After Kant and Hegel, the most important influence on modern aesthetics has been Croce. His oft-cited Estetica come scienza dell’ espressione e linguistica generale (1902; Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistics, or Aesthetic) presents, in a rather novel idiom, some of the important insights underlying the theories of his predecessors. In this work, Croce distinguishes concept from intuition: the latter is a kind of acquaintance with the individuality of an object, while the former is an instrument of classification. Art is to be understood first as expression and second as intuition. The distinction between representation and expression is ultimately identical with that between concept and intuition. The peculiarities of aesthetic interest are really peculiarities of intuition: this explains the problem of form and content and gives the meaning of the idea that the object of aesthetic interest is interesting for its own sake and not as a means to an end.
Croce conceived his expressionism as providing the philosophical justification for the artistic revolutions of the 19th century and, in particular, for the Impressionist style of painting, in which representation gives way to the attempt to convey experience directly onto the canvas. His extreme view of the autonomy of art led him to dismiss all attempts to describe art as a form of representation or to establish direct connections between the content of art and the content of scientific theories. Croce’s disciple R.G. Collingwood (Principles of Art, 1938) was similarly dismissive of representation and similarly concerned with presenting a theory of art that would justify the revolutionary practice of his contemporaries (in this case, the post-Symbolist poetry of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land ). As pointed out earlier, Collingwood distinguishes craft, which is a means to an end, from art, which is an end in itself. But since art is also, for Collingwood, expression, expression too must be an end in itself. It cannot be construed as the giving of form to independently identifiable states of mind. The feeling must reside in the form itself and be obtainable exclusively in that form. If it were otherwise, art would be simply another kind of craft—the craft of giving expression to preexisting and independently identifiable states of mind. Therefore, like Croce, Collingwood opposes expression in art to description: expression gives us the particularity and not the generality of states of mind.
Collingwood sets his aesthetics within the context of a theory of the imagination, in which he shows the influence of the British Empiricists as well as of the Idealist metaphysicians who had influenced Croce. A similar attempt to unite the theory of art with a philosophy of the imagination had been made by the French philosopher Alain in his Système des beaux-arts (1920, revised 1926; “System of the Fine Arts”), a work that is distinguished by its detailed attention to dress, fashion, manners, and the useful arts, and by its idea of the artist as artisan d’abord. Along with John Dewey’s Art As Experience (1934), in which aesthetic experience is presented as integral to the organic completion of human nature, these works provide the culminating expression of a now defunct view of aesthetics as central to the understanding not of art alone but of the human condition as well.
After Kant and Hegel, the most important influence on modern aesthetics has been Croce. His oft-cited Estetica come scienza dell’ espressione e linguistica generale (1902; Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistics, or Aesthetic) presents, in a rather novel idiom, some of the important insights underlying the theories of his predecessors. In this work, Croce distinguishes concept from intuition: the latter is a kind of acquaintance with the individuality of an object, while the former is an instrument of classification. Art is to be understood first as expression and second as intuition. The distinction between representation and expression is ultimately identical with that between concept and intuition. The peculiarities of aesthetic interest are really peculiarities of intuition: this explains the problem of form and content and gives the meaning of the idea that the object of aesthetic interest is interesting for its own sake and not as a means to an end.
Croce conceived his expressionism as providing the philosophical justification for the artistic revolutions of the 19th century and, in particular, for the Impressionist style of painting, in which representation gives way to the attempt to convey experience directly onto the canvas. His extreme view of the autonomy of art led him to dismiss all attempts to describe art as a form of representation or to establish direct connections between the content of art and the content of scientific theories. Croce’s disciple R.G. Collingwood (Principles of Art, 1938) was similarly dismissive of representation and similarly concerned with presenting a theory of art that would justify the revolutionary practice of his contemporaries (in this case, the post-Symbolist poetry of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land ). As pointed out earlier, Collingwood distinguishes craft, which is a means to an end, from art, which is an end in itself. But since art is also, for Collingwood, expression, expression too must be an end in itself. It cannot be construed as the giving of form to independently identifiable states of mind. The feeling must reside in the form itself and be obtainable exclusively in that form. If it were otherwise, art would be simply another kind of craft—the craft of giving expression to preexisting and independently identifiable states of mind. Therefore, like Croce, Collingwood opposes expression in art to description: expression gives us the particularity and not the generality of states of mind.
Collingwood sets his aesthetics within the context of a theory of the imagination, in which he shows the influence of the British Empiricists as well as of the Idealist metaphysicians who had influenced Croce. A similar attempt to unite the theory of art with a philosophy of the imagination had been made by the French philosopher Alain in his Système des beaux-arts (1920, revised 1926; “System of the Fine Arts”), a work that is distinguished by its detailed attention to dress, fashion, manners, and the useful arts, and by its idea of the artist as artisan d’abord. Along with John Dewey’s Art As Experience (1934), in which aesthetic experience is presented as integral to the organic completion of human nature, these works provide the culminating expression of a now defunct view of aesthetics as central to the understanding not of art alone but of the human condition as well.
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