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, and generated by way of contrariety the philosophy of Schelling and the historical philosophy of Hegel. Not even in Hegel is there to be found the elaboration of the doctrine of the individual judgment, nor is its identity with that of the concept explicitly recognized. But in Hegel not only do we find ourselves in the full historical atmosphere (suffice it to recall his histories of art, of religion, of philosophy and of the general development of the human race, which are still the most profound and the most stimulating writings upon history that exist); but these historical elucidations are all connected with the fundamental thought of his Logic: the concept is immanent and is divided in itself in the judgment, of which the general formula is that the individual _is_ the universal, the subject _is_ the predicate, every judgment is a judgment of the universal, and the universal is the dialectic of opposites. For this reason also, we find in the works of Hegel a historical method far in advance of all his predecessors and also (save in a few points) of his successors. He maintained, with much vigour, the necessity of the interpretative and rational element in history; and to those who demanded that a historian should be disinterested, in the same way as a magistrate who judges a case, he replied that since the magistrate has nevertheless his interest, that for the right, so has the historian also his interest, namely that for truth.[10]

[Sidenote: _W. von Humboldt._]

Hegel's defect in relation to history (as was Vico's before him but on a larger scale) was the philosophist error, which led him to the design of a philosophy of history, rising above history properly so-called. The psychological explanations of this strange duplication, together with its philosophic motives, have already been adduced.[11] Wilhelm von Humboldt certainly alluded to Hegel and intended to oppose him in this respect in his discourse concerning the office of the historian (1820). Here the method of the writer of history was likened to that of the artist. Fancy is as necessary to the historian as to the poet, Humboldt said, not in the sense of free fancy, but as the gift of reconstruction and of association. History, like art, seeks the true form of events, the pure and concrete form of real facts. But whereas art hardly touches the fugitive manifestations of the real, in order to rise above all reality, history attaches itself to those manifestations and becomes totally immersed in them. The ideas which the historian elaborates are not introduced by him into history, but discovered in reality itself, of which they constitute the essence. They are the outcome of the fulness of events, not of an extrinsic addition, as in what is called philosophic or theological history (Philosophy of history). Certainly, universal history is not intelligible without a world-order (eine Weltregierung). But the historian possesses no instrument which enables him directly to examine this design, and every effort in which he attempts to reach it, makes him fall into empty and arbitrary teleologism. He must, on the contrary, proceed by deducing it from facts examined in their individuality; for the end of history can only be the realization of the idea, which humanity must represent from all sides and in all the different modes in which finite form can ever be united with the idea. The course of events can only be interrupted when idea and form are no longer able to interpenetrate one another.[12] The protest was justified, not indeed against the fundamental doctrine of Hegel, but rather against one of its particular aberrations. But the protest was inferior in the determinateness of its concepts to the philosophy which it opposed. Even in the healthy tendency of the Hegelian doctrine, ideas should not be introduced but discovered in history. And if it sometimes seemed that the Philosophy of history introduced them from without, this happened because in that case true ideas were not employed and the concreteness of the fact was not respected.

[Sidenote: _F. Brentano._]

The theory of the individual judgment has made no progress in the Logics of the nineteenth century, save for certain timely explanations concerning the existential character of the judgment given by Brentano and his school. Brentano, who is an Anti-Kantian, considers the period inaugurated by Kant to be that of a new philosophical decadence. Yet notwithstanding his sympathy for mediæval scholasticism and for modern psychologism, he has too much philosophic acumen to remain fixed in the one or to lose himself in the other. Thus the tripartition of the forms of the spirit, maintained by him,[13] beneath the external appearance of a renovated Cartesianism, bears traces of the abhorred criticism, romanticism and idealism. The first form, the pure representation, answers to the æsthetic moment; the second, the judgment, is the primitive logical form answering to the Kantian _a priori_ synthesis; and love and hatred, the third form, which contains will and feeling, is not without precedent among the Post-Kantians themselves. He reasonably criticizes the various more or less mechanical theories, which treat the judgment as a connection of representations or a subsumption of concepts, and defends the _idiogenetic_ against allogenetic theories. But when he tries to prove that the judgment "A is" cannot be resolved into "A" and "is" (that is, into A and existence), because the concept of existence is found in the judgment and does not precede it, he goes beyond the mark. For the concept of existence certainly does not precede, but neither does it _follow_ the judgment: it is contemporaneous; that is to say, it exists only in the judgment, like the category in the _a priori_ synthesis. And he goes beyond the mark again, when he makes existentiality the character of the judgment, whereas existentiality is only one of the categories and consequently, if it be indispensable for the constitution of the judgment, it is not sufficient for any judgment, since for every judgment there is necessary the inner determination of the judgment as essence and as existence. For the rest, this is easily seen in the theories of his school, which end by establishing a double degree or form of judgment, thus creating a duality that cannot be maintained.[14] In any case, in the researches of Brentano and his followers, there is affirmed the need for a complete doctrine of the judgment and of its relation (which in our opinion is one of identity) with the doctrine of the concept. The theories of values and of judgments of values already mentioned, in their investigation of the universal or valuative element, express the same need from another point of view; although none of them discovers, by recalling the Kantian-Hegelian tradition, that values are immanent in single facts, and that consequently judgments of value, as judgments, are the same as individual judgments.

