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Title: Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic Author: Benedetto Croce

Release Date: November, 2005 [EBook #9306]

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TRANSLATED FROM THE ITALIAN OF BENEDETTO CROCE

B.A. (OXON.)

1909

THE AESTHETIC IS DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR TO THE MEMORY OF HIS PARENTS

PASQUALE AND LUISA SIPARI AND OF HIS SISTER MARIA NOTE

I give here a close translation of the complete Theory of Aesthetic, and in the Historical Summary, with the consent of the author, an abbreviation of the historical portion of the original work.

Intuitive knowledge—Its independence in respect to the intellect—

Intuition and perception—Intuition and the concepts of space and time—Intuition and sensation—Intuition and association—Intuition and representation—Intuition and expression—Illusions as to their difference—Identity of intuition and expression.

Corollaries and explanations—Identity of art and of intuitive knowledge—

No specific difference—No difference of intensity—Difference extensive and empirical—Artistic genius—Content and form in Aesthetic—Critique of the imitation of nature and of the artistic illusion—Critique of art conceived as a sentimental, not a theoretic fact—The origin of Aesthetic, and sentiment—Critique of the theory of Aesthetic senses—Unity and indivisibility of the work of art—Art as deliverer.

Indissolubility of intellective and of intuitive knowledge—Critique of the negations of this thesis—Art and science—Content and form: another meaning. Prose and poetry—The relation of first and second degree—Inexistence of other cognoscitive forms—Historicity—Identity and difference in respect of art—Historical criticism—Historical scepticism—Philosophy as perfect science. The so-called natural sciences, and their limits—The phenomenon and the noumenon.

Critique of the verisimilar and of naturalism—Critique of ideas in art, of art as thesis, and of the typical—Critique of the symbol and of the allegory—Critique of the theory of artistic and literary categories—Errors derived from this theory in judgments on art—

Empirical meaning of the divisions of the categories.

ANALOGOUS ERRORS IN HISTORY AND IN LOGIC

Critique of the philosophy of History—Aesthetic invasions of Logic—

Logic in its essence—Distinction between logical and non-logical judgments—The syllogism—False Logic and true Aesthetic—Logic reformed.

The will—The will as ulterior grade in respect of knowledge—Objections and explanations—Critique of practical judgments or judgments of value—Exclusion of the practical from the aesthetic—Critique of the theory of the end of art and of the choice of content—Practical innocence of art—Independence of art—Critique of the saying: the style is the man—Critique of the concept of sincerity in art.

ANALOGY BETWEEN THE THEORETIC AND THE PRACTICAL

The two forms of practical activity—The economically useful—

Distinction between the useful and the technical—Distinction between the useful and the egoistic—Economic and moral volition—Pure economicity—The economic side of morality—The merely economical and the error of the morally indifferent—Critique of utilitarianism and the reform of Ethic and of Economic—Phenomenon and noumenon in practical activity.

The system of the spirit—The forms of genius—Inexistence of a fifth form of activity—Law; sociality—Religiosity—Metaphysic—Mental imagination and the intuitive intellect—Mystical Aesthetic—Mortality and immortality of art.

INDIVISIBILITY OF EXPRESSION INTO MODES OR GRADES AND CRITIQUE OF

The characteristics of art—Inexistence of modes of expression—

Impossibility of translations—Critique of rhetorical categories—

Empirical meaning of rhetorical categories—Their use as synonyms of the aesthetic fact—Their use as indicating various aesthetic imperfections—Their use as transcending the aesthetic fact, and in the service of science—Rhetoric in schools—Similarities of expressions—Relative possibility of translations.

AESTHETIC SENTIMENTS AND THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE

Various meanings of the word sentiment—Sentiment as activity—

Identification of sentiment with economic activity—Critique of hedonism—Sentiment as concomitant of every form of activity—Meaning of certain ordinary distinctions of sentiments—Value and disvalue: the contraries and their union—The beautiful as the value of expression, or expression without adjunct—The ugly and the elements of beauty that constitute it—Illusion that there exist expressions neither beautiful nor ugly—Proper aesthetic sentiments and concomitant and accidental sentiments—Critique of apparent sentiments.

Critique of the beautiful as what pleases the superior senses—Critique of the theory of play—Critique of the theory of sexuality and of the triumph—Critique of the Aesthetic of the sympathetic—Meaning in it of content and of form—Aesthetic hedonism and moralism—The rigoristic negation, and the pedagogic negation of art—Critique of pure beauty.

THE AESTHETIC OF THE SYMPATHETIC AND PSEUDO-AESTHETIC CONCEPTS

Pseudo-aesthetic concepts, and the Aesthetic of the sympathetic—

Critique of the theory of the ugly in art and of its surmounting—

Pseudo-aesthetic concepts appertain to Psychology—Impossibility of rigorous definitions of these—Examples: definitions of the sublime, of the comic, of the humorous—Relation between those concepts and aesthetic concepts.

