maxims and of casuistry, observe how these also persist in literary
form, as laws, where this form is not eliminable. _Laws,_ as we have
seen, are not simple rules, but are based upon _formulæ of rules,_
and must of necessity make explicit in them decisions as to doing and
not doing. Jurisprudence is the Casuistic of law, or all the labour
of so-called interpretation, which is at bottom the excogitation of
new rules. All know that not only is Jurisprudence not of itself
legislative, but that it cannot even determine the volitional act of
the Statesman, nor the sentence, or decision upon the particular case,
a decision which the judge creates upon each occasion. But no one would
seriously think of suppressing the work and the function of those
_casuists,_ or judicial experts, a function which, since it has always
existed and continues to exist, cannot but answer to a social need.
It is possible to predict a form of social life, less complicated and
weighty, in which that function would have less scope, but whatever be
the case as regards this prediction, the casuistry of judicial experts
will continue so long as there are laws and rules, that is to say,
always.
[1] _Ricordi politici e civili,_ n. xliv. (in _Opere inedite_(2),
Firenze, 1857; p. 97).
[2] _Scritti inediti,_ ed. Del Giudice, Napoli, 1862, p. 12.
[3] Letter to the d'Épinay, 5th September 1772.
[4] _Mémoires,_ ed. Paris, Gamier, s.a., i pp. 3-4.
VIII
CRITIQUE OF THE INVASIONS BY PHILOSOPHY OF THE DOMAIN OF PRACTICAL
DESCRIPTION AND OF ITS DERIVATIVES
In demonstrating the legitimacy and necessity of practical description
and of its derivatives, Regolistic and Casuistic, we have not
fulfilled, as it were, our whole knightly duty, which binds us to that
discipline, which we have been obliged to maltreat so exceedingly,
and shall further maltreat, when it has been or shall be presented as
a philosophical method. It is now necessary to defend its existence
against the invasion of philosophy, or rather of philosophers. We must
make it obvious that if the empiricists and psychologists, who swell
themselves out to philosophers, are bunglers, those too are bunglers
who claim to solve empirical questions philosophically. Perhaps they
are bunglers less worthy of pardon, because it is part of philosophy to
know itself clearly, and consequently its own limits.
[Sidenote: _First form: tendency to generalize._]
The first bad effect that philosophy has upon practical description
is the tendency to change it from description and collection of
particular descriptions into something that has the air of generality
and comprehensiveness. Because, if practical description be closely
connected with the historical conditions of definite individuals and
societies and with their wants, the more specific and near to the
concrete it is, the better it will be, and the more useless by as much
as it goes wandering toward the general. We owe to the evil influence
of philosophy those verbose treatises upon psychological classes, such
as virtue, duties, things good, affections, passions, and human types,
to read which nourishes less than fresh water, which at least refreshes.
Let him who wishes to be convinced compare the books of rules and
observations that we owe to men of experience and to men of the
world, such as the _Ricordi_ of Guicciardini, the _Maximes_ of
Larochefoucauld, and the _Oraculo Manual_ of Balthazar Gracian,
with the _Traité des passions_ of Descartes, with that section
of the _Ethica_ of Spinoza that relates to this matter, with the
_Anthropologia_ and the _Doctrine of Virtue_ of Kant (we prefer to
record great names). He will then see on whose side is the advantage,
an advantage of originality, of importance, and even of style, which
is in this case a revelation. Those books by philosophers contain for
the most part definitions of vocabulary and of words which there is no
need to define, because everybody knows them to such an extent that the
definitions, rather than make them more clear, make them obscure. Who,
for example, can resist the philosophical triviality of the _Aphorisms
for the Wisdom of Life_ of Arthur Schopenhauer? Take the trouble to
open a book to learn that good things are to be divided into personal,
wealth and imagination, or reputation, and that the first (such as
good health and a gay temperament) are pre-eminent over the others.
Do we not learn more and with greater rapidity and efficacy from such
proverbs as "God helps the merry man"? It is superfluous to observe
that those books, in so far as they generalize, can never attain to
philosophy. They remain at bottom more or less historical.
[Sidenote: _Historical elements persisting in generalizations._]
The good and generous wine of the born psychologists and precept-makers
is diluted in a great deal of water, but that water, however much
there be of it, never becomes pure and is always discoloured and of an
unpleasant taste. Thus in classifications of ancient Ethic the idea of
"virtue" or of "good" was announced as the most important, in Christian
Ethic that of "duty," in the same way as in ancient Ethic the political
character was dominant, in the modern the individualistic, according to
the different character of the corresponding civilizations. Historical
elements differentiate the Ethic of Aristotle, impregnated with sane
Greek life, from that of the Stoics, in which is foretold the decadence
of the antique world and the germs of the future discovered (for
instance, cosmopolitanism, which precedes the Christian idea of the
unity of the human race). The four Platonic virtues retain the name,
but are filled with a new content, in the four cardinal virtues of the
Christian Ethic; the seven deadly sins are not to be explained in all
their settemplicity without the ascetic ideal of the Middle Ages.
