_A Lecture delivered at Heidelberg at the second general session of the
Third International Congress of Philosophy._
There exists an _empirical_ Aesthetic, which although it admits the
existence of facts, called aesthetic or artistic, yet holds that they
are irreducible to a single principle, to a rigorous philosophical
concept. It wishes to limit itself to collecting as many of those facts
as possible, and in the greatest possible variety, thence, at the most,
proceeding to group them together in classes and types. The logical
ideal of this school, as declared on many occasions, is zoology or
botany. This Aesthetic, when asked what art is, replies by indicating
successively single facts, and by saying: "Art is this, and this, and
this too is art," and so on, indefinitely. Zoology and botany renew the
representatives of fauna and of flora in the same way. They calculate
that the species renewed amount to some thousand, but believe that they
might easily be increased to twenty or a hundred thousand, or even to a
million, or to infinity.
There is another Aesthetic, which has been called hedonistic,
utilitarian, moralistic, and so on, according to its various
manifestations. Its complex denomination should, however, be
_practicism_, because that is precisely what constitutes its essential
character. This Aesthetic differs from the preceding, in the belief that
aesthetic or artistic facts are not a merely empirical or nominalistic
grouping together, but that all of them possess a common foundation. Its
foundation is placed in the practical form of human activity. Those
facts are therefore considered, either generically, as manifestations of
pleasure and pain, and therefore rather as economic facts; or, more
particularly, as a special class of those manifestations; or again, as
instruments and products of the ethical spirit, which subdues and turns
to its own ends individual hedonistic and economic tendencies.
There is a third Aesthetic, the _intellectualist_, which, while also
recognizing the reducibility of aesthetic facts to philosophical
treatment, explains them as particular cases of logical thought,
identifying beauty with intellectual truth; art, now with the natural
sciences, now with philosophy. For this Aesthetic, what is prized in art
is what is learned from it. The only distinction that it admits between
art and science, or art and philosophy, is at the most that of more or
less, or of perfection and imperfection. According to this Aesthetic,
art would be the whole mass of easy and popular truths; or it would be a
transitory form of science, a semi-science and a semi-philosophy,
preparatory to the superior and perfect form of science and of
philosophy.
A fourth Aesthetic there is, which may be called _agnostic_. It springs
from the criticism of the positions just now indicated, and being guided
by a powerful consciousness of the truth, rejects them all, because it
finds them too evidently false, and because it is too loth to admit that
art is a simple fact of pleasure or pain, an exercise of virtue, or a
fragmentary sketch of science and philosophy. And while rejecting them,
it discovers, at the same time, that art is not now this and now that of
those things, or of other things, indefinitely, but that it has its own
principle and origin. However, it is not able to say what this principle
may be, and believes that it is impossible to do so. This Aesthetic
knows that art cannot be resolved into an empirical concept; knows that
pleasure and pain are united with the aesthetic activity only in an
indirect manner; that morality has nothing to do with art; that it is
impossible to rationalize art, as is the case with science and
philosophy, and to prove it beautiful or ugly with the aid of reason.
Here this Aesthetic is content to stop, satisfied with a knowledge
consisting entirely of negative terms.
Finally, there is an Aesthetic which I have elsewhere proposed to call
_mystic_. This Aesthetic avails itself of those negative terms, to
define art as a spiritual form without a practical character, because it
is theoretic, and without a logical or intellective form, because it is
a theoretic form, differing alike from those of science and of
philosophy, and superior to both. According to this view, art would be
the highest pinnacle of knowledge, whence what is seen from other points
seems narrow and partial; art would alone reveal the whole horizon or
all the abysses of Reality.
