THE CONTENT
Introduction ................................................. .................................................. ...............
....... 2
1. Benedetto Croce ................................................ ............................................. 3
2. Aesthetics ................................................. .................................................. .......
.... 5
3. Theory ................................................. .................................................. ............
6
4. History ................................................. .................................................. ...........
8
4.1. Aesthetic ideas in Greco-Roman
antiquity ........................................... ........... 8
4.2. Aesthetic ideas in the Middle Ages and the
Renaissance ........................................... 9
4.3. The liveliness of thought in the 17th
century. .................................................. ......................... 9
4.4. Aesthetic ideas in Cartesianism and Leibnizism as well
Baumgarten's> Aesthetica <.............................................. ......................... 10
4.5. Other aesthetic teachings ............................................... ............................. 11
4.6. Francesco De Sanctis ............................................... ...............................
13
Conclusion ................................................. .................................................. ......
14
Literature ................................................. .................................................. ......
15
1
Introduction
This seminar paper should address Benedetto Croce’s aesthetic views that
have not only influenced purely theoretically interested spirits, but have delved into
the fields of artistic practice, critique, and historiography.
The initial part of the paper talks in general about the life and work of Croce
as a philosopher, critic and politician. Then we enter into the very theme of his work,
which is divided into two parts: Theory and History.
The theoretical part talks about aesthetics as a science of expression, and art
itself is identified with intuitive cognition, which fantasizes to know the individual.
While the second part is actually a historical overview of aesthetics.
2
1. Benedetto Croce
Italian philosopher, critic and politician (1866 - 1952). Twice (1920 and
1944) he was Minister of Education, and from 1943 to 1947 President of the Liberal
Party of Italy. He then retired from political life. Proponent of Italian national unity,
opponent of fascism. In 1903, together with Gentile, he started the magazine
"Critique", in which his extraordinarily rich socio-critical and literary-historical
activity came to the fore.1
In his numerous literary and historical studies and critiques, he relied heavily
on De Sanctis. But the whole endeavor of Croce, that "nestor of Italian culture," was
prepared by the renaissance of Hegel's thought in Italy in the mid-nineteenth century.
Croce, whose interest was in philosophy as well as in history, literature, art,
criticism, or general cultural theory, understood the reform of Hegel's dialectic by
emphasizing the need to move from Hegel's dialectic of opposites to dialects of
different degrees of spiritual reality. According to Croce, only in this way will we
avoid the degradation of those degrees of the spirit which in Hegel are reduced to the
lower moments of the absolute (such as art).
Croce's fundamental philosophical work, which made him the greatest name
of modern Italian philosophy and significantly influenced the development of
philosophical and especially aesthetic thought outside Italy, is Philosophy as a
1
Cf., GRLIĆ, Danko: Lexicon of Philosophers, Zagreb, Naprijed, 1983, p. 85.
3
science of spirit, within which the most famous first part: Aesthetics as a science of
expression and general linguistics.
In addition to this work, the Breviary of Aesthetics stands out, in which we
come across Croce's relational conception of art. He says that neither art nor content
has a particularly relational character. Only their relationship is artistic.2
Croce expressed all his mental peculiarity most strongly in the field of
aesthetics, as well as in the masterful application of his own general aesthetic theses
within a rich and varied literary criticism.
Croce believes that there are two fundamental theoretical forms of human
cognition: intuitive and logical. From one, intuitive or aesthetic, one comes to the
realization of the individual through fantasy, and from the other, logical, through the
scientific path of the intellect to the realization of the universal. Artistic truth is
independent of scientific truth, which uses the conceptual language of logic, and is so
indifferent to it that, logically speaking, it can contradict it.3
Aesthetics as a science of art, of expression, must ultimately become identical
with philosophical linguistics. Hence Croce's main work, Aesthetics, is subtitled: as a
science of expression and general linguistics.
He has also successfully criticized many a priori postulates of metaphysical
and speculative “aesthetics from above4»And sought to establish the autochthony and
indivisibility of the artistic, contrasting it not only with logic but also with ethics and
economics. Above all, he wants to enchant the autonomy of aesthetics, its
irreducibility to moral, economic, social or historical correlates.
2
Cf., CROCE, Benedetto: Breviary of Aesthetics, Zagreb, Ljevak, 2003, p. 25.
3
Cf., GRLIĆ, D .: nav.dj., p. 86.
4
Plato's metaphysics of the beautiful (he speculatively derives aesthetics from the metaphysical ideas
of good, beautiful and truth) is a model of the so-called "Aesthetics from above", which is later
continued by e.g. Schelling and Hegel.
