Logic as the Science of the Pure Concept

by Benedetto Croce

Relation of the distinct concepts as ideal history.

This relation of the distinct concepts in the unity which they constitute, can be compared to the spectacle of life, in which every fact is in relation with all other facts, and the fact which comes after is certainly different from that which precedes, but is also the same; since the consequent fact contains in itself the preceding, as, in a certain sense, the preceding virtually contained the consequent, and was what it was, just because it possessed the power of producing the consequent. This is called history; and therefore (continuing to develop the comparison) the relation of the concepts, which are distinct in the unity of the concept, can be called and has been called ideal history; and the logical theory of such ideal history has been regarded as the theory of the degrees of the concept, just as real history is conceived as a series of degrees of civilization. And since the theory of the degrees of the concept is the theory of its distinction, and its distinction is not different from its unity, it is clear that this theory can be separated from the general doctrine of the concept with which it is substantially one, only with a view to greater facility of exposition.

Distinction between ideal and real history.

Metaphors and comparisons are metaphors and comparisons and (like all forms of language) their effectiveness for the purposes of dissertation is accompanied, as we know, by the danger of misunderstanding. In order to avoid this, without at the same time renouncing the convenience of such modes of expression, it will be well to insist that the historical series, where the distinct concepts appear connected, is ideal, and therefore outside space and time, and eternal; so that it would be erroneous to conceive that in any smallest fragment of reality, or in any most fugitive instant of it, one degree is found without the other, the first without the second, or the first and the second without the third. Here too, we must allow for the exigencies of exposition, whereby, sometimes, when we intend to emphasize the distinction, we are led to speak of the relation of one degree to another, as if they were distinct existences; as if the practical man really existed side by side with the theoretic man, or the poet side by side with the philosopher, or as if the work of Art stood separate from the labour of reflection, and so on. But if a particular historical fact can in a certain sense be considered as essentially distinct in time and space, the grades of the concept are not existentially, temporally, and spatially distinct.

Ideal and abstract distinction.

An opposite, but not less serious error, would be to conceive the grades of the concept as distinct only abstractly, thus making abstract concepts of distinct concepts. The abstract distinction is unreal; and that of the concept is real; and the reality of the distinction (since here we are dealing with the concept) is precisely ideality, not abstraction. The universal, and therefore also all the forms of the universal, are found in every minutest fragment of life, in the so-called physical atom of the physicists, or in the psychical atom of the psychologists; the concept is therefore all distinct concepts. But each one of them is, as it were, distinct in that union; and in the same way as man is man, in so far as he affirms all his activities and his entire humanity, and yet cannot do this, save by specializing as a scientific man, a politician, a poet, and so on. In the same way the thinker, when thinking reality, can think it only in its distinct aspects, and in this way only he thinks it in its unity. A work of Art and a philosophical work, an act of thought or of will, cannot be taken up in the hand or pointed out with the finger; and it can be affirmed only in a practical and approximate sense that this book is poetry, and that philosophy, that this movement is a theoretic or practical, a utilitarian or a moral act. It is well understood that this book is also philosophy; and that it is also a practical act; just as that useful act is also moral, and also theoretic; and vice versa. But to think a certain intuitive datum and to recognize it as an affirmation of the whole spirit, is not possible save by thinking its different aspects distinctly. This renders possible, for example, a criticism of Art, conducted exclusively from the point of view of Art; or a philosophical criticism, from the exclusive point of view of philosophy; or a moral judgment, which considers exclusively the moral initiative of the individual, and so on. And therefore, here as in the preceding case, it is needful to guard against forcing the comparison with history too far, and conceiving, in history, the possibility of divisions as rigorous as in the concept. If distinct concepts be not existences, existences are not distinct concepts; a fact cannot be placed in the same relation to another fact, as one grade of the concept to another, precisely because in every fact there are all the determinations of the concept, and a fact in relation to another fact is not a conceptual determination.

Certainly distinct concepts can become simple abstractions; but this only happens when they are taken in an abstract way, and so separated from one another, co-ordinated and made parallel, by means of an arbitrary operation, which can be applied even to the pure concepts. The distinct concepts then become changed into pseudoconcepts, and the character of abstraction belongs to these last, not to the distinct concepts as such, which are always at once distinct and united.

Other usual distinctions of the concept, and their meaning, identicals, disparates, primitives, and derivatives, etc.

This is not the place to dwell upon the other forms of concepts met with in Logic, known as identical concepts, which cannot be anything but synonyms, or words;—or upon disparate concepts, which are simply distinct concepts, in so far as they are taken in a relation, which is not that given in the distinction, and is therefore arbitrary, so that the concepts, thus presented without the necessary intermediaries, appear disparate;—or primitive and derived concepts, or simple and compound concepts; a distinction which does not exist for the pure concepts, since they are always simple and primitive, never compound or derived.