Æsthetic as science of expression and general linguistic

by Benedetto Croce

The impossibility of such systematizations finds something like a proof in the strange attempts made to carry it out. The first and most common partition is that into arts of hearing, sight, and imagination; as if eyes, ears, and imagination were on the same level and could be deduced from the same logical variable as fundamentum divisionis. Others have proposed the division into arts of space and arts of time, arts of rest; and movement; as if the concepts of space, time, rest and motion could determine special æsthetic forms and possess anything in common with art as such. Finally, others have amused themselves by dividing them into classic and romantic, or into oriental, classic, and romantic, thereby conferring the value of scientific concepts upon simple historical denominations, or falling into those rhetorical partitions of expressive forms, already criticized above; or into arts that can only be seen from one side, like painting, and arts that can be seen from all sides, like sculpture—and similar extravagances, which hold good neither in heaven nor on earth.

The theory of the limits of the arts was perhaps at the time when it was put forward a beneficial critical reaction against those who believed in the possibility of remodelling one expression into another, as the Iliad or Paradise Lost into a series of paintings, and indeed held a poem to be of greater or lesser value according as it could or could not be translated into pictures by a painter. But if the rebellion were reasonable and resulted in victory, this does not mean that the arguments employed and the systems constructed for the purpose were sound.

Criticism of the theory of the union of the arts.

Another theory which is a corollary to that of the arts and their limits, falls with them; that of the union of the arts. Given particular arts, distinct and limited, it was asked: Which is the most powerful? Do we not obtain more powerful effects by uniting several? We know nothing of this: we know only that in each particular case certain given artistic intuitions have need of definite physical means for their reproduction and other artistic intuitions of other means. We can obtain the effect of certain plays by simply reading them; others need declamation and scenic display: there are some artistic intuitions which need for their full externalization words, song, musical instruments, colours, statuary, architecture, actors; while others are quite complete in a slight outline made with the pen, or a few strokes of the pencil. But it is false to suppose that declamation and scenic effects and all the other things together that we have mentioned are more powerful than a simple reading or a simple outline of pen or pencil; because each of those facts or groups of facts has, so to say, a different purpose, and the power of the means cannot be compared when the purposes are different.

Relation of the activity of externalization to utility and morality.

Finally, it is only from the point of view of a clear and rigorous distinction between the true and proper æsthetic activity and the practical activity of externalization that we can solve the complicated and confused questions as to the relations between art and utility and art and morality.

We have demonstrated above that art as art is independent both of utility and of morality, as also of all practical value. Without this independence, it would not be possible to speak of an intrinsic value of art, nor indeed to conceive an æsthetic science, which demands the autonomy of the æsthetic fact as its necessary condition.

But it would be erroneous to maintain that this independence of the vision or intuition or internal expression of the artist should be simply extended to the practical activity of externalization and communication which may or may not follow the æsthetic fact. If by art be understood the externalization of art, then utility and morality have a perfect right to enter into it; that is to say, the right to be master in one's own house.

Indeed we do not externalize and fix all the many expressions and intuitions which we form in our spirit; we do not declare our every thought in a loud voice, or write it down, or print, or draw, or paint, or expose it to the public. We select from the crowd of intuitions which are formed or at least sketched within us; and the selection is ruled by the criteria of the economic disposition of life and of its moral direction. Therefore, when we have fixed an intuition, we have still to decide whether or no we should communicate it to others, and to whom, and when, and how; all which deliberations come equally under the utilitarian and ethical criterion.

Thus we find the concepts of selection, of the interesting, of morality, of an educational end, of popularity, etc., to some extent justified, although these can in no way be justified when imposed upon art as art, and we have ourselves rejected them in pure Æsthetic. Error always contains an element of truth. He who formulated those erroneous æsthetic propositions in reality had his eye on practical facts, which attach themselves externally to the æsthetic fact and belong to economic and moral fife.