Logic as the Science of the Pure Concept

by Benedetto Croce

Æstheticism.

We have met with æstheticism and with empiricism at the beginning of our exposition, and again here and there throughout its course; and we have sufficiently determined the nature of both and demonstrated the contradictions in which they become involved. In every one of their movements they presuppose the pure concept and the philosophy of which they mean to take the place. At the same time, they do not develop the philosophy which they have presupposed, because they suffocate it in the vapour of the intuitions and in the chilly waters of naturalistic concepts. They are not therefore effective thought, but an adulteration of thought with heterogeneous elements, which by a misuse of words are said to be furnished with theoretic and logical value.

Æstheticism has few representatives, because complete abstention from reflection and reason is too obviously contradictory. Even when art was considered to be a true instrument of philosophy, in the Romantic period, this affirmation was put forward in a confused manner, intuition being finally distinguished from intuition, art from art. This amounted at bottom to a radical change and an abandonment of the original thesis. We have seen æstheticism reappear in our times under the name of intuitionism, or again as pure experience: an experience which is taken to be not posterior, but anterior to every intellectual category, and should therefore be called nothing but pure intuition.

Empiricism

The representatives of empiricism are on the other hand most numerous, now as in the past; so much so that empiricism sometimes seems to be the sole adversary of philosophy, and the true origin of all philosophic errors. This opinion is without doubt inexact, but it finds support in the fact that philosophy is obliged to defend itself from the incessant assaults of empiricism, more than from any other enemy. The confusion between pure and empirical concepts is, indeed, easy, since both have the form of universality (though the universality of the second is falsely assumed) and both refer to the concept (though in the second the concept is something arbitrarily limited). The empiricist is like the philosopher, in so far as he immerses himself in facts and constructs concepts.

Positivism, philosophy founded upon the sciences, inductive metaphysic.

The last great historical manifestation of empiricism is that which, from the system of Auguste Comte, took the name of positivism and by its very name expressed the intention of basing itself upon facts (that is, upon facts historically certified), in order to classify them, thus reducing philosophy to a classification. This, like all classifications, proceeded from the poorest to the richest, from the abstract gradually to the less abstract, though never to the concrete. Positivism did not seem to be aware that the facts from which it proposed to proceed and which it believed to be the rough material of experience, were already philosophic determinations, and could only in this way be admitted as historically ascertained. Psychologist is also positivism; positivism, that is to say, more properly applied to the group of the so-called mental and moral sciences. Neocriticism can be almost altogether identified with positivism, although its upholders generally possess some knowledge of philosophical history (which is altogether lacking to the pure positivists), and this confers a more specious polish on their doctrine. Neocriticism, indeed, tends to eliminate every speculative element from the Kantian criticism, and by so doing approaches positivism—so as almost to become confounded with it. It is no wonder, therefore, that from the camp of the neocritics should have originated the proclamation and programme of a philosophy founded upon the sciences, or of an inductive metaphysic. This is simply and solely the reduction of philosophy to the sciences, because a scientific philosophy, an inductive metaphysic, is not speculation, but classification, or as those who advocate it ingenuously declare, a systematization of the results obtained by the sciences. Here too are kindled the most comical quarrels between scientists and philosophers. For when it is only a question of classifying and systematizing those results, the scientist rightly feels that he can dispense with the labours of the philosopher, indeed, he feels that he alone, who has obtained the results, knows what these exactly are and how they should be treated in order to avoid deformation. And the philosopher, who by making himself an empiricist, a positivist, a psychologist and a neocritic, has renounced his autonomy, approaches the scientists and offers with little dignity services that they refuse. He elaborates scientific expositions, which they call compilations and mistakes, he proposes additions or corrections at which they mock as superfluous or foolish. Nevertheless, the philosopher does not grow weary nor become offended at these repulses and jests; he returns to the charge and indeed it is only when someone wishes to redeem him from this voluntary servitude and abjection that he turns upon him with fury, saying that philosophy should live on familiar terms with the sciences. As if the relations that we have faithfully described were relations of reciprocal respect and harmony! The truth is that the majority of empirical philosophers are failures in science and unsuccessful in philosophy, who out of their double incompetence compound a logical theory, thus furnishing another proof (if further proof were needed) in confirmation of the practical origin of errors. For our part, we recognise the justice of the accusation of parasitism, which is brought against a philosophy of this character, and we will willingly afford our aid to the scientists in driving out these intruders, who dishonour philosophy in our eyes not less than in theirs they dishonour the sciences.

Empiricism and facts.

Empiricism owes the greater part of its influence upon the minds of many to its continual appeal to reality and facts. This leads to the belief that speculative philosophy wishes to neglect reality and facts and to build, as the saying is, upon clouds. But we have here an ambiguity and a sophism with which we must not allow ourselves to be deceived. Not only does speculative philosophy also base itself upon facts and have the phenomenal world as its point of departure; but speculative philosophy truly founds itself upon facts and empiricism does not. The first considers facts in their infinite variety and in their continuous development; the second, a certain number of facts, collected at certain epochs and among certain peoples, or at all epochs and among all peoples empirically known; chat is to say, it considers a limited number of facts. Speculative philosophy, presupposing the pure phenomenon, transforms it into (historical) fact and is a true philosophy of fact; empiricism, without being aware of it, presupposes the facts that it accepts, which are already, though with little criticism, historically ascertained and interpreted. This unconsciousness of what it is doing makes its condition worse, so that it can give nothing but a philosophy of classifications, which are taken for facts only through habitual lack of reflection. Speculative philosophy, therefore, can answer the claim and the boast of empiricism that it is based upon facts, by accepting the claim but denying the boast, as one to which empiricism has and can have no right, and by appropriating this achievement to itself.

Bankruptcy of empiricism: dualism, agnosticism, spiritualism and superstition.