Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic by Benedetto Croce

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Examples of the economic, without the moral character, are the Prince of
Machiavelli, Caesar Borgia, or the Iago of Shakespeare. Who can help
admiring their strength of will, although their activity is only
economic, and is opposed to what we hold moral? Who can help admiring
the ser Ciappelletto of Boccaccio, who, even on his death-bed, pursues
and realizes his ideal of the perfect rascal, making the small and timid
little thieves who are present at his burlesque confession exclaim:
"What manner of man is this, whose perversity, neither age, nor
infirmity, nor the fear of death, which he sees at hand, nor the fear of
God, before whose judgment-seat he must stand in a little while, have
been able to remove, nor to cause that he should not wish to die as he
has lived?"

[Sidenote] _The economic side of morality._

The moral man unites with the pertinacity and fearlessness of a Caesar
Borgia, of an Iago, or of a ser Ciappelletto, the good will of the saint
or of the hero. Or, better, good will would not be will, and
consequently not good, if it did not possess, in addition to the side
which makes it _good_, also that which makes it _will_. Thus a logical
thought, which does not succeed in expressing itself, is not thought,
but at the most, a confused presentiment of a thought yet to come.

It is not correct, then, to conceive of the amoral man as also the
anti-economical man, or to make of morality an element of coherence in
the acts of life, and therefore of economicity. Nothing prevents us from
conceiving (an hypothesis which is verified at least during certain
periods and moments, if not during whole lifetimes) a man altogether
without moral conscience. In a man thus organized, what for us is
immorality is not so for him, because it is not so felt. The
consciousness of the contradiction between what is desired as a rational
end and what is pursued egoistically cannot be born in him. This
contradiction is anti-economicity. Immoral conduct becomes also
anti-economical only in the man who possesses moral conscience. The
moral remorse which is the proof of this, is also economical remorse;
that is to say, pain at not having known how to will completely and to
attain to that moral ideal which was willed at the first moment, but was
afterwards perverted by the passions. _Video meliora proboque, deteriora
sequor_. The _video_ and the _probo_ are here an initial will
immediately contradicted and passed over. In the man deprived of moral
sense, we must admit a remorse which is _merely economic_; like that of
a thief or of an assassin who should be attacked when on the point of
robbing or of assassinating, and should abstain from doing so, not owing
to a conversion of his being, but owing to his impressionability and
bewilderment, or even owing to a momentary awakening of the moral
consciousness. When he has come back to himself, that thief or assassin
will regret and be ashamed of his inconsequence; his remorse will not be
due to having done wrong, but to not having done it; his remorse is,
therefore, economic, not moral, since the latter is excluded by
hypothesis. However, a lively moral conscience is generally found among
the majority of men, and its total absence is a rare and perhaps
non-existent monstrosity. It may, therefore, be admitted, that morality
coincides with economicity in the conduct of life.

[Sidenote] _The merely economic and the error of the morally
indifferent._

There need be no fear lest the parallelism affirmed by us should
introduce afresh into the category of the _morally indifferent_, of that
which is in truth action and volition, but is neither moral nor immoral;
the category in sum of the _licit_ and of the _permissible_, which has
always been the cause or mirror of ethical corruption, as is the case
with Jesuitical morality in which it dominated. It remains quite certain
that indifferent moral actions do not exist, because moral activity
pervades and must pervade every least volitional movement of man. But
this, far from upsetting the parallelism, confirms it. Do there exist
intuitions which science and the intellect do not pervade and analyse,
resolving them into universal concepts, or changing them into historical
affirmations? We have already seen that true science, philosophy, knows
no external limits which bar its way, as happens with the so-called
natural sciences. Science and morality entirely dominate, the one the
aesthetic intuitions, the other the economic volitions of man, although
neither of them can appear in the concrete, save in the intuitive form
as regards the one, in the economic as regards the other.