Now, the five Aesthetics so far mentioned are not referable to
contingent facts and historical epochs, as are, on the other hand, the
denominations of Greek and Mediaeval Aesthetic, of Renaissance and
eighteenth-century Aesthetic, the Aesthetic of Wolff and of Herbart, of
Vico and of Hegel. These five are, on the contrary, mental attitudes,
which are found in all periods, although they have not always
conspicuous representatives of the kind that are said to become
historical. Empirical Aesthetic is, for example, called Burke in the
eighteenth, Fechner in the nineteenth century; moralistic Aesthetic is
Horace or Plutarch in antiquity, Campanella in modern times;
intellectualist or logical Aesthetic is Cartesian in the seventeenth,
Leibnitzian in the eighteenth, and Hegelian in the nineteenth century;
agnostic Aesthetic is Francesco Patrizio at the Renaissance, Kant in the
eighteenth century; mystic Aesthetic is called Neoplatonism at the end
of the antique world, Romanticism at the beginning of the nineteenth
century, and if it be adorned during the former period with the name of
Plotinus, in the latter it will bear the name of Schelling or of Solger,
And not only are those attitudes and mental tendencies common to all
epochs, but they are also all found to some extent developed or
indicated in every thinker, and even in every man. Thus it is somewhat
difficult to classify philosophers of Aesthetic according to one or the
other category, because each philosopher also enters more or less into
some other, or into all the other categories.
Nor can these five conceptions and points of view be looked upon as
increasable to ten or twenty, or to as many as desired, or that I have
placed them in a certain order, but that they could be capriciously
placed in another order. If this were so, they would be altogether
heterogeneous and disconnected among themselves, and the attempt to
examine and criticize them would seem altogether desperate, as also
would be that of comparing one with the other, or of stating a new one,
which should dominate them all. It is precisely thus that ordinary
sceptics look upon various and contrasting scientific views. They group
them all in the same plane, and believing that they can increase them at
will, conclude that one is as good as another, and that therefore every
one is free to select that which he prefers from a bundle of falsehoods.
The conceptions of which we speak are definite in number, and appear in
a necessary order, which is either that here stated by me, or another
which might be proposed, better than mine. This would be the necessary
order, which I should have failed to realize effectively. They are
connected one with the other, and in such a way that the view which
follows includes in itself that which precedes it.
Thus, if the last of the five doctrines indicated be taken, which may be
summed up as the proposition that art is a form of the theoretic spirit,
superior to the scientific and philosophic form--and if it be submitted
to analysis, it will be seen that in it is included, in the first place,
the proposition affirming the existence of a group of facts, which are
called aesthetic or artistic. If such facts did not exist, it is evident
that no question would arise concerning them, and that no
systematization would be attempted. And this is the truth of empirical
Aesthetic. But there is also contained in it the proposition: that the
facts examined are reducible to a definite principle or category of the
spirit. This amounts to saying, that they belong either to the practical
spirit, or to the theoretical, or to one of their subforms. And this is
the truth of practicist Aesthetic, which is occupied with the enquiry as
to whether these ever are practical facts, and affirms that in every
case they are a special category of the spirit. Thirdly, there is
contained in it the proposition: that they are not practical facts, but
facts which should rather be placed near the facts of logic or of
thought. This is the truth of intellectualistic Aesthetic. In the fourth
place, we find also the proposition; that aesthetic facts are neither
practical, nor of that theoretic form which is called logical and
intellective. They are something which cannot be identified with the
categories of pleasure, nor of the useful, nor with those of ethic, nor
with those of logical truth. They are something of which it is necessary
to find a further definition. This is the truth of that Aesthetic which
is termed agnostic or negative.
When these various propositions are severed from their connection; when,
that is to say, the first is taken without the second, the second
without the third, and so on,--and when each, thus mutilated, is
confined in itself and the enquiry which awaits prosecution is
arbitrarily arrested, then each one of these gives itself out as the
whole of them, that is, as the completion of the enquiry. In this way,
each becomes error, and the truths contained in empiricism, in
practicism, in intellectualism, in agnostic and in mystical Aesthetic,
become, respectively, falsity, and these tendencies of speculation are
indicated with names of a definitely depreciative colouring. Empiria
becomes empiricism, the heuristic comparison of the aesthetic activity
with the practical and logical, becomes a conclusion, and therefore
practicism and intellectualism. The criticism which rejects false
definitions, and is itself negative, affirms itself as positive and
definite, becoming agnosticism; and so on.
