Benedetto croce (1866— 1952) is a famous Italian philosopher, aesthete, historian and literary critic. Croce wrote a lot in his life, including four volumes: Philosophy of Spirit, Living Things and Dead Things in Hegel's Philosophy, Ethics and Politics, On Vico and Characteristics of Modern Philosophy. His aesthetic works, in addition to Scientific Aesthetics and General Linguistics (namely, Aesthetic Principles and Aesthetic History) as the expressions of philosophy of mind, also include New Aesthetics and Aesthetics and Politics.
Croce belongs to New hegelianism in philosophy. Like other new hegelianism scholars, he regards Hegel's absolute spirit as the foundation of all things in the world, thus constructing his so-called "pure spiritual philosophy" system. However, he thinks that Hegel regards the material world and nature as "alienation" of absolute spirit, which shows that his idealism is not thorough, so he was revised by Croce. Croce pointed out that "spirit is the whole reality", beyond which there is no real existence, and there is no other philosophy except spiritual philosophy. He was undoubtedly influenced by Kant in philosophy.
Croce divided mental activities into two categories: cognition and practice. Cognition and practice are divided into two stages. The four stages of spiritual activity belong to the intuitive and conceptual stage of cognition and the economic and moral stage of practice. Its values are beauty, truth, benefit and goodness, and the corresponding four philosophical departments are aesthetics, logic, economics and ethics. From the above classification, we can see that the basic characteristics of Croce's aesthetic theory system are irrationalism and subjective idealism. The central category of Croce's aesthetic theory system is "intuition".
The so-called intuition, according to Zhu Guangqian's explanation, is to see a thing, but only understand the shape or image of that thing in your heart, without thinking, seeking differences, judging meaning and making famous words. This is the primary stage of understanding, called intuition. According to Croce, intuition is not only the foundation of all knowledge, but also the source of beauty. All his aesthetic views are based on a basic concept: intuition is expression.
According to Croce, intuition is a cognitive activity, and its essence is various sensory impressions. These sensory impressions have been produced as soon as things come into contact with the senses, but at that time they were mixed, messy and intangible, lacking order and form. However, because intuition is a cognitive activity, it has the unique function of innate synthesis and giving forms to various senses and impressions. This is just as Croce said:' The function of intuitive activities is to integrate heterogeneous impressions into an organic whole. "The" organic whole "completed by intuition, that is, the formation of a complete image composed of various sensory impressions, is performance and intuition. Therefore, intuition is performance, and it is only performance. In other words, there is nothing more than performance in intuition, but there is nothing less than performance. Croce deduced two propositions from intuition as expression: intuition as art; Beauty is a sign of success.
In Croce's view, art, like intuition, is the lowest cognitive activity, and intuition or expression itself is an artistic activity. The essence of artistic creation is to transform all kinds of sensory impressions, that is, "feelings" or "emotions" into forms. In other words, intuition is the expression of lyricism and art Croce emphasizes that art is not a physical fact, that is, it is not an objective thing that is not influenced by intuition or mind; Art is not a utilitarian activity; Art is not a moral activity; Art is not a conceptual or logical activity; Art can't be classified and so on.
The so-called beauty is the performance of success, which must be related to the general starting point that intuition is the performance. In the process of giving feeling or emotional form, intuitive activities have two results: success and failure. If feelings or emotions are properly reflected in intuitive images, it is a sign of success, otherwise it is a sign of failure. Success is beautiful, failure or failure is ugly.
Croce's aesthetic theory has contributed to formalism, irrationalism and "art for art's sake" and other aesthetic and literary thoughts in modern western countries, and has had a serious negative impact. However, Croce's research and theoretical achievements on intuitive factors and expressive factors in artistic activities should also be paid attention to, analyzed concretely, and stripped of useful things from his idealism system.