We have the experience that when we are immersed in a great symphony, we experience a lot in less than an hour. It enriches our hearts, it broadens our horizons, it elevates our horizons, it deepens our emotions, it gives us a new insight into life, into the world -- and it's hard for me to put it into words.
It should be said that there is a great happiness that fills our hearts, and this happiness is not merely a formal beauty that pleases our senses. When this experience of spiritual happiness actually happens, we have to ask ourselves: What does art really mean? Heidegger has a philosophical discussion on art, The Origin of Works of Art, which is included in his collection of essays, Road in the Forest. In this essay, Heidegger explicitly links art with truth. Of course, this is not the first time in the history of Western aesthetics. Before him there was Hegel. Hegel also tried to connect art with truth in his "Lectures on Aesthetics", but Hegel did not make it clear after all, but Heidegger did. We always think that the field of art is the field of aesthetics, the field of truth is a rational field, we are so to distinguish. When we speak of truth, we think of the logic of reason; When we talk about art, we think of it as entering into the realm of the perceptual image, and what we get out of it is aesthetic pleasure, and aesthetic pleasure has nothing to do with truth. However, Heidegger said: art is the original occurrence of truth. Can we understand what he said? We all know that art is in the realm of sensibility, and in the realm of sensibility, how can there be truth? Indeed, if, in the realm of sensibility, the highest achievement that our human mind can achieve is the satisfaction of aesthetic taste, then I am afraid we will never be able to say anything about truth in art. Well, now let's try to understand the connection between our human sensibility and truth. In today's paradigm of civilization, we tend to see only the logical structure of the real world, the causal connection between things, and how this causal connection relates to our needs for survival. We distinguish things, evaluate things, assign different values to things, and set up an evaluation system for all things. In this evaluation system, one thing is superior to another. This evaluation is entirely based on the position of things on the scale of our living interests. But if man grasps the world in this way, he is embedded in a huge block of concrete and steel. Man equates himself with things, which is the objectification of man. But people are not things. Although man is very clever, know the causal relationship between things, so as to use the knowledge of the causal relationship to seek advantages and avoid harm, but this still does not make him higher than things. A life in concrete is not a life. The human heart also has an "infinite mind", which is to break through the limited individual situation, to grasp an infinite thing, to grasp the transcendent state. Where does the infinite heart come from? From the grasp of being. To grasp existence is to grasp nothingness at the same time, so the human heart has a side of infinite heart. Infinite heart, is the fundamental difference between people and things. Once the infinite mind is invented and expressed, it constructs the meaning of human life. Human life is different from animal life. If human life is satisfied after food and clothing, there will be no civilization. In a suitable natural environment, we can also get food and clothing. Man's natural needs for food and clothing are extremely limited. He can survive on a glass of water and two pieces of bread a day. When the wind and rain came, we could hide in the cave, and that would be enough. The real foundation of human civilization is the construction of the meaning of life. The construction of the meaning of life in primitive society was through witchcraft. Through witchcraft, the first people had access to a state of transcendence. The so-called beyond is beyond the current facts. Primitive people are so, all primitive tribal societies have a kind of ancestor worship. The Chinese are the people who have maintained ancestor worship for the longest time. Even today, we still deify ancestors in many customs and habits. On some festivals, we pay tribute to our ancestors, to the ancestors of the families we belong to, which is a very ancient relic of ancestor worship. What kind of wish did the primitive man realize in the ancestor worship of the primitive tribe? He unites his ego with the immortal ancestor, the immortal self of the tribe, through the worship of the ancestor. Every human being is connected to immortality through a connection to his ancestors. A finite life, a self, is associated with immortality. The ancestor represents the highest ideal of the primitive tribe and the confirmation of its self-meaning. This ancestor worship is performed through witchcraft. The original dances and music were meant to be witchcraft, not aesthetic. The purpose was for all participants to be aroused by the emotional and spiritual power of these dances and music. They are the exercise of spiritual appeal, and they put some transcendent being (such as the ancestors of the tribe) in the presence to enligh10 and inspire. Art is born out of witchcraft. Witchcraft is figurative, it has to have works, whether it's dance works or musical works, or the sacrifices that are used in witchcraft, which are original works of art. For example, a string of stones that were ground and painted and hung around the neck of a woman or a man in a primitive tribe were not necklaces in the sense we have today, but objects of witchcraft. From these facts of primitive art we perceive the true aim of art: to attain transcendence, to be associated with something immortal. Because of this connection, our hard life in the real world becomes meaningful. The kind of force that drives each of us to struggle is not a natural necessity, a biological necessity that struggles just to survive. The power to promote the struggle of human life is the spirit, and the initial expression of this spirit is in art. It is in this sense that we should discuss the relationship between art and truth.
