The Philosophy of the Practical: Economic and Ethic

by Benedetto Croce

Pleasure, pain and feeling.

First of all, we can here give yet another meaning to the indeterminate category of feeling with its poles of pleasure and pain, for it is clear that when feeling was distinguished from moral activity and set at variance with it, we had in view nothing but the pure economic activity. And in truth, of all the tendencies included in that concept as sketched out, this of economicity seems on the whole to prevail over the others, so much so that we shall henceforth be disposed to give to the word "feeling" the name of economic activity. Thus it was reasonably maintained, with implied reference to this meaning, that pleasure and pain are proper to feeling and extraneous to the other spiritual forms, and that they only act in the others as concomitants. For if the theoretical forms give rise to the dialectic of true and false, in so far as the practical spirit can be introduced into them, it is clear that pleasure and pain come to those forms from the practical spirit, with which the theoretic spirit is always in unity. In the practical spirit too, the moral activity divides into pleasure and pain, in so far as it has concrete or economic form; and therefore in so far as it is economic, not in so far as it is moral. Pleasure and pain belong to feeling alone, because they belong to the economic activity alone, which is the practical in its general form, involving of itself all the other forms, practical and theoretic.

Coincidence of duty with pleasure.

When this has been established, pleasure or economic feeling or economic activity as positive cannot be at strife with duty or with the moral activity in its positivity, for the two terms coincide. The divergence existed only when they were conceived, not in unity and distinction, but in coordination. When we speak of a good action accompanied with pain, we make an inexact statement, or better, we make use of a mode of expression that must be understood, not literally, but in its spirit. The good action, as such, always brings with it satisfaction and pleasure, and the pain said to accompany it, either shows that the action is not yet altogether good, because it has not been willed with complete internal accord, or that a new practical problem, still unsolved and therefore painful, lies beyond the pleasurable moral action.

Critique of rigorism or asceticism.

The other false idea, of rigoristic or ascetic Ethic, which makes war upon pleasure as such, derives from the plan of coordination, through the already mentioned casuistic of the conflict between the coordinated terms. Indeed, if it be legitimate to combat this or that pleasure, which enters into a contest with the moral act, it is not possible to abolish the category of pleasure, for the reason already given, that in this way the category itself of morality, which has its reality and concreteness in pleasure (in economicity), would be abolished: the concrete and real moral act is also pleasurable. The attempt to abolish pleasure is as insane as would be the wish to speak without words or any other form of expression, preserving thought pure of such sensual contacts, that is to say, producing an inexpressed and inexpressible thought. This last attempt has been made by mysticism, which either does not give thoughts at all, or, contradicting itself, gives them expressed and logical, like those of all other doctrines. Asceticism provides a complete counterpart to this in the practical field, for it might be called mysticism of the practical in the same way as the name of asceticism of the theoretical would not be unsuitable to mysticism.

Relation of happiness and virtue.

What has been said of the relation between pleasure and morality, is to be repeated of the other between happiness and virtue, a relation that is identical with the preceding, from which it diners only because expressed by means of empirical concepts of class. Happiness is not virtue, as pleasure is not morality, because there exist the pleasure of the innocent or of the mentally deficient, and the happiness of the child or the brute, who are without moral conscience. But virtue is always happiness, as morality is always pleasure. It will be said that a virtuous man may be unhappy, because he suffers atrocious physical pain or is in financial difficulties, and, therefore, that virtue and happiness do not coincide. But this is a vulgar sophism, because the virtuous man, who should be also happy, must be truly and altogether virtuous; that is to say, he must cure and conquer the ills of the body and of fortune with his energy, if he can, or, if it be impossible to conquer them, he must resign himself and take them into account and develop his own activity within the limits that they lay down. Every individual, not only the unfortunate individual of the example, has his limits; and everyone can transform his limits into pains by being dissatisfied with them, just as every one can, with resignation, transform his pains into limits and conditions of activity. It will be said that sometimes the evils that assail the virtuous man are not only incurable, but so intolerable as to render all resignation impossible. But he who does not effectively and absolutely resign himself, that is, does not accommodate himself to life, dies; and the occurrence of the death of the individual is neither happiness nor unhappiness: it is a fact or event.

Critique of the subordination of pleasure to morality.

Finally, the theory that subordinates pleasure or happiness, utility or economy, to duty, to virtue, to moral activity, is to be rejected. The subordination of the one term to the other is not possible on this side of morality, because only one of the two terms is present; and in like manner it is impossible in the moral circle, because, though the terms are certainly two, they are two in one, not one above and the other below; that is to say, they are distinct terms that become unified. Morality has complete empire over life, and there is not an act of life, be it as small as you will, that morality does not or ought not to regulate. But morality has no absolute empire over the forms or categories of the spirit, and as it cannot destroy or modify itself, so it cannot destroy or modify the other spiritual forms, which are its necessary support and presupposition.