Benedetto Croce (1866-1952)
ART AS LYRICAL IMAGE
“Art is not philosophy, because philosophy is the logical thinking of the universal categories of being, and art is the unreflective intuition of being.”
—Croce, “Aesthetics,” from Encyclopedia Britannica, 14th Edition
The Italian aesthetician Croce wasn’t a big fan of Cartesian dualism—the idea that there are separate physical and nonphysical entities that mysteriously interact with each other, like mind and brain or body and soul. He offered, as an alternative, that such problematic parings are in fact inexorably intertwined, dependent on each other for their very existence. It’s all in the tradition of Idealism, which opposes the Realist idea of an objective reality existing independent of the mind.
Relating his Idealism to art, Croce argues that intuition is identical to expression. When you have the intuitive sense of an idea, it already exists as an expression in your mind, even before you consciously establish it as a concept. In Croce’s view, art is all about intuitions, so art is really the foundation of conceptual knowledge. The images and feelings that people experience in life produce a lyrical expression of their intuitions, which is art. The work of art is the external manifestation, or symbol, of the intuition, and is successful insofar as it captures and preserves the intuition’s spirit.
Croce uses poetry as an example. Every poem contains images that are brought to life by an artistic feeling. Poetry only exists if image and feeling are united as a lyrical intuition, and the person who understands poetry experiences the intuition just as the poet did. —CKG
QUESTIONS TO PONDER
• Have you ever felt an intuitive understanding of an artwork’s essence?
• Do you believe that reality exists outside the mind, or is it simply an idea that we share?