manifestations of the human spirit, if this statement did not open
the way to another common prejudice, to the belief that to each of
those forms (for instance, to Art, History and Philosophy) several
spiritual activities contribute. Were this so, we should have before
us a mixture, not a product of an unique and original character, such
as we find, as a matter of fact, in a work of Art, a philosophic
theory, a narrative, and a theorem. By the law of the unity of the
spirit all the forms of the spirit are implicit in one another; and the
results, previously obtained from the various forms, condition each
one of them. But each one of them is, explicitly, itself and not the
others; it absorbs and transforms the results of the others; it does
not leave them within itself as extraneous elements, and it therefore
makes of them its own results. The strength of each one of those
forms of knowledge lies precisely in this _purity,_ which persists
in the greatest complexity. A great poem is as homogeneous as the
shortest lyric or as a verse; a philosophic system as homogeneous as a
definition; the most complicated calculations as the addition of "two
and two make four."
[Sidenote: _Enumeration and determination of the forms of knowing,
corresponding to the forms of acquaintance._]
If the forms of acquaintance and the forms of knowledge be identical,
it is proved thereby that the second are as many and of the same
sort as the first; and the existence of combined or composite forms
is also excluded from the forms of knowledge. Thus we are henceforth
freed from the obligation of enquiring into the particular nature of
the various forms of knowledge, a task that we have already fulfilled
when enquiring into the forms of acquaintance. It is sufficient to
name them (in correspondence) with the names already given to the
forms of acquaintance, for thus they will be clearly distinguished and
completely enumerated. The method of denomination itself will not be
new and surprising, because it has been, as it were, anticipated, and
foreseen from the examples of which we have availed ourselves above,
and also from some terminological references. We have now only to make
it manifest, to declare it, so to speak, in clear tones.
Pure intuition is the theoretic form of Art (or of _Poetry,_ if we wish
to extend to the whole of æsthetic production the name given to a group
of works of art); and art cannot be otherwise defined than as pure
intuition. The thinking of the pure concept, of the concept as itself,
of the universal that is truly universal and not mere generality or
abstraction, is _Philosophy,_ and Philosophy cannot be otherwise
defined than as the thinking, or the conceiving of the pure concept.
And since the pure concept can be expressed either in the form of
definition or in that of individual judgment, there corresponds to this
duplication the distinction of the two forms of knowing, _Philosophy
in the strict sense, and History._ The method of treatment called
_empirical Science or natural Science,_ or most commonly in our time,
_Science,_ is composed of those pseudoconcepts known as representative
or empirical or classificatory. The mathematical Sciences are
composed of abstract, enumerative and mensurative pseudoconcepts,
and the application of the second of these, by means of the first,
to individual judgments, is nothing else than what is called the
_mathematical Science of nature._
[Sidenote: _Critique of the idea of a special Logic as doctrine of the
forms of knowledge,_]
It is usual for the treatment of the forms of knowledge to be presented
in the majority of treatises as a _special_ or _applied Logic_;
following _general_ or _pure Logic,_ which has for its object the
specific forms of acquaintance alone, or as it is significantly
expressed, the _elementary_ forms of acquaintance. But we cannot admit
the existence of such a Logic, for the reasons already given. The
elementary or fundamental forms are the only forms philosophically
conceivable and really existing, and the whole of logical Science is
exhausted in them. There is no duality of grades for logical Science
any more than for Philosophy in general. And as no special Æsthetic
exists independent of general Æsthetic, no special Ethic and Economic
independent of general Economic, so there is not a _general_ Logic
alongside of a _special_ Logic.
[Sidenote: _and as doctrine of methods._]
Special Logic is also inadmissible, when it is presented as doctrine
of _methods,_ and especially of demonstrative or intrinsic methods.
The method of a form of knowledge and in general of a form of the
spirit, is not something different or even distinguishable from this
form itself. The method of poetry is poetry, the method of philosophy
is philosophy, the method of mathematics is mathematics, and so on.
