The Philosophy of the Practical: Economic and Ethic. Benedetto Croce
a duality of finite and infinite—Perfect analogy of the two forms: theoretic and practical—Not a parallelism, but a circle—The circle of Reality: thought and being, subject and object—Critique of the theories as to the primacy of the theoretical or of the practical reason—New pragmatism: Life conditioning Philosophy—Deductive confirmation of the two forms, and deductive exclusion of the third (feeling).
SECOND PART
THE PRACTICAL ACTIVITY IN ITS SPECIAL FORMS
FIRST SECTION
THE TWO PRACTICAL FORMS: ECONOMIC AND ETHIC
I 309
DISTINCTION OF THE TWO FORMS IN THE PRACTICAL CONSCIOUSNESS
The utilitarian or economic form, and the moral or ethical form—Insufficiency of the descriptive and psychological distinction—Deduction and necessity of integrating it with induction—The two forms as a fact of consciousness—The economic form—The ethical form—Impossibility of eliminating them—Confirmations in fact.
II 323
CRITIQUE OF THE NEGATIONS OF THE ETHICAL FORM
Exclusion of materialistic and intellectualistic criticisms—The two possible negations—The thesis of utilitarianism against the existence of moral acts—Difficulty arising from the presence of these—Attempt to explain them as quantitative distinctions—Criticism of it—Attempt to explain them as facts, either extraneous to the practical or irrational, and stupid—Associationism and evolutionism. Critique—Desperate attempt: theological utilitarianism and mystery.
III 337
CRITIQUE OF THE NEGATIONS OF THE ECONOMIC FORM
The thesis of moral abstractionism against the concept of the useful—The useful as means, or as theoretic fact—Technical and hypothetical imperatives—Critique: the useful is a practical fact—The useful as the egoistic or the immoral—Critique: the useful is amoral—The useful as ethical minimum—Critique: the useful is premoral—Desperate attempt: the useful as inferior practical conscience—Confirmation of the autonomy of the useful.
IV 348
RELATION BETWEEN ECONOMIC AND ETHICAL FORMS
Economic and ethic as double degree of the practical—Errors arising from conceiving them as co-ordinated—Disinterested actions: critique—Vain polemic conducted with such Supposition against utilitarianism—Actions morally indifferent, obligatory, supererogatory, etc. Critique—Comparison with the relation between art and philosophy—Other erroneous conceptions of modes of action—Pleasure and economic activity, happiness and virtue—Pleasure and pain and feeling—Coincidence of duty with pleasure—Critique of rigorism or asceticism—Relation of happiness and virtue—Critique of the subordination of pleasure to morality—No empire of morality over the forms of the spirit—Non-existence of other practical forms; and impossibility of subdivision of the two established.
V 364
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ECONOMY AND THE SO-CALLED SCIENCE OF ECONOMY
Problem of the relations between Philosophy and Science of economy—Unreality of the laws and concepts of economic Science—Economic Science founded on empirical concepts but not empirical or descriptive—Absoluteness of its laws—Their mathematical nature—Its principles and their character of arbitrary postulates and definitions—Its utility—Comparison of Economy with Mechanic, and reason for its exclusion from ethical, æsthetic, and logical facts—Errors of philosophism and historicism in Economy—The two degenerations: extreme abstractism and empiristical disaggregation—Glance at the history of the various directions of Economy—Meaning of the judgment of Hegel as to economic Science.
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VI 382
CRITIQUE OF THE CONFUSIONS BETWEEN ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF ECONOMY
Adoption of the economic method and formulæ on the part of Philosophy—Errors that derive from it—1st, Negation of philosophy for economy—2nd, Universal value attributed to empirical concepts. Example: free trade and protectionism—3rd, Transformation of the functions of calculation into reality—The pretended calculus of pleasures and pains; and doctrines of optimism and pessimism.
VII 391
HISTORICAL NOTES
I. Greek Ethic and its ingenuousness—II. Importance of Christianity for Ethic—The three tendencies that result from it: utilitarianism, rigorism, and psychologism—Hobbes, Spinoza—English Ethic—Idealistic Philosophy—III. E. Kant and his affirmation of the ethical principle—Contradictions of Kant as to the concept of the useful, of prudence, of happiness, etc.—Errors that derive from it in his Ethic—IV. Points for a Philosophy of Economy—The inferior appetitive faculty—Problem of politics and Machiavellism—Doctrine of the passions—Hegel and the concept of the useful—Fichte and the elaboration of the Kantian Ethic—V. The problem of the useful and of morality in the thinkers of the nineteenth century—Extrinsic union of Ethic and of economic Science, from antiquity to the nineteenth century—Philosophic questions arising from a more intimate contact between the two—VII. Theories of the hedonistic calculus: from Maupertuis to Hartmann.
SECOND SECTION
THE ETHICAL PRINCIPLE
I 425
CRITIQUE OF MATERIALISTIC AND OF FORMALISTIC ETHIC
Various meanings of "formal" and "material"—The ethical principle as formal (universal) and not material (contingent)—Reduction of material Ethic to utilitarian Ethic—Expulsion of material principles—Benevolence, love, altruism, etc.; and critique of them—Social organism, State, interest of the species, etc. Critique of them—Material religious principles. Critique of them—"Formal" as statement of a merely logical demand—Critique of a formal Ethic with this meaning: tautologism—Tautological principles: ideal, chief good, duty, etc. Critique of them—Tautological significance of certain formulæ, material in appearance—Conversion of tautological Ethic into material and utilitarian Ethic—In what sense Ethic should be formal; and in what other sense material.
II 440
THE ETHICAL FORM AS ACTUALIZATION OF THE SPIRIT IN UNIVERSAL
Tautological Ethic, and its partial or discontinuous connection with Philosophy—Rejection of both these conceptions—The ethical form as volition of the universal—The universal as the Spirit (Reality, Liberty, etc.)—Moral actions as volitions of the Spirit—Critique of antimoralism—Confused tendency of tautological, material, religious formulæ in relation to the Ethic of the Spirit—The Ethic of the Spirit and religious Ethic.
III 452
HISTORICAL NOTES
I. Merit of the Kantian Ethic—The predecessors of Kant—Defect of that Ethic: agnosticism—Critique of Hegel and of others—Kant and the concept of freedom—Fichte and Hegel—Ethic in the nineteenth century.
THIRD PART
LAWS
I 465
LAWS AS PRODUCTS OF THE INDIVIDUAL
Definition of law—Philosophical and empirical