philosophic universal must be reawakened and strengthened, in
conformity with its most perfect elaboration in the history of thought,
at the hands of Hegel. The critics of the sciences are at present
far from this mark. The term that is distinct from the empirical and
abstract concepts, the knowledge of reality which is not falsified by
practical ends and discovered beneath labels and formulae, is supplied,
not by the pure concept, by reality thought in its concreteness, by
philosophy which is history, but by pure sensation or intuition. Both
Avenarius and Mach appeal to pure and primitive experience, that is,
to experience free of thought and anterior to it. Bergson, with an
artistic talent that is wanting to the two Germans, but following
the same path, has proclaimed a new metaphysic, which proceeds in an
opposite sense to that of symbolical knowledge and of generalizing and
abstracting experience. He has defined the metaphysic which he desires,
as a science _qui prétend se passer des symboles,_ and therefore as
"_Science de l'expérience intégrale._" This metaphysic would be the
opposite of the Kantian ideal, of the mathematical universal, of the
Platonism of the concepts, and would be founded upon intuition, the
sole organ of the Absolute: "_est relative la connaissance symbolique
par concepts pré-existants qui va du fixe au mouvant, mais non pas la
connaissance intuitive, qui s'installe dans le mouvement et adopte
la vie même des choses. Cette intuition atteint l'absolu._"[28] The
conclusion is æstheticism, and sometimes something even less than
æstheticism, namely mysticism, or _action_ substituted for the concept.
The criticism of the sciences thereby comes to mean the negation of
knowledge and of truth. Hence the protest of Poincaré[29] against Le
Roy, justified in its motive, but ineffective, because based upon the
presuppositions of mathematics and physics. In others again, it becomes
intermingled with the turbid waters of pragmatism, which is a little of
everything, but, above all, chatter and emptiness.
[Sidenote: _The theory of values._]
Finally, another of the thinkers that we have mentioned, Rickert
(following Windelband), wishes to integrate naturalistic and abstract
knowledge with the historical knowledge of individual reality. Being
reasonably diffident as to the possibility of a metaphysic as an
"experimental science" (such as Zeller was among the first to desire),
he moves towards a general theory of values. This indeed is the form
(imperfect because stained with transcendence) by means of which many
in our day are approaching a philosophy as the science of the spirit
(or of immanent value). But in the hands of Windelband and Rickert it
is understood as a primacy of the practical reason, which is taken to
govern the double series of the world of the sciences and the world
of history. This doubtless represents progress, as compared with
empiricism and positivism; but not as compared with the Hegelian Logic
of the pure concept, which included in itself what is and what ought to
be.
Such, briefly stated, is the present state of logical doctrines
concerning the Concept.
[Footnote 1: _De sophist. elench._ ch. 34.]
[Footnote 2: _Metaphys._ M 4, p. 1078 b 28-30; cf. A 6, p. 987 b 2-3.]
[Footnote 3: Cf. _Æsthetic,_ part ii. chap. i.]
[Footnote 4: See in this connection the observations of Lasson, in the
preface to his recent German translation of the _Metaphysic,_ Jena,
Diederichs, 1907.]
[Footnote 5: Cf. especially the _Parmenides,_ the _Theætetus,_ and
_Book of the Republic._]
[Footnote 6: _Metaphys._ E I, p. 1025 b, 1026 a.]
[Footnote 7: _Metaphys._ vi. 1027 a.]
[Footnote 8: _Anal. post._ i. ch. 30.]
[Footnote 9: See the writings of Gentile concerning De Wulf and La
Berthonnière in the _Critica,_ iii. pp. 203-21, iv. pp. 431-445.]
[Footnote 10: Prantl, _Gesch. d. Logik,_ iii. pp. 182-3.]
[Footnote 11: For these references to writings of Luther, see F. J.
Schmidt, _Zur Wiedergeburt des Idealismus,_ Leipzig, 1908, pp. 44-6.]
[Footnote 12: See my Essay upon Hegel, ch. ii.]
[Footnote 13: Preface to _Nouveaux Essais._]
[Footnote 14: See what is said on this point in my
_Æsthetic,_² Part II. Chap. VIII.]
[Footnote 15: _Krit. d. rein. Vern._ ed. Kirchmann, pp. 22-3.]
