The Philosophy of the Practical: Economic and EthicCroce, Benedetto
Philosophy
The Philosophy of the Practical: Economic and Ethic
Croce, Benedetto
Economics; Ethics; Will
with empirical limitations, to attain to philosophical distinctions,
but that it is necessary to start from these, in order to interpret
contingent facts, and finally to understand also the mode of formation
of empirical classes. For this reason the psychological method revolves
in a circle that is effectively vicious.
[Sidenote: _Deduction and the necessity of integrating it with
induction._]
Neither is it possible to proceed with the method that we shall call
deductive solely; that is, we see the necessity of the two sub-forms
of the practical activity, which, being the object of the subject and
therefore in every way analogous to the activity of the subject, that
is, to the theoretical, must have a duplication of forms answering
to the duplication of the theoretical activity into æsthetic and
logical, and cannot posit the universal practical without positing the
individual that shall be its vehicle. This deduction, although in every
way correct and rigorous, cannot be convincing, save when it is also
demonstrated that it responds to fact as revealed by observation, that
is, when deduction is also induction, as the speculative method demands.
[Sidenote: _The two forms as a fact of consciousness._]
Leaving, therefore, on this occasion also, the deductive proof to the
complete development of the theory, we shall begin by appealing to
observation of self, in order that every one may verify in himself
the existence of the two different forms of volitional acts, termed
by us economic and ethic. The economic activity is that which wills
and effects only what corresponds to the conditions of fact in which
a man finds himself; the ethical activity is that which, although
it correspond to these conditions, also refers to something that
transcends them. To the first correspond what are called individual
ends, to the second universal ends; the one gives rise to the judgment
concerning the greater or less coherence of the action taken in itself,
the other to that concerning its greater or less coherence in respect
to the universal end, which transcends the individual.
[Sidenote: _The economic form._]
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