[Sidenote: _Controversies concerning the nature of history._]

Enquiries concerning the character of history may assist the constitution of a theory of individual judgments. These enquiries have never enjoyed so much favour as in the last decade of the nineteenth century. Naturalism or positivism has provided the incentive to such enquiries, for it brought into being the problem: "whether history is or is not a (natural) science," by its attempt to violate and pervert history by raising it (as they said, and it must have sounded ironical) to the rank of a science, that is to say, of a naturalistic science. There were two answers to the problem: (1) that history is a science _sui generis_ (not natural); (2) that it is, not a science, but an art, a particular form of art, the representation of the real.

[Sidenote: _Rickert; Xénopol. History as science of the individual._]

The first of these answers is to be found in the work of Rickert (1896-1902), cited above, and in the almost contemporary work of Xénopol (1899).[15] Rickert's work is that of a professional philosopher, and a follower of Windelband; the other, of an intelligent historian, who is somewhat lacking in equipment as a philosopher. Rickert, after having examined the naturalistic process and demonstrated how it finds a limit in individuality, next examines historical process, which takes possession of the field that naturalism is obliged to relinquish. Xénopol upholds the same distinction, of a double series of sciences, historical and theoretical, of _phénomènes successifs_ and of _phénomènes de répétition._ To both these writers (besides the merit of having revived, in opposition to naturalism, the consciousness of individuality) belongs that of having understood that the field of history extends far beyond that ordinarily assigned to it, and embraces every manifestation of the real. But merely successive phenomena or phenomena of mere repetition do not exist and are not conceivable; nor is it true that the sciences dealing with the former stop at differences of fact and neglect identities. For how could a history of political facts be written, if no attention were paid to the constant political nature of those facts? or of poetry, without paying attention to the constant poetical nature of all its historical manifestations? or of zoological species, without paying attention to the constant nature of the organism and of life? The distinction, therefore, as formulated by Xénopol, is little enough elaborated, not to say crude. Rickert, for his part, falls into a like error, owing to his failure to respect that intuitive and individual element, which he had previously admitted. Hence the serious contradictions, in which he becomes involved in the second part of his book. After having defined the concept as peculiar to the naturalistic method, he eventually claims to find also a species of concept in the procedure of history, which he had distinguished from and opposed to the former: a _historical_ concept, which is obtained by cutting out, in the extensive and intensive infinity of facts, certain groups, which are placed in relation by means of practical criteria of importance and of value. It is true (he writes) that the concept has been defined by us as something of universal content; but now we _wish_ precisely to surpass this one-sidedness, and therefore in the interest of logic it is justifiable to give the name concepts also to the thoughts which express the _historical essence_ of reality.[16] It is worse still when he attempts to explain the ineradicable intuitive and æsthetic element of historical narration; for holding art to be without truth and of use only in producing some sort of artistic (hedonistic?) effect, he recognizes that element as a means of endowing narration with liveliness and of exciting the fancy.[17] A consequence of this lack of understanding of the æsthetic function has been the laborious and vain attempt which Rickert is obliged to make, to determine to what personages and facts we are to attribute objective historical value.

[Sidenote: _History as art._]

The second answer, that history is an art (that is to say, a special form of art, which is distinguished from the rest, in that it represents, not the possible but the real), avoids the above-mentioned difficulties. It distinguishes clearly between the natural sciences and history; it explains the ineliminability and the function of the intuitive element in history, and does not lose itself in the vain search for the distinctive criterion between historical facts and non-historical facts, because it declares that all facts are historical.[18] But it must in any case be corrected and completed with the conclusion that the representation of the real is no longer simple representation or simple art, but the interpenetration of thought and representation, that is to say, philosophy-history.[19]

[Sidenote: _Other controversies concerning history._]

All the other controversies recently engaged upon, relate to the criteria of interpretation, or the system of ideas, which serves as the basis of any sort of historical narration. Thus there have been disputes as to the precise meaning and the greater or less importance in history of climate, of race, of economic factors, of individuality, of collectivity, of culture, of morality, and of intelligence; and also as to how teleology, immanence, providence, and so on, are to be understood in history. In these disputes there recur constantly the names of Buckle, of Taine, of Spencer, of Ranke, of Marx, of Lamprecht and of others. It is evident that those controversies concern, not only the gnoseological nature of historical writing, but the system of the spirit and of the real, the conception of the world itself. The materialist and the spiritualist, the theist and the pantheist, will solve them differently. To write their history here would be to go beyond the boundaries of Logic and of the particular history of Logic, that we have set ourselves.