[Footnote 16: _Wiss. d. Logik,_ i. p. 35; cfr. p. 19.]
[Footnote 17: Kuno Fischer in his _Logic,_ when expounding the thought
of Hegel, clearly distinguishes the empirical concepts from the pure
concepts, and notes that those which are pure or philosophical, are,
in the spirit, the basis and presupposition of the others. "These
others, the empirical, are formed from single representations or
intuitions, by uniting homogeneous characteristics and separating
them from the heterogeneous; and thus arise general representations,
concepts of classes": empirical, because of their empirical origin,
and representative, because they represent entire classes of single
objects, that is, are generalized representations. But at the base
of each of these are found judgments or syntheses, which contain
non-empirical and non-representable elements, elements which are _a
priori_ and only thinkable. These are the true concepts, the first
thoughts in the ideal order, without which nothing can be thought
(_Logik²,_ i. sect. i. § 3). The difference between these pure concepts
or categories and empirical concepts or categories is not quantitative,
but qualitative: the pure concepts are not the most general, the
broadest classes; they do not represent phenomena, but connections and
relations; they can be compared to the signs (+,-, x, ÷, √, etc.) of
arithmetical operations; they are not obtainable by abstraction, indeed
it is by means of them that all abstractions are affected (_loc. cit._
§§ 5-6).]
[Footnote 18: See my essay, _What is Living and what is Dead of the
Philosophy of Hegel,_ for the criticism here briefly summarized.]
[Footnote 19: _Dialektik,_ ed. Halpern, pp. 203-245.]
[Footnote 20: _Werke,_ ed. Grisebach, ii. chap. 39.]
[Footnote 21: The movement of Italian thought in the first decades of
the nineteenth century was rather a progress of national philosophic
culture than a factor in the general history of philosophy. In this
last respect, the rôle of Italy was for the time being ended; though
it did not end in the seventeenth century with Campanella and Galileo
(as foreign historians and the Italians who copy them believe). It
ended magnificently in the first half of the eighteenth century with
Vico, the last representative of the Renaissance and the first of
Romanticism. The influence of German philosophy continued to manifest
itself in Italy in the nineteenth century, at first almost entirely
through French literature, then directly. It can be studied in the
three principal thinkers of the first half of the century, Galuppi,
Rosmini, and Gioberti. The first began from the Scottish school, and
while attacking Kant, he absorbed not a few of his principles. The
second, also in a polemical sense and in a Catholic wrapping, can be
called the Italian Kant. The third, who had always only the slightest
consciousness of history, assumed the same position as Schelling and
Hegel. To have attained (between 1850 and 1860) to such historical
consciousness is the merit of Bertrando Spaventa (see especially his
book, _La filosofia italiana nelle sue relazioni con la filosofia
europea,_ new edition, by G. Gentile, Bari, Laterza, 1908), who
represented Hegelianism in Italy in a very cautious and critical form.
But there was no true surpassing of Hegelianism either by his disciples
or by his adversaries, and some original thought is to be found only
among non-professional philosophers, particularly in Æsthetic, with
Francesco de Sanctis (cf. _Estetica,_ part ii. chap. 15).]
[Footnote 22: _Krit. d. rein. Vernunft, loc. cit._]
[Footnote 23: _Logik,_ p. 42 _sqq._]
[Footnote 24: See, among other books, _L'Analisi delle sensazioni,_
Italian translation Turin, Bocca; 1903.]
[Footnote 25: _Grenzen d. naturwissensch. Begriffsbildung,_ Freiburg i.
B, 1896-1902, chaps. 1-3.]
[Footnote 26: See above, p. 528.]
[Footnote 27: See his articles in the _Revue de métaphys. et de
morale,_ vols. vii. viii. xi.]
[Footnote 28: "Introduction à la Métaphysique," in the _Revue de
métaphys. et de mor._ xi. pp. 1-36.]
[Footnote 29: _La Valeur de la science,_ Paris, 1904.]
III
THE THEORY OF THE INDIVIDUAL JUDGMENT
[Sidenote: _Secular neglect of the theory of history._]
The theory of the individual judgment and therefore of historical
thought, has been the least elaborated of all logical theories in
the course of philosophic history. It is a very true and profound
remark that the historical sense is a modern thing, and that the
nineteenth century is the first great century of historical thinking.
