p The modifications made by Collingwood to Croce’s aesthetics, as well as his polemic with Croce are attributable not only to the influence of the English tradition and Gentile, but also to certain peculiarities of Collingwood as both a philosopher and a person. In the opinion of the Soviet historian of philosophy Alexei Bogomolov, Collingwood is the only one of the English bourgeois philosophers of the time who tried to connect philosophy and problems of political struggle and to define his position both in philosophy and in politics on this basis. As a “man of action”, tackling the problem of how “to make the world better”, he was impressed by Marx’s view that it is necessary to change, and not just explain, the world (6, 102). It is to precisely this progressive side of his worldview that we can attribute his promotion of the social function of art, of art for the “public”, for society, to primary place amongst the principles of art, and his criticism of the individualistic theory of art. It is true that neither the neoHegelian Croce nor Hegel himself had denied the importance 89 of the social role of art, but this function of the “use” of art was not included in the aesthetic essence of art. Collingwood made it such, this being an indubitable step forward which involved an entire series of “modifications” of Croce’s aesthetics.
p The essence of art, according to Collingwood, is in the expression of emotions. But the artist expresses those emotions which he shares with the public, and not those which are his own private emotions; he says what the public want to say, but are unable to do so without his aid. The artist’s job is a public one, he works for the sake of society. In this sense his relation to the public is not merely a by-product of his aesthetic experience but an integral part of this experience itself. This is somthing more than communication from the artist to the public, this is collaboration with his audience, with other artists and performers (7, 311-21).
p It follows from the above that in the case of aesthetic experience the presence of a physical perceptive work of art, that is to say of a “language” of art, is essential for the public. For only language, the material bearer of meaning, provides us with, as Marx and Engels pointed out, a practical, real awareness, which also exists for others and by virtue of this alone also exists for ourselves. Collingwood realises that, when he recognizes this necessity he must show the necessity of a physical work of art for the artist’s aesthetic experience as well, or else the identity of experience in both cases and its communication will be incomprehensible. How was he to resolve this -problem?
p Relying to a considerable extent on Croce’s aesthetics, Collingwood identifies three levels of experience: the psychic, the imaginative and the intellectual. The two latter are the two stages of awareness. In the resultative expression sensation (or impression) corresponds to the psychic level, ideas or images of imagination to the imaginative, the concepts to the intellect. Each level of experience contains emotion as a “charge”, an essential, but autonomous element. Psychic emotions and the emotions of consciousness are distinguished correspondingly, the latter functioning either as the 90 emotions of imagination or intellectual emotions. [90•1 Emotions of any level cannot exist without physical expression. There are no unexpressed emotions. Psychic expression corresponds to emotions of the psychic level. This is a non-arbitrary, unconscious physical act, necessarily connected with the “ expressed" emotion.
p The consciousness elevates psychic emotions to the level of emotions of the imagination, idealized emotions, to which imaginative expression corresponds. Such expression is not an automatism of the psycho-physical organism, but physical acts which are experienced in our self^awareness as an activity belonging to us and controlled by us. Physical acts which express certain emotions are language, insofar as they (the acts) are performed under our control and are perceived by us as our means of expressing these emotions. Thus language emerges alongside imagination as a feature of experience at the level of consciousness. In its natural, original state language is an imaginative-expressive activity, whose function is to express emotion, it is the motor side of the total imaginative experience. But language actually is art. Psychophysical activity, whose “charge” is emotion, is transformed into an activity of the organism controlled by the consciousness, and “this activity is language or art" (7, 225, 235, 247, 274). If we take, for example, painting, we will see in it two activities: vision (related to “knowledge” and not sensation) and decoration with colours. The first experience is inner, imaginative, and the second outer, or physical. These two activities are not identical, but indivisibly interconnected, and form a single, indivisible experience. We find no “ exteriorization" of inner experience here, the experience being achieved within itself and by itself.
p Thus Collingwood comes to the point of rejecting the most offensive aspect of Croce’s aesthetics, about the exclusively spiritual character of expression, language and art. What for Croce was outer “exteriorization” is included by Collingwood in the expression itself. This rejection is not surprising, and what is surprising is that he believes it possible that these 91 correct (although rather trivial) notions are compatible with Croce’s ideas, which we discussed in the previous paragraph. Collingwood claims that it does not follow from the necessity for a physical side to aesthetic activity that we should reject the fact that the work of art is not physical and perceptive, but is the product of our imagination. This is of course wrong, and such a rejection does necessarily follow. After all, Collingwood’s assertion that a work of art cannot be accomplished within itself and by itself independently of the physical process of expression is contradictory to his Crocean thesis that the work of art can be entirely created in the mind of the artist. [91•1
p As we have already stated, Collingwood was right when he wrote that if the physicality of the work of art is necessary for the public its necessity must also be proved for the artist. But this is still insufficient to explain the process of communication. Insofar as, according to Collingwood, emotion is communicated in the language proper of art, he should recognize that there is of necessity a certain similarity ( likeness, isomorphism) between idealized emotion and its physical expression in language and art, which makes possible the reproduction of a similar emotion during perception.
