AESTHETICS3
Walter du Halde
In science, the situation is different, where all previous discoveries are comprised, absorbed in the system of knowledge. With science there is no need to keep going back to its sources and foundations, to the achievements of previous epochs . And there is another important difference. Whereas scientists studying similar phenomena may arrive at exactly the same formulae and conclusions independently of one another, true art does not permit impersonality. What is more, the artistic image loses its concreteness and becomes a mere schema if the typical is presented as something abstractly general, divorced from the particular and the individual. When considering the development of art, one must not discount previous artistic experience. Maxim Gorky was perfectly right when he wrote , �nearly every book by a new author is intrinsically linked with works that have preceded it, and every new book there are elements of the old . It could not be otherwise because the process of the development of the intellect is a continuous line and all writers must obey the law of literary heredity. Stendhal, Balzac, Flaubert and Maupassant would be impossible without one another. . .
� Every budding artist finds in the existing world of art certain level of material and spiritual culture, a certain amount of intellectual `material � which he cannot afford to ignore, certain ideas that people have had about the beautiful and the ugly, certain artistic tastes, without fully understanding what they were. And most people would acknowledge that clearly expressed artistic tastes in society, the capability for emotional cognition and experience of the beautiful in nature, in society and works of art cannot fail to influence the development and formation of art as a whole. That is no less true when the artist breaks through the barrier of traditional forms of artistic thinking and aesthetic perception than when he follows them, at least unconsciously. The auditorium for art, the ability to respond aesthetically the possession of artistic taste are shaped by the whole life of society, all social conditions, and not only by artistic creativity, not only by art. In other words the practice of art, people�s idealogical and aesthetic development, although specific in their aims, character and forms, are always connected with all other forms of human practice, with all aspects of the life of society. Politics, philosophy and morality in art cannot be regarded as something outside aesthetics, as the theoreticians who seek to divorce art from progressive political and philosophical ideas in art acquire a specific , aesthetic significance to the extent that they are wowed into the artistic fabric of work of art after passing through the crucible of the individual�s aesthetics consciousness, his emotional sphere.
Every budding artist finds in the existing world of art a certain level of material and spiritual culture, a certain amount of intellectual material which he cannot afford to ignore, certain ideas that people have had about the beutiful and ugly, certain artistic tastes, without fully understanding what they were. And most people would acknowledge that clearly expressed artistic tastes in society, the capability for emotional cognition and experience of the beautiful in nature, in society and in works of art cannot fail to influence the deveplopment and formation of at as whole.
That is no less true when the artist breaks through the barrier of traditional forms of artistic thinkig and aesthetic perception than when he follows them, at least unconscciosly. The auditorioum for art, the ability to respond aesthetically the possession of artistic taste are shaped by the whole life of society, all social conditions, and not only by artistic creativity, not only by art. In other words, the practice of art, people�s ideological and aesthetic development, although specific in their aims, character and forms, are always connected with alll other forms of human practice, with all aspects of the life of society. Politics, philosophy and morality in art cannot be regarded as something outside aesthetics, as the theoreticians who seek to diverce art from progressive political, moral and philosophical ideas maintain. On the contrary, moral, political and philosophical ideas in art acquire a specific, aesthetic significance to the extent tha they are woved into the artistic fabric of a work of art after passing through the crucible of the individual�s aesthetic consciousness, this emotional sphere. This means that art is connected with life, wwith its social patterns not only directly but also through other forms of social consciousness, which, incidentally, are bound to leave their imprint on all aesthetic values created by the people and by gifted artists.
In the course of hitorical development the links between morality and philosophy are perfected and deepened, thus enriching people�s intellectual word and their practical activity.
