五、艺术的价值

Theories of the value of art are of two kinds, which we may call extrinsic and intrinsic. The first regards art and the appreciation of art as means to some recognized moral good, while the second regards them as valuable not instrumentally but as objects unto themselves. It is characteristic of extrinsic theories to locate the value of art in its effects on the person who appreciates it. Art is held to be a form of education, perhaps an education of the emotions. In this case, it becomes an open question whether there might not be some more effective means to the same result. (46) Alternatively, one may attribute a negative value to art, as Plato did in his Republic, arguing that art has a corrupting or diseducative effect on those exposed to it.

The extrinsic approach, adopted in modern times by Leo Tolstoy in What Is Art in 1896, has seldom seemed wholly satisfactory. (47)Philosophers have constantly sought for a value in aesthetic experience that is unique to it and that, therefore, could not be obtained from any other source. The extreme version of this intrinsic approach is that associated with Walter Pater, Oscar Wilde, and the French Symbolists, and summarized in the slogan “art for art’s sake”. Such thinkers and writers believe that art is not only an end in itself but also a sufficient justification of itself. (48)They also hold that in order to understand art as it should be understood, it is necessary to put aside all interests other than an interest in the work itself.

Between those two extreme views there lies, once again, a host of intermediate positions.  (49)We believe, for example, that works of art must be appreciated for their own sake, but that, in the act of appreciation, we gain from them something that is of independent value.（50）Thus a joke is laughed at for its own sake, even though there is an independent value in laughter, which lightens our lives by taking us momentarily outside ourselves. Why should not something similar be said of works of art, many of which aspire to be amusing in just the way that good jokes are?

答案

46.或者，人们可能会认为艺术具有负面的影响，像柏拉图在《理想国》一书中所认为的那样，艺术会影响那些接触它的人，使其堕落，或起不到教化作用。

47.哲学家们一直在不懈地探索审美体验中的价值。这种价值是独一无二的，因此不能从别处获得。

48.他们还相信，为了以理解艺术的方式去理解艺术，必须放弃对其他方面的关注而只关注艺术作品本身。

49.比如，我们认为艺术作品必须作为艺术品被人们欣赏，但是我们在欣赏艺术作品时也能从中获得一些具有独立价值的东西。

50.因此，笑话是因为其本身而可笑，尽管笑声中有一种独立的价值，这一价值通过使我们在片刻中脱离自己而燃亮了我们的生命。

总体分析

本文是一篇关于艺术的价值的文章。其中主要论述的是唯美主义的“为艺术而艺术”的观点。

第一段：提出了艺术价值的两种理论，即内在理论和外在理论。对这两种理论做了具体阐释，并引出了对艺术效果的疑问。

第二段：指出列夫·托尔斯泰的外在理论不能令人满意，哲学家们一直关注探索的是艺术自身的价值体验。在该段中，作者引用了奥斯卡·瓦尔德以及法国象征主义的观点。

第三段：在两种极端的观点之间，有一种居中的观点，即艺术作品必须作为他们本身而被体验，但是在体验的过程中，我们又确实得到了一些东西。该段作者用了例证法，以“玩笑”的价值为例来证明自己的观点。

文章学术性较强，属于正式文体，因此长句、复合句颇多，其中引入了一些学术界人士的观点，所以有很大难度。通过该文章的阅读，考生应懂得拓宽知识面的重要性。

文章考查的知识点主要有：(一)被动语态。(二)状语，包括现在分词做状语、方式状语从句、目的状语从句和让步状语从句。(三)定语从句。(四)it做形式主语。

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