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Benedetto Croce

(1866 - 1952)

Biography

Benedetto Croce was born in Pescasseroli on February 25, 1866 to father Pasquale

and mother Luisa Sipari as a third child; the first two died in their early childhood (the

first born brother who deceased in his babyhood was the first one to be given the

name Benedetto). Later, four other children were born, but only brother Alfonso and

sister Maria survived. Family lived in Naples, but went to Pescasseroli, mother's

native place, to expect Benedetto's birth to avoid epidemic outburst of cholera in

town.

Croce's were a wealthy family and offered their son all ingredients of a rich bourgeois

family education, together with the interest for history and interest for books and

literature. He grew up in a calm and secure atmosphere untouched by troubles and

tensions. This normal life came to en end in July 1883 when both his parents and

sister Maria died in an earthquake, while Benedetto nearly escaped death; brother

Alfonso was not with them at the time. In the next few "melancholic years", as he

calls them in his autobiography, he felt lonely, lost his religious faith and even thought

about suicide. Perhaps all that, and also the fact that he was torn between purely

erudite bibliophilic studies and philosophy, added to the early decision to bring his

formal studies to a stop, leave the university and begin on his own project. The only

family heirs, Benedetto and Alfonso, were financially independent, and Benedetto

obviously thought that spiritual independence from academic studies could serve him

well too. As he himself explains, this early crisis of his life resulted in the fundamental

determination: "Imparai a considerare la vita come una cosa seria, come unproblema da risolvere; e cominciai a coltivare per semplice soddisfazione del mio

spirito la filosofia."1

His first studies were in the history of Naples, he read art criticism and theories of De

Sanctis, and discussed different views with at first Hegelian and later Marxist Antonio

Labriola. He decided that university studies and academic career were not what he

longed for, and conducted his own research living "la vita di un vecchio"2. From

1 Benedetto Croce, Memorie della mia vita, Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Storici, Napoli 1966, p.132 ibid., p. 15

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historical research, dissatisfied with historiography and its methods, Croce

approached philosophy and aesthetics to find a solution for the methodology of

historical narration. This resulted in his text La storia ridotta sotto il concetto generale

dell'arte (1893), with an idea that history is an artistic discourse of the realm of non-

conceptual knowledge which can grasp the individual historical appearance. At the

same time, he decided that he has to abandon his secluded life and enter into "una

vita pi intensa"3. They say that he was not very skilled in his public appearances, be

it lecturing or discussing. He was a man of a working table. But when he found a

ground for a decision of his life and his theoretical studies, he followed without

hesitance. When he decided for more intensive life, it meant that he should deal with

actualities in an intellectual manner and in public space. And that is what he did for

the rest of his life: studies of Italian history which are part of producing Italians as a

nation; studies of world civilisation and culture which research tensions and ruptures

of modernity;, aesthetic theory and art criticism showing the basic ability of all human

beings at work in great creations of art; systematic philosophy strengthening the

spiritual potentials of the human being as the only capacity which builds a world of

our own; and living an intellectual, public and even politically extremely active life. To

find a theoretical platform for such an intellectual attitude, he embraced Marx and

Marxism for a short period, and even later when he criticised Marxism he always

admitted the importance of economy as a practical and pre-moral activity. Politics is

for him a part of such a practical, but still spiritual attitude, and he declared that he

belongs to "un liberalismo e radicalismo democratico"4. His friendship with Giovanni

Gentile dates from the last years of the 19th Century when they paid tribute to Italian

thinkers of the past, believed that spiritual idealism may be the solution of all

philosophical and practical problems, and built their (later found quite different)

critical approach to Hegel's philosophy of the Spirit.From 1898 on, Benedetto Croce worked on hisAesthetics which he presented at first

as lectures in Academia Pontiniana and in printed from as Estetica come scienza

dell'espressione e linguistica generale (1902). His systematic philosophy Filosofia

come scienza dello spirito of which Estetica is the first volume includes also Logica

come scienza del concetto puro (1909), Filosofia della pratica. Economia ed etica

(1909) and Teoria e storia della storiografia (1917).

3 ibid., p. 174 ibid., p. 21

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Perhaps the most popular introduction to Croce's aesthetic views in a short and clear

form is his L'estetica in nuce from 1928 which appeared as an article on aesthetics in

Encyclopaedia Britannica5

He entered public life, founded his famous journal La critica in 1903, and became

member of the Senate in 1910 and secretary of education in the government of 1920-

1921. During his resistance to fascism, which was of altogether intellectual kind (that

is why Gramsci even when he was already in prison felt Benedetto Croce as the

main obstacle in the battle for intellectual hegemony on anti-fascist front), he put to a

stop his friendship with Giovanni Gentile who became one of the leading fascist

politicians, but their philosophical differences are of an earlier date. Croce became

something of a heroic figure of anti-fascist struggle, especially for Italian intellectuals

and liberals. After the fall of the fascism he entered the government once again in

1944, became member of the Constitutional Assembly and in 1948 elected in Senate

once again.

At the same time, he never ceased to develop his ideas and publish a mass of

books, mainly with his life-long editorial friendship with Laterza publishers (founded

1901) from Bari. His dilemma between encyclopaedic erudition and philosophy

seemed to resolve itself in a long row of texts on all possible intellectual subjects

from philosophy and aesthetics to linguistics and art history, from literature and

historiography to morals and politics. His influence, intellectual and political, was

enormous, in Italy and elsewhere.

He wrote of his life and times as well, especially in Memorie della mia vita (Istituto

Italiano per gli Studi Storici, Naples 1966) and Contributi alla critica di me stesso

(Adelphi, Milano 1989), but there is also his vast correspondence, extracts from his

diary, and memoirs of his daughter Elena. For English-reading public, Encyclopaedia

Britannica recommends Cecil Sprigge's Benedetto Croce: Man and Thinker from1952 as the most informative biography written by his long-time friend.

He died on November 20, 1952 in Naples where he spent most of his life, at his table

and in manner which he himself announced when asked what he is doing in his old

age: "I am dying at my work."

5 Benedetto Croce, "Aesthetics",Encyclopaedia Britannica, 14th Edition, Vol. VII, New York and London(transl. By r. g. Collingwood), in Italian as "L'Estetica in nuce", Ultimi saggi, Laterza, Bari 1935, pp. 1-42

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1. Philosophy as an open systematics of the Spirit

tienne Sourieau6 says that when we view the past more systematically and with

broader perspective of facts and processes, we usually find out that people, events

and ideas we believe to be the most alive and important of a certain time (in his case

it was a year 1913) were more or less invisible to the people of that time, and that,

contrary to our expectations, people, events and ideas which were from our

perspective already dead were quite the contrary very well alive, and in their own

time more prosperous as those we see as most vital. Well, from this point of view

Croce was a happy man. He was famous and recognised in Italy and abroad in his

own times, as an intellectual of a profile and integrity, and as a philosopher of

systematic attitude. As any popular public and academic figure, he was at the same

time praised and attacked for many wrong reasons. On the other side, after his death

his figure nearly vanished from our horizons, and we often find him in intellectual and

spiritual histories of the 20th century as a kind of historic figure which, with more or

less all his work, belongs to the past.

