Read Ebook: Logic as the Science of the Pure Concept by Croce Benedetto Ainslie Douglas Translator

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Ebook has 273 lines and 121687 words, and 6 pages

Necessity of the historical element in philosophy--Historical quality of the culture required of the philosopher--Apparent objections--Communication of philosophy as changing of philosophy--Perpetuity of this changing--The overcoming and continuous progress of philosophy--Meaning of the eternity of philosophy--The concept of spontaneous, ingenuous, innate philosophy, etc.; and its meaning--Philosophy as criticism and polemic--Identity of philosophy and history--Didactic divisions, and other reasons for the apparent duality--Note.

THE NATURAL SCIENCES

The natural sciences as empirical concepts, and their practical nature--Elimination of an equivocation concerning this practical character--Impossibility of unifying them in one concept--Impossibility of introducing into them rigorous divisions--Laws in the natural sciences, and so-called prevision--Empirical character of naturalistic laws--The postulate of the uniformity of nature, and its meaning--Pretended impossibility of exceptions to natural laws--Nature and its various meanings. Nature as passivity and negativity--Nature as practical activity--Nature in its gnoseological significance, as naturalistic or empirical method--The illusions of materialists and dualists--Nature as empirical distinction of an inferior reality in respect to a superior reality--The naturalistic method, and the natural sciences as extending to superior not less than to inferior reality--Claim for such extension, and effective existence of what is claimed--Historical foundation of the natural sciences--The question whether history be foundation or crown of thought--Naturalists as historical investigators--Prejudices as to non-historicity of nature--Philosophic foundation of the natural sciences, and effect of philosophy upon them--Effect of natural sciences upon philosophy, and errors in conceiving such relation--Reason of these errors. Naturalistic philosophy--Philosophy as the destroyer of naturalistic philosophy, but not of the natural sciences. Autonomy of these.

MATHEMATICS AND THE MATHEMATICAL SCIENCE OF NATURE

THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE SCIENCES

Theory of the forms of knowledge and doctrine of the categories--Problem of classification of the sciences; its empirical nature--Falsely philosophic character that it assumes--Coincidence of that problem with the search for the categories, when understood with philosophic rigour--Forms of knowledge and literary-didactic forms--Prejudices derived from the latter--Methodical prologues to scholastic manuals, their impotence--Capricious multiplication of the sciences--The sciences and professional prejudices.

THIRD PART

THE FORMS OF ERROR AND THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH

ERROR AND ITS NECESSARY FORMS

Error as negativity; impossibility of a special treatment of errors--Positive and existing errors--Positive errors as practical acts--Practical acts and not practical errors--Economically practical acts, not morally practical acts--Doctrine of error, and doctrine of necessary forms of error--Logical nature of all theoretical errors--History of errors and phenomenology of error--Deduction of the forms of logical errors. Forms deduced from the concept of the concept, and forms deduced from the other concepts--Errors derived from errors--Professionally and nationality of errors.

AESTHETICISM, EMPIRICISM AND MATHEMATICISM

Definition of these forms--AEstheticism--Empiricism--Positivism, the philosophy founded upon the sciences, inductive metaphysic--Empiricism and facts--Bankruptcy of Empiricism: dualism, agnosticism, spiritualism and superstition--Evolutionistic positivism and rationalistic positivism--Mathematicism--Symbolical mathematics--Mathematics as a form of demonstration of philosophy--Errors of mathematical philosophy--Dualism, agnosticism and superstition of mathematicism.

THE PHILOSOPHISM

THE MYTHOLOGISM

DUALISM, SCEPTICISM AND MYSTICISM

Dualism--Scepsis and scepticism--Mystery--Critique of affirmations of mystery in philosophy--Agnosticism as a particular form of scepticism--Mysticism--Errors in other parts of philosophy--Conversion of these errors into one another and into logical errors.

THE ORDER OF ERRORS AND THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH

Necessary character of the forms of errors. Their definite number --Their logical order--Examples of this order in various parts of philosophy--Erring spirit and spirit of search--Immanence of error in truth--Erroneous distinction between possession of and search for truth--Search for truth in the practical sense of preparation for thought; the series of errors--Transfiguration of error into tentative or hypothesis in the search so understood--Distinction between error as error and error as hypothesis--Immanence of the tentative in error itself as error--Individuals and error--Duplicate aspect of errors--Ultimate form of error: the methodological error or hypotheticism.

THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF ERROR AND THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

Inseparability of phenomenology of error from the philosophical system--The eternal course and recurrence of errors--Returns to anterior philosophies; and their meaning--False idea of a history of philosophy as history of the successive appearance of the categories and of errors in time--Philosophism case in point of this false view, as is the formula concerning the identity of philosophy and history of philosophy--Distinction between this false idea of a history of philosophy, and the books which take it as their title or programme--Exact formula: identity of philosophy and history--History of philosophy and philosophic progress--The truth of all philosophies; and criticism of eclecticism--Researches for authors and precursors of truths; reason for the antinomies which they exhibit.

"DE CONSOLATIONE PHILOSOPHIAE"

Logic and defence of Philosophy--Utility of Philosophy and the Philosophy of the practical--Consolation of philosophy, as joy of thought and in the true. Impossibility of a pleasure arising from falsity and illusion--Critique of the concept of a sad truth --Examples: Philosophical criticism and the concepts of God and Immortality--Consolatory virtue, pertaining to all spiritual activities--Sorrow and elevation of sorrow.

FOURTH PART

HISTORICAL RETROSPECT

HISTORY OF LOGIC AND HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

Reality, Thought and Logic--Relation of these three terms--Inexistence of a general philosophy outside particular philosophic sciences; and, in consequence, of a general History of philosophy outside the histories of particular philosophic sciences--Histories of particular philosophies and literary value of such division--History of Logic in its particular sense--Works dealing with history of Logic.

THEORY OF THE CONCEPT

THEORY OF THE INDIVIDUAL JUDGMENT

THEORY OF THE RELATIONS BETWEEN THOUGHT AND WORD AND FORMALIST LOGIC

Relation between history of Logic and history of Philosophy of language--Logical formalism. Indian logic free of it--Aristotelian Logic and formalism--Later formalism--Rebellions against Aristotelian Logic--Opposition by humanists and its motives--Opposition of naturalism--Simplicatory elaboration in eighteenth century. Kant--Refutation of formal Logic. Hegel; Schleiermacher--Its partial persistence, owing to insufficient ideas as to language--Formal Logic in Herbart, in Schopenhauer, in Hamilton--More recent theories--Mathematical Logic--Inexact idea of language among mathematicians and intuitionists.

CONCERNING THIS LOGIC

FIRST PART

FIRST SECTION

THE PURE CONCEPT AND THE PSEUDOCONCEPTS

AFFIRMATION OF THE CONCEPT

Presupposed in the logical activity, which is the subject of this treatise, are representations or intuitions. If man had no representations, he would not think; were he not an imaginative spirit, he would not be a logical spirit. It is generally admitted that thought refers back to sensation, as its antecedent; and this doctrine we have no difficulty in making our own, provided it be given a double meaning. That is to say, in the first place, sensation must be conceived as something active and cognitive, or as a cognitive act; and not as something formless and passive, or active only with the activity of life, and not with that of contemplation. And, in the second place, sensation must be taken in its purity, without any logical reflection and elaboration; as simple sensation, that is to say, and not as perception, which , so far from being implied, in itself implies logical activity. With this double explanation, sensation, active, cognitive and unreflective, becomes synonymous with representation and intuition; and certainly this is not the place to discuss the use of these synonyms, though there are excellent reasons of practical convenience pointing to the preference of the terms which we have adopted.

At all events, the important thing is to bear clearly in mind, that the logical activity, or thought, arises upon the many-coloured pageant of representations, intuitions, or sensations, whichever we may call them; and by means of these, at every moment the cognitive spirit absorbs within itself the course of reality, bestowing upon it theoretic form.

What is a real presupposition of the logical activity, is, for that very reason, not a presupposition in Philosophy, which cannot admit presuppositions and must think and demonstrate all the concepts that it posits. But it may conveniently be allowed as a presupposition for that part of Philosophy, which we are now undertaking to treat, namely Logic; and the existence of the representative or intuitive form of knowledge be taken for granted. After all, scepticism could not formulate more than two objections to this position: either the negation of knowing in general; or the negation of that form of knowing which we presuppose. Now, the first would be an instance of absolute scepticism; and we may be allowed to dispense with exhibiting yet again the old, but ever effective argument against absolute scepticism which may be found in the mouths of all students at the university, even of the boys in the higher elementary classes . But we do not mean by this declaration that we shall evade our obligation to show the genesis and the profound reasons for this same scepticism, when we are led to do so by the order of our exposition. The second objection implies the negation of the intuitive activity as original and autonomous, and its resolution into empirical, hedonistic, intellectualist, or other doctrines. But we have already, in the preceding volume, directed our efforts towards making the intuitive activity immune against such doctrines, that is to say, towards demonstrating the autonomy of fancy and establishing an AEsthetic. So that, in this way, the presupposition which we now allow to stand has here its pedagogic justification, since it resolves itself into a reference to things said elsewhere.