[Sidenote] _Critique of utilitarianism and the reform of Ethic and
of Economic._

This combined identity and difference of the useful and of the moral, of
the economic and of the ethic, explains the fortune enjoyed now and
formerly by the utilitarian theory of Ethic. It is in fact easy to
discover and to show a utilitarian side in every moral action; as it is
easy to show an aesthetic side of every logical proposition. The
criticism of ethical utilitarianism cannot escape by denying this truth
and seeking out absurd and inexistent examples of _useless_ moral
actions. It must admit the utilitarian side and explain it as the
concrete form of morality, which consists of what is _within_ this form.
Utilitarians do not see this within. This is not the place for a more
ample development of such ideas. Ethic and Economic cannot but be
gainers, as we have said of Logic and Aesthetic, by a more exact
determination of the relations that exist between them. Economic science
is now rising to the animating concept of the useful, as it strives to
pass beyond the mathematical phase, in which it is still entangled; a
phase which, when it superseded historicism, was in its turn a progress,
destroying a series of arbitrary distinctions and false theories of
Economic, implied in the confusion of the theoretical with the
historical. With this conception, it will be easy on the one hand to
absorb and to verify the semi-philosophical theories of so-called pure
economy, and on the other, by the introduction of successive
complications and additions, and by passing from the philosophical to
the empirical or naturalistic method, to include the particular theories
of the political or national economy of the schools.

[Sidenote] _Phenomenon and noumenon in practical activity._

As aesthetic intuition knows the phenomenon or nature, and philosophic
intuition the noumenon or spirit; so economic activity wills the
phenomenon or nature, and moral activity the noumenon or spirit. _The
spirit which desires itself_, its true self, the universal which is in
the empirical and finite spirit: that is the formula which perhaps
defines the essence of morality with the least impropriety. This will
for the true self is _absolute liberty_.

VIII

EXCLUSION OF OTHER SPIRITUAL FORMS

[Sidenote] _The system of the spirit._

In this summary sketch that we have given, of the entire philosophy of
the spirit in its fundamental moments, the spirit is conceived as
consisting of four moments or grades, disposed in such a way that the
theoretical activity is to the practical as is the first theoretical
grade to the second theoretical, and the first practical grade to the
second practical. The four moments imply one another regressively by
their concretion. The concept cannot be without expression, the useful
without the one and the other, and morality without the three preceding
grades. If the aesthetic fact is alone independent, and the others more
or less dependent, then the logical is the least so and the moral will
the most. Moral intention operates on given theoretic bases, which
cannot be dispensed with, save by that absurd practice, the jesuitical
_direction of intention_. Here people pretend to themselves not to know
what at bottom they know perfectly well.

[Sidenote] _The forms of genius._

If the forms of human activity are four, four also are the forms of
genius. Geniuses in art, in science, in moral will or heroes, have
certainly always been recognized. But the genius of pure Economic has
met with opposition. It is not altogether without reason that a category
of bad geniuses or of _geniuses of evil_ has been created. The
practical, merely economic genius, which is not directed to a rational
end, cannot but excite an admiration mingled with alarm. It would be a
mere question of words, were we to discuss whether the word "genius"
should be applied only to creators of aesthetic expression, or also to
men of scientific research and of action. To observe, on the other hand,
that genius, of whatever kind it be, is always a quantitative conception
and an empirical distinction, would be to repeat what has already been
explained as regards artistic genius.

[Sidenote] _Non-existence of a fifth form of activity. Law;
sociality._

A fifth form of spiritual activity does not exist. It would be easy to
demonstrate how all the other forms, either do not possess the character
of activity, or are verbal variants of the activities already examined,
or are complex and derived facts, in which the various activities are
mingled, or are filled with special contents and contingent data.

