Æsthetic as science of expression and general linguistic

by Benedetto Croce

IMMANUEL KANT

I. Kant.

Of all these writers, Winckelmann and Mengs, Home and Hogarth, Lessing and Goethe, none was a philosopher in the true sense of the word: not even those who like Meier laid claim to the title, nor those who had some gifts for philosophy like Herder or Hamann. After Vico, the next European mind of real speculative genius is Immanuel Kant, who now comes before us in his turn.

Kant and Vico.

That Kant took up the problem of philosophy where Vico laid it down (not, of course, in a directly historical, but in an ideal, sense) has already been noted by others.[1] How far he made an advance upon his predecessor and how far he failed to reach the same level it is not here our business to inquire; we must confine ourselves strictly to the consideration of Æsthetic questions.

Summarizing the results of such a consideration, we may say at once that though Kant holds an immensely important place in the development of German thought; though the book containing his examination of æsthetic facts is among his most influential works; and though in histories of Æsthetic written from the German point of view, which ignore practically the whole development of European thought from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, Kant can pose as the man who discovered the problem of Æsthetic or solved it or brought it within sight of solution; yet in an unprejudiced and complete history whose aim is to take broad views and to consider not the popularity of a book or the historical importance of a nation but the intrinsic value of ideas, the judgement passed on Kant must be very different. Like Vico in the serious tenacity with which he reflected upon æsthetic facts, more fortunate than he in having a much larger stock of material gathered from preceding discussion and argument, Kant was at once unlike and less successful than Vico in that he was unable to attain a doctrine substantially true, and unable also to give his thoughts the necessary system and unity.

Identity of the concept of art in Kant and Baumgarten.

In fact, what was Kant's idea of art? Strange as our reply may seem to those who recollect the explicit and insistent war waged by him against the school of Wolff, and the concept of beauty as a perfection confusedly perceived, we must assert that Kant's idea of art was fundamentally the same as that of Baumgarten and the Wolffian school.[2] In that school his mind had been trained; he always had a great respect for Baumgarten whom in the Critique of Pure Reason he calls "that excellent analyst"; he chose the text of Baumgarten for two of his University lectures on Metaphysics, and that of Meier for his lecture on Logic (Vernunftlehre). Kant, like them, therefore considered Logic and Æsthetic (or theory of art) as conjoined sciences. They were thus described by him in his Scheme of Lectures in 1765, when he proposed, while expounding the critique of reason, to "throw a glance at that of taste, that is to say, at Æsthetic, since the rules of one apply to the other and each throws light upon the other."

Kant's "Lectures."

In his University lectures he distinguished æsthetic truth from logical truth in the style of Meier; even citing the example of the beautiful rosy face of a girl which, when seen distinctly, i.e. through a microscope, ceases to be beautiful.[3] It is æsthetically true (said he) that a man once dead cannot come to life again, although this is in opposition to logic and moral truth: it is æsthetically true that the sun plunges into the sea, but it is false logically and objectively. To what degree it is necessary to combine logical truth with æsthetic the learned have never yet been able to decide; not even the greatest æstheticians. In order to become accessible, logical concepts must assume æsthetic forms; a garb to be abandoned only in the rational sciences which seek profundity. Æsthetic certainty is subjective: it is content with authority, i.e. the citation of the opinions of great men. On account of our weakness, for we are strongly attached to the sensible, æsthetic perfection often helps us to render our thoughts distinct. In this, examples and images co-operate; æsthetic perfection is the vehicle for logical perfection; taste is the analogue of intellect. There are logical truths which are not æsthetic truths: and on the other hand we must exclude from abstract philosophy exclamations and other sentimental commotions proper to the other truth. Poetry is a harmonious play of thoughts and sensations. Poetry and eloquence differ in this: in the former, thoughts adapt themselves to sensations; in the latter the contrary is the case. In these lectures Kant sometimes taught that poetry is anterior to eloquence because sensations come before thoughts; and he observed (perhaps under Herder's influence) that the poetry of Eastern peoples, lacking concepts, is wanting in unity and taste although rich in imaginative detail. Poetry formed out of the pure play of sensibility is doubtless a possibility, e.g. love-poems: but true poetry disdains such productions, concerned as they are with sensations which every one knows ought to be expelled from our breasts. True poetry must strive to present virtue and intellectual truth in sensible form, as has been done by Pope in his Essay on Man, in which he attempts to vivify poetry by means of reason. On other occasions Kant definitely says that logical perfection is the basis of every other, æsthetic perfection being merely an adornment of the logical; something of the latter may be omitted in order to appeal to the audience, but it must never be disguised or falsified.[4]