Logic as the Science of the Pure ConceptCroce, Benedetto
Philosophy
Logic as the Science of the Pure Concept
Croce, Benedetto
Logic
[Sidenote: _Æsthetic and Æsthetic-logical expressions or expressions of
the concept; propositions and judgments._]
Owing to the incarnation of the concept or logic in expression and
language, language is quite full of logical elements; hence people
are often led astray into affirming (we have already made clear the
erroneousness[2] of this) that language is a logical function. Water
might as well be called wine, because wine has been poured into the
water. But language as language or as simple æsthetic fact is one
thing, and language as expression of logical thought is another, for
in this case, certainly, language remains always language and subject
to the law of language, but is also more than language. If the first
be termed simple expression, _logos seimantikos,_ as Aristotle said,
or _judicium æstheticum sive sensitivum,_ according to the school of
Baumgarten, the second must on the contrary be called affirmation,
_logos apophantikos, judicium logicum_ or _æsthetico-logicum._ To
this same issue we can reduce, if we understand it properly, the
distinction between _proposition_ and _judgment,_ for they are only
distinguishable in so far as it is assumed that the second form is
dominated by the concept, whereas the first is given as free of such
domination.
But we should seek in vain for facts in proof of expressions belonging
to either form, because we cannot furnish them without making the
proviso that we understand them in the meaning of one or other of
the two forms. Taken by themselves, any verbal expressions which we
adduce or can adduce as proofs are indeterminate and therefore of many
meanings. "Love is life" can be the saying of a poet who notes an
impression with which his soul is agitated and marks it with fervour
and solemnity; or it can be, equally, the logical affirmation of
some one philosophizing on the essence of life. "Clear, fresh, and
sweet waters," when uttered by Petrarch, is an æsthetic proposition;
but the same words become a logical judgment when, for example, they
answer the question as to which is the most celebrated love song
of Petrarch, or pseudological when applied by a naturalist to the
substance water. A word no longer has meaning, or--what amounts to the
same thing--has no definite meaning, when it is abstracted from the
circumstances, the implications, the emphasis, and the gesture with
which it has been thought, animated, and pronounced. Nevertheless,
forgetfulness of this elementary hermeneutic canon, by which a word is
a word only on the soil that has produced it and to which it must be
restored, has been in Logic the cause of interminable disputes as to
the logical nature of this or that verbal phrase, separated from the
whole to which it belonged and rendered abstract. It would be much less
equivocal to adduce such poems as _I Sepolcri,_ or the song _A Silvia,_
as documents of æsthetic propositions, and philosophical treatises
(for examples, the _Metaphysics_ or the _Analytics_) as documents of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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