The Philosophy of the Practical: Economic and Ethic. Benedetto Croce
a real fact. The practical act brings with it approbation and disapprobation, joy and sorrow, and like facts of consciousness that are altogether unreflective. By these we explain the immediate sympathy that certain actions afford us, and the enthusiasms that are often spread through wide circles of society, and the force of example, which is most successful in arousing imitative efforts. Thus at certain moments the soul of all seems to vibrate in unison with the soul of one, and the actions of many to be prepared and carried out, as though with one accord, without its being possible to say at those moments what is willed, what abhorred and what admired. That taste, or consciousness, or feeling is not, however, distinct from the volitional act, and is, indeed, the volitional act itself. It is that internal control of which we have already spoken, that immediate feeling of oneself, that immediate consciousness, which makes of it a spiritual act. Abstract it from the volitional act and the volitional act itself disappears from before you.
If it can take place, not only in the individual who is acting, but also in him who contemplates the action, that is because the individual who contemplates becomes unified in that moment with the individual who acts, he wills imitatively with him, with him suffers and enjoys, as the disc-thrower watches with his eye and with his whole person the disc that has been thrown, follows its rapid and direct course and the dangers in the form of obstacles that it seems to be about to strike, its turns and deviations, and seems to become himself a running turning disc. The denomination "practical taste" is very well chosen, because the analogy with the theoretic activity and with æsthetic taste is here most full. But since æsthetic taste is not æsthetic judgment, as the mere reproduction of the æsthetic act is not the criticism of it, as the listener to a poem who sings within himself with the poet, must not be confused with the critic, who analyses and understands it, any more than the contemplator of a picture, of a statue, or of a piece of architecture, who paints with the painter, sculptures with the sculptor, or ideally raises airy masses with the architect; so we must distinguish practical taste and sympathy (or antipathy) from the practical judgment. Without taste (æsthetic or practical), judgment (æsthetic or practical) is not possible; but taste is not judgment, which demands a further act of the spirit.
The practical judgment as historical judgment.
The practical judgment is, as has already been observed, a historical judgment; so that to judge practical acts and to give their history is really the same thing. What occurs here is analogous to what was demonstrated of the theoretic and æsthetic act, when we illustrated the coincidence of literary and artistic criticism with literary and artistic history. Criticism, be it practical or theoretic, cannot consist of anything but determining whether a spiritual act has taken place and what it has been. The differences between the one and the other criticism arise only from the diversity of content present in each case, asking different categories of judgment, but not of logical procedure, which is in both cases the same. Every other conception of the judgment, which should make it consist, not of a historical judgment, but of heaven knows what sort of measurement upon transcendental models, separated from the real world by a measurement of which the measure is extraneous to the measured, indeed (as though it were something of the other world) extraneous to the real itself, runs against insuperable contradictions, and makes judgment arbitrary and history grotesque; history would thus have value, not in itself, but outside itself, enjoying it as a loan from others, a gracious concession. But even these contradictions cannot appear in all their crudity, nor the opposite theory in all its unshakable truth, save from what will be seen further on, and we must here be satisfied with the enunciation.
Its logic.
In order to avoid repetition, we must refer to the analysis of the single or historical judgment already given and assume its result, namely, that it is the only judgment in which there is a true and proper distinction between subject and predicate, and that it is composed of an intuitive element (subject) and of an intellectual element (predicate). In like manner the practical judgment is not possible without a clear representation of the act to be judged and a conception not less clear of what the practical act is in its universality and in its particular forms, and so on, specifying in its various sub-forms and possibilities of individuation. The judgment is the compenetration of the two elements, the historical synthesis which establishes: Peter has accomplished a useful act in tilling a piece of land of such and such dimensions; Paul has accomplished an action that is not useful in opening a new manufactory of boots, more costly and not better than those already on the market; -Pope Leo III. acted wisely, as custodian of the universal character of the Church of Rome, in consecrating Charles the Frank emperor, thus restoring the empire of the West;—Louis XVI. acted foolishly in not deciding upon a prompt and profound change of the French political constitution, and in allowing himself to be afterwards dragged unwilling whither he had not known how to go of his own will. And so on. There are therefore two ways of sinning against the exactitude of the practical judgment: either by not having exact information as to the content of the volitional act to be judged and understood, or by not having an exact criterion of judgment. The first of these errors can be exemplified by those judgments that are so frequently pronounced, without knowledge as to the true sequence of events or without placing oneself in the precise conditions in which the person to be judged found himself. Hence it happens not less often, that when the facts are really known, the precise conditions understood, and the defence of the accused has been heard, the judgment must be altered. A cause of the second error is the substitution (likewise a very common occurrence) of one category of judgment for the other, as when a moral act is praised and admired for its cleverness, or the gestures and the felicitous utterance of a practical man are praised, as though it were a question of judging an actor or reciter. As in art, so in life, differences of judgment arise, not so much from difference of understanding, as from these oscillations and undue transpositions of judgments and concepts.
It is likewise superfluous to enter into disputes as to the absoluteness or relativity of the practical judgment, because these have been superseded by the concept of the historical judgment, which is both absolute and relative: absolute for the categories that it applies, relative for the matter, always new, to which it applies them.
Importance of the practical judgment.
The importance of the practical judgment for practical life is of the greatest, and when we are warned: nolite judicare or noli nimium judicare, what are meant are not true acts of judgment, but certain psychical conditions, which reveal slight spiritual seriousness. And the importance is of the greatest, precisely because the nature of the judgment is historical, and as we know already, historical knowledge, knowledge, that is, of actual situations, is the basis of future actions. For this reason every man who is strongly volitional is continually submitting himself and others to judgment; for this reason we feel the need of talking to others about our own actions, in order to be upheld by the spirit of others in forming a just judgment. This is the origin of such social institutions as the confessional, or of poems such as the Divina Commedia. The only judgment without meaning is that final judgment made in the valley Jehoshaphat, because what object can there be in giving oneself the trouble of judging a world looked upon as ended? We judge in order to continue to act, that is, to live, and when universal life is at an end, judgment is vain (vain praise or paradise, vain cruelty or hell).
Difference between the practical judgment and the judgment of the event.
The value of the volitional act is therefore, as has been demonstrated, in the act itself, and we must not expect and derive it from succession or event. The practical judgment always concerns the volitional act, the intention, the action (which are all one), and never the result or happening. With this distinction we annul one of the most disputed, intricate, and difficult questions: if it be possible to judge, or as they say, to try history. Since we know well that judgment and historical narrative coincide, we must reply in general, as we have replied, in the affirmative. We must in consequence deny all the absurd claims of an objectivity, which is the irrealizable aspiration to the abstention from thought and from history itself. We must also deny to the historian that frivolous privilege by which he is allowed to judge, almost tolerating in him an original sin or an incorrigible vice, provided he clearly distinguish between the serious and the facetious, between the narrative and the judgment, as though the distinction were ever possible. But the prejudice against those who make out a case against history