There are also, of course, form of social consciousness that hinder the deveplopment of artistic thought. Religion, for example, tries to steer art towards the celestial heights and deprive it of its vital earthly content. Of couse, it is impossible to dony the link between art and religion in the early stages of human sociaty. With the forces of production at such a low level nobody could make a sober appraisal of the world without any extraneous influences. But it would also be wrong to indentify the religious and artistic assimilation of reality. Religion always grows out of nonknowledge, while art develops on the basis of knowledge, it perfects itself as knowledge of the objective world grows more profund. If we consider the hitory of art, we have no difficulty in perceiving the striking differences, for example, between the religious myth, the fairy-tale and the folk tale in the period of the desintegration of the tribal system. It is harder to distinguish between the fairy-tale and the myth as the earlier stages of cultural development because at that time every generalisation was clothed in mythological form. But even this does not prove any close connection between the artistic and religious assimilation of reaality, because mythology with its primitive syncretic amalgam of ideas arose not out of mysticism, but out of a primitive, na�ve urge to explain reality.
Mythology helped to developed art in the ancient world to the extent that legends and myths were artistic generalisations, free of the dogmatic elements characteristic of religion. While there can no doubt that European artistic culture in the Middle Ages developed under the influence of Cristianity, and that the adoption of Christianity in Russia was a progressive phenomenon, it is clear that the development of artistic creativity in these cases wass promoted not by religion itself, but by the cultural influences that came with the Christian religion. As for religuious dogmatism and asceticism, they did nothing but hinder the flowering of artistic creativity.
When religion often assumed the garb of art in an effort to put art at its service, mysticism never swallowed up art even in the Middle Ages. Although the rhyms, the psalms, the visions and other forms of the medieval art were originally connected with religion, they nevertheless drew extensively on folklore, in which pre-Christian notions abounded. The popular epos, the lyrics and novels of chivalry, civic architecture, and many forms of applied arts also existed independently in the Middle Ages.
Social Realism, as a great art which truly reflects life, does not, of cource, reject fantasy and imagination. It is never a mechanical reproduction of certain facts of life.It is always a generalisation of life�s phenomena and is, therefore, not averse to intensifying the image, to using symbols and grotesque, if any of these things help to achieve an authentic aristic reproduction of reality. The form of the artistic image may also be based on convention or fantasy, but one thing is indispensable under all circumstances: the bais of artistic truth is knowledge of the truth of life in its essential connections and relationships. And unless we are deeply prejudiced, we have no diffculty in realising this when considering the history of art.
Social Realism is in the gradual process of self-liberation from the impediments that distort the true picture of the objetive world. By liberating itself art is able to reveal man�s spiritual world more deelpy and fully, thus reinforcing man�s confidence in his creative powers.
On the others side, the advocates of unrestricted realism or abstract realism, which is the same thing, force the whole history of artistic creativity right up to the 20th century into a narrow framework of naturalism, which they call illusionism. They ascrive the supreme role in the development of artistic illusionism to Balzac and claim that the art of the 20th century has been dominated by those who, having overcome illusionism, have created works of art entirely on the basis of their own fecund imaginations, arbitrarily, by sheer intuition, deliberately deforming lifelike ideas and trying to banish all visible signs of life from art. This they call ascending to the heights of realism; in the past artistis tried to imitate life, but now art, so they maitain, must create its own specific reality as the artist himself thinks fit.
Such theoreticians believe that artistic principle, art�s creative method spring not from the reflection of reality but from the capricious imagination of the artist, who has managed to get away from reality. They make no distintion between realist conventions and those that drag the the artist away from reality and turn his work into a whimsical intellectual game. The true history of art is bound to be distorted if artistic creativity is understood in this way.
Religion, on the other hand, but in the same side, like any other kind of irrationalist trend in art, hinders the artistic cognition of reality and prevents us from showing the movement of the masses towards freedom in all its beauty and fullness, prevents us from understanding and explaining life, the new phenomena that arise and grow stronger in life. The underhealthy growths on the living tree of artistic knowledge, once they have appeared, form their own traditions. In its development art breaks the bonds os such traditions, which impede artistic understanding of the objetive world. But art does not break alll traditions. It carefully assimilates what has been accumulatedd by previous artistic development and what may help to bring about new artistic discoveries, and then marches forward on the basis of this artistic experience, enriching the classical traditions and creating new art forms.
