Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General LinguisticCroce, Benedetto
Philosophy
Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic
Croce, Benedetto
Aesthetics; Language and languages -- Philosophy; Philosophy
In a Logic suitably reformed on this basis, it will be fitting to
proclaim before all things this truth, and to draw from it all its
consequences: the logical fact, _the only logical fact_, is _the
concept_, the universal, the spirit that forms, and in so far as it
forms, the universal. And if be understood by induction, as has
sometimes been understood, the formation of universals, and by deduction
the verbal development of these, then it is clear that true Logic can be
nothing but inductive Logic. But since by the word "deduction" has been
more frequently understood the special processes of mathematics, and by
the word "induction" those of the natural sciences, it will be advisable
to avoid the one and the other denomination, and to say that true Logic
is the Logic of the concept. The Logic of the concept, adopting a method
which is at once induction and deduction, will adopt neither the one nor
the other exclusively, that is, will adopt the (speculative) method,
which is intrinsic to it.
The concept, the universal, is in itself, abstractly considered,
_inexpressible_. No word is proper to it. So true is this, that the
logical concept remains always the same, notwithstanding the variation
of verbal forms. In respect to the concept, expression is a simple
_sign_ or _indication_. There must be an expression, it cannot fail; but
what it is to be, this or that, is determined by the historical and
psychological conditions of the individual who is speaking. The quality
of the expression is not deducible from the nature of the concept. There
does not exist a true (logical) sense of words. He who forms a concept
bestows on each occasion their true meaning on the words.
[Sidenote] _Distinction between logical and non-logical judgements._
This being established, the only truly logical (that is,
aesthetico-logical) propositions, the only rigorously logical judgments,
can be nothing but those whose proper and exclusive content is the
determination of a concept. These propositions or judgments are the
_definitions_. Science itself is nothing but a complex of definitions,
unified in a supreme definition; a system of concepts, or chief concept.
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