The _judicial_ fact, for example, considered as what is called objective
law, is derived both from the economic and from the logical activities.
Law is a rule, a formula (whether oral or written matters little here)
in which is contained an economic relation willed by an individual or by
a collectivity. This economic side at once unites it with and
distinguishes it from moral activity. Take another example. Sociology
(among the many meanings the word bears in our times) is sometimes
conceived as the study of an original element, which is called
_sociality_. Now what is it that distinguishes sociality, or the
relations which are developed in a meeting of men, not of subhuman
beings, if it be not just the various spiritual activities which exist
among the former and which are supposed not to exist, or to exist only
in a rudimentary degree, among the latter? Sociality, then, far from
being an original, simple, irreducible conception, is very complex and
complicated. This could be proved by the impossibility, generally
recognized, of enunciating a single sociological law, properly
so-called. Those that are improperly called by that name are revealed as
either empirical historical observations, or spiritual laws, that is to
say judgments, into which are translated the conceptions of the
spiritual activities; when they are not simply empty and indeterminate
generalizations, like the so-called law of evolution. Sometimes, too,
nothing more is understood by sociality than social rule, and so law;
and thus sociology is confounded with the science or theory of law
itself. Law, sociality, and like terms, are to be dealt with in a mode
analogous to that employed by us in the consideration of historicity and
technique.

[Sidenote] _Religiosity._

It may seem fitting to form a different judgment as to _religious_
activity. But religion is nothing but knowledge, and does not differ
from its other forms and subforms. For it is in truth and in turn either
the expression of practical and ideal aspirations (religious ideals), or
historical narrative (legend), or conceptual science (dogma).

It can therefore be maintained with equal truth, both that religion is
destroyed by the progress of human knowledge, and that it is always
present there. Their religion was the whole patrimony of knowledge of
primitive peoples: our patrimony of knowledge is our religion. The
content has been changed, bettered, refined, and it will change and
become better and more refined in the future also; but its function is
always the same. We do not know what use could be made of religion by
those who wish to preserve it side by side with the theoretic activity
of man, with his art, with his criticism, and with his philosophy. It is
impossible to preserve an imperfect and inferior kind of knowledge, like
religion, side by side with what has surpassed and disproved it.
Catholicism, which is always coherent, will not tolerate a Science, a
History, an Ethic, in contradiction to its views and doctrines. The
rationalists are less coherent. They are disposed to allow a little
space in their souls for a religion which is in contradiction with their
whole theoretic world.

These affectations and religious susceptibilities of the rationalists of
our times have their origin in the superstitious cult of the natural
sciences. These, as we know and as is confessed by the mouth of their
chief adepts, are all surrounded by _limits_. Science having been
wrongly identified with the so-called natural sciences, it could be
foreseen that the remainder would be asked of religion; that remainder
with which the human spirit cannot dispense. We are therefore indebted
to materialism, to positivism, to naturalism for this unhealthy and
often disingenuous reflowering of religious exaltation. Such things are
the business of the hospital, when they are not the business of the
politician.

[Sidenote] _Metaphysic._

Philosophy withdraws from religion all reason for existing, because it
substitutes itself for religion. As the science of the spirit, it looks
upon religion as a phenomenon, a transitory historical fact, a psychic
condition that can be surpassed. Philosophy shares the domain of
knowledge with the natural disciplines, with history and with art. It
leaves to the first, narration, measurement and classification; to the
second, the chronicling of what has individually happened; to the third,
the individually possible. There is nothing left to share with religion.
For the same reason, philosophy, as the science of the spirit, cannot be
philosophy of the intuitive datum; nor, as has been seen, _Philosophy of
History, nor Philosophy of Nature_; and therefore there cannot be a
philosophic science of what is not form and universal, but material and
particular. This amounts to affirming the impossibility of _metaphysic_.

The Method or Logic of history followed the Philosophy of history; a
gnoseology of the conceptions which are employed in the natural sciences
succeeded natural philosophy. What philosophy can study of the one is
its mode of construction (intuition, perception, document, probability,
etc.); of the others she can study the forms of the conceptions which
appear in them (space, time, motion, number, types, classes, etc.).
Philosophy, which should become metaphysical in the sense above
described, would, on the other hand, claim to compete with narrative
history, and with the natural sciences, which in their field are alone
legitimate and effective. Such a competition becomes in fact a labour
spoiling labour. We are _antimetaphysical_ in this sense, while yet
declaring ourselves _ultrametaphysical_, if by that word it be desired
to claim and to affirm the function of philosophy as the
autoconsciousness of the spirit, as opposed to the merely empirical and
classificatory function of the natural sciences.

