Croce's Distinctions in the Aesthetic

Benedetto Croce's aesthetic system is based on distinctions, where art is compared and carefully contrasted to multiple other realms: that of logic, history, economics, physics, mathematics, morality, religion, politics, truth, sensation, pleasure, emotion... Art is not any of these things, art is art, and for this Croce's doctrine has been called "tautological", giving definitions of art mainly through negations. I think that Croce's aesthetic theory goes much deeper than being merely "tautological": Aesthetics for Croce is the philosophical science of art, and the aesthetician has to answer the question what art is, to reveal the true nature of art and its real roots in human nature. Croce holds that negations are relations after all, and that by defining what art is not, by seeing its connections, we arrive closer to the truth of art's essential nature: art is an intuition. What is intuition, then, for Croce?

Croce contrasts intuition to the instinctive grasp of truth, and to the knowing of some higher domain of being. Intuition is the lowest, and the most basic step of mental activity, it is an inner vision of an image, it is immediate knowledge, obtained through the imagination of the individual thing in its concrete dimension. The effect of the arts-work is an intuition. Intuition is not a sensation, but an association of sensations, where association is neither memory nor flux of sensations, but a productive association, a synthesis, a spiritual activity. Every true intuition (or representation) is also expression. Expression is an inseparable part of intuition, because how can we possess an intuition of something (a figure, for example), unless we possess an accurate image of it? Intuitive activity, for Croce, therefore, possesses intuitions to the extent that it expresses them, which includes nonverbal expressions (line, color, sound). Impressions by means of words (or expression in general) pass from the obscure realm of the soul into the clarity of the contemplative spirit, and intuition cannot be distinguished from expression in the cognitive process, they appear simultaneously, because they are two, not one. And if thoughts seem to vanish in the act of expressing them, the reason is that they really did not exist, holds Croce. (But is it not exactly the opposite, I would like to ask here: the deeper the feeling or thought at the "core" of our being, the more impossible it is for us to express it? Or, as more elegantly put by Lacan: "I always say the truth. But not the entire truth, because there is no way to express the entire. To express the entire truth is materially impossible: words do not permit it. And in spite of this, it is precisely by the virtue of this impossibility that the truth is connected with reality". Or, again, in other words: how can we talk about the "essence" of things, or any thing, if we are agonizingly at the "existence" level, viewing the "inside", not the "outside". Or, again, may there be a realm of merging, where there is no rigid distinction between "inside" and "outside"?) For Croce we intuit the world in little expressions, they are the words we say to ourselves, our silent judgements: "Here is this, and I like it"; they gradually expand with the increasing spiritual concentration of certain moments.

From slight intuitions (as an index, or a label are), we move on to greater intuitions, the thing or the object itself, and still onwards to the greatest and most lofty intuitions, such as an artist would have. This way for Croce the painter is a painter, because he operates at a level inconceivable for others, because he sees what others only feel vaguely or catch a glimpse of, but do not see ("One paints, not with the hands, but with the brain", Leonardo). Intuitions are unique, no two works of art are the same, but what similar there is, it is all our actual patrimony of intuitions. Everything else is only impressions, sensations, feelings, impulses, emotions ... or what still falls short of the spirit and is not assimilated by man, something postulated for the convenience of exposition, and otherwise non-existent, because to exist, holds Croce, also is a fact of the spirit. The real work of art is not something outwardly present, existing "objectively" in the outside world, a physical fact. Because when we analyze the physical fact, it turns out to be a scientific abstraction, while art is immediate, concrete, and not permitting analysis. The beautiful cannot be measured, counted, dissected, reduced, because beauty is something internal, impressions and feelings, fused into an image of contemplation, beauty is the inner expression (or form). And again, art is not a technique, but an intuition. Thus, intuitive knowledge is expressive knowledge, independent to intellectual function, indifferent to reality/unreality, to formations and apperceptions of space and time. Intuition is form , to be distinguished from the felt, the suffered, from the flux and wave of sensation, or from psychic matter. This form, taking possession, is expression.