p As is known, Croce considered it futile to look for a transition from the spiritual to the physical, arguing that the physical side of language and art is heterogeneous with respect to its aesthetic essence. In contrast to Croce, Collingwood regarded physical expression in art and language a necessary factor of aesthetic activity itself. And nevertheless we will not find in his writings even a mention of the question of the similarity of expressed emotion and expression, to say nothing of an analysis of the character of this similarity or of the mechanism of the projection of this similarity to material and of its reproduction in the mind of the perceiver. Without an explanation of these processes Collingwood’s version of the process of communication (like Croce’s) is still to be explained.
p Croce counterposes the creative character of intuition-expression 92 to exteriorization as to technical activity, containing knowledge about the goal and the means of its attainment. As we have shown, this leads to an underestimation of the “technical” factor for spiritual acts of expression. Since Collingwood included exteriorization in expression, this led him to a metaphysical opposition of language and art, regarded in their physical aspect as well, to craft or the technical act, where we find a distinction between goal and means, planning and performance, content and form. These factors were now placed “beyond the brackets" not only of the spiritual creative act, but even beyond the bounds of exteriorization, and everything which contained them was declared without sufficient grounds to be elements of craft and not creation.
p Collingwood absolutizes the circumstance that the process of creating a work of art has a probability character, and is not strictly determined. Until the work is completed as a whole it is impossible to forecast, with any degree of certainty, its aesthetic state. But this does not in any way mean that some goals and intentions are not attained within certain limits of uncertainty, that is, something may be known in advance.
p The metaphysical opposition of language and art to craft, or technique, led Collingwood to the equally metaphysical opposition of “expression” to emotion and its “evocation”. An activity aimed at evoking a certain emotion with the aid of an artefact is, according to Collingwood, neither language nor art, but a “technical” act of emotional representation: evoking a feeling that reflects the feeling, evoked by the original.
p This view of Collingwood’s contradicts his view of art as communication and collaboration. If we proceed from this conception of his, the expression of emotion not only does not exclude, it actually of necessity demands the evocation of emotion. In actual fact to communicate an emotion is to evoke it (or one similar to it) in someone else, as Collingwood understands. If, by counterposing the expression of emotion to its evocation, Collingwood means that the latter necessarily takes place, but is not the goal the artist sets himself, there are insufficient grounds to support this assertion. Of 93 course, in the act of creation the artist may not set himself such a goal, but there are no grounds for the assertion that he is unable to do so. Collingwood’s critics correctly pointed out that the evocation of an emotion and its expression are not mutually exclusive, and Collingwood is hardly right when he insists that the artist’s activity is never an activity directed at the evocation of a specific emotional effect in the audience who are perceiving his work of art. It is in this precise point that Collingwood’s theory of art as language is in the last analysis untenable.
p The English philosopher also modifies Croce’s Aesthetics in the question of the interrelation of language and art with thought and intellect. Admittedly this modification reproduces to a large extent the changes made by Croce himself in the course of the evolution of his views.
p To get round the charge of anti-intellectualism Collingwood introduces two meanings of the term “thought”: a broad and a narrow sense. In the broad sense language is an activity of thought, a level of consciousness, of imagination, and in the narrow (=intellect) it is beneath this level. Language at the service of intellect is a product of its (language’s) later modification. It may seem that since art is the imaginative expression of emotion, then this secondary development of language is of no interest for aesthetics. Collingwood regards this view as mistaken. Although art never expresses thought as such, certain works of art express emotions which come into being as “charges” on the base of intellectual activity. And since the emotional life of the consciousness is much richer on the intellectual level than on the simple psychic level, it is natural that these higher levels should be the main source of the emotional content of works of art. Thought enters art and is translated into emotion, expressing what the artist experiences, the way he feels the ideas and thoughts which he has in his mind and which he thinks in a particular way.
