Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic

INDIVISIBILITY OF EXPRESSION INTO MODES OR DEGREES

AND CRITICISM OF RHETORIC

The characters of art—Non-existence of modes of expression—Im-

possibility of translations—Criticism of the rhetorical categories—

Empirical sense of the rhetorical categories—Their use as syno-

nyms of the aesthetic fact—Their use to indicate various aesthetic

imperfections—Their use in a sense transcending aesthetic, in

the service of science—Rhetoric in the schools—The resemblances

of expressions—The relative possibility of translations . - - 67

AESTHETIC FEELINGS AND THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN

THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE UGLY

Various significations of the word feeling—Feeling as activity—Identifi-

cation of feeling with economic activity—Criticism of hedonism—

Feeling as a concomitant of every form of activity—Meaning of cer-

tain ordinary distinctions of feelings—Value and disvalue: the con-

traries and their union—The beautiful as the value of expression,

or expression without qualification—The ugly, and the elements

of beauty which compose it—Illusion that there exist expressions

neither beautiful nor ugly—True aesthetic feelings and concomi-

tant and accidental feelings—Criticism of apparent feelings . - 74

Pace

Criticism of the beautiful as that which pleases the higher senses—Criti-

cism of the theory of play—Criticism of the theory of sexuality and

of triumph—Criticism of the AEsthetic of the sympathetic : meaning

in it of content and form—AEsthetic hedonism and moralism—

The rigoristic negation, and the pedagogic justification of art—

Criticism of pure beauty . - - - - - - - 82

XII

THE AESTHETIC OF THE SYMPATHETIC AND PSEUDO-AESTHETIC

CONCEPTS

Pseudo-aesthetic concepts, and the AEsthetic of the sympathetic—Criti-

cism of the theory of the ugly in art and of the overcoming of it

—Pseudo-aesthetic concepts belong to Psychology—Impossibility

of rigorous definitions of them—Examples: definitions of the
sublime, of the comic, of the humorous—Relation between these
concepts and aesthetic concepts . - - - - - - 87

XIII

THE “PHYSICALLY BEAUTIFUL * IN NATURE

AND IN ART

AEsthetic activity and physical concepts—Expression in the aesthetic

sense, and expression in the naturalistic sense—Representations

and memory—The production of aids to memory—Physical

beauty—Content and form : another meaning—Natural beauty

and artificial beauty—Mixed beauty—Writings—Free and non-free

beauty—Criticism of non-free beauty–Stimulants of production . 94

XIV

ERRORS ARISING FROM THE CONFUSION BETWEEN

PHYSICS AND AESTHETIC

Criticism of aesthetic associationism—Criticism of aesthetic Physics—

Criticism of the theory of the beauty of the human body—Criticism

of the beauty of geometrical figures—Criticism of another aspect

pace

of the imitation of nature—Criticism of the theory of the elementary

forms of the beautiful—Criticism of the search for the objective

conditions of the beautiful—The astrology of AEsthetic. - . IO4

The practical activity of externalization—The technique of external-

ization—Technical theories of the different arts—Criticism of

aesthetic theories of particular arts—Criticism of the classification of

the arts—Criticism of the theory of the union of the arts—Relation

of the activity of externalization to utility and morality. - ... III

XVI

TASTE AND THE REPRODUCTION OF ART

AEsthetic judgement: its identity with aesthetic reproduction — Im-

possibility of divergences—Identity of taste and genius—Analogy

with other activities—Criticism of aesthetic absolutism (intellectual-

ism) and relativism—Criticism of relative relativism—Objection

founded on the variation of the stimulus and of psychic dis-

position—Criticism of the distinction of signs into natural and con-

ventional—The surmounting of variety—Restorations and historical

interpretation . - - - - - - - - . I 18

XVII

THE HISTORY OF LITERATURE AND OF ART

Historical criticism in literature and art : its importance—Literary and

artistic history: its distinction from historical criticism and from

the aesthetic judgement—The method of artistic and literary history

—Criticism of the problem of the origin of art—The criterion of

progress and history—Non-existence of a single line of progress in

artistic and literary history—Errors committed against this law—

Other meanings of the word “progress” in relation to AEsthetic . 128

XVIII

CONCLUSION : IDENTITY OF LINGUISTIC AND AESTHETIC

Summary of the study—Identity of Linguistic with AEsthetic—AEsthetic
formulation of linguistic problems—Nature of language—Origin

pace

of language and its development—Relation between Grammar and

Logic—Grammatical kinds or parts of speech—The individuality

of speech and the classification of languages—Impossibility of a

normative Grammar—Didactic organisms—Elementary linguistic

facts, or roots—AEsthetic judgement and the model language

—Conclusion - - - - - - - - - . I4O

HISTORY OF AFSTHETIC

AESTHETIC IDEAS IN GRAECO-ROMAN ANTIQUITY

V Point of view of this History of Æsthetic—Mistaken tendencies, and

attempts towards an AEsthetic, in Graeco-Roman antiquity—Origin

of the aesthetic problem in Greece—Plato's rigoristic negation

— AEsthetic hedonism and moralism — Mystical aesthetic in

antiquity—Investigations as to the Beautiful—Distinction be-

tween the theory of Art and the theory of the Beautiful—Fusion

of the two by Plotinus—The scientific tendency: Aristotle—The

concepts of imitation and of imagination after Aristotle: Philos-

tratus—Speculations on language - - - - - . I 55

AESTHETIC IDEAS IN THE MIDDLE AGES AND RENAISSANCE

V Middle Ages. Mysticism: Ideas on the Beautiful—The pedagogic theory
of art in the Middle Ages—Hints of an AEsthetic in scholastic philo-
sophy—Renaissance : Philography and philosophical and empirical
inquiries concerning the Beautiful—The pedagogic theory of art
and the Poetics of Aristotle—The “Poetics of the Renaissance”—
Dispute concerning the universal and the probable in art—G.
Fracastoro — L. Castelvetro — Piccolomini and Pinciano — Fr.
Patrizzi (Patricius) . - - - - - - - . I75

III

FERMENTS OF THOUGHT IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

New words and new observations in the seventeenth century—Wit—
Taste—Various meanings of the word taste—Fancy or imagination

page

—Feeling—Tendency to unite these terms—Difficulties and contra-

dictions in their definition—Wit and intellect—Taste and in-

tellectual judgement—The “je ne sais quoi?”—Imagination and

sensationalism : the corrective of imagination—Feeling and sen-

sationalism . - - - - - - - - - . 189