Part 11

Croce's interest in such couples of opposites as those that we have mentioned is very far from being as keen as Hegel's. Their dialectic solution into single concepts is implicit in every phase of Croce's philosophy. This can best be seen in the constant interchange of such words as spirit and reality; each of them, when taken by itself, a pure, formal spirit, and a pure, material reality, are meaningless, while, once they have been correlated, both indicate the same concept, the spirit perpetually realizing itself in the concreteness of life: a formula which contains the whole of Croce's immanentism. But within the distinctions of the concept, the dialectic process is constantly applied by Croce to such oppositions as those of good and evil, true and false, beautiful and ugly, which are nothing but the double aspect, affirmative and negative, respectively, of the concepts of goodness, and truth, and beauty. We need only recall what we have said of Croce's conception of æsthetic value, and of value in general. The dialectic process is the logical structure of Croce's concept of value. The positive element of each concept is the only real one, and a negative judgment of value is not a purely logical judgment, but a statement to which is added the expression of a desire or of an exigency. If we say: A is immoral, we mean: A follows his own immediate pleasure (a logical statement), and also: A ought to follow a higher end (the expression of a desire). A positive judgment of value, on the other hand, coincides entirely with a logical judgment, or a statement of fact. The opposition of value to fact is of the same kind as that of spirit to reality; verbal and apparent and not logical and real. The underlying reality of the opposition can be grasped only through the distinction; what in the opposition is a negative and therefore a mere abstraction can never be anything but a positive value of another order, a distinct form of activity. The action that we have judged as morally evil, if it is an action at all, belongs to the economic order, is economically rational, directed towards a particular end which confers on it its particular value; and the same applies to all the other categories of reality, in which error and evil cannot be introduced except by the substitution of one form for the other. It is impossible to distinguish a concept from its opposite as two concepts; but when a distinction is introduced, the opposition loses its negative character, and identifies itself with a distinct but positive value. Error and evil as such are never present except in the act that transcends them, in the conscience that, realizing itself in a higher sphere, turns against them and condemns them. It is superfluous to point to the importance that this process lends to the distinctions themselves, which are now seen at last not as mere logical instruments, but as the actual differentiations of reality, the necessary conditions of all life and progress.

The concept does not exist outside its verbal expression, but the relation between logical thought and language, because of the purely æsthetic or intuitive nature of language, is not of the rigorous character which is postulated by the Aristotelian logician, and, in more recent times, by the student of symbolic logic, who both assume language to be an essentially logical function. It would be impossible for Croce to fall into that extreme of idealism which is the common vice of the verbal realist, for whom propositions, judgments, or syllogisms have a kind of absolute reality of their own, independent of the mind that thinks them. It may seem paradoxical to assert that nowhere is Croce's realism more apparent than in his treatment of the verbal forms of the concept; and yet his criticism of the old logical principles and forms, running parallel to that of the rhetorical categories and genres in the field of æsthetics, allows him to reach the actual workings of the logical activity with much greater intimacy than is possible through any kind of formalistic logic.

The logical judgment, or concept, appears in two main forms: the definition, and the individual judgment. In the definition, the subject is one with the predicate, both being universal; in the individual judgment, the subject is an individual, the predicate a universal. "The intuition is the æsthetic form of the spirit," is a definition; "The _Divine Comedy_ is poetry," is an individual judgment. The individual judgment is one with the perception, or perceptive judgment, with the historical judgment, and, for the reason given before, with the positive judgment of value; it is the last and most perfect form of knowledge. But the distinction between the definition and the individual judgment is not an ultimate and irreducible one. The concrete logical act is always an individual judgment, that is, the affirmation of the unity of the individual and the universal in relation to a particular subject; and every definition is an individual judgment inasmuch as it cannot be but the solution of a particular problem, individually and historically determined. The particular problem, the group of facts, from which a particular definition arises, is the individual subject of which the definition predicates the concept. This identification of the definition and the individual judgment disposes of the familiar distinctions of formal and material truths, of truths of reason and of fact, and of analytical and synthetical judgments; which all are reduced to mere abstractions, partial aspects of the only logical act, consisting in the thinking of the pure concept, as a concrete universal.