New social phenomena and themes present the artist with new problems in the sphere of form. In the classical period of Greek art the heroic epic, whish had been the dominating genre, was superseded by the drama. Yhis signalled a transition from collective creativity to literature and overcome the static and descriptive element in the epic by concentrating event in completed actions and briging them together around the main conflict. The drama emerges as a new type of artistic phenomenon with its own genre and stylistic-compositional form. We see how later the drama on the one hand, increasingly from departs from ritual action -ancient Greece- and begins to draw its material not from ritual but from narrative prose, while still under all circumtances retaining its spectacular character - Middle Ages-, until at last it enters the sphere of literature. On the other hand, in the drama the form in which the dramatis conflict emerges gradually changes: in ancient Greece the dramatic action was propelled by Fate; during the Renaissance. Tima appeared on the scene with its historical perception of events; in the 17th century the drama paid more and more attention to the human soul; in the 18th century the theatre of the Enlightenment was dominated by middleclass drama, portraying manners, the life of the third state (properly speaking, in the modern sense of the term, drama dates from the Enlightenment when the sharp divisions between tragedy and comedy were comedy were eliminated).
This perfecting of the artistic form of cognition of reality is one of the characteristic features of the progresive development of artistic form of cognition of reality is one of the characteristic features of the progresive development of artistic culture, in the course of which both the creative method and the techniques, the means by which material is processed by the artist, are improved and perfected. The possibilities for the artistic portrayal of the reality, if we have in mind the line of human artistic deveplopment, are thus deepened an expanded.
At the end , art cannot stand still for yet another reasons, the reason is that in the process of the cultural growth of society aesthetic feelings and artistic tastes are developed, that is to say, the whole people which is the subject of art, grows aesthetically, and acquires a richer intellectual world and consciousness. This is an essential prerequisite and the same time a result of hitorical progress in art.
In short, the scoppe of artistic cognition of reality expands from one epoch to another and popular participation in the development of art, the
significance fof artistic culture in the life of society, increase. In the curse of history there have been more or lees favourable and sometimes totally unfavourable conditions for the development of art and aesthetic educations, but there have been no total gasps in its deveplopment. Artistic thought has never dried up completely.
Even in the Midddle Ages, which to the Enlighteners of the 18ht century seemed to be a time of total barbarity and ignominy, artistic deveplopment did not stop but brought fresh discoveries and advances. Suffice it to recall the Gothic cathedrals oof Reims and Chatrer, Amiens and Paris, the famous frescoes and cultural decorations, particularly in churches; themusica mensurata, and other rudiments of the new musical culturer, and also the burgher literature, which from the 13th century in Western Europe became the main line of artistic development. In the Middle Ages link with previous development, particulary with the culture of the ancients, was not severed. Augustine(later on:Saint)did not reject everything that had been created in classical times and his follower. Ab�lard thought higly of Ovid and Horace. Artist learned from antiquity, even if they did it in a medieval way. Antiquity was studied and some of its elements were developed by the progressive artist of Middle Ages, who blazed the trail for the art of the Renaissance.
The objective, historically logical connection between the various stages in the development of art is not in doubt. But what kind of connection was it?. Only the dialectical antagonic connection. These differences of opinion mentioned above are reflected first and foremost in two diametrically opposed points of departure, of cost unreconcilable. According to the one, aesthetics constitutes a science concerned solely with the laws of artistic development and the nature of artistic creativity. Viewed from that angle, aesthetics is no more than the general theory of art. Those approach it from the other angle, proffer the view that aesthetics and the general theory of art are separate sciencies. It is precisely the theory of art which is concerned with the laws of artistic development and the nature of artistic creativity, while aesthetic, they assure us, is just a science of the beautiful, both in the real world and in art.
Clearly neither of these aproaches is acceptable, since they are both one-side. Aesthetic is concerned both with the study of the beutiful in all its manifold forms and also with the elucidation of the nature of art and the laws of its development.
