Logic as the Science of the Pure ConceptCroce, Benedetto
Philosophy
Logic as the Science of the Pure Concept
Croce, Benedetto
Logic
A glance at the tables of categories that have appeared in the course
of the history of philosophy, from that of Aristotle, which is the
first, at least among the conspicuous, to that of Stuart Mill, or if
it be preferred, to the Kategorienlehre of E. von Hartmann, which is
the last, or among the last, shows at once that the other categories,
which have been described as logical categories, can be reduced to
verbal variants of this unique one of the pure concept, or belong to
other aspects of the spirit and of reality, as distinct from that of
logical thought. For if in the Aristotelian table the _ousia_ and the
_poion,_ substance and quality, to some extent denote the subject and
the predicate of the judgment, that is to say, the abstract elements
of the _a priori_ synthesis: the _poson,_ on the other hand, appeals
to the processes of enumeration and of measurement, the _pou_ and
the _poté_ to the determination of space and time, the _poiein_ and
the _paschein_ to the principles of practical activity, and so on.
The Kantian table seems to refer, or to mean to refer, to logical
thought; but that does not prevent the appearance in it of traces of
the principles of mathematical, naturalistic, heuristic, and other
processes. Furthermore, in the Kantian philosophy, the whole system
of the categories is to be deduced, not from the transcendental Logic
alone, but also from the transcendental Æsthetic (space and time), and
from the Critique of Practical Reason and Judgment, which all lead to
functions or forms, operating as spiritual syntheses and reappearing
as categories in judgments. Finally, we must not neglect the Kantian
metaphysical categories of Physics.
[Sidenote: _The Hegelian system of the categories and other later
systems._]
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