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 the history of thought, at the hands of Hegel. The critics of the sciences are at present far from this mark. The term that is distinct from the empirical and abstract concepts, the knowledge of reality which is not falsified by practical ends and discovered beneath labels and formulae, is supplied, not by the pure concept, by reality thought in its concreteness, by philosophy which is history, but by pure sensation or intuition. Both Avenarius and Mach appeal to pure and primitive experience, that is, to experience free of thought and anterior to it. Bergson, with an artistic talent that is wanting to the two Germans, but following the same path, has proclaimed a new metaphysic, which proceeds in an opposite sense to that of symbolical knowledge and of generalizing and abstracting experience. He has defined the metaphysic which he desires, as a science _qui prétend se passer des symboles,_ and therefore as "_Science de l'expérience intégrale._" This metaphysic would be the opposite of the Kantian ideal, of the mathematical universal, of the Platonism of the concepts, and would be founded upon intuition, the sole organ of the Absolute: "_est relative la connaissance symbolique par concepts pré-existants qui va du fixe au mouvant, mais non pas la connaissance intuitive, qui s'installe dans le mouvement et adopte la vie même des choses. Cette intuition atteint l'absolu._"[28] The conclusion is æstheticism, and sometimes something even less than æstheticism, namely mysticism, or _action_ substituted for the concept. The criticism of the sciences thereby comes to mean the negation of knowledge and of truth. Hence the protest of Poincaré[29] against Le Roy, justified in its motive, but ineffective, because based upon the presuppositions of mathematics and physics. In others again, it becomes intermingled with the turbid waters of pragmatism, which is a little of everything, but, above all, chatter and emptiness.

[Sidenote: _The theory of values._]

Finally, another of the thinkers that we have mentioned, Rickert (following Windelband), wishes to integrate naturalistic and abstract knowledge with the historical knowledge of individual reality. Being reasonably diffident as to the possibility of a metaphysic as an "experimental science" (such as Zeller was among the first to desire), he moves towards a general theory of values. This indeed is the form (imperfect because stained with transcendence) by means of which many in our day are approaching a philosophy as the science of the spirit (or of immanent value). But in the hands of Windelband and Rickert it is understood as a primacy of the practical reason, which is taken to govern the double series of the world of the sciences and the world of history. This doubtless represents progress, as compared with empiricism and positivism; but not as compared with the Hegelian Logic of the pure concept, which included in itself what is and what ought to be.

Such, briefly stated, is the present state of logical doctrines concerning the Concept.

[Footnote 1: _De sophist. elench._ ch. 34.]

[Footnote 2: _Metaphys._ M 4, p. 1078 b 28-30; cf. A 6, p. 987 b 2-3.]

[Footnote 3: Cf. _Æsthetic,_ part ii. chap. i.]

[Footnote 4: See in this connection the observations of Lasson, in the preface to his recent German translation of the _Metaphysic,_ Jena, Diederichs, 1907.]

[Footnote 5: Cf. especially the _Parmenides,_ the _Theætetus,_ and _Book of the Republic._]

[Footnote 6: _Metaphys._ E I, p. 1025 b, 1026 a.]

[Footnote 7: _Metaphys._ vi. 1027 a.]

[Footnote 8: _Anal. post._ i. ch. 30.]

[Footnote 9: See the writings of Gentile concerning De Wulf and La Berthonnière in the _Critica,_ iii. pp. 203-21, iv. pp. 431-445.]

[Footnote 10: Prantl, _Gesch. d. Logik,_ iii. pp. 182-3.]

[Footnote 11: For these references to writings of Luther, see F. J. Schmidt, _Zur Wiedergeburt des Idealismus,_ Leipzig, 1908, pp. 44-6.]

[Footnote 12: See my Essay upon Hegel, ch. ii.]

[Footnote 13: Preface to _Nouveaux Essais._]

[Footnote 14: See what is said on this point in my _Æsthetic,_² Part II. Chap. VIII.]

[Footnote 15: _Krit. d. rein. Vern._ ed. Kirchmann, pp. 22-3.]

[Footnote 16: _Wiss. d. Logik,_ i. p. 35; cfr. p. 19.]

[Footnote 17: Kuno Fischer in his _Logic,_ when expounding the thought of Hegel, clearly distinguishes the empirical concepts from the pure concepts, and notes that those which are pure or philosophical, are, in the spirit, the basis and presupposition of the others. "These others, the empirical, are formed from single representations or intuitions, by uniting homogeneous characteristics and separating them from the heterogeneous; and thus arise general representations, concepts of classes": empirical, because of their empirical origin, and representative, because they represent entire classes of single objects, that is, are generalized representations. But at the base of each of these are found judgments or syntheses, which contain non-empirical and non-representable elements, elements which are _a priori_ and only thinkable. These are the true concepts, the first thoughts in the ideal order, without which nothing can be thought (_Logik²,_ i. sect. i. § 3). The difference between these pure concepts or categories and empirical concepts or categories is not quantitative, but qualitative: the pure concepts are not the most general, the broadest classes; they do not represent phenomena, but connections and relations; they can be compared to the signs (+,-, x, ÷, √, etc.) of arithmetical operations; they are not obtainable by abstraction, indeed it is by means of them that all abstractions are affected (_loc. cit._ §§ 5-6).]