A consistent phylosophy aesthetics serves to summarise the laws governing man�s aesthetic perception of the world. However, given that these laws find their fullest, most comprhensive and direct expression in art, so aesthetics constitutes firs and foremost a science of essence and fundamental laws of art, of the nature of artistic creativity. Thus the significance of this consistent aessthetics, which scientifically substantiates the experience involved in th emost diverse manifestations of aethetic perception, is determined by the role which it plays in the development of art.
It is this principle which has gained particulary wide recognition. Its adherents, logically enough, start out from the fact man�s aesthetic perception of the real world is a brosder sphere of activity than art itself. It invoves not only artistic creativity but also other manifestations of man�s aesthetic relationship with reality. Yet at the same time it presupposes a farreaching and active influence exerted by art on various spheres of material and cultural life, the participation of art in the process of transforming the real world. This is why literature and art have always been the main subjects of aesthetic study throughout its story, and it is no coincidence that the fundamental and most important premises of this consistent aesthetics have taken shape above all on the basis of generalisations drawn from artistic experience. Theoretical interpretation of creative work in the field of modern art and deliberate influence upon its development is the most important task of aesthetics now as before.
The art is a part of the subject of aesthetics occupies pride of place and not only on the strength of its sheer volume. To a large extent art determines the very character of aesthetic research as a whole. This explains why the majority of aesthetic theories to date have resembled art criticism. The theory of art has thus provided and provides the most satisfactory and comprenhensive model om which to base parameters for other phenomena coming the heading of aesthetics. The subject of aesthetics now covers wider ground, but " parameters for other phenomena" that come within its range are, at the present time, still determined by art as such.
On the opposite side, who hold that there is a sharply defined boundary between the general theory of art and aesthetics, the study of the beautiful, suggest that their standpoint is based on Chernyshevsky�s point of view and is diametrically opposed to the basic tenets of Hegelian aesthetics. At the same time they stress that Hegel in is �sthetik�s lessons started out from the view that the said science is a theory of art, to be more precise, a theory of fine art, while Chernyshevsky used two separate concepts: `aesthetics� and the `theory of art�. However, it would seem that the Russian aesthetician did not in any way consider these concepts to represent two separate sciencies. He asked: �What is to be understood by aesthetics if not a system of general principles for art as such, and poetry in particular?. It is clear that Chernyshevsky, like Hegel before him, as he worked towards a definition of the subject of aesthetic, maitained that is shold be defined first and foremosst as a general theory of art. The fact that Chernyshevsky appeared to distinguish between aesthetics and criticism did not constitute any fundamental difference between the conceptions of the two writers; what set Chernyshevsky�s ideas apar from those of Hegel was the former�s materialist interpretation of the nature of aesthetics and artistic creativity and the social role of art. It thus follows that Chernyshevsky cannot be ranked among those writers who regard aesthetics and the theory of art separate entities.
Precise definition and enrichment of our concepts of the subject of aesthetics are essential for its continued deveplopment. Debates in recent years has centred round the concluding stage of work aimed to single out aesthetics as a separate branch of scientific knowledge. Controversy has centred, in particular, arround such problemss as the relationship between aesthetics and the history of art, and between aesthetics and philosophy, inthe bosom of wich it has traditionally developed, however, this broadening of modern concepts of aesthetics does not in the least imply that all phenomena of the real worl should be extended to the utmost in view of the aesthetician�s capacity to provide an aesthetic evaluation of any phenomenon. Yet at the same time its range should not be excessively narrowed down by the omission from aesthetic studies of art in the broad sense of the world. An example of this narrowing, and hence impoverishment, of the subject of aesthetics can be found in a very special theory, where categorical distictions are between the aesthetic and the artistic, thus excluding the general theory of art from the field of aesthetics...
