Category: Philosophy & Ethics

Logic as the Science of the Pure Concept

[Benedetto Croce's Philosophy of the Spirit, in the English translation by Douglas Ainslie, consists of 4 volumes (which can be read separately): 1. Aesthetic as science of expression and general linguistic. (A first ed. is available at Project Gutenberg. A second augmented ed...

Chapters

29. Part 29

But just because the phenomenology of error and the system of the categories are outside time, we must also recognize the fallacy of a history of philosophy which expounds the d...

3. Part 3

Facing, therefore, without more ado, the problem of Logic, the first obstacle to be removed will not be absolute scepticism nor scepticism concerning the intuitive form; but a n...

28. Part 28

This is already clearly seen in the exposition given of the forms of logical error, and more clearly still when, resuming, we consider that the spirit, when it rebels against th...

9. Part 9

Yet it would seem that though the definition affirms both essence and existence, and therefore the reality of the concept, it is, nevertheless, an empty form; for we have recogn...

16. Part 16

If the confusion between Logic and the Doctrine of the Categories, or between the thinking of the logical category and the thinking of the other categories, had produced no othe...

21. Part 21

The empirical character (and the practical character in the sense already established) of the natural sciences is commonly admitted in the case of such of them as consist in cla...

24. Part 24

Further, the specialist has his pride, which leads him to exaggerate what he practises and fail to recognize its true nature and limits. The multiplication of the _Sciences_ in...

8. Part 8

Thought, in so far as it is itself life (that is to say, the life which is thought, and therefore life of life), and in so far as it is reality (that is to say, the reality whic...

7. Part 7

An opposite, but not less serious error, would be to conceive the grades of the concept as distinct only _abstractly,_ thus making abstract concepts of distinct concepts. The ab...

22. Part 22

History, which has philosophy for its foundation, becomes in its turn foundation in the natural sciences. This explains why, with the controversy as to whether history be a scie...

4. Part 4

Having made clear, by means of these examples, the character of concepts and of fictional concepts, we are prepared to solve the question as to whether the second are legitimate...

6. Part 6

Other disputes, far enough apart in significance and nature, concerning the nature of the concept, acquire a more precise meaning when referred to our subdivision of pseudoconce...

26. Part 26

The last-mentioned case occurs frequently in books that bear the title of Philosophy of history. These certainly cannot be considered to have been refuted when the concept of th...

31. Part 31

Without dwelling upon the later scepticism, mysticism and mythologism, which represented the dissolution of ancient philosophy and the germ of a new life (especially in Christia...

35. Part 35

Such is the case with the rebellions of the humanists, Ciceronians and rhetoricians, which took place in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, of Lorenzo Valla, of Rudolph Agr...

34. Part 34

It would be preferable to say that all Kant's failures in recognition and all his lacunæ are certainly of importance, just because they provided his followers with a new problem...

30. Part 30

"He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow" is a false saying, because the increase of knowledge is the overcoming of sorrow. But it is true, in so far as it means that the...

10. Part 10

Its point of departure is the external distinction between words and connections of words, which belongs properly to Grammar. But words are then treated by it as concepts, and c...

25. Part 25

The representatives of empiricism are on the other hand most numerous, now as in the past; so much so that empiricism sometimes seems to be the sole adversary of philosophy, and...

15. Part 15

A question of no less importance is whether the logical _a priori_ synthesis (we might say, the _a priori_ synthesis in general) is to be conceived as a synthesis of opposites;...

32. Part 32

Neglecting the particular differences between these thinkers and the genetic process by which we pass from one to the other, and taking the result of that speculative movement i...

11. Part 11

But the individual judgment can take another name, much better known and more familiar: _perception_; and perception, in its turn, should be called, synonymously, individual jud...

19. Part 19

The conviction that has been gained as to the necessity of the logical element, of concepts, criteria, or values, for the formation of narrative, has induced some to demand, not...

27. Part 27

Since then, religion is identical with myth, and since myth is not distinguishable from philosophy by any positive character, but only as false philosophy from true philosophy a...

20. Part 20

Philosophy also changes with the change of history, and since history changes at every moment, philosophy at every moment is new. This can be observed even in the fact of the co...

12. Part 12

The traditional reply is, on the other hand, that existence, in the judgment of existence, is not a predicate, but a knowledge _sui generis,_ sometimes called a knowledge of _po...

17. Part 17

The character of the pure concept is also indicated in the definition of philosophy as the _elaboration of the concepts,_ which the other sciences leave imperfect and self-contr...

18. Part 18

On this necessity is based the importance which in the examination of historians is attached to intuition, or touch, or scent, or whatever else it may be called, that is to say,...

23. Part 23

Now, a function which organizes theoretic contradictions without thinking them, and so without falling into contradictions, is not a theoretic, but a practical function, and is...

5. Part 5

The pseudoconcepts, falsifying the concept, cannot imitate it scrupulously, because, if they did, they would not be pseudoconcepts, but concepts; not imitations, but the very re...

13. Part 13

The abuse of empirical or classificatory judgments is not less in relation to perception, which, as we know, is nothing but the series of individual judgments. It frequently hap...

33. Part 33

But in order that this result should be obtained, the idea of the philosophic universal must be reawakened and strengthened, in conformity with its most perfect elaboration in t...

1. Part 1

[Benedetto Croce's Philosophy of the Spirit, in the English translation by Douglas Ainslie, consists of 4 volumes (which can be read separately): 1. Aesthetic as science of expr...

14. Part 14

We must not, however, be in a hurry, but rather carefully recall the observation just made incidentally: that the verbal or literary form can throw into _relief_ a moment of the...

2. Part 2

Result of preceding enquiry: the judgment of definition and the individual judgment--Distinction between the two: truth of reason and truth of fact, necessary and contingent, et...

36. Part 36

V. Finally, the doctrines and the presuppositions of formalist Logic are refuted in a precise manner. The autonomy of the _logical form_ is asserted and consequently the effort...