"Thinking in Functions" and "Thinking in Substances": Two Creative Principles in Art

Main Article Content

Vitaly A. Shuranov

Abstract

The article is devoted to the embodiment in art of two worldview opposite concepts – a problem that has occupied art criticism from antiquity to the present day. The first concept is based on a human, on the embodiment of his feelings in the area of the visible world. At the center of the second one there is the being as such (ontos), its substantive forces, that carry out their manifestation through the artistic language matter. The article presents various dichotomous definitions of the two artistic systems; one of them (by S.S. Averintsev) is included in the article’s title.
Behind the fact of distinguishing artistic concepts the article sets the task to define (general characterization) the respectively opposite linguistic principles corresponding to this or that system of world-understanding. At the same time, more attention is paid to the less familiar and theoretically developed problem – the characteristic of the “substantive” concept, the peculiarities of its linguistic embodiment in art. Taking into account the necessity of not direct but symbolic embodiment of the “supersensible”, the author of the article refers to such philosophical and aesthetic concepts of the past and present as “eidos” (antiquity), “anagogy”, “energy” (medieval hermeneutics), “removal of certainty” (N. Kuzansky), “existentiality” (L. Ginzburg), “ontological hypostasis” (V. Bychkov), and the terms of the Holy Bible.
The article gives more concrete linguistic manifestations of two types of thinking and puts the issue of parallelism and the possibility of realizing substantival qualities in the functional type texts. In music, substantiality is put in parallel with modality. The forms of such appearance of the modal through the functional are illustrated by the example of melodic and intonation patterns of romances by of M.I. Glinka.


Keywords: Artistic worldview, language and thinking, ontological image, S.S. Averintsev, modality and functionality, M.I. Glinka.

Article Details

How to Cite
Shuranov В. А. (2023). "Thinking in Functions" and "Thinking in Substances": Two Creative Principles in Art. Music Scholarship / Problemy Muzykal’noj Nauki, 53(4), 7–23. Retrieved from https://musicscholar.ru/index.php/PMN/article/view/1475
Section
Horizonts of Musicology
Author Biography

Vitaly A. Shuranov, Ufa State Zagir Ismagilov Institute of Arts, Ufa, Russia

PhD (Arts), Professor at the Music Theory Department