Logic as the Science of the Pure Concept

by Benedetto Croce

But the question, the problem, the doubtis always individually conditioned. The doubt of the child is not that of the adult, the doubt of the uncultured man is not that of the man of culture, or the doubt of the novice that of the learned. Further, the doubt of an Italian is not that of a German, and the doubt of a German of the year 1800 is not that of a German of the year 1900. Indeed, the doubt formulated by an individual in a given moment, is not that formulated by the same individual a moment after. It is sometimes said by way of simplification, that the same question has been put by very many men, in various countries and at various times. But in the very act of saying this, we simplify. In reality, every question differs from every other question. Every definition, though it may seem to be the same and bounded with certain definite words, which seem to remain unchanged and constant, differs in reality from every other, because the words, even when they seem to be materially the same, are in effect different, according to the spiritual differences of those who pronounce them. Each of these is an individual, and on that account each finds himself in circumstances that are individually determined. "Virtue is the habit of moral actions," is a formula which can be pronounced a hundred times. But if it be seriously pronounced as a definition of virtue each of those hundred times, it answers to a hundred psychological situations, more or less different, and is in reality not one, but a hundred definitions.

It will be replied that the concept remains the same through all these definitions, like a man who changes his clothes a hundred times. But (setting aside the fact that even the man who changes his clothes a hundred times does not remain the same) the truth is that the relation between concept and definition is not the same as that between a man and his clothes. No concept exists save in so far as it is thought and enclosed in words, or in so far as it is defined. If the definitions vary, the concept itself varies. There are, certainly, variations of the concept, of that which is, par excellence, self-identical. These are the life of the concept, not of the representation. But the concept does not exist outside its life, and every thinking of it is a phase of this life, never its overcoming, since however far we go, it is never possible to swim outside water, or however high we climb, to fly outside air.

The definition as also historical judgment. Unity of truths of reason and of fact.

If we posit individual or historical conditions for every thinking of the concept, or of every definition (conditions which constitute the doubt, the problem, the question, to which the definition replies), we must admit that the definition, which contains the answer and affirms the concept, at the same time illumines by so doing those individual and historical conditions, that group of facts, from which it comes. It illumines, that is to say, qualifies it as what it is, grasps it as subject by giving it a predicate, and judges it. And since the fact is always individual, it forms an individual judgment. This means just that every definition is also an individual judgment. And this agrees with the hypothesis we framed: it is the assumption that seemed doubtful and now is proved. Truth of reason and truth of fact, analytic and synthetic judgments, judgments of definition and individual judgments, do not exist as distinct from one another: they are abstractions. The logical act is unique: it is the identity of definition and of individual judgment, the thinking of the pure concept.

Considerations confirming this.

Such a theory as this, although it goes against the ordinary way of thinking (though this, in its turn, suffers from its own contradictions), can be made convincing even to ordinary thought, when it is led to reflect upon what is implicitly understood in any judgments of definition that are pronounced. For example, definitions have always in view some particular adversary; they change according to time and circumstances, and those definitions that we felt constrained to give, at one stage of our mental development, we abandon at another, not because we judge them to be erroneous, but because they seem to us to be inopportune or commonplace. These and other facts, easy to observe, would not be possible, unless judgment of definite situations intervened to produce the change. And this judgment, though we may try to think of it as preceding or as following each one of those acts of definition, in reality neither precedes nor follows them, but on the contrary presents itself to the mind as contemporaneous, or rather coincident and identical with the act of definition. Every one who attains to a conceptual truth, every one, for instance, who achieves a definite doctrine of art or of morality, is immediately aware in himself that henceforth he knows more adequately not only the kingdom of ideas but also the kingdom of things. He realizes that as soon as an idea becomes more clear ipso facto it makes clearer the things out of whose vortex and tumult it comes. The star-gazer who forgets the earth, will be an astronomer, but certainly not a philosopher. In the act of thought, in the world of ideas, earth and sky are fused in one. Whoever looks well at the sky sees in it (miraculously!) the earth.

For the rest, the identity of definition and individual judgment, which we have demonstrated by various processes that are usually called negative, hypothetical, or inductive and based upon observation, is also confirmed by the process called deductive. For if the thinking of the concept be a degree superior to pure representation, and if in the degrees of the spirit the superior contain in itself the inferior, it is evident that representation as well as conceptual elements must always be found in the concept. But it is also evident that we can never find them distinct or distinguishable, but mingled in such a way that every distinction in them must be introduced solely by a deliberate act. The logical act is certainly spoken, represented, individualized. But when it is split up into concept and individual judgment, one of two things must happen: either we make an empirical and external distinction, of more or less; or two monstrosities are asserted: a non-individualized concept, which therefore does not exist, and a judgment not thought, and therefore non-existent as judgment, and existing, at the most, as pure intuition.

Critique of the false distinction between formal and material truths.

As our distinction between definitions and individual judgments was provisional, so also we must regard the consequence that we showed to issue from it—the partial justification of the doctrine of affirmations formally (logically) true and materially (individually) false. In reality, an error of fact implies a more or less inaccurate and erroneous definition, and an error of definition implies an error of fact. Thus this distinction also retains only an empirical meaning useful for the rough distinction of certain classes of errors from certain others. And resuming another previous observation, we must also say that, strictly speaking, it must be held impossible to err as to facts through the use of pure concepts, since the penetration of concepts, however great one may think it, is also always penetration of facts. This formula, too, cannot have anything but an empirical meaning, to indicate a certain type of errors of concept and of fact, which is popularly called the use of concepts and the use of facts, whereas it is the abuse of both.