Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic — John Shaqi
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
The statements repeated so often, with others similar, that art is not
knowledge, that it does not tell the truth, that it does not belong to
the world of theory, but to the world of feeling, arise from the failure
to realize exactly the theoretic character of the simple intuition. This
simple intuition is quite distinct from intellectual knowledge, as it is
distinct from the perception of the real. The belief that only the
intellective is knowledge, or at the most also the perception of the
real, also arises from the failure to grasp the theoretic character of
the simple intuition. We have seen that intuition is knowledge, free of
concepts and more simple than the so-called perception of the real.
Since art is knowledge and form, it does not belong to the world of
feeling and of psychic material. The reason why so many aestheticians
have so often insisted that art is _appearance_ (_Schein_), is precisely
because they have felt the necessity of distinguishing it from the more
complex fact of perception by maintaining its pure intuitivity. For the
same reason it has been claimed that art is _sentiment_. In fact, if the
concept as content of art, and historical reality as such, be excluded,
there remains no other content than reality apprehended in all its
ingenuousness and immediateness in the vital effort, in _sentiment_,
that is to say, pure intuition.
[Sidenote] _Critique of theory of aesthetic senses._
The theory of the _aesthetic senses_ has also arisen from the failure to
establish, or from having lost to view the character of the expression
as distinct from the impression, of the form as distinct from the
matter.
As has just been pointed out, this reduces itself to the error of
wishing to seek a passage from the quality of the content to that of the
form. To ask, in fact, what the aesthetic senses may be, implies asking
what sensible impressions may be able to enter into aesthetic
expressions, and what must of necessity do so. To this we must at once
reply, that all impressions can enter into aesthetic expressions or
formations, but that none are bound to do so. Dante raised to the
dignity of form not only the "sweet colour of the oriental sapphire"
(visual impression), but also tactile or thermic impressions, such as
the "thick air" and the "fresh rivulets" which "parch all the more" the
throat of the thirsty. The belief that a picture yields only visual
impressions is a curious illusion. The bloom of a cheek, the warmth of a
youthful body, the sweetness and freshness of a fruit, the cutting of a
sharpened blade, are not these, also, impressions that we have from a
picture? Maybe they are visual? What would a picture be for a
hypothetical man, deprived of all or many of his senses, who should in
an instant acquire the sole organ of sight? The picture we are standing
opposite and believe we see only with our eyes, would appear to his eyes
as little more than the paint-smeared palette of a painter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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