美学上の文化的多元主義 : その成立と含意をめぐって

抄録

Ever since J. G. Herder (1744-1803) elaborated his idea of "culture" as particular groups' traditional values in contrast with more cosmopolitan "civilization", the concept of cultural differences has served as a vehicle for the critique of universal values. But has this tradition of anti-universalism of culture with emphasis on the aesthetic contributed, as A. Kuper, J. Hutchinson and other social scientists assume, merely to induce nationalist ideology? This paper reexamines the origin and the discursive function of the concept of cultural diversity in aesthetic theories. In his pluralist reading of Kant's The Critique of Judgement, Herder granted the notion of culture a two-fold function which allowed him to steer between the solipsism of artistic experience and the over-generalization of the sense of beauty. This balance-act is still required today in handling the concept of culture, as this consists in an ambivalence between external difference and internal homogeneity. Bearing this ambivalence in mind, we always have to be aware both of the particularist ideology of culture, and of the ideal of pluralism as its critical-utopian moment, which still has great influence on such theories as feminist aesthetics.