The Croce-Collingwood theory as theory

Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

Volumn 61, Issue 2, 2003, Pages 149-157

  Kemp, Gary ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 61049313802     PISSN: 00218529     EISSN: 15406245     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1540-6245.00104     Document Type: Review

References (59)

1. I refer to the works of Collingwood and Croce according to abbreviated titles. For Collingwood's works: Speculum Mentis (Oxford University Press, 1924) is noted as SM
2. The Principles of Art (Oxford University Press, 1938) is noted as PA
3. trans. D. Ainslie from Esetica come scienza dell'espressione e linguistica generale (Bari: Laterza, 1902), is noted as Aes
4. Philosophy of the Practical, Economic and Ethic (Macmillan, 1913)
5. Logic as the Science of the Pure Concept (London: Macmillan, 1917)
6. The Essence of Aesthetic (London: MacMillan 1921)
7. "Aesthetics," in Encyclopædia Britannica, 14th ed. (1929)
8. The Philosophy of Giambattista Vico (George Allen & Unwin, 1913)
9. trans. R. G. Collingwood from La filosofia di Giambattisto Vico (Bari: Laterza, 1911), is noted as PV
10. "The Totality of Artistic Expression," in Philosophy, Poetry, History (Oxford University Press, 1966)
11. trans. C. Sprigge from Filosofia, Poesia, Storia (Milan: Riccardo Ricciardi, 1951), is noted as TAE
12. Ernst Gombrich, Art and Illusion (Princeton University Press, 1960)
13. Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1968)
14. Richard Wollheim, Art and Its Objects, 2nd ed. (Cambridge University Press, 1980)
15. John Hospers, "The Croce-Collingwood Theory of Art," Philosophy 31 (1956): 291-308
16. William Kennick, "Does Traditional Aesthetics Rest on a Mistake?" Mind 67 (1958): 317-334
17. John Passmore, "The Dreariness of Aesthetics," in Aesthetics and Language, ed. W. Elton (Basil Blackwell, 1959), pp. 36-55
18. Stuart Hampshire, "Logic and Appreciation," in Aesthetics and Language, ed. Elton
19. Morris Weitz, "The Role of Theory in Aesthetics," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 15 (1956): 27-35
20. Arthur Danto, "The Artistic Enfranchisement of Real Objects: The Artworld," The Journal of Philosophy 61 (1964): 571-584
21. Jerrold Levinson, "Defining Art Historically," The British Journal of Aesthetics 19 (1979): 232-250
22. George Dickie, Art and the Aesthetic (Cornell University Press, 1974)
23. In The Transfiguration of the Commonplace (Harvard University Press, 1981), Danto offers an alternative explanation: our concern with art just is, or has become, partly reflexive, a concern with the nature of the interest we take in works of art
24. See, for example, R. Wilkinson, "Art, Emotion and Expression," in Philosophical Aesthetics, ed. O. Hanfling (London: Blackwell, 1992), pp. 186-194
25. True, Collingwood says that Book 1 of the Principles of Art is an exercise in conceptual analysis. And that theoretical elements figure prominently there does not prove that he was wrong to say so; analysis is almost always idealization, and in practice must be informed by theoretical considerations. However, the plausibility, and indeed the content, as Collingwood points out, of the claim that Art is Expression is derived almost wholly from the theories propounded in Book 2. It was, I think, a needless and bad strategic maneuver on Collingwood's part to have pretended that he could first, by strictly analytical means, mark out the logical space to be filled by a theory. For a more detailed discussion of this issue with respect to Collingwood, see J. Grant, "On Reading Collingwood's Principles of Art," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 46 (1987): 239-248
26. For a recent, unsympathetic account of what below I call the Expression Thesis in Croce and Collingwood, see Gordon Graham, "Croce and Collingwood," in The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics, ed. B. Gaut and D. Lopes (London: Routledge, 2000), pp.75-85
27. For pungent criticism of what I call the Ideality Thesis, see Beryl Lake, "A Study of the Irrefutability of Two Aesthetic Theories," in Aesthetics and Language, ed. W. Elton (London: Blackwell, 1959), pp. 100-113
28. and Paul Ziff, "Art and the 'Object of Art,'" also in Philosophical Aesthetics, pp. 170-186
29. John Hospers, in "Collingwood and Art Media: a Reply," Southwestern Journal of Philosophy 2 (1971): 43-46, stresses the importance of this bit of Kantianism in both Croce and Collingwood
30. For detailed analysis and criticisms of Collingwood's theory specifically, see P. Jones, "A Critical Outline of Collingwood's Philosophy of Art," ed. M. Krausz, Critical Essays on the Philosophy of R. G. Collingwood (Oxford University Press, 1972), pp. 42-67
31. For problems internal to Croce's theory of art, see G. Douglas, "A Reconsideration of the Croce-Dewey Exchange," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 28 (1970): 497-504
32. and especially G. Orsini, Benedetto Croce, Philosopher of Art and Literary Critic (Southern Illinois University Press, 1961)
33. On Croce's general philosophy, see C. Sprigge, Benedetto Croce: Man and Thinker (Cambridge: Bowes & Bowes, 1952)
34. and D. Roberts, Benedetto Croce and the Uses of Historicism (University of California Press, 1987)
