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
Such is the theory of art as pure intuition, in its fundamental
conception. This theory, then, takes its origin from the criticism of
the loftiest of all the other doctrines of Aesthetic, from the criticism
of mystical or romantic Aesthetic, and contains in itself the criticism
and the truth of all the other Aesthetics. It is not here possible to
allow ourselves to illustrate its other aspects, such as would be those
of the identity, which it lays down, between intuition and expression,
between art and language. Suffice it to say, as regards the former, that
he alone who divides the unity of the spirit into soul and body can have
faith in a pure act of the soul, and therefore in an intuition, which
should exist as an intuition, and yet be without its body, expression.
Expression is the actuality of intuition, as action is of will; and in
the same way as will not exercised in action is not will, so an
intuition unexpressed is not an intuition. As regards the second point,
I will mention in passing that, in order to recognize the identity of
art and language, it is needful to study language, not in its
abstraction and in grammatical detail, but in its immediate reality, and
in all its manifestations, spoken and sung, phonic and graphic. And we
should not take at hazard any proposition, and declare it to be
aesthetic; because, if all propositions have an aesthetic side
(precisely because intuition is the elementary form of knowledge and is,
as it were, the garment of the superior and more complex forms), all are
not _purely_ aesthetic, but some are philosophical, historical,
scientific, or mathematical; some, in fact, of these are more than
aesthetic or logical; they are aestheticological. Aristotle, in his
time, distinguished between semantic and apophantic propositions, and
noted, that if all propositions be _semantic_, not all are _apophantic_.
Language is art, not in so far as it is apophantic, but in so far as it
is, generically, semantic. It is necessary to note in it the side by
which it is expressive, and nothing but expressive. It is also well to
observe (though this may seem superfluous) that it is not necessary to
reduce the theory of pure intuition, as has been sometimes done, to a
historical fact or to a psychological concept. Because we recognize in
poetry, as it were, the ingenuousness, the freshness, the barbarity of
the spirit, it is not therefore necessary to limit poetry to youth and
to barbarian peoples. Though we recognize language as the first act of
taking possession of the world achieved by man, we must not imagine that
language is born _ex nihilo_, once only in the course of the ages, and
that later generations merely adopt the ancient instrument, applying it
to a new order of things while lamenting its slight adaptability to the
usage of civilized times. Art, poetry, intuition, and immediate
expression are the moment of barbarity and of ingenuousness, which
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account