Of course, since history has always been made and individual judgments
pronounced, theoretic observations upon historical judgments have not
been altogether wanting in the past. The spirit is, as we know, the
whole spirit at every instant, and in this respect nothing is ever
new under the sun, indeed, nothing is new, either before or after the
sun.[1] But history, and in particular, the theory of history, did not
formerly arouse interest nor attract attention, nor was its importance
felt, nor was it the object of anxious and wide investigations to the
degree witnessed in the nineteenth century and in our times, when the
consciousness of immanence triumphs more and more--and immanence means
history.
[Sidenote: _Græco-Roman world's ideas of history._]
Transcendence, then, which has for centuries been more or less
dominant, supplies the reason why the study of the individual and the
theory of history were neglected. In Greek philosophy, individual
judgments were either despised, as in Platonism, or superseded by and
confused with logical judgments of the universal, as in Aristotle. In
the _Poetics_[2] the character of history did not escape him. Differing
from science (which was directed to the universal) and from poetry
(which was directed to the possible), it expresses things that have
happened in their individuality, _ta genomena_ (what Alcibiades did and
experienced). But in the _Organon,_ although he distinguished between
the universal (ta katholou) and the individual (ta kath' ekastou),
between man and Callias,[3] he made no use of the distinction, and
divided judgments into universal, particular and indefinite. The
theory of history was not raised to the rank of philosophic treatment
in antiquity, like the other forms of knowledge, and especially
philosophy, mathematics and poetry. What mark the ancients have
left upon the argument is limited to incidental observations, and
some altogether empirical remarks here and there upon the method of
writing history. They were wont to assign extrinsic ends to it, such
as utility and advice upon the conduct of life. Such utterances of
good common sense as that of Quintilian, to the effect that history
is written _ad narrandum, non ad demonstrandum,_ do not possess great
philosophic weight. Nor had the rules of the rhetoricians philosophic
value, such as that of Dionysus of Halicarnassus, that historical
narrative, without becoming quite poetical, should be somewhat more
elevated in tone than ordinary discourse; or that of Cicero, who
demanded for historical style _verba ferme poëtarum,_ "perhaps" (wrote
Vico, making the rhetorical rule profound) "in order that historians
might be maintained in their most ancient possession, since, as has
been demonstrated in the _Scienza nuova,_ the first historians of
the nations were the first poets."[4] More important, on the other
hand, are the demands (as expressed especially by Polybius) of what
is indispensable to history. Besides the element of fact, there is
needful (Polybius observed) knowledge of the nature of the things
of which the happenings are portrayed, of military art for military
things, of politics for things political. History is written, not
from books, as is the way with compilers and men of letters, but from
original documents, by visiting the places where it has occurred and by
penetrating it with experience and with thought.[5]
[Sidenote: _The theory of history in mediæval and modern philosophy_]
The abstractionist and anti-historical character of the Aristotelian
Logic had an injurious effect in the schools, though, on the other
hand, it allied itself well with the persistent transcendentalism.
Certainly, just as in the Middle Ages appeared reflections upon
history, so there could be no avoiding the distinction between what
was known _logice_ and what was known _historice,_ or, as Leibnitz
afterwards formulated the distinction, between _propositions de raison_
and _propositions de fait._ But these latter were always regarded
with a compassionate eye, as a sort of uncertain and inferior truth.
The ideal of exact science would have been to absorb truths of fact
in truths of reason, and to resolve them all into a philosophy, or
rather into a universal mathematics. Nor did the empiricists succeed
in increasing their credit. These certainly paid particular attention
to facts (hence the polemic of the Anti-Aristotelians and the origin
of the new instrument of observation and induction). But by weakening
the consciousness of the concrete universal they also weakened that
of the concrete individual, and therefore presented the latter in the
mutilated form of species and genera, of types and classes. Bacon, had
he done nothing else, at any rate assigned a place to history in his
classification of knowledge, which was divided, as we know, according
to the three faculties (memory, imagination and reason), into History,
Poetry and Philosophy. He passed in review the two great classes of
history, natural and civil (the first of which was either narrative
or inductive, the second more variously subdivided); thus he even
pointed out the kinds of history that were desirable, but of which no
conspicuous examples were yet extant, such as literary history.[6]
Hobbes, on the other hand, having distinguished the two species of
cognition, one of reason and the other of fact, "altera facti, et est
cognitio propria testium, cujus conscriptio est historia," and having
subdivided this into natural and civil, "_neutra_" (he added, that is
to say neither the natural nor the civil) "_pertinet ad institutum
nostrum_" which was concerned only with the _cognitio consequentiarum,_
that is to say, science and philosophy.[7] Locke is not less
anti-historical than Descartes and Spinoza, and even Leibnitz, who was
very learned, did not recognize the autonomy of historical work, and
continued to consider it as directed towards utilitarian and moral ends.