Only by means of empirical abstraction is the method separated from the
activity itself; and when this duality has been created, we are led
to add to it a third term, which is called the _object_ of that form.
But since the method is the form itself, so form and method are the
object itself. Certainly, all the forms of the spirit have a common
object, which is Reality; but this is not because reality is separated
from them, but because they are reality: they therefore _have_ not, but
_are_ this object. Thus the forms of knowledge have not a theoretic
object, but create it: they themselves are that object. Philosophy has
the pure concept for method and object; art has intuition; science
the empirical concept, and so on. If we wished to treat of methods in
a special Logic, we could not do otherwise than repeat what we have
already said in respect to the character of each form.
[Sidenote: _Nature of our treatise in respect to the forms of
knowledge._]
All this amounts to saying that the things we shall discuss concerning
the various forms of knowledge are not to be understood as a special
Logic, although they are grouped in a second part for literary reasons.
There we shall examine one by one the various forms of knowledge,
in order to confirm their identity with the forms of awareness and
to demonstrate how the characters adopted by them are reducible to
those already explained for the others, and how the difficulties
found in them are overcome by means of the same principles that we
employed to overcome the difficulties presented by the others. In
so doing, we shall also gain the advantage of making more clear the
doctrines already laid down as to the elementary forms, by fixing
our attention upon those manifestations of them which are presented
on a larger scale. To those who forget or deny the existence of the
pure concept or of the abstract concept, it will be of assistance,
in giving the speculative deduction of those forms, to point out the
masterpieces of Art, of Philosophy, or of Mathematics, and to invite an
examination of their structure. It is true that in our day preference
is given to another method, which is not only antiphilosophical but
also antipædagogic. This method consists in altogether neglecting
philosophic demonstration in the attempt to divert the attention from
notable and luminous manifestations of the spirit, in order to devote
it to rude and uncertain manifestations. Inscriptions of savages are
preferred to the art of Michael Angelo, the philosophy that is still
crudely enveloped in religion and custom to that of civilized times,
something whose nature none can tell precisely, owing to lack of
documents and the elements of research, to what is evidently art and
philosophy. Such enquirers adopt precisely an opposite course to that
followed by the sciences of observation, which have made telescopes
and microscopes to enlarge the little and bring the distant near.
They seek for instruments which shall diminish the great and make the
near remote. Theirs is a strange empirical caricature of philosophy,
which substitutes the chronologically remote for the fundamentally
conceptual, and for the logically simple, the materially small, which
is not, on that account, simple and is far less transparent. For our
part (and we say it in passing), we believe that to furnish examples
of where to fix the attention in logical enquiry, the minds of an
Aristotle or of a Kant afford all we require, without there being any
necessity to have recourse to the psychology of sucklings and idiots.
But to study Aristotle and Kant does not suffice for knowledge of the
truth of the concept. We must find in all beings of whatever grade and
importance, the universal Spirit and its eternal forms.
And since we have studied the first and most ingenuous form of
knowledge, Art, in a special volume, we shall here begin our
examination of the second of its forms, Philosophy; and first of all,
of Philosophy _in the strict sense._
II
PHILOSOPHY
[Sidenote: _Philosophy as pure concept and the various definitions of
philosophy. Those which deny philosophy._]
All the definitions that have ever been given of philosophy will be
found to contain the thought that philosophy is the pure concept
(or to say the same thing with more words and less precision), that
it has the pure concept as its directive criterion. All, be it well
understood, save those which, in negating the pure concept, negate also
the peculiar nature of philosophy. But such are not, properly speaking,
definitions of philosophy, although even these, by contradicting
themselves, imply and assume the definition of philosophy as an
original form, and so as the pure concept. Such is the case with the
theories already examined, of æstheticism, mysticism, and empiricism
(and also of mathematicism), to which we shall return. For them,
philosophy is art, sentiment, the empirical (or abstract) concept.
