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 category of _apparent_ aesthetic feelings has been formed in modern
Aesthetic. These have nothing to do with the aesthetic sensations of
pleasure arising from the form, that is to say from the work of art. On
the contrary, they arise from the content of the work of art. It has
been observed that "artistic representations arouse pleasure and pain in
their infinite variety and gradations. We tremble with anxiety, we
rejoice, we fear, we laugh, we weep, we desire, with the personages of a
drama or of a romance, with the figures in a picture, or with the melody
of music. But these feelings are not those that would give occasion to
the real fact outside art; that is to say, they are the same in quality,
but they are quantitively an attenuation. Aesthetic and _apparent_
pleasure and pain are slight, of little depth, and changeable." We have
no need to treat of these _apparent feelings_, for the good reason that
we have already amply discussed them; indeed, we have treated of them
alone. What are ever feelings that become apparent or manifest, but
feelings objectified, intensified, expressed? And it is natural that
they do not trouble and agitate us passionately, as do those of real
life, because those were matter, these are form and activity; those true
and proper feelings, these intuitions and expressions. The formula,
then, of _apparent feelings_ is nothing but a tautology. The best that
can be done is to run the pen through it.
XI
CRITIQUE OF AESTHETIC HEDONISM
As we are opposed to hedonism in general, that is to say, to the theory
which is based on the pleasure and pain intrinsic to Economy and
accompanies every other form of activity, confounding the content and
that which contains it, and fails to recognize any process but the
hedonistic; so we are opposed to aesthetic hedonism in particular, which
looks upon the aesthetic at any rate, if not also upon all other
activities, as a simple fact of feeling, and confounds the _pleasurable
of expression_, which is the beautiful, with the pleasurable and nothing
more, and with the pleasurable of all sorts.
[Sidenote] _Critique of the beautiful as that which pleases the
higher senses._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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