[Sidenote: _Treatises on historical art in the Renaissance._]
Reflections upon history, suggested rather by the professional needs
of historians than by a need for systematization and a profound
philosophy, continued on their way, almost apart from the philosophy
of the time. From the Renaissance onwards, treatises on historical
art were multiplied at the hands of Robortelli, Atanagi, Riccoboni,
Foglietta, Beni, Mascardi, and of many others, even of non-Italians;
but their discussions usually centred upon elocution, upon the use of
ornament and of digressions, upon arguments worthy of history, and
the like. Among these writers of treatises we must note (here as well
as in the history of Poetics and of Rhetoric) Francesco Patrizio or
Patrizzi (1560), for his ideas, sometimes acute, sometimes incoherent
and extravagant. Overcoming one of the prejudices of empiricism, he
justly wished that the concept of history should not be limited to
military enterprises and political negotiations alone, and that it
should be extended to all the doings of men. With a like superiority
to empirical views, he found historical representation not only in
words, but also in painting and sculpture--(our times, so fruitful
of histories graphically illustrated, should admit that he was to
some extent right), and he did not accept chronological limits. He
also insisted upon the mode of testing historical truth and upon the
degree of credibility of witnesses. But he became extravagant, when he
admitted a history of the future, calling the prophets as witnesses,
and incoherent, when he both denied and affirmed the moral end of
history.[8]
[Sidenote: _Treatises upon method._]
Another form of empiricism, certainly more important, the
methodological, which dealt with the canons and criteria to be borne in
mind in making historical researches, accompanied the often rhetorical
empiricism of writers of treatises. The reference to the duties of
the historian in one place in Cicero was repeated and commented upon
by all. But this treatment became gradually more wide, as we see
especially in the work of Vossius, _Ars historica sive de historia
et historiae natura, historiaeque scribendae praeceptis commentatio_
(1623). The term "Historic" dates from this book and is formed on the
analogy of Logic, Poetic, Rhetoric, etc., and applied to the theory or
Logic of history. Gervinus (1837) and Droysen (1858) tried to bring
this term again into vogue. The methodological treatment of historical
research was more widely developed in the scholastic manuals of Logic
of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, such as the _Logica seu ars
ratiocinandi_ of Leclerc (1692).[9] With these canons arising in the
field of research and historical criticism, we may opportunely compare
those concerning the mode of valuing and weighing evidence, which were
gradually unified in juridical literature. Methodological treatment
has also progressed in our times, in manuals such as those of Droysen,
of Bernheim, of Langlois-Seignobos; but the general tendency of these
works (as is also evident from their apparatus in heuristic, in
criticism, in comprehension and in exposition) remains and must remain
altogether empirical.
[Sidenote: _The theory of history and G. B. Vico._]
The first philosopher who gave to History an importance equal to
Philosophy was Vico, with his already-mentioned union of philosophy
and philology, of _truth_ and _certainty,_ and with the example that
he offered of a philosophic _system,_ which is also a _history_ of the
human race: an "_eternal ideal_ history, upon which the histories of
nations run in _time._" For this reason (not less than from his strong
consciousness of the difference in character between the metaphysical
concept and mathematical abstraction) Vico was an Anti-Cartesian. He
stands between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as the opposer
of the past and of the future, or of the nearest past and the nearest
future. Indeed, there is even in Vico a trace of that vice which
arises from a too indiscriminate identification of philosophy and
history, which certainly constitute an identity, but an identity which
is a synthesis and therefore a distinction. Hence, when no account
is taken of this, the substantial truth affirmed loses its balance
in philosophism and mythologism. The real epochs of Vico are too
philosophic and have in them something forced; the ideal epochs are too
historical and have in them something of exuberance and of contingency.