35. In the earlier account in Speculum Mentis (pp. 80-91), Collingwood holds that since intuition, in itself, is not assertoric, it cannot be meaningful, hence, it cannot be expressive
36. See Orsini, Benedetto Croce, Philosopher of Art and Literary Critic, p. 48
37. Richard Wollheim develops this view in his Art and Its Objects, §§ 15-19
38. Collingwood seems to struggle with this issue on p. 239, top; in answering the question he sets for himself, he really only answers the question with respect to the psychical emotions
39. One might think that Croce's later emphasis on the "lyrical intuition" (see especially The Essence of Aesthetic, pp. 28-33) represents such a distinction, but it is clear, on close reading, that what Croce has in mind is a difference of degree rather than principle
40. For its appearance in Croce, see "Aesthetics," pp. 229-231
41. The Essence of Aesthetic, pp. 10-11
42. Aesthetic, pp. 104-110
43. Aaron Ridley, "Not Ideal: Collingwood's Expression Theory," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 55 (1997): 263-272
44. and "Collingwood's Commitments: A Reply to Hausman and Dilworth," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56 (1998): 396-398
45. Many points similar to Ridley's are made in Grant, "On Reading Collingwood's Principles of Art."
46. John Dilworth, "Is Ridley Charitable to Collingwood?" The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56 (1998): 393-396
47. Ridley, "Not Ideal," pp. 266-269
48. See the remarks about the experience of being understood, The Principles of Art, pp. 317-318. I discuss this passage below
49. On this issue, see also Grant, "On Reading Collingwood's Principles of Art."
50. I invoke a point from Donald Davidson, "Knowing One's Own Mind," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Association 70 (1986): 441-458. Actually, Davidson's example was sunburn. The comparison is closer if we consider something that is more palpably an object (a fleabite) than a condition (sunburn)
51. See also Dilworth, "Is Ridley Uncharitable to Collingwood?" p. 396
52. Ridley, "Collingwood's Commitments," p. 397
53. But see "Aesthetics," p. 567. The argument to follow is very near the surface here of Croce's distinction between the physical object and the work of art
54. For criticism of Collingwood on this point, see the excellent article by Don Taylor, "Art, Craft and History," Clio 2 (1973): 239-278. Taylor argues that Collingwood's attempt to distinguish art ontologically from amusement-craft must fail; for some amusements achieve their end precisely by exercising the imagination. But according to Taylor, that does not mean that the distinction cannot be made, and made as sharply as we think it ought to be: Art can be distinguished, if not by its exercising the imagination, then by the sorts of things it is concerned to imagine. The distinction is moral, axiological, perhaps epistemological, but not ontological
55. It is most interesting that at the time of Speculum Mentis, when Collingwood had yet to accept Croce's emphasis on feeling as the key to expression, he was much closer to the idea that beauty is somehow connected with truth; indeed, his attempt to make this out in terms of his logic of question and answer (Speculum Mentis, pp. 76-80), is impressive, and one wishes he had done more with it in the later work
56. Readers familiar with it may wonder why I concentrate on the discussion in Art and Its Objects, omitting the more sustained criticism Wollheim offers in his later article, "On an Alleged Inconsistency in Collingwood's Aesthetics," in Critical Essays on the Philosophy of R. G. Collingwood, ed. M. Krausz (Oxford University Press, 1972), pp. 68-78. The reason is that the former makes a more fundamental and decisive point. Very briefly, Wollheim's point in the 1972 essay is that the divorce of the artwork from the bodily work is plausible only with respect to those arts that admit of notation, and that are most suitably identified with types rather than tokens (e.g., music, poetry). Unlike those cases, it is just not true that we can credit someone with having made a sculpture in advance of her or his having sculpted it. This point is not decisive, however: one might think it accidental that the plastic arts are not notated (although, of course, there are well-known difficulties here). Further, as stressed, that the imaginative experience should, as a matter of psychological fact, depend upon actual perception, is consistent with the Ideality Thesis. Thus, the fact that we do not credit merely imagined sculptures might be perfectly intelligible even if the Ideality Thesis were true, indeed, even if we actually subscribed to it. What is needed is to show that something in the very notion of art - in our conception of its purpose or value - rules this out. That is what the argument from Art and Its Objects succeeds in doing
57. Arts and Its Objects, § 23
58. For a recent defense of this sort of view, see Malcom Budd, Values of Art: Pictures, Poetry and Music (London: Penguin, 1995), chap. 1
59. For comments and conversation, I wish to thank Richard Bellamy, Chris Belshaw, Bob Hale, Carl Hausman, Mathew Kieran, Dudley Knowles, Jim Mawby, Philip Percival, Aaron Ridley, Helen Wright, and - emphatically - an anonymous referee for The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism