I

ÆSTHETIC IDEAS IN GRECO-ROMAN

ANTIQUITY

THE question whether Esthetic is to be considered as an Point of view ancient or a modern science has on several occasions of this history of Esthetic. been a matter of controversy; whether, that is to say, it arose for the first time in the eighteenth century, or had previously arisen in the Græco-Roman world. This is a question, not only of facts, but of criteria, as is easily to be understood: whether one answers it in this way or that depends upon one's idea of that science, an idea afterwards adopted as a standard or criterion.1

Our view is that Esthetic is the science of the expressive (representative or imaginative) activity. In our opinion, therefore, it does not appear until a precise concept is formulated of imagination, representation or expression, or in whatever other manner we prefer to name that attitude of the spirit, which is theoretical but not intellectual, a producer of knowledge, but of the individual, not of the universal. Outside this point of view, we for our part are not able to discover anything but deviations and errors.

These deviations can lead in various directions. Following the distinctions and terminology of an eminent Italian philosopher 2 in an analogous case, we shall be

1 See above, pp. 128-131. Quotations which give only the name of the author, or are otherwise abbreviated, refer to historical or critical works of which the complete title is given in the Bibliographical Appendix.

2 Rosmini, Nuovo saggio sull' origine delle idee, sections iii. and iv., where theories of knowledge are classified.

Mistaken tendencies, and attempts towards an Esthetic, in

antiquity.

inclined to say that they arise either from excess or from defect. The deviation from defect would be that which denies the existence of a special æsthetic and imaginative activity, or, which amounts to the same thing, denies its autonomy, and thus mutilates the reality of the spirit. Deviation by excess is that which substitutes for it or imposes upon it another activity, altogether undiscoverable in the experience of the interior life, a mysterious activity which does not really exist. Both these deviations, as can be deduced from the theoretical part of this work, take various forms. The first, that due to defect, may be (a) purely hedonistic, in so far as it considers and accepts art as a simple fact of sensuous pleasure; (b) rigoristic-hedonistic, in so far as, looking upon it in the same way, it declares it to be irreconcilable with the highest life of man; (c) hedonistic-moralistic or pedagogic, in so far as it consents to a compromise, and while still considering art to be a fact of sense, declares that it need not be harmful, indeed that it may render some service to morality, provided always that it is submissive and obedient.1 The forms of the second deviation (which we shall call "mystical") are not determinable a priori, for they belong to feeling and imagination in their infinite variety and shades of meaning.2

The Græco-Roman world presents all these fundamental forms of deviation: pure hedonism, moralism or pedagogism, mysticism, and together with them the Greco-Roman most solemn and celebrated rigoristic negation of art which has ever been made. It also exhibits attempts at the theory of expression or pure imagination; but nothing more than approaches and attempts. Hence, since we must now take sides in the controversy as to whether Esthetic is an ancient or modern science, we cannot but place ourselves upon the side of those who affirm its modernity.

A rapid glance at the theories of antiquity will suffice to justify what we have said. We say rapid, because to enter into minute particulars, collecting all the scattered

1 See above, pp. 83-84.

2 See above, p. 65.

observations of ancient writers upon art, would be to do again what has been done many times and sometimes very well. Further, those ideas, propositions and theories have passed into the common patrimony of knowledge, together with what else remains of the classical world. It is therefore more advisable here than in any other part of this history merely to indicate the general lines of development.

the asthetic

Art, the artistic faculty, only became a philosophical Origin of problem in Greece after the sophistical movement and problem in as a consequence of the Socratic dialectic. The historians Greece. of literature generally point to the origins of Greek Esthetic in the first appearance of criticism and reflection upon poetical works, painting and sculpture; in the judgements pronounced on the occasion of poetical competitions, in the observations that were made as to the methods of the different artists, in the analogies between painting and poetry as expressed in the sayings attributed to Simonides and Sophocles; or, finally, in the appearance of that word which served to group together the various arts and to indicate in a certain way their relationship-the word mimesis or mimetic (uíμnois)— which oscillates between the meaning of "imitation and that of "representation." Others make the origin of Esthetic go back to the polemics which were conducted by the first naturalistic and moralistic philosophers against the tales, fantasies and morals of poets, and to the interpretations of the hidden meaning (úπóvoia), or, as the moderns call it, allegory, employed to defend the good name of Homer and of the other poets; finally, to the ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry, as Plato was afterwards to call it. But, to tell the truth, none of these reflections, observations and arguments implied a true and proper philosophical discussion of the nature of art. Nor was the sophistical movement favourable to its appearance. For although attention was at that time certainly given to internal psychical facts, yet these were conceived as mere phenomena of opinion

1 Republic, x. 607.

Plato's rigoristic negation.

and feeling, of pleasure and pain, of illusion, whim or caprice. And where there is no true and no false, no good and no evil, there can be no question of beautiful and ugly, nor of a difference between the true and the beautiful or between the beautiful and the good. The most one has in that case is the general problem of the irrational and the rational, but not that of the nature of art, which assumes the difference between rational and irrational, material and spiritual, mere fact and value, to have been already stated and grasped. If, then, the sophistical period was the necessary antecedent to the discoveries of Socrates, the æsthetic problem could only arise after Socrates. And it did indeed arise with Plato, author of the first, or indeed of the only really great negation of art of which there remains documentary proof in the history of ideas.

Is art, mimesis, a rational or an irrational fact? Does it belong to the noble region of the soul, where philosophy and virtue are found, or does it dwell in that base lower sphere, with sensuality and crude passionality? This is the question asked by Plato,1 who thus states the problem of Esthetic for the first time. The sophist Gorgias was able to note, with his sceptical acuteness, that tragic representation is a deception, which (strangely enough) turns out to the honour both of him who deceives and of him who is deceived, in which it is shameful not to know how to deceive oneself and not to let oneself be deceived.2 With that remark he could rest content. That was for him a fact like another. But Plato, the philosopher, was bound to solve the problem : if it were a deception, then down with tragedy and the rest of mimetic productions: down with them among the other things to be despised, among the animal qualities of man. But if it were not deception, what was it? What place did art occupy among the lofty activities of philosophy and of good action?

The answer that he gave is well known. Mimetic does not realize the ideas, that is to say the truth of things, 1 Republic, x. 607. 2 Plutarch, De audiendis poetis, ch. i.