But the attempt to close a mental process in an arbitrary manner is
vain, and of necessity causes remorse and self-criticism. Thus it comes
about, that each one of those unilateral and erroneous doctrines
continually tends to surpass itself and to enter the stage which follows
it. Thus empiricism, for example, assumes that it can dispense with any
philosophical conception of art; but, since it severs art from
non-art--and, however empirical it be, it will not identify a
pen-and-ink sketch and a table of logarithms, as if they were just the
same thing, or a painting and milk or blood (although milk and blood
both possess colour)--thus empiricism too must at last resort to some
kind of philosophical concept. Therefore, we see the empiricists
becoming, turn and turn about, hedonists, moralists, intellectualists,
agnostics, mystics, and sometimes they are even better than mystics,
upholding an excellent conception of art, which can only be found fault
with because introduced surreptitiously and without justification. If
they do not make that progress, it is impossible for them to speak in
any way of aesthetic facts. They must return, as regards such facts, to
that indifference and to that silence from which they had emerged when
they affirmed the existence of these facts and began to consider them in
their variety. The same may be said of all other unilateral doctrines.
They are all reduced to the alternative of advancing or of going back,
and in so far as they do not wish to do either, they live amid
contradictions and in anguish. But they do free themselves from these,
more or less slowly, and thus are compelled to advance, more or less
slowly. And here we discover why it is so difficult, and indeed
impossible, exactly to identify thinkers, philosophers, and writers with
one or the other of the doctrines which we have enunciated, because each
one of them rebels when he finds himself limited to one of those
categories, and it seems to him that he is shut up in prison. It is
precisely because those thinkers try to shut themselves up in a
unilateral doctrine, that they do not succeed, and that they take a
step, now in one direction, now in another, and are conscious of being
now on this side, now on the other, of the criticisms which are
addressed to them. But the critics fulfil their duty by putting them in
prison, thus throwing into relief the absurdity into which they are led
by their irresolution, or their resolution not to resolve.
And from this necessary connection and progressive order of the various
propositions indicated arise also the resolve, the counsel, the
exhortation, to "return," as they say, to this or that thinker, to this
or that philosophical school of the past. Certainly, such returns are
impossible, understood literally; they are also a little ridiculous,
like all impossible attempts. We can never return to the past, precisely
because it is the past. No one is permitted to free himself from the
problems which are put by the present, and which he must solve with all
the means of the present (which includes in it the means of the past).
Nevertheless, it is a fact that the history of philosophy everywhere
resounds with cries of return. Those very people who in our day deride
the "return to Hume" or the "return to Kant," proceed to advise the
"return to Schelling," or the "return to Hegel." This means that we must
not understand those "returns" literally and in a material way. In
truth, they do not express anything but the necessity and the
ineliminability of the logical process explained above, for which the
affirmations contained in philosophical problems appear connected with
one another in such a way that the one follows the other, surpasses it,
and includes it in itself. Empiricism, practicism, intellectualism,
agnosticism, mysticism, are _eternal stages of the search for truth_.
They are eternally relived and rethought in the truth which each
contains. Thus it would be necessary for him who had not yet turned his
attention to aesthetic facts, to begin by passing them before his eyes,
that is to say, he must first traverse the empirical stage (about
equivalent to that occupied by mere men of letters and mere amateurs of
art); and while he is at this stage, he must be aroused to feel the want
of a principle of explanation, by making him compare his present
knowledge with the facts, and see if they are explained by it, that is
to say, if they be utilitarian and moral, or logical and intellective.
Then we should drive him who has made this examination to the
conclusion, that the aesthetic activity is something different from all
known forms, a form of the spirit, which it yet remains to characterize.
For the empiricists of Aesthetic, intellectualism and moralism represent
progress; for the intellectualists, hedonistic and moralistic alike,
agnosticism is progress and may be called Kant. But for Kantians, who
are real Kantians (and not neo-Kantians), progress is represented by the
mystical and romantic point of view; not because this comes after the
doctrine of Kant chronologically, but because it surpasses it ideally.