But it is an art in some way differentiated from the rest of art, a
sentiment that acquires a peculiar value, an empirical or abstract
concept, which raises itself up and looks over the heads of the others.
Thus it is something peculiar, a mode of reflecting _sui generis,_
and so precisely the pure concept. Empiricism especially reveals this
intimate contradiction, when it advocates a philosophy consisting of a
systematization or synthesis of the results of the empirical sciences.
That is to say, it advocates something not given by the empirical
sciences, because, were they to give it, they would already be
systematized and synthesized of themselves, and the further elaboration
asked for would be altogether superfluous.
[Sidenote: _Those that define it as the science of supreme principles,
ultimate causes, etc.; contemplation of death, etc.;_]
All the other definitions which presuppose the peculiarity of
philosophy are reducible, as is easily seen, to the single character of
the pure concept. Philosophy (they say) is the science of the _supreme
principles of the real,_ the science of _ultimate causes,_ of the
_origin of things,_ and the like. In these propositions, the supreme
principles are evidently not real things, or groups of real things, or
empty formulæ, but the ideal generators of the real. Ultimate causes
are not causes (for the cause is never ultimate, being always the
effect of an antecedent cause), but ideal principles. The origin in
question is not the historical origin of this or that single fact, but
the ideal deduction of the fact from facts or from omnipresent reality.
The same idea is expressed in the imaginative saying that philosophy is
the _contemplation of death._ For what but the individual dies? And is
not the contemplation of the death of the individual also that of the
immortality of the universal? Is it not contemplation of the eternal?
This remark supplies the motive for that other formula which defines
philosophy as "the vision of things _sub specie aeterni._"
[Sidenote: _as elaboration of the concepts, criticism, science of
norms;_]
The character of the pure concept is also indicated in the definition
of philosophy as the _elaboration of the concepts,_ which the other
sciences leave imperfect and self-contradictory. Indeed, since no human
activity has the imperfect and contradictory as its aim, if the other
sciences are involved in imperfect and contradictory concepts, this
means that they do not aim at constructing concepts and that philosophy
alone elaborates true and proper concepts. For this reason, philosophy
has sometimes been conceived, not as science, but as criticism, and
criticism means placing oneself above the object criticized, in virtue
of a concept superior to those criticized. For this reason, finally,
philosophy has been conceived as the science of _norms and values_:
norms and values, which, if they are to surpass singular things, cannot
be extraneous to them. Hence it is the same thing to speak of _norms
and values,_ or of universal concepts, surpassing and containing in
themselves each single thing.
[Sidenote: _as doctrine of the categories._]
If philosophy is the pure concept, it is also the distinctions of
the pure concept; it is all the pure concepts capable of serving as
predicates to individual judgments and so of acting as categories. Here
there is another definition of philosophy: philosophy is the _doctrine
of the categories._ For this reason we have already refused to assign
to Logic the search for the categories: first because the doctrine of
the categories is the whole of Philosophy, whereas Logic is only one
of its links, and consequently seeks only one of the categories, that
of logicity. It could also be said that Philosophy is the doctrine of
the categories, and that Logic, as a part of Philosophy, is a Category
of categories, or a Philosophy of Philosophy. Hence its singular
position among philosophical sciences, so that it appears at the same
time within and without Philosophy, because it completes by surpassing
and surpasses by completing it. In reality, Logic, like every other
philosophic science, is within and not without Philosophy; like the
glassy water which reflects the landscape and is itself part of the
landscape.
[Sidenote: _Exclusion of mathematical definitions of philosophy._]
These definitions which we have selected to record and to interpret
(and others which we leave to the reader to record and to interpret)
are all _formal,_ in the legitimate sense of the word. They define
the eternal nature of philosophy, they do not determine actually any
special solution of other philosophical problems, although naturally
they do potentially determine one solution, in that they can agree
only with one solution. Obedient to this formal character, we have
not taken and shall not take account of definitions that imply the
effective solution of all philosophical problems, or of Philosophy in
its totality. Such is, for instance, the definition that Philosophy is
knowledge of oneself, as was said at the dawn of Hellenic thought; or
that it is the return to the inward man where dwells the truth, as St.
