The principles of artistic judgment did not have a particular scientific organization. This is because aesthetic judgment was confused either with logical or with moral judgment, or was allowed to disappear in mystical soaring, or made trivial in technical empiricism. With the aim of finding principles of judgment, critics have turned to aesthetic heresies and arrived at good concrete judgment through an attempt at adjustment between principles and intuitions. The autonomy of art has been recognized and made to consist in a spiritual activity, a creative activity and not imitative, distinct from logical activity. To logical activity belongs the rational activity, as to the aesthetic belongs imaginative or intuitive activity. What is called beauty, when it is not an object of the senses only, is the perfection of art. |