The concept, then, is not representation, nor is it a mixture and refinement of representation. It springs from representations, as something implicit in them that must become explicit; a necessity whose premisses they provide, but which they are not in a position to satisfy, not even to affirm. The satisfaction is afforded by the form of knowledge which is no longer representative but logical, and which occurs continually and at every instant in the life of the Spirit.

To deny the existence of this form, or to prove it illusory by substituting other spiritual formations in its place, is an attempt which has been and is made, but which has not succeeded and does not succeed, and which, therefore, may be considered desperate. This series of manifestations, this aspect of reality, this form of spiritual activity, which is the Concept, constitutes the object of Logic.

THE CONCEPT AND THE PSEUDOCONCEPTS

The conceptual fictions of the triangle and of free motion have an analogous but opposite defect. With them, it appears, we emerge from the difficulties of representations. The triangle and free motion are not something which begins and ends in time and of which we are not able to state exactly the character and limits. So long as thought, that is to say, thinkable reality, exists, the concept of the triangle and of free motion will have validity. The triangle is formed by the intersection of three straight lines enclosing a space and forming three angles, the sum of which, though they 'vary from triangle to triangle, is equal to that of two right angles. It is impossible to confuse the triangle with the quadrilateral or the circle. Free motion is a motion, which we think of as taking place without obstacles of any sort. It is impossible to confuse it with a motion to which there is any particular obstacle. So far so good. But if those conceptual fictions let fall the ballast of representations, they ascend to a zone without air, where life is impossible; or, to speak without metaphor, they gain universality by losing reality. There is no geometric triangle in reality because in reality there are no straight lines, nor right angles nor sums of right angles, nor sums of angles equal to that of two right angles. There is no free motion in reality, because every real motion takes place in definite conditions and therefore among obstacles. A thought, which has as its object nothing real, is not thought; and those concepts are not concepts but conceptual fictions.

In short, we have to abandon entirely the idea that conceptual fictions are errors, or sketches and aids, and that they precede rigorous concepts. Quite the opposite is true: conceptual fictions do not precede rigorous concepts, but follow them, and presuppose them as their own foundation. Were this not so, of what could they ever be fictions? To counterfeit or imitate something implies first knowledge of the thing which it is desired to counterfeit or to imitate. To falsify means to have knowledge of the genuine model: false money implies good money, not vice versa. It is possible to think that man, from being the ingenuous poet that he first was, raised himself, immediately, to the thought of the eternal; but it is not possible to think that he constructed the smallest conceptual fiction, without having previously imagined and thought. The house, the rose, the cat, the triangle, free motion presuppose quantity, quality, existence, and we know not how many other rigorous concepts: they are made with iron instruments great and small, which logical thought has created, and which come to be used with such rapidity and naturalness that we usually end by believing that we have proceeded without them. Whoever makes conceptual fictions, has already taken his logical bearings in the world: he knows what he is doing and reasons about it; progress with his conceptual fictions depending upon progress with his rigorous concepts, and being continuously remade, according to the new needs and the new conditions which are formed. Now that the concept of miracle or witchcraft has been destroyed, the conceptual fictions relating to the various classes and modes of miraculous facts and acts of witchcraft are no longer constructed; and since the destruction of the belief in the direct influence of the stars upon human destinies, the astrological and mathematical fictions, which arose upon those conceptual presuppositions, have also disappeared.

Those who have seen errors or sketches of truth in conceptual fictions have certainly seen something: because it may at once be admitted, that conceptual fictions also sometimes become both errors and obstacles, and suggestions and aids to truth. But because a given spiritual product is adopted for an end different from that which rightly belongs to it , we must not omit to search for the intrinsic end, which constitutes the genuine nature of this product. The portrait of a fair lady, white as milk and red as blood, which the prince of the story finds beneath a cushion by the help of the fairy, may serve as an incentive to make him undertake the journey round the world in search of the woman in flesh and blood, who is like the portrait and whom he will make his wife; but that portrait, before it is an instrument in the hands of the fairy, is a picture, that is to say, a work of art, which has come from the hands, or rather from the fancy, of the painter; and must be appreciated as such. Thus conceptual fictions, before they are transmuted into errors or into expedients, into obstacles or into aids to the search for truth, have, before them, a truth already constructed, toward the construction of which, therefore, they cannot serve; whereas that truth has served them, for they would not otherwise have been able to arise. They are, therefore, intrinsically neither obstacles nor aids to truth, but something else, that is, themselves; and what they are in themselves it is still necessary to determine.

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