17 / Croce /
The Essence of Aesthetic
antithesis, that other of “art for life”; and from that time it
was discussed, to tell the truth, rather among men of
letters or artists than philosophers. It has lost interest in
our day, fallen to the rank of a theme with which
beginners amuse or exercise themselves, or of an
argument for academic orations. However, traces are to be
found of it even previous to the romantic period, and even
in the most ancient documents containing reflections upon
art; and philosophers of Æsthetic themselves, even when
they appear to neglect it (and they do indeed neglect it in
its vulgar form), really do consider it, and indeed may be
said to think of nothing else. Because to dispute as to the
dependence or the independence, the autonomy or the
heteronomy of art, does not mean anything but to enquire
whether art is or is not, and, if it is, what it is. An activity
whose principle depends upon that of another activity is
substantially that other activity, and retains for itself an
existence that is only putative or conventional: art which
depends upon morality, upon pleasure, or upon
philosophy, is morality, pleasure, or philosophy; it is not
art. If it be held not to be dependent, it will be advisable
to investigate the foundation of its independence — that is
to say, how art is distinguished from morality, from
pleasure, from philosophy, and from all other things; what
it is — and to posit whatever it may be as truly
autonomous. It may chance to be asserted, on the other
hand, by those very people who affirm the concept of the
original nature of art, that, although it preserve its peculiar
nature, yet its place is below another activity of superior
dignity, and (as used at one time to be said) that it is a
handmaid to ethic, a minister’s wife to politics, and
interpretess to science; but this would only prove that
there are people who have the habit of contradicting
themselves or of allowing discord among their thoughts:
giddy folk who never seek proof of anything. For our part,
we shall take care not to fall into such a condition; and
having already made clear that art is distinguished from
the physical world and from the practical, moral, and
conceptual activity as intuition, we shall give ourselves no
further anxiety, and shall assume that with that first
demonstration we have also demonstrated the
independence of art.
But another problem is implicit in the dispute as to
dependence or independence; of this I have hitherto
purposely not spoken, and I shall now proceed to examine
it. Independence is a concept of relation, and in this aspect
the only absolute independence is the Absolute, or
absolute relation; every particular form and concept is
independent no one side and dependent on another, or
both independent and dependent. Were this not so, the
spirit, and reality in general, would be either a series of
juxtaposed absolutes, or (which amounts to the same
thing) a series of juxtaposed nullities. The independence
of a form implies the matter upon which it acts, as we
have already seen in the development of the genesis of art
as an intuitive formation of a sentimental or passionate
material; and in the case of absolute independence, since
all material and aliment would be wanting to it, form
itself, being void, would become nullified. But since the
recognised independence prevents our thinking one
activity as under the rule of another, the dependence must
be such as to guarantee the independence. But this would
not be guaranteed even by the hypothesis that one activity
should be made to depend on another in the same way as
that other upon it, like two forces which counterbalance
each other, and of which the one does not vanquish the
other; because, if it do not vanquish it, we have reciprocal
arrest and stasis; if it vanquish the other, pure and simple
dependence, which has already been excluded. Hence,
considering the matter in general, it appears that there is
no other way of thinking the simultaneous independence
and dependence of the various spiritual activities than that
of conceiving them in the relation of condition and
conditioned, in which the conditioned surpasses the
condition and presupposes it, and, becoming again in its
turn condition, gives rise to a new conditioned, thus
constituting a series of development. No other defect
could be attributed to this series than that the first of the
series would be a condition without a previous
conditioned, and the last a conditioned which would not
become in its turn condition, thus causing a double
rupture of the law of development itself. Even this defect
is remedied if the last be made the condition of the first
and the first the condition of the last; that is to say, if the
series be conceived as reciprocal action, or rather
(abandoning all naturalistic phraseology), as a circle. This
conception seems to be the only way out of the difficulties
with which the other conceptions of spiritual life are
striving, both that which makes it consist of an
assemblage of independent and unrelated faculties of the
soul, or of independent and unrelated ideas of value, and
that which subordinates all these in one and resolves them
in that one, which remains immobile and impotent; or,
more subtly, conceives them as necessary grades of a
linear development which leads from an irrational first to
a last that would wish to be most rational, but is, however,
super-rational, and as such itself also irrational.
But it will be better not to insist upon this somewhat
abstract scheme, and rather to consider the manner in
which it becomes actual in the life of the spirit, beginning
with the aesthetic spirit. For this purpose we shall again
return to the artist, or manartist, who has achieved the
process of liberation from the sentimental tumult and has
objectified it in a lyrical image — that is, has attained to
art. He finds his satisfaction in this image, because he has
worked and moved in this direction: all know more or less
the joy of the complete expression which we succeed in
giving to our own proper impulses, and the joy in those of
others, which are also ours, when we contemplate the
works of others, which are to some extent ours, and which
we make ours. But is the satisfaction definite? Was the
artist-man impelled only toward the image? Toward the
image and toward something else at the same time;
toward the image in so far as he is artistman, toward