Dillon Wallace - "Left on the Labrador"

Alexis de Tocqueville - "American Institutions And Their Influence"

Richard Jefferies - "Round About a Great Estate"

Charles Felton Pidgin - "The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic

B >> Benedetto Croce >> Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic




But precisely because syllogistic is the art of exposing and of
debating, its theory cannot hold the first place in a philosophical
Logic, usurping that belonging to the doctrine of the concept, which is
the central and dominating doctrine, to which is reduced everything
logical in syllogistic, without leaving a residuum (relations of
concepts, subordination, co-ordination, identification, and so on). Nor
must it ever be forgotten that the concept, the (logical) judgment, and
the syllogism do not occupy the same position. The first alone is the
logical fact, the second and third are the forms in which the first
manifests itself. These, in so far as they are forms, cannot be examined
save aesthetically (grammatically); in so far as they possess logical
content, only by neglecting the forms themselves and passing to the
doctrine of the concept.

[Sidenote] _False Logic and true Aesthetic._

This shows the truth of the ordinary remark to the effect that he who
reasons ill, also speaks and writes ill, that exact logical analysis is
the basis of good expression. This truth is a tautology, for to reason
well is in fact to express oneself well, because the expression is the
intuitive possession of one's own logical thought. The principle of
contradiction, itself, is at bottom nothing but the aesthetic principle
of coherence. It will be said that starting from erroneous concepts it
is possible to write and to speak exceedingly well, as it is also
possible to reason well; that some who are dull at research may yet be
most limpid writers. That is precisely because to write well depends
upon having a clear intuition of one's own thought, even if it be
erroneous; that is to say, not of its scientific, but of its aesthetic
truth, since it is this truth itself. A philosopher like Schopenhauer
can imagine that art is a representation of the Platonic ideas. This
doctrine is absolutely false scientifically, yet he may develop this
false knowledge in excellent prose, aesthetically most true. But we have
already replied to these objections, when we observed that at that
precise point where a speaker or a writer enunciates an ill-thought
concept, he is at the same time speaking ill and writing ill. He may,
however, afterwards recover himself in the many other parts of his
thought, which consist of true propositions, not connected with the
preceding errors, and lucid expressions may with him follow upon turbid
expressions.

[Sidenote] _Logic reformed._

All enquiries as to the forms of judgments and of syllogisms, on their
conversion and on their various relations, which still encumber
treatises on Logic, are therefore destined to become less, to be
transformed, to be reduced to something else.

The doctrine of the concept and of the organism of the concepts, of
definition, of system, of philosophy, and of the various sciences, and
the like, will fill the place of these and will constitute the only true
and proper Logic.

Those who first had some suspicion of the intimate connexion between
Aesthetic and Logic and conceived Aesthetic as a _Logic of sensible
knowledge_, were strangely addicted to applying logical categories to
the new knowledge, talking of _aesthetic concepts, aesthetic judgments,
aesthetic syllogisms_, and so on. We are less superstitious as regards
the solidity of the traditional Logic of the schools, and better
informed as to the nature of Aesthetic. We do not recommend the
application of Logic to Aesthetic, but the liberation of Logic from
aesthetic forms. These have given rise to non-existent forms or
categories of Logic, due to the following of altogether arbitrary and
crude distinctions.

Logic thus reformed will always be _formal_ Logic; it will study the
true form or activity of thought, the concept, excluding single and
particular concepts. The old Logic is ill called formal; it were better
to call it _verbal_ or _formalistic_. Formal Logic will drive out
formalistic Logic. To attain this object, it will not be necessary to
have recourse, as some have done, to a real or material Logic, which is
not a science of thought, but thought itself in the act; not only a
Logic, but the complex of Philosophy, in which Logic also is included.
The science of thought (Logic) is that of the concept, as that of fancy
(Aesthetic) is the science of expression. The well-being of both
sciences lies in exactly following in every particular the distinction
between the two domains.




