Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic Part 5

Some psychologists, on the other hand, place before practical action an altogether special cla.s.s of judgments, which they call _practical_ judgments or judgments _of value_. They say that in order to resolve to perform an action, it is necessary to have judged: "this action is useful, this action is good." And at first sight this seems to have the testimony of consciousness on its side. But he who observes better and a.n.a.lyses with greater subtlety, discovers that such judgments follow instead of preceding the affirmation of the will; they are nothing but the expression of the already exercised volition. A good or useful action is an action that is willed. It will always be impossible to distil from the objective study of things a single drop of usefulness or goodness. We do not desire things because we know them to be good or useful; but we know them to be good and useful, because we desire them.

Here too, the rapidity, with which the facts of consciousness follow one another has given rise to an illusion. Practical action is preceded by knowledge, but not by practical knowledge, or better by the practical: to obtain this, it is first necessary to have practical action. The third moment, therefore, of practical judgments, or judgments of value, is altogether imaginary. It does not come between the two moments or degrees of theory and practice. That is why there exist no normative sciences in general, which regulate or command, discover and indicate values to the practical activity; because there is none for any other activity, a.s.suming every science already realized and that activity developed, which it afterwards takes as its object.

[Sidenote] _Exclusion of the practical from the aesthetic._

These distinctions established, we must condemn as erroneous every theory which confuses aesthetic with practical activity, or introduces the laws of the second into the first. That science is theory and art practice has been many times affirmed. Those who make this statement, and look upon the aesthetic fact as a practical fact, do not do so capriciously or because they are groping in the void; but because they have their eye on something which is really practical. But the practical which they are looking at is not Aesthetic, nor within Aesthetic; it is _outside and beside it_; and although they are often found united, they are not necessarily united, that is to say, by the bond of ident.i.ty of nature.

The aesthetic fact is altogether completed in the expressive elaboration of the impressions. When we have conquered the word within us, conceived definitely and vividly a figure or a statue, or found a musical motive, expression is born and is complete; there is no need for anything else.

If after this we should open our mouths and _will_ to open them, to speak, or our throats to sing, and declare in a loud voice and with extended throat what we have completely said or sung to ourselves; or if we should stretch out and _will_ to stretch out our hands to touch the notes of the piano, or to take up the brushes and the chisel, making thus in detail those movements which we have already done rapidly, and doing so in such a way as to leave more or less durable traces; this is all an addition, a fact which obeys quite different laws to the first, and with these laws we have not to occupy ourselves for the moment. Let us, however, here recognize that this second movement is a production of things, a _practical_ fact, or a fact of _will_. It is customary to distinguish the internal from the external work of art: the terminology seems here to be infelicitous, for the work of art (the aesthetic work) is always _internal_; and that which is called _external_ is no longer a work of art. Others distinguish between _aesthetic_ fact and _artistic_ fact, meaning by the second the external or practical stage, which may and generally does follow the first. But in this case, it is simply a case of linguistic usage, doubtless permissible, although perhaps not opportune.

[Sidenote] _Critique of the theory of the end of art and of the choice of the content._

For the same reasons the search for the _end of art_ is ridiculous, when it is understood of art as art. And since to fix an end is to choose, the theory that the content of art must be _selected_ is another form of the same error. A selection from among impressions and sensations implies that these are already expressions, otherwise, how can a selection be made among what is continuous and indistinct? To choose is to will: to will this and not to will that: and this and that must be before us, they must be expressed. Practice follows, it does not precede theory; expression is free inspiration.

The true artist, in fact, finds himself big with his theme, he knows not how; he feels the moment of birth drawing near, but he cannot will it or not will it. If he were to wish to act in opposition to his inspiration, to make an arbitrary choice, if, born Anacreon, he were to wish to sing of Atreus and of Alcides, his lyre would warn him of his mistake, echoing only of Venus and of Love, notwithstanding his efforts to the contrary.

[Sidenote] _Practical innocence of art._

The theme or content cannot, therefore, be practically or morally charged with epithets of praise or of blame. When critics of art remark that a theme is _badly selected_, in cases where that observation has a just foundation, it is a question of blaming, not the selection of the theme (which would be absurd), but the manner in which the artist has treated it. The expression has failed, owing to the contradictions which it contains. And when the same critics rebel against the theme or the content as being unworthy of art and blameworthy, in respect to works which they proclaim to be artistically perfect; if these expressions really are perfect, there is nothing to be done but to advise the critics to leave the artists in peace, for they cannot get inspiration, save from what has made an impression upon them. The critics should think rather of how they can effect changes in nature and in society, in order that those impressions may not exist. If ugliness were to vanish from the world, if universal virtue and felicity were established there, perhaps artists would no longer represent perverse or pessimistic sentiments, but sentiments that are calm, innocent, and joyous, like Arcadians of a real Arcady. But so long as ugliness and turpitude exist in nature and impose themselves on the artist, it is not possible to prevent the expression of these things also; and when it has arisen, _factum infectum fieri nequit_. We speak thus entirely from the aesthetic point of view, and from that of pure aesthetic criticism.

