Comment On The Aesthetic Thought Of Levi-Strauss

Levi-Strauss was one of the most famous thinkers and cultural anthorogists in 20th century. His thought included aesthetic thought.Levi-Strauss thought human being had a common psychological structure. It wasn't a form or social relationship but it was an abstract which human being could understand nature and create culture rely on,which was perception,invisibility and generality. Thus,his ideal was regarded as a priori materialism as Kant's. But he emphasized that he didn't deny the substantial base and he merely wanted to more deeply interpreted the Marxist theory of superstructure,especially in the two aspects of the relative independence and the subjective activity. According to the theory,he raised and answered some aesthetic questions.Levi-Strauss thought it inevitable that culture was opposite to nature because culture was single sign which human being distinguished itself from nature. He inherited the West's tradition of studying soul by language and regared language as single sign of rational human being. Because language had character of symbol,culture established by language logic would have the same character. He proved the view by the analysis of relative structure and myth structure. So he put forward the view that opposition between culture and nature was established by symbol system and it could be solved by the same one. He looked for the solution by studying the savage thought. The savage thought had two characters of concrete and entirety. It could make the opposition in harmony depended on its functions of transformation and rite. By analogy,transformation could integrate diverse concrete figures or concrete figure with abstract meaning. Rite was a sign which could get rid of difference and generate united illusion. Here,he tried to translate some hypothesis and interpretation like fable into clear and logical interpretation. Levi-Strauss obviously opposed the theory of subject. He upheld system and structure,and regared human being as one of structures,so it had no innate meaning. He critized Jean-Paul Sartre and said that unconscious structure could give meaning to human being and everything,but human being couldn't. He proved that history was subjective,so it was in vain to try to prove human being's meaning by objective history. His thought broke the myth of subject self-controlling,pointed out the complex relation between subject and reality. Beauce of this thought,aesthetics found a new way from art to culture,and the theories of subjective aesthetic feeling or objective aesthetic feeling were critized.Levi-Strauss put forward some new views about art. The first one was about the origin of art. He thought the floating signifier was the surety of all art. As soon as human being emerged,he had have integration of signifier,which it was difficult to match completely the signifer with the signifed. This generated a signfier-surfeit relative to the signified to which it can be fitted. So,in man's effort to understand the world,he always disposes of a surplus of signification. In fact,this gave an independence of looking after balance illusion to human being's culture signed by symbol. Art was a mean realizing balance illusion. It was helpful to work out the problem of artistical appreciation's universality and explain the relation between art and craziness. But it was limited beause of the relation between it and the unconscious. The second one was about the definition of art. Levi-Strauss had two special views that art was a compressed model and art was lain between scientific knowledge and magic thought. He thought,in artistic compressed model,the knowledge of integration was prior to that of part,and man could get a sense that he grasped and owned object. So he had aesthetic feeling. This was similar to Kant's comment on lofty feeling. In addition,he located the important place of occasions in artistic creation. Though the final result of art was to find or appear a structure,the start point of art was occasional affairs. This was similar to E H Gombrich comment on creation prior...