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
Passing to the second, not altogether insignificant, use of these words
and distinctions, we sometimes find in the examination of a literary
composition such remarks as follow: here is a pleonasm, here an ellipse,
there a metaphor, here again a synonym or an equivoke. This means that
in one place is an error consisting of using a larger number of words
than is necessary (pleonasm); that in another the error arises from too
few having been used (ellipse), elsewhere from the use of an unsuitable
word (metaphor), or from the use of two words which seem to express two
different things, where they really express the same thing (synonym); or
that, on the contrary, it arises from having employed one which seems to
express the same thing where it expresses two different things
(equivoke). This pejorative and pathological use of the terms is,
however, more uncommon than the preceding.
[Sidenote] _Their use in a sense transcending aesthetic, in the
service of science._
Finally, when rhetorical terminology possesses no aesthetic
signification similar or analogous to those passed in review, and yet
one is aware that it is not void of meaning and designates something
that deserves to be noted, it is then used in the service of logic and
of science. If it be granted that a concept used in a scientific sense
by a given writer is expressed with a definite term, it is natural that
other words formed by that writer as used to signify the same concept,
or incidentally made use of by him, become, _in respect to_ the
vocabulary fixed upon by him as true, metaphors, synecdoches, synonyms,
elliptic forms, and the like. We, too, in the course of this treatise,
have several times made use of, and intend again to make use of such
terms, in order to make clear the sense of the words we employ, or may
find employed. But this proceeding, which is of value in the
disquisitions of scientific and intellectual criticism, has none
whatever in aesthetic criticism. For science there exist appropriate
words and metaphors. The same concept may be psychologically formed in
various circumstances and therefore be expressed with various
intuitions. When the scientific terminology of a given writer has been
established, and one of these modes has been fixed as correct, then all
other uses of it become improper or tropical. But in the aesthetic fact
exist only appropriate words. The same intuition can only be expressed
in one way, precisely because it is an intuition and not a concept.
[Sidenote] _Rhetoric in the schools._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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