Benedetto Croce: An Introduction to His PhilosophyPiccoli, Raffaello
Philosophy
Benedetto Croce: An Introduction to His Philosophy
Piccoli, Raffaello
Aesthetics; Croce, Benedetto, 1866-1952
These are the successive steps by which Croce reached his doctrine of
the identity of history and philosophy, one of the most discussed and
of the least understood among his theories. We shall come back to it
later. But a few more hints on its meaning can already be given here.
It is clear that by introducing the predicate of existence as essential
to history Croce had already abandoned the conception of history as
pure, that is, non-logical, non-intellectualized intuition: but the
predicate of existence is insufficient to form a judgment, without
the addition of the other predicates, that is, of the whole concept.
The predicate of existence can only tell us that something exists,
but not what it is, that exists: the determination of the singular,
in its relations with the particular and the universal, is implicit
in the historical judgment, even when it is not openly enunciated.
Such judgments as: This thing is, or has been, seem to present the
proper form of the historical judgment; no other predicates than that
of existence are here visible, but my talking of _this thing_ implies
that I know what _this thing_ is; the other predicates are concealed
in the subject. Every historical statement is, therefore, a perfect
individual judgment. Its concrete and individual character, which Croce
had asserted in his early theory, is here maintained by the presence of
the subject, though the subject itself, in history, is seen not in its
intuitive purity, as in poetry, but as a concrete determination of the
concept. The identification of philosophy and history is not so much
the effect of a more intellectualized view of the historical processes,
as of the progressive consciousness acquired by Croce of the inherent
concreteness and individuality of the universal--of that realistic
view of the concept as expressed by his elaboration of the logical _a
priori_ synthesis.
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