In this sense, and in this sense alone, we should now "return" to the
romantic Aesthetic. We should return to it, because it is ideally
superior to all the researches in Aesthetic made in the studies of
psychologists, of physio-psychologists, and of psycho-physiologists of
the universities of Europe and of America. It is ideally superior to the
sociological, comparative, prehistoric Aesthetic, which studies
especially the art of savages, of children, of madmen, and of idiots. It
is ideally superior also to that other Aesthetic, which has recourse to
the conceptions of the genetic pleasure, of games, of illusion, of
self-illusion, of association, of hereditary habit, of sympathy, of
social efficiency, and so on. It is ideally superior to the attempts at
logical explanation, which have not altogether ceased, even to-day,
although they are somewhat rare, because, to tell the truth, fanaticism
for Logic cannot be called the failing of our times. Finally, it is
ideally superior to that Aesthetic which repeats with Kant, that the
beautiful is finality without the idea of end, disinterested pleasure,
necessary and universal, which is neither theoretical nor practical, but
participates in both forms, or combines them in itself in an original
and ineffable manner. But we should return to it, bringing with us the
experience of a century of thought, the new facts collected, the new
problems that have arisen, the new ideas that have matured. Thus we
shall return again to the stage of mystical and romantic Aesthetic, but
not to the personal and historical stage of its representatives. For in
this matter, at least, they are certainly inferior to us: they lived a
century ago and therefore inherited so much the less of the problems and
of the results of thought which day by day mankind laboriously
accumulates.
They should return, but not to remain there; because, if a return to the
romantic Aesthetic be advisable for the Kantians (while the idealists
should not be advised to "return to Kant," that is to say, to a lower
stage, which represents a recession), so those who come over, or already
find themselves on the ground of mystical Aesthetic, should, on the
other hand be advised to proceed yet further, in order to attain to a
doctrine which represents a stage above it. This doctrine is that of the
_pure intuition_ (or, what amounts to the same thing, of pure
expression); a doctrine which also numbers representatives in all times,
and which may be said to be immanent alike in all the discourses that
are held and in all the judgments that are passed upon art, as in all
the best criticism and artistic and literary history.
This doctrine arises logically from the contradictions of mystical
Aesthetic; I say, _logically_, because it contains in itself those
contradictions and their solution; although _historically_ (and this
point does not at present concern us) that critical process be not
always comprehensible, explicit, and apparent.
Mystical Aesthetic, which makes of art the supreme function of the
theoretic spirit, or, at least, a function superior to that of
philosophy, becomes involved in inextricable difficulties. How could art
ever be superior to philosophy, if philosophy make of art its object,
that is to say, if it place art beneath itself, in order to analyse and
define it? And what could this new knowledge be, supplied by art and by
the aesthetic activity, appearing when the human spirit has come full
circle, after it has imagined, perceived, thought, abstracted,
calculated, and constructed the whole world of thought and history?
As the result of those difficulties and contradictions, mystical
Aesthetic itself also exhibits the tendency, either to surpass its
boundary, or to sink below its proper level. The descent takes place
when it falls back into agnosticism, affirming that art is art, that is,
a spiritual form, altogether different from the others and ineffable; or
worse, where it conceives art as a sort of repose or as a game; as
though diversion could ever be a category and the spirit know repose! We
find an attempt at overpassing its proper limit, when art is placed
below philosophy, as inferior to it; but this overpassing remains a
simple attempt, because the conception of art as instrument of universal
truth is always firmly held; save that this instrument is declared less
perfect and less efficacious than the philosophical instrument. Thus
they fall back again into intellectualism from another side.
These mistakes of mystical Aesthetic were manifested during the Romantic
period in some celebrated paradoxes, such as those of _art as irony_ and
of the _death of art_. They seemed calculated to drive philosophers to
desperation as to the possibility of solving the problem of the nature
of art, since every path of solution appeared closed. Indeed, whoever
reads the aestheticians of the romantic period, feels strongly inclined
to believe himself at the heart of the enquiry and to nourish a
confident hope of immediate discovery of the truth. Above all, the
affirmation of the theoretic nature of art, and of the difference
between its cognitive method and that of science and of logic, is felt
as a definite conquest, which can indeed be combined with other
elements, but which must not in any case be allowed to slip between the
fingers. And further, it is not true that all ways of solution are
closed, or that all have been attempted. There is at least one still
open that can be tried; and it is precisely that for which we resolutely
declare ourselves: the Aesthetic of the pure intuition.
