Logic as the Science of the Pure ConceptCroce, Benedetto
Philosophy
Logic as the Science of the Pure Concept
Croce, Benedetto
Logic
When we consider these errors more closely, it is easy to see that
dualism, scepticism, and mysticism manifest themselves not only in the
forms of thought, in philosophy as Logic, but also in all the other
particular philosophic problems, distinct from those that are peculiar
to Logic, and in the errors due to them. The complete enumeration of
these and their concrete determination would (as has already been said)
require the development of the whole philosophic system, and therefore
cannot all be contained in the present treatise. Indeed, they take
their name, not from the forms of the spirit, with which the logical
form is confused, or from the internal mutilation of the logical form,
but from the confusion and mutilation of the remaining spiritual forms.
They are no longer called æstheticism, mathematicism, or philosophism,
but ethical utilitarianism, moral abstractionism, æsthetic logicism,
sensationalism and hedonism, practical intellectualism, metaphysical
dualism or pluralism, optimism and pessimism, and so on. It is not
those who, as in the previous instances, deny philosophy itself, that
fall into such errors, but those who admit it and carry it out more
or less badly in its other parts. Without the admission of the method
of philosophic thought, and without the assertion of a concept, it is
impossible to conceive logical usurpations in the domain of another
concept, which is not less necessary than the first to the fulness and
unity of the real.
_Ethical utilitarianism,_ for instance, thinks the concept of
utilitarian practical activity; but its fallacy consists in arbitrarily
maintaining that the concept of utility altogether exhausts that of
the practical activity, thus negating the other concept distinct from
it, the practical moral activity. _Moral abstractionism_ commits
the opposite error, affirming the moral activity, but negating the
utilitarian. _Æsthetic logicism_ rightly affirms the reality of the
logical mental form, but is wrong in not recognizing the intuitive
mental form and in considering it to be resolved in the logical
form. Æsthetic _sensationalism,_ directing its attention to crude
and unexpressed sensation, emphasises the necessary precedent of the
æsthetic activity, but then makes of the condition the conditioned,
defining art as sensation. Æsthetic _hedonism, utilitarianism or
practicism,_ is true in so far as it notes the practical and hedonistic
envelope of the æsthetic activity; but it becomes false in so far as
it takes the envelope for the content, and treats art as a mere fact
of pleasure and pain. _Practical intellectualism_ perceives that the
will is not possible without a cognitive basis, but by exaggerating
this, it ends by destroying the originality of the practical spiritual
form, and reduces it to a complex of concepts and reasonings. In like
manner, _metaphysical dualism_ avails itself of the difference between
the concept of reality as spirit and that of reality as nature, the
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