14

This essay attempts to read Benedetto Croce and Robert Brandom in parallel, through the centrality of the notion of expression in Croce’s aesthetics and Brandom’s semantics. After a first section which answers certain preliminary objections to this hermeneutical operation, the analysis is developed in two successive sections. First, the divergences and convergences between the two authors concerning the epistemological relevance of the concept of expression are identified. In both cases, the emphasis is on articulation as an indispensable characteristic of expression, and on the normativity that clearly distinguishes the expressive act from mere extrinsecation (“estrinsecazione”). Secondly, we focus on a social and political characteristic of the two authors that is explicitly non-elitist, and in which their relevance lies. The expressive act, in its aesthetic (Croce) and conceptual (Brandom) manifestations, effectively brings to light affective and cognitive structures which, through this act alone, become the common heritage of a shared feeling and thought.