Crocean, Not Gricean

------------- JLS


I was doing this google with amazon, and come across a 'new' book by Avramides (I love her):

"A Crocean Examination of Language"

-- it seems it's a typo: she means "Gricean". But I'd love Anita to be serious about Benedetto.

Some commentary on the wiki open thing about this heavy-set philosopher:

"In 1883, an earthquake hit the village. His father and mother were killed". He survived.

You see how un-Gricean of you it is to be an Italian philosopher.

"Croce was seriously threatened by Mussolini's regime, and his library was raided by the fascist troopers."

Could they _read_?

"His complete work is spread over 80 books."

Eagle-spread. No Grice there ("Grice published no book").

The keyword to consider here is

"espressione", as used by Croce: The Gricean 'expression'. Grice hardly used "expression" in this pedantic sense, but I think Schiffer, and myself, did. "Expression meaning" versus "utterer's meaning" proper.

Born in the Abruzzo, Croce disliked the Neapolitan (dialect). He was NOT a pro writer since he didn't need to be one. With dad and mum dead at an early age he inherited good stuff and could just write when it pleased him. But when his Neapolitan friend, Giambattista Basile, sent him a copy for his library,

Lo cunto de li cunti

he felt a translation was perhaps required: "Racconto degli racconti" he boringly suggested.

Like Grice, Croce did not think 'meaning' was a topic for the natural sciences.

"Expression "can" be a topic for the natural sciences, though. Croce writes: ‘for instance in Darwin's enquiries into the expression of feeling in man and in the animals’ (PPH 265; cf. Aes. 21, 94–7).

My favourite book _EVER_ and cited by Wharton (alongside me) in "P & NVB".


Grice will sometimes drop the scare quotes in 'mean' (for things like "Those spots 'mean' measles), Croce never!

"‘expression’, albeit conscious, can rank as expression only by metaphorical licence when we appply it to a _cat_."

"nature" is just joked upon by Grice when he calls one type of 'usages' for 'mean' as to involve "nature" (his mean-N and mean-NN). Croce, on the other hand, too, perhaps too seriously, 'nature'. Etc. And thus he was troubled with 'natural' aspects of this or that.

Most Englishmen worth being so would have read Croce in Italian (if at all) but the Americans tr. it early enough: 1909:

1909 [1922]. Aesthetic: As science of expression and general linguistic, translated by Douglas Ainslie, New York: Noonday.

There is a later tr. 1992 by C. Lyas, the French structuralist -- and genius!

Bosanquet published -- with "Croce" in title -- for Mind. e.g.

Bosanquet, B., ‘Reply to Carr’, Mind XXIX (2), 212–15.

--- the fact that Grice lists "Bosanquet" (along with Wittgenstein and Wollaston) as "the most minor philosophers that ever existed" does not help.

"In 1883 Croce lost his family in an earthquake and he went to live with his uncle in Rome."

He should have stayed. Naples is _too_ hot.

Etc.

The issue for the Gricean is to "Grice" Croce -- rather than other. We are tired of Crocing of Gricings. Grice is right, Croce is wrong. Croce did not _see_. He took some dogmas for granted. His style was too dogmatic, and while he founded "Critica" he hardly was. He loved pets but was unable to grant a cat the expression to express, "I'm hungry". Etc. These are serious topics. The problem with voluntary control in either Grice or Croce need perhaps a good Freudian brushing. Croce was imprisoned in Latin and Italian; Grice in English. When are we publishing these things in Deutero-Esperanto.

Croce, as an Italian, like D'Annunzio, was enamoured with art and opera and literature, and disliked "logica" -- concetto puro. Espressione is language and thus "philosophy of language", for him, = aesthetics. He has interesting things to say about 'hedone' or pleasure in aesthetic, but his ideas on logical 'concetto' need also to be taken into account when Gricifying him. A monolingual Italian should do that: An Italian, if you find her, who can't speak English, so won't be corrupted by Grice!

---- Etc.