Aesthetic categories are the first and most important milestones in the system of aesthetic concepts. They reflect the experience and traditions of culture, socio-political characteristics, spiritual values. Along with the laws and general concepts of aesthetics, they help to comprehend the properties of reality, beauty and harmony, features of artistic creativity and social life.
The concept of category in aesthetics
Aesthetic categories mean the most general concepts that describe the processes of creativity (cultural, artistic, musical, cinematic, and others). They simultaneously reflect the essence of the phenomena of being in philosophy. The system of aesthetic categories is a stable relationship of basic concepts, where a change in some elements entails the transformation of others.
Analysis of the categories of aesthetics is inextricably linked with their consideration in historical retrospect, as their content has changed over the centuries. In the methodology of this science, nihilistic opinions about the possibility ofcategorical description. Thus, the Italian philosopher and politician Benedetto Croce in his writings substantiated the idea that all aesthetic categories are individual in nature, are perceived by each person in their own way, and therefore are pseudo-concepts. Since they cannot be given a precise and unambiguous definition, they should be abandoned in philosophy.
One of the central categories or metacategories associated with the variety of expressive forms of the surrounding world is aesthetic vision. It allows you to establish a relationship with the philosophy and sociology of art, to show the beautiful as one of the most important dimensions of aesthetic perception inherent in the spiritual nature of man.
Categories
The main aesthetic categories include:
- beautiful;
- ugly;
- sublime;
- tragic;
- comic;
- low;
- terrible.
Additional categories can be added to this group: mimesis (imitation), chaos and harmony, irony, grotesque, allegory, and a large number of others. There is no exhaustive list, since aesthetics only indicates the path that allows a person to leave the realm of utilitarianism and join a higher, spiritual reality. Some of these categories are considered within the framework of the general principles of art - mimesis, motivation, artistic taste and objectivity, style, while others - when analyzing the languages of art (artistic symbol and image, simulacrum).
Many of these concepts existed in antiquity. In contemporary aestheticstheir content was rethought, new categories appeared: absurdity, labyrinth, artistic space and time, and others. More general concepts of aesthetic quality or property are also introduced.
Beautiful
One of the earliest categories in aesthetics was "beautiful", describing phenomena that have the highest aesthetic value. Ideas of what is beautiful varied across cultures and eras.
In Antiquity, this term was understood as a property of the world - an ideal order. The ancient Greek thinkers Pythagoras and Aristotle saw beauty in harmony - proportionality, consistency of parts and orderliness of diversity. This idea was realized in the architecture of this culture - the temples of Ancient Greece were distinguished by their proportionality to human proportions. At the same time, the idea arose that beauty is created with the help of inspiration and mental transformation of reality.
Aristotle played a special role in the development of aesthetics. The aesthetic categories of beauty, tragedy and imitation in his works acquired an ontological character. The main one he considered mimesis - a creative imitation of reality in art, capable of presenting the image as beautiful or ugly. His point of view was different from that of Plato, who meant by this category a simple copy.
In the Middle Ages, the concept of beauty was identified with the divine. Only God gives inert matter aesthetic properties. Asceticism of that era denies sinful pleasureworks of art. Beautiful, it is also divine, should tame the desires of a person and help him on the path to faith.
In the Renaissance, this aesthetic category in art returns to ancient traditions. The beautiful, including the beauty of the human body, has become a symbol of good, and the ugly - evil. In the era of Classicism, the meaning of this concept acquired a different shade - it began to be identified with graceful and truthful. Thus, beauty largely depends on the subjective perception of the world, which explains the large difference in the aesthetic assessments of individuals.
Ugly
The ugly as one of the main aesthetic categories arose as an opposition to the beautiful, the sublime and the aesthetic. Dialectical negation is a characteristic feature of the ugly in reality and in art. It is associated with such characteristics as negative emotions, rejection, anti-value, disgust.
During Greco-Roman antiquity, ugly objects and dying, decaying beings were actually ugly, in the concept of morality - immoral acts, in politics - abuse of power, deceit and other phenomena. In art, it is more difficult to designate the ugly, since it can be a fact of skillful imitation (image). Cicero and Aristotle also stressed that the ugly and ugly are always inherent in the comic.
Ugly in aesthetics is understood as the properties of objects that have a negative value inin general human terms, but do not pose a serious threat. The beautiful gives pleasure when contemplated, and the ugly repels.
