Logic as the Science of the Pure Concept

Name: Logic as the Science of the Pure Concept
Author: Croce, Benedetto

Croce, Benedetto

Logic

The conscience of humanity well understood knows how to do justice to
all men, without, on that account, confounding him who seeks with him
who errs, the man of good will with the utilitarian. It does justice
to them, because in every man, indeed at every instant in the life
of every man, it discovers all those various spiritual moments, both
inferior and superior. Error and the search for truth are continually
intertwined. Sometimes a beginning is made with research, and it ends
with an obstinate persistence in the suggestion that has been made,
which is converted into a result and an erroneous affirmation. At
others a beginning is made, with the deliberate intention of escaping
difficulties by means of some sort of a combination of ideas; and that
combination arouses the mind and becomes a suggestion for research,
which is followed until peace is found in the truth. Each one of us is
at every moment in danger of yielding to laziness and to the seduction
of error and has hope of shaking off that laziness and following the
attraction of truth. We fall and rise up again at every instant; we are
weak and strong, cowardly and courageous. When we call another weak and
cowardly, we are condemning ourselves; when we admire another as strong
and courageous, we idolize the strength and courage which is active
within us. When we are in the presence of a complex product, as, for
example, a faith, a doctrine, a book, it would be naïve and fallacious
to look upon it as only error or as only suggestion. For it is both
the one and the other; that is to say, it contains equally the moments
of error properly so-called, and the other moments of suggestion and
search; the voluntary interposition of obstacles to the truth and
the voluntary removal of such obstacles; the disfigured image of the
truth and the outline of the truth. Sometimes we are unable to say of
ourselves whether we are erring or are seeking, whether we believe
that we have found the whole truth or only discovered a ray of it. The
logical criticism which implacably condemns us seems to be unjust,
although we cannot contest its arguments which impose the truth upon
our thought. We feel that that truth was in a way sought, seen for a
moment, and almost possessed in that spiritual state of ours, which has
been summarily and abruptly condemned by others as altogether erroneous.

[Sidenote: _The double aspect of errors._]

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

Opening the text

Logic as the Science of the Pure ConceptCroce, Benedetto

Philosophy

Logic as the Science of the Pure Concept

Croce, Benedetto

Logic

The conscience of humanity well understood knows how to do justice to
all men, without, on that account, confounding him who seeks with him
who errs, the man of good will with the utilitarian. It does justice
to them, because in every man, indeed at every instant in the life
of every man, it discovers all those various spiritual moments, both
inferior and superior. Error and the search for truth are continually
intertwined. Sometimes a beginning is made with research, and it ends
with an obstinate persistence in the suggestion that has been made,
which is converted into a result and an erroneous affirmation. At
others a beginning is made, with the deliberate intention of escaping
difficulties by means of some sort of a combination of ideas; and that
combination arouses the mind and becomes a suggestion for research,
which is followed until peace is found in the truth. Each one of us is
at every moment in danger of yielding to laziness and to the seduction
of error and has hope of shaking off that laziness and following the
attraction of truth. We fall and rise up again at every instant; we are
weak and strong, cowardly and courageous. When we call another weak and
cowardly, we are condemning ourselves; when we admire another as strong
and courageous, we idolize the strength and courage which is active
within us. When we are in the presence of a complex product, as, for
example, a faith, a doctrine, a book, it would be naïve and fallacious
to look upon it as only error or as only suggestion. For it is both
the one and the other; that is to say, it contains equally the moments
of error properly so-called, and the other moments of suggestion and
search; the voluntary interposition of obstacles to the truth and
the voluntary removal of such obstacles; the disfigured image of the
truth and the outline of the truth. Sometimes we are unable to say of
ourselves whether we are erring or are seeking, whether we believe
that we have found the whole truth or only discovered a ray of it. The
logical criticism which implacably condemns us seems to be unjust,
although we cannot contest its arguments which impose the truth upon
our thought. We feel that that truth was in a way sought, seen for a
moment, and almost possessed in that spiritual state of ours, which has
been summarily and abruptly condemned by others as altogether erroneous.

[Sidenote: _The double aspect of errors._]

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

Logic as the Science of the Pure Concept

Logic as the Science of the Pure Concept

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