On the Relationship between Art and Morality

On the relationship between art and morality. First of all, define "morality": it refers to the sum of ethical concepts and behavioral norms about good and evil, right and wrong, justice and injustice formed by people in social life, including moral consciousness, moral relationship and moral activities. Morality is the morality of society, which comes into being with the emergence of human society and changes with the development of human society. (1) The relationship between morality and art. Compared with western aesthetics, Eastern aesthetics pays more attention to the relationship between morality and art. Generally speaking, if the history of western aesthetics is mostly about the thinking of "philosophers" on art, then the history of Chinese aesthetics is mostly about the requirements of "sages" on art. In pre-Qin classics, beauty is goodness, and goodness is beauty. But in Confucius' view, "goodness" is more important than "beauty", and it is a more fundamental thing, and attaches great importance to the social and ethical function of art. For music, Confucius opposed Zheng Sheng because of "Zheng Sheng's fornication"; He thinks that Wu's music is "perfect and imperfect", but it is not excellent; Only "less" music can reach the realm of "perfection" and be called excellent. The close relationship between morality and art is manifested in two aspects: on the one hand, morality affects art, and this influence is first manifested in that the ethical thoughts of a certain era and a certain society are always reflected through the theme, theme, plot, characters, ideological content, tendency and internal meaning of artistic works. Any art, whether it is literature, drama, film, television, architecture, painting, music and dance, is always a reflection of social life in a certain era, and an important part of social life is people's moral life. Therefore, works of art often contain moral content, and people's moral outlook is reflected by shaping typical images. The famous Tolstoy trilogy, namely "War and Peace", Anna? Karenina and Resurrection almost all deeply touched on ethical issues. Secondly, the influence of morality on art, especially on the world outlook and morality of writers and artists, has a great influence on artistic creation. Art is the product of social life reflected in the minds of writers and artists. Therefore, when describing and expressing people's moral outlook and moral life, it is necessary to integrate the moral evaluation and moral judgment of writers and artists themselves. On the other hand, art affects morality. Mainly manifested in the moral education function of artistic works to people. Because of its vivid and touching image and special charm, art has a great influence on the evaluation of moral concepts and the choice of moral behavior. An excellent work of art can improve people's moral level and spiritual realm. The influence of art on morality is also reflected in the change of social moral consciousness and moral concept to a certain extent. For example, the May 4th New Culture Movement and the literary revolution have far-reaching historical significance. It is a cultural revolutionary movement with ideological enlightenment as its core. The main content of this movement is to publicize science and democracy, oppose old morality and old ideas, advocate new morality and new ideas, oppose old literature and advocate new literature. It is a movement that completely opposes feudal culture. Chen Duxiu, Li Dazhao, Lu Xun and others published a large number of articles against feudal ethics centered on the Three Cardinal Principles and the Five Permanent Principles, and severely criticized the Confucian dogma that "benevolence, righteousness and morality" were "cannibalism". In terms of literature and art, a number of works of art, represented by Lu Xun's Diary of a Madman, not only mark a brand-new historical stage in the history of China's literary development, but also have a far-reaching impact on the changes of social moral consciousness and moral concepts. Art and morality have a special relationship, but as two different cultural phenomena, they have essential differences. From the scope, art can not only reflect people's moral relations, but also show people's political relations, economic relations, legal relations and so on. Therefore, art reflects people's social life from a wider range. From the way, morality reflects the relationship between people with concepts, principles and norms, while art describes, depicts or expresses this relationship with images. Judging from the evaluation criteria, there are also differences between moral evaluation and aesthetic evaluation. The former often takes "goodness" as the sole criterion, while the latter often takes the unity of "truth, goodness and beauty" as the criterion, which leads to the difference between moral evaluation and aesthetic evaluation of artistic works. It should also be noted that not all artistic works must have moral content, such as landscape photography, flower-and-bird painting and instrumental music. And many of them don't involve moral content. What needs to be pointed out in particular is that for those artistic works with moral content, it is also necessary to "entertain and educate", that is, to organically integrate moral content into artistic images, so as to make them turn good into beauty and have aesthetic education functions, rather than dry moral preaching. Only in this way can they really exert a subtle influence on the viewers. (2) Moral content in art is the sum of various ethical concepts and codes of conduct formed by people in social life, and it is the art category that reproduces social life, such as literature, drama, opera, movies, television and so on. , more obviously influenced by morality. There are countless literary works in this field. From the perspective of drama, there are also a lot of works in this field at home and abroad, especially Ibsen's Drama of Social Problems in the 9th century, including A Doll's House, Social Pillar, Public Enemy and so on. All this is aimed at recreating the real life in Norway at that time. Through the description of social and moral issues such as love, marriage, family and women's status, there are also moral factors infiltrating into non-replicating art categories such as architecture, music, calligraphy and practical crafts. For example, although architecture is a kind of practical art and expressive art, China architectural art, like other arts, as a traditional culture, embodies a specific ethical concept. Music, as an art of expression and hearing, cannot directly reproduce social life, but it is also permeated with certain times and social ethics. Therefore, Chinese and western thinkers have attached great importance to the ethical education of music.