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
Having enumerated and defined, as well as it could, the chief among
these varieties, the Aesthetic of the sympathetic set itself the problem
of the place to be assigned to the _ugly in art_. This problem is
without meaning for us, who do not recognize any ugliness save the
anti-aesthetic or inexpressive, which can never form part of the
aesthetic fact, being, on the contrary, its antithesis. But the question
for the doctrine which we are here criticizing was to reconcile in some
way the false and defective idea of art from which it started, reduced
to the representation of the agreeable, with effective art, which
occupies a far wider field. Hence the artificial attempt to settle what
examples of the ugly (antipathetic) could be admitted in artistic
representation, and for what reasons, and in what ways.
The answer was: that the ugly is admissible, only when it can be
_overcome_, an unconquerable ugliness, such as the _disgusting_ or the
_nauseating_, being altogether excluded. Further, that the duty of the
ugly, when admitted in art, is to contribute towards heightening the
effect of the beautiful (sympathetic), by producing a series of
contrasts, from which the pleasurable shall issue more efficacious and
pleasure-giving. It is, in fact, a common observation that pleasure is
more vividly felt when It has been preceded by abstinence or by
suffering. Thus the ugly in art was looked upon as the servant of the
beautiful, its stimulant and condiment.
That special theory of hedonistic refinement, which used to be pompously
called the _surmounting of the ugly_, falls with the general theory of
the sympathetic; and with it the enumeration and the definition of the
concepts mentioned above remain completely excluded from Aesthetic. For
Aesthetic does not recognize the sympathetic or the antipathetic In
their varieties, but only the spiritual activity of the representation.
[Sidenote] _Pseudo-aesthetic concepts belong to Psychology._
However, the large space which, as we have said, those concepts have
hitherto occupied in aesthetic treatises makes opportune a rather more
copious explanation of what they are. What will be their lot? As they
are excluded from Aesthetic, in what other part of Philosophy will they
be received?
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