The Philosophy of the Practical: Economic and EthicCroce, Benedetto
Philosophy
The Philosophy of the Practical: Economic and Ethic
Croce, Benedetto
Economics; Ethics; Will
A comparison with the theoretic activity will serve to make clearer
this criticism of the _licit_ or morally indifferent. Artistic
intuitions or expressions are neither true nor false philosophically,
so much so that Philosophy, if it wish to exist, must also become
concrete itself, as living speech, æsthetic form, intuition-expression,
and place itself as an intuition among intuitions, though it be
an intuition _portans mysteria,_ that is, enclosing in itself the
universal. But the appearance of philosophy reacts upon the pure
intuitions, or upon the poetic representation of the world, in which
existent and inexistent were indistinct; and the world of intuition
transforms itself into the world of perceptions, in which those that
once were poetic intuitions, are now all of them critical or reflective
images penetrated by the concepts, divided into images of existence
and images of possibility. In the world of perception or of history,
no poetical element can subsist as such; what was a bewitching truth
in the field of art, were it introduced into history, would give rise
to disharmony and become changed into a repugnant lie, as we see is
actually the case in history mingled with inventions and fables.
History too assumes artistic form; but it cannot tolerate in its bosom
art as an element standing alone. Utilitarian or economic volitions and
the moral-economic volitions (universal and historical perceptions
or representations of the practical) proceed in a manner perfectly
analogous (intuitions of the practical). Moral indifference belongs
to the first, when they are on this side of the moral conscience,
but within this conscience they lose the right to innocence, as in
history the pure intuitions, when they have become perceptions, lose
the privilege that they possessed as pure intuitions. The ethical
discrimination of the economic volitions, which takes place through the
moral conscience, is then in full correspondence with the historical
discrimination of the æsthetic intuitions, which takes place through
the logical conscience.
[Sidenote: _Other erroneous conceptions of modes of action._]
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