[Sidenote] _Mental imagination and the intuitive intellect._

In order to maintain itself side by side with the sciences of the
spirit, metaphysic has been obliged to assert the existence of a
specific spiritual activity, of which it would be the product. This
activity, which in antiquity was called _mental or superior
imagination_, and in modern times more often _intuitive intellect or
intellectual intuition_, would unite in an altogether special form the
characters of imagination and of intellect. It would provide the method
of passing, by deduction or dialectically, from the infinite to the
finite, from form to matter, from the concept to the intuition, from
science to history, operating by a method which should be at once unity
and compenetration of the universal and the particular, of the abstract
and the concrete, of intuition and of intellect. A faculty marvellous
indeed and delightful to possess; but we, who do not possess it, have no
means of proving its existence.

[Sidenote] _Mystical aesthetic._

Intellectual intuition has sometimes been considered as the true
aesthetic activity. At others a not less marvellous aesthetic activity
has been placed beside, below, or above it, a faculty altogether
different from simple intuition. The glories of this faculty have been
sung, and to it have been attributed the fact of art, or at the least
certain groups of artistic production, arbitrarily chosen. Art,
religion, and philosophy have seemed in turn one only, or three distinct
faculties of the spirit, now one, now another of these being superior in
the dignity assigned to each.

It is impossible to enumerate all the various attitudes assumed by this
conception of Aesthetic, which we will call _mystical_. We are here in
the kingdom, not of the science of imagination, but of imagination
itself, which creates its world with the varying elements of the
impressions and of the feelings. Let it suffice to mention that this
mysterious faculty has been conceived, now as practical, now as a mean
between the theoretic and the practical, at others again as a theoretic
grade together with philosophy and religion.

[Sidenote] _Mortality and immortality of art._

The immortality of art has sometimes been deduced from this last
conception as belonging with its sisters to the sphere of absolute
spirit. At other times, on the other hand, when religion has been looked
upon as mortal and as dissolved in philosophy, then the mortality, even
the actual death, or at least the agony of art has been proclaimed.
These questions have no meaning for us, because, seeing that the
function of art is a necessary grade of the spirit, to ask if art can be
eliminated is the same thing as asking if sensation or intelligence can
be eliminated. But metaphysic, in the above sense, since it transplants
itself to an arbitrary world, is not to be criticized in detail, any
more than one can criticize the botany of the garden of Alcina or the
navigation of the voyage of Astolfo. Criticism can only be made by
refusing to join the game; that is to say, by rejecting the very
possibility of metaphysic, always in the sense above indicated.

As we do not admit intellectual intuition in philosophy, we can also not
admit its shadow or equivalent, aesthetic intellectual intuition, or any
other mode by which this imaginary function may be called and
represented. We repeat again that we do not know of a fifth grade beyond
the four grades of spirit which consciousness reveals to us.

IX

INDIVISIBILITY OF EXPRESSION INTO MODES OR GRADES AND CRITIQUE OF
RHETORIC

[Sidenote] _The characteristics of art._

It is customary to give long enumerations of the characteristics of art.
Having reached this point of the treatise, having studied the artistic
function as spiritual activity, as theoretic activity, and as special
theoretic activity (intuitive), we are able to discern that those
various and copious descriptions mean, when they mean anything at all,
nothing but a repetition of what may be called the qualities of the
aesthetic function, generic, specific, and characteristic. To the first
of these are referred, as we have already observed, the characters, or
better, the verbal variants of _unity_, and of _unity_ in _variety_,
those also of _simplicity_, of _originality_, and so on; to the second of
these, the characteristics of _truth_, of _sincerity_, and the like; to
the third, the characteristics of _life_, of _vivacity_, of _animation_,
of _concretion_, of _individuality_, of _characteristicality_. The words
may vary yet more, but they will not contribute anything scientifically
new. The results which we have shown have altogether exhausted the
analysis of expression as such.