This Aesthetic reasons as follows:--Hitherto, in all attempts to define
the place of art, it has been sought, either at the summit of the
theoretic spirit, above philosophy, or, at least, in the circle of
philosophy itself. But is not the loftiness of the search the reason why
no satisfactory result has hitherto been obtained? Why not invert the
attempt, and instead of forming the hypothesis that art is _one of the
summits or the highest grade_ of the theoretic spirit, form the very
opposite hypothesis, namely, that it is _one of the lower grades_, or
the lowest of all? Perhaps such epithets as "lower" and "lowest" are
irreconcilable with the dignity and with the splendid beauty of art? But
in the philosophy of the spirit, such words as lowest, weak, simple,
elementary, possess only the value of a scientific terminology. All the
forms of the spirit are necessary, and the higher is so only because
there is the lower, and the lower is as much to be despised or less to
be valued to the same extent as the first step of a stair is despicable,
or of less value in respect to the topmost step.
Let us compare art with the various forms of the theoretic spirit, and
let us begin with the sciences which are called _natural_ or _positive_.
The Aesthetic of pure intuition makes it clear that the said sciences
are more _complex_ than History, because they presuppose historical
material, that is, collections of things that have happened (to men or
animals, to the earth or to the stars). They submit this material to a
further treatment, which consists in the abstraction and systematization
of the historical facts. _History_, then, is less complex than the
natural sciences. History further presupposes the world of the
imagination and the pure philosophical concepts or categories, and
produces its judgments or historical propositions, by means of the
synthesis of the imagination with the concept. And _Philosophy_ may be
said to be even less complex than History, in so far as it is
distinguished from the former as an activity whose special function it
is to make clear the categories or pure concepts, neglecting, in a
certain sense at any rate, the world of phenomena. If we compare _Art_
with the three forms above mentioned, it must be declared inferior, that
is to say, less complex than the _natural Sciences_, in so far as it is
altogether without abstractions. In so far as it is without conceptual
determinations and does not distinguish between the real and the unreal,
what has really happened and what has been dreamed, it must be declared
inferior to _History_. In so far as it fails altogether to surpass the
phenomenal world, and does not attain to the definitions of the pure
concepts, it is inferior to _Philosophy_ itself. It is also inferior to
_Religion_, assuming that religion is (as it is) a form of speculative
truth, standing between thought and imagination. Art is governed
entirely by imagination; its only riches are images. Art does not
classify objects, nor pronounce them real or imaginary, nor qualify
them, nor define them. Art feels and represents them. Nothing more. Art
therefore is _intuition_, in so far as it is a mode of knowledge, not
abstract, but concrete, and in so far as it uses the real, without
changing or falsifying it. In so far as it apprehends it immediately,
before it is modified and made clear by the concept, it must be called
_pure intuition_.
The strength of art lies in being thus simple, nude, and poor. Its
strength (as often happens in life) arises from its very weakness. Hence
its fascination. If (to employ an image much used by philosophers for
various ends) we think of man, in the first moment that he becomes aware
of theoretical life, with mind still clear of every abstraction and of
every reflexion, in that first purely intuitive instant he must be a
poet. He contemplates the world with ingenuous and admiring eyes; he
sinks and loses himself altogether in that contemplation. By creating
the first representations and by thus inaugurating the life of
knowledge, art continually renews within our spirit the aspects of
things, which thought has submitted to reflexion, and the intellect to
abstraction. Thus art perpetually makes us poets again. Without art,
thought would lack the stimulus, the very material, for its hermeneutic
and critical labour. Art is the root of all our theoretic life. To be
the root, not the flower or the fruit, is the function of art. And
without a root, there can be no flower and no fruit.