Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General LinguisticCroce, Benedetto
Philosophy
Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic
Croce, Benedetto
Aesthetics; Language and languages -- Philosophy; Philosophy
A glance over the path traversed will show that we have completed the
entire programme of our treatise. We have studied the nature of
intuitive or expressive knowledge, which is the aesthetic or artistic
fact (I. and II.), and we have described the other form of knowledge,
namely, the intellectual, with the secondary complications of its forms
(III.). Having done this, it became possible to criticize all erroneous
theories of art, which arise from the confusion between the various
forms, and from the undue transference of the characteristics of one
form to those of another (IV.), and in so doing to indicate the inverse
errors which are found in the theory of intellectual knowledge and of
historiography (V.). Passing on to examine the relations between the
aesthetic activity and the other spiritual activities, no longer
theoretic but practical, we have indicated the true character of the
practical activity and the place which it occupies in respect to the
theoretic activity, which it follows: hence the critique of the invasion
of aesthetic theory by practical concepts (VI.). We have also
distinguished the two forms of the practical activity, as economic and
ethic (VII.), adding to this the statement that there are no other forms
of the spirit beyond the four which we have analyzed; hence (VIII.) the
critique of every metaphysical Aesthetic. And, seeing that there exist
no other spiritual forms of equal degree, therefore there are no
original subdivisions of the four established, and in particular of
Aesthetic. From this arises the impossibility of classes of expressions
and the critique of Rhetoric, that is, of the partition of expressions
into simple and ornate, and of their subclasses (IX.). But, by the law
of the unity of the spirit, the aesthetic fact is also a practical fact,
and as such, occasions pleasure and pain. This led us to study the
feelings of value in general, and those of aesthetic value, or of the
beautiful, in particular (X.), to criticize aesthetic hedonism in all
its various manifestations and complications (XI.), and to expel from
the system of Aesthetic the long series of pseudo-aesthetic concepts,
which had been introduced into it (XII.). Proceeding from aesthetic
production to the facts of reproduction, we began by investigating the
mode of fixing externally the aesthetic expression, with the view of
reproduction. This is the so-called physically beautiful, whether it be
natural or artificial (XIII.). We then derived from this distinction the
critique of the errors which arise from confounding the physical with
the aesthetic side of things (XIV.). We indicated the meaning of
artistic technique, that which is the technique serving for
reproduction, thus criticizing the divisions, limits, and
classifications of the individual arts, and establishing the connections
between art, economy, and morality (XV.). Because the existence of the
physical objects does not suffice to stimulate to the full aesthetic
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