Logic as the Science of the Pure Concept

by Benedetto Croce

And, certainly, these distinctions are useful, and therefore necessary in practice. We all feel the need of creating an aristocracy of men and things; of distinguishing the word that a sergeant whispers in the ear of a maid-servant from a sonnet or a symphony; the proverbs of Sancho Panza from a treatise on Ethics; and the report of a police-agent from the history of Rome or of England. We distinguish the classification of the glasses and bowls in use at home from that of Mineralogy or of Zoology; the reckoning of our daily expenses from the calculation of the astronomer; and, finally, Tom, Dick and Harry from Aeschylus, Plato, Thucydides, Hippocrates and Euclid. The odi profanum vulgus is a motto that should be appropriated by whosoever labours to promote the life of thought and of art, yet not without adding to it Ariosto's post-script: "Nor do I wish to absolve any from the name of vulgar, save the prudent."

But, admitting all this, we must recognize not less energetically that these distinctions, imposed by the necessities of life, have in philosophy no value at all, and that their introduction there, if it has some excuse in professional custom, is nevertheless the way to shut off from us for ever all understanding both of the forms of knowledge and of those of acquaintance. Man is complete man at every instant and in every man; the spirit is always whole in every individuation of itself. The philosopher in the highest sense (in the philosopher worthy of the name) could be defined as one who raises doubts, collects difficulties, and formulates problems, intent upon clearing up doubts, upon levelling difficulties, and upon solving problems; the artist as a man who limits himself to looking and to recording the significance of what he has seen. In this case, the ordinary man would be he who encounters no theoretic difficulties and is unaware of spectacles worthy of contemplation. But in reality the ordinary man also sets himself problems and solves them, contemplates and expresses the spectacle of the real. The distinction has value, therefore, only in descriptive Psychology, which passes in review types of reality and the perfected organs, so to speak, which reality creates for itself in great philosophers and great poets. But what empiricism always divides, philosophy must always unite. To be scandalized when some one speaks of the poetry, philosophy, science, mathematics, which are in every one's mouth; to mock those who unify and identify; to appeal to good sense and to threaten the madhouse, are things that reveal much pedantry but no humanity, or, at most, very little. It is foolish to fear that such an identification as we propose will lessen the importance of the forms of knowledge and render trivial divine Poetry, lofty Philosophy, severe History, serious Science and ingenious Mathematics. As the hero is not outside humanity, but is he in whom the soul of the people is concentrated and made powerful, so poetry, philosophy, science and history, aristocratically circumscribed, are the most conspicuous manifestations attained by the elementary forms of acquaintance themselves. Such they could not be, were they not all one with them, just as the mountains could not be, were it not for the earth upon which they are raised and of which they are constituted.

It might be said that the forms of knowledge are rich and complex manifestations of the human spirit, if this statement did not open the way to another common prejudice, to the belief that to each of those forms (for instance, to Art, History and Philosophy) several spiritual activities contribute. Were this so, we should have before us a mixture, not a product of an unique and original character, such as we find, as a matter of fact, in a work of Art, a philosophic theory, a narrative, and a theorem. By the law of the unity of the spirit all the forms of the spirit are implicit in one another; and the results, previously obtained from the various forms, condition each one of them. But each one of them is, explicitly, itself and not the others; it absorbs and transforms the results of the others; it does not leave them within itself as extraneous elements, and it therefore makes of them its own results. The strength of each one of those forms of knowledge lies precisely in this purity, which persists in the greatest complexity. A great poem is as homogeneous as the shortest lyric or as a verse; a philosophic system as homogeneous as a definition; the most complicated calculations as the addition of "two and two make four."

Enumeration and determination of the forms of knowing, corresponding to the forms of acquaintance.

If the forms of acquaintance and the forms of knowledge be identical, it is proved thereby that the second are as many and of the same sort as the first; and the existence of combined or composite forms is also excluded from the forms of knowledge. Thus we are henceforth freed from the obligation of enquiring into the particular nature of the various forms of knowledge, a task that we have already fulfilled when enquiring into the forms of acquaintance. It is sufficient to name them (in correspondence) with the names already given to the forms of acquaintance, for thus they will be clearly distinguished and completely enumerated. The method of denomination itself will not be new and surprising, because it has been, as it were, anticipated, and foreseen from the examples of which we have availed ourselves above, and also from some terminological references. We have now only to make it manifest, to declare it, so to speak, in clear tones.

Pure intuition is the theoretic form of Art (or of Poetry, if we wish to extend to the whole of æsthetic production the name given to a group of works of art); and art cannot be otherwise defined than as pure intuition. The thinking of the pure concept, of the concept as itself, of the universal that is truly universal and not mere generality or abstraction, is Philosophy, and Philosophy cannot be otherwise defined than as the thinking, or the conceiving of the pure concept. And since the pure concept can be expressed either in the form of definition or in that of individual judgment, there corresponds to this duplication the distinction of the two forms of knowing, Philosophy in the strict sense, and History. The method of treatment called empirical Science or natural Science, or most commonly in our time, Science, is composed of those pseudoconcepts known as representative or empirical or classificatory. The mathematical Sciences are composed of abstract, enumerative and mensurative pseudoconcepts, and the application of the second of these, by means of the first, to individual judgments, is nothing else than what is called the mathematical Science of nature.

Critique of the idea of a special Logic as doctrine of the forms of knowledge,

It is usual for the treatment of the forms of knowledge to be presented in the majority of treatises as a special or applied Logic; following general or pure Logic, which has for its object the specific forms of acquaintance alone, or as it is significantly expressed, the elementary forms of acquaintance. But we cannot admit the existence of such a Logic, for the reasons already given. The elementary or fundamental forms are the only forms philosophically conceivable and really existing, and the whole of logical Science is exhausted in them. There is no duality of grades for logical Science any more than for Philosophy in general. And as no special Æsthetic exists independent of general Æsthetic, no special Ethic and Economic independent of general Economic, so there is not a general Logic alongside of a special Logic.

and as doctrine of methods.

Special Logic is also inadmissible, when it is presented as doctrine of methods, and especially of demonstrative or intrinsic methods. The method of a form of knowledge and in general of a form of the spirit, is not something different or even distinguishable from this form itself. The method of poetry is poetry, the method of philosophy is philosophy, the method of mathematics is mathematics, and so on. Only by means of empirical abstraction is the method separated from the activity itself; and when this duality has been created, we are led to add to it a third term, which is called the object of that form. But since the method is the form itself, so form and method are the object itself. Certainly, all the forms of the spirit have a common object, which is Reality; but this is not because reality is separated from them, but because they are reality: they therefore have not, but are this object. Thus the forms of knowledge have not a theoretic object, but create it: they themselves are that object. Philosophy has the pure concept for method and object; art has intuition; science the empirical concept, and so on. If we wished to treat of methods in a special Logic, we could not do otherwise than repeat what we have already said in respect to the character of each form.