Logic as the Science of the Pure Concept

by Benedetto Croce

The concept as expression.

The concept, to which we have risen from intuition, does not live in empty space. It does not exist as a mere concept, or as something abstract. The air it breathes is the intuition itself, from which it detaches itself, but in whose ambient it continues. If these images seem unsuitable, or somewhat drawn from the sphere of representations, we may choose others, such as that, which we used on another occasion, of the second grade, which, to be second, must rest upon the first, and, in a certain sense, be the first. The concept does not exist, and cannot exist, save in the intuitive and expressive forms, or in what is called language. To think is also to speak; he who does not express, or does not know how to express his concept, does not possess it: at the most, he presumes or hopes to possess it. Not only is there never in reality an unexpressed representation, a pictorial vision unpainted, or a song unsung; but there is never even a concept which is simply thought and not also translated into words.

We have previously defended this thesis against the objections which are wont to be made to it.[1] But in order to recapitulate and thus to avoid the misunderstandings which might arise from the abbreviating formulæ which we use, it will be well to repeat that the concept is not expressed only in the so-called vocal or verbal forms; and if we mention these more than others, it will be by synecdoche, that is to say, when we refer to them, we desire to take them as representative of all the others. Undoubtedly, the affirmation that the concept can also be expressed in non-verbal form may cause surprise. It will be said that geometry itself, in so far as it describes geometrical figures, at the same time employs or implies speech; and we shall be ironically challenged to attempt to set the Critique of Pure Reason to music or to make a building of Newton's Natural Philosophy. But we must carefully beware of breaking up the unity of the intuitive spirit, because errors arise and become incorrigible, precisely through such breaking up. Words, tones, colours, and lines are physical abstractions, and only by abstraction can they be successfully separated. In reality, he who looks at a picture with his eyes also speaks it in words to himself; he who sings an air also has its words in his spirit; he who builds a palace or a church speaks, sings, and makes music; he who reads a poem sings, paints, sculptures, constructs. The Critique of Pure Reason cannot be set to music, because it already has its music; the Natural Philosophy cannot be built in stone, because it is already architectonic; in exactly the same way that the Transfiguration cannot be turned into a symphony in four movements, or the Promessi Sposi into a series of pictures. Thus the challenge, if made, would testify to the lack of reflection on the part of the challengers, for they would confuse physical distinctions with the real and concrete act of the intuitive spirit.

Æsthetic and Æsthetic-logical expressions or expressions of the concept; propositions and judgments.

Owing to the incarnation of the concept or logic in expression and language, language is quite full of logical elements; hence people are often led astray into affirming (we have already made clear the erroneousness[2] of this) that language is a logical function. Water might as well be called wine, because wine has been poured into the water. But language as language or as simple æsthetic fact is one thing, and language as expression of logical thought is another, for in this case, certainly, language remains always language and subject to the law of language, but is also more than language. If the first be termed simple expression, logos seimantikos, as Aristotle said, or judicium æstheticum sive sensitivum, according to the school of Baumgarten, the second must on the contrary be called affirmation, logos apophantikos, judicium logicum or æsthetico-logicum. To this same issue we can reduce, if we understand it properly, the distinction between proposition and judgment, for they are only distinguishable in so far as it is assumed that the second form is dominated by the concept, whereas the first is given as free of such domination.

But we should seek in vain for facts in proof of expressions belonging to either form, because we cannot furnish them without making the proviso that we understand them in the meaning of one or other of the two forms. Taken by themselves, any verbal expressions which we adduce or can adduce as proofs are indeterminate and therefore of many meanings. "Love is life" can be the saying of a poet who notes an impression with which his soul is agitated and marks it with fervour and solemnity; or it can be, equally, the logical affirmation of some one philosophizing on the essence of life. "Clear, fresh, and sweet waters," when uttered by Petrarch, is an æsthetic proposition; but the same words become a logical judgment when, for example, they answer the question as to which is the most celebrated love song of Petrarch, or pseudological when applied by a naturalist to the substance water. A word no longer has meaning, or—what amounts to the same thing—has no definite meaning, when it is abstracted from the circumstances, the implications, the emphasis, and the gesture with which it has been thought, animated, and pronounced. Nevertheless, forgetfulness of this elementary hermeneutic canon, by which a word is a word only on the soil that has produced it and to which it must be restored, has been in Logic the cause of interminable disputes as to the logical nature of this or that verbal phrase, separated from the whole to which it belonged and rendered abstract. It would be much less equivocal to adduce such poems as I Sepolcri, or the song A Silvia, as documents of æsthetic propositions, and philosophical treatises (for examples, the Metaphysics or the Analytics) as documents of æsthetic-logical judgments or propositions. But here, too, we should need to add: "poetry considered as poetry," and "philosophy considered as philosophy," since it is clear that a poem is prose in the soul of him who reflects upon it, and prose is poetry in the soul of a writer vibrating with enthusiasm and emotion in the act of composition. Facts do not constitute proofs in philosophy, save when they are interpreted through the medium of philosophy; and then, too, they become mere examples, which aid in fixing the attention upon what is being demonstrated.

Surpassing of the dualism of thought and language.

The relation between language and thought, conceived as we have conceived it, does not admit the criticism that it creates an insuperable dualism, though that criticism was justly aimed at those who set the two concepts side by side and parallel with one another. In that case the sole means that remained of obtaining unity was to present language as an acoustic fact and declare thought to be the unique psychic reality, and language the physical side of the psychophysical nexus. But no one will henceforth wish to repeat the blasphemy that language (the synonym of fancy and poetry) is nothing but a physical-acoustic fact and merely adherent to thought. We have in the two forms, notwithstanding their clear distinction, not parallelism and dualism, but an organic relation of connection in distinction,—the first form being implied in the second, the second crystallized into the first,—precisely in conformity with that rhythmical movement of the concepts which we have already discussed. And thus, too, when asked if the prius of Logic be the concept or the judgment, we must reply that the judgment, understood as an æsthetic proposition, is certainly a prius; but understood as a logical judgment, it is neither a prius nor a posterius in relation to the concept, since it is the concept itself in its effectuality.

The logical judgment as definition.