Among the various writers of treatises, the foreground is filled, now
with the idea of effort or of duty, now with that of enjoyment and
satisfaction; ideas are now despotic masters, now smiling friends;
the dominant idea is in turn that of justice, of benevolence, of
enthusiasm, and so on. In the systems of Catholic Ethic are reflected
political absolutism and semi-feudal economy; in those of Protestant
Ethic, constitutionalism, liberalism, the industrial and capitalistic
world; a strict probity, not indeed without utilitarianism, and
a hardness of heart, not indeed without austerity. Modern Ethic
is concerned with property, with the struggle of classes, with
proletarianism and communism. These are all historical facts and as
such most worthy of attention, but for that very reason they should
be examined in all their force and value and not through the medium
of the pale categories of a universal doctrine, which they disturb
and falsify and by which they are very often disturbed and falsified.
Whoever undertakes to write general treatises upon the passions, upon
the virtues, and upon the other practical classes, will always show the
signs of his time in the categories that he establishes, and the result
will be at once banal and empirical, that is to say, badly empirical.
[Sidenote: _Second form: literary union of philosophy and empiria._]
But hitherto the chief ill has been that useless and tiresome books are
written. Matters begin to look graver when an approach is attempted
between philosophical theories and empirical classifications and they
are united in one treatise, as the _general_ part and the _particular_
part, the _abstract_ and the _concrete_ part, the _theoretical_ and
the _historical_ part. We do not wish to refuse recognition to an
occasionally just sense of the intimate relations between philosophy
and history as among the motives that lead to such unions, the first of
which flows into the second, revives it and is by it in turn revived.
But the history, to which philosophy applies the torch, is all history
in its palpitating reality; it is history represented by all histories
that historians have written and will write, and also by those that
they have not written and will not write. The history offered by these
empirical descriptions is only a very small part of history and (what
is worse) abstract and mutilated. This would, however, be an injury of
not too grave a nature, even at this point, provided the incongruity
were limited to literary unfitness; in which case, it is true, would be
added to inutility the ugliness of a union capricious and artificial,
but fortunately extrinsic. But by means of that extrinsic approach,
the way is opened to the attempt at an intrinsic approach, and thus
to the third form of the undue invasion of practical description by
philosophy, which constitutes the _morbus philosophico-empiricus_ in
all its harm fulness.
[Sidenote: _Third form: attempt to place them in intimate connexion._]
The attempt at intrinsic approach takes place when empirical
classes are placed in connection with the philosophical concepts or
categories, with pure thought. Nearly all philosophers have fallen
into this error, since it is very natural that they should not have
wished to leave a _hiatus_ between the first and second parts of
their books of Philosophy of the practical, between the general and
particular parts, and that they should have striven to connect the
one with the other by passing logically from the concepts of the
first to those of the second. The mistake was indubitably increased
owing to their small degree of clearness as to the logical nature of
the two orders of concepts (concepts and pseudo-concepts), which is
fundamentally diverse, and we shall not further insist upon this matter.
[Sidenote: _Science of the practical and Metaphysic: various
significations._]
Rather let us note that sometimes there has been something rational
in the minds of those who have required the Science of the practical
or Ethic to be constructed independently of all Metaphysic. In truth,
that programme of the independence of the Science of the practical
or Ethic of Metaphysic has had various meanings that it will be well
to enumerate briefly. The first meaning was that the Science of the
practical, in so far as it was philosophy, should be independent of
the _aggregate_ of the philosophical system (Metaphysic). In this
case the claim was not acceptable, as we shall see, because it was
at variance with the nature itself of philosophy, which is unity. The
second meaning was that the Practical, as science, should be kept
remote from every form of faith, or feeling or fancifulness (which has
sometimes been called "Metaphysic"); and in this case the proposition
was inexpugnable, however contestable may have seemed the opportuneity
of the meaning given to that word. The third meaning was that the
Science of the practical, in so far as it was descriptive, should stand
by itself, in order to afford a base for philosophical induction. Use
was here made of the erroneous idea, already rejected several times,
of philosophy as an intensification of the psychological method, or
as a carrying of it on. But in a fourth sense, it was desired finally
to withdraw practical description from the perilous care of the
philosophers, and it seems to us that with this fourth meaning was
expressed a very just demand.