We do not delay to pa.s.s here in review the damage which the criticism of choice does to artistic production, with the prejudices which it produces or maintains among the artists themselves, and with the contrast which it occasions between artistic impulse and critical exigencies. It is true that sometimes it seems to do some good also, by a.s.sisting the artists to discover themselves, that is, their own impressions and their own inspiration, and to acquire consciousness of the task which is, as it were, imposed upon them by the historical moment in which they live, and by their individual temperament. In these cases, criticism of choice merely recognizes and aids the expressions which are already being formed. It believes itself to be the mother, where, at most, it is only the midwife.

[Sidenote] _The independence of art._

The impossibility of choice of content completes the theorem of the _independence of art_, and is also the only legitimate meaning of the expression: _art for art's sake_. Art is thus independent of science, as it is of the useful and the moral. Let it not be feared that thus may be justified art that is frivolous or cold, since that which is truly frivolous or cold is so because it has not been raised to expression; or in other words, frivolity and frigidity come always from the form of the aesthetic elaboration, from the lack of a content, not from the material qualities of the content.

[Sidenote] _Critique of the saying: the style is the man._

The saying: _the style is the man_, can also not be completely criticized, save by starting from the distinction between the theoretic and the practical, and from the theoretic character of the aesthetic activity. Man is not simply knowledge and contemplation: he is also will, which contains in it the cognoscitive moment. Now the saying is either altogether void, as when it is understood that the man is the style, in so far as he is style, that is to say, the man, but only in so far as he is an expression of activity; or it is erroneous, when the attempt is made to deduce from what a man has seen and expressed, that which he has done and willed, inferring thereby that there is a necessary link between knowing and willing. Many legends in the biographies of artists have sprung from this erroneous identification, since it seemed impossible that a man who gives expression to generous sentiments should not be a n.o.ble and generous man in practical life; or that the dramatist who gives a great many stabs in his plays, should not himself have given a few at least in real life. Vainly do the artists protest: _lasciva est n.o.bis pagina, vita proba_. They are merely taxed in addition with lying and hypocrisy. O you poor women of Verona, how far more subtle you were, when you founded your belief that Dante had really descended to h.e.l.l, upon his dusky countenance! Yours was at any rate a historical conjecture.

[Sidenote] _Critique of the concept of sincerity in art._

Finally, _sincerity_ imposed upon the artist as a duty (this law of ethics which, they say, is also a law of aesthetic) arises from another equivoke. For by sincerity is meant either the moral duty not to deceive one's neighbour; and in that case Is foreign to the artist. For he, in fact, deceives no one, since he gives form to what is already in his mind. He would deceive, only if he were to betray his duty as an artist by a lesser devotion to the intrinsic necessity of his task. If lies and deceit are in his mind, then the form which he gives to these things cannot be deceit or lies, precisely because it is aesthetic. The artist, if he be a charlatan, a liar, or a miscreant, purifies his other self by reflecting it in art. Or by sincerity is meant, fulness and truth of expression, and it is clear that this second sense has nothing to do with the ethical concept. The law, which is at once ethical and aesthetic, reveals itself in this case in a word employed alike by Ethic and Aesthetic.

VII

a.n.a.lOGY BETWEEN THE THEORETIC AND THE PRACTICAL

[Sidenote] _The two forms of practical activity._

The twofold grade of the theoretical activity, aesthetic and logical, has an important parallel in the practical activity, which has not yet been placed in due relief. The practical activity is also divided into a first and second degree, the second implying the first. The first practical degree is the simply _useful_ or _economical_ activity; the second the _moral_ activity.

Economy is, as it were, the Aesthetic of practical life; Morality its Logic.

[Sidenote] _The economically useful._

If this has not been clearly seen by philosophers; if its suitable place in the system of the mind has not been given to the economic activity, and it has been left to wander in the prolegomena to treatises on political economy, often uncertain and but slightly elaborated, this is due, among other reasons, to the fact that the useful or economic has been confused, now with the concept of _technique_, now with that of the _egoistic_.

