The Philosophy of the Practical: Economic and EthicCroce, Benedetto
Philosophy
The Philosophy of the Practical: Economic and Ethic
Croce, Benedetto
Economics; Ethics; Will
was pardoned, because she had loved much; she sinned through love and
beauty; and the affecting element lies in this, that she has scruples
about her love, and beautiful and sensible as she is, sheds torrents of
tears. But her error is not that she has loved so much; her beautiful
and moving error is precisely that she believes herself to be a sinner,
whereas her sensitive beauty gives the impression that she could not
have been otherwise than noble and of lofty senses in her love."[17]
[Sidenote: _The doctrine of the passions._]
V. The relation between the passions or desires and the will has rather
been studied at the moment of strife between the will and the passions,
than for itself and within its two terms, although Aristotle had
already begun an analysis as to the diversity of appetites or βούλησις
in respect to the intention or προαίρεσις, observing that the intention
relates only to what can be done, whereas the appetition relates also
to things that are impossible.[18] The opposed schools of the Cynics
and Cyrenaïcs, Stoics and Epicureans, and others such, were chiefly
concerned with the antithesis of the passions and the rational will;
but the formulæ of all these schools, if they have some empirical value
as precepts of life more or less suitable for definite individuals,
classes and times, possess none or very little for philosophy. Cynics
and Cyrenaïcs, Stoics and Epicureans, they seem rather to be monks
following this or that rule than philosophers. The question as to the
mode of freeing oneself from the passions and of dominating them,
which lingered till the treatises of Descartes and Spinoza, has
also a chiefly empirical character. G. B. Vico took up a position
opposed to the two opposed degenerations arising from those practical
tendencies, that of "quenching the senses," and of "making a rule of
them." He despised both Stoics and Epicureans as "monastic or solitary
philosophers," and maintained as "a philosopher politician," that it is
needful "not to tear away his own nature from man, nor to abandon him
in his corruption," but "to moderate the human passions and to make of
them human virtues."[19] Rarely has the defence of the passions enjoyed
an equally limpid philosophical enunciation; as a rule, and even in
Hegel, it has been directed chiefly against certain social tendencies,
rather than against philosophical doctrines.[20] The absolute
abandonment to the passions or their absolute destruction, are theories
that have not had true and proper representatives.--The confusion
between the various meanings of the word "passion," understood now
as appetition, or concrete and actual passion, now as a state of the
soul (joy and sorrow), now as volitional habit, is to be found in the
various treatises that we have already had occasion to record. It is
natural that their character of indifference when understood as habits
should have often been observed. Thus for Descartes, _elles sont toutes
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