Still, as philosophic friends of the history of the human Spirit, and not the admirers of

the whims of the intellectual fashions, we can converse Sourieau's statement the

other way around. Benedetto Croce might be represented as a person from the past,

as some kind of the remnant of the nineteenth century in the twentieth century, or

even a more atavistic phenomenon of late renaissance nostalgia. But the problemshe had to confront were problems of modernism: how to make human being the

centre of his own world, how to ascertain his freedom and dignity, and how to bring

all actual contradictions and troubles of his time to the judgement of philosophy - in

spite of scepticism which dethroned enlightenment rule of reason and looked for

irrational hopes, in spite of positivism which denied the possibility of spiritual

transcendence and hope, and in spite of already boring meta-physical formulas

6 tienne Souriau, "1913: La conjoncture",L'Anne 1913. Les formes aesthtiques de l'oeuvre d'art la veille dela premire guerre mondiale, Klincksieck, Paris 1971, p. 15

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which turned philosophy into an easy target of simplified criticism. His attitude, often

elitist and sometimes even aristocratic, might not please our democratic relativism,

and his answers with open, but still clear message might not suit our post-modern

affinity for the obscure. If we watch his philosophy and aesthetics from a broader

perspective, and if we take into account the reason and the idea which started the

whole thing, he is still well alive. And the reason, it seems, was in his case that he

envisaged dangers which are on the look-out for the ideals of humanism and

liberalism even before the First World War, a danger which for Croce became actual

with the rise of totalitarian fascism in Italy. He was an intellectual in constant fight, but

not in the manner of revolutionaries he criticised nor in the manner of academics he

despised: he fought with his intellect as his only weapon, and he avoided empty and

eternally boring disputes of professional scholars.

So, Benedetto Croce is one of the last systematic philosophers of the Western

philosophy, building his philosophical all-embracing system already in a period when

some of his younger colleagues declared systematic thought obsolete and even

dangerous. They believed that the decisive weapon against spiritual totalitarianism

must be fragmentation and negativity, and not universality and totality. Croce

persisted and continued to develop his original philosophical programme of spirit and

its universality until his death. He touched more or less all philosophical disciplines,

and built his influence in social and human sciences as well. Beside philosophy, we

may still detect his influential presence in art history, comparative and world

literature, theory of art and literary criticism, history and intellectual history, linguistics

and many other fields of human thought, even economics. He wanted to be a

renaissance kind of intellectual, with universal interest for everything in humanities,

so his broader scientific space includes all studia humanitatis. Philosophy entered his

studies as a solution and foundation of these studies of humanity which were allconnected with history, at the beginning of the 1890ies, when he published a study

La storia ridotta sotto il concetto generale dell'arte (History subsumed under the

general concept of art, 1893), and "from then on, willy-nilly, never interrupted his

philosophical studies"7. The idea of subsuming history as a kind of narrative to art,

defended in this text had a short life as a concept of a general validity. But his urge to

combat the attempt of the natural sciences to resolve history into their scheme, and

7 Benedetto Croce,Memorie sulla mia vita, Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Storici, Napoli 1966, p. 16 ("Da allorain poi, volente o nolente, non ho potuto pi abbandonare gli studii filosofici.")

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to assert the theoretical character and seriousness of art, which positivism, dominant

at that time, considered just an object of pleasure, and also to deny that historicity

was a special form of the theoretical spirit, different from the aesthetic form and the

intellective form - these features which appeared in his first philosophical text on art

remained the main drive of his work. Thus, like Baumgarten with his aesthetics as

lower logic of knowledge, and logic as its upper part, he had to establish two different

theoretical forms of knowledge, namely, conoscenca and scienca - knowledge and

science. Croce respected Baumgarten much more than those who saw him just as

somebody who invented the name "aesthetics" in 1735, but is otherwise theoretically

uninteresting, and has proposed a new reading of Baumgarten - "rileggendo'8. But he

could not accept that aesthetics, dealing with art and beauty, could be 'lower'

knowledge. Croce was confronted with different philosophical situation as

Baumgarten who had to introduce poetic artwork and artistic abilities into Leibniz-

Wolff's philosophical rationalism without overthrowing the primate of reason as

knowledge of the universal over knowledge of the individual and concrete which

belongs to aisthesis. For Croce, the knowledge of the universal was something much

more institutionalised: modern science with its claim on omnipotence and the only

possessor of truth which stimulated the 19th Century philosophical positivism as a

Bible of science. The result of positivism was the negation of philosophy which can

not show any certain field of its competence after science took over nature, society

and human being as possible objects of knowledge. At the end of the 19 th Century, it

seemed that there was no other knowledge than that which was researched,

developed, announced and turned into useful inventions - the scientific knowledge.

So, when he introduces knowledge and science as two separate concepts, Croce

criticises this religious belief that science is the only epistemologically certain and

practically useful domain of human endeavour.This opens better possibilities for philosophy, but turns Croce to the other

philosophical tradition of the 19th Century: metaphysical philosophy. This label

characterises German philosophy and aesthetics from Kant on - those of Schiller,

Schelling, Solger and Hegel, and especially romantic philosophy which followed their

way9. As Croce's own philosophy is often labelled by his critics as metaphysical,8 Benedetto Croce, "Rileggendo l'Aesthetica del Baumagarten",La Critica, 1933 Vol. 31 No. 1., pp. 1-209 Benedetto Croce,Estetica come scienza dell'espressione e lingustica generale, Bari, Laterza & Figli, 1945, p.

315: " noto infatti che lo Schelling guidicava la Critica del giudizio la pi importante delle tre critiche kantiane,e che lo Hegel e in generale tutti i seguaci dell'idealismo metafisico mostrarono per quel libro speciale

predilezione." In "The Intuition and the Lyrical Character of Art" from 1908 he changed the term "metaphysical

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idealistic and (neo)romantic, it is worth to find out what Croce had in mind with his

anti-metaphysical attitude.

His philosophical system is a system of Spirit, and so is that of Georg Wilhelm

Friedrich Hegel whom he already criticised in "Aesthetics" from 1902, and dedicated

him a well known study from 1906 "What is Living and What is Dead in Hegel's

Philosophy". When Benedetto Croce is classified as an exponent of metaphysical

philosophy, it usually means that his is just another philosophy of Spirit. When Croce

declares himself against metaphysics, German idealism and romantic philosophy, he

obviously has to use the term "metaphysical" in a different sense.

The first hint of the direction of his criticism of metaphysics is his rejection of

hierarchy of different spiritual potentials of the human being, and of any exaggeration

in qualifying the creative artistic and aesthetic forces as something special, because

that would give them mystical glow and separate them from the common human

being. German idealists and later Romantics have elevated art sky-high, and

believed that they have done it justice, but the result was that art appeared as

something of no consequence that "non serviva pi a nulla" 10. Croce dismissed the

idea of building any kind of hierarchy of human potentials and abilities, and as much

as he confronted Baumgarten for giving aesthetics a position of a lower part of logic,

he could not accept raising the aesthetics and art as its object on a pedestal,

because he did not see it as something distracted from and reaching beyond just any

human being.