[Footnote 1: See my observations concerning the perpetuity of historical criticism in _Critica,_ vi. pp. 383-84.]

[Footnote 2: _Poetics,_ chap. 8.]

[Footnote 3: _Anal. pr._ i. chap. 27.]

[Footnote 5: See (in particular for Polybius) E. Pais, _Della storiografia della filosofia della storia presso i Greci,_ Livorno, 1889.]

[Footnote 6: _De dign. et augm._ i. ii. chaps. 1-2.]

[Footnote 7: _De homine,_ chap. 9.]

[Footnote 8: E. Maffei, _I trattati dell' arte storica del Rinascimento fino al secolo XVII,_ Napoli, 1897.]

[Footnote 9: G. Gentile, "Contribution à l'histoire de la méthode historique," in the _Revue de synthèse historique,_ v. pp. 129-152.]

[Footnote 10: _Encycl._ § 549; and all the introduction to the _Phil. d. Gesch._]

[Footnote 11: See above, Part III. Chap. III.]

[Footnote 12: "Ueber die Aufgabe des Geschichtsschreibers," in the _Transactions_ of the Academy of Berlin, 1882, and reprinted in _W. W._]

[Footnote 13: F. Brentano, _Psychologie,_ Leipzig, 1874.]

[Footnote 14: F. Hildebrand, _Die neuen Theorien der kategorischer. Schlussen,_ Vienna, 1891.]

[Footnote 15: _Les Principes fondamentaux de l'histoire,_ Paris, 1899; 2nd ed., entitled _La Théorie de l'histoire,_ Paris, 1908.]

[Footnote 16: _Grenzen d. naturwiss. Begriffsbildung,_ pp. 328-29.]

[Footnote 17: _Op. cit._ pp. 382-89.]

[Footnote 18: This is the thesis maintained in 1893 by the author of this book, cf. also B. Croce, "Les Études relatives à la théorie de l'histoire en Italie," in the _Revue de synthèse historique,_ v. pp. 257-259.]

[Footnote 19: See above, Part II. Chap. IV., and the note concerning it.]

IV

THEORIES OF THE RELATIONS BETWEEN THOUGHT AND WORD AND FORMALIST LOGIC

[Sidenote: _Relation between the history of Logic and that of the Philosophy of language._]

The history of Logic depends very closely upon the history of the Philosophy of language, or of Æsthetic, understood as the philosophy of language and of expression in general. Every discovery concerning language throws new light upon the function of thought, which, surpassing language, employs it as an instrument, and therefore unites itself with language both negatively and positively. It belongs to the progress of the Philosophy of language, not less than to that of Logic, to have determined in a more exact manner the relations between thought and expression, as also to have dissipated or begun the dissipation of empirical and formalist Logic. This Logic, deluding itself with the belief that it was analysing thought, presents a series of mutilated and empty linguistic forms.

[Sidenote: _Logical formalism. Indian Logic free of it._]

This error, which appeared very early in our western world, has spread during the centuries and yet dominates many minds; so true is this that "Logic" is usually understood to mean just illogic or formalist Logic. We say our western world, because if Greece created and passed on the doctrine of logical forms, which was a mixture of thoughts materialized in words and of words become rigid in thoughts, another Logic is known, which, as it seems, developed outside the influence of Greek thought, and remained immune from the formalist error. This is Indian Logic, which is notably antiverbalist, though very inferior to that of Greece and of Europe in wealth and depth of concepts, and limited almost exclusively to the examination of the empirical concept or reasoning, of naturalistic induction or _expectatio casuum similium._ Indian Logic studies the naturalistic syllogism in _itself,_ as internal thought, distinguishing it from the syllogism _for others,_ that is to say, from the more or less usual, but always extrinsic and accidental forms of communication and dispute. It has not even a suspicion of the extravagant idea (which still vitiates our treatises) of a truth which is merely syllogistic and formalist, and which may be false in fact. It takes no account of the judgment, or rather it considers what is called judgment, and what is really the proposition, as a verbal clothing of knowledge; it does not make the verbal distinctions of subject, copula and predicate; it does not admit classes of categorical and hypothetical, of affirmative and of negative judgments. All these are extraneous to Logic, whose object is the constant: knowledge considered in itself.[1]

