【作者】 袁敦卫；

【导师】 王坤；

【作者基本信息】 中山大学 ， 文艺学， 2009， 博士

【摘要】 本文重点考察德国近代文化哲学家齐美尔(Georg Simmel,1858~1918)的社会美学思想,并试图从中引申出一条思考当代社会审美现象的特殊途径。齐美尔提出的“社会美学”是一个具有特定内涵的美学范畴,在当代东西方美学研究中基本处于半休眠状态。按照齐美尔的定义,“社会”并不是指人类活动的整体形态(如马克思和韦伯所认定的那样),而是单指人与人之间的社会交往形式。“社会交往”与“社会交往形式”的差别在于:前者包含丰富的社会生活内容,而后者仅强调形式意义。譬如商人与顾客的社会交往,通常涉及商品种类、顾客类型以及买卖方式(如批发、零售、现金付款、赊账)等经验性内容;而从社会交往形式来看,商人与顾客的关系只有一种形态,即交换(exchange)。或者说,交换乃商人与顾客之间惟一的社会交往形式;一旦脱离这一形式,则商人与顾客相应的社会身份必然发生变化(当然,并非只有“商人/顾客”这种社交组合才体现交换关系)。因此,社会交往形式乃是剔除了社会交往的经验内容之后留存下来的纯粹形式(齐美尔的社会学理论因而也被称为“纯粹社会学”),齐美尔也正是在这个意义上使用“社会”这一概念的。因此,“社会美学”的恰切内涵乃是“社会交往形式的美学”(aesthetics of social forms)。“社会美学”是齐美尔社会学理论的精魂。他再三否认自己是社会学家,而希望学界把他当作哲学家,源于他执著、深厚的美学情怀。“社会美学”思想的孕育和阐发,既显示了齐美尔的个人敏锐,也折射出时代的某种精神趋向。在他看来,传统宗教想像和艺术形式的衰落,给西方造成了普遍的心灵虚空;寻求新的灵魂寄托物必然成为现代人的共同选择。紧随涂尔干之后,齐美尔更为清晰地看到:日益活跃的社会生活开始侵入现代人的灵魂空间并成长为新的精神中心。拜金拜物、追逐时尚、纵身爱欲最为典型地暴露了现代人深重的精神危机:外在的丰富总是难以逃脱内在贫乏的追赶。但是,齐美尔对现代人日常心灵的关注既不是道德主义的,也不是实用主义的,而是审美主义的。此处的“审美主义”可从两个层面来看:一是他的整个理论构思都散发着审美主义的精神气质:拒绝价值夷平,拒绝理性化和同质化,是他的基本立场(在这方面,尼采对他的影响极为深刻);二是他的形式分析法本质上是一种美学方法:它剔除了社交形式“辖制”之下的道德化和经验性内容,仅存“形式”维度(齐美尔申明乃是受康德“美在形式”观念的影响)。如在探讨社交形式中的爱欲时,他重点剖析了现代卖淫活动中的两性关系,但几乎不涉及妓女的道德价值问题和社会大众的情感态度。就此而言,齐美尔又不乏自然科学家的严谨、客观和冷静。毋庸讳言,一切社会活动都体现一定的社交形式,不分轻重、主次的笼统分析只会损害“社会美学”的前瞻性构想。针对现代人的主要精神病症,并对应于拜金拜物、追逐时尚、纵身爱欲,齐美尔主要对三种社交形式的具体文本展开了细致的经验分析,即体现普遍人际关系的货币、展示阶层(群体)关系的时尚以及演绎性别关系的爱欲。通过考察三者的形式变迁,齐美尔试图以一种颇为个性化的方式为现代性把脉。齐美尔认为:货币本质上是一种社交关系的体现,但在不同的历史阶段,货币所呈现的社交关系——严格说是社交形式颇有差异。远古时期,货币是以神灵祭品的形式出现的,主要体现着人与神灵之间的交换关系。此种交换与现代交易中的等价意识绝缘,并以“时间延搁”(指完成交换过程需要很长的时间)为表现形式。及至前现代和现代社会,由于货币在实物形态和功能上发生变化,它所体现的社交形式也变得光怪陆离,且与现代的“文化逻辑”(丹尼尔·贝尔语)颇有相通之处。与货币一样,时尚、爱欲都是社交形式的典型经验文本。齐美尔运用形式方法,条分缕析,虽偶有偏激之语和“印象主义哲学家”(卢卡奇对齐美尔的评价)的随意散漫,但深刻揭示了货币、时尚、爱欲所演绎的现代社交形式的基本特征,从一个崭新的角度诊断了“时代的精神状况”(雅斯贝尔斯语)。在三份经验分析的基础上,齐美尔进一步从理论上概括现代社交形式的精神特质和审美功能,并引入经康德、席勒之手改造过的游戏说,把社交形式的美学品格与游戏的无功利性结合起来,赋予现代社交形式以更丰富、更深厚的文化底蕴——使之成为继踵宗教、艺术之后的又一心灵拯救之途。但齐美尔也深切看到:任何社交形式都带有某种社会修辞功能,它使个体在社会生活中缺乏足够的自省意识,将外在的丰富代替内在的充实,忽视生命的本质乃在于“额外生命和多于生命”(齐美尔语)。围绕社会美学这一中心线,论文最后梳理了齐美尔与舍勒、曼海姆、海德格尔和吉登斯四人的思想联系。虽然众多思想家在思考当代社会生活与个人生命意义之关系时,观点颇为歧异,但都充分意识到了社交形式对当代心灵的特殊影响。遗憾的是,此种影响的性质和意义至今尚未得到全面清理——齐美尔只不过是打开了一扇窗而已。事实上,社会美学对现实的指导意义并不局限于齐美尔的时代,当代思想家哈贝马斯(Jürgen Habermas)一再称誉齐美尔为“时代诊断者”,或许不是没有深意的吧!更多还原

【Abstract】 This dissertaion focuses on the thoughts of social aesthetics advanced by Georg Simmel (1858~1918), a modern cultural philosopher from Germany. It attempts to stretch a special way of pondering aesthetic phenomena of contemporary society.The social aesthetics advanced by Georg Simmel is an aesthetic cagegory with particular implication, which is in a state of semi-dormancy in the aesthetic study of both the East and the West. According to Georg Simmel,“society”does not mean the overall forms of activities of human beings (as Karl Marx and Max Weber have identified), but merely refers to the forms of social interaction among people. The difference between“social interaction”and“forms of social interaction”is that the former contains rich content of social life, while the latter only emphasizes the meaning of forms. For example, the social interaction between merchants and customers usually relates to experiential content like merchandise types, customer types, trade manners (such as wholesale, retail, cash payment, credit), and