VI

THEORETIC AND PRACTICAL ACTIVITY


The intuitive and intellective forms exhaust, as we have said, all the
theoretic form of the spirit. But it is not possible to know them
thoroughly, nor to criticize another series of erroneous aesthetic
theories, without first establishing clearly their relations with
another form of the spirit, which is the _practical_ form.

[Sidenote] _The will._

This form or practical activity is the _will_. We do not employ this
word here in the sense of any philosophical system, in which the will is
the foundation of the universe, the principle of things and the true
reality. Nor do we employ it in the ample sense of other systems, which
understand by will the energy of the spirit, the spirit or activity in
general, making of every act of the human spirit an act of will. Neither
such metaphysical nor such metaphorical meaning is ours. For us, the
will is, as generally accepted, that activity of the spirit, which
differs from the mere theoretical contemplation of things, and is
productive, not of knowledge, but of actions. Action is really action,
in so far as it is voluntary. It is not necessary to remark that in the
will to do, is included, in the scientific sense, also what is vulgarly
called not-doing: the will to resist, to reject, the prometheutic will,
is also action.

[Sidenote] _The will as an ulterior stage in respect to knowledge._

Man understands things with the theoretical form, with the practical
form he changes them; with the one he appropriates the universe, with
the other he creates it. But the first form is the basis of the second;
and the relation of _double degree_, which we have already found
existing between aesthetic and logical activity, is repeated between
these two on a larger scale. Knowledge independent of the will is
thinkable; will independent of knowledge is unthinkable. Blind will is
not will; true will has eyes.

How can we will, without having before us historical intuitions
(perceptions) of objects, and knowledge of (logical) relations, which
enlighten us as to the nature of those objects? How can we really will,
if we do not know the world which surrounds us, and the manner of
changing things by acting upon them?

[Sidenote] _Objections and elucidations._

It has been objected that men of action, practical men in the eminent
sense, are the least disposed to contemplate and to theorize: their
energy is not delayed in contemplation, it rushes at once into will. And
conversely, that contemplative men, philosophers, are often very
mediocre in practical matters, weak willed, and therefore neglected and
thrust aside in the tumult of life. It is easy to see that these
distinctions are merely empirical and quantitative. Certainly, the
practical man has no need of a philosophical system in order to act, but
in the spheres where he does act, he starts from intuitions and concepts
which are most clear to him. Otherwise he could not will the most
ordinary actions. It would not be possible to will to feed oneself, for
instance, without knowledge of the food, and of the link of cause and
effect between certain movements and certain organic sensations. Rising
gradually to the more complex forms of action, for example to the
political, how could we will anything politically good or bad, without
knowing the real conditions of society, and consequently the means and
expedients to be adopted? When the practical man feels himself in the
dark about one or more of these points, or when he is seized with doubt,
action either does not begin or stops. It is then that the theoretical
moment, which in the rapid succession of human actions is hardly noticed
and rapidly forgotten, becomes important and occupies consciousness for
a longer time. And if this moment be prolonged, then the practical man
may become Hamlet, divided between desire for action and his small
amount of theoretical clarity as regards the situation and the means to
be employed. And if he develop a taste for contemplation and discovery,
and leave willing and acting, to a more or less great extent, to others,
there is formed in him the calm disposition of the artist, of the man of
science, or of the philosopher, who are sometimes unpractical or
altogether blameworthy. These observations are all obvious. Their
exactitude cannot be denied. Let us, however, repeat that they are
founded on quantitative distinctions and do not disprove, but confirm
the fact that an action, however slight it be, cannot really be an
action, that is, an action that is willed, unless it be preceded by
cognoscitive activity.

[Sidenote] _Critique of practical judgments or judgments of value._

Some psychologists, on the other hand, place before practical action an
altogether special class 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
analyses 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, assuming 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 identity 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 pass 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
assisting 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 noble 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 nobis 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 hell, 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

ANALOGY 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 _egoism_, 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 God, 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
analogous 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.

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