Comparative Research On Art Theory Between Cassirer's Semiotics And Marxism

What is humankind? From ancient time philosophors gave out different answers. The Maxism and Cassirer's semiotics has provided us two specially definited mentalities:human is the animal which can make tools and human is the animal which can make symbols.These two ideas,separately from practice and cognition,empirical and metempirical,material and consciousness,attempts to point out humanity's essence. The Marxism believed that making and using tools to carry on the productive labor caused human to be separated from the animal kingdom;Cassirer pointed out that tool wasn't the determining factor of difference between human and animal,tool is only one kind of human's achievements,but this kind of achievement relies on human's metempirical symbolic ability,and symbol became the most remakable sign of human. Thus,the comparative research on human making tools and human making symbols has had a feasibility.Tool and symbol are separately the basic categories of Marx and Cassirer when they studied on human's essence.The interlinked point is the both are made out by human,the different of them exists in different angles in explaining human's nature.We can presume that making tools needs symbolic ability,human's symbolic ability proves human's nature power either.Without the constructive effect of human's symbolic idea we can't make tools to work,and human's symbolic ability is one part of human's colorful nature powers,or it may be the part insome phase.In a comparative framework,we discover that Cassirer's thought that art is to make human's varied aesthetic experience to a form via direct-viewing and preception,and a objectification of human's symbolic ability,while art theoty of Marxism viewed art as one way of people to master the world,and the targetification of human's nature power.Cassirer's semiotics philosophy opened a new way in researching human's cognitive ability via symbol,explained that how people creat colorful culture with their symbol ability,and then formed his grand cultrual philosophy or cultrual anthropology system.In cassirer's viewpoint,art and language and myths and science and religion comprised of entire coverings of fan of human's culture,so art composing is also originated from human's symbol ability.But art has a different apperance,Cassirer's special explanation formed his semiotics philosophy art theory.He distributed human's mental ability to symbolic form ability,it is a kind of ability of objectification,a kind of ability of nominate and making form.In cassirer's philosophy,symbolic form ability was viewed as human's metempirical ability,and metempiricality became characteristic of Cassirer's philosophy.Marxism philosophy is familiarized for us.According to historical materialism,the main sign of human independed from animal kindom is making and using tools to rebuild and conquer the world.In Marx's viewpoint,it is using tools that humankind created human themselves and human's culture.In Marxism,productive power and social existence of material are the decisive factor,while art belongs to social consciousness form,a kind of top construction high on the base,so art is mainly located in a determined position.So,Maxism especially emphasized this determining and determined relation,emphasizng some eternal rules such as relation between art and society,the relation between art and reality was once understood as the relation of reflection thought.Just like Marx gave tools a fundamental meaning,art became a kind of special tool making some effect.Thus,art has a characteristic like materiality and practicality.For the viewpoint for art,we don't have any reason to win Marx's agreement,but our scholors do get these conclusions according to his understanding on human's nature,so far we believe that such conclusions should be consummated. Contrast to Hegel's philosophy,revolutionarity is one of characteristics of Marxism philosophy.Marxism don't believe we can get the absolute truth,while only get near to absolute thuth gradually.In the process of getting near to absolute truth,Marxism philosophy is likely to absorb the fruit of human's civilization including Cassirer's philosophy to consummate itself,and moves forward with time.