The name is absent

The Breviary of Aesthetic 19
the blows that his adversary inflicts upon him, acquires new
strength through these very blows, and reaches the sighed-for
eminence, repulsing his adversary, and yet in his company.
Here I cannot do more than record in passing the importance
of the Aristotelian concept of mimesis (arising in opposition
to the Platonic condemnation of poetry), and the attempt
made by the same philosopher to distinguish poetry and his-
tory: a concept that was not sufficiently developed, and per-
haps not altogether mature in his mind, and therefore long
misunderstood, but which was yet to serve, after many cen-
turies, as the point of departure for modern æsthetie
thought. And I will mention in passing the ever-increasing
consciousness of the difference between logic and fancy, be-
tween judgment and taste, between intellect and genius,
which became ever more lively during the course of the sev-
enteenth century, and the solemn form which the contest
between Poetry and Metaphysic assumed in the "Scienza
Nuova” of Vico; and also the scholastic construction of an
Æsthetica, distinct from a Logica, as Gnoseologia inferior
and Scientia Cognitionis sensitivæ, in Baumgarten, who, how-
ever, remained involved in the Conceptualistic conception of
art, and did not carry out his project; and the Critique of
Kant directed against Baumgarten and all the Leibnitzians
and Wolffians, which made it clear that intuition is intuition
and not a “confused concept”; and romanticism, which per-
haps better developed the new idea of art, announced by
Vico, in its artistic criticism and in its histories than in its
systems; and, finally, tire criticism inaugurated in Italy by
Francesco de Santis, who caused art as pure form, or pure
intuition, to prevail over all utilitarianism, moralism, and
conceptualism (to adopt his vocabulary).

But doubt springs up at the feet of truth, “like a young

<<   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   >>

More intriguing information