Theory & History of HistoriographyCroce, Benedetto
Philosophy
Theory & History of Historiography
Croce, Benedetto
Historiography
But although history distinguishes and unifies, it never
_divides_--that is to say, _separates_; and the _divisions of history_
which have been and are made do not originate otherwise than as the
result of the same practical and abstractive process that we have
seen break up the actuality of living history to collect and arrange
the inert materials in the temporal scheme, rendered extrinsic.
Histories already produced, and as such past, receive in this way
titles (every thought is 'without title' in its actuality--that is to
say, it has only itself for title), and each one is separated from
the other, and all of them, thus separated, are classified under more
or less general empirical conceptions, by means of classifications
that more or less cross one another. We may admire copious lists of
this sort in the books of methodologists, all of them proceeding,
as is inevitable, according to one or the other of these general
criteria: the criterion of the _quality_ of the objects (histories
of religions, customs, ideas, institutions, etc., etc.), and that of
_temporal-spatial_ arrangement (European, Asiatic, American, ancient,
medieval, of modern times, of ancient Greece, of ancient Rome, of
modern Greece, of the Rome of the Middle Ages, etc.); in conformity
with the abstract procedure which, when dividing the concept, is led
to posit on the one hand _abstract forms of the spirit_ (objects) and
on the other _abstract intuitions_ (space and time). I shall not say
that those titles and divisions are useless, nor even those tables,
but shall limit myself to the' remark that the history of philosophy,
of art, or of any other ideally distinct history, when understood as a
definite book or discourse, becomes empirical for the reason already
given, that true distinction is ideal, and a discourse or a book in
its concreteness contains not only distinction but unity and totality,
and to look upon either as incorporating only one side of the real is
arbitrary. And I shall also observe that as there are histories of
philosophy and of art in the empirical sense, so also nothing forbids
our talking in the same sense of a general history, separate from
special histories, indeed even of a history of progress and one of
decadence, of good and evil, of truth and error.
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