The division of philosophy into ingenuous and learned is due to its convenience and to its didactic value, and in like manner philosophy properly so-called, or system, is distinguished from philosophy as criticism. The former is looked upon as the solid and permanent part, the latter as variable and adaptable to times and places, having as its object the defence of the eternal truths conquered by the human spirit, against the wiles and assaults of error. In reality the distinction is empirical: philosophy and philosophical criticism are the same thing; every affirmation is a negation, every negation is an affirmation. The critical or negative side is inseparable from philosophy, which is always substantially a polemic, as can be seen from the examination of any philosophic writing. Peace-loving people are fond of recommending abstention from polemics and the expression of one's own ideas in a positive manner. But only the artist is capable of expressing his soul without polemic, since it does not consist of ideas. Ideas are always armed with helmet and lance, and those who wish to introduce them among men must let them make war. A philosopher, when he truly abstains from polemics and expresses himself as though he were pouring out his own soul, has not even begun to philosophize. Or, having philosophized upon certain problems, he makes, as Plato does, the act of renunciation when he is confronted with others, feeling that he has attained to the extreme limit of his powers, and from philosophy he passes to poetry and prophecy.
Identity of philosophy and history.
Philosophy, then, is neither beyond, nor at the beginning, nor at the end of history, nor is it achieved in a moment or in any single moments of history. It is achieved at every moment and is always completely united to facts and conditioned by historical knowledge. But this result which we have obtained and which completely coincides with that of the conditioning of history by philosophy is still somewhat provisional. Were we to consider it definite, philosophy and history would appear to be two forms of the spirit, mutually conditioning one another, or (as has sometimes been trivially remarked) in reciprocal action. But philosophy and history are not two forms, they are one sole form: they are not mutually conditioned, but identical. The a priori synthesis, which is the reality of the individual judgment and of the definition, is also the reality of philosophy and of history. It is the formula of thought which by constituting itself qualifies intuition and constitutes history. History does not precede philosophy, nor philosophy history: both are born at one birth. If it is desired to give precedence to philosophy, this can only be done in the sense that the unique form of philosophy-history must take the name and character, not of intuition, but of what transforms intuition, that is to say, of thought and of philosophy.
Didactic divisions and other reasons for the apparent duality.
Philosophy and history are distinguished, as we know, for didactic purposes, philosophy being that form of exposition in which special emphasis is accorded to the concept or system, and history as that form in which the individual judgment or narrative is specially prominent. But from the very fact that the narrative includes the concept, every narrative clarifies and solves philosophic problems. On the other hand, every system of concepts throws light upon the facts which are before the spirit. The confirmation of the value of a system resides in the power of interpreting and narrating history, which it displays. It is history which is the touchstone of philosophy. It is true that the two may appear to be different, owing to the external differences of books, in which only one of the two seems to be treated: and it is also true that the didactic division is based upon a diversity of aptitudes, which practice contributes to develop. But, provided always that the meaning both of a philosophic proposition and of a historical proposition is fathomed to the bottom, their intrinsic unity is indubitable. The fact that is so often cited of conflicts between philosophy and history is in reality a conflict between two philosophies, the one true and the other false, or both partly true and partly false. Some thinkers, for instance, are idealist in recounting history and materialist in their philosophic systems. This means that two philosophies are at strife within them without either being sufficiently aware of it. And does it not also happen that we find in a philosophic exposition propositions that contradict one another and divergent systems capriciously associated in one system?
From intuition, which is indiscriminate individualization, we rise to the universal, which is discriminate individualization, from art to philosophy, which is history. The second stage, precisely because it is second, is more complex than the first, but this does not imply that it is, as it were, split into two lesser degrees, philosophy and history. The concept, with one stroke of the wing, affirms itself and takes possession of the whole of reality, which is not different from it, but is itself.
Note.—May I be permitted an explanation concerning the history of my thought (and also of its criticism owing to their unity already demonstrated)? Sixteen years ago I began my studies in philosophy with a memoir entitled History beneath the general concept of Art (1893). There I maintained, not that history is art (as others have summarized my thought) but (as indeed the title clearly showed) that history can be placed beneath the general concept of art. I now maintain, sixteen years after, that, on the contrary, history is philosophy and that history and philosophy are indeed the same thing. The two theories are certainly different; but they are far less different than appears, and the second theory is in any case a development and perfecting of the first. Elle a bien changé sur la route, without doubt; but without discontinuity and without gaps. Indeed, the objects of my memoir were chiefly: (1) to combat the absorption of history, which the natural sciences were then attempting more than they are now; (2) the affirmation of the theoretic character of art and of its seriousness, art being then regarded as a hedonistic fact by the prevailing positivism; (3) the negation of history as a third form of the theoretic spirit different from the æsthetic form and from that of thought. I still maintain these three theses intact and they form part of my Æsthetic and of my Logic. But the proper character of philosophy, so profoundly different from the empirical and abstract sciences, was not clear to me at the time, and therefore neither was the difference between philosophic Logic and Logic of classification. For this reason I was unable completely to solve the problem that I had proposed to myself. Owing to this confusion of the true universality of philosophy and of the false universality of the sciences (which is either mere generality or abstractness) in a single group, it seemed to me that the concreteness of history could enter only the group of art, understood in its greater extension (hence the general concept of art). In this group, by means of the fallacious method of subordination and co-ordination, I distinguished history as the representation of the real, placing it without mediation alongside the representation of the possible (art in the strict sense of the word). When I understood the true relation between Philosophy and the sciences (a slow progress, because to reattain to consciousness of what philosophy truly is has been slow and difficult for the men of my generation), the nature of history also became somewhat clearer to me as I gradually freed myself from the remnants of the intellectualistic and naturalistic method. In the Æsthetic I looked upon that spiritual product as due to the intersection of philosophy and of art. In the Outlines of Logic I made another step in advance, history there appearing to me as the ultimate result of the theoretic spirit, the sea into which flowed the river of art, swelled with that of philosophy. The complete identity of history and of philosophy was, however, always half-hidden from me, because in me the prejudice still persisted that philosophy might have a form in a certain way free from the bonds of history, and constitute in relation to it a prior and independent moment of the spirit. That is to say, something abstract persisted in my idea of philosophy. But this prejudice and this abstractness have been vanquished little by little. And not only have my studies in the Philosophy of the practical greatly helped me to vanquish them, but also and above all, the studies of my dearest friend Giovanni Gentile (to whom my mental life owes many other aids and stimulations), concerning the relation between philosophy and history of philosophy (cf. now especially Critica, vii. pp. 142-9). In short, I have gradually passed from the accentuation of the character of concreteness, which history possesses in relation to the empirical and abstract sciences, to the accentuation of the concrete character of philosophy. And having completed the elimination of the double abstractness, the two concretenesses (that which I had first of all claimed for history, and that which I have afterwards claimed for philosophy) have finally revealed themselves to me as one. Thus I can now no longer accept without demur my old theory, which is not the new one, but is linked to it by such close bonds.
Such is the road I have travelled, and I wished especially to describe it, in order to leave no misunderstandings which, through my neglect, might lead others into error.