meanings of the word sentiment--Sentiment as activity--
Identification of sentiment with economic activity--Critique of
hedonism--Sentiment as concomitant of every form of
activity--Meaning of certain ordinary distinctions of sentiments--Value
and disvalue: the contraries and their union--The beautiful as the value
of expression, or expression without adjunct--The ugly and the
elements of beauty that constitute it--Illusion that there exist
expressions neither beautiful nor ugly--Proper aesthetic sentiments and
concomitant and accidental sentiments--Critique of apparent
sentiments.
XI CRITIQUE OF AESTHETIC HEDONISM
Critique of the beautiful as what pleases the superior senses--Critique
of the theory of play--Critique of the theory of sexuality and of the
triumph--Critique of the Aesthetic of the sympathetic--Meaning in it of
content and of form--Aesthetic hedonism and moralism--The rigoristic
negation, and the pedagogic negation of art--Critique of pure beauty.
XII THE AESTHETIC OF THE SYMPATHETIC AND
PSEUDO-AESTHETIC CONCEPTS
Pseudo-aesthetic concepts, and the Aesthetic of the sympathetic--
Critique of the theory of the ugly in art and of its surmounting--
Pseudo-aesthetic concepts appertain to Psychology--Impossibility of
rigorous definitions of these--Examples: definitions of the sublime, of
the comic, of the humorous--Relation between those concepts and
aesthetic concepts.
XIII THE SO-CALLED PHYSICALLY BEAUTIFUL IN NATURE
AND IN ART
Aesthetic activity and physical concepts--Expression in the aesthetic
sense, and expression in the naturalistic sense--Intuitions and
memory--The production of aids to memory--The physically beautiful--
Content and form: another meaning--Natural beauty and artificial
beauty--Mixed beauty--Writings--The beautiful that is free and that
which is not free--Critique of the beautiful that is not free-- Stimulants
of production.
XIV ERRORS ARISING FROM THE CONFUSION BETWEEN
PHYSIC AND AESTHETIC
Critique of aesthetic associationism--Critique of aesthetic physic--
Critique of the theory of the beauty of the human body--Critique of the
beauty of geometrical figures--Critique of another aspect of the
imitation of nature--Critique of the theory of the elementary forms of
the beautiful--Critique of the search for the objective conditions of the
beautiful--The astrology of Aesthetic.
XV THE ACTIVITY OF EXTERNALIZATION. TECHNIQUE AND
THE THEORY OF THE ARTS
The practical activity of externalization--The technique of
externalization--Technical theories of single arts--Critique of the
classifications of the arts--Relation of the activity of externalization
with utility and morality.
XVI TASTE AND THE REPRODUCTION OF ART
Aesthetic judgment. Its identity with aesthetic reproduction--
Impossibility of divergences--Identity of taste and genius--Analogy
with the other activities--Critique of absolutism (intellectualism) and of
aesthetic relativism--Critique of relative relativism--Objections
founded on the variation of the stimulus and of the psychic
disposition-- Critique of the distinction of signs as natural and
conventional--The surmounting of variety--Restorations and historical
interpretation.
XVII THE HISTORY OF LITERATURE AND OF ART
Historical criticism in literature and art. Its importance--Artistic and
literary history. Its distinction from historical criticism and from the
aesthetic judgment--The method of artistic and literary
history--Critique of the problem of the origin of art--The criterion of
progress and history--Inexistence of a single line of progress in artistic
and literary history--Errors in respect of this law--Other meanings of
the word "progress" in relation to Aesthetic.
XVIII CONCLUSION: IDENTITY OF LINGUISTIC AND
AESTHETIC
Summary of the inquiry--Identity of Linguistic with Aesthetic--
Aesthetic formulation of linguistic problems. Nature of language--
Origin of language and its development--Relation between Grammatic
and Logic--Grammatical categories or parts of speech--Individuality of
speech and the classification of languages--Impossibility of a normative
Grammatic--Didactic organisms--Elementary linguistic elements, or
roots--The aesthetic judgment and the model language-- Conclusion.
HISTORICAL SUMMARY
Aesthetic ideas in Graeco-Roman antiquity--In the Middle Age and at
the Renaissance--Fermentation of thought in the seventeenth
century--Aesthetic ideas in Cartesianism, Leibnitzianism, and in the
"Aesthetic" of Baumgarten--G.B. Vico--Aesthetic doctrines in the
eighteenth century--Emmanuel Kant--The Aesthetic of Idealism with
Schiller and Hegel--Schopenhauer and Herbart--Friedrich
Schleiermacher--The philosophy of language with Humboldt and
Steinthal--Aesthetic in France, England, and Italy during the first half
of the nineteenth century--Francesco de Sanctis--The Aesthetic of the
epigoni--Positivism and aesthetic naturalism--Aesthetic psychologism
and other recent tendencies--Glance at the history of certain particular
doctrines--Conclusion.
APPENDIX
Translation of the lecture on Pure Intuition and the lyrical nature of art,
delivered by Benedetto Croce before the International Congress of
Philosophy at Heidelberg.
INTRODUCTION
There are always Americas to be discovered: the most interesting in
Europe.
I can lay no claim to having discovered an America, but I do claim to
have discovered a Columbus. His name is Benedetto Croce, and he
dwells on the shores of the Mediterranean, at Naples, city of the antique
Parthenope.
Croce's America cannot be expressed in geographical terms. It is more
important than any space of mountain and river, of forest and dale. It
belongs to the kingdom of the spirit, and has many provinces. That
province which most interests me, I have striven in the following pages
to annex to the possessions of the Anglo-Saxon race; an act which
cannot be blamed as predatory, since it may be said of philosophy more
truly than of love, that "to divide is not to take away."
The Historical
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