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
For Schleiermacher, the sphere of Ethic included the whole Philosophy of
the Spirit, in addition to morality. These are the two forms of human
activity--that which, like Logic, is the same in all men, and is called
activity of identity, and the activity of difference or individuality.
There are activities which, like art, are internal or immanent and
individual, and others which are external or practical. _The true work
of art is the internal picture_. Measure is what differentiates the
artist's portrayal of anger on the stage and the anger of a really angry
man. Truth is not sought in poetry, or if it be sought there, it is
truth of an altogether different kind. The truth of poetry lies in
coherent presentation. Likeness to a model does not compose the merit of
a picture. Not the smallest amount of knowledge comes from art, which
expresses only the truth of a particular consciousness. Art has for its
field the immediate consciousness of self, which must be carefully
distinguished from the thought of the Ego. This last is the
consciousness of identity in the diversity of moments as they pass; the
immediate consciousness of self is the diversity itself of the moments,
of which we should be aware, for life is nothing but the development of
consciousness. In this field, art has sometimes been confused with two
facts which accompany it there: these are sentient consciousness (that
is, the feelings of pleasure and of pain) and religion. Schleiermacher
here alludes to the sensualistic aestheticians of the eighteenth
century, and to Hegel, who had almost identified art and religion. He
refutes both points of view by pointing out that sentient pleasure and
religious sentiment, however different they may be from other points of
view, are yet both determined by an objective fact; while art, on the
contrary, is free productivity.
Dream is the best parallel and proof of this free productivity. All the
essential elements of art are found in dream, which is the result of
free thoughts and of sensible intuitions, consisting simply of images.
But dream, as compared with art, is chaotic: when measure and order is
established in dream, it becomes art. Thoughts and images are alike
essential to art, and to both is necessary ponderation, reflexion,
measure, and unity, because otherwise every image would be confused with
every other image. Thus the moments of inspiration and of ponderation
are both necessary to art.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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