Æsthetic as science of expression and general linguisticCroce, Benedetto
Philosophy
Æsthetic as science of expression and general linguistic
Croce, Benedetto
Aesthetics; Language and languages -- Philosophy; Philosophy
Let us remark in passing that what has been said of the æsthetic
judgement holds good equally for every other activity and for every
other judgement; and that scientific, economic, and ethical criticism
is effected in a like manner. To limit ourselves to this last, only if
we place ourselves ideally in the same conditions in which he found
himself who took a given resolution, can we form a judgement as to
whether his decision were moral or immoral. An action would otherwise
remain incomprehensible and therefore impossible to judge. A homicide
may be a rascal or a hero: if this be, within limits, indifferent
as regards the defence of society, which condemns both to the same
punishment, it is not indifferent to one who wishes to distinguish and
judge from the moral point of view, and we therefore cannot dispense
with reconstructing the individual psychology of the homicide, in order
to determine the true nature of his deed, not merely in its legal,
but also in its moral aspect. In Ethics, a moral taste or tact is
sometimes mentioned, answering to what is generally called the moral
consciousness, that is to say, to the activity of the good will itself.
[Sidenote: _Criticism of æsthetic absolutism (intellectualism) and
relativism._]
The explanation above given of æsthetic judgement or reproduction both
agrees with and condemns the absolutists and relativists, those who
affirm and those who deny the absoluteness of taste.
In affirming that the beautiful can be judged, the absolutists are
right; but the theory on which they found their affirmation is not
tenable, because they conceive of the beautiful, that is, æsthetic
value, as something placed outside the æsthetic activity, as a concept
or a model which an artist realizes in his work, and of which the
critic avails himself afterwards in judging the work itself. These
concepts and models have no existence in art, for when proclaiming
that every art can be judged only in itself and that it has its model
in itself, they implicitly denied the existence of objective models of
beauty, whether these are intellectual concepts, or ideas suspended in
a metaphysical heaven.
In proclaiming this, their-adversaries, the relativists, are perfectly
right, and effect an advance upon them. However, the initial
rationality of their thesis in its turn becomes converted into a false
theory. Repeating the ancient adage that there is no accounting for
tastes, they believe that æsthetic expression is of the same nature as
the pleasant and the unpleasant, which every one feels in his own way,
and about which there is no dispute. But we know that the pleasant and
the unpleasant are utilitarian, practical facts. Thus the relativists
deny the specific character of the æsthetic fact, and again confound
expression with impression, the theoretic with the practical.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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