Logic as the Science of the Pure Concept

by Benedetto Croce

All the other definitions which presuppose the peculiarity of philosophy are reducible, as is easily seen, to the single character of the pure concept. Philosophy (they say) is the science of the supreme principles of the real, the science of ultimate causes, of the origin of things, and the like. In these propositions, the supreme principles are evidently not real things, or groups of real things, or empty formulæ, but the ideal generators of the real. Ultimate causes are not causes (for the cause is never ultimate, being always the effect of an antecedent cause), but ideal principles. The origin in question is not the historical origin of this or that single fact, but the ideal deduction of the fact from facts or from omnipresent reality. The same idea is expressed in the imaginative saying that philosophy is the contemplation of death. For what but the individual dies? And is not the contemplation of the death of the individual also that of the immortality of the universal? Is it not contemplation of the eternal? This remark supplies the motive for that other formula which defines philosophy as "the vision of things sub specie aeterni."

as elaboration of the concepts, criticism, science of norms;

The character of the pure concept is also indicated in the definition of philosophy as the elaboration of the concepts, which the other sciences leave imperfect and self-contradictory. Indeed, since no human activity has the imperfect and contradictory as its aim, if the other sciences are involved in imperfect and contradictory concepts, this means that they do not aim at constructing concepts and that philosophy alone elaborates true and proper concepts. For this reason, philosophy has sometimes been conceived, not as science, but as criticism, and criticism means placing oneself above the object criticized, in virtue of a concept superior to those criticized. For this reason, finally, philosophy has been conceived as the science of norms and values: norms and values, which, if they are to surpass singular things, cannot be extraneous to them. Hence it is the same thing to speak of norms and values, or of universal concepts, surpassing and containing in themselves each single thing.

as doctrine of the categories.

If philosophy is the pure concept, it is also the distinctions of the pure concept; it is all the pure concepts capable of serving as predicates to individual judgments and so of acting as categories. Here there is another definition of philosophy: philosophy is the doctrine of the categories. For this reason we have already refused to assign to Logic the search for the categories: first because the doctrine of the categories is the whole of Philosophy, whereas Logic is only one of its links, and consequently seeks only one of the categories, that of logicity. It could also be said that Philosophy is the doctrine of the categories, and that Logic, as a part of Philosophy, is a Category of categories, or a Philosophy of Philosophy. Hence its singular position among philosophical sciences, so that it appears at the same time within and without Philosophy, because it completes by surpassing and surpasses by completing it. In reality, Logic, like every other philosophic science, is within and not without Philosophy; like the glassy water which reflects the landscape and is itself part of the landscape.

Exclusion of mathematical definitions of philosophy.

These definitions which we have selected to record and to interpret (and others which we leave to the reader to record and to interpret) are all formal, in the legitimate sense of the word. They define the eternal nature of philosophy, they do not determine actually any special solution of other philosophical problems, although naturally they do potentially determine one solution, in that they can agree only with one solution. Obedient to this formal character, we have not taken and shall not take account of definitions that imply the effective solution of all philosophical problems, or of Philosophy in its totality. Such is, for instance, the definition that Philosophy is knowledge of oneself, as was said at the dawn of Hellenic thought; or that it is the return to the inward man where dwells the truth, as St. Augustine said; or that it is the science of Spirit, as we say. This definition offers something more than the simply logical aspect of Philosophy. Looked at from the purely logical standpoint, Philosophy will be the science of God or of the Devil, of Spirit or Matter, of final cause or mechanism, or of anything else that may be suggested as a hypothesis for enquiry, provided that this, whatever it be, is thinkable as a pure concept or Idea. Whoever should negate this condition, would not negate this or that philosophy, but as we have seen, philosophy itself, in favour of art, of action, or of something else.

Idealism of every philosophy.

But if Philosophy is by its logical nature pure concept or idea, every philosophy, to whatever results it may attain, and whatever may be its errors, is in its essential character and deepest tendency, idealism. This has been recognized by philosophers of the most different and antagonistic views (for example, by Hegel and by Herbart). It should be taught as truth to those who are ignorant of it and those who have forgotten should be reminded of it. Determinism negates the end and affirms the cause; but the cause which it posits as its principle, is not this or that cause, but the idea of cause. Materialism negates thought and affirms matter; but not this or that matter, which composes this or that body, but the idea of matter. Naturalism denies spirit and affirms nature; not this or that manifestation of nature, but nature as idea. Finally, when a single natural fact seems to be posited as the principle of explanation of reality, this fact is idealized and stands as the idea of itself, generating itself and everything else. Thus (it has been repeatedly remarked) the water of Thales, by the very fact that it is taken as a principle, is no longer any given empirical water, but metaphysical and ideal water. In like manner, the numbers of Pythagoras are not those of the Pythagorean table, but cosmic principles and ideas. Theism does not believe it possible to obtain the sufficient reason of reality, without positing a personal God, above and beyond the world. But this God is always something non-representative, however much he may be involved in sensible representation, and placed upon Sinai or Olympus. He is the idea of personal divinity, the idea of Jehovah or of Jove. The philosophy which is called idealist in the strict sense of the word (it would be better called activist or finalist or absolute spiritualism), strives to prove that, for instance, cause, matter, nature, number, water, Jehovah, Jove and the like, are not thinkable as pure concepts and as such imply contradictions, and that therefore such philosophies are insufficient. This means that it holds the idealism of those philosophies insufficient, that they are not equal to themselves and are inadequate to the assumption on which they rest; but it does not imply that this assumption is not idealistic.