Work · German Idealism & Its Heirs
Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic
Defines art as intuition, which is the same as expression, separates it from concepts, utility and morality, and adds a history of aesthetics in which Vico appears as its discoverer.
Introduction
The “Aesthetic” appeared in 1902 as the first part of Croce’s philosophy of spirit; an English translation by Douglas Ainslie followed in 1909. Its theoretical part identifies intuition with expression: to intuit something is already to give it form, and art is nothing other than this expressive intuition, which precedes concepts and is independent of physical facts, utility and morality. From this Croce draws far-reaching consequences – the rejection of fixed literary genres and of rhetoric as a separate doctrine, the identity of aesthetics with the general philosophy of language, and the refusal to judge art by its content. The long historical part runs from antiquity to the nineteenth century and presents Vico as the first to grasp the autonomy of the aesthetic. The book made Croce known in Europe and influenced R. G. Collingwood and, in the United States, the critic Joel Spingarn.
Connections
Builds on
- The New Science1725 · Giambattista Vico
More works by Benedetto Croce
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