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
For the same reason, it cannot be asserted that the intuition, which is
generally called artistic, differs from ordinary intuition as intensive
intuition. This would be the case if it were to operate differently on
the same matter. But since the artistic function is extended to wider
fields, yet does not differ in method from ordinary intuition, the
difference between them is not intensive but extensive. The intuition
of the simplest popular love-song, which says the same thing, or very
nearly, as any declaration of love that issues at every moment from the
lips of thousands of ordinary men, may be intensively perfect in its
poor simplicity, although it be extensively so much more limited than
the complex intuition of a love-song by Leopardi.
[Sidenote: _The difference is extensive and empirical._]
The whole difference, then, is quantitative, and as such is indifferent
to philosophy, _scientia qualitatum._ Certain men have a greater
aptitude, a more frequent inclination fully to express certain
complex states of the soul. These men are known in ordinary language
as artists. Some very complicated and difficult expressions are not
often achieved, and these are called works of art. The limits of
the expression-intuitions that are called art, as opposed to those
that are vulgarly called non-art, are empirical and impossible to
define. If an epigram be art, why not a simple word? If a story, why
not the news-jottings of the journalist? If a landscape, why not a
topographical sketch? The teacher of philosophy in Molière's comedy was
right: "whenever we speak, we create prose." But there will always be
scholars like Monsieur Jourdain, astonished at having spoken prose for
forty years without knowing it, who will have difficulty in persuading
themselves that when they call their servant John to bring their
slippers, they have spoken nothing less than--prose.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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