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
manifestations, and another man who expresses it aesthetically; between
the aspect, the cries, and the contortions of one who is tortured with
sorrow at the loss of a dear one, and the words or song with which the
same individual portrays his torture at another moment; between the
distortion of emotion and the gesture of the actor. Darwin's book on the
expression of the feelings in man and animals does not belong to
Aesthetic; because there is nothing in common between the science of
spiritual expression and a _Semiotic_, whether it be medical,
meteorological, political, physiognomic, or chiromantic.
Expression in the naturalistic sense simply lacks expression in the
spiritual sense, that is to say, the characteristic itself of activity
and of spirituality, and therefore the bipartition into poles of beauty
and of ugliness. It is nothing more than a relation between cause and
effect, fixed by the abstract intellect. The complete process of
aesthetic production can be symbolized in four steps, which are: _a_,
impressions; _b_, expression or spiritual aesthetic synthesis; _c_,
hedonistic accompaniment, or pleasure of the beautiful (aesthetic
pleasure); _d_, translation of the aesthetic fact into physical
phenomena (sounds, tones, movements, combinations of lines and colours,
etc.). Anyone can see that the capital point, the only one that is
properly speaking aesthetic and truly real, is in that _b_, which is
lacking to the mere manifestation or naturalistic construction,
metaphorically also called expression.
The expressive process is exhausted when those four steps have been
taken. It begins again with new impressions, a new aesthetic synthesis,
and relative accompaniments.
[Sidenote] _Intuitions and memory._
Expressions or representations follow and expel one another. Certainly,
this passing away, this disassociation, is not perishing, it is not
total elimination: nothing of what is born dies with that complete death
which would be identical with never having been born. Though all things
pass away, yet none can die. The representations which we have
forgotten, also persist in some way in our spirit, for without them we
could not explain acquired habits and capacities. Thus, the strength of
life lies in this apparent forgetting: one forgets what has been
absorbed and what life has superseded.
But many other things, many other representations, are still efficacious
elements in the actual processes of our spirit; and it is incumbent on
us not to forget them, or to be capable of recalling them when necessity
demands them. The will is always vigilant in this work of preservation,
for it aims at preserving (so to say) the greater and more fundamental
part of all our riches. Certainly its vigilance is not always
sufficient. Memory, we know, leaves or betrays us in various ways. For
this very reason, the vigilant will excogitates expedients, which help
memory in its weakness, and are its _aids_.
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