As Hegel's system of dialectics was the most typical and elaborated philosophy of

such exaltation, Croce made a point by rejecting his idea of progressive synthesis

which abolishes opposing entities as the outcome of their development into

incompatible contradictions. This schematism of progressing Spirit, usually

condensed in the formula thesis - antithesis - synthesis, builds metaphysicalabstractions. The dialectic unity of opposites is possible, claims Croce, only if and

aesthetics" into "mystic aesthetics": "E c', infine, un'Estetica, che, altra volta, ho proposto di chiamare mistica,la quale, traendo profitto da codeste determinazioni negative, definisce l'arte come forma spirituale, che non hacarattere pretico, perch teoretica, e non ha carattere logico o intelletivo, perch froma teoretica diversa daquelle della scienza e della filosofia, e superiore a entrambe." ("L'Intuizione pura e il carattere lirico dell'arte",

Problemi di estetica, Gius. Laterza & Figli, Bari 1910, p. 5) About the metaphysical in Croce, and aboutcriticism of Croce as metaphysical philosophy, see: Paolo D'Angelo, "Metafisica o metodologia? Note sullaricezione dell'estetica crociana in Italia",Per conoscere Croce (ed. Paolo Bonetti), Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane,1998, pp. 137-152

10 Benedetto Croce,Estetica, l.c., p. 337 ("Il romanticismo e l'idealismo metafisico avevano messo l'arte tantoin su, tanto nelle nuvole, da dover finire di necessit con l'accorgersi che, cos in alto, essa non serviva pi anulla.")

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when opposing concepts have a distinct and autonomous existence which is not

condensed into suppressing totality. This is a strategy essentially different from any

negative dialectics which forbids formation of totality altogether. Croce's position has

two important consequences: his system of Spirit should not become in any way all-

embracing synthesis of abolished and now useless parts needed only for climbing on

top of the world; and his definitions of specific differences between respecting human

abilities should never get so abstract that any link or connection between these

different fields of human activity would be completely impossible, or accessible

through mystical means only. Reason can not be something which overcomes and

out-rules fantasy, intuition can not be something which puts an end to a need for

practical solutions, and the urge to built firm ethical foundations for human action can

not disregard the need for survival. Any kind of Hegel'sAufhebungis out of question,

because the Spirit is not a principle of progress to the heavenly highest which would

leave everything terrestrial and commonly human behind it. It is a principle of a

linkage of all possible abilities into an everyday human whole, and if there is any

chance of freedom and progress of humanity, it has to be founded and proved on

these common grounds. Any kind of abstract differentiation which would put different

human potentials and creative forces apart or even confront them one to another is

out of question, because the Spirit is a principle of linkage and unity, not of the

German Ausdifferenzierung. The concept with which we gather a number of

individual characteristics under a common denominator is just a tool for grasping the

indeterminate infiniteness into confined and determined frame of human

understanding.

Thus, Croce's philosophical system of Spirit gives us some fundamental concepts

which are based on the idea of the irrepressible difference, and they can be shown

schematically:the theoretical the practical

aesthetics logic economy ethics

What we may perceive immediately is the even number of the structure. In

systematic philosophies we are used to discover schematism with three-partite

structures which allows us to proceed from binary oppositions to the over-all

synthesis. Croce is satisfied with binary structure which favours the spiritual concept

of the human being and establishes connections between structural parts. The

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difference between the theoretical and the practical is irrepressible, but this does not

mean that there is no connection and communication between them, quite the

contrary. There are two different forms of theory, aesthetic and logical, and two

different forms of practice, economic and ethical. The spiritual orientation of Croce's

system is apparent when he claims that theoretical can exist without practical, but

practical can not exist without theoretical. His orientation toward concreteness of

living human being is evident when he claims that aesthetic theory can exist without

scientific theory, while the other way around is impossible, and that economy can and

does exist independently of morality and its judgements, while morality can not exist

without economic usefulness. This is the lesson he took from his short but important

adherence to Marx and Marxism: the philosophical importance of economy which is

another criticism of metaphysical neglecting of human necessities and the way of

fulfilling human needs. Still, we have to bear in mind that this remains a system of

Spirit, and that even economy is dealt with in terms of spiritual practical human

structure.

The starting point of the Spirit remains human common sense (comune coscienca

umana, comune buonsenso), even for philosophical truths, because all knowledge

must start here and all activity must prove itself in this field where there are no

qualitative distinctions between different individual human beings and where there

are no final demarcation lines between different spiritual potentials. The aesthetic is

embedded here as well, and its primary function is to introduce an aesthetic

knowledge based on fantasy as universal ability of all and everybody, with

intertwined intuition-expression as general foundation of language; that is why his

"aesthetics" is called so curiously "science of the expression and general linguistics".

What, if anything, is than metaphysical in Croce's system? It is a system of Spirit

which does not allow the physical world to get the status of "reality". Physical world isun-real, because the very moment when we start treating it as something real, we are

in the realm of spiritual representations. There is no nature, or, better, when we say

that nature exists, it means that we expressed our intuition in a form of spiritual

representation. For human beings, only the realm of the spiritual, i.e. the realm of

representations (re)presents reality. Croce's refusal of both positivism and

metaphysics and, at the same time, the special starting position of aesthetics as

theory based on pure intuition, introduced an open theory - but not only in his ownsense of new inventions and reintegrations which prevent the Spirit to reach any

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Hegelian final absolute stage. It has a concealed room we are forbidden to enter.

Croce tells us that pure intuition is a spiritual movement, and all the other spiritual

activities, theoretical or practical, have their roots only in this virgin soil of intuitional

spirituality. However, is pure intuition of an object physically present as a part of

"natura esterna" possible as well? In his lecture for the Third International Congress

of Philosophy in Heidelberg of 1908 "L'intuizione pura e il carattero lirico dell'arte"

(Pure Intuition and the Lyrical Character of Art) Croce acknowledges, in accordance

with the premises of his philosophical system, that this is impossible and would lead

us into dualism, which is the end of any philosophy. Therefore, we are forbidden to

enter this room, yet Croce gives us, at the same time such a tempting and even

artistic reason to try: "A un sol patto si potrebe avere intuzione pura di un ogetto

fisico: se, cioe, la fisi o natura esterna fosse una realta metafisica, una realta

veramente reale, e non gia una construzione e astrazione dell'intelleto." 11 ("We could

have pure intuition of a physical object just in one case: if physics or external nature

would be a metaphysical reality, the truthful reality, and not just a construction or

abstraction of intellect.") This thought is important because it shows the difference

between idealist and metaphysical philosophies of the Spirit, and Benedetto Croce.

His idea of external nature has more in common with the post-modern idea of reality

as a spiritual representation and cultural construction than with classical

philosophical metaphysics where Spirit becomes a mystical force over and above

any human touch and access. To avoid classical antagonistic binary system of

metaphysical idealism vs. positivistic materialism, Croce introduced modernist binary

system of naturalism vs. culturalism, and defined human being as a cultural

phenomenon producing images, while external nature as such remains inaccessible

to its abilities to comprehend and grasp. All logics of scientific knowledge begin with

images produced in human fantasy, and these images may represent the natural andthe external, but they are not nature and they are, of course, part of our own spiritual

activity.