[Sidenote] _Distinction between the useful and the technical._

_Technique_ is certainly not a special activity of the spirit.

Technique is knowledge; or better, it is knowledge itself, in general, that takes this name, as we have seen, in so far as it serves as basis for practical action. Knowledge which is not followed, or is presumed to be not easily followed by practical action, is called pure: the same knowledge, if effectively followed by action, is called applied; if it is presumed that it can be easily followed by the same action, it is called technical or applied. This word, then, indicates a _situation_ in which knowledge already is, or easily can be found, not a special form of knowledge. So true is this, that it would be altogether impossible to establish whether a given order of knowledge were, intrinsically, pure or applied. All knowledge, however abstract and philosophical one may imagine it to be, can be a guide to practical acts; a theoretical error in the ultimate principles of morals can be reflected and always is reflected in some way, in practical life. One can only speak roughly and unscientifically of truths that are pure and of others that are applied.

The same knowledge which is called technical, can also be called _useful_. But the word "useful," in conformity with the criticism of judgments of value made above, is to be understood as used here in a linguistic or metaphorical sense. When we say that water is useful for putting out fire, the word "useful" is used in a non-scientific sense.

Water thrown on the fire is the cause of its going out: this is the knowledge that serves for basis to the action, let us say, of firemen.

There is a link, not of nature, but of simple succession, between the useful action of the person who extinguishes the conflagration, and this knowledge. The technique of the effects of the water is the theoretical activity which precedes; the _action_ of him who extinguishes the fire is alone useful.

[Sidenote] _Distinction between the useful and the egoistic._

Some economists identify utility with _egosm_, that is to say, with merely economical action or desire, with that which is profitable to the individual, in so far as individual, without regard to and indeed in complete opposition to the moral law. The egoistic is the immoral. In this case Economy would be a very strange science, standing, not beside, but facing Ethic, like the devil facing G.o.d, or at least like the _advocatus diaboli_ in the processes of canonization. Such a conception of it is altogether inadmissible: the science of immorality is implied in that of morality, as the science of the false is implied in _Logic_, the science of the true, and a science of ineffectual expression in Aesthetic, the science of successful expression. If, then, Economy were the scientific treatment of egoism, it would be a chapter of Ethic, or Ethic itself; because every moral determination implies, at the same time, a negation of its contrary.

Further, conscience tells us that to conduct oneself economically is not to conduct oneself egoistically; that even the most morally scrupulous man must conduct himself usefully (economically), if he does not wish to be inconclusive and, therefore, not truly moral. If utility were egoism, how could it be the duty of the altruist to behave like an egoist?

[Sidenote] _Economic will and moral will._

If we are not mistaken, the difficulty is solved in a manner perfectly a.n.a.logous to that in which is solved the problem of the relations between the expression and the concept, between Aesthetic and Logic.

To will economically is to _will an end_; to will morally is to _will the rational end_. But whoever wills and acts morally, cannot but will and act usefully (economically). How could he will the _rational_, unless he willed it also _as his particular end_?

[Sidenote] _Pure economicity._

The reciprocal is not true; as it is not true in aesthetic science that the expressive fact must of necessity be linked with the logical fact.

It is possible to will economically without willing morally; and it is possible to conduct oneself with perfect economic coherence, while pursuing an end which is objectively irrational (immoral), or, better, an end which would be so judged in a superior grade of consciousness.

Examples of the economic, without the moral character, are the Prince of Machiavelli, Caesar Borgia, or the Iago of Shakespeare. Who can help admiring their strength of will, although their activity is only economic, and is opposed to what we hold moral? Who can help admiring the ser Ciappelletto of Boccaccio, who, even on his death-bed, pursues and realizes his ideal of the perfect rascal, making the small and timid little thieves who are present at his burlesque confession exclaim: "What manner of man is this, whose perversity, neither age, nor infirmity, nor the fear of death, which he sees at hand, nor the fear of G.o.d, before whose judgment-seat he must stand in a little while, have been able to remove, nor to cause that he should not wish to die as he has lived?"

[Sidenote] _The economic side of morality._

The moral man unites with the pertinacity and fearlessness of a Caesar Borgia, of an Iago, or of a ser Ciappelletto, the good will of the saint or of the hero. Or, better, good will would not be will, and consequently not good, if it did not possess, in addition to the side which makes it _good_, also that which makes it _will_. Thus a logical thought, which does not succeed in expressing itself, is not thought, but at the most, a confused presentiment of a thought yet to come.

