerless to understand what is happening”9. The confusion and alleged crisis of aesthetic science could turn into a constructive process through an appeal to the fundamental foundations of aesthetics itself, its empirical and theoretical level, based on the same philosophical and anthropological tradition.

Research into aesthetic knowledge as a theoretical system and analysis of the functional orientations of aesthetics have not lost their relevance. Due to the fact that aesthetics is an area of methodological reflection addressed to humanitarian knowledge, and therefore to science appealing to man, the interpretive-phenomenological and activity-constructive, philosophical-aesthetic and scientific-aesthetic principles fall into the field of view of aesthetic achievements. Through the efforts of centuries-old cultural creativity, combined with the individual theoretical constructs of individual aesthetic scientists, three types of aesthetic theory were formed depending on the prevailing system-forming principle: philosophical-aesthetic theoreticality, general aesthetic theoreticality and particular scientific aesthetic-theoretical constructs.

Currently being established new style methodological reflection, forming a certain type of methodological attitude to knowledge and philosophical and aesthetic transformation. In its content, this path integrates subject-specific aesthetic and philosophical knowledge. However, the greatest difficulty arises when interpreting the concept of “picture of the world” as subject boundaries and completeness of volume with regard to the strict scientific nature of the categories, principles, and laws of modern aesthetic theory. Along with the biological, physical, philosophical, one can distinguish sensory-spatial, spiritual-cultural, metaphysical pictures of the world. Discussing this issue “...we make the subject of special study the ambivalence of the human worldview, its inconsistency, which in its borderline manifestations acts as antinomy.

Human existence contains a fundamental tension, the manifestations of which range from “all-language” semantic dialogicity to the intense human tension between finitude and infinity, meaning and nonsense, life and death, etc.” Thus, philosophical anthropology, the integral essence of which consists of phenomenology, existentialism, psychoanalysis, neo-Thomism, personalism and their various modifications, serves as the context for a new fundamental ontology of the aesthetic.