Logic as the Science of the Pure ConceptCroce, Benedetto
Philosophy
Logic as the Science of the Pure Concept
Croce, Benedetto
Logic
Indeed, in the first case, if the natural sciences be of a philosophic
nature and represent a first approximation to philosophy, they must
disappear when philosophy is evolved, as the provisional disappears
before the definite, as the proof before the printed book. This would
mean that natural sciences as such do not exist and that what really
exists is philosophy. In the second case, if philosophy have the same
nature as the natural sciences, the further development of the first
sketch will always be the work of the naturalistic method, however
refined and however increased in power we may please to imagine it.
Thus, what would really exist would never be philosophy, but always the
natural sciences. This erroneous conception therefore reduces itself
to a denial, either of the natural sciences or of philosophy; either
of the pseudoconcepts or of the pure concepts; a negation that need
not be confuted, because the whole of our exposition of Logic is its
explicit confutation.
[Sidenote: _Motive of these errors: naturalistic philosophy._]
The genesis of such a psychological illusion resides in the fact that
the natural sciences seem to be tormented with the thirst for full and
real truth, and philosophy, on the other hand, to be intent solely
upon correcting the perversions and inexactitudes of the empirical and
natural sciences. But it is a question of likeness or appearance only,
because the thirst for truth belongs not to the natural sciences, but
to philosophy, which lives in all men, and also in the naturalist.
And the philosophic perversions and inexactitudes which have to be
corrected do not form part of the natural sciences (which as such
affirm neither the true nor the false), but to that philosophy which
the naturalist forms and into which he introduces the prejudices
derived from his special business.
[Sidenote: _Philosophy as destroyer of naturalistic philosophy, but not
of the natural sciences. Autonomy of these._]
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