It is not correct, then, to conceive of the amoral man as also the anti-economical man, or to make of morality an element of coherence in the acts of life, and therefore of economicity. Nothing prevents us from conceiving (an hypothesis which is verified at least during certain periods and moments, if not during whole lifetimes) a man altogether without moral conscience. In a man thus organized, what for us is immorality is not so for him, because it is not so felt. The consciousness of the contradiction between what is desired as a rational end and what is pursued egoistically cannot be born in him. This contradiction is anti-economicity. Immoral conduct becomes also anti-economical only in the man who possesses moral conscience. The moral remorse which is the proof of this, is also economical remorse; that is to say, pain at not having known how to will completely and to attain to that moral ideal which was willed at the first moment, but was afterwards perverted by the pa.s.sions. _Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor_. The _video_ and the _probo_ are here an initial will immediately contradicted and pa.s.sed over. In the man deprived of moral sense, we must admit a remorse which is _merely economic_; like that of a thief or of an a.s.sa.s.sin who should be attacked when on the point of robbing or of a.s.sa.s.sinating, and should abstain from doing so, not owing to a conversion of his being, but owing to his impressionability and bewilderment, or even owing to a momentary awakening of the moral consciousness. When he has come back to himself, that thief or a.s.sa.s.sin will regret and be ashamed of his inconsequence; his remorse will not be due to having done wrong, but to not having done it; his remorse is, therefore, economic, not moral, since the latter is excluded by hypothesis. However, a lively moral conscience is generally found among the majority of men, and its total absence is a rare and perhaps non-existent monstrosity. It may, therefore, be admitted, that morality coincides with economicity in the conduct of life.

[Sidenote] _The merely economic and the error of the morally indifferent._

There need be no fear lest the parallelism affirmed by us should introduce afresh into the category of the _morally indifferent_, of that which is in truth action and volition, but is neither moral nor immoral; the category in sum of the _licit_ and of the _permissible_, which has always been the cause or mirror of ethical corruption, as is the case with Jesuitical morality in which it dominated. It remains quite certain that indifferent moral actions do not exist, because moral activity pervades and must pervade every least volitional movement of man. But this, far from upsetting the parallelism, confirms it. Do there exist intuitions which science and the intellect do not pervade and a.n.a.lyse, resolving them into universal concepts, or changing them into historical affirmations? We have already seen that true science, philosophy, knows no external limits which bar its way, as happens with the so-called natural sciences. Science and morality entirely dominate, the one the aesthetic intuitions, the other the economic volitions of man, although neither of them can appear in the concrete, save in the intuitive form as regards the one, in the economic as regards the other.

[Sidenote] _Critique of utilitarianism and the reform of Ethic and of Economic._

This combined ident.i.ty and difference of the useful and of the moral, of the economic and of the ethic, explains the fortune enjoyed now and formerly by the utilitarian theory of Ethic. It is in fact easy to discover and to show a utilitarian side in every moral action; as it is easy to show an aesthetic side of every logical proposition. The criticism of ethical utilitarianism cannot escape by denying this truth and seeking out absurd and inexistent examples of _useless_ moral actions. It must admit the utilitarian side and explain it as the concrete form of morality, which consists of what is _within_ this form.

Utilitarians do not see this within. This is not the place for a more ample development of such ideas. Ethic and Economic cannot but be gainers, as we have said of Logic and Aesthetic, by a more exact determination of the relations that exist between them. Economic science is now rising to the animating concept of the useful, as it strives to pa.s.s beyond the mathematical phase, in which it is still entangled; a phase which, when it superseded historicism, was in its turn a progress, destroying a series of arbitrary distinctions and false theories of Economic, implied in the confusion of the theoretical with the historical. With this conception, it will be easy on the one hand to absorb and to verify the semi-philosophical theories of so-called pure economy, and on the other, by the introduction of successive complications and additions, and by pa.s.sing from the philosophical to the empirical or naturalistic method, to include the particular theories of the political or national economy of the schools.

[Sidenote] _Phenomenon and noumenon in practical activity._

As aesthetic intuition knows the phenomenon or nature, and philosophic intuition the noumenon or spirit; so economic activity wills the phenomenon or nature, and moral activity the noumenon or spirit. _The spirit which desires itself_, its true self, the universal which is in the empirical and finite spirit: that is the formula which perhaps defines the essence of morality with the least impropriety. This will for the true self is _absolute liberty_.