Croce, Benedetto

Croce, Benedetto (b Pescasseroli, 25 Feb. 1866; d Naples, 20 Nov. 1952).
Italian philosopher, historian, critic, and statesman. Croce was regarded as the foremost Italian philosopher of the 20th century. His large literary output included a good deal about art, his views being set out most fully in his book Estetica come scienza dell'espressione e linguistica generale (1902; English translation, Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic, 1909). In this work he regards all art as a form of imaging—a conjuring into being of images of particulars—and considers that good art is successful expression of emotion. But Croce uses ‘expression’ in a special sense, as a synonym for ‘intuition’, and not in the usual sense that involves some form of external manifestation. His theories have been criticized partly on the ground of inherent confusion of concepts, more generally on the ground that his identification of art with the mental process of intuition/expression does less than justice to the problems of communicating an idea or intuition in concrete form—a work of art as understood in ordinary language. Nevertheless, because of his ‘attempt' to understand the distinction between representation and expression’, Croce has been described as ‘the founder of modern aesthetics’ (Oxford History of Western Philosophy, 2000). His other writings on aesthetics include the article on the subject in the 14th edition (1929) of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and many contributions to the journal La critica, which he founded in 1903 (in 1944 it became Quaderni della critica). He was briefly minister of education before Benito Mussolini came to power in 1922 and served in the government again in 1944, after Mussolini had been deposed; his staunch opposition to Fascism made him a symbol of liberty of thought and moral courage.