p Like Croce in his later period Collingwood correctly endeavours to pinpoint the specific features of the expression of thought in art. He is right to try and see these features in the special connection of thought with emotions and the 94 imagination. What is questionable is his categorical and unfounded assertion that art never expresses thought as such, that it should be “diffused” in emotion. Correctly maintaining that the theory of art should investigate how languageand art-must be modified to express the emotions of intellectual activity Collingwood unfortunately goes no further than this statement, and does not himself undertake such an investigation. As in many other points of his theory of art he is inconsistent and self-contradictory in the question of the interrelation of art and thought. [94•1 In actual fact, to say that art as such contains nothing which it owes to the intellect, then to add that certain works of art may contain a lot which is owed to the intellect, and finally to admit that the emotional content of works of art is derived largely from emotions at the intellectual level is self-contradictory in the extreme.
p Collingwood failed to define the specifics of art in comparison with other types of intellectual activity. As Hospers correctly remarks, the English philosopher provides no criterion for the distinction between artistic creation and the creation of mathematics, scientific creation. Morris-Jones also mentions this, pointing out that Collingwood’s understanding of art subsumes a scientific argument, that it is too general to be of any use (20).
To sum up we can say that Collingwood’s attempt to free Crocean aesthetics of its inherent radical defects, caused by its idealistic and metaphysical basis while at the same time staying true to “the spirit and the principles" of this basis, resulted in total failure. In consequence a talented book, which contains a mass of fruitful discussions, fine and exact observations, was fraught with contradictions. His valid conception of the communicative and social essence of art thus could not fit in the idealistic construction of Croceanism. Collingwood’s philosophy of art did not after all take Croce’s conception a step forward, as Collingwood had hoped and attempted to do.
95p R. G. Collingwood unquestionably is amongst the major representatives of English early 20th century idealist aesthetics. A. Donagan, an English student of Collingwood’s work, asserts: “R. G. Collingwood ... is generally acknowledged to have contributed more to the philosophy of art and the philosophy of history than any other British philosopher of his time" (13, ix). In the opinion of the American philosopher M. E. Brown, concerned with the study of neo-Hegelian aesthetics (Croce, Gentile, Collingwood), Collingwood is the most important non-Italian proponent of neo-idealistic aesthetics (9 ,12). The Principles of Art is especially popular and highly acclaimed in the West. G. R. G. Mure regards this as probably the best modern book on aesthetics (21, 331). Opinions of this sort (many more of which could be quoted), including some expressed by scholars who criticized Collingwood’s conception of art as a whole from their own (as a rule, idealistic) positions, is evidence of the place occupied by Collingwood in modern western aesthetics and of his influence. The latter can be felt in the works of many aestheticians, including those of the semantic orientation (e.g., S. Langer).
What exactly is Collingwood’s position vis-a-vis modernism? Like his teacher Croce, Collingwood was subjectively opposed to content-less formalist art, bare eccentricity, “pure literature”, whose interest is directed not towards its content, but towards its “technical qualities”. Collingwood does not object to art “serving” politics, expressing political emotions, including “communistic sentiments" (7, 278-79, 330-31). He was right to state that the sincerity of the expression of feeling is a necessary condition for this. But the metaphysical dichotomy between the “expression” of feelings and “ converting others into them" leads to the false conclusion that any effort by the artist to affect people with his art, to convey to them his emotions may at best be good service to politics, but bad service to art (7, 286). The English philosopher’s erroneous thesis that art can be “good” and not turn into “ magic" only on condition the artist does not aim to affect 96 people can objectively lead to a negation of its important political and educational function in society. Objectively Collingwood’s aesthetics can and does serve the cause of theoretical substantiation of modernism. [96•1
Notes
[90•1] Collingwood gives a more differentiated classification of emotions in his work The New Leviathan (5, 75).
[91•1] Merle Brown’s statement is right that this contradiction is in Collingwood’s thinking rather than in his subject-matter (9, 215).
[94•1] Revealing the contradictory nature of Collingwood’s aesthetics M. E. Brown argues that it is his treatment of the relation of art to intellect which is most contradictory (9, 231).
[96•1] A. Hofstadter’s position is characteristic in this connection. Pointing to the connection between the aesthetics of Collingwood (as well as of Croce and Langer) and the flowering of expressionism, which culminated in abstract expressionism, and pointing out that in the period when Jackson Pollock and Arnold Schonberg were active Croce’s, Collingwood’s and Langer’s books were reprinted as bestsellers, Hofstadter makes a remarkable reservation. He warns that his statement should not be interpreted as a denigration of the value of their work. On the contrary, he sees in their analyses the “authenticity” of the living art-reality of his time (A. Hofstadter, Truth and Art). Thus, the theoretical “stimulation” of formalist art is regarded as a merit. It would indeed be hard to expect any different approach from a bourgeois theoretician.