Art is not a meta-intuition, at the same time, states Croce, art is an expression of impressions, and not an expression of expression. Art is a collection of wide and complex intuitions of sensations and impressions, which are different from everyday ordinary impressions. This difference is only extensive, not intensive, it is spread onto wider fields, but does not differ in method from ordinary intuitions. The artists have a greater aptitude, a more frequent inclination fully to express the complex states of their soul. The limits of art are empirical and impossible to define, because if an epigram is art, why not a word? If a story, why not the jottings of a journalist? The answer for Croce is that the artistic genius possesses more quantitative signification. There is an identity of nature between the great artist's imagination and ours, because how otherwise would we understand the revelations of the genius, unless the difference between us is only one of quantity? And another characteristic of the intuitive (artistic) genius: it is conscious, as every form of human activity, it is not a blind mechanism. On the other hand it is not reflective consciousness, the super added consciousness of a critic or a historian. One of the most discussed questions of aesthetics is the relation between matter and form, or form and content, and their relation. Problems are created, Croce writes, in as far as words signify different things, but if we take that matter is emotionally elaborated, or that it is impressions, and form is an intellectual activity and expression, then our view cannot be doubted. The aesthetic fact is not content alone (i.e. not just simple impressions), it is a junction between form and content, it is impressions formed by expressive activity. Therefore, the aesthetic fact is form and nothing but form. But from this does not follow that the content is something superfluous (as it is in a theory of "pure formalism", such as Clive Bell's), because the content is the necessary point of departure for the expressive fact. What is important here is that there is no passage from the qualities of the content to those of the form. But impression and expression are not the same thing, and though it is the content that is transformable into a form, we know nothing about it until the transformation takes place. It does not become an aesthetic content before, but only after it has been actually transformed, it has no determinate qualities until transformation takes place (I would like to note that this argument seems somewhat like Parmenides' view that there can exist no change, because what is does not have to become in order to be, since it already is; and what is not cannot give being to what is, because it is not. The definite distinction here needs a more Aristotelian approach, maybe an explanation of how the process takes place gradually).

Imitations, illusions, hallucinations are not aesthetic intuitions for Croce, because the first is just a mechanical reproduction of life, and the other two have nothing to do with the calm domain of the aesthetic (But is that so, it seems to be important somehow to ask? Is the domain of the aesthetic forever calm? Is Picasso's "Guernica" or Goya's "black period" calm? And even if so - calm in what sense?). Then, intuition is not to be confused with a state of idle passive awareness or daydreaming: it is an active, creative expression of imagination, although "intuition" is described by other concepts - that of representation, contemplation, impression, which may be interpreted to have a passive nuance. But intuition is not the mechanical functioning of the fancy. Intuition is a cognitive, yet emotive expression of the human spirit, although sometimes Croce emphasizes the intuition in the impression, and not in the expression, although in the process of intuition they are described to be an organic unity. And, although cognitive, intuition is not a concept, as those concepts (or generalizations) philosophy and science deal with. Art and history comprise particular objects and unique individuals: things like a table, a chair, a tree are unique and particular representations, they cannot be deduced from a general concept, though later on Croce distinguishes further between "the individual", as belonging to the realm of the historical investigation, and the "particular", described as the object of intuition. Particular representations are opposed to the conceptual reasoning of logic, for example, or philosophy. The intuition of particular images is not something "inferior" for Croce, but remains autonomous, in the sense that it does not depend on other types of cognition. Then, by virtue of its creative nature, Croce sees art as more extensive than history , the outside world in art not belonging neither to the real, nor to the false, but to the realm of the possible, whereas history deals with narrating what has already happened.