so on. But from the perspective of forms of social interaction, there is only one form of relationship between merchants and customers form-exchange. In other words, the exchange is the unique form of social interaction between them. Their correspondent social status must change once their relationship deviates from this form. (Of course,“merchants/customers”is not the only social combination to reflect exchange relationship.) Therefore, the forms of social interaction refer to pure forms excludding the experiential content of social interaction. (Thus Simmel’s sociological theory is also called“pure sociology”.) In this sense, Simmel adopted the concept of“society”. So the exact implication of social aesthetics is“aesthetics of forms of social interaction”(aesthetics of social forms).“Social aesthetics”is the spirit of Simmel’s sociological theory. Due to his inflexible and profound feelings towards aesthetics, he kept denying that he was a sociologist and hoped to be regarded as a philosopher in academic circles. The gestation and elucidation of Simmel’s“social aesthetics”thouthts not only reflected his of wit, but also represented the mental tendency of the time.From his point of view, the decline of forms of traditional religious imagination and forms of arts led to the universal vacuity of mind in western countries. As a result, to search for a new anchorage of spirit would become the common choice of people in modern times. Following Durkheim, Simmel had a clear understanding that the increasingly active social life began to invade the spiritual space of modern people and become the new center of spirit. The grave spiritual crisis of modern people-external abundance always cannot escape the chase of internal poorness in people’s mind,was revealed from three typical aspects: Money worship and fetishism, fashion-chasing, and wallowing in Eros.However, Simmel’s concern on people’s everyday soul is neither based on moralism nor pragmatism, but aestheticism, which could be analyzed from two levels: for one thing, the overall conception of his theory is filled with spiritual temperament of aestheticism and his basic position is to refuse value averaged, retionalization and homogenization. (In this regard, Nietzsche had a great impact on him.)For another,the pattern analysis he adopted is essentially a aesthetic method,which excludes the moralized and expeiential content under the influence of social forms and only keeps the only dimension-forms.(Simmel affirmed that this method was affected by Kant’s idea that“beauty lies in form”). For example, while discussing the eros, one form of social interaction, Simmel focused on the gender relations in activities of prostitution in modern times. He did not refer to the moral value problem of prostitutes and the emotional attitudes of the public towards the prostitutes. In this sense, Simmel is as precise, objective, and calm as scientists.Needless to say, all social activities must present certain social forms. Thus the general analysis without distinguishing the primary and secondary could damage the forward-looking vision of social aesthetics. Aiming at curing the main mental diseases of