Images,an Analytic Approach To Economic Philosophy

The fundamental character of the image economy era is themass commercial production of images. The development of imageeconomy is now fostering the progress of economy in modernsociety. And especially under the background of globalization,image industry has become the pillar industry in developedcountries, such as Korea, Japan, Europe and the United States. Atthe same time, the growth of image industry brings us changes ofcognitive style. By using certain economic philosophy terms, thispaper, based upon the theories of value and knowledge of images,tries to analyze images from an economic philosophy perspectiveso as to grasp the development direction of the image economy.The mankind's cognizance of images is an evolution fromprimitive images to cognitive ones, then to artistic ones. Imagescame into being with the development of human beings' cognitiveabilities. It is not merely one kind of material commodity in ordinarysense but also maintains profound philosophical ideas andsymbolic meanings. The Primitive image had intensive spiritualmeanings since it was born. On one hand, it possessedcharacteristic of simple and intuitive imitation, on the other hand, ithad completely expressed spiritual needs and psychology inprimitive society. The primitive image, hence, as an adhesive ofprimitive society, was playing a directly guiding part in behaviorsand value orientation of primitive human beings. In the phase ofimage cognition, many philosophers, from Plato to Aristotle, hadconducted exhaustive studies on the combination of "idea" and"form" in an image. The process of images' spreading hasexperienced three phases, i.e. vision, sensation and perception,during which our knowledge about images developed through acontinual integration of ideas. Take artistic images in Middle Agesand Renaissance for instance, the human being had reached ahigh degree of excellence in expressing cognition through artisticimages. During the process from the worship of a god to valuinghuman himself, the idea of man had been expressed precisely andvividly with various artistic images. For example, the religioustheme or an adoration of man in images respectively reflects thedevelopmental feature of image art in different times.The intuition of images, at a deeper level, is a theme thatphilosophy always shows great interest in. The so-called intuition isto grasp an object immediately and to form an entirety. Theintuitions of images just appear as a kind of primitive thinking.Classical philosophers, with Descartes and Spinoza asrepresentatives, had given an intensive study of intuition. RodofArnheim asserted further that intuition directly led to the formationof visual thinking, and showed some characteristics, especiallyplayed a key role in pushing tacit knowledge for producing, and yetchanging into explicit knowledge. In aesthetics, Hegel's studyfocused more on the connection between images and the freeideological expression of soul, while Heidegger made a deepelaboration on the relationships between the existence of humanbeings vs. beauty and truth. Among different kind of theories thatinterpret images, the most influential are phenomenology andhermeneutics. It is, however, Marx's theory about objectification ofmen's labor that had given the most incisive interpretation andanalysis of the image and its essence.The image philosophy also emphasizes on symbolic meaningsof images, which includes iconic meaning, indexed meaning andsymbolic meaning. The reason why images always keepenchanting is because of images' shifting between the levels of"signifier" and "signified". The image sign has become the fetishismof modern society, because the production of images is, in fact akind of production of image signs, as well as a production ofdiscrepancy and different hierarchy. The sign produces an order ofsigns, thus changes the possession of production mode into thepossession of the meanings of signs. For that reason a sign is anemblem of hierarchy. Therefore, the key problem for us tounderstand the symbolic meaning of images is how to get out of thecontrol of social ideology of image signs. Nevertheless, the symbolof images, including direct meaning and indirect meaning, is afurther step to the significance of image signs, which is at the sametime, the oldest and basic way for human beings to expressexperiential consciousness and cognize the world. Nowadays thevery core of image culture, under the visual culture background, isthe spiritual characteristic of images' symbolic consumption. That isnot only a symbol of people's culture level, the satisfaction of men'ssub-consciousness, the realization of self-value, but also therecognition of one's social identity. Consequently, the image culturedirectly results in a social stratification. Herbert Marcuse, DanielBell, Guy Debord and Jean Baudrillard had all provided perceptiveinsights into social critic functions of image signs, which providedan illumination in thought to create a cultural atmosphere, adaptedto the development of human's image economy.The attributes of image goods are rooted in their deepphilosophical background, which appear in the characteristic oflabor in an image, or its use-value and exchange-value. Laborsinvolved in images, mostly refer to the sum total of all laborers'efforts with mental labor, science and technology taking a greatproportion. Yet such labors as circulation labor that realizes valuesor alters value forms, or distribution labor that divides existingvalues, for example, the engineering and advertising labor, are allcategorized as mental labor. Consequently, among all elementsinvolved in image production, the knowledgeable composition oflaborers is the key element, while capital, technology andmanagement are essential ones. Moreover, we ought to distinguisheffective labor from ineffective labor. Generally speaking, theuse-value of images is found in visually cognitive value, visuallyaesthetic value, communicative value, spiritually exchanging value,and value of social-identification or self-identification, etc. But onlythrough the act of exchange can realize the use-value andexchange-value of image goods. In summary, the study ofproductive force and productive relations of image production is thecrux to reveal its economic mystery. Different economic systemshave different arrangements in supporting the development ofimage industry. As long as advantages of socialism can beeffectively combined with those of capitalism, we would make gooduse of systematical advantages to help the development of imageindustry.The image resource is scarce. It is constrained from variousresources such as traditional, talent, human and systematicalresources etc. Therefore, it is critical to explore the possibilities ofimage production and to bring about the equilibrium price for imageproducts based upon the scarcity of image resources. Imagemarket is mainly shown in image commodities' condition of demandand supply, which is being affected by factors such as production,consumption, distribution, and price, etc. The satisfaction ofconsumption of images is reflected in two aspects, one is for visualsatisfaction;the other is for symbolic satisfaction. Therefore it isimportant to study the needs and preferences of image consumers.The image-consuming motives of people can be divided intopractical motives, social motives, reputation-pursuing motive,innovation motives, aesthetic motives, imitation motives, publicconformity and personal preference motives, etc. Driven by thosemotives above, the consumer behavior shows an obviouslychanging trend. Therefore, how to understand the functions ofimage market and reinforce the management of it, is an importantway to boost the development of image market. Particularly, facedwith the mass production of images, management of image marketshould be prepared to innovate at any moment. Of course, ideas ofimage consuming play a great part in promoting the production ofimages. Therefore, it requires us to pay regard to the social effectsof image product, as well as the economic benefits.The biggest topic of the image era is how image goods co-existwith the humanism. With the copy technology's "ruling" the world,the production of image goods has undoubtedly been brought intoan assemble-line industrial operation. And consequently, peopleare submerged in the huge volume of image goods, whose vision isgradually alienated, with a tending dull mind to the beauty outsidethe world. Furthermore, men's body consciousness is keepingexaggerated and strengthened, under the background of fabricated"realness", men turning off to the subservient to goods with anintensely tawdry trend in aesthetics. So, how to effectively inheritpicks of traditional culture and exploit the function of culturalcustoms, is the premises of sustainable development of imageindustry.Accordingly, a basic thought to develop Chinese imageeconomy should be grasped. In other words, we need to see theprospect of image economic development, based on a clearunderstanding of features and developmental the status quo ofChinese image economy. And then make further attempts andefforts in many aspects, especially in how to create a socialenvironment suited for Chinese image production, for instance,strengthening the platforms that promote communication, raisingthe consumption level, extending the influences of medias onimage economy, and obtaining support from government, etc. Thatis just the point of my study.