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
or readers "not as men, to whom intellect is proper, but as beasts whom
imagination satisfies."[53]
The conception of imagination as purely sensuous shows strongly in
Muratori, who is so convinced that the faculty, if left to itself,
would deteriorate into a riot of dreams and intoxication, that he links
it to intellect as to "an authoritative friend" who shall influence
the choice and combination of images.[54] The problem of the nature of
imagination had strong attraction for Muratori, and, while traducing
and vilifying, he returns to it again in his _Della forza della
fantasia umana_;[55] describing it as a material faculty essentially
different from the mental or spiritual, and denying it the validity of
knowledge. Although he had observed that the aim of poetry is distinct
from that of science, in that the latter seeks to "know," and the
former to "represent" truth,[56] he persisted in counting Poetry as an
"art of delectation" subordinate to Moral Philosophy, of whom she was
one of the three servants or ministers.[57] Very similarly Gravina held
that along with novelty and delight in the marvellous, poetry should
endow the mind of the vulgar with "truth and universal cognitions."[58]
Outside Italy the same movement was going on. Bacon, although he
assigned poetry to imagination, yet considered it as something
intermediary between history and science, approximating epic to
history and the most lofty style, the parabolic, to science: ("_poēsis
parabolica inter reliquas eminet"._) Elsewhere he calls poetry
_somnium_ or declares absolutely that "_scientias fere non parit,_" and
that "_pro lusu potius ingenii quam pro scientia est habenda_": music,
painting and sculpture are voluptuous arts.[59] Addison identified the
pleasures of the imagination with those produced by visible objects or
the ideas to which they give rise: such pleasures are not so strong as
those of the senses nor so refined as those of the intellect: he groups
together the pleasures experienced respectively in comparing imitations
with the objects imitated, and in sharpening by this means the faculty
of observation.[60]
[Sidenote _Feeling and Sensationalism._]
The sensationalism of Du Bos and other upholders of feeling appears
very clearly. For Du Bos art is a pastime whose pleasantness consists
in the fact that it occupies the mind without fatigue, and has
affinities with the pleasure provoked by gladiatorial contests,
bullfights and tourneys.[61]
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