NAPLES,
November 1908.
[PREFACE TO THIRD ITALIAN EDITION OF THE LOGIC]
On reprinting the present volume, after an interval of seven years, I have reread it with attention to its literary form, but have made no substantial changes or additions to it; because the further development of that part which deals with the logic of Historiography has been collected in a special volume, forming as it were an appendix. This is now the fourth volume of the Philosophy of the Spirit.
It seemed to many, upon the first publication of this volume, that it chiefly consisted of a very keen attack upon Science. Few, above all, discovered what it was: a vindication of the seriousness of logical thought, not only in respect to empiricism and abstract thought, but also to intuitionist, mystical and pragmatistic doctrines, and to all the others then very vigorous, which, including justly combated positivism, distorted every form of logicity.
Nor, in truth, did its criticism of Science favour what is known as a philosophy "detesting facts": indeed, the chief preoccupation of that criticism was meticulous respect of facts, which was neither observed nor observable in empirical and abstract constructions and in the analogous mythologies of naturalism. The character of this Logic might equally be described as affirmation of the concrete universal and affirmation of the concrete individual, as proof of the Aristotelian Scientia est de universalibus and proof of Campanula's Scientia est de singularibus. In this manner those empty generalizations and fictitious riches which are removed from philosophy in the course of treatment, there appear more than amply, infinitely compensated for by the restitution to it of its own riches, of the whole of history, both that known as human and that known as history of nature. Henceforward it can live there as in its own dominion, or rather its own body, which is co-extensive with and indivisible from it. The separation there effected by philosophy from science is not separation from what is true knowledge in science, that is from the historical and real elements of science. It is only separation from the schematic form in which those elements are compressed, mutilated and altered. Thus it may also be described as a reconnection of it with what of living, concrete and progressive exists in those sciences. If the destruction of anything be aimed at in it, that can clearly be nothing but abstract and anti-historical philosophy. This Logic must thus be looked upon as a liquidation of philosophy rather than of science, if abstract science be posited as true philosophy.
That point is dwelt upon in the polemic against the idea of a general philosophy which should stand above particular philosophies, or the methodological problems of historical thought. The distinction of general philosophy from particular philosophies (which are true generality in their particularity) seems to me to be the gnoseological residue of the old dualism and of the old transcendency; a not innocuous residue, for it always tends to the view that the thoughts of men upon particular things are of an inferior, common and vulgar nature, and that the thought of totality or unity is alone superior and alone completely satisfying. The idea of a general philosophy prepares in this way consciously or otherwise for the restoration of Metaphysic, with its pretension of rethinking the already thought by means of a particular thought of its own. This, when it is not altogether religious revelation, becomes the caprice of the individual philosopher. The many examples offered by post-Kantian philosophy are proof of this. Here Metaphysic raged so furiously and to such deleterious effect as to involve guiltless philosophy in its guilt. The latent danger always remains, even if this restoration of Metaphysic does not take place, for if it never becomes effective because it is carefully watched and restrained, the other draw-back persists, namely, that that general philosophy, or super-philosophy or super-intelligence desired, while it does not succeed in making clear particular problems, which alone have relation to concrete life, nevertheless in a measure discredits them, by judging them to be of slight importance and by surrounding them with a sort of mystical irony.