The following volumes are not included in the Laterza edition of
Croce's works:
_Cultura e vita morale_, Bari, 1914. ("Culture and Moral Life.")
_Aneddoti e profili settecenteschi_, Palermo, 1914. ("Anecdotes and
Profiles of the Eighteenth Century.")
_Contributo alla critica di me stesso_, Naples, 1918. ("Contribution
to a Criticism of Myself"; one hundred copies printed for private
distribution.)
_Curiosità storiche_, Naples, 1920. ("Historical Curiosities.")
_Pagine Sparse_, edited by G. Castellano, Naples, 1919-1920.
("Scattered Pages," consisting of _Pagine di letteratura e di cultura_,
2 vols.; _Pagine sulla guerra_; and _Memorie, scritti biografici e
appunti storici_.)
A complete bibliography, cataloguing the whole of Croce's multifarious
activity, is outside the scope of this note. The nearest approach to it
can be found in G. Castellano's _Introduzione alle opere di B. Croce_,
Bari, 1920, which contains, besides, a full list of translations in
eight languages, a bibliography of the Italian and foreign critical
literature on Croce, and a very useful series of abstracts of
discussions and judgments on Croce's work.
Besides articles and essays in American and English magazines and
reviews, the following works of Croce have been translated into
English: the four volumes of the _Filosofia dello Spirito_, the essay
on Hegel, the _Essence of Æsthetics_, and the essays on _Ariosto,
Shakespeare, and Corneille_, by Douglas Ainslie; the essay on Vico, by
R. G. Collingwood, and the essays on Historical Materialism, by C. M.
Meredith. But the English or American student of Croce ought to rely
as little as possible on translations; the reading of the Italian text
will be found comparatively easy, on the basis of a good acquaintance
with Latin or with French. The labour entailed by the surmounting
of the first difficulties will be largely repaid by the advantages
gained in coming into direct contact with Croce's thought, and by the
acquisition of at least a reading knowledge of Italian.
For the vast critical literature on Croce, scattered through the
literary and philosophical reviews of Europe and of America during
the last twenty years, we are compelled again to refer the reader to
Castellano's book. We shall only mark out Croce's own autobiographical
notes, the Contributo listed above, which, however, having been printed
for private circulation only, is not generally accessible except in
the French translation printed in the _Revue de Métaphysique et de
Morale_, XXVI, pp. 1-40. The following are the only books which give
a general view of Croce's thought: G. Prezzolini, _Benedetto Croce_,
Naples, 1909; E. Chiocchetti, _La filosofia di B. Croce_, Florence,
1915; H. Wildon Carr, _The Philosophy of B. Croce_, London, 1917. The
first is an able, but very cursory sketch; the second examines Croce's
philosophy from the standpoint of neoscholasticism; the third is an
ample summary written by a distinguished writer well acquainted with
the various currents of modern thought. Each of them ought to be read
with a critical and discriminating eye.
In the English-speaking world, Croce's fame rests emphatically on his
æsthetics, and its applications to literary criticism. His influence
on English and American critical thought has already gone much deeper
than a mere list of writings on his theories would show; especially in
England, his ideas are, so to speak, in the air, and appear in many
writers who have no direct knowledge of his work. The best exposition
of this phase of his philosophy is to be found in E. F. Carritt's
book, _The Theory of Beauty_, 1914, chap. XIV. The writings of A. B.
Walkley, and of J. E. Spingam, contain the most vigorous prosecution
of his thought as applied, respectively, to English and to American
scholarship and criticism.
For the general history of Italian thought, to which many a reference
is made in the course of this book, the best helps, besides Croce's
essay on Vico, and B. Spaventa, _La filosofia italiana_, recently
reprinted, Bari, 1909, are the historical works of Giovanni Gentile,
and especially his _Storia della filosofia italiana_, Milano, n.
d. Gentile is one of the most profound and earnest modern European
thinkers, and it is desirable that his theoretical works, similar in
tendency to, but widely divergent in temper from those of Croce, should
become better known to the Anglo-Saxon world. Two of his books, _La
Riforma dell' Educazione_ and _Teoria generale dello Spirito_, are soon
to appear in English. Croce's judgment on Gentile's Actual Idealism is
expressed in _Una discussione tra filosofi amici_, in _Conversazioni
Critiche_, II, pp. 67-95. But a complete understanding of the vital
relations between the two thinkers can be gathered only through an
adequate knowledge of both Croce's and Gentile's work.