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发表于 2009-12-15 13:28
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Waterhouse怎样用亚当夏娃故事来佐证历史上的第一次审美反应"This was, then, the first aesthetic response in history" (节选自他的文章EPISTEMOLOGY OF THE BUDDHA IMAGE)
I shall put the matter another way. It will be recalled that God placed in the Garden of Eden both a Tree of Life and a Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil; and warned, in His inscrutable way, that the penalty for eating from the latter would be death. Religious leaders who like to keep their flock in blissful ignorance have taken the warning to heart: but Adam and Eve chose to listen to the serpent, who told them not to worry about it. This was fortunate for those of us today who toil in universities dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge; but, as Adam and Eve discovered, knowledge has its price. We are informed that the Garden of Eden contained "every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food", and that the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was perceived by Eve as both good for food and pleasant to the eyes, even before she ate from it. This was, then, the first aesthetic response in history, unless we include the satisfaction previously felt by God at His own creations; and it will be seen that, it already embodies a value judgment. Furthermore, before the Fall, the only value judgments which had been made, or indeed could be made, were favourable; and there were presumably no degrees of goodness either, since that implies qualification, criticism and negation.
If we use this fable to assist us in understanding the intuitive response to a work of art, we see that it has to be positive; and that it has to be singular. It cannot imply, or suggest, comparison with one's response to other works of art, or to objects which are not artistic. In short, it is a response to art for art's sake. Because of what happened in the Garden of Eden, the intuitive response presumably exists now only as a logical fiction, at least here on earth; but it is nevertheless logically necessary. |
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