The Aesthetic as the Science of Expression and of the Linguistic in General, Part 1, Theory

Art is shown to be integral to any life and an essential aspect of humanity in this original translation.

Benedetto Croce (Author), Colin Lyas (Translated by)

9780521359962, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 31 January 1992

212 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.2 cm, 0.32 kg

"The case for a new translation of Croce's Estetica is overwhelming....for all its influence it has never been widely read in the English-speaking world...this new translation is fully set to put right this anomaly." Richard Wollheim, University of California-Berkeley

The Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce (1866–1952) spent most of his life as a private scholar in Naples. His Estetica, which first appeared in 1902, has remained a seminal work not only for aesthetics but also for general linguistics. As the full title indicates, this is not a narrow work dealing with the theory of art and criticism. For Croce intended this to be the first part of his 'philosophy of the spirit' and he thus presents a systematic general theory intended to solve all philosophical problems. The work presents an account of the structure of the human mind and shows how art arises naturally from that structure, as well as introducing the influential notion of the organic unity of a work of art. As a result, art is shown to be integral to any life and an essential aspect of what it is to be human.

Acknowledgments
Translator's foreword
Preface
1. Intuition and expression
2. Intuition and art
3. Art and philosophy
4. Historicism and intellectualism in the aesthetic
5. critique of analogous errors in history and logic
6. Theoretical activity and practical activity
7. The analogy between the theoretical and the practical
8. The exclusion of other forms of the spirit
9. That expression cannot be divided into modes or levels: the critique of rhetoric
10. Aesthetic feelings and the distinction between the beautiful and the ugly
11. Critique of aesthetic hedonism
12. The aesthetic of 'That which attracts liking' and the pseudo-aesthetic concepts
13. Physical beauty and the nature of art
14. Errors arising from the confusion between the physical and the aesthetic
15. The activity of externalisation: the technique and the theory of the arts
16. Taste and the reproduction of art
17. The history of art and literature
18. Conclusion: identity of linguistics and the aesthetic
Index.

Subject Areas: Philosophy: aesthetics [HPN], Theory of art [ABA]