Benedetto Croce

 BENEDETTO CROCE

• Introduction:

    Benedetto Croce (1866-1952) was an outstanding Italian philosopher who lived during the first half of the 20th century. In 1903, he started "La critica ", a journal of cultural criticism. He published nearly all of his writings and expressed his critical views on history, philosophy and art and literature that was produced in Europe at the time. According to croce,

“ the foundation of La critica marked the beginning of a new period in my life, the period of maturity or harmony between myself and reality.”

Croce rendered great service in moulding the character of the Italian citizens. Even then the prime minister of italy once remarked:

“ Having made italy, we must italians.”-  "L'Italia è fatta. Restano da fare gli italiani" La critica took up that task.

• Croce’s theory of expressionism:

Expressionism in Literature II Intuition as Expression II Benedetto Croce Literary Criticism

Expressionism is the most important and influential aspect of all his philosophical ideas which he developed during his lifetime. He is of the view that all art is essentially expressive. Expressionism is a movement of art in which the artist aims at self-expression “ without the least regard for the feelings of the audience”.

The followers of this movement believed that the moment the rules and norms from outside are imposed on the artists, they cease to be the artists. They further said that the children should not be taught to draw. Teaching lessons would plant artificial plants in their minds. Teaching art hinders their original impulses, it destroys their power of expression.

• Two kind of reality:

There are two kinds of reality: external and internal. hence , there are two kinds of the world) and the other which is in our mind (impressionistic, internal world).

• Two kind of knowledge:

Knowledge can be in two forms: intuitive and logical. We recognize this world through logic, through our five senses. Intuitive knowledge comes from within whereas intellectual knowledge is developed from outside in this respect, Kant, a modern philosopher rightly said. “ all human knowledge begins from intuitions”. For these philosophers, the intuition only is the reality.

•  Expression of intuition:

Croce contrasts intuition with impression. According to him. All intuitions must find proper expression within the mind itself. He writes:

“Every true intuition or representation is also expression”

The intuition which does not objectify itself in expression is not intuition at all. For example, when a painter feels something and receives some impressions in his mind, it is not art. It is only when the painter feels something and expresses its completeness within his mind. In croce’s philosophy, art is nothing but intuition or the expression of impressions (within the  mind.)

• Death of the critic:

If we agree with the above view, it creates a danger for the vocation of the critics. The job of the critics is to examine, interpret and to make judgement about the external art which he sees with his own eyes. Croce says that art does not have any physical form. The moment the artist tries to express or externalise his impression, he ceases being an artist . art exists only within the mind, when it appears on a piece of paper, it is not an art. Hence , criticism has no place and no role to play.

• Limitations of croce’s theory:

Croce forgets that the main business of an artist is to communicate his vision of life , his sense of beauty. If the artist does not do this, what is his role in society? A number of artists and painters tried to follow Croce's theory and presented useless and ugly things which they called their own vision. 

• Intuition and expression:

One of the first problems to arise, when the work of art is defined as “lyrical image,” concerns the relation of “intuition” to “expression” and the manner of the transition from one to the other. At bottom this is the same problem which arises in other parts of philosophy: the problem of inner and outer, of mind and matter, of soul and body, and, in ethics, of intention and will, will and action, and so forth. Thus stated, the problem is insoluble; for once we have divided the inner from the outer, body from mind, will from action, or intuition from expression, there is no way of passing from one to the other or of reuniting them, unless we appeal for their reunion to a third term, variously represented as God or the Unknowable. Dualism leads necessarily either to transcendence or to agnosticism. But when a problem is found to be insoluble in the terms in which it is stated the only course open is to criticise these terms themselves, to inquire how they have been arrived at, and whether their genesis was logically sound. In this case, such inquiry leads to the conclusion that the terms depend not upon a philosophical principle, but upon an empirical and naturalistic classification, which has created two groups of facts called internal and external respectively (as if internal facts were not also external, and as if an external fact could exist without being also internal), or souls and bodies, or images and expressions; and everyone knows that it is hopeless to try to find a dialectical unity between terms that have been distinguished not philosophically or formally but only empirically and materially. The soul is only a soul in so far as it is a body; the will is only a will in so far as it moves arms and legs, or is action; intuition is only intuition in so far as it is, in that very act, expression. An image that does not express, that is not speech, song, drawing, painting, sculpture or architecture—speech at least murmured to oneself, song at least echoing within one’s own breast, line and colour seen in imagination and colouring with its own tint the whole soul and organism—is an image that does not exist. We may assert its existence, but we cannot support our assertion; for the only thing we could adduce in support of it would be the fact that the image was embodied or expressed. This profound philosophical doctrine, the identity of intuition and expression is, moreover, a principle of ordinary common sense, which laughs at people who claim to have thoughts they cannot express or to have imagined a great picture which they cannot paint. Rem tene, verba sequentur; if there are no verba, there is no res. This identity, which applies to every sphere of the mind, has in the sphere of art a clearness and self-evidence lacking, perhaps, elsewhere. In the creation of a work of poetry, we are present, as it were, at the mystery of the creation of the world; hence the value of the contribution made by aesthetics to philosophy as a whole, or the conception of the One that is All. Aesthetics, by denying in the life of art an abstract spiritualism and the resulting dualism, prepares the way and leads the mind towards idealism or absolute spiritualism.

 

• Conclusion: 

Let’s summarise Croce's views on art.

1. There are two kinds of reality: internal and external.

2. There are two forms of knowledge-logical and intuitive.

3. The work of an artist exists in his own mind.

4. When the impressions are given an external form, it becomes inferior to that which is expressed in the artist’s mind.

This theory of expressionism became popular in the first half of the 20th century. Artists like van gogh, matisse, gauguin, and kandinsky followed it in their works but this movement had its own limitations and hence, it did not enjoy good days for long.

 

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