[Footnote 18: See my essay, _What is Living and what is Dead of the Philosophy of Hegel,_ for the criticism here briefly summarized.]

[Footnote 19: _Dialektik,_ ed. Halpern, pp. 203-245.]

[Footnote 20: _Werke,_ ed. Grisebach, ii. chap. 39.]

[Footnote 21: The movement of Italian thought in the first decades of the nineteenth century was rather a progress of national philosophic culture than a factor in the general history of philosophy. In this last respect, the rôle of Italy was for the time being ended; though it did not end in the seventeenth century with Campanella and Galileo (as foreign historians and the Italians who copy them believe). It ended magnificently in the first half of the eighteenth century with Vico, the last representative of the Renaissance and the first of Romanticism. The influence of German philosophy continued to manifest itself in Italy in the nineteenth century, at first almost entirely through French literature, then directly. It can be studied in the three principal thinkers of the first half of the century, Galuppi, Rosmini, and Gioberti. The first began from the Scottish school, and while attacking Kant, he absorbed not a few of his principles. The second, also in a polemical sense and in a Catholic wrapping, can be called the Italian Kant. The third, who had always only the slightest consciousness of history, assumed the same position as Schelling and Hegel. To have attained (between 1850 and 1860) to such historical consciousness is the merit of Bertrando Spaventa (see especially his book, _La filosofia italiana nelle sue relazioni con la filosofia europea,_ new edition, by G. Gentile, Bari, Laterza, 1908), who represented Hegelianism in Italy in a very cautious and critical form. But there was no true surpassing of Hegelianism either by his disciples or by his adversaries, and some original thought is to be found only among non-professional philosophers, particularly in Æsthetic, with Francesco de Sanctis (cf. _Estetica,_ part ii. chap. 15).]

[Footnote 22: _Krit. d. rein. Vernunft, loc. cit._]

[Footnote 23: _Logik,_ p. 42 _sqq._]

[Footnote 24: See, among other books, _L'Analisi delle sensazioni,_ Italian translation Turin, Bocca; 1903.]

[Footnote 25: _Grenzen d. naturwissensch. Begriffsbildung,_ Freiburg i. B, 1896-1902, chaps. 1-3.]

[Footnote 26: See above, p. 528.]

[Footnote 27: See his articles in the _Revue de métaphys. et de morale,_ vols. vii. viii. xi.]

[Footnote 28: "Introduction à la Métaphysique," in the _Revue de métaphys. et de mor._ xi. pp. 1-36.]

[Footnote 29: _La Valeur de la science,_ Paris, 1904.]

III

THE THEORY OF THE INDIVIDUAL JUDGMENT

[Sidenote: _Secular neglect of the theory of history._]

The theory of the individual judgment and therefore of historical thought, has been the least elaborated of all logical theories in the course of philosophic history. It is a very true and profound remark that the historical sense is a modern thing, and that the nineteenth century is the first great century of historical thinking. Of course, since history has always been made and individual judgments pronounced, theoretic observations upon historical judgments have not been altogether wanting in the past. The spirit is, as we know, the whole spirit at every instant, and in this respect nothing is ever new under the sun, indeed, nothing is new, either before or after the sun.[1] But history, and in particular, the theory of history, did not formerly arouse interest nor attract attention, nor was its importance felt, nor was it the object of anxious and wide investigations to the degree witnessed in the nineteenth century and in our times, when the consciousness of immanence triumphs more and more--and immanence means history.

[Sidenote: _Græco-Roman world's ideas of history._]