The linkage which binds the chain art - concept - act of economy - act of morality

together, and at the same time provides for their relative autonomy, has to start from

the division between theoretical and practical Spirit. In his "Philosophy of the

Practical. Economy and Ethics" Croce wrote that at the beginning there was neither

11 Benedetto Croce, "L'Intuizione pura e il carattero lirico dell'arte",Problemi di estetica e contributi alla storiadell'estetica Italiana, Giuseppe Laterza & Figli, Bari 1910, p. 26

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the Word nor the Act. There was "Verbo dell'Atto" and "L'Atto del Verbo" (word of an

act, and act of the word)12. Saying it with other words, he would like to have at the

same time modernist differentiation with the autonomy of differentiated fields of

human ability, and pre-modern authenticity of the whole which does not allow for any

rupture or definite demarcation to be anything more but just a fictitious convention.

Logic with its concepts needs aesthetic intuition as its background, but aesthetic

intuition does not need logic; ethical act needs economical act as its background, but

not the other way around. This invests aesthetics and economy with more autonomy

than logic and ethics, but it means as well that logic and ethics include the aesthetic

and the economic as their respective materials. This was Croce's purpose: mutual

relations without ruptures or gaps which would have to be bridged afterward with

metaphysical or mystical means, but also without any steady mutual relationships

which would build hierarchy of fields and disciplines. Still, the link between theoretical

and practical is not where we would expect it to be by the scheme, i.e. in relation

between logic and economy as a contact on the border, or between ethics and

aesthetics as a contact over the borders. Economy is the material of the aesthetics,

says Croce, as aesthetics is the liberation of the useful. This might be also the

outcome of his confrontation with Marxism: economy is not the decisive factor in the

life of the Spirit. It has to be purified and liberated with the help of the aesthetics. In

Hegel's system, the aesthetics is the first step of the Spirit towards its perfection, still

burdened with the sensual and the material which it has to overcome and abandon to

come on its own terms with itself. In Croce's philosophy, the aesthetics serves among

other things as a purifying bath for the naturalism of the economy. And if this sounds

a bit abstract, we have to add that his purpose and end was to cultivate and to

enlighten, in the name of liberty and freedom of mankind. Today, perhaps, Benedetto

Croce is known to specialists for his philosophy, aesthetics, linguistics, art history,literary criticism, theory of historybut during his lifetime, and especially in times of

his confrontations with fascism and after, he was famous for his advocacy of

liberalism. This liberalism is not something grown apart from his philosophy. It is a

central and focal point of his system of thought. Only from such a point we can

understand that despite the usual method of the history of philosophy which puts

philosophers in a sequence, so that the later would be solving the contradictions of

the former, it does not work like that. Yes, Croce was a follower and a critic of12 Benedetto Croce,Filosofia della pratica. Economia ed Etica, Laterza, Bari 1950, pp. 194-195

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Gianbatista Vico, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Karl Marx, De Sanctis and many

others. But his philosophy was a philosophy of life, and when he said that in each

period philosophy has to solve what his own part of history challenges it with, he was

very serious. In the name of liberty and emancipation, he tried to connect all human

abilities, and with the same target in mind, he wanted to find a spiritual solution with

theoretical and practical consequences for the problems of his time: working class

position and class struggles, scientific positivism and its negation of philosophy,

backwardness of his native country contemporary situation and its heroic past,

mimetic misunderstanding of artistic creation, fascist movement connected with

artistic Futurism and his friend Giovanni Gentile's philosophy, First and Second

World WarsHe wanted not just to comprehend all these and many other intellectual

features and shocking events of his own time. He wanted to shape spiritual frames

for the action in name of liberty. And that is why he stacked to his original system-

program so much.

The connoisseurs of the whole body of his work have discussed the unity or

difference in his development already during his lifetime, revealing three or even four

phases and stages of his opus, and in his aesthetics respectively 13. Croce, well

known for his pragmatic treatment of Hegel from the aspect of "What is Living and

What is Dead in Hegel's Philosophy" from 1906, did not like the treatment of his

students and followers and has insisted on a constant progress and reintegration of

new and deeper insights into his thinking "which would be impossible to divide into

sections, designated as first, second and third Esthetics."14 It is possible to study, as

has already been done, Croce's philosophy in the same way as he treated Hegel,

asking ourselves what is living and what is dead. On the other hand, we could follow

his periods of innovation and reintegration till the final stage, concluding with an

opening of this stage to new developments and interpretations. The first attitudetreats theory as something dead even when it finds some still useful spare parts

ready for transplantation; the second is the way of his students and followers which

today are not around any more, but were numerous already during his life-time. It

seems that Croce, obviously refusing to be treated like a dead dog (Hegel's

expression!), doubted that theoretical followers could be useful. He claimed that13 Giovanni Gullace, "Translator's Preface",Benedetto Croce's Poetry and Literature. An Introduction to ItsCriticism and History, Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale and Edwardsville, 1981, p. xiii; four

phases of Croce's aesthetics are discussed also in the text on Benedetto Croce by H.S. Harris in TheEncyclopedia of Philosophy Vol. 2, Collier-Macmillan, London 1967, pp. 263-26714 ibid., p. xiv

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come-backs and returns to the past are not possible because we have to deal with

the problems of our present, which must be solved by the means of the present. It is

true that throughout the history of philosophy there were slogans to go back to the

past like "back to Hegel" or "Back to Kant". But Croce thinks that studying the history

of theories and ideas of the past could be useful only as an introductive

phenomenology of progressive theoretical integrations15. We might say that his idea

of history is not a German one, as a heavy burden of the dead upon the living, but

the Italian one, when you live (as he did in Naples) with the past present all around

you, and in that case it is integrated in the present.

His plans for future work which he put down in addition to his curriculum vitae prove

that his work after 1898 till his death was really proceeding throughout more than fifty

years in a way which did not change his basic propositions and his ambitious

systematic orientation. In 1902, he believed himself to enter the phase of his

scientific and philosophical maturity afterAestheticsappearance in the same year.

His ambitions were in philosophy and in history, and his philosophical idea was "di

menare a termine un intero sistema di Filosofia dello Spirito, ossia di tutta la filosofia,

che, secondo il mio modo di vedere, si esaurisce nella filosofia dello spirito." 16 So,

afterAesthetics, there should be 4 other volumes: "Logica, o scienza del Concetto

Economica, o scienza della VolontEtica, o scienza della LibertFilosofia

generale."17 At the same time, he wanted to finish his other great work - the history of

Italy, and to begin with a journal for public criticism and intellectual engagement. He

expressed also his political ambitions connected with liberal and radical politics.

Reading it hundred years after and half a century after his death, we can not but

admire the consistency with which he followed his plans during all his later life.

