The Philosophy of the Practical: Economic and Ethic. Benedetto Croce
of acute and profound analysis. Readers unaccustomed to the dialectic may not at first be prepared to admit the necessary forms of error, that error is not distinct, but opposed to truth and as such its simple dialectic negation, and that truth is thought of truth, which develops by conquering error, which must always exist in every problem. The full understanding of the Crocean theory of error throws a flood of light on all philosophical problems, and has already formed the basis of at least one brilliant study of contemporary philosophy.
To the reduction of the concept of law to an economic factor, which depends upon the priority and autonomy of Economic in relation to Ethic, is devoted a considerable portion of the latter part of the Philosophy of the Practical, and it is easy to see that an elaborate treatment of this problem was necessary, owing to the confusion as to its true nature that has for so long existed in the minds of thinkers, owing to their failure to grasp the above distinction. In Great Britain indeed, where precedent counts for so much in law, the ethical element is very often so closely attached as to be practically indistinguishable from it, save by the light of the Crocean analysis. In the Logic as Science of the Pure Concept will be found much to throw light upon the Philosophy of the Practical, where the foreshortening of certain proofs (due to concentration upon other problems) may appear to leave loopholes to objection. Thought will there be found to make use of language for expression, though not itself language; and it will be found useless to seek logic in words, which in themselves are always æsthetic. For there is a duality between intuition and concept, which form the two grades or degrees of theoretic knowledge, as described also in the Æsthetic. There are two types of concept, the pure and the false or pseudo-concept, as Croce calls it. This latter is also divided into two types of representation—those that are concrete without being universal (such as the cat, the rose), and those that are without a content that can be represented, or universal without being concrete, since they never exist in reality (such are the triangle, free motion). The first of these are called empirical pseudo-concepts, the second abstract pseudo-concepts: the first are represented by the natural, the second by the mathematical sciences.
Of the pure concept it is predicated that it is ineliminable, for while the pseudo-concepts in their multiplicity are abolished by thought as it proceeds, there will always remain one thought namely, that which thinks their abolition. This concept is opposed to the pseudo-concepts: it is ultra or omni-representative. I shall content myself with this brief mention of the contents of the Philosophy of the Practical and of the Logic upon which I am now working.
Since the publication of Æsthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic, there has been some movement in the direction of the study of Italian thought and culture, which I advocated in the Introduction to that work. But the Alps continue to be a barrier, and the thought of France and of Germany reaches us, as a rule, far more rapidly than that of the home of all the arts and of civilization, as we may call that Italy which contains within it the classical Greater Greece. A striking instance of this relatively more rapid distribution of French thought is afforded by the celebrated Lundis of Sainte-Beuve, so familiar to many readers; yet a critic, greater in depth than Sainte-Beuve, was writing at the same period—greater in philosophical vision of the relations of things, for the vision of Sainte-Beuve rarely rose above the psychological plane. For one reader acquainted with the History of Italian Literature of De Sanctis, a hundred are familiar with the Lundis of Sainte-Beuve.
At the present moment the hegemony of philosophical thought may be said to be divided between Italy and France, for neither Great Britain nor Germany has produced a philosophical mind of the first order. The interest in Continental idealism is becoming yearly more keen, since the publication of Bergson's and of Blondel's treatises, and of Croce's Philosophy of the Spirit. Mr. Arthur Balfour, being himself a philosopher, was one of the first to recognise the importance of the latter work, referring to its author in terms of high praise in his oration on Art delivered at Oxford in the Sheldonian Theatre. Mr. Saintsbury also has expressed his belief that with the Æsthetic Croce has provided the first instrument for scientific (i.e. philosophical, not "natural" scientific) criticism of literature. This surely is well, and should lead to an era of more careful and less impartial, of more accurate because more scientific criticism of our art and poetry.
I trust that a similar service may be rendered to Ethical theory and practice by the publication of the present translation, which I believe to be rich with great truths of the first importance to humanity, here clearly and explicitly stated for the first time and therefore (in Vico's sense of the word) "created," by his equal and compatriot, Benedetto Croce.
Then leaning upon the arm of time came Truth, whose radiant face,
Though never so late to the feast she go, hath aye the foremost place.
DOUGLAS AINSLIE.
ATHENAEUM CLUB, PALL MALL,
January 1913.
[1] G. de Ruggiero, La Filosofia contemporanea, Laterza, Bari, 1912.
FIRST SECTION
THE PRACTICAL ACTIVITY IN ITS RELATIONS
I 3
THE PRACTICAL ACTIVITY AS A FORM OF THE SPIRIT
Practical and theoretic life—Insufficiency of descriptive distinctions—Insufficiency of the psychological method in philosophy—Necessity of the philosophical method—Constatation and deduction—Theories which deny the practical form of the spirit—The practical as an unconscious fact: critique—Nature and practical activity—Reduction of the practical form to the theoretical: critique—The practical as thought in action—Recognition of its autonomy.
II 21
NEGATION OF THE SPIRITUAL FORM OF FEELING
The practical and the so-called third spiritual form: feeling—Various meanings of the word: feeling, a psychological class—Feeling as a state of the spirit—Function of the concept of feeling in the History of philosophy: the indeterminate—Feeling as forerunner of the æsthetic form—In Historic: preannouncement of the intuitive element—In philosophical Logic: pre-announcement of the pure concept—Analogous function in the Philosophy of the practical—Negation of feeling—Deductive exclusion of it.
III 33
RELATION OF THE PRACTICAL ACTIVITY WITH THE THEORETICAL
Precedence of the theoretical over the practical—The unity of the spirit and the co-presence of the practical—Critique of pragmatism—Critique of psychological objections—Nature of theoretic precedence over the practical: historical knowledge—Its continual mutability—No other theoretic precedent—Critique of practical concepts and judgments—Posteriority of judgments to the practical act—Posteriority of practical concepts—Origin of intellectualistic and sentimentalistic doctrines—The concepts of end and means—Critique of the end as plan or fixed design—Volition and the unknown—Critique of the concept of practical sciences and of a practical Philosophy.
IV 53
INSEPARABILITY OF ACTION FROM ITS REAL BASE AND PRACTICAL NATURE OF THE THEORETIC ERROR
Coincidence of intention and volition—Volition in the abstract and in the concrete: critique—Volition thought and real volition: critique—Critique of volition with unknown or ill-known base—Illusions in the instances adduced—Impossibility of volition with erroneous theoretical base—Forms of the theoretic error and problem as to its nature—Distinction between ignorance and error: practical origin of latter—Confirmations and proofs—Justification of the practical repression of error—Empirical distinctions of errors and the philosophic distinction.
V 73
IDENTITY