[Sidenote: _Aristotelian Logic and formalism._]

It was a subject of enquiry and of disagreement, especially during the second half of last century, whether formalist Logic, the Logic of the schools, could legitimately be called _Aristotelian._ Some, among whom were Trendelenburg and Prantl, absolutely denied this, and wished to restore the genuine thought of Aristotle, opposing it to post-Aristotelian and mediæval Logic. But they themselves were so enmeshed in logical formalism, that they were not capable of determining its peculiar character. The contrast between those two Logics, so far as it struck them, concerned secondary points. If the proper character of formalism consists in the confusion between thought and word, how are we to deny that Aristotle fell into this error, or that at any rate he set his foot upon the perilous way? Certainly he did not proceed to the exaggerations and ineptitudes of later logicians. He was ingenuous, not pedantic. And his books (and in particular the _Analytics)_ are rich in acute and original observations. He was a philosopher, and his successors were very often manual labourers. But Aristotle (probably influenced by the mathematical disciplines) conceived the idea of a theory of _apodeictic,_ which, from simple judgments, through syllogisms and demonstrations, reached completeness in the definition as its last term. The concept was the first term, as the loose concept or name, the last term was the concept defined. He was not ignorant that not everything can thus be demonstrated, that in the case of the supreme principles such a demonstration cannot be given, and it is vain to look for it, and that there is alongside the apodeictic a science of _anapodeictic._ But that did not induce him to abandon the study of verbal forms for a close study of the concepts or of the category, which is the demonstration of itself. In his divisions of judgments he was very discreet; but yet he distinguished them verbally, as universal, particular and indefinite, negative and affirmative. In the syllogism he distinguished only three figures, and affirmed that of those the first is the truly scientific (ἐπιστημὀνικον), because it determines _what is,_ whereas the second does not give a categorical judgment and affirmative knowledge, and the third does not give universal knowledge; but these restrictions did not suffice to correct the false step made in positing the idea of _figures_ and _moods_ of the syllogism. When we examine the various doctrines of Aristotle and compare them with the forms and developments which they assumed later, it can be maintained that no logician was less Aristotelian than Aristotle. But even he was Aristotelian, and the impulse to seek logic in words had been begun in so masterly a manner that for centuries it weighed upon the mind like a fate.

[Sidenote: _Later formalism._]

Why, then, should we rage, like many modern critics, against the later manipulations and amplifications to which Aristotelian Logic was submitted by Peripatetics and Stoics, by commentators and rhetoricians, by doctors of the Church and masters of the University, by Neolatins and Byzantines, by Arabs and Germans? We certainly harbour no tenderness for the _hypothetical_ and _disjunctive_ syllogism, or for the _fourth figure_ of the syllogism, as elaborated from Theophrastus to Galen, or for the _five predicables_ of Porphyry, or for subtleties upon the _conversions_ of judgments, or for the _mnemonic verses_ of Michael Psellus and of Peter Hispanus, or for the geometric symbols of the concepts and syllogisms invented by Christian Weiss in the seventeenth century ("to direct blockheads aright,"[2] as Prantl permits himself to say), or for the calculations upon the moods of the syllogism made by John Hispanianus, which he found to be no less than five hundred and sixty in number, thirty-six of which are conclusive. We also willingly admit that errors have been made in the traditional interpretation of certain doctrines of Aristotle (for example, in the doctrine of the enthymeme).[3] But setting aside these errors, we can say that for those excogitations and distinctions support was already found in the Organon of Aristotle, and that they were derived from principles there laid down. Certainly, with their crude roughness and their evident absurdity, they shock good sense in a way in which the distinctions of Aristotle did not, for these were in some sort of relation with the empirical description of the usual mode of scientific discussions. But the error nestled in themselves; and it was well that it should be intensified, so that it might leap to the eyes of all, just as it is sometimes well that there should be scandals in practical life.

[Sidenote: _Rebellions against Aristotelian Logic. The opposition of the humanists and their motives._]

The rebellions which the school (in the wide sense of the word, from the Peripatetic to the modern) continued to arouse in regard to these doctrines might seem to be of greater interest than this labour of embroidering and carving. But since there has been a time during which every protest, and indeed, every insult levelled against the philosopher of Stagira seemed a sign of original thought, of spiritual freedom and of secure progress, it is well to repeat that an indispensable condition for surpassing the Aristotelian Logic was a new Philosophy of language. Such a condition was altogether wanting in the past and is partly wanting now. It is therefore not surprising that when those rebellions are closely examined, we discover in the midst of secondary and superficial disagreement something quite different from what was expected; not the radical negation, but the substantial acceptance, explicit or understood, of the principles of formalist Logic.