The Philosophy of the Practical: Economic and Ethic

by Benedetto Croce

This consciousness of necessity and liberty inseparably united is found in all men of action, in all political geniuses, who are never inert or reckless: they feel themselves at once bound and unbound; they always conform to facts, but always to surpass them. The fatuous, on the other hand, oscillate between the passivity of the given situation and the sterile attempt to overleap it, that is, to leap over their own shadow. They are consequently now inert, now forward. They do not therefore fix or conclude anything, they do not act; or, if they do, it is always according to what of the actual situation they have understood, and what of initiative they have displayed.

Comparison with the æsthetic activity.

The best comparison is afforded on this occasion also by the æsthetic activity. No poet creates his poem outside definite conditions of space and time, and even when he appears to be and is proclaimed "a soul of other times," he belongs to his own time. The historical situation is given to him. The world of his perceptions is such, with those men, those customs, those thoughts, those works of art. But when the new poem has appeared, there is in the world of reality (in the contemplation of reality) something that was not there before, which, although connected with the previous situation, yet is not identical with it, is indeed a new form, and therefore a new content, and so the revelation of a truth previously unknown. So true is this, that in its turn the new poem conditions a spiritual and practical movement, becomes part of the situation given for future actions and for future poems. He is a true poet who feels himself at once bound to his predecessors and free, conservative and revolutionary, like Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare, who receive into themselves centuries of history, of thought and of poetry, and add to those centuries something that is the present and will be the future: chargés du passé, gros de l'avenir. The false poet, on the other hand, is now a blind follower of tradition and imitator, now a charlatanesque innovator, and if in the vacuity in which he labours he sometimes does produce a fragment of poetry, this happens only when he is made to look into himself and to have a vision, be it great or small, of a world that arises.—But the comparison instituted is rather an analogy than a comparison, for that which happens in the practical sphere happens in that of poetry and in all the other spheres of the spiritual activity. The Spirit is freedom, and in order to be so, not in the abstract, but in the concrete, it must also be necessity.

Critique of determinism and of arbitrarism.

This indissoluble connection of necessity and liberty confutes both the partial theories which dispute the field in the problem of freedom: the deterministic theory and that of free will. The determinists do not see in the volitional act anything but the actual situation; the followers of the theory of free will see nothing but the moment of freedom. These conceive a volition that is as it were a duplication, triplication, quadruplication of the given fact, and so on to the infinite; those a volition that bursts forth from nothing, or rains down from above and then inserts itself, no one knows how, into the course of the real. Both exaggerate, and since exaggerations are called in science errors in sense, both err, and being one-sided are proved false. But since, on the other hand, it is a quality of errors opposed to one another, to become identified and to pass, the one into the other, it is given to us to assist at a like spectacle in this case also, and to see the determinists change into arbitrarists and the believers in free will into determinists. The first, in fact, passing from cause to cause, abandon the concept of cause at the end of the chain, as though (to use the expression of Schopenhauer), they were dismissing the hired carriage, made use of during the day for their own affairs, and return to free will. The others, being unable to justify freedom in the world of reality and of experience, justify it in a transcendental way, as the effect of a divine cause, which excludes free will, and excludes it also when it concedes it; for by the very fact of conceding, it determines, limits, and produces it.

General form of this antithesis: materialism and mysticism.

But with this explanation of our thesis, and of the two theses opposing it, we are transported into the heart of one of the greatest problems of Gnoseology, so great in fact as to appear to contain in it the whole problem of philosophy. In fact, that which is called determinism and free will in the Philosophy of the practical is the same antithesis that in Gnoseology is called materialism and mysticism. And that which we here oppose to the two one-sided theses, as theory of that liberty which is also necessity, is called in Gnoseology, idealism. The thesis and antithesis are therefore to be found in all the particular problems of philosophy, since they concern the logical form in universal. This, then, is the reason why the question of freedom of willing has become so grave and complicated as to appear insoluble. To obtain a solution, it was necessary to construct a Logic of philosophy, and intrinsically necessary to renew the whole system of philosophy. Herbart wisely counselled never to discuss the freedom of the will with the laity, in order not to be misunderstood.[3]

Had this advice been followed, we should not have seen both determinism and free will torn asunder by advocates in the law courts, dragging in the one or the other to suit their purposes, and thus insulting good sense, which should alone rule in those places. The freedom of the will is doubted and discussed among philosophers, as the reality of the external world is doubted and discussed, but this is not done because it is wished to set in doubt the existence of the boots of this gentleman or of that gentleman's overcoat. If a confirmation be sought that the question of the freedom of willing is, as was said, the universal gnoseological or metaphysical question, let it be observed how the determinists and the advocates of free will affirm or deny the freedom of willing, not only in that field, but in all fields. Indeed, whoever, for instance, should admit spiritual activity to knowledge and deny it to the will, would not, properly speaking, be a determinist, but an intellectualist or an æsthetician. That is to say, he would be a theoretician, who, in denying the freedom of the will, would simply mean to deny the existence of a practical activity side by side with the theoretic; for freedom is the very essence of every spiritual form, and with the denial of the freedom of that form is denied the form itself. Determinism, arbitrarism, libertarianism reflect, then, the universal gnoseological thesis of naturalism and mechanicism in the special practical field.

The materialistic sophisms of determinism.

Determinism of the will, like materialism and mechanicism in general, consists in nothing but the transference to philosophical speculation of the form proper to the physical disciplines. By dint of classifying practical facts and presenting them as empirical concepts, and thus as merely related by cause and effect, they end by forgetting that those formulæ are not thoughts and that their content is not real reality; and causes or motives (abstractive transformation of the actual situation) are given as agents of the will, and thus the agent is destroyed for the cause, the form for the abstract material. Hence these timid phrases that on close inspection turn out to be tautologies or mistakes: "Freedom is an illusion; what prevails is always the strongest motive." But if we ask what is the strongest motive, we are told (and no other reply is possible) it is that which prevails. This, translated into our language, amounts to saying that the actual situation is the actual situation, and conditions the will, which is what it is and can be no other than it is.—Virtue is a mere product, like vitriol. Certainly, vitriol is also in its way a creation, a manifestation of the spirit, as is virtue, and if it be permitted to falsify vitriol by changing it into something material and mechanical, nothing forbids doing the same for virtue. Virtue, too, can be produced just like vitriol, that is to say, by setting in motion the spontaneous forces of the spirit and of so-called nature, which itself is also spirit, and nothing forbids endowing educators with the title of chemists and apothecaries of virtue.