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 double distinction may be made amongst human activities. In the
first place, there are activities which we presume to be constituted
in the same manner in all men (such as the logical activity) and are
called activities of identity; and others whose diversity is presumed,
which are called activities of difference or individual activities.
Secondly, there are activities which exhaust themselves in the
internal life, and others which actualize themselves in the external
world: immanent activities and practical activities. To which of the
two classes in each of the two orders does artistic activity belong?
There can be no doubt of its different modes of development, if not
actually in each individual person, at least in different peoples and
nations; therefore it belongs properly to activities of difference or
individual activities.[6] As for the other distinction, it is true
that art does realize itself in the external world, but this fact is
something superadded ("_ein später Hinzukommendes_") "which stands to
the internal fact as the communication of thought by means of speech
or writing stands to thought itself": art's true work is the internal
image ("_das innere Bild ist das eigentliche Kunstwerk_"). Exceptions
to this might be adduced, such as mimicry; but they would be apparent
only. Between a really angry man and the actor who plays the part of
an angry man on the stage there is this difference: in the second case
anger appears as controlled and therefore beautiful; that is, the
internal image is in the actor's soul interposed between the fact of
passion and its physical manifestation.[7] Artistic activity "belongs
to those human activities in which we presuppose the individual in its
differentiation; it belongs equally to those activities developing
essentially within themselves and not completing themselves in any
external world. Art, therefore, is an immanent activity in which we
presuppose differentiation." Internal, not practical: individual, not
universal or logical.
[Sidenote: _Artistic truth and intellectual truth._]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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