Meaning And Beyond - Western Symbolism

By discussing the symbol theories in west countries,the main subject of this thesis is to study on the problem of the history of Symbol aesthetic category from initial to now,and its basic aesthetic attributes.In "preface",the author views there are both relation and difference between symbol and sign,metaphor or allegory.The key question in symbol theories is to study meaning or significance of symbol,which mainly signifies its transcending liberal meaning.The first chapter discusses symbol in primitive society.1.Dualismistic world outlook is founded on the antithesis between the sacred and the common,which presupposes the existence of symbol and primitive religion.2.Primitive man's thinking is an unconscious symbolical thinking-Artistic thinking is also a mainly symbolical thinking style,not traditionally the so-called Thinking in Images.3.Formalism is a important cause for the symbolism in primitive literary and arts.The major contents in the second chapter are the Greek symbol theories.The Greek Ontology and Blato's Theory of Idea had laid a philosophic metaphysical foundation for symbol,and effected the poetic theory of Imitate.The third chapter discusses symbol theories in Middle Ages. By virtue of the all-around influence from the Christian religion,religious symbolism had spread all over the disciplines such as theology,philosophy and aesthetics,thought highly of the divinity and spirit ,taken the God as the source of beauty,and given important effects to Hermeneutics and religious literary and arts.In the forth chapter,the author mainly introduces symbol theories in 18-19th century.Kant,Hegel,the Romanticist and the French Symbolist had all studied aesthetic or poetic problems relates to symbol.The main contents in the fifth chapter are symbol theories in 20th century,m which,the problem about symbol had been studied in almost every discipline of humane studies,but in this chapter the author only discusses the four symbol theories in S.Freud' and C.GJung's Psychoanalysis,E.Cassier's and his American disciple S.Langer's the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms,Gadamer's Hermeneutics,and R.Barthes's and J.Derrida's Post-constructionism or Deconstructionism.The latter two theories had emphasized the ambiguity of symbol or the pluralistic concept of meaning,so they manifest the core spirit of postmordenism.The sixth chapter discusses the basic and important aesthetic attributes ofsymbol.1.Its significance or implication transcends its literal meaning,its transcendental significance lies in two aspects: either the subject transcends the object,or the subject generalizes the object.2.Its meaning or significance is ambiguous or pluralistic,which origins from the abundance of the world,or the implication of the text,or the result of human being's interpretation.3.It is abstract.So symbolism has something to do with formalism.In "concluding remarks",the author views traditional symbolic aesthetics should not pass away,because human being is a peculiar animal existing with spirit,even though now it has met with rejection from postmodernism and scientific modernism. For the former,symbolic aesthetic attribute is its transcendence,but the latter either stickings out the symbolic implication or ambiguity,holds the pluralistic concept of meaning,or insisits on the rational realism,thus overlooks the profound and mystical relation between human being's spirit and the symbol.