And, in spite of all possible phases in his development which do exist, it is quite

remarkable how precisely he stuck to his systematic plans and programs. AfterEstetica from 1902, he published Filosofia della pratica (economy and ethics) and La

logica come scienza del concetto puro in 1909, and Teoria e storia della storiografia

15 Benedetto Croce, "L'intuizione pura e il carattero lirico dell'arte",Problemi di estetica e contributi alla storiadell'estetica Italiana, Giuseppe Laterza & Figli, Bari 1910, pp. 9-10: "E in questa connessione e ordine

progressivo delle varie proposizioni indicate prende origine anche il proposito, il consiglio, l'esortazione a'tornare', come si dice, a questo o a quel pensatore, a questa o alla quella scuola filosofica del passato. Certo, tali'ritorni', presi alla lettera, sono impossibili, e anche un po' ridicoli, come tutti i tentativi impossibili; al passatonon si torna mai, proprio perch passato; e a nessuno consentito di liberarsi dal problemi, che il presente gli

pone, e che, con tutti i mezzi del presente (il quale include in s i mezzi del passato), deve risolvere."16 Benedetto Croce,Memorie della mia vita, Instituto Italiano per gli Studi Storici, Napoli 1966, p. 2617 ibid., p. 26

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in 191718. The "pure concept" of his logic is an expression, and that is why logics can

not start without the aesthetics; but concept is something universal and concrete as

well. Universality distinguishes pure concept from just empirical assessment of facts,

and concreteness distinguishes it from metaphysical abstractions. Here, Croce

explained systematically his idea of dialectics, insisting that unity of differences is not

a confrontation of oppositions which then have to vanish in the all-embracing

synthesis. Instead of a hostile relation between opposites, we have a relation with the

Other - "altro", which builds a possible unity, but does not abandon the concrete

existence of differences, or the basic situation of otherness which prevents any final

and total usurpation of the Other.

As much as aesthetics is the entrance of his philosophy, a theory of history is the

outcome and uniting principle, and also the reason for his decision to study

philosophy in the first place: "Pure, di tanto in tanto, sentivo il bisogno di una vita

intelletiva pi intensa; e questo bisogno divent vivissimo sulla fine del 1891 e nel

1892. Esso si manifest, tra l'altro, col dubbio sul valore della storia e del metodi

storiciNel 1892 il nuovo filosofare sulla storia, congiungendosi col vecchio

filosofare sull'arte, dette origine alla mia prima memoria filosofica, che col titolo: La

storia ridotta sotto il concetto generale dell'arte fu da me letta all' Academia

Pontaniana nel marzo del 1893. Da allora in poi, volente o nolente, non ho potuto pi

abandonare gli studii filosofici."19 This original and radical idea which put history at

the same level as art, because art and history are both knowledge of the individual

and particular, sharing the language of narration, had a short life. But Croce's urge

expressed in his first philosophical expression to combat the attempt of the natural

sciences to resolve history into their scheme, his ambition to assert the theoretical

character and seriousness of art against positivist attitude to art as pure pleasure,

and his persistence to deny that historicity is a special form of the theoretical spiritaside the intuitive and the conceptual, remained the main drive of his work. In Logics

of 1909, also first lectured in Academia Pontaniana in 1904-1905, he identified

historical knowledge with the conceptual, and thus opened the doors to the identity

between history and philosophy which both strive for the universal. This was only

possible because Croce denied universality to natural sciences which can not arrive

to the universal at all. His theory of history from 1917 strengthens both the difference

18 This work was published first in German asZur Theorie und Geschichte der Historiographie (Tbingen 1915)19 Benedetto Croce,Memorie della mia vita, Instituto Italiano per gli Studi Storici, Napoli 1966, pp. 15-16

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between history and natural sciences, and the connection between history and

philosophy. History is always contemporary history, because the historian gives the

documents of the past actuality through his spiritual interest to reach the universal.

And this universal does not mean that the universal history can ever become an

infinite totality. It is always a concrete and individual concept, and concept (as we

know from his "Logic") is not an universal idea, it is a construction of human spirit

always ready for renewal, because it could never reach a stage of final and perfect

result. Croce is criticising metaphysical idea of history, of course, but his criticism is

now aimed at all methodology of history as a science of facts and their objective

interpretation. When history has been declared a kind of narrative again in the

1970ies, the importance of Croce's ideas became apparent. History as a science

structured by empiricism of the natural sciences is what he got rid of, and as it has

been connected to art at the first Croce's step, it is later connected to philosophy.

Philosophy is "un momento metodologico della storia"20. The experiences of

totalitarianism and war only strengthened his ideas, declaring philosophy to be an

absolute historicism21. All history is contemporary history, because it meets a present

need. History is a political ethics, as a conflict of different individual ideals, and this

liberal idea of history is the one and only possible background for human freedom.

After more than sixty years of his studies, Croce did not stop to develop his ideas

according to problems connected with his epoch and its usually not very pleasant

and optimistic changes, and he did not stop to stress his basic ideas: systematic of

human spirit which builds understanding and knowledge, but no finalised systems;

historicity of human existence in contemporaneity which includes past, present and

(in its hope for welfare and freedom) future; liberty which has to be connected with

the individuality, with the Other as competitive but not opposite, and with politics as a

unity of utilitarian activities performed for the welfare of the State which (as the wholeeconomy anyway) are nor moral nor immoral.

When Croce concluded labelling his philosophy as absolute historicism, the others

understood it as an inauguration of the absolute liberalism in philosophy because of

his position against fascism. In spite of the openness of his concepts to new historical

situations, it suits his philosophical liberalism to be labelled as "absolute" because of

20 Benedetto Croce, Teoria e storia della storiografia, Laterza, Bari 1917, p. 136

21 Benedetto Croce, "Il concetto della filosofia come storicismo assoluto",Il carattere della filosofia moderna,Laterza, Bari 1941; see alsoFilosofia e storiografia, Laterza, Bari 1949, and Storiografia e idealit morale,Laterza, Bari 1950.

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its essential difference from more usual positivist, pragmatic or relativist foundations

of liberalism in many other cases of liberal theory and philosophy of the 19 th and 20th

Century.

2. Aesthetics of intuition

From its beginning in 1735 with Baumgarten, and after Kant's classical foundations

for aesthetics, this discipline nourished a discord between philosophy of art and

beauty, and theory of perception, feeling and sensuality. Croce's re-actualisation of

Giambattista Vico, with his principle of fantasy distinguished from the rational

reflection, paved a way for an aesthetics which is at the same time a theory of human

knowledge of the individual and a philosophy of artistic creation, but does not include

any theory of perception or sensuality or body presence and needs of the human

being. Croce presented his Tesi fondamentali di un'Estetica come scienza

dell'espressione e linguistica generale in Academia Pontaniana in Naples in 1900,

and added his study on Giambattista Vico in 1901 in a journal Flegrea (Giambattista

Vico primo scopritore della scienza estetica). In his Preface to theAesthetics of 1902,

which is a text developed from his Tesi fondamentali, he explained why any

sistematics in philosophy has to begin with the phenomenon of the aesthetic. As in

Hegel, all philosophy is a unity which can be entered through any of its parts: "La

filosofia unit; e, quando si tratta di Estetica o di Logica o di Etica, si tratta sempre

di tutta la filosofia, pur lumeggiando per convenienza didascalica un singolo lato di

quel'unit inscindibile."22 Among all spiritual activities fantasy with its spiritual activity

of representing is a beginning and a birth of the human spirit. Not as philosophy of art

but as the universal capacity of human spirituality, the aesthetic is "la forma aureale

dello spirito".23 Here the spirit founds its first homeland, and it has always to comeback to fantasy as its source. Would this be a kind of back-to-mythical beginnings, as

in Schelling? If so, intuition would really become something irrational, mystical and

even anti-rational, but that was not what Croce had in mind. The spiritual

quintessence and at the same time original homeland of spirit is - language ("il

linguagio"). This turns aesthetics in a discipline of fantasy, language and art, all

22 Benedetto Croce,Estetica come scienza dell'espressione e linguistica generale, Bius. Laterca&Figli, Bari

1945, p. vii-viii23 Vittorio Mathieu, "Benedetto Croce",Enciclopedia filosofica, Vol. 1, Instituto per la collaborazione culturale,Venezia-Roma 1956, pp. 1358

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based on the division between aesthetics and logic as two parts of the theoretical

spirit. Art is only one part of aesthetic concern, and it is not different from other parts

in any qualitative way; it represents a certain concentration of aesthetic quantity, i.e.

works of fantasy.