The real epochs are not exempt from philosophistic caprices; the ideal
sometimes become converted into a mythology (though full of profound
meanings). For this reason, it has been possible now to praise, now to
blame him for having invented the _Philosophy of history._ There is
indeed in him, here and there, some hint of a philosophy of history
_sensu deteriori,_ but above all he is the great philosopher and the
great historian.
[Sidenote: _The anti-historicism of the eighteenth century and Kant._]
As the eighteenth century did not really know the concept of
philosophy, so was it ignorant of that of history: its anti-historicism
has become proverbial. There appeared at this time some celebrated
theoretic manifestations of historical scepticism, of the negation
of history, which seemed, as before to Sextus Empiricus, a thing
without art and without method (ἅτεχνον ... καὶ ἐκ τἥς ἀμεθόδον ὕλης
τυγχράνουσαν). The book of Melchior Delfico, _Pensieri sull' Istoria
e sull' incertezza ed inutilità della medesima_ (1808), is one of
the last manifestations of this sort. But all the thinkers of that
time were of this opinion; even Kant, in whose wide culture were
certainly two lacunæ--artistic and historical. And if in the course
of elaborating his system he was led by logical necessity to meditate
upon art, or rather upon beauty, he never paid serious attention to the
problem of history.
[Sidenote: _Concealed historical value of the a priori synthesis._]
Yet Kant is the true, though unconscious creator of the new Logic
of history. To him belongs the merit, not only of having shown the
importance of the historical judgment, but also of having given the
formula of the identity of philosophy and history in the _a priori_
synthesis. The logical revolution effected by Kant consists in this:
that he perceives and proclaims that to know is not to think the
concept abstractly, but to think the concept in the intuition, and
that consequently to think is to _judge._ The theory of the judgment
takes the place of that of the concept and is truly the theory of
the concept, in so far as it becomes concrete. What does it matter
that he is not aware of all this and that instead of referring
the logical _a priori_ synthesis to history, he refers it to the
sciences, constituting it an instrument not of history, but of the
sciences; and that instead of exhausting knowledge in the _a priori_
synthesis, he leaves outside of it true knowledge as an unattainable,
or theoretically unattainable ideal? What does it matter that when
confronted with the problem of the judgment of existence, he solves it
like Gaunilo and withdraws existence from thought, removing from it
the character of predicate and of concept and making of it a position
or an imposition _ab extra?_ What does it matter that his history is
without historical developments and wanting even in knowledge of the
history of philosophy, and that in the parts of the so-called system
that he has developed (for example, in the doctrine of virtue and of
rights) there reigns the most squalid crowd of abstractions and of
anti-historical determinations? What does it matter that we find the
man of the eighteenth century on every page of his book, and that he
was absolutely without sympathy for the tendencies of thought of the
Hamanns and of they Herders? There always remains the fact that the
_a priori_ synthesis carried in itself even that which its discoverer
ignored or denied.
[Sidenote: _The theory of history in Hegel._]
It would be preferable to say that all Kant's failures in recognition
and all his lacunæ are certainly of importance, just because they
provided his followers with a new problem, and generated by way of
contrariety the philosophy of Schelling and the historical philosophy
of Hegel. Not even in Hegel is there to be found the elaboration of
the doctrine of the individual judgment, nor is its identity with that
of the concept explicitly recognized. But in Hegel not only do we find
ourselves in the full historical atmosphere (suffice it to recall
his histories of art, of religion, of philosophy and of the general
development of the human race, which are still the most profound and
the most stimulating writings upon history that exist); but these
historical elucidations are all connected with the fundamental thought
of his Logic: the concept is immanent and is divided in itself in the
judgment, of which the general formula is that the individual _is_ the
universal, the subject _is_ the predicate, every judgment is a judgment
of the universal, and the universal is the dialectic of opposites. For
this reason also, we find in the works of Hegel a historical method
far in advance of all his predecessors and also (save in a few points)
of his successors. He maintained, with much vigour, the necessity of
the interpretative and rational element in history; and to those who
demanded that a historian should be disinterested, in the same way as
a magistrate who judges a case, he replied that since the magistrate
has nevertheless his interest, that for the right, so has the historian
also his interest, namely that for truth.[10]
[Sidenote: _W. von Humboldt._]