Transcendence, then, which has for centuries been more or less dominant, supplies the reason why the study of the individual and the theory of history were neglected. In Greek philosophy, individual judgments were either despised, as in Platonism, or superseded by and confused with logical judgments of the universal, as in Aristotle. In the _Poetics_[2] the character of history did not escape him. Differing from science (which was directed to the universal) and from poetry (which was directed to the possible), it expresses things that have happened in their individuality, _ta genomena_ (what Alcibiades did and experienced). But in the _Organon,_ although he distinguished between the universal (ta katholou) and the individual (ta kath' ekastou), between man and Callias,[3] he made no use of the distinction, and divided judgments into universal, particular and indefinite. The theory of history was not raised to the rank of philosophic treatment in antiquity, like the other forms of knowledge, and especially philosophy, mathematics and poetry. What mark the ancients have left upon the argument is limited to incidental observations, and some altogether empirical remarks here and there upon the method of writing history. They were wont to assign extrinsic ends to it, such as utility and advice upon the conduct of life. Such utterances of good common sense as that of Quintilian, to the effect that history is written _ad narrandum, non ad demonstrandum,_ do not possess great philosophic weight. Nor had the rules of the rhetoricians philosophic value, such as that of Dionysus of Halicarnassus, that historical narrative, without becoming quite poetical, should be somewhat more elevated in tone than ordinary discourse; or that of Cicero, who demanded for historical style _verba ferme poëtarum,_ "perhaps" (wrote Vico, making the rhetorical rule profound) "in order that historians might be maintained in their most ancient possession, since, as has been demonstrated in the _Scienza nuova,_ the first historians of the nations were the first poets."[4] More important, on the other hand, are the demands (as expressed especially by Polybius) of what is indispensable to history. Besides the element of fact, there is needful (Polybius observed) knowledge of the nature of the things of which the happenings are portrayed, of military art for military things, of politics for things political. History is written, not from books, as is the way with compilers and men of letters, but from original documents, by visiting the places where it has occurred and by penetrating it with experience and with thought.[5]

[Sidenote: _The theory of history in mediæval and modern philosophy_]

The abstractionist and anti-historical character of the Aristotelian Logic had an injurious effect in the schools, though, on the other hand, it allied itself well with the persistent transcendentalism. Certainly, just as in the Middle Ages appeared reflections upon history, so there could be no avoiding the distinction between what was known _logice_ and what was known _historice,_ or, as Leibnitz afterwards formulated the distinction, between _propositions de raison_ and _propositions de fait._ But these latter were always regarded with a compassionate eye, as a sort of uncertain and inferior truth. The ideal of exact science would have been to absorb truths of fact in truths of reason, and to resolve them all into a philosophy, or rather into a universal mathematics. Nor did the empiricists succeed in increasing their credit. These certainly paid particular attention to facts (hence the polemic of the Anti-Aristotelians and the origin of the new instrument of observation and induction). But by weakening the consciousness of the concrete universal they also weakened that of the concrete individual, and therefore presented the latter in the mutilated form of species and genera, of types and classes. Bacon, had he done nothing else, at any rate assigned a place to history in his classification of knowledge, which was divided, as we know, according to the three faculties (memory, imagination and reason), into History, Poetry and Philosophy. He passed in review the two great classes of history, natural and civil (the first of which was either narrative or inductive, the second more variously subdivided); thus he even pointed out the kinds of history that were desirable, but of which no conspicuous examples were yet extant, such as literary history.[6] Hobbes, on the other hand, having distinguished the two species of cognition, one of reason and the other of fact, "altera facti, et est cognitio propria testium, cujus conscriptio est historia," and having subdivided this into natural and civil, "_neutra_" (he added, that is to say neither the natural nor the civil) "_pertinet ad institutum nostrum_" which was concerned only with the _cognitio consequentiarum,_ that is to say, science and philosophy.[7] Locke is not less anti-historical than Descartes and Spinoza, and even Leibnitz, who was very learned, did not recognize the autonomy of historical work, and continued to consider it as directed towards utilitarian and moral ends.

[Sidenote: _Treatises on historical art in the Renaissance._]

Reflections upon history, suggested rather by the professional needs of historians than by a need for systematization and a profound philosophy, continued on their way, almost apart from the philosophy of the time. From the Renaissance onwards, treatises on historical art were multiplied at the hands of Robortelli, Atanagi, Riccoboni, Foglietta, Beni, Mascardi, and of many others, even of non-Italians; but their discussions usually centred upon elocution, upon the use of ornament and of digressions, upon arguments worthy of history, and the like. Among these writers of treatises we must note (here as well as in the history of Poetics and of Rhetoric) Francesco Patrizio or Patrizzi (1560), for his ideas, sometimes acute, sometimes incoherent and extravagant. Overcoming one of the prejudices of empiricism, he justly wished that the concept of history should not be limited to military enterprises and political negotiations alone, and that it should be extended to all the doings of men. With a like superiority to empirical views, he found historical representation not only in words, but also in painting and sculpture--(our times, so fruitful of histories graphically illustrated, should admit that he was to some extent right), and he did not accept chronological limits. He also insisted upon the mode of testing historical truth and upon the degree of credibility of witnesses. But he became extravagant, when he admitted a history of the future, calling the prophets as witnesses, and incoherent, when he both denied and affirmed the moral end of history.[8]

[Sidenote: _Treatises upon method._]