We�ll open a brief parentheses when among the problems arising when procwsses of consciousness and understanding are invetigated those that lead to paradoxical situations deserve special attention, videlicet, to the impossibility of overcoming logical contradictions that stem from the simplest, most obvious premises. These problems include the link between sensual and rational aspects of understanding. Philosophers, from the classic Greeks have been investigating the difference between the mentally comprehended - noumenon- and what is comprehended by sensations-phenomenon-, a difference they reduce to opposition. Classical philosophy drew a more or less clear line between these sesations (as emotions or feelings), and reason(ideas, abstractions, judgments). But difficulties arose when explaining the connection between these two aspects of cognitive activity which led to the formation of rival conceptions that found expression in a centuries-longconfrontation of sensationism and ratonalism. Discussion developed, in particular, on the souce of the knowledge that every individual person and humankind as a whole disposed of.
The theory before mentined holds that research into specific features of art and study of the nature of creativity -as opposed to paticular theories of art- should be the province of a separae science, a "general theory of art". This assumtion need not be called in question. However this theory goes on to suggest that the theoretical study of the history of art, that has constituted a separate science since the time of Hegel, is wrongly termed aesthetics:"During the last 150 years, indeed right up to the present time, the general theoretical study of the history of art has often been labelled �aesthetics�, which gives rise to impermissible confusion of quite distinct branches of knowledge". Yet if esthetics is taken separately from the general theory of art, then what will its suject be?
In answer to this question on suggest thet the definition of the subject of aesthetics provided by Baumgarten be used: in the later�s view aesthetics was the study of "knowledge through sensation" that helps man to understand the beauty of the world around him. Aesthetics, as we see, is the science of the objective properties of the "beutiful", of the correlation between the beautiful and other analoguos properties of phenomena in the real world, and of man�s apprehension of theses properties. However, the weakness of this view comes clearly to the fore in the final in the final conclusion: although aesthetics has its own specific subject-matter, this subject-matter does not possess any inner laws of its own. Yet, without the latter, can aesthetics possess specific subjectt-matter, and its essence be singled out and defined?
For indeed, the right to an independent existence of any any science rest and foremost on whether or not there are specific inner laws peculiar to the subject under study.
In fact, the conception considered above there is however a certain degree of retional content to be discerned. They reflect the tremendous significance of the aesthetic principle in various forms of the practical graps of the real world in modern advanced society. In a society concern for the future, the aesthetic principle acquires incomparably greater significance than it ever had in the past. At the present time central topics aesthetics become new have come to include forms of aesthetics activity that have recently undergone intensive development, topics which extend beyond the cconfines of artistic creativity. These include technical design, aesthetic qualityy of man�s enviroment, and certain other manifestation of aesthetic principle, such as sport. These forms of aesthetic activity cannot be contained within art cateories and require a different explanation. Undeniably all these types of activity constitute, together with art, a single aesthetic culture and should not be viewed as something divorced from art. They are qualitatively different from each other, yet at the same time have much in comon. There is no doubt that art can be regarded as a school for all forms aesthetic activity.
The historical movility and flexibility of subjects of scientific sudy characterise the evolution of scientific knowledge and philosophy. This applies not only to the structure but to the very substance of subjects under study. Changes in the structure of the science of aesthetics are shaped by the objective historical development of the phenomena studied by aestheticians, in particularthe features and trends peculiar to the development of contemporary art. Changes in the substance of the subject-matter of aesthetics are determined bothh by the objective process of the emerge of new types of aesthetic activity(such as design), new art forms (photograph, cinema and televition), and by changes in the objectives and problems facing the aestheticians. It is therefore meaningless to seek for hard and fast or conclusive definitions of the subject of aesthetics: they should be to certain extent approximate and open to amendments and modifications. On the other hand, the fact that the subject-matter of aesthetics involves, as indeed to definitions of aesthetics, does not justify any attemps to conclude that relevant definitions of aesthetics are altogether impossibl, as is the practice for example among adherents of "analytical aesthetics".
The study of aesthetic theory runs into various difficulties of methodological and world-view character, suffice it to mention that both in recent years, and before that, almost all works on problems of scientific theory relied on the factual materials of natural sciencies, in the first place of physics. It is possible to concentrate here on the development of sciencies, where their theoretical organisation is represented most clearly. It turned out, however, that "clarity" had its drawbacks, too. By no means all propositions that are applicable to the theories of natural science are applicable in the analysis of the theoretical forms of thinking employed in the social sciences, the humanities, art criticism and, finally, aesthetics. The specificity of forms of thinking, including, first and foremost, theoretical thinking, both in the natural and man sciences has to be taken into account.