Croce introduced the whole body of his aesthetics with two forms of knowledge: "La

conoscenca ha due forme: o conoscenza intuitiva o conoscenza logica;

conoscenza per la fantasia o conoscenza per l'intelletto; conoscenza dell'individuale

o conoscenza dell'universale; delle cose singole ovvero delle loro relazioni;

insomm, o produttrice d'immagini o produttrice di concetti."24 Here, he decided

against philosophical tradition and in favour of common sense, as he continued to do

many more times afterwards: philosophy is biased in favour of the intellectual and the

logical, while common sense knows very well that intuition is independent from

intellect and is the source of all knowledge. The first few sentences ofThe Aesthetics

are more familiar with Baumgarten's and Kant's aesthetics, and contrary to the

tradition of the philosophy of art of the 19 th Century. Intuition is not intellectual, but it

is at the same time not perceptual, or not only, because our intuitions are not just

about reality. Distinction between reality and fiction is of later origin, and we can not

find it in the original situation of sprit: "L'intuizione l'unit indifferenziata della

percezione del reale e della semplice immagine del possibile." 25 Those who believe

that all our knowledge is shaped by previously existing ideas of time and space are

wrong: time and space are rather complex intellectual constructions which appear

only later in the development of our spiritual potentials. Intuitions, if not meta-

physical, are not sensual as well. This neither-nor structure of Croce's argumentation

against metaphysical and positivist, or idealistic and materialistic philosophy, repeats

itself incessantly, because systematic unity of his philosophy is completely

dependent on this kind of conceptual turn. To avoid Hegelian triads, he has to keepdifferences alive in spite of any synthesis as their outcome; to avoid insurmountable

dualism and binarism, he has to introduce primordial unity of all differences. And

aesthetics is the corner stone for this operation, being the position of spirit which can

not be reduced to any other position, and being the first and original state of spirit

which has nothing else of spiritual character to precede it. There is no Nature, says

Croce, because (as in case of time and space) even Nature can not be anything but

24 Benedetto Croce,Estetica come scienza dell'espressione e linguistica generale, Laterza, Bari 1945, p.325 ibid,. P.6

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a spiritual construction. At the beginning, there must be an original unity of matter

and spirit - of a spiritual kind, because, as human beings, we are spiritual beings.

This does not mean that we are not material beings, or that the world is something

immaterial. But it means that, as much as we are aware of ourselves and of the

world, this operation of awareness or the initial knowledge about ourselves and the

other has to be a kind of spiritual activity; matter is something passive and non-

productive, and that is what we are as just material beings - passive and non-

productive. We produce our world with our spiritual abilities which postulate the

original unity of matter and form: "la forma costante, l'attivit spirituale; La

materia mutevole, e senza di essa l'attivit spirituale non uscirebbe dalla sua

astratezza per diventare attivit concreta e reale, questo o quel contenuto spirituale,

questa o quella intuizione determinata."26 Today, we would use instead of "intuition"

the notion of "representation", and Benedetto Croce is already using both: "Ogni vera

intuizione o rappresentazione , insieme, espressione."27 Human spirit is always

active, and intuitions are never just a kind of imprints made by the outside world or

our physical existence. As active, they are expressions, and it is not possible to make

any difference between intuitions and expressions - they are one. This unity is a

foundation stone for the whole body of Croce's philosophy, and without it his

sistematics would break up into two binary constructions which would need special

bridging and tying up. With the help of Herbartian interpretation of Kant, Croce has

hidden famous Kant's gap between nature and culture, between freedom and

necessity, in this formula of pre-determined unity. Here, we are not allowed to

proceed with differentiation and criticism, or, if we do so, we risk entering the

unsolvable dispute between positivism and metaphysics, idealism and materialism.

Only after all these introductory explanations about the character of human spirit, and

fundamental difference between its two theoretical forms, the aesthetic and thelogical, Croce proceeds with the role of intuition-expression in the art. Many

philosophers have tried to find out the special quality of artistic intuition, and they

have all failed. They did not succeed, thinks Croce, because there is none. In the

period of modernism, and near to the outburst of the historical avant-garde,

Benedetto Croce stands up against aestheticism, and theories of artistic purity, and

thus at the same time against then prevailing ideas of autonomy of art. There is no

26 ibid., pp. 8-927 ibid., p. 11

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special anatomy for small, and another for bigger organisms, so there can not be one

aesthetics for 'lower' and another for' higher' intuitions. "Noi dobbiamo tener fermo

alla nostra identificazione, perch l'avere staccato l'arte dalla comune vita spirituale,

l'averne fatto non si sa qual circolo aristocratico o quale esercizio singolare, stata

tra le principali cagioni che hanno impedito all'Estetica, scienza dell'arte, di attingere

la vera natura, le vere radici di questa nell'animo umanocos non c' una scienza

dell'intuizione piccola e un'altra della grande, una dell'intuizione commune e un'altra

dell'artistica, ma una sola Estetica, scienza della cognizione intuitiva o espressiva,

ch' il fatto estetico o artistico. E questa Estetica il vero analogo della Logica, la

quale abbraccia, come cose della medesima natura, la formazione del pi piccolo e

ordinario concetto e la construzione del pi complicato sistema scientifico e

filosofico."28 Here is a connection between Croce's philosophical sistematics which

does not allow for any insurmountable differences (which, by the way, makes him

much more indebted to Leibniz and Baumgarten as is usually stressed), and his

liberalism which does not allow for any qualitative differences between human

beings. His dislike of aristocratic aesthetics which is a pure metaphysics of art is from

the same origin as his dislike for the romantic concept of genius. "Anche niente pi

che una differenza quantitativa possiamo ammettere nel determinare il significato

della parola genio, o genio artistico, distinto dal non genio, dall'uomo comune." 29

Better than to say that a poet is born (poeta nascitur) we should say that a person is

born as a poet (homo nascitur poeta). Here, in opposition to the "Superman" or the

"bermensch" idea of the artist30, we find all doors open to the later artistic and

political statement that all human beings are artists, "poeti piccoli gli uni, poeti grandi

gli altri."31 The same goes for the ability of aesthetic judgement, or taste: "L'attivit

che giudica si dice gusto; l'attivit produtrice genio; genio e gusto sono, dunque,

sostanzialmente identici."32

Another target is a theory of mimesis, be it of imitation or of mirroring, and his

insistence on the spiritual process of creation as something really personal and

intuitive which results in an artwork. Pure mimetic copy is something cold which can

not give us any food for our own intuitions. Here is what is wrong with photography.

