Logic as the Science of the Pure Concept

by Benedetto Croce

Empirical division of representative material.

The second mode is, of necessity, empirical, and cannot be carried out without the introduction of empirical concepts. For otherwise it would not be possible to keep the representations of reality separate, since they constitute a continuous and compact series. By means of empirical concepts, history is divided into the history of the State, of the Church, of society, of the family, of religion (as distinct from philosophy), or of philosophy (as distinct from religion). Or, as the history of philosophy, it is divided into the history of idealism, of materialism, of scepticism; or as the history of art, into the history of painting, of poetry, of the drama, of fiction. Or again, as the history of civilization, it is divided into oriental history—history of Greece, of Rome, of the Middle Ages, of the Renaissance, of the Reformation, and so on. Even these last mentioned criteria (Greece, Rome, the Middle Ages, etc.) are empirical concepts and not representations, because, as we know,[2] the representation is individual, and when it is made constant and general it is changed into a concept of the individual, the summary and symbol of several representations, in fact, the empirical concept. Each one of these divisions is valid in so far as it is useful; and equally valid, under a like condition, are all the divisions that have been conceived, and the infinite number that are conceivable.

Empirical concepts in history and the false theory as to the function that they have there.

But the failure to understand that the true function of the introduction of empirical concepts is to divide the mass of historical facts and to regroup them conveniently for mnemonic purposes, has greatly interfered with the ideas of logicians as to the writing of history. Just as the individual judgment presupposes neither the empirical concept, nor the judgment of classification, nor the abstract concept, nor the judgment of enumeration, whereas all these forms presuppose just the individual judgment; so history does not presuppose classifications conducted from the practical point of view, or enumerations and statistics, whereas on the other hand all of these do presuppose history, and without it could not appear. We should not be deceived by finding them fused in historical works (which continually have recourse to such aids to memory), nor allow ourselves to forget that their function is subservient, not constitutive. There can be no abstract idea of the Greek, unless we have first known the individual life of the men called Pericles and Alcibiades. Nor can there be any enumeration of the Three Hundred of Thermopylæ or of the Three Hundred of Cremera, except in so far as each was known in his individual features, and then classified as a citizen of Sparta or a Roman of the Fabian gens. To avail oneself of these simplifications is not to narrate history, which is already present to the spirit, but to fix it in the memory and to communicate it to others in an easier way. Those others, if they have not the capacity to recover the individual fact beneath those concepts of class and of number, will understand nothing of history, thus simplified and reduced to a skeleton for the purposes of communication.

Hence comes also the claim to reduce history to a natural science;

The positivist fiction that history can be reduced to a science (natural science is of course meant) arises from the false interpretation of the subsidiary character of the pseudoconcepts in history and from making them a constitutive part of it. History, on this view, would be rendered a perfect example of what it has hitherto been only in imperfect outline, a classification and statistical table of reality. The many practical attempts at such a reduction have damaged contemporary historical writing not a little, by substituting colourless formulæ and empty abstractions which are applicable to several epochs at once or to all times, for the narration of individual reality. The same tendency appears in what is called sociologism, and in its polemic against what it calls psychological or individual history, and in favour of institutional or social history. Against these materialistic reductions of history, the doctrines of accident or of little causes which upset the effects of great causes, are efficacious and valuable, for these and suchlike absurdities have the merit of reducing that false reduction to absurdity.

and the thesis of the practical character of history.

By reason of the same erroneous interpretation there has come from philosophers who are not positivists, the theory that history is rendered possible only by the intervention of the practical spirit. On this view, the practical spirit, after establishing practical values, arranges beneath them the formless material and shapes it into historical narrative. But the practical spirit is impotent to produce anything in the field of knowledge; it can act only as the custodian and administrator of what has already been produced. For this reason, the theory here referred to, by appealing to the practical spirit, resolves itself into a complete negation of the value of history as knowledge. And this negation, though it was certainly not foreseen or desired by those who maintain the theory, yet is unavoidable.

Distinction between historical facts and facts that are not historical, and its empirical value.