THE SO-CALLED PHYSICALLY BEAUTIFUL IN NATURE AND IN ART

Aesthetic activity and physical concepts—Expression in the aesthetic sense, and expression in the naturalistic sense—Intuitions and memory—The production of aids to memory—The physically beautiful—

Content and form: another meaning—Natural beauty and artificial beauty—Mixed beauty—Writings—The beautiful that is free and that which is not free—Critique of the beautiful that is not free—

Stimulants of production.

ERRORS ARISING FROM THE CONFUSION BETWEEN PHYSIC AND AESTHETIC

Critique of aesthetic associationism—Critique of aesthetic physic—

Critique of the theory of the beauty of the human body—Critique of the beauty of geometrical figures—Critique of another aspect of the imitation of nature—Critique of the theory of the elementary forms of the beautiful—Critique of the search for the objective conditions of the beautiful—The astrology of Aesthetic.

THE ACTIVITY OF EXTERNALIZATION. TECHNIQUE AND THE THEORY OF THE ARTS

The practical activity of externalization—The technique of externalization—Technical theories of single arts—Critique of the classifications of the arts—Relation of the activity of externalization with utility and morality.

TASTE AND THE REPRODUCTION OF ART

Aesthetic judgment. Its identity with aesthetic reproduction—

Impossibility of divergences—Identity of taste and genius—Analogy with the other activities—Critique of absolutism (intellectualism) and of aesthetic relativism—Critique of relative relativism—Objections founded on the variation of the stimulus and of the psychic disposition—

Critique of the distinction of signs as natural and conventional—The surmounting of variety—Restorations and historical interpretation.

THE HISTORY OF LITERATURE AND OF ART

Historical criticism in literature and art. Its importance—Artistic and literary history. Its distinction from historical criticism and from the aesthetic judgment—The method of artistic and literary history—Critique of the problem of the origin of art—The criterion of progress and history—Inexistence of a single line of progress in artistic and literary history—Errors in respect of this law—Other meanings of the word “progress” in relation to Aesthetic.

CONCLUSION: IDENTITY OF LINGUISTIC AND AESTHETIC

Summary of the inquiry—Identity of Linguistic with Aesthetic—

Aesthetic formulation of linguistic problems. Nature of language—

Origin of language and its development—Relation between Grammatic and Logic—Grammatical categories or parts of speech—Individuality of speech and the classification of languages—Impossibility of a normative Grammatic—Didactic organisms—Elementary linguistic elements, or roots—The aesthetic judgment and the model language—

Conclusion.

Aesthetic ideas in Graeco-Roman antiquity—In the Middle Age and at the Renaissance—Fermentation of thought in the seventeenth century—Aesthetic ideas in Cartesianism, Leibnitzianism, and in the “Aesthetic” of Baumgarten—G.B. Vico—Aesthetic doctrines in the eighteenth century—Emmanuel Kant—The Aesthetic of Idealism with Schiller and Hegel—Schopenhauer and Herbart—Friedrich Schleiermacher—The philosophy of language with Humboldt and Steinthal—Aesthetic in France, England, and Italy during the first half of the nineteenth century—Francesco de Sanctis—The Aesthetic of the epigoni—Positivism and aesthetic naturalism—Aesthetic psychologism and other recent tendencies—Glance at the history of certain particular doctrines—Conclusion.

Translation of the lecture on Pure Intuition and the lyrical nature of art, delivered by Benedetto Croce before the International Congress of Philosophy at Heidelberg.

There are always Americas to be discovered: the most interesting in Europe.

I can lay no claim to having discovered an America, but I do claim to have discovered a Columbus. His name is Benedetto Croce, and he dwells on the shores of the Mediterranean, at Naples, city of the antique Parthenope.

Croce’s America cannot be expressed in geographical terms. It is more important than any space of mountain and river, of forest and dale. It belongs to the kingdom of the spirit, and has many provinces. That province which most interests me, I have striven in the following pages to annex to the possessions of the Anglo-Saxon race; an act which cannot be blamed as predatory, since it may be said of philosophy more truly than of love, that “to divide is not to take away.”

The Historical Summary will show how many a brave adventurer has navigated the perilous seas of speculation upon Art, how Aristotle’s marvellous insight gave him glimpses of its beauty, how Plato threw away its golden fruit, how Baumgarten sounded the depth of its waters, Kant sailed along its coast without landing, and Vico hoisted the Italian flag upon its shore.

But Benedetto Croce has been the first thoroughly to explore it, cutting his way inland through the tangled undergrowth of imperfect thought. He has measured its length and breadth, marked out and described its spiritual features with minute accuracy. The country thus won to philosophy will always bear his name, Estetica di Croce, a new America.

It was at Naples, in the winter of 1907, that I first saw the Philosopher of Aesthetic. Benedetto Croce, although born in the Abruzzi, Province of Aquila (1866), is essentially a Neapolitan, and rarely remains long absent from the city, on the shore of that magical sea, where once Ulysses sailed, and where sometimes yet (near Amalfi) we may hear the Syrens sing their song. But more wonderful than the song of any Syren seems to me the Theory of Aesthetic as the Science of Expression, and that is why I have overcome the obstacles that stood between me and the giving of this theory, which in my belief is the truth, to the English-speaking world.

No one could have been further removed than myself, as I turned over at Naples the pages of La Critica, from any idea that I was