Benedetto Croce: An Introduction to His Philosophy

by Raffaello Piccoli

A recent literary polemic in America offered some striking examples of these prejudices. A critic of the older school, in a discussion of the moral tendencies of the age, introduced a criticism of the proposition that art is not concerned either with truth or morality, by affirming that this negative proposition could legitimately be converted into the positive one: the object of art is to deny that which truth and morality affirm. The sophism of this conversion is based on a confusion between the two logical concepts of distinction and opposition. The critic was not deducing a logical consequence of the first proposition, any more than if he were interpreting my saying that I am not interested as a student of literature in the law of gravitation, as implying a disbelief in the law of gravitation: he was merely stating his own conception of art as a conceptual and moral function, and of the value of art as an intellectual and moral value; which is the error of intellectualism and moralism. In his reply to the older critic, a writer of the younger generation contended that æsthetic values are higher than either logical or moral values, and in some mysterious way transcend and comprehend them both. The younger writer was evidently using the same kind of logic as his adversary, and affirming on his own account the error of a variety of æstheticism.

What the original proposition actually implies is that judgments regarding the logical truth or the historical verity, the moral merit or demerit of a work of art, do not treat art as art, but dissolve the work itself into its abstract elements, and deal with these elements in an entirely different context. If I discuss the theology and philosophy of Dante, I shall find a number of propositions which to my mind are untrue; but the beauty of Dante's poetry is incommensurable with the truth or falsehood of his logical thought. The beauty of Francesca's episode is not impaired by the quite reasonable suspicion that the poetical idealization of a guilty passion might have a dangerous influence on weak and sentimental souls.

The imperfect distinction between art and logical or scientific truth is responsible for the critical prejudice of art as expressive of the typical. The typical is a product of abstract thought, of the kind that is employed in the natural sciences. The expressions of art are essentially individual and particular, and when we consider them as typical, we merely use them as the starting point for our own abstractions, that is, for the purposes of a quite different mental process. Similar to the concept of the typical are those of the allegory and symbol, which are mechanical constructions of the intellect, and which art is unable to represent unless it reduces them to the particular and concrete.

The confusion between art and morality, being ultimately founded on the supposition that art is not a theoretical function, but an act of the will, gives rise to the theories of the ends of art, and of the so-called choice of the subject. But the end of art is art itself, expression or beauty, or whatever other name we shall give to the æsthetic value, just as the end of science is truth and the end of morality is goodness; that is, the concept of end coincides in every case with the concept of value. And the artist cannot choose his subject, since there is no abstract subject present to his mind, but only the world of his own already formed intuitions and expressions; which he can neither will nor not will. This is the truth contained in the old idea of poetical inspiration, which was merely another word for the spontaneity and unreflectiveness of art. A choice of the subject according to ends other than æsthetic is a certain cause of failure. The only conceivable meaning that advice as to the choice of a subject may have, is a kind of artistic know thyself, a warning to the artist to be true to himself, to follow his inspiration, and that which is deepest and most genuine in it. It is, however, a tautological meaning, and the reverse of the one which is given to it by the moralistic critic.

If it is impossible for us either to will or not will our æsthetic vision, the internal image which is the true "work of art," it is clear that an element of will enters into the production of the physical or external image, made of sounds or lines or colours or shapes, which we call works of art in a naturalistic or empirical sense. The complete process of æsthetic production is symbolized by Croce in the four following stages: a, the impression; b the expression or æsthetic spiritual synthesis; c, the feeling of pleasure or pain which accompanies the æsthetic as well as any other form of spiritual activity; d, the translation of the æsthetic fact into physical phenomena. The only true æsthetic moment of the whole process is in b, which alone is real expression, while d is expression in the naturalistic and abstract sense of the word. Such a conception clashes against a number of deep-rooted fallacies, which in their turn are the source of innumerable æsthetic prejudices. It is clear, however, that what we call a printed poem is no poem at all, but only a collection of conventional black signs on a white page, which suggest to me a number of movements of my vocal organs destined to the production of certain sounds; and again, that these sounds are not the poem in itself, apart from my understanding of their meaning, from my re-creation of the internal image which prompted their original production now recorded in the pages of a book. Physically, a painting is constituted by colours on a wall, or board, or canvas: here, the first stage of reproduction which is required for the written poem is not necessary: the material (visual, as it was auditive for the poem) on which the original image fixed itself is directly present to me; and yet, again, that material object is not the æsthetic vision, but a mere stimulus for its reproduction. Starting from the material object, Croce symbolized the inverse process of æsthetic reproduction in the following series: e, the physical stimulus; d-b, the perception of physical facts (sound, colours, etc.), which is at the same time the æsthetic synthesis previously produced; c, the æsthetic pleasure or pain. Here, again, the only moment of true æsthetic activity is in b where, at least in the hypothesis of a perfect understanding, my vision coincides with the orignal creation.

