Logic as the Science of the Pure Concept

by Benedetto Croce

The consequence of the process here recognized as to the manner in which individual empirical judgments are formed, and in virtue of which they have pure judgments as their base, is that empirical judgments also in the last analysis are based upon the concept of existentiality. Pseudoconcepts of possibility are not formed, because possibilities are infinite, and it would be vain, or of no mnemonic use, to fix types of them. When, as sometimes occurs, such types seem to be formed outside of all existence, their appearance serves, not a mnemonic purpose, but a purpose of research. This is the case with hypotheses and with other provisional methods of thought. But the empirical judgment is related to the individual or existential judgment, and it also employs pseudoconcepts of existential origin. For this reason, when giving examples of judgments of existence in the preceding chapter, we availed ourselves without scruple of empirical judgments also; for these obey the same law in relation to existentiality. "This animal is a monkey" implies, not only the existence of the animal taken as subject of the judgment; but also of that class of animals, of which the character has been abstracted, and the complex of characteristics which under the name of a monkey fulfil the function of predicate. An animal that does not exist and a class of animals that does not exist are not reducible to subject and predicate, and do not give rise to judgment of any sort.

Dependence of empirical judgments upon pure judgments.

Another consequence is that empirical concepts and judgments are continually originated and modified by pure individual judgments. The object of empirical concepts and judgments is to maintain the possession and the easy use of our knowledge; and this with no other end than that of serving as base for our actions, and thus also as a means of attaining new knowledge. New knowledge is expressed in new pure individual judgments, which in their turn supply material for the elaboration of new empirical concepts and judgments. In this way empirical concepts and judgments must be and continually are renewed, by being dipped in the waters of pure individual judgments, true judgments of reality. From these waters they issue forth with youth renewed. If they do not do this, the worse for them: they fall ill, waste away and die. Given a rapid and profound revolution of thought, or, as it is also called, a transvaluation of all the values of life and reality, we should also have at once a no less rapid and profound transformation of all the empirical concepts and judgments previously possessed and employed. But this is continually occurring in the life of the spirit, if not in cataclysmic form, then in a more modest way. For example, who now employs the empirical concept of phlogiston, or forms judgments based upon it, now that we no longer admit the existence of that element, which was at one time believed to be separated from combustible bodies in the act of combustion? Who now says (save in jest) that such and such a syllogism is in bramantip or in fresison, or that a certain part of a speech is an ornatum or a hypotyposis, now that we no longer believe the facts upon which such concepts of the old Logic and Rhetoric were based? Who still distinguishes human destinies according to the conjunctions of the stars that presided at birth, as was done when astrology was believed?

Empirical judgments as classification.

The empirical judgment, in so far as it applies a predicate to a subject supplied by the pure individual judgment, makes that subject enter that predicate, which is a type or class; and therefore it classifies the subjects of individual judgments. Thus we may also call empirical judgments, judgments of classification. This explains why the judgment has sometimes been considered to be nothing but a relation of subordination: for the empirical judgment does indeed subordinate a representation (which has first been logically determined by the individual judgment) to an empirical concept; that is, it places it in a class.

Classification and intelligence.

Classification is an essential function, for the reasons already given, which it would be useless to repeat; but to classify is not to realize intellectually, to understand, to grasp, to comprehend. If therefore, in life, we disapprove of those unmethodical people who detest classification, we do not disapprove any the less of the perpetual classifiers, who content themselves with arranging things in classes, when on the contrary the needful thing is to penetrate their nature and peculiar value. It is a very common error to believe that something has been thoroughly understood and every problem relating to it completely solved, when it has simply been put into a drawer, that is, into a class. Thus in the not distant past, instead of establishing whether the Promessi Sposi were or were not an æsthetic work, and what movement of the spirit it represents, it was considered to be the duty of criticism to enquire whether that book were a romance or a novel, a historical or didactic romance, a historical representation of persons or of environment, and so on. The zoologist too, instead of studying the history and transformations of animals, their life and habits, limited himself to adding a rare specimen to a variety, or a variety to a subspecies, or a subspecies to a species, and believed that by so doing he had completely fulfilled the function of science.

Interchange of the two, and genesis of perceptive and judicial illusions.

The abuse of empirical or classificatory judgments is not less in relation to perception, which, as we know, is nothing but the series of individual judgments. It frequently happens that when entering upon the discussion of real facts, and having in mind groups and series of pseudoconcepts, we hastily form empirical judgments, which take the place of pure individual judgments and are taken in exchange for them. From these exchanges have arisen certain famous controversies about the truth of perception, such as that indicated by the instance of the stick immersed in water, which seems to the eye to be broken, whereas it is whole and straight. The usual answer to such a view is that the error lies in the judgment, since perception as perception is never wrong. This answer is not altogether correct, since the perception is a judgment, and if the judgment is wrong, the perception also is wrong. On the contrary, the error is not in the judgment, but in the prejudice that the stick in question is in reality straight, and that when immersed in water the genuine reality is disturbed by a new element; as though the stick outside the water possessed greater or less reality than when immersed in the water. This error arises from the construction of the empirical concept of "stick," taken as a true and proper concept, so that when the stick is immersed in water and seems to be broken it seems not to answer to its true concept. Strictly speaking, the perception of the stick as broken or otherwise altered is not less true than that of the straight stick; the absurdity, occasioned by the empirical concept, arises from seeking the true perception among various perceptions, in order to make of it the basis and foundation of the others declared illusory. This error would seem to be of slight importance, so long at least as it is a matter of a stick; but it entails most serious consequences, since it is owing to similar errors that outside the Spirit there has come to be posited the Thing in itself.

Abstract concepts and individual judgments.