[Sidenote] _Inexistence of modes of expression._

But at this point, the question as to whether there be various _modes or
grades_ of expression is still perfectly legitimate. We have
distinguished two grades of activity, each of which is subdivided into
two other grades, and there is certainly, so far, no visible logical
reason why there should not exist two or more modes of the aesthetic,
that is of expression.--The only objection is that these modes do not
exist.

For the present at least, it is a question of simple internal
observation and of self consciousness. One may scrutinize aesthetic
facts as much as one will: no formal differences will ever be found
among them, nor will the aesthetic fact be divisible into a first and a
second degree.

This signifies that a philosophical classification of expressions is not
possible. Single expressive facts are so many individuals, of which the
one cannot be compared with the other, save generically, in so far as
each is expression. To use the language of the schools, expression is a
species which cannot in its turn perform the functions of genus.
Impressions, that is to say contents, vary; every content differs from
every other content, because nothing in life repeats itself; and the
continuous variation of contents follows the irreducible variety of
expressive facts, the aesthetic syntheses of the impressions.

[Sidenote] _Impossibility of translations._

A corollary of this is the impossibility of _translations_, in so far as
they pretend to effect the transference of one expression into another,
like a liquid poured from a vase of a certain shape into a vase of
another shape. We can elaborate logically what we have already
elaborated in aesthetic form only; but we cannot reduce that which has
already possessed its aesthetic form to another form also aesthetic. In
truth, every translation either diminishes and spoils; or it creates a
new expression, by putting the former back into the crucible and mixing
it with other impressions belonging to the pretended translator. In the
former case, the expression always remains one, that of the original,
the translation being more or less deficient, that is to say, not
properly expression: in the other case, there would certainly be two
expressions, but with two different contents. "Ugly faithful ones or
faithless beauties" is a proverb that well expresses the dilemma with
which every translator is faced. In aesthetic translations, such as
those which are word for word or interlinear, or paraphrastic
translations, are to be looked upon as simple commentaries on the
original.

[Sidenote] _Critique of rhetorical categories._

The division of expressions into various classes is known in literature
by the name of theory of _ornament_ or of _rhetorical categories_. But
similar attempts at classification in the other forms of art are not
wanting: suffice it to mention the _realistic and symbolic forms_,
spoken of in painting and sculpture.

The scientific value to be attached in Aesthetic and in aesthetic
criticism to these distinctions of _realistic and symbolic_, of _style
and absence of style_, of _objective and subjective_, of _classic and
romantic_, of _simple and ornate_, of _proper and metaphorical_, of the
fourteen forms of metaphor, of the figures of _word_ and of _sentence_,
and further of _pleonasm_, of _ellipse_, of _inversion_, of
_repetition_, of _synonyms and homonyms_, and so on; is _nil_ or
altogether negative. To none of these terms and distinctions can be
given a satisfactory aesthetic definition. Those that have been
attempted, when they are not obviously erroneous, are words devoid of
sense. A typical example of this is the very common definition of
metaphor as of _another word used in place of the word itself_. Now why
give oneself this trouble? Why take the worse and longer road when you
know the shorter and better road? Perhaps, as is generally said, because
the correct word is in certain cases not so _expressive_ as the
so-called incorrect word or metaphor? But in that case the metaphor
becomes exactly the right word, and the so-called right word, if it were
used, would be _but little expressive_ and therefore most improper.
Similar observations of elementary good sense can be made regarding the
other categories, as, for example, the generic one of the ornate. One
can ask oneself how an ornament can be joined to expression. Externally?
In that case it must always remain separate. Internally? In that case,
either it does not assist expression and mars it; or it does form part
of it and is not ornament, but a constituent element of expression,
indistinguishable from the whole.

It is not necessary to dwell upon the harm done by these distinctions.
Rhetoric has often been declaimed against, but although there has been
rebellion against its consequences, its principles have been carefully
preserved, perhaps in order to show proof of philosophic coherence.
Rhetoric has contributed, if not to make dominant in literary
production, at least to justify theoretically, that particular mode of
writing ill which is called fine writing or writing according to
rhetoric.

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