Chapter III: The Concept of Art

Further determinations of the concept of art--Theoretical and practical activity--The progress of æsthetic theories--An American instance: morality and art--The typical--The ends of art--The process of æsthetic production--Relations of the æsthetic with the practical activity--The delusion of objective beauty--Æsthetic hedonism--The æsthetic value.

The determination of the concept of art as pure intuition would be little more than a verbal variation of older doctrines, if its validity and importance could not be proved in the actual practice of thought on æsthetic problems, in the study of the relations of the æsthetic fact with the other facts of human activity, and in the criticism of errors which have invaded the field of æsthetic thought through a confusion of the æsthetic with the intellectual or the practical. We shall therefore not be able to grasp the new concept in the fulness of its meaning until we have surveyed the whole ground of the philosophy of mind: the æsthetic concept cannot be said to be fully determined until we have a clear conception of the other fundamental grades or forms of the spirit. For the purposes of our exposition, we may however anticipate a summary or scheme of the essential relations, which will be more fully developed in the following chapters.

We have already seen how the logical activity springs from the soil of the pure intuition; how the knowledge of the universal follows the knowledge of the individual. The æsthetic and the logic grade, of which the second implies the first, exhaust the whole of knowledge, the whole theoretical life of man. A third grade or form does not exist: not in history, which Croce still considered, in the first years of this period, as reducible to the concept of art, and differentiated from it only by its employment of the predicate of existence, of the distinction between reality and imagination; and not in the natural and mathematical sciences, which elaborate the data of intuition through fictions, hypotheses, and conventions, which are practical and not theoretical processes.

The relation between the theoretical and the practical activity is of the same kind as that between the two grades of the theoretical activity: that is, the first is the basis of the second. We can think of a knowing which is independent from the will, but not of a will which is independent of knowledge: it is impossible to will without historical intuitions and a knowledge of relations. Within the practical activity, we can further distinguish two grades corresponding to the two grades of the theoretical activity: the economic, which is the will of the individual, of a particular end, and the ethic, which is the will of the universal, of the rational end. The relation between the economic and the ethic activity is again the same grade-relation as between the æsthetic and the logic, the theoretical and the practical. The concrete life of the human spirit consists in the perpetually recurring cycle of the four grades of its activity, which is the law of its unity and development. The concept rises from the intuition, and action from knowledge; ethical activity is not conceivable without a theoretical foundation, and the concreteness of a particular end. At the close of the cycle, the spiritual life itself becomes the object of a new intuition, from which a new concept and a new action are reproduced _ad infinitum_. In the history of æsthetics, the errors deriving from the confusion of that which is distinctively æsthetic with other forms of theoretical or practical activity, present themselves as a series of doctrines, which can be considered as gradual approximations to the definition of art as intuition. It is not necessarily, or not only, a chronological series, but rather a succession of actual moments in the deduction of the concept of art. Empirical æsthetics recognises the existence of a class of æsthetic or artistic facts, without attempting to reduce them under a single concept; practical (hedonistic or moralistic) æsthetics makes a first attempt at interpreting them by putting them in relation with one of the categories of spiritual activity; intellectualiste æsthetics denies that they belong to the practical sphere, though failing to discover their precise theoretical character; agnostic æsthetics criticises all the preceding moments, and is satisfied with a purely negative definition; mystic æsthetics, conscious of the difference of æsthetic from logical facts, makes a new spiritual category of them, affirms their autonomy and independence, but mistakes the nature of their relation with conceptual knowledge. We are all more or less familiar with the various aspects of these doctrines, and it can be said that none of them (with the exception of the first, which is now represented by psychologic æsthetics) is now being held consistently by any responsible thinker. The truth of the intuitive theory, which we find adumbrated already in classical antiquity in the Aristotelian theory of _mimesis_, and of which artists and critics have always had a kind of obscure presentiment, is now implicitly recognised by all who have an intimate contact with and a sincere feeling for art and poetry. The literary and artistic development of the end of the eighteenth and of the nineteenth century has been accompanied by such a wealth of critical thought, that a conscious understanding of the nature of art is now much more frequent than in former ages. The forces that were at work liberating logical and moral thought from the shackles of the past, reacted vigorously on æsthetic thought, and helped to make it more and more independent from both intellectualistic and moralistic errors. It would be possible to extract aphorisms and meditations from the writings of the greatest poets, artists, and musicians of the period, to show how common among them was and is the knowledge of the spiritual autonomy and of the intuitive character of art. But because the task of the artist is not that of elaborating a philosophy of art, and a good many critics and æstheticians, on the other hand, have very little experience of the actual æsthetic processes, we find that though the other doctrines are discredited, yet a number of prejudices which have their roots in them are still current,--the artists themselves rejecting them, as it were, by instinct and not by reasoning, and the critics and æstheticians clinging to them because they help them to gain a fictitious possession of that artistic reality which escapes them in its purity and actuality. An intellectualiste or moralistic critic can easily mask his lack of æsthetic taste, his fundamental ignorance of art, by talking at length and with great solemnity about unessentials. Artists and poets, on the other hand, are apt to react to these prejudices by falling into the errors of æstheticism, that is by attributing to their empirical selves the freedom that belongs to their function, and by denying in the name of art the autonomy and dignity of intellectual and moral values. In both cases, what is manifestly lacking is a proper understanding of the meaning of logical, or ideal distinctions, for which the artists, I suppose, ought to be more readily forgiven than the critics, though æstheticism may be as dangerous to art as moralism or intellectualism are to thought.