The practical imitations of the concept, or pseudo-concepts, also may appear in the double form of definitions and individual judgments. From the empirical concepts we can form empirical judgments, which consist in the inclusion of an individual subject within a class or type, and therefore can also be called classificatory judgments. From the abstract concepts, the passage to the individual subject cannot be effected without the intervention of an empirical concept, that is, without a previous reduction of the individual subjects to classes and types: this reduction enables us to form empirico-abstract judgments, or judgments of numeration and mensuration. The function of these judgments is, as that of the concepts with which they are related, not theoretical, but practical: to classify or to enumerate is not the same as to understand, though they are both essential operations of the human mind. The corresponding judgments are therefore called by Croce pseudo-judgments, or practical imitations of the individual judgment.

The reduction of the pure concept to the individual judgment is the fundamental innovation of Croce's logic. It entirely disposes of any form of transcendental thought, of an Absolute or a Universal as some beyond and above reality, and therefore of the last remnants of metaphysics in philosophy. It means, translated into terms of common language, that there is no thought outside the thinking of individual minds, individually, that is, historically determined; and, conversely, that there is no reality outside the reality of thought, since the postulation of an external reality is nothing but one more act of thought. In the light of this doctrine, the relation between the intuition and the concept, between æsthetic and logical knowledge, can be restated by saying that while the intuition is the autonomous, creative mental act, by which the individual is known as individual, the concept is the autonomous, creative mental act, by which the individual is known as universal, that is, not simply known, but understood. Since Kant, an autonomous creative act of the human mind has received in modern philosophy the name of _a priori_ synthesis, a synthesis which cannot be resolved into its components, or material elements, because its form, and therefore its true being, cannot be traced in them, but is imposed on them by the mind. Croce's intuition is an æsthetic _a priori_ synthesis, through which the obscure psychic material rises to the light of consciousness; his concept, a logical _a priori_ synthesis, in which the intuition is no longer form, but matter, subject to a new form which is judgment and reason. The _a priori_ synthesis is thus employed by Croce as the peculiar dialectic process of the distinctions of the concept, the rigorous logical form of the double-grade relation between the individual and the universal, between intuition and concept, between knowledge and action, and, as we shall see in his philosophy of the practical, between the economic and the ethical will. It is, however, not a mere logical form, or rather, it is a logical form, because it is the actual process of the spirit, which cannot either know or act except by forming a priori syntheses (æsthetic or logical, economic or ethical), that is, by constantly re-creating itself and its own reality and values.

[Footnote 1: See _Logica_, part i, "Il concetto puro," etc., pp. 1-170.]

VI. THE FORMS OF KNOWLEDGE[1]

The elementary forms of knowledge--Philosophy as the pure concept-- Development of Croce's theory of history--The identity of history and philosophy--Subjectivity and objectivity--Distinctions and divisions of history--The historical determination of philosophy--The economic theory of science--The natural sciences--History and science--The naturalistic method and the concept of nature--Mathematical processes.

The result of Croce's inquiry into the forms of man's theoretical activity can be summed up by saying that there are two pure theoretical forms, the intuition and the concept, of which the second can be subdivided for convenience' sake into the definition and the individual judgment; and two modes of the practical elaboration of knowledge, the empirical concept and the abstract concept, from which are derived the classificatory judgment and the judgment of numeration. Already in æsthetics we have found no rigorous criterion of distinction between the general intuitive activity of man, as it manifests itself in language, and those empirically constituted bodies of particular intuitions, which we call Poetry and the Arts: every man is a poet and an artist, though we reserve these names only for those among ourselves in whom the æsthetic activity manifests itself in a higher degree, dominates the whole life of the individual spirit. The concept and the pseudo-concepts are also elementary, fundamental forms of knowledge, of which all men partake: every man, as he is a poet, is also a philosopher and an historian, a scientist and a mathematician: but, again, we reserve these names only for the most conspicuous manifestations of those common spiritual activities, and form the empirical concepts of Philosophy and History, of Science and Mathematics. We may speak of vulgar knowledge and of pure or scientific knowledge, but only by approximation and without forgetting that the only claim to rationality and intelligibility on the part of pure knowledge lies in its relationship with the elementary forms, in the same way as Poetry owes its power and beauty to the language in which it spreads its roots. A particular treatment of these higher degrees of knowledge is not, therefore, logically justified; the problems that they present are the same that have been met with in the general discussion of the theoretical activity, and all they will have to offer will be but a confirmation, and in some points a clarification, of what has already been said.

