Æsthetic as science of expression and general linguistic. Benedetto Croce
time and formerly of the utilitarian theory of Ethics. Indeed it is easy to discover and to illustrate a utilitarian side in every moral action; as it is easy to reveal the æsthetic side in every logical proposition. The criticism of ethical utilitarianism cannot begin by denying this truth and seeking out absurd and non-existent examples of useless moral actions. It must admit the utilitarian side and explain it as the concrete form of morality, which consists in this, that it is inside this form. Utilitarians do not see this inside. This is not the place for the fuller development that such ideas deserve. Ethics and Economics cannot however fail to be gainers (as we have said of Logic and Æsthetic) by a more exact determination of the relations that exist between them. Economic science is now rising to the activistical concept of the useful, as it attempts to surpass the mathematical phase in which it is still entangled; a phase which was in its turn a progress when it superseded historicism, or the confusion of the theoretical with the historical, and destroyed a number of capricious distinctions and false economic theories. With this conception, it will be easy on the one hand to absorb and to verify the semi-philosophical theories of so-called pure economics, and on the other, by the introduction of successive complications and additions, to effect a transition from the philosophical to the empirical or naturalistic method and thus to embrace the particular theories expounded in the so-called political or national economy of the schools.
Phenomenon and noumenon in practical activity.
As æsthetic intuition knows the phenomenon or nature, and the philosophic concept the noumenon or spirit; so the economic activity wills the phenomenon or nature, and the moral activity the noumenon or spirit. The spirit which wills itself, its true self, the universal which is in the empirical and finite spirit: that is the formula which perhaps defines the essence of morality with the least impropriety. This will for the true self is absolute freedom.
VIII
EXCLUSION OF OTHER SPIRITUAL FORMS
In this summary sketch that we have given of the entire philosophy of the spirit in its fundamental moments, the spirit is thus conceived as consisting of four moments or degrees, disposed in such a way that the theoretical activity is to the practical as the first theoretical degree is to the second theoretical, and the first practical degree to the second practical. The four moments imply one another regressively by their concreteness. The concept cannot exist without expression, the useful without both and morality without the three preceding degrees. If the æsthetic fact is in a certain sense alone independent while the others are more or less dependent, then the logical is the least dependent and the moral will the most. Moral intention acts on given theoretic bases, with which it cannot dispense, unless we are willing to accept that absurd procedure known to the Jesuits as direction of intention, in which people pretend to themselves not to know what they know only too well.
The forms of genius.
The system of the spirit.
If the forms of human activity are four, four also are the forms of genius. Men endowed with genius in art, in science, and in moral will or heroes, have always been recognized. But the genius of pure economicity has met with repugnance. It is not altogether without reason that a category of bad geniuses or of geniuses of evil has been created. The practical, merely economic genius, which is not directed to a rational end, cannot but excite an admiration mingled with alarm. To dispute as to whether the word "genius" should be applied only to creators of æsthetic expression or also to men of scientific research and of action would be a mere question of words. To observe, on the other hand, that "genius," of whatever kind it be, is always a quantitative conception and an empirical distinction, would be to repeat what has already been explained as regards artistic genius.
Non-existence of a fifth form of activity. Law; sociability.
A fifth form of spiritual activity does not exist. It would be easy to show how all the other forms either do not possess the character of activity, or are verbal variants of the activities already examined, or are complex and derivative facts, in which the various activities are mingled, and are filled with particular and contingent contents.
The juridical fact, for example, considered as what is called objective law, is derived both from the economic and from the logical activities. Law is a rule, a formula (whether oral or written matters little here) in which is fixed an economic relation willed by an individual or by a community, and this economic side at once unites it with and distinguishes it from moral activity. Take another example. Sociology (among the many meanings the word bears in our times) is sometimes conceived as the study of an original element, which is called sociability. Now what is it that distinguishes sociability, or the relations which are developed in a meeting of men, and not in a meeting of sub-human beings, if it be not just the various spiritual activities which exist among the former and which are supposed not to exist, or to exist only in a rudimentary degree, among the latter? Sociability, then, far from being an original, simple, irreducible conception, is very complex and complicated. A proof of this would be the impossibility, generally recognized, of enunciating a single law which could be described as purely sociological. Those that are improperly so called are shown to be either empirical historical observations, or spiritual laws, that is to say judgements into which the conceptions of the spiritual activities are translated, when they are not simply empty and indeterminate generalities, like the so-called law of evolution. Sometimes, too, nothing more is understood by "sociability" than "social rule," and so law; thus confounding sociology with the science or theory of law itself. Law, sociability, and similar concepts, are to be dealt with in a mode analogous to that employed by us in the consideration and analysis of historicity and technique.
Religion.
It may seem that religious activity should be judged otherwise. But religion is nothing but knowledge, and does not differ from its other forms and sub-forms. For it is in turn either the expression of practical aspirations and ideals (religious ideals), or historical narrative (legend), or conceptual science (dogma).
It can therefore be maintained with equal truth either that religion is destroyed by the progress of human knowledge, or that it is always present there. Their religion was the whole intellectual patrimony of primitive peoples: our intellectual patrimony is our religion. The content has been changed, bettered, refined, and it will change and become better and more refined in the future also; but its form is always the same. We do not know what use could be made of religion by those who wish to preserve it side by side with the theoretic activity of man, with his art, with his criticism and with his philosophy. It is impossible to preserve an imperfect and inferior kind of knowledge, such as religion, side by side with what has surpassed and disproved it. Catholicism, which is always consistent, will not tolerate a Science, a History, an Ethics, in contradiction to its views and doctrines. The rationalists are less coherent: they are disposed to allow a little space in their souls for a religion in contradiction with their whole theoretic world.
The religious affectations and weaknesses prevalent among the rationalists of our time have their origin in the superstitious worship so recklessly lavished upon the natural sciences. We know ourselves and their chief representatives admit that these sciences are all surrounded by limits. Science having been wrongly identified with the so-called natural sciences, it could be foreseen that the remainder would be sought in religion; that remainder with which the human spirit cannot dispense. We are therefore indebted to materialism, to positivism, to naturalism for this unhealthy and often disingenuous recrudescence of religious exaltation, which belongs to the hospital, when it does not belong to the politician.
Metaphysic.
Philosophy removes from religion all reason for existing, because it substitutes itself for religion. As the science of the spirit, it looks upon religion as a phenomenon, a transitory historical fact, a psychic condition that can be surpassed. Philosophy shares the domain of knowledge with the natural sciences, with history and with art. To the first it leaves enumeration, measurement and classification; to the second, the chronicling of what has individually happened; to the third, the individually possible. There is nothing left to allot to religion. For the same reason, philosophy, as the science of the spirit, cannot be philosophy of the intuitive