Augustine said; or that it is the science of Spirit, as we say. This
definition offers something more than the simply logical aspect of
Philosophy. Looked at from the purely logical standpoint, Philosophy
will be the science of God or of the Devil, of Spirit or Matter, of
final cause or mechanism, or of anything else that may be suggested
as a hypothesis for enquiry, provided that this, whatever it be, is
thinkable as a _pure concept or Idea._ Whoever should negate this
condition, would not negate this or that philosophy, but as we have
seen, philosophy itself, in favour of art, of action, or of something
else.
[Sidenote: _Idealism of every philosophy._]
But if Philosophy is by its logical nature pure concept or idea, every
philosophy, to whatever results it may attain, and whatever may be its
errors, is in its essential character and deepest tendency, _idealism._
This has been recognized by philosophers of the most different and
antagonistic views (for example, by Hegel and by Herbart). It should
be taught as truth to those who are ignorant of it and those who have
forgotten should be reminded of it. Determinism negates the end and
affirms the cause; but the cause which it posits as its principle, is
not this or that cause, but the _idea_ of cause. Materialism negates
thought and affirms matter; but not this or that matter, which composes
this or that body, but the _idea_ of matter. Naturalism denies spirit
and affirms nature; not this or that manifestation of nature, but
nature as _idea._ Finally, when a single natural fact seems to be
posited as the principle of explanation of reality, this fact is
idealized and stands as the idea of itself, generating itself and
everything else. Thus (it has been repeatedly remarked) the water
of Thales, by the very fact that it is taken as a principle, is no
longer any given empirical water, but metaphysical and ideal water.
In like manner, the _numbers_ of Pythagoras are not those of the
Pythagorean table, but cosmic principles and ideas. Theism does not
believe it possible to obtain the sufficient reason of reality, without
positing a personal God, above and beyond the world. But this God is
always something non-representative, however much he may be involved
in sensible representation, and placed upon Sinai or Olympus. He is
the idea of personal divinity, the idea of Jehovah or of Jove. The
philosophy which is called idealist in the strict sense of the word (it
would be better called activist or finalist or absolute spiritualism),
strives to prove that, for instance, cause, matter, nature, number,
water, Jehovah, Jove and the like, are not thinkable as pure concepts
and as such imply contradictions, and that therefore such philosophies
are insufficient. This means that it holds the _idealism_ of those
philosophies _insufficient,_ that they are not equal to themselves and
are inadequate to the assumption on which they rest; but it does not
imply that this assumption is not idealistic.
Were it not idealistic, it would not be philosophical, and so it would
not be possible to submit it to criticism from the philosophical point
of view.
[Sidenote: _Systematic character of philosophy._]
From the identity of philosophy with the pure concept can be also
deduced its necessarily _systematic_ character.
To think any pure concept means to think it in its relation of unity
and distinction with all the others. Thus, in reality, what is thought
is never _a_ concept, but _the_ concept, the _system_ of concepts. On
the other hand, to think the concept in general is only possible by
arbitrary abstraction. To think it truly in general, means to think
it also as particular and singular, and so to think the whole system
of distinct concepts. Those who wish to think an isolated concept
philosophically without paying attention to the others, are like
doctors who wish to cure an organ without paying attention to the
organism. Such a mode of treatment may cure the organ, but the organism
dies and with it dies the healed organ a moment after. The true
philosopher, when he makes even the smallest modification in a concept,
has his eye on the whole system, for he knows that this modification,
however small it may seem, modifies to some extent the whole.