It must be understood, however, that these successive stages are not real, but abstract or symbolical distinctions. We cannot re-create an æsthetic vision except through the sounds or colours in which it originally expressed itself; and those sounds or colours coincide with the original expression. The words and rhythm of a poem are to it what the body is to the soul, and once you have dissolved that form, there is nothing left. Hence the theoretical impossibility of a translation, which can only exist as a new creation. But when we consider those words or that rhythm not within the expressive synthesis, in which their reality is spiritual and not physical, but outside it, as words, as rhythm, we build up by abstraction a category of physical facts, to which we attribute a reality not inferior to that of the spiritual activity. B and d, in the preceding analysis, are not different realities, but different elaborations, the first, ideal, the second, naturalistic, of the same fact.

We have now established a relation between the æsthetic and the practical activity: the physical expression is an act of the will, and as such it falls legitimately in the domain of both economic and ethical judgments. We may buy or sell the physical stimuli, books, statues, and paintings, though no amount of wealth can give the æsthetic vision: the possession of the objects of art is of another order than the possession of the spiritual creation. We may consider that the communication of a certain intuition is in certain cases morally undesirable, and censure the artist for having willed it, or try to prevent him from accomplishing it. The principle of the spiritual autonomy of art, necessary to establish the nature of æsthetic value, cannot be understood to imply the absolute practical freedom of the artist from the laws that bind all other men. But even from this point of view, there is no doubt that art is more likely to suffer from excessive constraint than from excessive freedom; and that the fanatics of morality in art are only too often inclined to mistake a set of arbitrary rulings for morality, and to overlook the intention of the artist. It is a significant fact, and one which deserves more attention than it seems to have ever received, that the so-called moral condemnation of a true work of art has never outlasted one or two generations, and their prejudices and weaknesses.

The existence of the physical stimuli or material helps for the æsthetic reproduction, fosters the illusion of beauty as an intrinsic attribute of physical objects, first as artistic, and then as natural beauty. It is hardly necessary to criticise this illusion at this point of our discussion: beauty is not an objective attribute, but a spiritual value. In the same way as there is no intrinsic beauty, independent dent of our either creative or re-creative activity, in words or notes or lines or colours, there is also no category of natural beauty. What we call beauty of nature is either that which in nature is merely pleasureable from a practical and sensuous standpoint, or the presence of certain stimuli for the reproduction of a preëxistent æsthetic vision. We recognise the obvious truth of this fact, when we remark that the beauty of a certain landscape is not visible to everybody, but only to him who looks at it with an artist's eye. And it would be possible to write a history of the progressive development of beauty in nature, which would practically coincide with, or follow at a short distance of time, the various stages of the history of poetry and painting.

Closely related with the confusion between the physical attributes of the objects of art, and the true æsthetic value, are all the theories of æsthetics which consider that the end of art is pleasure, or æsthetic hedonism in its various forms. Of these the most ancient is the one that considers beautiful that which gives pleasure to the higher senses, he hearing and the sight; and other forms of it can still be found, if not among artists and critics, at least among psychologists. Two of the most recent interpretations of æsthetic facts, the theory of empathy or Einfühlung and the theory of tactile values, are merely modern scientific variations of the old prejudice. But no hedonistic theory can ever give a consistent account of æsthetic facts, as it is impossible to draw a distinction, on a purely psychological plane, between those pleasures of the senses which may precede or accompany the æsthetic fact, and those that are purely sensuous; and the inevitable result is a complete reduction of the æsthetic to the sensual. In such theories, the real æsthetic problem does not even reach the stage of being formulated.