Anonymous
Posted June 20, 2003
Croce doesn't need someone to approve or disapprove of his book, so I am just giving information on this edition. The edition itself does not contain the second part of the work, The History of Aesthetic. This lack alone would make this edition one to avoid. Add to this the fact that older editions of this book containing the history section can usually be found used between five and ten dollars. The high price of the books in the Cambridge philosophy series is only worth it in the case of those works that are not as easily available in other editions as this one.
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Overview
The Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce (1866-1952) spent most of his life as a private scholar in Naples. His Estetica, which first appeared in 1902, has remained a seminal work not only for aesthetics but also for general linguistics. As the full title indicates, this is not a narrow work dealing with the theory of art and criticism. For Croce intended this to be the first part of his "philosophy of the spirit" and he thus presents a systematic general theory intended to solve all philosophical problems. The work presents an account of the structure of the human mind and shows how art arises naturally from that structure, as well as introducing the influential notion of the organic unity of a work of art. As a result, art is shown to be integral to any life and an essential aspect of what it is to be human. This new translation of the first and most important part of the work (Theory) supersedes the defective translation by D. Ainslie, first published in 1909. It is based on the most recent Italian edition (1990). In his foreword the translator addresses the difficulties in translating certain key words in the Italian original, "scienza", "fantasia", and of course, "estetica" itself. He also furnishes the reader with helpful explanatory annotation. This publication will be of cardinal importance for all those interested in the philosophy of art, the history of criticism, and the history of linguistics.
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments; Translator's foreword; Preface; 1. Intuition and expression; 2. Intuition and art; 3. Art and philosophy; 4. Historicism and intellectualism in the aesthetic; 5. critique of analogous errors in history and logic; 6. Theoretical activity and practical activity; 7. The analogy between the theoretical and the practical; 8. The exclusion of other forms of the spirit; 9. That expression cannot be divided into modes or levels: the critique of rhetoric; 10. Aesthetic feelings and the distinction between the beautiful and the ugly; 11. Critique of aesthetic hedonism; 12. The aesthetic of 'That which attracts liking' and the pseudo-aesthetic concepts; 13. Physical beauty and the nature of art; 14. Errors arising from the confusion between the physical and the aesthetic; 15. The activity of externalisation: the technique and the theory of the arts; 16. Taste and the reproduction of art; 17. The history of art and literature; 18. Conclusion: identity of linguistics and the aesthetic; Index.