I would like to note here that history, similarly to art, can be viewed as a creation , as a process, which turns facts into fiction, a process whereby the past is transformed and experienced again in a "new" sense of "reality", a psychological reality. The depths of the historical image could be said to be "real", but not in the empirical sense of the word, and not "unreal" in the sense of illusion either. The depths of the image are surreal, in the sense of Andre Breton (i.e., in short, everything leads us to believe, that there exists a domain in the spiritual space, where life and death, the future and the past, the communicative and the non-communicative, the high and the low cease to be seen as contradictory). The story that is experienced, is not just a transformation of history into story, of facts into fiction, of knowledge into belief. Reflecting the events of the world, we are forced to poeticize the past, turning it into a poetic history, and the creation of the past can be seen as being very similar to the process of creation in art.

Croce's theory of intuition is closely related to literature, history and theory. The question whether history is art or science was one of the frequently debated questions at the beginning of the XIX century. In spite of the pointed out by Croce difference between art and history , it seems that he did not set altogether a further distinction between them: intuition is described as both - the subject of historical judgment, and as art. Intuition conditions as the unique impressions and expressions of particular feelings, formed the object matter of art and of history, and are differentiated by the aesthetician from the universals and general rules of the sciences. Intuition seen as the unity of the perception of the real and of the simple image of the possible makes it quite impossible to distinguish between art and history. In "Aesthetic" (1953, p.28) Croce does point out: "Only at a later stage does the spirit form the concepts of external and internal, of what has happened and what is desired, of object and subject, and the like : only at this later stage, that is, does it distinguish historical from non-historical intuition, the real from the unreal, real imagination from pure imagination." All the same, Croce still sees that he has not set a clear division line between history and philosophy on the one hand, and art, as pure intuition, on the other. Thus, intuitions can become concepts, and concepts - intuitions, until it becomes impossible to distinguish between reality and fantasy: " Where this is not possible, where the delicate and fleeting shades between the real and unreal intuitions are so slight as to mingle the one with the other, we must either renounce for the time being at least the knowledge of what really happened (and this we often do), or we must fall back upon conjecture, verisimilitude, probability." ("Aesthetic", 1953, p.29.) For Croce history, unlike the sciences, does not construct the concepts of the real and the unreal, but makes use of them, and is to be distinguished from the theory of history. In "Aesthetic" intuition is distinguished further as form from "what is felt and suffered, or from the psychic matter; and this form, taking possession, is expression. To intuit is to express." And this expression is immediate, without being subsumed under the forms of space and time, and without the application of concepts. But how does ordinary intuition distinguish from intuition, that is art? The intuition, which is art, has a certain complexity of expression, not present in the everyday representation of it:

"The intuition of the simplest popular love-song, which says the same thing, or very nearly, as any declaration of love that issues at every moment from the lips of thousands of ordinary men, may be intensively perfect in its poor simplicity, although it be extensively so much more limited than the complex intuition of a love-song by Leopardi." ("Aesthetics", 1953, p.13.)

The intuition that is art and the everyday expression is a matter of degree (or quantity) and cannot be determined beforehand. Everyday intuitions, according to Croce, are not as complex as the art-intuitions, but can be as perfect as the complicated expressions of art. The simple intuition has a theoretic character, though being quite distinct from intellectual knowledge (as it is distinct from perception of the real, being more simple). Therefore, art is knowledge, form, though it does not belong to the realm of feeling, or the psychic. And if art is defined sometimes as "appearance" (Schein), it is to be distinguished from that more complex fact of perception, by maintaining its pure intuitiveness (i.e. reality in its ingenuousness and immediacy in the vital impulse, again - in its feeling). Aesthetic expression is synthesis, in which it is impossible to distinguish direct and indirect. All impressions are placed by it on a level, in so far as they are aestheticized. The person who absorbs the art-work will have it before him in a series of impressions, some of which have prerogatives and precedence over the others, but he knows nothing of what has happened prior to having absorbed it, the same way as distinctions made after reflection have nothing to do with art as such. The theory of aesthetic senses fails to distinguish expression from impression, and form from matter; but it goes wrong when attempting to establish what physiological organs are necessary for the aesthetic fact as well. Expression knows nothing about physiological facts. Expression's genesis is in the impressions, and the physiological path by which they have found their way into the mind is of no importance. Of course, the man born blind cannot intuit and express light. But the impressions are not dependent only on the organ, but also on the stimuli which operate upon the organ . This, though, only repeats what we already know: the point of departure for expressions are impressions, and not the stimulus, or the organ, and every impression excludes other impressions during the moment in which it dominates; the same holds for every expression. Another typical characteristic of the art-work for Croce is its unity and indivisibility: every expression is a single expression:

"Another corollary of the conception of expression as activity is the indivisibility of the work of art. Every expression is a single expression. Activity is a fusion of the impressions in an organic whole. A desire to express this has always prompted the affirmation that the work of art should have unity, or, what amounts to the same thing, unity in variety. Expression is a synthesis of the various, or multiple, in the one." ("Aesthetic", 1953, p.20.)

Activity is a fusion of the impressions in an organic whole, and expression is a synthesis of the various, or multiple, in one, a unity of the variety. Any division into parts, scenes, episodes, etc. annihilates the work, as dividing an organism into heart, brain, nerves, etc. Sometimes an expression arises from other expressions: there are simple and there are compound expressions. There is a difference between the eureka, with which Archimedes expressed all his joy at his discovery, and an expressive act of a regular tragedy.

Art is liberating and purifying for Croce. By elaborating his impressions man frees himself from them. By objectifying them, he removes them from him and makes himself their superior. That is the reason why artists possess both: maximum of sensibility or passion, and maximum of insensibility or Olympian serenity. The two are compatible, for they do not refer to the same object. The sensibility refers to the material, which the artist absorbs into himself, the insensibility - to the form, with which he dominates the tumult of the sensations and passions. Art is like the spirit of which it is a form, eternal and omnipresent. What, then, is the spirit, of which Croce writes often in his "Aesthetic"? It is not a transcendent or a supernatural reality; it is the immanent conscious activity in its concrete dimension; it is the life of the mind, encompassing everything. Within the spirit no divisions are possible, though distinctions may be made:

THEORETICAL (manifests itself through thought) :
AESTHETICS (knowledge of individuals by intuition) vs. LOGIC (knowledge of universals by concepts)
PRACTICAL (manifests itself through action):
ECONOMICS (related to desiring individual things) vs. ETHICS (related to willing of universal ends)

This distinction of Croce gives us the four categories of being, in order to understand the whole domain of the spirit. It is also an indication of the basic concepts, determining the meaning and value of life itself - respectively the Beautiful, the True, the Useful, and the Good. These steps of being are organized into successive grades from aesthetics to logic, or from economics to ethics, because thought presupposes intuition and will follows desire. But everything in the spirit is synthetically related, fused in a unit, and each grade presupposes all of the others. Therefore art, as one of the grades of the spirit, cannot have types, sorts, variations, techniques, degrees and ends. That is why the categories of rhetoric (simple, ornate, proper, metaphorical), and the categories of the "pseudo-aesthetical" as well (tragic, comic, sublime, ridiculous), the artistic "technique", and all classifications of arts are dismissed from the realm of the aesthetical for Croce. Even the division "beautiful", referring to expression, and "ugly", referring to unsuccessful expression, is not really a positive thing in aesthetics, because it distracts us from understanding art as expression, because a beautiful work is a complete, perfect, fused unity, while an ugly work is an incompletely fused multiplicity. The absolutely beautiful is perfectly expressive for the aesthetician, but nothing is absolutely ugly, i.e. lacking any expression.

