The Philosophy of the Practical: Economic and EthicCroce, Benedetto
Philosophy
The Philosophy of the Practical: Economic and Ethic
Croce, Benedetto
Economics; Ethics; Will
Feeling, therefore, cannot but lose importance in the Hegelian
philosophy, which makes of art a form of knowledge, and of the
teleological judgment the logic of the idea or philosophical logic,
resolving also in it the demand of Jacobi, whose feeling or immediate
knowledge is shown to be logical knowledge and supreme mediation. In
Hegel feeling is nothing but a class of spiritual facts, the lowest
of all, that in which theory and practice are still indistinct.
But this class has a merely psychological value in his system, not
philosophical and real (which is not clearly recognised by him).
Indeed, feeling, which was absolute knowledge for Jacobi and for
Schleiermacher, is placed, not in the sphere of the absolute spirit,
nor in that of the objective or practical spirit, but in the subjective
spirit, or Psychology. The "doctrine of the three faculties"
(_Dreivermögenslehre_), as was called that elaborated from Mendelssohn
to Kant and promulgated in the Kantian philosophy, did not, however,
remain without opponents in the nineteenth century; from Krug (1823) to
the youthful Fichte, and in more recent times Brentano (1874).
[Sidenote: _Opponents of the doctrine of the three faculties. Krug._]
Krugs confutation is wrongly combated by Hamilton and discredited by
Brentano, for it proceeds with perfect correctness, and is founded on
the correct philosophical principle that' there are no other activities
of the spirit conceivable, save those directed either inwardly or
outwardly (immanent or theoretical and transcendent or practical),
and that therefore there is no place for feeling, which would be a
mixture of the two activities, and consequently a failure of direction
or inactivity, nothing, therefore, but a poor, rudimentary knowing or
willing, that is, a psychological class, not a philosophical category.
[Sidenote: _Brentano._]
Brentano, returning in a measure to Descartes, constructs the
doctrine of the three faculties in a different way, determining them
as representation (to which he makes art and the æsthetic activity
correspond), judgment (to which corresponds science), and love and
hate (to which corresponds the practical). Feeling, therefore, does
not find a place of its own in the psyche, and that which is wont to
be called feeling is either representation, or love and hate. Brentano
shows himself inferior to Krug in the philosophical demonstration of
the inconceivability of this form of the spirit, but he has the merit
of having substituted certain positive elements for the indeterminate
word "feeling," although the function exercised by feeling in the
development of philosophical thought is more important than Brentano
succeeds in perceiving, for among other things he ignores and fails
to recognize the relation of the concept of feeling to the demands of
speculative thought.[31]
[1] _Eutyphron,_ 10.
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