modern people, Simmel did meticulous experiential analysis of the concrete texts of three social forms, corresponding to money worship and fetishism, fashion-chasing, wallowing in Eros. They were money reflecting the common relations among people, fashion presenting the relations among class (group) and Eros showing gender relations. Through exploring the changes of the three forms, Simmel attempted to feel the pulse of modernity in an individual way.Simmel believes that money is essentially a reflection of social relations. But the social relations, strictly speaking social forms presented by money are quite different at various historical stages. In ancient times, money was divine sacrifices to deities, presenting the exchange relations between human beings and deities. Such exchange had nothing to do with the equivalent consciousness of modern transactions, of which the presentation form was“time delay”(it takes long time to finish the exchange). In pre-modern and modern society, due to the physical and functional changes of money, the social forms presented have become bizarre, which are similar to the modern“cultural logic”(by Daniel Bell)Like money, both fashion and Eros are typical experiential text of social forms. Simmel adopted formal methods to anatomize. Although there was occasional extreme remarks and the random of“impressionist philosopher”(remarks on Simmel by Georg Lukacs), Simmel revealed the basic features of modern social forms presented by money, fashion and Eros, diagnosing the“mental state of the time”(by Jaspers) from a new perspective.Based on the analysis of the three texts, Simmel further generalized the spiritual characteristics and aesthetic function of modern social forms in modern times from theoretical point of view. He also introduced the Game Theory improved by Kant and Schiller and combined aesthetic characteristics of social forms with the non-utilitarian nature game. Thus he endowed the modern social forms with richer and more profound cultural connotation-making it another a salvation of mind, following religions and arts. Meanwhile, Simmel deeply realized that any social form has certain rhetorical function, allowing individual to live in society without sufficient self-awareness and replace the inernal enrichment by external abundance. Thus the essence of life“additional life and more than life”, was ignored (by Simmel). Concentrating on the main clue-social aesthetics, this dissertation finally explores the the connection between Simmel and four other thinkers respectively,who are Max Scheler, Karl Mannheim, Martin Heidegger and Antony Giddens. Even though many ideologists hold different opinions on the relationship between contemporary social life and the significance of individual life, they all realize the special influence of social forms on the mind of modern times. Unfortunately, the nature and significance of this kind of influence has not been fully envisaged, Simmel just opened a window. As a matter of fact, the directive significance of social aesthetics to reality is not confined to the time of Simmel. No wonder Jürgen Habermas keeps naming Simmel“the diagnostician of the time”.更多还原