As Art is intuition, so Philosophy is the pure concept: it is easy to see that all the formal definitions of Philosophy that have ever been given, as science of the first principles, of the ultimate causes, of the origins of things, of norms, of values, of categories, are mere verbal variants of the pure concept. Even the most materialistic and realistic philosophies, since matter itself or nature or reality are assumed by them as principles of universal validity, as concepts or ideas, fall within the limits of this definition. In this sense there is no philosophy which is not idealistic: the differences between one philosophy and another are nothing but differences in the elaboration of the pure concept. What follows from this identification cation of philosophy with the pure concept is that all philosophies are, of necessity, systematic, inasmuch as it is impossible to think the pure concept as a singular or particular one, outside its relations with the whole. This systematic character belongs to every philosophical proposition, and not only to the actual systems of philosophy: the solution of every particular philosophical problem implies a vision of that problem in its universality, that is, in the system. We are constantly reminded of this exigency by the fact that a new and original elaboration of particular problems does actually react on the whole of our thought; and that we are often compelled to revise our fundamental opinions by the discovery of a difficulty which at first presents itself in one sphere of thought only.

Of such a process, the whole of Croce's philosophy is a continuous exemplification, but nowhere so clearly apparent as in the progress of his conception of history. His first step had been that of reducing history to the general concept of art, thereby emphasizing the concreteness and individuality of history, as opposed to the abstractness of the natural sciences, the concepts of which, in that early stage, he could not yet distinguish from those of philosophy. In the _Estetica_ the conception is still practically the same, history resulting from the intersection of art and philosophy through the application of the predicate of existence to the intuitive material. In his first _Lineamenti di Logica_, history appears as the ultimate product of the theoretical spirit, "the sea to which the river of art flowed, swollen by the waters of the river of philosophy." But in the same _Lineamenti_ he had not yet arrived at the identification of the definition and the individual judgment, which in his second _Logica_ constitutes the final form of the pure concept, Croce's original interpretation of Kant's _a priori_ synthesis. Between the first and the second _Logica_, Croce wrote his _Filosofia della pratica_, in which he denied the duality of intention and action, as in the _Estetica_ he had denied the duality of intuition and expression: an intention which was not also an action appeared to him, as we shall see, inconceivable. It was by analogy with his treatment of this duality, that he solved the duality between the concept (in the sense of definition) and the individual judgment, which was also a duality of philosophy as antecedent and history as consequent, as he perceived that a concept which is not at the same time a judgment of the particular is as unreal as an intention which is not at the same time an action.

These are the successive steps by which Croce reached his doctrine of the identity of history and philosophy, one of the most discussed and of the least understood among his theories. We shall come back to it later. But a few more hints on its meaning can already be given here. It is clear that by introducing the predicate of existence as essential to history Croce had already abandoned the conception of history as pure, that is, non-logical, non-intellectualized intuition: but the predicate of existence is insufficient to form a judgment, without the addition of the other predicates, that is, of the whole concept. The predicate of existence can only tell us that something exists, but not what it is, that exists: the determination of the singular, in its relations with the particular and the universal, is implicit in the historical judgment, even when it is not openly enunciated. Such judgments as: This thing is, or has been, seem to present the proper form of the historical judgment; no other predicates than that of existence are here visible, but my talking of _this thing_ implies that I know what _this thing_ is; the other predicates are concealed in the subject. Every historical statement is, therefore, a perfect individual judgment. Its concrete and individual character, which Croce had asserted in his early theory, is here maintained by the presence of the subject, though the subject itself, in history, is seen not in its intuitive purity, as in poetry, but as a concrete determination of the concept. The identification of philosophy and history is not so much the effect of a more intellectualized view of the historical processes, as of the progressive consciousness acquired by Croce of the inherent concreteness and individuality of the universal--of that realistic view of the concept as expressed by his elaboration of the logical _a priori_ synthesis.

The old distinction between a subjective and an objective treatment of history receives a new light from the foregoing considerations. It is impossible to make history without judgment, and, therefore, history is in a sense irreducibly subjective. But the subjectivity of history is not the arbitrary and capricious subjectivity of the individual historian, who introduces his own passions and tendencies into the historical narrative: it is the subjectivity of thought, of the earnest and dispassionate research of truth, which coincides with the only conceivable objectivity. What we call objective truth is not reached by renouncing thought, but only by making our thought deeper and truer. The historian who permeates with his thought his recreation of the past (and if he did not, he would be recreating the past as poetry, and imagination, not as history) needs not add a judgment of value to his statements of fact: the identity of value and fact presents itself once more to us in the intrinsic structure of the historical judgment. Whatever the aspect of reality to which we turn our attention, true history and true criticism coincide.