4
2. Aesthetics
Aesthetics (Greek. Aisthesis, observation, remark), was originally a science
of sensory maturation and sensory appearance. 5 But at the same time a philosophical
discipline that examines the criteria for creating, experiencing and valuing the
beautiful, ie art (art as an eminent field of the beautiful).
While Baumgarten establishes aesthetics as a science of lower powers of
cognition as a complement to the science of higher spiritual-historical cognition.
Kant distinguishes the transcendental aesthetics of sensory forms of maturation from
the transcendental logic of the categories of reason. Hegel sees the appearance of the
absolute truth of all reality in the splendor of beauty instead of irony, and thus the
name of aesthetics has become inappropriate and prevalent in his way of looking.
And for Heidegger, aesthetics is the title for a fundamental modern form of
subjectivity that relates to everything and enjoys everything, and which does not
recognize the demand for truth in art. Viewed in essence, aesthetics is slowly coming
to an end and is being replaced by an philosophy of art that is related to the question
of truth.6
5
Cf., HALDER, Alois: "Aesthetics", Philosophical Dictionary, Zagreb, Jurčić, 2008, p. 92.
6
Cf., ibid., P. 93.
5
3. Theory
Croce divides his work into theory and history. In the theoretical part he talks
about how there are two forms of cognition: intuitive or logical; that is, according to
him, cognition is the creator of images or the creator of concepts.
Artistic truth is independent of scientific truth, which uses the conceptual
language of logic. But although the aesthetic can do without the scientific, the
scientific cannot without the aesthetic, every great scientific work is also artistic.
Every true intuition is at the same time an expression, because the spirit does
not know intuitively differently than through action, through expression. And
whatever that expression is, it cannot be absent in an intuition because it is an
integral part of it. Beauty can therefore be defined as a successful expression or just
as an expression, because an expression when it has failed is not an expression at all.
According to that, there is no gradation of beauty, but only ugliness (which shows
multiplicity).7
Croce then discusses forms of practical activity. According to him, the first
stage is a mere useful or economic activity, and the second is a moral activity.
7
Cf., CROCE, Benedetto: Aesthetics as a Science of Expression and General Linguistics, Zagreb,
Globus. 1991, p. 28.
6
Economics is like the aesthetics of practical life, and morality is like logic. To want
economically means to want a goal, and morally means to want a rational goal. He
who wants and acts morally cannot, without wanting and not acting usefully.
Physical beauty is mainly divided into natural and artificial, which brings us
to one of the facts that caused the most trouble to thinkers, to the naturally beautiful.
Nature is beautiful only for those who observe it through the eyes of an artist.
Zoologists and botanists do not know about beautiful animals or plants because
natural beauty is revealed. He also says that without the share of imagination no part
of nature is beautiful, but because of that share, due to different moods of the spirit,
the same object can be expressive or insignificant. After all, there is no such thing as
natural beauty where the artist would not make any correction.
Towards the end of the first part of the book he says that without tradition and
historical criticism the enjoyment of almost all works of art would be irretrievably
lost, ie that we should understand that the goal of historical research is not only to
help reproduce and judge works of art. it also has its own interests that may be
foreign to art history, but not to other aspects of historiography.8
It also explains to us the difference between a man of taste and a historian. He
says that man in his spirit only reproduces a work of art, and the historian, after
reproducing it, approaches its historical representation, applying the categories
through which history differs from pure art.
Further in the text he discusses the thesis of aesthetics and linguistics
understood as true sciences, they are not two divided things but only one. There is
only general linguistics, that is, philosophical linguistics, and whoever works on it
works on aesthetic problems and vice versa.9
8
Cf., ibid., P. 53.
9
Cf., ibid., P. 133-136.
7
4. History
The second part discusses whether aesthetics should be considered an ancient
or modern science, or whether it first manifested itself in the 18th century. or in the
Greco-Roman world.
Historians themselves are most hesitant between the meaning of imitation and
representation, but believe that the aesthetic problem could have arisen only after
Socrates (although the very beginnings are seen in the first appearances of criticism
in Hellenism).
4.1. Aesthetic ideas in Greco-Roman antiquity
The aesthetic problem arose with Plato, the creator of the magnificent
negation of art, of which we have a testimony in the history of ideas. Plato wonders
whether art, mimicry, is a rational or irrational fact?
According to him, mimetics does not realize ideas, but reproduces natural or
artificial things. According to him, art does not belong to the rational realm of the
8
soul. He defines beauty itself as the goodness of a life dedicated to justice united
with philosophical cognitive wisdom.