The description of art in the "Aesthetic" in terms of complexity and organic unity of expression grows on to adding more characteristics to distinguish better everyday intuition from the artistic intuition in Croce's later works. One is the view of "the lyrical" or "pure" intuition : that in comparison with other kinds of cognition, intuition is the most simple and fundamental, that it does not include the concepts of historical narrative or the classifications of empirical sciences. The intuitive cognition should rather express images and bring concrete knowledge. The lyrical quality is seen in the life, the movement, the emotion of the artist, which is to help distinguish works of true art from false. And when emotion and feeling are present a lot can be forgiven; while if they lack - nothing can make up for that. A synonym of intuition, "lyricality", holds Croce, is a deeper understanding of aesthetic expression as feeling or emotion. Still another qualification of intuition follows lyricality in Croce's aesthetic system: art is defined as the expression of "cosmic totality". Art's essence is seen by Croce not in its apparent subject matter, but in depth and breadth of the artist's emotional expression, which would allow us (experiencing the art work) to move beyond the characteristics of our own limitations in time and space: towards the cosmic being in the great work's rhythm and in the variety of the new life that is born, expands, is extinguished and reborn, in order to grow and to be extinguished anew...

Croce's aesthetic theory has been described by commentators as contradictory (aesthetic representation being viewed by Croce as both - particular and universal), it has been said that illogical expression in Croce's system came from what Croce himself called "category mistake" (the activities of consciousness - intuitional, conceptual, economic, and ethical - expressed concepts and to misapply or confuse them was a categorial error). Even from the short review of the major points in Croce's early aesthetic theory in this text, it is clear, I think, that Croce's distinctions, his categorial theory is an original contribution to philosophic thought. Croce is giving a classification and an explanation to what remains alive in the history of thought: far from being just a "negative statement" his theory of intuition specifies the unique character of art, as being separate in its "intuitive expression" from conceptual thought, and aesthetic appreciation as being distinct from intellectual understanding. And more - for Croce art is not just a display of emotions, and the aesthetic response is not a direct arousal of emotion (nor, of course, is it merely an intellectual interest), because there is a distinction between a real-life situation and an aesthetical one. Over intellectualizing and over emotionalizing both distorting the nature of the response to art.

Maybe the most startling of Croce's ideas is the identification of artistic intuition with artistic expression, which does not account for the creative activity of the artist, who embodies the intuited ideas in his work with his skill and effort, and this is not purely an imaginative effort. Croce gives major importance to what is going on in the artist's mind, and although art is not craft, craft does play a role in it. Pleasure can be taken in recognizing the technical skill in an art-work, as well as in the expressed emotions. Expression is only one aspect of art, and similarly to Collingwood's aesthetic theory (briefly stated, for Collingwood art is expression at the level of "imagination", instead of "intuition", but again, expression is the criterion by which a work of art may be recognized), or even similarly to the simple theory of art of Tolstoy (for Tolstoy art is the contagion of feeling), Croce's theory underlines that the importance of an art-work is in its expressiveness - but, there is more than just expression even to the most expressive works. Separating the aesthetical emotion from all other emotions in life still remains somewhat unclear in Croce's attempt to set distinctions, and the aesthetical dimension, which should have its own special quality different from everything else still leaves unresolved issues, when it is described as "intuition" or "vision", and the artist - producing "images" or "dreams".

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Benedetto Croce,Aesthetic as a Science of Expression and General Linguistic, translated by Douglas Ainslie, Peter Owen, London, 1953;

Benedetto Croce, The Aesthetic as the Science of Expression and of the Linguistic in General , translated by Colin Lyas, Cambridge University Press, 1990;

Benedetto Croce, An Autobiography , translated by Oxford Clarendon Press, 1927;

H.S.Harris,Benedetto Croce , The Encyclopedia of ed. P.Edwards, vol.I, Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc.&The Free N.Y., London,1967;

M.E.Moss, Benedetto Croce Reconsidered. Truth and Error in Theories of Art, Literature, and History , University Press of New England, Hanover, and London, 1987;

G.N.G.Orsini, Benedetto Croce. Philosopher of Art and Literary Critic, Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale, 1961;