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
A glance over the path traversed will show that we have completed
the entire programme of our treatise. We have studied the nature of
intuitive or expressive knowledge, which is the æsthetic or artistic
fact (I. and II.), and described the other form of knowledge, the
intellectual, and the successive complications of these forms (III.);
it thus became possible for us to criticize all erroneous æsthetic
theories arising from the confusion between the various forms and from
the illicit transference of the characteristics of one form to another
(IV.), noting at the same time the opposite errors to be found in the
theory of intellectual knowledge and of historiography (V.). Passing
on to examine the relations between the æsthetic activity and the
other activities of the spirit, no longer theoretic but practical, we
indicated the true character of the practical activity and the place
which it occupies in respect to the theoretic activity: hence the
criticism of the intrusion into æsthetic theory of practical concepts
(VI.); we have distinguished the two forms of the practical activity,
as economic and ethical (VII.), reaching the conclusion that there are
no other forms of the spirit beyond the four which we have analyzed;
hence (VIII.) the criticism of every mystical or imaginative Æsthetic.
And since there are no other spiritual forms co-ordinate with these,
so there are no original subdivisions of the four established, and
in particular of Æsthetic. From this arises the impossibility of
classes of expressions and the criticism of Rhetoric, that is, of
ornate expression distinct from simple expression, and of other similar
distinctions and subdistinctions (IX.) But by the law of the unity of
the spirit, the æsthetic fact is also a practical fact, and as such,
occasions pleasure and pain. This led us to study f the feelings of
value in general, and those of æsthetic value or of the beautiful in
particular (X.), to criticize æsthetic hedonism in all its various
manifestations and complications (XI.), and to expel from the system
of Æsthetic the long series of psychological concepts which had been
introduced into it (XII.). Proceeding from æsthetic production to the
facts of reproduction, we began by investigating the external fixing
of the æsthetic expression, for the purpose of reproduction. This
is called the physically beautiful, whether natural or artificial
(XIII.). We derived from this distinction the criticism of the errors
which arise from confounding the physical with the æsthetic side of
facts (XIV.). We determined the meaning of artistic technique, or that
technique which is at the service of reproduction, thus criticizing
the divisions, limits and classifications of the individual arts,
and establishing the relations of art, economy and morality (XV.).
Since the existence of physical objects does not suffice to stimulate
æsthetic reproduction to the full, and since, in order to obtain it,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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