p As is the case with Croce, Collingwood’s later aesthetics has a philosophical character (22) and is in fact a philosophy of art. Art, according to Collingwood, is a form of experience, of cognition (to be more precise, of self-cognition of the mind), which is realised with the help of the imagination, which corresponds to Croce’s intuition. In true Crocean spirit he regards his theory of the imagination as the basis for his theory of aesthetic experience. Art is the activity of the imagination, indivisibly connected with the activity of expression. By combining within itself these two features art becomes identical to language. Language is not identified with speech, but is taken in a broad sense as the purely physical emotion converted by the act of consciousness (7, 273, 274).
85p In accordance with Croce’s position set out in The Breviary ot Aesthetics (1913), where the essence of art is seen in lyrical intuition, expressing a feeling, Collingwood maintains that the essence of language and art consists in the expression of emotion (7, 273). Croce and Collingwood display a common tendency to see aesthetic experience as essentially expression, or symbolism, of feeling, and to connect it as such with all use of language and other symbolism. The expression of emotions should be distinguished from the “psychological expression" of emotions (or, as Croce puts it, “naturalistic”), which is non-arbitrary, unconscious, and connected with the emotions by a necessary link. Art and language proper should also be distinguished from symbolism or “intellectualized” language. A symbol is something arrived at by agreement and accepted by the parties to the agreement as valid for a certain purpose. These characteristics do not apply to art and language proper (7, 225-26).
p For a correct understanding of art and language it is essential to characterize them as activities of the creative process. Language, interpreted as the product of such activity, is a metaphysical fiction. The division into words and parts of speech is thought up in the course of analysis. Each word is accomplished only once in speech, and thus the meanings of words, the relations of synonymy are fictitious essences. The words and sentences are idioms, and imply something personal and private, which contains a protest against its use by society. Grammar has a use, but it is practical and not theoretical.
p Like language art does not tolerate cliches, and every genuine expression must be an original one. The artistic activity does not “use” a “ready-made language”, but “creates” it. It is only possible to use “by-products” (ready-made words, phrases, types of pictorial and sculptural form, etc.) and the habits of artistic activity, but this use is inherent not in art proper, but in a pseudo-aesthetic activity (7, 275-76).
p Insofar as Collingwood follows Croce’s principles in characterizing language and art as individual creative activity it is possible to level the same criticisms at him as at his teacher. These include an accusation of subjectivism and 86 psychologism, of linguistic and aesthetic nominalism, and idealistic relativism.
p Collingwood also preserved Croce’s most dubious notion, about the exclusively ideal character of the work of art, amongst his principles of art. There is no necessity, he argues, for the work of art to be a real thing, it can be imaginary. A work of art can be entirely created within the mind of the artist. Thus, a musical work need not be something audible, but can exist solely in the mind of the musician as something imaginary (an imaginary experience of total activity) (7, 151). Like Croce, in this respect Collingwood considers the hedonistic view of art as sensory pleasure insubstantial. The material aspect of a work of art, as, for example, the sound in music heard by the audience, is not music at all, but merely the means by which the audience reconstruct for themselves the imagined melody which exists in the composer’s mind.
p Pointing to the Crocean sources of this view, Collingwood’s commentators have correctly shown its openly idealistic and subjective character (14, 196). Moreover, this view is in clear contradiction to other important views of his theory of art, which we shall be discussing below.
p Just as Croce (following Vice’s lead) had excluded intuition from the intellectual forms of knowledge and proclaimed it primal and autonomous with respect to intellect, Collingwood characterizes imagination in exactly the same metaphysical way. Correspondingly language and art acquire an alogical, extra-intellectual character. Language and art, together with imaginative experience as such stand outside the intellect and beneath it. In their original essence they express emotions, and not thoughts. Only subsequently is language modified and does it acquire the “secondary” function of the expression of thought. Art, however, never expresses thought as such (7, 252).
p Just as with Croce, here we can see how the correct tendency to resist the intellectualization of language and art turns into anti-intellectualism, alogism and the metaphysical isolation of linguistic and artistic activity from the intellect. As A. Hofstadter correctly points out, Collingwood, 87 by distinguishing its intellectual and emotional aspects, arbitrarily identifies language with the expression of emotion. His similar identification with respect to art has the same arbitrary character.
p A further development (with certain modifications) of the Crocean classification of expressions and his distinction between poetry and non-poetry, of art and pseudo-arts is given by Collingwood’s theory of the so-called arts, which are incorrectly designated by this term. Collingwood regards the expression of emotions as the only goal connected with the essence of art. All other goals which can be attained with the help of art he characterizes as utilitarian, lying outside art and relating to the sphere of the use of art. In this connection Collingwood criticizes the “stimulus-reaction” theory, developed by psychologists. According to this theory a work of art is an artefact serving as the means towards the realisation of a goal which lies outside it. Such goals might be the desire to evoke certain emotions, or intellectual activity and actions. Collingwood believes that if art serves the attainment of the goals indicated above and not the expression of emotions we are dealing not with art proper, but with pseudo-arts, of which he counts six.
p First, there is “art” as entertainment which evokes emotions for their own sake, as an experience providing pleasure. Entertaining art is characterized by “illusion”, “game”, but it is at the same time utilitarian. Examples of this pseudoart are pornography, horror stories, detective stories.
p Secondly, “art” as magic, evoking emotions for their practical value in life. As examples of magic types of “art” we can take religious and patriotic “art”, the music of military and dance bands, etc. Their primary function is not aesthetic, but the generation of specific emotions.
p The remaining four kinds of pseudo-art are: “art” as a puzzle, in which the intellectual faculties are stimulated for the sake of their exercise, “art” as instruction, in which they are stimulated to learn some thing or other, “art” as advertizing (or propaganda), and “art” as a sermon, in which practical activity is stimulated as something useful or proper.
88p Collingwood’s classification of the pseudo-arts reproduces the corresponding classification of Croce’s with certain minor, insubstantial changes. In his approach to the problem of the specific features of art Croce tried metaphysically to isolate art as a theoretical, autonomous, and totally free activity from everything practical and socially conditioned. Collingwood did not share this tendency, yet neither was he able to avoid the metaphysical nature of Croce’s approach to the specifics of arts, as the critics have pointed out.
p The problem of beauty is approached by Collingwood entirely in the spirit of Croce’s subjectivism. Beauty is not an objective property, but the subjective quality of an act of expression, or an aesthetic emotion. The rejection of the objectivity of beauty leads to the rejection of aesthetics as a theory of beauty (7, 36-41,115-17).
All the above bears out the truth of the assertion that Collingwood remained true to “the spirit and the principles" of Croce’s aesthetics-the principles of neo-Hegelian idealism and metaphysics.
Notes