28 ibid., pp. 17-1829 ibid., p. 1830 It is not a coincidence that Croce used the expression "superuomo" (ibid., p. 18), as an allusion to Nietzsche

whom he introduced in his history of aesthetics as the last romantic poet in philosophy.31 Ibid., p. 1832 ibid., p. 132

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Photography is an art only as much as a photographer succeeds to interweave his

intuition into the result, but it is still not completely artistic because "l'elemento

naturale resta pi o meno inliminabile e insubordinato".33 The problem of

technological mediums is that they are just that: passive mediators which may

produce pictures as mimetic copies of chemical or similar natural processes, but they

can not produce images. For images there has to be the involvement of human

fantasy. Croce is not just insisting on pure creativity which can not allow for art to be

a mere technical means of "mirroring". He is, here as elsewhere in his philosophical

works, insisting on human subjectivity, on human active ability to conquer nature,

which is a passive force, with his spirit which is an active force. He is back to the

basic repertoire of European spiritual tradition: matter and form, nature and spirit are

involved in a patriarchal female-male relationship, and his strive for insubordination

which works so well for art in its relation to science, and for economy in its relation to

ethics, gives no autonomy neither to matter not to nature. For us, there is not a thing

which is something else that a spiritual manifestation, and nature or matter can not

have any independent existence of their own - at least from the human point of view.

This is the quintessence of Croce's idealism: the idealisation of the human spiritual

activity from the very beginning in the aesthetic. So, as much as he is against artistic

purity if it means an aristocracy of taste, he sees hedonistic, utilitarian, or naturalistic

approaches to art as completely wrong. It is all there in an artwork: pleasure, use,

physics; but the artistic is still something qualitatively different. His exclusion of

"beautiful nature"34 might be even more radical as that of Hegel 35, because what he

has in mind is not just the exclusion of beautiful nature: beautiful or not beautiful, we

can not experience anything natural without actively changing it into something

spiritual.

The subtitle ofAesthetics - "Theory and History", indicates that Croce included ahistory of aesthetic doctrines into his systematic representation, not as an appendix

but as a necessary part of theory. Here, he is already practicing his idea of

contemporaneity of history, because this history is not a story of the aesthetic ideas

of the past. It is a story of Benedetto Croce's ideas of the history of aesthetics, with

Hegelian touch which turns all philosophers and thinkers from the past into33 ibid., p. 2034 Croce uses the expression "il bello fisico" (ibid., p. 103)

35 "L'esclusione pi netta e pi perentoria del bello naturale dall'orizzonte dell'estetica si trova per in BenedettoCroce, per il quale negare l'esistenza del bello naturale ha rappresentato la liberazione da un grave errore."(Paolo D'Angelo,Estetica della natura. Bellezza naturale, paesaggio, arte ambientale, Laterza, Bari 2001, p. 47

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predecessors of Croce, and explains their ideas as not-yet-Croce's ideas. But what

we can not find here is Hegelian progressivism which arranges the past into an

orderly progressive development oriented toward certain and final end, because for

Croce history is always open and unsolved. "Ogni configurazione di storia umana ha

a suo criterio costruito il concetto del progresso. Ma per progresso non da

intendere la fantastica legge del progresso, la quale, con forza irrestibile, menerebbe

le generazioni umane a non si sa quali destini definitivi, secondo un piano

provvidenziale, che noi potremmo indovinare e intendere poi nella sua logica." 36 This

combination of non-progressivism and contemporaneity of history resulted in what his

friend mockingly called "a graveyard"37. We do not need to visit it, because he later

added a systematic approach to the history of aesthetics. In his lecture for the Third

International Congress of Philosophy in Heidelberg "L'intuizione pura e il carattero

lirico dell'arte" (Pure Intuition and the Lyrical Character of Art, 1908) 38, Croce speaks

of five different approaches to the character of art, his own being the sixth, of course.

This catalogue of all possible aesthetic theories is obviously logical and not historical,

as individual thinkers belong to two or even more of them, and because they form a

logical sequence: "Esse si legano l'una con l'altra; e in tal modo, che la veduta, che

segue, comprende in s quella che precede."39 They were all present in some form

and extent in all times, and as there is something wrong with any of it, each sounds

at least partly true.

The first and thus the lowest is empirical aesthetics which claims that aesthetic or

artistic phenomena do not have a common principle. This kind of aesthetics classifies

empirical artistic phenomena, but disables philosophy to comprehend them with a

rigorous concept. The second, practical aesthetics, finds a common basis for all the

arts in practical forms of human activity (hedonism, utilitarianism, morality, pedagogy

etc.). Here, art has a common denominator in something practical or of practical use.The third is intellectualist aesthetics which identifies beauty and intellectual truth. It

defines art as a sort of truth in a popular pre-logical form of semi-science and semi-

36 ibid., p. 14637 "Antonio Labriola, quando la lesse, me la defin scherzevolmente, ma pure non senza qualche verit, uncamposanto." (Benedetto Croce, "Avvertenza" from 1921,Estetica, Laterza, Bari 1945, p. xii38 Benedetto Croce, "L'Intuizione pura e il carattero lirico dell'arte", read on September 2, 1908 in Heidelberg(without any regard for the audience, we were told, in Napolitano version of Italian, and in overall manner ofunable lecturer), and published inProblemi di estetica e contributti alla storia dell'estetica Italiana, Laterza,

Bari 1910, pp. 3-3039 Benedetto Croce, "L'Intuizione oura e il carattero lirico dell'arte",Probopemi di estetica e contributti allastoria dell'estetica Italiana, Laterza, Bari 1910, p. 6

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philosophy. What it cares for in art is what can be learned in the form of concepts.

Agnostic aesthetics is the first step to the recognition of an independent principle of

art, but this kind of theory can not formulate it in any positive way. Negative

description in manner of neither-nor follow each other and never reach a point of a

certain answer. The last, mystical aesthetics, treats art as an independent spiritual

form which has a theoretical, but not scientific or intellectual character, and is a

higher truth compared with science or philosophy: "L'arte, secondo questa veduta,

sarebbe la cima pi alta della conoscenza; quella, da cui gli spettacoli, che si vedono

dalle altre, appaiono angusti e parziali, e che sola ci svela tutto l'orizzonte, o tutti gli

abissi, della Realt."40 What Croce proposed to philosophers was to start with the

highest form, i.e. a romantic variation of mystical aesthetics, deny its hierarchical

claim for the primacy of artistic truth, and accept his own idea of pure intuition and

lyricism as an explanation for the independent foundation of the concept of art, at the

same time ascertaining its autonomy and its links with other spiritual abilities of

humanity, theoretical (logic) and practical.

After the Aesthetics of 1902, Croce has in his own words stuck to the original

background of his ideas, but developed some new ideas without changing the core.