Aristotle felt that this conclusion could not be entirely true and that some
aspect of the problem had certainly been ignored. He overcame the obstacle that
arose from the Platonic teaching of ideas, as hypostasis of concepts. For him, ideas
were simple concepts, and she really hoped for him in a more vivid way, as a
synthesis of matter and form. According to him, it was much easier to recognize the
rationality of mimesis and attribute the appropriate position to it.10
And while Plato called rhetoric a mockery of art, Aristotle argues this by the
closeness of rhetoric and logic. Style and manner of speaking are just as important as
content.
4.2. Aesthetic ideas in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance
The Middle Ages could be said to have equated art with philosophy or
theology. Formal beauty in art, as a self-conscious thought, did not exist in the
Middle Ages.
Augustine advocated the introduction of aesthetic elements, such as rhetorical
balance, contrast, metaphor, and hyperbole, in the form of sermons.
In the Renaissance period, the aesthetic world awakens and art is considered a
mirror of ordinary life and nature. Culture is being enriched, the number of those
participating in it is increasing, original sources are being studied, old authors are
being translated, numerous discussions on poetry and the arts, rhetoric, dialogues and
dissertations on the beautiful are being written and printed.
But essentially new ideas in the field of aesthetic science are not yet
emerging. The mystical tradition has been refreshed and strengthened by the renewal
of Plato's cult.
10
Cf., ibid., P. 155.
9
4.3. The liveliness of thought in the 17th century.
The interest in aesthetic research then strengthened with the advent of the
next century, namely the introduction of many new concepts or new meanings of
words.11This is how they distinguished ingeny from intellect. Pellegrini defined
genius as that part of the soul which in a certain way applies, strives and strives to
find and produce beautiful and effective.
No less widespread was the notion of taste, or good taste: a judgmental ability
that deals with the beautiful, separated in some way from intellectual judgment.
And in Italy in the seventeenth century, imagination was in vogue, taking the
place of the authentic, which is neither true nor false to some of Aristotle's
interpreters. According to Pallavica, the imagination cannot go wrong, because he
equates it in everything and in everything with feelings, incapable of distinguishing
the true from the false. And the fact that the fantasy world is likable is not because it
possesses some special truth, but because it represents objects that are "despite being
false, likable."
4.4. Aesthetic ideas in Cartesianism and Leibnizism and
Baumgarten's> Aesthetica <
In the period of neoclassicism, a close connection was observed between
Descartes' ideal of clear and unambiguous thinking and the ideal of the artistic order
of writers like Racine. Descartes acknowledged the appeal of art and the power of
inspiration, but permanently admired only science. In Cartesianism, therefore, there
was no place for the aesthetics of imagination.
Like Descartes in France, Locke in England is an intellectual and knows no
other form of theoretical elaboration than thinking about the senses. In addition, he
11
Cf., ibid., P. 171.
10
accepts the division into modern and contemporary from modern literature. In his
opinion, the first one combines ideas with pleasant diversity and reveals in them
some similarities and relationships to make beautiful images that would entertain and
impress the imagination, while the second one explores differences as a measure of
truth.
Lebniz on the arts says that they can drive a man mad, and aesthetic
knowledge for him is vague. Because we feel it more in spirit than in reason.
In the midst of these discussions and attempts, a young Alexander
Baumgarten was formed who thought about how to shape the rhetorician's recipes
within the philosophical system. Thus, in September 1735, he published as a
habilitation thesis for his doctorate a booklet where the word "aesthetics" was first
written as the name of a special science. The subject of aesthetics for him are sensory
facts, which ancient thinkers always diligently distinguished from mental facts. The
beauty of sensory cognition should be excluded from the beauty of objects and
matter, with which it is often incorrectly confused due to its linguistic use, since the
fact remains that ugly things can be thought of in a beautiful way and beautiful in an
ugly way.12
The revolutionary who, leaving aside the notion of the credible and realizing
imagination in a new way, penetrated the true nature of poetry and art and who, so to
speak, discovered aesthetic science was the Italian Giambattista Vico. Plato's poetry
was banished to a lower part of the soul, among animal spirits. But Vico elevated it,
he takes it as a period of human history, and since its history is ideal, because its
periods are not contingent facts but forms of spirit, he takes it as a moment of ideal
spiritual history, as a form of consciousness. Poetry comes before the intellect, but
after the senses.
Vico is also notable for his book New Science, where he brings this new
aesthetic idea, defining the imagination as independent of intellect or morality.
12
Cf., ibid., P. 191.
