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
These explications have firmly established that the pure or fundamental
forms of knowledge are two: the intuition and the concept--Art, and
Science or Philosophy. With these are to be included History, which
is, as it were, the product of intuition placed in contact with the
concept, that is, of art receiving in itself philosophic distinctions,
while remaining concrete and individual. All other forms (natural
sciences and mathematics) are impure, being mingled with extraneous
elements of practical origin. Intuition gives us the world, the
phenomenon; the concept gives us the noumenon, the Spirit.
IV
HISTORICISM AND INTELLECTUALISM IN ÆSTHETIC
These relations between intuitive or æsthetic knowledge and the other
fundamental or derivative forms of knowledge having been definitely
established, we are now in a position to reveal the errors of a series
of theories which have been, or are, presented as theories of Æsthetic.
[Sidenote: _Criticism of probability and of naturalism._]
From the confusion between the demands of art in general and the
particular demands of history has resulted the theory (which has lost
ground to-day, but was once dominant) of the _probable_ as the object
of art. As is generally the case with erroneous propositions, the
meaning of those who employed and employ the concept of probability
has no doubt often been much more reasonable than their definition
of the word. By probability used really to be meant the artistic
_coherence_ of the representation, that is to say, its completeness
and effectiveness, its actual presence. If "probable" be translated
"coherent," a very just meaning will often be found in the discussions,
examples, and judgements of the critics who employ this word. An
improbable personage, an improbable ending to a comedy, are really
badly-drawn personages, badly-arranged endings, happenings without
artistic motive. It has been said with reason that even fairies and
sprites must have probability, that is to say, be really sprites and
fairies, coherent artistic intuitions. Sometimes the word "possible"
has been used instead of "probable." As we have already remarked in
passing, this word possible is synonymous with the imaginable or
intuitible. Everything truly, that is to say coherently, imagined, is
possible. But also, by a good many critics and theorists, the probable
was taken to mean the historically credible, or that historical truth
which is not demonstrable but conjecturable, not true but probable.
This was the character which these theorists sought to impose upon art.
Who does not remember how great a part was played in literary history
by criticism based on probability, for example, censure of _Jerusalem
Delivered,_ based upon the history of the Crusades, or of the Homeric
poems, upon the probable customs of emperors and kings? Sometimes too
the æsthetic reproduction of historical reality has been imposed upon
art. This is another of the erroneous forms taken by the theory of the
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