Benedetto Croce: An Introduction to His PhilosophyPiccoli, Raffaello
Philosophy
Benedetto Croce: An Introduction to His Philosophy
Piccoli, Raffaello
Aesthetics; Croce, Benedetto, 1866-1952
form, or volition of the individual. We may here recall, to test once
more the coherence of Croce's thought, and to make this definition
clearer, his definition of the concept as knowledge of the universal;
by it the concept is distinguished from the intuition, or knowledge of
the individual, and the logical principle is seen as unidentifiable
either with an abstract logical form or with any particular system
of philosophy. The concept is real only in the infinite individual
determinations of actual thought, as the ethical principle in the
infinite concrete volitions of the human spirit sub specie universalis.
The universal which is the object of the ethical volition is not
something that we shall need to define at this point of our exposition,
since the whole of Croce's philosophy is nothing but a definition of
the universal. The universal is mind or the spirit; it is reality, as
unity of will and thought; it is life grasped in its depth as that
same unity; it is freedom, since a reality thus conceived is perpetual
development, creation, progress. Man, in willing the universal, turns
from his individuality to that which transcends it, to the spirit,
or reality, or life, or freedom, not as abstract ideals, but as they
realize themselves in his individual action. The volition of the
individual, of one's individual existence, is necessarily the first
step; there is no man, however deeply moral, who does not begin by
affirming his own individual life; without this affirmation, he would
never be able to transcend it and to deny it. But he who should limit
himself to this affirmation, and accept as a place of rest what is only
the beginning of his development, would find himself in contradiction
with his real, intimate self. He must will not only his individual
self, but that self also, which being the same in all selves is their
common Father. It is thus that he promotes the realization of reality,
lives the full life, and makes his heart beat with the heart of the
universe: _Cor cordium_. The moral individual is conscious that he
is working for the Whole. Every action which is in accord with the
ethical duty is in accord with Life, and would be contrary to duty and
immoral, if instead of promoting life, it should depress and mortify
it. The most humble moral action resolves itself into this volition
of the spirit in its universality. The soul of a simple and ignorant
man wholly devoted to his modest duty is in perfect unison with that of
the philosopher whose mind receives within itself the universal spirit.
What one does, the other thinks; and both reach by different roads
their full satisfaction in an act of life, in a fecund embrace with
reality.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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