A consequence of this identification of history and philosophy is that the only legitimate divisions of history are those that correspond to the distinctions of the concept,--history of knowledge and of action, of art, of thought, of the practical activity of man; and that the relation among the different branches of history is similar to that of the distinctions of the concept within the concept itself: that is, the history of one particular form of human activity is nothing but the history of the whole spirit of man as it realizes itself under one of its aspects, a statement that we have already illustrated when speaking of the history of art and poetry. Other divisions of history are possible and useful, deduced from empirical concepts (such as the state, the church, the drama, the novel, society, religion, etc.), but they are divisions of practical convenience, mnemonic and didascalie expedients, and not rigorous distinctions. Empirical concepts are, in fact, in constant use in history, but as instruments, not as constituents of historical thought. History is of the individual _sub specie universalis_, and not of the practical generalizations. This peculiar function of the empirical concept in history marks the distinction between history and the natural sciences, the final irreducibility of history to sociology.

As history is reduced to philosophy through the identification of the historical with the individual judgment, so philosophy is reduced to history through the identification of the definition with the individual judgment. Since every philosophical proposition is an answer to a given question, and every question or problem is individually and historically determined, the whole course of the history of philosophy is in constant function of the general course of history. This is the truth contained in Hegel's formula of the identity of philosophy and history of philosophy, which had been revived in Italy, when Croce was meditating on these problems, by his friend Gentile: a formula which he finally accepted and transformed into that of the identity of history and philosophy, in accordance with his view of philosophy as a moment or grade of the spirit of man. The _a priori_ synthesis which constitutes the reality both of the definition and of the individual judgment is, at the same time, the reality of both philosophy and history. The distinction between the two is a purely didactic one: in the first the emphasis is laid on the definition and the system, in the second on the individual judgment and the narrative. But because the narrative includes the concept, every narrative clarifies and solves philosophical problems, and, on the other hand, every system of concepts throws light on the facts which are present to the mind. The confirmation of the soundness of the system is in the power it displays to interpret and narrate history; the touchstone of philosophy is history. The concept, in affirming itself, conquers the whole of reality, which becomes one with it.

We shall deal more briefly with Croce's treatment of the organization of the empirical and abstract concepts in the natural and mathematical sciences because his views coincide in their general lines with the economic theory of science, which is the view of scientific method elaborated by the scientists themselves in the last decades, and differ from it only in so far as they are comprehended in a vaster system of thought. Croce's polemic against pseudo-scientific philosophy, which was amply justified at the beginning of his career, has now lost a good deal of its actuality, since the ambitious attempts to organize the concepts of science into a system of ultimate truth have finally collapsed under the blows inflicted on their authors by science itself, and are now relegated into a few academic and journalistic backwaters. On the other hand, there is no doubt that his discussion of scientific methods, though sufficient for his purposes, is far from being as exhaustive as his discussion of either art or philosophy.

The natural sciences are systems of empirical concepts, that is, of practical elaborations of knowledge, and, therefore, they do not belong to the sphere of theoretical, but to that of practical activity. This proposition must not be understood as referring to the practical ends, or applications, of science: action requires a knowledge of the individual fact with which we are to deal, and, therefore, the true antecedent of action is not science, but an individual (or historical) judgment. The natural sciences are not subservient to action, but they are actions in the service of knowledge. Because of the empirical and pragmatic character of their concepts, it is impossible either to unify them in a single concept, or to divide them according to rigorous distinctions. The natural laws which they evolve are the same empirical concepts, which give rise to the creation of classes and types, expressed in a different form; their empirical character is confirmed by what Boutroux called their contingency, which is nothing but the reflex of their arbitrary formation. Even the most general of those laws, that of the constancy and uniformity of nature, assumed as the foundation of so much pseudo-scientific thought in the nineteenth century, is a mere postulate of practical opportunity, without which it would be hardly possible to construct any science: it is the first economic principle of scientific method, not an attribute of objective reality.