XVI Taste and the Reproduction of Art
Aesthetic judgment. Its identity with aesthetic reproduction— Impossibility of divergences—Identity of taste and genius—Analogy with the other activities—Critique of absolutism (intellectualism) and of aesthetic relativism—Critique of relative relativism—Objections founded on the variation of the stimulus and of the psychic disposition— Critique of the distinction of signs as natural and conventional—The surmounting of variety—Restorations and historical interpretation.
XVII — The History of Literature and of Art
Historical criticism in literature and art. Its importance—Artistic and literary history. Its distinction from historical criticism and from the aesthetic judgment—The method of artistic and literary history—Critique of the problem of the origin of art—The criterion of progress and history—Inexistence of a single line of progress in artistic and literary history—Errors in respect of this law—Other meanings of the word “progress” in relation to Aesthetic.
XVIII — Conclusion: Identity of Linguistic and Aesthetic
Summary of the inquiry—Identity of Linguistic with Aesthetic— Aesthetic formulation of linguistic problems. Nature of language— Origin of language and its development—Relation between Grammatic and Logic—Grammatical categories or parts of speech—Individuality of speech and the classification of languages—Impossibility of a normative Grammatic—Didactic organisms—Elementary linguistic elements, or roots—The aesthetic judgment and the model language— Conclusion.
Historical Summary
Aesthetic ideas in Graeco-Roman antiquity—In the Middle Age and at the Renaissance—Fermentation of thought in the seventeenth century—Aesthetic ideas in Cartesianism, Leibnitzianism, and in the “Aesthetic” of Baumgarten—G.B. Vico—Aesthetic doctrines in the eighteenth century—Emmanuel Kant—The Aesthetic of Idealism with Schiller and Hegel—Schopenhauer and Herbart—Friedrich Schleiermacher—The philosophy of language with Humboldt and Steinthal—Aesthetic in France, England, and Italy during the first half of the nineteenth century—Francesco de Sanctis—The Aesthetic of the epigoni—Positivism and aesthetic naturalism—Aesthetic psychologism and other recent tendencies—Glance at the history of certain particular doctrines—Conclusion.
Appendix
Translation of the lecture on Pure Intuition and the lyrical nature of art, delivered by Benedetto Croce before the International Congress of Philosophy at Heidelberg.