A recent literary polemic in America offered some striking examples of these prejudices. A critic of the older school, in a discussion of the moral tendencies of the age, introduced a criticism of the proposition that art is not concerned either with truth or morality, by affirming that this negative proposition could legitimately be converted into the positive one: the object of art is to deny that which truth and morality affirm. The sophism of this conversion is based on a confusion between the two logical concepts of distinction and opposition. The critic was not deducing a logical consequence of the first proposition, any more than if he were interpreting my saying that I am not interested as a student of literature in the law of gravitation, as implying a disbelief in the law of gravitation: he was merely stating his own conception of art as a conceptual and moral function, and of the value of art as an intellectual and moral value; which is the error of intellectualism and moralism. In his reply to the older critic, a writer of the younger generation contended that æsthetic values are higher than either logical or moral values, and in some mysterious way transcend and comprehend them both. The younger writer was evidently using the same kind of logic as his adversary, and affirming on his own account the error of a variety of æstheticism.

What the original proposition actually implies is that judgments regarding the logical truth or the historical verity, the moral merit or demerit of a work of art, do not treat art as art, but dissolve the work itself into its abstract elements, and deal with these elements in an entirely different context. If I discuss the theology and philosophy of Dante, I shall find a number of propositions which to my mind are untrue; but the beauty of Dante's poetry is incommensurable with the truth or falsehood of his logical thought. The beauty of Francesca's episode is not impaired by the quite reasonable suspicion that the poetical idealization of a guilty passion might have a dangerous influence on weak and sentimental souls.

The imperfect distinction between art and logical or scientific truth is responsible for the critical prejudice of art as expressive of the typical. The typical is a product of abstract thought, of the kind that is employed in the natural sciences. The expressions of art are essentially individual and particular, and when we consider them as typical, we merely use them as the starting point for our own abstractions, that is, for the purposes of a quite different mental process. Similar to the concept of the typical are those of the allegory and symbol, which are mechanical constructions of the intellect, and which art is unable to represent unless it reduces them to the particular and concrete.

The confusion between art and morality, being ultimately founded on the supposition that art is not a theoretical function, but an act of the will, gives rise to the theories of the ends of art, and of the so-called choice of the subject. But the end of art is art itself, expression or beauty, or whatever other name we shall give to the æsthetic value, just as the end of science is truth and the end of morality is goodness; that is, the concept of end coincides in every case with the concept of value. And the artist cannot choose his subject, since there is no abstract subject present to his mind, but only the world of his own already formed intuitions and expressions; which he can neither will nor not will. This is the truth contained in the old idea of poetical inspiration, which was merely another word for the spontaneity and unreflectiveness of art. A choice of the subject according to ends other than æsthetic is a certain cause of failure. The only conceivable meaning that advice as to the choice of a subject may have, is a kind of artistic _know thyself_, a warning to the artist to be true to himself, to follow his inspiration, and that which is deepest and most genuine in it. It is, however, a tautological meaning, and the reverse of the one which is given to it by the moralistic critic.

If it is impossible for us either to will or not will our æsthetic vision, the internal image which is the true "work of art," it is clear that an element of will enters into the production of the physical or external image, made of sounds or lines or colours or shapes, which we call works of art in a naturalistic or empirical sense. The complete process of æsthetic production is symbolized by Croce in the four following stages: _a_, the impression; _b_ the expression or æsthetic spiritual synthesis; _c_, the feeling of pleasure or pain which accompanies the æsthetic as well as any other form of spiritual activity; d, the translation of the æsthetic fact into physical phenomena. The only true æsthetic moment of the whole process is in b, which alone is real expression, while _d_ is expression in the naturalistic and abstract sense of the word. Such a conception clashes against a number of deep-rooted fallacies, which in their turn are the source of innumerable æsthetic prejudices. It is clear, however, that what we call a printed poem is no poem at all, but only a collection of conventional black signs on a white page, which suggest to me a number of movements of my vocal organs destined to the production of certain sounds; and again, that these sounds are not the poem in itself, apart from my understanding of their meaning, from my re-creation of the internal image which prompted their original production now recorded in the pages of a book. Physically, a painting is constituted by colours on a wall, or board, or canvas: here, the first stage of reproduction which is required for the written poem is not necessary: the material (visual, as it was auditive for the poem) on which the original image fixed itself is directly present to me; and yet, again, that material object is not the æsthetic vision, but a mere stimulus for its reproduction. Starting from the material object, Croce symbolized the inverse process of æsthetic reproduction in the following series: _e_, the physical stimulus; _d-b_, the perception of physical facts (sound, colours, etc.), which is at the same time the æsthetic synthesis previously produced; _c_, the æsthetic pleasure or pain. Here, again, the only moment of true æsthetic activity is in _b_ where, at least in the hypothesis of a perfect understanding, my vision coincides with the orignal creation.