Tragic
Tragic, as a category of aesthetics, first appeared in Aristotle. In his understanding, it was an insoluble conflict, the obligatory component of which was passion and suffering. Their reasons are the sublime.
Since more than 2000 years, the concept of the tragic has changed a lot. This problem in modern art and philosophy intersects with the awareness of mortality, sinfulness and human imperfection, as well as the lack of freedom. At the same time, along with the tragedy of irretrievable death, the tragic affirms the infinity of the universe. This category is trying to solve the problems of life and death, the meaning of being, the eternity of an ever-changing world.
Comic
The essence of the comic aesthetic category lies in contradiction. It can be characterized as the result of the opposition between the beautiful and the ugly, the sublime and the base, the stupid and the reasonable, the false and the true. The forms of such opposition, and, consequently, of the comic, are very diverse.
The features of this aesthetic category in literature are:
- grotesque;
- surprise effect;
- emotional criticism;
- variety of shades (humor, irony, sarcasm, satire and others).
Sublime
In ancient Greece, the sublime was understood not as a category of aesthetics, but as a stylistic onefigure of speech. In the Middle Ages, God was the highest good and sublime, and at the level of human existence, this meant striving for the ideal and pure.
In modern understanding, this category has a shade of positive meaning of objects that have not yet been fully disclosed and are fraught with great potential. This is something colossal, powerful and beyond human capabilities at the present stage of development.
Inferior
The base, like the ugly, is a contrast. It is the opposite of the category of the sublime and represents the extreme degree of the ugly.
The base is an extremely negative value for all mankind, carrying a great danger. An example of this type of aesthetic category is fascism, militarism, nuclear war.
Terrible
The category of terrible in meaning is close to tragic. Its difference lies in the fact that it is hopeless and leaves no hope for the best. The outcome of the terrible is hopeless, and death in this case does not carry an enlightening beginning, since this is not subject to a person. In medieval consciousness, this category was associated with the torments of hell and the coming Last Judgment.
An example of a terrible thing in the French writer and philosopher Denis Diderot was a picture that depicts a man thrown to be torn to pieces by wild animals. His suffering and death are completely meaningless and lead to a pessimistic attitude.
Chaos and harmony
The ancient aesthetic categories also include chaos and harmony. Reflections on these two concepts among philosophers have often led to the question of the intelligent formation of the world from the initial chaos. So, the German philosopher Hegel, wondering about chance, asked the reader: how many times does it take to scatter a set of letters to make Homer's poem "The Iliad" out of it?
Harmony in the understanding of ancient Greek thinkers is a kind of whole, consisting of a set of elements that are often opposite in nature. Harmony is harmony between people (social sphere), between people and gods (spiritual sphere) and between natural phenomena (ontological sphere). It carries a positive characteristic that is aimed at reunion.
Chaos is the opposite of harmony, mismatch between any elements. Both categories exist in a single world space. The most amazing thing is that chaos can give rise to harmony: from the collision of particles and their interaction, stars, planets and the world of matter as a whole are born.
Catharsis
The category of catharsis was of great importance in ancient culture. Her concept included, first of all, spiritual purification as a result of aesthetic experience. In those days, it was believed that art was able to treat mental and other diseases, to tame the harmful passions of a person. In modern psychology there is also a specific direction - art therapy,designed to solve internal problems, rehabilitation after mental and physical injuries, reduce stress levels.
In the modern sense, catharsis borders on expressiveness, self-expression, sublimation through painting, sculpture, acting, playing music and other areas of art. When perceiving a work of art, a person must also experience catharsis, which leads to a sense of beauty and the desire to be better. This category is closely related to the artistic image. He affects a person with his emotionality, calls for empathy.
Artistic image
Artistic image as an aesthetic category is a generalized picture that is created with the help of fiction and has aesthetic value. It also serves as the only possible form of reflection of reality in art. The artist's fiction creates a different reality in the context of an aesthetic ideal based on life experience. The interpretation of the image can also be different, depending on the knowledge of the person who comprehends and the historical era.
There are many techniques for creating an image: comparison, typing, generalization, fiction and others. Artistic image has the following functions:
- reflecting the features of reality and revealing the spiritual life;
- expression of emotional attitude to a phenomenon or object;
- the embodiment of the ideal, harmony and beauty;
- creating aesthetic value;
- shaping the internal attitude of the viewer, listener orreader's perception;
- embodiment of a certain kind of convention when reflecting the actual data (creative role).