It becomes increasingly clear that the specificity of man�s aesthetic relation to the to the worls, in the framework of wich is truly human transformation is aschieved, aesthetic cognition at each stage of its development concenttrated on the fundamental problems of humans being, however distractive they might look in the mirror of theoretical thiking. Hence the special forms of interaction and the specificity of synthesising various branches of knowledge in theoretical aesthetics and in aesthetic science as a whole.
Turning to the concrete universal tendencies in the deveplopment of aesthetic theory, we must admit that its highest forms in the ahead of time were schieved by classical German philosophy, and in this context, by Hegelian aesthetics as the most profund and systematically alaborated form of theoretical aesthetical aesthetics. hegel�s aesthetic system, being differentiated whole, represents not only a kind of scientific norm of this aerlier period of the development of philosophical aesthic, it also reveals, in striking relief, its links with the previous stages in the development of theoretical aesthetics. Hegelian aesthetics demostrates, to a great extent if not fully, the internal reversibility of the historical and the logical, which is intensified, among other reasons, by the links between the theoretical system and the history of the formation and development of theoretical thought. Absorbing the content of the previous stages in the development of theoretical though. Absorbing the content of the previous stages in the development of cognition.
Hegelian aesthetics appears, not only in the logical but just as much in the historical sense, as a kind of invariant form of the cognitive relation in theoretical aesthetics. This stand out with the utmost clarity if we take into account that we are dealing here with Hegel�s construction and transformation os thesse aspcts of scientific activity which were oriented toward desinging idealised objects, working out the rules for operating with them, and developing a system of interpretation of these idealisations. This orientation of Hegel�s aesthetics permitted him to sublate more fully the achievements of materialist aesthetic thought as well-as was poited out by Engels.
We turned to this question in connection with the special position of methodological problems of historical-retrospective studies in scientific knowledge. Its complexity and links with the present-day state of science have been pointed out on several occasions recently. Taking into account the special character of relative independence of the theoretical forms of cognition, this question must, in our view, be substantively reformulated. We are interested here not only in the links between the Hegelian, or most advanced form of aesthetic science, and the previous forms of theoretical thinking but also in the post-Hegelian qualitative transformation of aesthetics as a whole, and primarily of its theoretical system, effected by Marxism. To establish this continuity in the domain of aesthetic cognition is alll the more topical since we are concerned with thinking in the sphere of idealisation, with transformation and systematisations that have no direct bearing on the world of objective phenomena and processes. It is this position, however , that calls for a methodological analys of continuity in aesthetic science considered in the light of diverse, qualitatively different elements of its movement. Of cost this last point needs a consequent exposition.
The view of aesthetic theory as a differentiated whole compels us to divide our attention between two aspects of this phenomenon: first, the morphological definiteness of the links and relations of this differentiated whole, and second, the movement of its historical definiteness. This interpretation, based on the dialectical materialism of unity of the historical and logical, makes it possible to identify a number of stages in the development of cognition in aesthetic theory with regard to different parameters which are, however, equaly essential for the theoretical world, such features of theoretical aesthetic knowledge can be singled out, among athers, as ita completeness and intergrality, its links with the theories of contiguous an othehr branches of knowledge of different orders or levels, the structure of substantiation of the theoretical forms at different stages of development, the leading contradictions of the principal tendencies of this development, etc. Still, the determinig factor of any theoretical system is the relation between theory and object, i.e., the domain wich the system has to explain and in relation to wich it must become a link in the chain of its transformation.
The process of identification of the object in the object enviroment, and subsequent narrowing down of the object to the limits of the subject-matter under study (which is a cross-section of the object), is sublated by the theory in its activity of creating a special theoretical world -the world of ideal objects, which represents never less not only the links and relations of the subject matter of research but also the interconnection between the subject-matter and the object of study. The complexity of relationship between theoretical objects(or objects created theoretically) and the objects of the real world, on the hand, and the need for establishing this relationship, on the other, pose before theory the problem of reflexion, wich constitute to a large extent the content of the relation of a theory to its object.