[Sidenote: _Damaging consequences of the invasions._]
What are, in fact, the consequences of the care that philosophers
have bestowed upon practical description? We would not wish to use an
over-coloured simile, but what happens is very much what would happen
if a man were given a baby to suckle. He would press it violently
against his dry and arid breast, incapable of nourishing, but well
capable of tormenting it. Philosophy, when it approaches the empirical
classes, will either begin to criticize their distinctions and abolish
them, reducing several classes to one, and then reducing the reduced
classes in their turn to a less number, until none are left at all and
it finds itself in company with the universal philosophical principle
alone, or alone with itself;--or it will contrive to preserve them
as classes, deducing them philosophically, and will thus make them
rigid and absolute, removing from them that elasticity and fluidity
which they derive from their historical character, and converting them
from useful classes that they were, into bad philosophemes, concepts
contradictory in themselves.
[Sidenote: _1a. Dissolution of the empirical concepts._]
Both these consequences have occurred, for the books of philosophers
are full of examples, now of destruction, now of corruption of the
empirical classes of the Practical. The treatment of the doctrine
of the virtues or of so-called natural rights affords examples of
destruction. Striving to distinguish courage from prudence, or justice
from benevolence, or on the other hand, egotism from wickedness, they
ended by recognizing that true courage is prudence, true prudence
courage; that benevolence is justice, justice benevolence; that egotism
is wickedness, wickedness egotism, and so on. In this way, all the
virtues became one, the virtue of being virtuous, the will for the
good, duty. In like manner, by giving philosophical form to the natural
rights of life, of liberty, of culture, of property, and so on, they
ended by recognizing that all rights merge in one single right, which
is that of existence; which latter, indeed, is not a right, but a fact.
The passions were reduced from seventy or eighty classes to six or
seven fundamental, but these six or seven were in their turn reduced
to two only, pleasure and pain, and of these two; it was finally
discovered that they constituted one only--life, which is pleasure
and pain together. But virtues, rights, passions, possess value in
practical description only in so far as they are multiplicity--their
value is always plural, never singular. To reduce them to a single
class signifies to annul them, as to blow upon a candle signifies to
extinguish it and to remain in darkness; darkness is to be understood
as without empirical light. Now the philosopher should certainly
destroy empirical ideas, but only in so far as they present themselves
as philosophical distinctions, that is, in so far as they are empirico
philosophical: and in that case it suffices him to show that they are
empirical, without pretending to annul them in their own domain also:
_debellare superbos,_ but _parcere subjectis;_ that is, he should spare
strangers who remain quietly in their own house.
[Sidenote: _Examples: war and peace, property and communism, and the
like._]
It might seem desirable to pass in review all these empirical
distinctions and questions which the philosophers have thought that
they had satisfactorily solved, when they had, on the contrary, passed
beyond them. But the theme is inexhaustible, and we cannot here give
even a rich selection, comprising the most frequent and important
cases. We must limit ourselves to brief mention.--People discuss every
day: whether war be an evil, and if it be possible to abolish it;
if community of goods should take the place of private property; if
rational government be that of liberty or of authority, of democracy
or aristocracy, of anarchism or state organization; whether the State
should be in the Church or the Church in the State, or side by side and
independent; if freedom of thought should be admitted or restrained;
if instruction should be free or undertaken by the State; and other
similar problems. Now behold the philosopher applying himself to the
study of these ideas. Having tested them, he is astonished that people
can find in them opposing terms, and make them argument for dispute.
In truth (he says), war is intrinsic to reality, and peace is peace in
so far as by making an end of one war it prepares another; as Socrates
demonstrated in the _Phaedo,_ when, scratching his leg in the place
where it had been pressed by the chain, he realized that he could not
have experienced that pleasure had he not previously experienced the
pain. Nor is property different from communism: the individual declares
himself by an individual taking possession of things and becoming their
owner; but by so doing he enters into relations and into communion with
other individuals, and does business with them. And liberty excludes
subjection the less, since _sub lege libertas;_ nor does aristocracy
exclude democracy, since the true aristocrat is the bearer of those
universal values that are the substance of democracy; hence the more we
are aristocratic the more we are democratic, and inversely. Nor does
anarchism exclude State organization, because a collection of men,
however free we suppose it to be, must nevertheless govern itself
according to some laws, and these laws are the State. Then, the ideal
State, being the best government of men for their perfectionment, both
material and spiritual, accomplishes the work of the Church itself,
which is neither above, nor below, nor beside the State, because it is
the State. Thus in like manner, no one can grant or abolish freedom of
thought, since thought is by definition freedom, and the restraint is
thought itself, because liberty coincides with necessity. And finally
State instruction cannot but correspond with rational demands, and the
free instruction of citizens, if it be really so and not arbitrary and
capricious, will be the same as that of the State, or will be changed
into the instruction of the State.
