Logic as the Science of the Pure Concept

by Benedetto Croce

The author of a philosophic work is, however, always dissatisfied, for he feels that his book or treatise hardly suffices for an instant, but immediately reveals itself as more or less insufficient. For this reason, to any philosopher, as to any poet, the only works of his own that bring true satisfaction are those that he has still to do. Thus every philosopher and every true artist dies unsatisfied, like Karl Marx, who, when asked in the last year of his life to prepare a complete edition of his works, replied that he had yet to write them. He alone is satisfied who at a certain moment ceases to think and takes to admiring himself, that is to say, the corpse of himself as a thinker, and is careful, not of art or philosophy, but of his own person. Yet to no one can even this give the satisfaction he imagines, for life is no less voracious and insatiable than thought. In any case, to be satisfied, the author must become philosophically immobile in a formula, and the reader must content himself with this formula. Thoughts must become "obtuse and deaf," as Leibnitz called them, who defined such a spiritual condition as psittacism. The only consolation left to one who does not become immobile is that of reflecting, like Socrates, that his discourses will not be sterile, but fruitful. Other discourses will spring from them in his own soul and in the soul of others, in whom he has sown the seeds[2] He will console himself with the thought that philosophy, like life, is infinite.

Surpassing and continuous progress of philosophy.

The infinity of philosophy, its continuous changing, is not a doing and an undoing, but a continuous surpassing of itself. The new philosophic proposition is made possible only by the old; the old lives eternally in the new that follows it and in the new that will follow that again and make old that other which is new. This suffices to reassure those minds which are easily led astray and inclined to lament the vanity of things. Where everything is vain, nothing is vain; fullness consists precisely in that perpetual becoming vain, which is the perpetual birth of reality, the eternal becoming. Nobody renounces love because love is transitory, nor abandons thinking because his thought will give place to other thoughts. Love passes, but generates other beings, who will love. Thought passes, but generates other thoughts, which, in their turn, will excite other thoughts. In the world of thought also, we survive in our own children: in our children who contradict us, substitute themselves for us and bury us, not always with due piety.

Meaning of the eternity of philosophy.

No other meaning but this is to be found in the vaunted eternity of philosophy in regard to time and space. The eternity of every philosophic proposition must be affirmed against those who materialistically consider all propositions as valueless existences, and fugitives which leave no trace, as phenomena of brute matter, which alone persists. Philosophic propositions, though historically conditioned, are not effects produced and determined by these conditions, but creations of thought, which is continued in and through them. When they appear to be produced determinately, they must be held to be, not philosophy, but false philosophy, vital interests masquerading as thoughts. That alone can be eternal as philosophy, which is knowledge and truth. But when eternity is misunderstood as isolation from those conditions, it must then be denied, and in place of it the thesis of relativity must be admitted, provided we are careful that it does not assume the erroneous vesture of historical materialism and economic determinism. The thesis that the history of philosophy should be treated psychologically, by the attribution of ideas to the temporal conditions and the personal experiences of philosophers, to social history and biography, is reducible (and it is worth while noticing this) to materialism and determinism in its least evident form, namely psychologism. Such a thesis is the failure to recognize spiritual value, or at least (as is the case with some unconscious æstheticists), the logical value of philosophy, whose history, when changed into that of the expressions of states of the soul, comes to coincide altogether with the history of poetry and literature.

The concept of spontaneous, ingenuous, innate philosophy, etc., and its meaning.

The eternity of philosophy is its truth, and the conception which is sometimes brought forward of a spontaneous or ingenuous or innate or cryptic (abdita) philosophy, which alone should be permanent amid the variations of philosophic opinions, or to which the spirit should return after many wanderings, is nothing but a symbol of this truth. The Platonic theory of reminiscence (anamneisis) is reducible to this conception. In this theory true knowledge is explained as the recollection of an original state; and it is this reminiscence, as the restitution of the childish soul, that is described by our Leopardi in the following verses:

I believe that to know is very often, if we examine it, nothing but to perceive the folly of beliefs due to habit, and the careful reconquest of the knowledge of childhood, taken from us by age; for the child neither knows nor sees more than we, but he does not believe that he sees and knows.

But such philosophy and such reminiscence are really found only in propositions historically conditioned. Ingenuous philosophy and primitive knowledge are nothing but the concept itself of philosophy, fully realized in all and none. "Platonic reminiscence (explained Schelling) is the memory of that state, in which we are all one with nature." But since we are one with nature in every one of our acts, each one of them demands a special reminiscence and so a new thought. In like manner, the state of nature, celebrated in moral and political doctrines (the doctrines of morality and rights), was a state of perfection which can never be found anywhere in the world or at any moment of time, because it expressed the very concept of the good, of virtue and of justice. Socrates, in another Platonic dialogue, spoke of those true beliefs (doxai aleiteis) as elusive like the statues of Daedalus, that disappear from the soul, unless one binds them with rational arguments, and only when thus bound do they from beliefs become knowledge.[3] Such is ingenuous philosophy, which in reality exists only when bound and never when loose and ingenuous, as the name would suggest; philosophy abdita exists only as philosophy addita. Certainly, to the consciousness of doctrinaires, obscured with too much labour, we can sometimes oppose ingenuous consciousness, and to the pedantry of scholastic treatises we can oppose the truth of proverbs, of good sense, of children, of the people, or of primitive races. But we must not forget that in all these cases ingenuous is a metaphor which designates truth in contradistinction to what is not truth.

Philosophy as criticism and polemic.