Logic as the Science of the Pure ConceptCroce, Benedetto
Philosophy
Logic as the Science of the Pure Concept
Croce, Benedetto
Logic
And, certainly, these distinctions are useful, and therefore necessary
in practice. We all feel the need of creating an aristocracy of men and
things; of distinguishing the word that a sergeant whispers in the ear
of a maid-servant from a sonnet or a symphony; the proverbs of Sancho
Panza from a treatise on Ethics; and the report of a police-agent from
the history of Rome or of England. We distinguish the classification
of the glasses and bowls in use at home from that of Mineralogy or
of Zoology; the reckoning of our daily expenses from the calculation
of the astronomer; and, finally, Tom, Dick and Harry from Aeschylus,
Plato, Thucydides, Hippocrates and Euclid. The _odi profanum vulgus_ is
a motto that should be appropriated by whosoever labours to promote
the life of thought and of art, yet not without adding to it Ariosto's
post-script: "Nor do I wish to absolve any from the name of vulgar,
save the prudent."
But, admitting all this, we must recognize not less energetically
that these distinctions, imposed by the necessities of life, have in
philosophy no value at all, and that their introduction there, if it
has some excuse in professional custom, is nevertheless the way to shut
off from us for ever all understanding both of the forms of knowledge
and of those of acquaintance. Man is complete man at every instant
and in every man; the spirit is always whole in every individuation
of itself. The philosopher in the highest sense (in the philosopher
worthy of the name) could be defined as one who raises doubts, collects
difficulties, and formulates problems, intent upon clearing up doubts,
upon levelling difficulties, and upon solving problems; the artist as
a man who limits himself to looking and to recording the significance
of what he has seen. In this case, the ordinary man would be he who
encounters no theoretic difficulties and is unaware of spectacles
worthy of contemplation. But in reality the ordinary man also sets
himself problems and solves them, contemplates and expresses the
spectacle of the real. The distinction has value, therefore, only in
descriptive Psychology, which passes in review types of reality and
the perfected organs, so to speak, which reality creates for itself in
great philosophers and great poets. But what empiricism always divides,
philosophy must always unite. To be scandalized when some one speaks of
the poetry, philosophy, science, mathematics, which are in every one's
mouth; to mock those who unify and identify; to appeal to good sense
and to threaten the madhouse, are things that reveal much pedantry
but no humanity, or, at most, very little. It is foolish to fear that
such an identification as we propose will lessen the importance of the
forms of knowledge and render trivial divine Poetry, lofty Philosophy,
severe History, serious Science and ingenious Mathematics. As the hero
is not outside humanity, but is he in whom the soul of the people is
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