11
4.5. Other aesthetic teachings
Platonism, or rather Neoplatonism, was restored by the creator of art history,
Wincklemann. Observing the works of ancient sculpture, with the impression of
sublimity rather than human and divine indifference that they create more
irresistibly, since it is not always easy to relive their intimate and original life and
understand the original meaning. This led Wincklemann to the notion of Beauty
which, coming down from the seventh heaven of the Divine Idea, would be
embodied in works of this kind.13
Croce then dedicates one chapter to Kant, who can be said to have led to the
very solution of the problem of that science, he argued the premise that aesthetic
enjoyment, with all its properties, is more serious than physical science. For him,
aesthetic perfection is a mere ornament of the logical.
Hegel goes beyond the entire history of aesthetics, striving to separate the
notion of art from a narrow rationalist interpretation, to achieve respect for the
uniqueness and autonomy of art, and to rank it among the highest spiritual activities.
According to Hegel, classical art really achieves and exposes what
constitutes its deepest notion. Therefore, it takes spiritual content as its
content, if it draws nature and its forces into its own realm, and therefore it
does not show itself as pure interior and rule over nature, but takes human
form, deed and action through which it is spiritually immersed. to the
sensory side of form not as some external thing but as to some particular
being representing an existence corresponding to the spirit. 14
Hegel emphasizes the cognitive character of art more than his predecessors,
but that is precisely why he encounters a difficulty that others hastily circumvent. If
art is placed in the realm of the absolute spirit, in the society of faith and philosophy,
how can it be sustained alongside such powerful and violent comrades, especially
13
Cf., ibid., P. 230.
14
HEGEL, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich: Aesthetics, Volume 2, Belgrade, Belgrade Publishing and Graphic
Institute, 1975, p. 179
12
next to a philosophy that, in the Hegelian system, stands at the very top of all
spiritual development?15
Schopenhauer accepted the theory of art, which started from the difference
between a concept that is an abstraction and a concept that is concreteness or an idea,
although he attaches his ideas to Platonic ideas. They have something in common
with intellectual notions, because both are units that represent a plurality of real
facts.16
Schopenhauer attributes to music the power to express the ultimate meaning,
he places it above other arts (architecture is at its lowest level).
Croce also mentions Nitzsche, who at the same time values the artist as his
natural advisor and criticizes him as a spoiler of philosophical honesty. Art creates a
more beautiful picture of reality, provides protection, but his superman is brave
enough to face the truth, so he refuses that refuge in art.
4.6. Francesco de Sanctis
The autonomy of art experienced a secure affirmation in Italy in the critical
work of Francesco de Sanctis. He presented his teachings in critical essays, in
monographs on Italian writers and in the classical History of Italian Literature.
For De Sanctis, Hegel's Aesthetics was a tool and a support through which he
could rise, overcoming the debates and notions of the old Italian schools. He took all
the life-giving part from him, moderately interpreting his teachings, but he remained
distrustful and eventually rebelled against everything that was artificial, formalistic
and meticulous in Hegel.
15
Cf., CROCE, B .: Aesthetics ..., op.cit.,, P. 261.
16
Cf., Ibid., P. 263.
13
It is important to point out that for De Sanctis the notion of form was identical
with the notion of imagination, expressive or imaginative power, artistic vision. That
is to say when one wants to establish exactly the tendency of his opinion. But he
himself failed to develop a theory with scientific perfection, and aesthetic ideas
remained in him almost like a sketch of an unfinished system.17
Conclusion
Few of the philosophically implemented aesthetic conceptions had such a
long-lasting echo as the aesthetics of Benedetto Croce from 1902.
The backbone of his teaching is the attitude that within the field of intuitive
cognition he concretizes a purely artistic aesthetic act as an expression. However,
since expression or expression always implies language, aesthetics thus necessarily
becomes general linguistics in Croce.
In this book, he summed up all the aesthetics of the past, from the very
beginnings of Greco-Roman antiquity, through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance
17
Cf., ibid., P. 306-314.
14
to aesthetic ideas in the 19th century, attributing to art the original innocence of
imagination, but also the ability to shape passions. Art has no obligation to represent
things as they are, it is in no way determined by truth, it must be free from all
scientific and moral additions.
His aesthetic views not only influenced purely theoretically interested spirits,
but also reached far-reaching in the fields of artistic practice, criticism, and
historiography.
It was his theory that established the purity of art.
Literature
1. CROCE, Benedetto: Breviary of Aesthetics, Zagreb, Ljevak, 2003.
15
2. CROCE, Benedetto: Aesthetics as a Science of Expression and General
Linguistics, Zagreb, Globus. 1991
3. GRLIĆ, Danko: Lexicon of Philosophers, Zagreb, Naprijed, 1983.
4. HALDER, Alois: Filozofijski rječnik, Zagreb, Jurčić, 2008.
5. HEGEL, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich .: Aesthetics, Volume 2, Belgrade, Belgrade
Publishing and Graphic Institute, 1975.
16