In the Introductions to new editions of the Aesthetics of 1921 and 1941, he

mentioned altogether three such new steps: the lyrical character of the pure intuition

(1908)41, the universal and cosmic character of the pure intuition (1918) 42 and the

difference between poetry and literature (1936)43. The term "lyricism" was introduced

as a sign for the non-conceptual ingredient of poetic communication, for emotions

and moods of the individual and unique pre-conceptual individuality: "L'arte, come

crea le prime rappresentazioni a, per tal modo, inaugura la vita della conoscenza,

cosi rinfresca di continuo innanzi al nostro spirito gli aspetti delle cose, che il

pensiero da sottomesso alla riflessione e l'inteletto all'astrazione; e ci fa,perpetuamente, ridiventare poeti. Senza di essa, mancherebbe al pensiero lo

stimolo, e la materia stessa, pel suo lavoro ermeneutico e critico. Essa la radice di

tutta la nostra vita teoretica; e nell'essere radice, e non fiore o frutto, il suo ufficio;

n, senza radice, si d poi il fiore e il frutto." 44 Under the star of the intuition, he

40 ibid., p. 541 Benedetto Croce, "L'Intuizione pura e il carattero lirico dell'arte", see n. 3342 Benedetto Croce: "Il carattere di totalit della espressione artistica" (1917) and "L'arte come creazione e la

creazione come fare" (1918), both inNuovi saggi d'estetica, Laterza, Bari 192043 Benedetto Croce,La poesia, Laterza, Bari 193644 Benedetto Croce, "L'intuizione pura", l.c., p. 15

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continued to develop these all-embracing roots of human understanding in above

mentioned texts from 1917 and 1918, art reveals aesthetic synthesis of the whole

and the universal which escapes more analytical ability of reason, dialectically

synthesising feeling and image in intuition. Is it possible to find an acceptable

aesthetic theory which would preserve the spiritual independence and autonomy of

art and introduce the normative limits of great art without falling into positivistic or

metaphysical pitfalls, and without pretension to give definite answers or purely logical

totality? Croce thinks, differently from the Critical theory which denounced totality as

totalitarian, that we have to find a positive answer to this question, according to our

contemporary situations. His own answer to the crisis of the European culture was

that art has the character of totality, the cosmic afflatus, which makes universality and

artistic form one and the same thing. The total human rhythm of art offers an integral

vision of man. The cosmic character of art is found in poetry as the perennial voice of

humanity in its complexity and totality. In this interpretation, the human need for

poetry and the response to it took the place reserved by Immanuel Kant for a

response to the French revolution. It may not ascertain human ability for unending

progress, but the poetry still testifies that human totality and cosmic unity of

spirituality are always present in the aesthetic roots of the human world.

As much as he has been keen to develop the difference between artistic and logic

forms of the theoretical spirit at the beginning of his career, Croce later insisted on

the differentiation of the pure art from the other types of artistic expression. Thus, his

La Poesia from 1926, accentuates difference between poetry and literature,

introducing altogether 4 types of intuition/expression: sentimental or immediate,

poetic, prosaic and rhetorical. The poetic type of expression is the pure lyricism,

while literature or the prose serves many different and thus impure ends. From the

point of view of the theory of literature, Croce's developed theory is "nominalistic" 45

because each work of art is an individual totality which has to be studied in itself, and

not as a part of the history of styles and genres, or as an expression of the artists

everyday biography. For the same reason, he had to exclude from the poetry not only

such admittedly philosophical texts in verse as De rerum natura by Titus Lucretius

Carus, but Goethe's second part ofFaustas well. Due to historical circumstances of

art and humanity during the first half of the 20th Century, Benedetto Croce started

45 As characterized by Ren Wellek and Austin Warren,Theory of Literature, Harcourt, Brace & World, NewYork 1970, p. 226

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from a democratic idea of intuition/expression as an artistic ability of a common

human being, and arrived at an aristocratic and elitist idea of poetry which excludes

from its special realm all prose, rhetorics and even common sentimentality. The

reason for this shift from the democratic to the aristocratic liberalism was to preserve

totality and universality of human spiritual world, embedded in the aesthetic ability of

the theoretical spirit.

Benedetto Croce has been one of the most influential intellectuals of his times, and

especially so in Italy where his impact reached well beyond his death. But his

systematic philosophy was really accepted just by a few followers, mostly Italian and,

of course, Robin G. Collingwood. His actual influence is much broader than a number

of his direct followers, and is differentiated between disciplines. His name and some

of his theories are still present in aesthetics, of course, but he was also a major figure

in the art history, in the theory of literature, in linguistics, in Italian studies, and in the

theory and methodology of history46. As he became in Italy already during his life a

kind of an intellectual icon, his ideas were quite neglected after his death, and he

entered the discussion only in the last decades of the 20 th Century, now without the

previous aura47. This might be an opportunity, as Benedetto Croce would like it, not

for a return to Croce, but for a "rileggendo" of his opus from the point of view of

history, i.e. our own contemporaneity.

4. Conclusion

They say that generals always fight the battles of the previous war. On the first sight,

Benedetto Croce was indeed such a general, a philosopher who wanted to confront

problems of his own time with the means of systematic idealism, which postulated the

Spirit as the one and only living force. He declared himself to be a Gian Battista Vicoand De Sanctis kind of idealist in aesthetics, Herbartian in morals and axiology, anti-

Hegelian and anti-metaphysical in theory of history and world development, and

naturalist-intellectualist in epistemological puzzles. This sounds as eclecticism, which

46 Just to illustrate his importance in historiography, we may mention that in Hayden White'sMetahistory of1973 which paved new ways of historiographic discussions, he figures prominently even as a figure to becriticised for his neglect of social sciences and his hostility to sociology. (Hayden White,Metahistory. The

Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe, John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 1973, Chapter

10)47 For the account of Croce's place in Italian aesthetics, see Paolo D'Angelo,L'estetica italiana del Novecento,Laterza, Bari 1997

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it was. Not because of the lack of a position of his own, but because he had to use all

means to achieve his ends. His philosophical position was dignity and liberty of

human spirit, and as in his own contemporaneity this position seemed to weaken,

while nihilism and relativism were gaining the territory, Croce used against these

dangers all philosophical weapons he could get and which at that time seemed

useful. From this point of view, his philosophy is the last philosophy of a classical

humanism, enlightenment and idealism, which produced the last philosophical

system of liberty and liberalism.

But, as a modern philosopher living his own time, loving the common sense,

comprehending the importance of economy for philosophical systematics, engaged in

actual criticism and political activity, and especially as an aesthetician who at the

same time (and that is really an exception among the number of aestheticians of his

own period!) was in contact with contemporary arts and artists, wrote literary history

and theory, published criticism, discussed cultural politics and actual situation of arts

in Italy and elsewhere - he had to go beyond his heroic program to stubbornly resist

erosion of great philosophical systems of humanism and enlightenment. Perhaps the

initial reason for this belonging to the past and present at the same time was his

decision to never become an academic scholar. What he wanted was the position of

an intellectual who is at ease with all everyday processes of his own time, far from

claustrophobic surroundings of philosophers' dark room, and in contact with common

sense of human life. To answer the problems of his own time, he introduced

aesthetics as an ability of the fantasy to produce first germs of spiritual life in

intuitions-expressions as genuine human language of knowledge which speaks about

the individual. So, the realm of aesthetics is for Benedetto Croce precisely the realm

of creation - because here the Spirit is created and re-created on and on. By his

standards, pure art is a personal poetic intuition which on the other side of hisdemocratic idea that genius is just a better quantity of ability already present in every

human being, creates an aristocratic field of universality, and cosmic unity of spiritual

world. In his theory of historiography and historicity, he had to embrace the relativism

and subjectivity of the contemporaneity. Seen from the distance of our own present,

his systematics of the Spirit, creating theoretical and practical means for

comprehending the world's unity, and his insistence that in our own world there is no

nature and just (spiritual) culture, he may well become a predecessor of the claim

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that all we deal with in so called reality are just representations and cultural

constructions.

benedetto 1

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