[Sidenote: _Other examples._]
Passing to other orders of fact that are less political, but are also
argument for practical discussions, we shall refer to the so-called
conflicts between duty or interest, as symbolized in the legendary
Titus Manlius, when offered the alternative _aut reipublicae aut sui
suorumque obliviscendi_;--or to the so-called question of the two
moralities, private and public, in support of which the not legendary
Camillo Cavour said in 1860, that if he had done in his private
interest what he had done for Italy, he would have deserved the
galleys;--or we can refer to questions of classification, and ask
whether the kind of man who is socially harmless should be placed side
by side with the criminal;--or to those others, famous in Casuistic,
relating to capital punishment, homicide, suicide, lies, whether and
when they should be permitted, and other similar questions. Here, too,
the philosopher will smilingly observe that duties and interests can
never be in conflict, because in every given case duty is always one
only, and interest is always one only, that of the given case;--he
will deny that there is one public and one private morality, because
in man, the private person and the citizen, family relations, or
those of friendship, and those of political life, are inseparable and
indistinguishable;--that every man is bad and good, inoffensive and
criminal, and that in the so-called criminal there must also be the
non-criminal, if he be given the name of man;--that every punishment is
a punishment of death, that is, it causes something to die, and that it
is impossible to find a clear distinction between shutting a man up in
prison and thus taking from him a more or less large slice of physical
life, and taking it from him altogether by hanging or shooting
him;--that homicide, as such, is so little a crime that in war it is a
duty to commit it;--that a lie, which is silence as to what one knows,
is in itself so innocent that no one in the world, save a foolish
prater, tells all he knows, and that if it be admitted that one can
and should be silent, that is to say, let others be deceived by our
silence (though this is eloquent), there is no reason for not admitting
that we can also betray them with speech (often less eloquent), as is
done with children in order to send them to bed, and with sick persons
in order to comfort them;--that, finally, culpable suicide is not
the material act of depriving oneself of physical life (a thing done
without incurring blame, and indeed with praise and glory, by those who
sacrifice themselves for others in war, in epidemics, in dangers of all
sorts, and by every one who consumes his own vital strength in a worthy
cause), but the killing of the moral life in oneself.
[Sidenote: _Misunderstanding on the part of philosophers._]
In all these answers to questions, we have not made our imaginary
philosopher commit any blunder; we have indeed put into his mouth
things that we believe to be all of them most true and irrefutable,
because we believe them ourselves. And we hold that it is necessary to
profess them against those who arbitrarily make questions philosophical
whose terms are not philosophical. But when the philosopher offers
those solutions to the empirical disputants, he behaves like him who,
hearing a speech in a language of which he knows little, makes a reply
that is in itself most reasonable, but without relation to the previous
speech. The empiricist, if he have studied philosophy, will be able
to reply, as did King Theodore, worn with misery, in the old _opéra
bouffe_ of the Abbé Casti, to him who recalls to him the miseries
suffered by Marius, Themistocles, and Darius:--
Good my son, I know them well,
For I have heard these tales before;
But just at present, truth to tell,
'Tis money interests me more.
[Sidenote: _Historical significance of the aforesaid questions._]
Money, that is, ready money to spend in definite situations
historically given, in order to find one's way in them; for all those
questions are without universal signification, but have arisen from
political and individual problems, to which they do and must belong.
Certainly they are insoluble in the abstract, and this is the defect,
or rather the nature of empirical questions, which, if they admitted
of rigorous solution, would not be any longer empirical. Therefore it
is a foolish thing to discuss them philosophically, as is seen in the
conspicuous example of certain casuistical enquiries (the homicide of
the unjust aggressor, the lie, incest, etc.) which have been treated by
nearly all philosophers and have been dragged about for centuries in
discussions on Ethic, although every century has left them at the same
point as they were in the one preceding.
But if it be not possible to solve, we can at least _state_ them
in abstract terms, in the same way as drill and the sham-fight are
abstract, though certainly of use when the battle is really fought. We
can and we should bear in mind these abstract solutions, in order that
we may be the better able to solve a series of concrete cases, which
are not identical, certainly, because identical cases do not exist, but
more or less similar, and therefore require solutions that are more or
less similar.--Can war be done away with? This question refers not to
the elimination' of the category "war," but to the possibility or the
reverse of avoiding in the twentieth century and in European countries
that empirical war which is waged with cannons and cruisers, that
costs milliards when it is not waged, and tens of milliards when it
is waged, and out of which the conqueror comes conquered. It is well
understood that some form of war will always continue, because war is
inherent to life.--Can private property be done away with? This does
not mean to ask if it be possible to prevent man from taking possession
of things, of his food, or of the material that he requires for dress,
or from inhabiting a house; but whether it be possible to alter, to
the advantage of mankind, the proportion that now obtains between
production with private capital and production with collective capital,
giving the preference to the latter.