It must be understood, however, that these successive stages are not real, but abstract or symbolical distinctions. We cannot re-create an æsthetic vision except through the sounds or colours in which it originally expressed itself; and those sounds or colours coincide with the original expression. The words and rhythm of a poem are to it what the body is to the soul, and once you have dissolved that form, there is nothing left. Hence the theoretical impossibility of a translation, which can only exist as a new creation. But when we consider those words or that rhythm not within the expressive synthesis, in which their reality is spiritual and not physical, but outside it, as words, as rhythm, we build up by abstraction a category of physical facts, to which we attribute a reality not inferior to that of the spiritual activity. _B_ and _d_, in the preceding analysis, are not different realities, but different elaborations, the first, ideal, the second, naturalistic, of the same fact.

We have now established a relation between the æsthetic and the practical activity: the physical expression is an act of the will, and as such it falls legitimately in the domain of both economic and ethical judgments. We may buy or sell the physical stimuli, books, statues, and paintings, though no amount of wealth can give the æsthetic vision: the possession of the objects of art is of another order than the possession of the spiritual creation. We may consider that the communication of a certain intuition is in certain cases morally undesirable, and censure the artist for having willed it, or try to prevent him from accomplishing it. The principle of the spiritual autonomy of art, necessary to establish the nature of æsthetic value, cannot be understood to imply the absolute practical freedom of the artist from the laws that bind all other men. But even from this point of view, there is no doubt that art is more likely to suffer from excessive constraint than from excessive freedom; and that the fanatics of morality in art are only too often inclined to mistake a set of arbitrary rulings for morality, and to overlook the intention of the artist. It is a significant fact, and one which deserves more attention than it seems to have ever received, that the so-called moral condemnation of a true work of art has never outlasted one or two generations, and their prejudices and weaknesses.

The existence of the physical stimuli or material helps for the æsthetic reproduction, fosters the illusion of beauty as an intrinsic attribute of physical objects, first as artistic, and then as natural beauty. It is hardly necessary to criticise this illusion at this point of our discussion: beauty is not an objective attribute, but a spiritual value. In the same way as there is no intrinsic beauty, independent dent of our either creative or re-creative activity, in words or notes or lines or colours, there is also no category of natural beauty. What we call beauty of nature is either that which in nature is merely pleasureable from a practical and sensuous standpoint, or the presence of certain stimuli for the reproduction of a preëxistent æsthetic vision. We recognise the obvious truth of this fact, when we remark that the beauty of a certain landscape is not visible to everybody, but only to him who looks at it with an artist's eye. And it would be possible to write a history of the progressive development of beauty in nature, which would practically coincide with, or follow at a short distance of time, the various stages of the history of poetry and painting.

Closely related with the confusion between the physical attributes of the objects of art, and the true æsthetic value, are all the theories of æsthetics which consider that the end of art is pleasure, or æsthetic hedonism in its various forms. Of these the most ancient is the one that considers beautiful that which gives pleasure to the higher senses, he hearing and the sight; and other forms of it can still be found, if not among artists and critics, at least among psychologists. Two of the most recent interpretations of æsthetic facts, the theory of empathy or _Einfühlung_ and the theory of tactile values, are merely modern scientific variations of the old prejudice. But no hedonistic theory can ever give a consistent account of æsthetic facts, as it is impossible to draw a distinction, on a purely psychological plane, between those pleasures of the senses which may precede or accompany the æsthetic fact, and those that are purely sensuous; and the inevitable result is a complete reduction of the æsthetic to the sensual. In such theories, the real æsthetic problem does not even reach the stage of being formulated.

The truth that the hedonist obscurely foresees is that every spiritual activity is constantly accompanied by the practical reflex of satisfaction and dissatisfaction, pleasure and pain, value and dis-value. Value is every activity that unfolds itself freely, dis-value is the contrasted, hindered, impeded unfolding of the same activity. If we call beauty the æsthetic value, then beauty is but the successful expression, or better, the expression, since an unsuccessful expression is not an expression at all. And it is not necessary to repeat that by expression we distinctly mean not the physical stimulus, but the spiritual synthesis.

With this definition of æsthetic value we reach one of the most important points of Croce's thought: the solution of what he calls the dualism of values, or ideals, to the concrete realities. As the beautiful expression is simply expression, the true thought is simply thought, and so on, so the ugly expression or the false thought are non-expression and non-thought, the non-being which has no reality outside the moment of its opposition and criticism.