Simulstaneously, and precisely in view of the above, theoretical reflexion figures as an indicator of the degree of naurity of the theory itself. The links between theoretical reflextion and the above-mentioned and other parameters of the movement of theoretical-aesthetic cognition as a whole, and withe each of them in particular, are obvious, but the measure of the reflexiveness of a theory at different moments of its evolution, contained in its structural componets, varies. In other world , an aesthetic theory, which is structurally a system of theories, is not uniform on the content plane in relation to its theoretical object, and undoubtedly affects its explanatory possibilities in relation to the object at the cognition of which it is oriented.
Even ,preliminary analysis shows that aesthetic theory laying claims to a certain completenss of theoretical descriptions and explanations of its object includes theories of artistic creativity an aesthetic perception, the theory of art, theories artistic and work of art, the theory of artistic upbringing, etc. The content of the theory represented in this way is linked not only with the way theoretical-aesthetic system is organised (the principles, foundations, etc., of this organisation), but also with extent in wich this system has been reflexiively elaborated in terms of the same (or differnt) theory. Reflexion in terms of a differnt theory is by no means of rare occasion in the history of aesthetics. Wich some reservations it may be asserted that the history of aesthetics is in this sense a gradual theoretical emancipation of the aesthetic-cognitive reflexive principle of which the meaning consisted (and still consist in many present day constructs in theoretical aesthetic) in transposing these basic principles (of a general philosophical, epistemological, and often of a particular scientific nature) from the outside into the interior, so to speak, i.e., in their philosophical aesthetic assimilation and absorption, in this connection, the inner relationship between aesthetic theory and the theries of contiguous or related branches of knowledge should be pointed out. In the first place, there are theoretical doctrines whish directly adjoin aesthetic theory and largely condition it: the theory of personality, the theory of creativity, the theory of culture, the theries of laguage and representational activity, etc.
The reflexive ability of theoretical-aesthetic cognition can be typologically represented in accrdance wwith the degree of realisation of the links between aesthetic theory and the theries of contiguous spheres, the forms of the assimilations of their content, the completeness and correctness of absorption of this content. However, much deeper and more decisive links are discovered in the process of analysis of the structural organisation of aesthetic theory when we consider the relation of system-formation in terms of its philosophical methodological conditioning and reflexivity is higly relative, the latter being included in the former, naturally with due regard for the historical possibility in relation to completeness as well as the character of this inclusion.
Still, the opposition does exist. We have to distinguish in the methology of cognition the fully conscious and purposive realisation in the process of cognition of a definite system of methods, modes and forms of similation of the subject-matter from the aspect which is characterised by an incomplete, not fully or inadequately realised cognitive action. In scientific methodology this distinction is of a basically different character, but it is vital here as well. Its essnce is in the lack of coincidence between the inner objective content of human activity as a whole and of cognition as a a process which ensures it, in particular, works its way through the network of events and normal actions as their leitmotif which reaches consciousness and realisation only when the field of vision encompasses a temporally sufficiently extended of events whose variability makes the inner links, recurrence, rhythm and orientation more vulnerable.
The methodological level of the content of activity aimed at a maximal narrowing down of this gap (between the objective content of activity, including cognitive activity, and its realised content) cannot escape the common lot, and under some conditions, both cognitive and socio-cultural, this gap in the methology itself proves to be sigbificant. Under these conditions, theoretical constructs-both separate conceptions and theoretical systems- turn to such a fundamental scientific structure as the picture of the world.
What are the specific cognitiv and socio cultural conditions which compel theoretical thinking to orient itself not only at a definite methodology which has established itself as the most effective in scientific cognition but also at the picture of the world, which retaining its ontological status, turns out to be an effective form of a cognition with a sufficiently productive organising and ordering sense forming functions?
