The Philosophy of the Practical: Economic and Ethic

by Benedetto Croce

If the volitions followed one another, so to speak monadistically, each one shut up in itself, simple, impenetrable, indecomposible, it would be impossible to understand the moment that there is in them of arbitrary choice, of evil, of contradiction. But it is not so. The individual is solicited simultaneously by many or, more exactly, by infinite volitions, because the individual is at every moment a microcosm and in him is reflected the whole cosmos, and he reacts against the whole cosmos by willing in all directions. This infinity of volitions that is in every individual, can be proved by a very obvious fact: by what occurs in the contemplation of works of art, in which the same individual is able to reconstruct in himself the most various actions and psychological situations, and to feel himself in turn mild and sanguinary, austere and voluptuous, Achilles and Thersites. This would not happen, had he not to some extent in himself the experience of all these various volitional attitudes. But even if we wish to restrict ourselves to those volitions that are the most closely connected with the historical situation, thus limited as well as may be (every historical situation is in reality a cosmic situation), restricting ourselves to what are called volitions of the moment, we have always, if not a chaos, certainly a multiplicity, or at the least a duality, of volitions. Were the individual to abandon himself to that chaos, to that multiplicity, to that duality, he would instantly be lacerated, broken in pieces, destroyed. But he does not abandon himself to it, for he is an individual, volitional and operating just because he renounces that feigned richness of the infinite and that pernicious richness of multiplicity or duality, limiting himself on each occasion to one single volition, which is the volition corresponding to the given situation.

Multiplicity and unity as bad and good.

This volition is consequently the result of a struggle in which the individual drives back all the other infinite volitions, to attach himself to that one alone which the given situation must and does arouse in him. And when the given volition does not affirm itself fully in this struggle, he falls a victim to multiplicity, in which is found that arbitrary choice attached to a volition which is not the one that should be willed, which he feels he wills and that he does will in a way. Hence the will becomes split up in different directions and contradictory, action not positive but negative, not truly action, but rather passivity.

The multiplicity of volitions explains then the moment of arbitrary choice, of evil, in the practical activity. This could be defined as the volition that conquers the volitions, as its contrary arbitrary choice is the contest of volitions with volition.

Excluded volitions and the passions or desires.

The volitions that are driven back on every occasion and excluded, to make way for the volitional act, are variously denominated in ordinary speech and by psychologists as appetites, tendencies, impulses, affections, wishes, velleities, desires, aspirations, passions. But, as is usual with us, we do not intend to compose and defend such classes in a naturalistic and psychological sense, nor consequently to distinguish appetite from desire, or affection from passion, with boundaries that must of necessity be arbitrary and undulating. What is of real importance is only the distinction and the precise boundary, not arbitrary but real, between the volition and volitions, or, as we can now say, the relation between true and proper volition and the passions or desires.

Passions and desires as possible volitions.

Passions or desires are and are not volitions: they are not volitions in respect to the volitional synthesis, which, by excluding, annuls them as such; they are on the other hand volitions, if considered in themselves, for they are capable of constituting the centre of new syntheses in changed conditions. It has been said that we cannot will the impossible, but that we can perfectly well desire it. That is not exact, because the impossible, the contradictory, cannot even be the object of desire. No one wishes to find himself at the same moment in two different places, or to construct a triangle that should be at the same time a square: and even if such absurd wishes be manifested in words, the words will be absurd, but the desires will either be different from what is stated, or they will not exist even as desires. In a certain aspect all desires are desires of the impossible (and not only some of them), if, that is to say, we consider them as volitions that have not been realized and which cannot be realized at that moment: but from another point of view, they are all possible, and can indeed be precisely defined as possible volitions. This is proved by their becoming gradually actual as the actual situation changes. If (to choose a very simple illustration) an individual engaged in a certain work repel the desire for food and sleep with his volition and action, that desire is nothing at that point, as actual volition; but it does not for that reason lose its intrinsic volitional character, for when the hour for the repast or for sleep has struck, it passes from possibility to actuality and becomes the will for food and sleep. The sophism previously criticized, by means of which a bad and unsuccessful act, that is to say one that is dominated by passion and caprice, is justified by proving that it has had a legitimate motive and answers to a good intention, appeals to this character of possibility, possessed by all desires, and artfully changes it into a character of actuality, thus substituting for the given the imagined situation.

Volition as conflict with the passions.

The relation that we have defined between volition and passions or desires explains why the will has often seemed to be nothing but a conflict with the passions, and life itself a battle (vivere militare est,) and at other times itself nothing but passions. The will is indeed homogeneous with the passions, and is opposed, not to the nature of the passions, which is its own nature, but to their multiplicity. For this reason, it has been said that only passion acts upon the passions: for the will is a passion among passions. Even the poet or the philosopher, who frees himself from the passions by objectifying them and making them material for æsthetic contemplation or for speculative research, succeeds in so doing, only because he is able to affirm the passion over the passions: the passion for poetry or for philosophy.