Another form of empiricism, certainly more important, the methodological, which dealt with the canons and criteria to be borne in mind in making historical researches, accompanied the often rhetorical empiricism of writers of treatises. The reference to the duties of the historian in one place in Cicero was repeated and commented upon by all. But this treatment became gradually more wide, as we see especially in the work of Vossius, _Ars historica sive de historia et historiae natura, historiaeque scribendae praeceptis commentatio_ (1623). The term "Historic" dates from this book and is formed on the analogy of Logic, Poetic, Rhetoric, etc., and applied to the theory or Logic of history. Gervinus (1837) and Droysen (1858) tried to bring this term again into vogue. The methodological treatment of historical research was more widely developed in the scholastic manuals of Logic of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, such as the _Logica seu ars ratiocinandi_ of Leclerc (1692).[9] With these canons arising in the field of research and historical criticism, we may opportunely compare those concerning the mode of valuing and weighing evidence, which were gradually unified in juridical literature. Methodological treatment has also progressed in our times, in manuals such as those of Droysen, of Bernheim, of Langlois-Seignobos; but the general tendency of these works (as is also evident from their apparatus in heuristic, in criticism, in comprehension and in exposition) remains and must remain altogether empirical.

[Sidenote: _The theory of history and G. B. Vico._]

The first philosopher who gave to History an importance equal to Philosophy was Vico, with his already-mentioned union of philosophy and philology, of _truth_ and _certainty,_ and with the example that he offered of a philosophic _system,_ which is also a _history_ of the human race: an "_eternal ideal_ history, upon which the histories of nations run in _time._" For this reason (not less than from his strong consciousness of the difference in character between the metaphysical concept and mathematical abstraction) Vico was an Anti-Cartesian. He stands between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as the opposer of the past and of the future, or of the nearest past and the nearest future. Indeed, there is even in Vico a trace of that vice which arises from a too indiscriminate identification of philosophy and history, which certainly constitute an identity, but an identity which is a synthesis and therefore a distinction. Hence, when no account is taken of this, the substantial truth affirmed loses its balance in philosophism and mythologism. The real epochs of Vico are too philosophic and have in them something forced; the ideal epochs are too historical and have in them something of exuberance and of contingency. The real epochs are not exempt from philosophistic caprices; the ideal sometimes become converted into a mythology (though full of profound meanings). For this reason, it has been possible now to praise, now to blame him for having invented the _Philosophy of history._ There is indeed in him, here and there, some hint of a philosophy of history _sensu deteriori,_ but above all he is the great philosopher and the great historian.

[Sidenote: _The anti-historicism of the eighteenth century and Kant._]

As the eighteenth century did not really know the concept of philosophy, so was it ignorant of that of history: its anti-historicism has become proverbial. There appeared at this time some celebrated theoretic manifestations of historical scepticism, of the negation of history, which seemed, as before to Sextus Empiricus, a thing without art and without method (ἅτεχνον ... καὶ ἐκ τἥς ἀμεθόδον ὕλης τυγχράνουσαν). The book of Melchior Delfico, _Pensieri sull' Istoria e sull' incertezza ed inutilità della medesima_ (1808), is one of the last manifestations of this sort. But all the thinkers of that time were of this opinion; even Kant, in whose wide culture were certainly two lacunæ--artistic and historical. And if in the course of elaborating his system he was led by logical necessity to meditate upon art, or rather upon beauty, he never paid serious attention to the problem of history.

[Sidenote: _Concealed historical value of the a priori synthesis._]

Yet Kant is the true, though unconscious creator of the new Logic of history. To him belongs the merit, not only of having shown the importance of the historical judgment, but also of having given the formula of the identity of philosophy and history in the _a priori_ synthesis. The logical revolution effected by Kant consists in this: that he perceives and proclaims that to know is not to think the concept abstractly, but to think the concept in the intuition, and that consequently to think is to _judge._ The theory of the judgment takes the place of that of the concept and is truly the theory of the concept, in so far as it becomes concrete. What does it matter that he is not aware of all this and that instead of referring the logical _a priori_ synthesis to history, he refers it to the sciences, constituting it an instrument not of history, but of the sciences; and that instead of exhausting knowledge in the _a priori_ synthesis, he leaves outside of it true knowledge as an unattainable, or theoretically unattainable ideal? What does it matter that when confronted with the problem of the judgment of existence, he solves it like Gaunilo and withdraws existence from thought, removing from it the character of predicate and of concept and making of it a position or an imposition _ab extra?_ What does it matter that his history is without historical developments and wanting even in knowledge of the history of philosophy, and that in the parts of the so-called system that he has developed (for example, in the doctrine of virtue and of rights) there reigns the most squalid crowd of abstractions and of anti-historical determinations? What does it matter that we find the man of the eighteenth century on every page of his book, and that he was absolutely without sympathy for the tendencies of thought of the Hamanns and of they Herders? There always remains the fact that the _a priori_ synthesis carried in itself even that which its discoverer ignored or denied.

[Sidenote: _The theory of history in Hegel._]