Benedetto Croce (1866-1952) was one of the most important Italian philosophers since the 18th century, and it is his work in aesthetics that is most widely known. You are reading three short chapters from a book, Aesthetic, that was originally published in 1902; the Hofstadter and Kuhns anthology contains a later presentation of his views, an article published in the Encyclopedia Britannica (1929). (The course Moodle site also has a series of lectures, The Essence of Aesthetic, that falls between the two in date and length.)
Although Croce was influenced by Hegel, that is probably not very apparent in what you will read. A closer connection is with R. G. Collingwood (1889-1943), who translated Croce’s text for the encyclopedia article and who is well known in his own right as a philosopher. Their views on art are close enough that people sometimes speak of a “Croce-Collingwood” theory, and we will be looking at a critical discussion of their shared position next time.
• Croce’s first chapter has two key points. The first is the characterization of what Croce calls “intuition” by distinguishing it from intellectual or conceptual knowledge on the one hand and mere sensation of the other. The second point is his identification of intuition in this sense with what he calls “expression.” Since both of these are technical terms, it would be possible to understand the identity intuition = expression to be a stipulation of what “expression” means, so ask yourself whether the identity might do more, in particular whether it might help to characterize intuition. The idea of a “lyrical image” that is presented in the first section of the encyclopedia article (HK 556-558) is a later, more positive way of presenting this idea; the identity of intuition and expression is also stated in a brief later section of that article (HK 565-566).
• The second chapter makes the connection between intuition and art explicit, but it is largely devoted to rejections of alternative ways of characterizing art. One section of the encyclopedia article (HK 559-561) makes analogous points, but with regard to a different set of characterizations. (Some of these appear in chapters of Aesthetic that I haven’t assigned and others overlap arguments in ch. XV of Aesthetic.)
• Chapter XV is Croce’s account of the works of art or art objects by way of the idea of “externalization.” He refers to communication only in passing in the first paragraph of this chapter; but, in the encyclopedia article, Croce’s key points about externalization appear as a distinction between intuition or expression on the one hand and communication on the other (HK 566-567). In both cases, he goes on to claim that issues concerning technique are beside the point of art as such.
Think about the relation between the views of Croce and Tolstoy. From some points of view, they can seem quite different while, from others, than can seem rather similar. How distant or close do their views seem to you on the whole?