Logic as the Science of the Pure ConceptCroce, Benedetto
Philosophy
Logic as the Science of the Pure Concept
Croce, Benedetto
Logic
Special Logic is also inadmissible, when it is presented as doctrine
of _methods,_ and especially of demonstrative or intrinsic methods.
The method of a form of knowledge and in general of a form of the
spirit, is not something different or even distinguishable from this
form itself. The method of poetry is poetry, the method of philosophy
is philosophy, the method of mathematics is mathematics, and so on.
Only by means of empirical abstraction is the method separated from the
activity itself; and when this duality has been created, we are led
to add to it a third term, which is called the _object_ of that form.
But since the method is the form itself, so form and method are the
object itself. Certainly, all the forms of the spirit have a common
object, which is Reality; but this is not because reality is separated
from them, but because they are reality: they therefore _have_ not, but
_are_ this object. Thus the forms of knowledge have not a theoretic
object, but create it: they themselves are that object. Philosophy has
the pure concept for method and object; art has intuition; science
the empirical concept, and so on. If we wished to treat of methods in
a special Logic, we could not do otherwise than repeat what we have
already said in respect to the character of each form.
[Sidenote: _Nature of our treatise in respect to the forms of
knowledge._]
All this amounts to saying that the things we shall discuss concerning
the various forms of knowledge are not to be understood as a special
Logic, although they are grouped in a second part for literary reasons.
There we shall examine one by one the various forms of knowledge,
in order to confirm their identity with the forms of awareness and
to demonstrate how the characters adopted by them are reducible to
those already explained for the others, and how the difficulties
found in them are overcome by means of the same principles that we
employed to overcome the difficulties presented by the others. In
so doing, we shall also gain the advantage of making more clear the
doctrines already laid down as to the elementary forms, by fixing
our attention upon those manifestations of them which are presented
on a larger scale. To those who forget or deny the existence of the
pure concept or of the abstract concept, it will be of assistance,
in giving the speculative deduction of those forms, to point out the
masterpieces of Art, of Philosophy, or of Mathematics, and to invite an
examination of their structure. It is true that in our day preference
is given to another method, which is not only antiphilosophical but
also antipædagogic. This method consists in altogether neglecting
philosophic demonstration in the attempt to divert the attention from
notable and luminous manifestations of the spirit, in order to devote
it to rude and uncertain manifestations. Inscriptions of savages are
preferred to the art of Michael Angelo, the philosophy that is still
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