[Sidenote: _Philosophic and literary significance of system._]
The systematic character of philosophy, understood logically,
belongs to every single philosophical proposition which is always a
philosophical cosmos, as every drop of water is the ocean, indeed, the
whole world, contracted into that drop of water. It is hardly necessary
to distinguish from this the _literary sense_ of system, which is the
name given to certain forms of exposition, which embrace definite
groups of problems, traditionally held to be those in which philosophy
is contained. When some or many of those groups do not receive explicit
literary treatment, it is said that system is wanting. It is true
that there is wanting the fulfilment of a literary task (or what here
amounts to the same thing, of a pedagogic task); but the system is
there, even in the case when a very specialized problem is treated,
provided it be approached with philosophic and so with systematic
energy. That the same thinker, when he passes to another problem,
should give a wrong solution contradictory to that previously given,
does not prove that he had not at first a system, but that he has lost
it when faced with the new difficulty. He was at first a philosopher
and so systematic; afterwards, not philosopher enough, and so not
sufficiently systematic.
[Sidenote: _Advantages and disadvantages of the literary form of
system._]
The traditional groupings of problems, and the construction of system
in the literary and pedagogic sense, certainly have their utility
(all that exists has its proper function and value). They preserve
and promote culture already acquired, by obliging it to examine
difficulties, which, were they neglected, might unexpectedly become
a great hindrance and loss. Hence the love for system, or for the
literary form of system, a love which the author of these pages
also nourishes in his soul and of which he has sought to give some
proof, by writing a _system,_ although it is long since systems have
been written, in Italy at least (unless scholastic manuals be thus
called), and it is no slight merit to have braved the ridicule of the
enterprise. But systems have also the disadvantage of sometimes leading
to a tiresome re-exposition of problems that are out of date and
whose solutions have passed into the common patrimony of culture. The
treatment of these problems is better left to be understood, that time
and space may be gained for the treatment of others more urgent. Hence
the rebellion against system, or against the pedantry which can adhere
to that form of exposition. This rebellion is similar at all points
with that against the pedantry of definition, which is a legitimate
rebellion, yet cannot eliminate the logical form of definition. Instead
of systems, we write monographs, essays, and aphorisms, but these, if
philosophic, will always be inwardly systematic.
[Sidenote: _Genesis of the systematic prejudice and rebellion against
it._]
But the rebellion against systems has another more serious cause, less
literary and more philosophical. Sometimes the demand for a system
becomes a _systematic prejudice._ This fact merits explanation, because
thus stated it may reasonably appear to be paradoxical. However could
the demand inherent in a function be changed into a prejudice, or into
an obstacle to that function? Stated in these terms, it certainly
seems inconceivable. But it becomes clear and admissible, when we
remember that philosophical enquiry is both induction and deduction,
the thinking of distinction and the thinking of unity in distinction.
Neither of the two processes, which are one single thing, should be
substituted for or dominate the other. If we think the concept of
morality, it should be placed in relation to and deduced from the
other forms of the spirit and thus from unity; but it must also be
thought in itself. The thinking of the peculiar nature of the moral
act cannot remain isolated and atomic, but unity in its turn cannot
give the character of the moral act, unless this act be present to
the spirit and make itself known for what it is. In the process of
research, it is possible to deduce the moral act from the consideration
of the other activities of the spirit, without thinking it in itself.
But here a _heuristic_ process is adopted, a _hypothesis_ is made,
and this hypothesis must afterwards be verified, in order to become
effective thought and concept. Now the systematic prejudice consists
precisely in thinking the unity without thinking the distinctions, in
deduction without induction, in changing the hypothesis into a concept
without having seriously verified it. Hence analogical constructions
(or falsely analogical, and so metaphysical and fantastic), which take
the place of philosophical distinctions, and hence the systematic
prejudice, which is a _false idea of system._ Against this rebellion
is justified. But the mistake is usually made of discarding the true
demand for system through horror of the false, or of denying the
utility of the analogical process, which is blameable in the system,
but useful in enquiry.
[Sidenote: _Sacred and philosophical numbers; meaning of the demand
which they express._]