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
Other examples are taken from what is called art applied to industry.
Plates, glasses, knives, guns, and combs can be made beautiful; but it
is held that their beauty must not so far exceed as to prevent our
eating from the plate, drinking from the glass, cutting with the knife,
firing off the gun, or combing one's hair with the comb. The same is
said of the art of printing: a book should be beautiful, but not to the
extent of its being difficult or impossible to read it.
[Sidenote] _Critique of the beautiful that is not free._
In respect to all this, we must observe, in the first place, that the
external purpose, precisely because it is such, does not of necessity
limit or trammel the other purpose of being a stimulus to aesthetic
reproduction. Nothing, therefore, can be more erroneous than the thesis
that architecture, for example, is by its nature not free and imperfect,
since it must also fulfil other practical objects. Beautiful
architectural works, however, themselves undertake to deny this by their
simple presence.
In the second place, not only are the two objects not necessarily in
opposition; but, we must add, the artist always has the means of
preventing this contradiction from taking place. In what way? By taking,
as the material of his intuition and aesthetic externalization,
precisely the _destination_ of the object, which serves a practical end.
He will not need to add anything to the object, in order to make it the
instrument of aesthetic intuitions: it will be so, if perfectly adapted
to its practical purpose. Rustic dwellings and palaces, churches and
barracks, swords and ploughs, are beautiful, not in so far as they are
embellished and adorned, but in so far as they express the purpose for
which they were made. A garment is only beautiful because it is quite
suitable to a given person in given conditions. The sword bound to the
side of the warrior Rinaldo by the amorous Armida was not beautiful: "so
adorned that it seemed a useless ornament, not the warlike instrument of
a warrior." It was beautiful, if you will, in the eyes and imagination
of the sorceress, who loved her lover in this effeminate way. The
aesthetic fact can always accompany the practical fact, because
expression is truth.
It cannot, however, be denied that aesthetic contemplation sometimes
hinders practical use. For instance, it is a quite common experience to
find certain new things so well adapted to their purpose, and yet so
beautiful, that people occasionally feel scruples in maltreating them by
using after contemplating them, which amounts to consuming them. It was
for this reason that King Frederick William of Prussia evinced
repugnance to ordering his magnificent grenadiers, so well suited for
war, to endure the strain of battle; but his less aesthetic son,
Frederick the Great, obtained from them excellent services.
[Sidenote] _The stimulants of production._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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