movements are accompanied with hopes, beliefs, and _myths._ These have
no logical or historical truth, but it is on the other hand impossible
to criticize them, because they are not error, but fantastic projection
of the state of soul of individuals and groups of individuals in
action, and testify to the existence of desires ready to transform
themselves into will and action. Utopias are poetry, they are not
practical acts; but beneath that poetry there is always the reality
of a desire that is a factor of future history. Hence it also happens
that poets are thought of as _seers,_ when the utopia of to-day becomes
the reality of the morrow. The Utopian and semi-poetic Address of the
Italian patriots to the Directory of June 18, 1799,[1] the not less
Utopian Proclamation of Rimini of 1815, the song of Manzoni, in which
rang out the fateful verse,
We shall not be free if we are not one,
will become, for the Italians of 1860, effective action and _historical
event._
[Sidenote: _Art as the pure representation of becoming and the artistic
form of thought._]
Pure intuition, ingenuous representation of reality, representation
of feeling, lyricism and personal intonation, are then all equivalent
formulæ, all of them definitions of the æsthetic activity and of art.
And it would be superfluous to repeat that art thus characterized
remains the concrete form of the superior theoretical grades of the
spirit. In fact, logical thought or concept is also volition, owing to
the unity of the spirit, and the representation of such volition is the
logos made flesh, the concept that incorporates itself in language,
palpitating with the drama of its becoming. What word of man is there
that is not personally and lyrically coloured, whether he communicate
the truth of science or narrate the incidents of life? And how could we
deny a place among the dramas that agitate human life and art portrays,
to that drama of dramas, which is the drama of thought and of the
historical comprehension of the real?
[1] B. Croce, _Relazioni dei patrioti napoletani col Direttorio e col
Consolato e l' idea dell' unità italiana,_ Napoli, 1902, pp. 69-73.
VII
HISTORICAL ANNOTATIONS
[Sidenote: _The problem of freedom._]
I. For the reasons stated in their place, a history of the concept of
freedom would end by becoming almost a general history of philosophy.
Denied in different ways in the mechanistic and deterministic
conceptions (from the Stoics to Spinoza), and in the theological and
arbitraristic (from Epicurus to St. Augustine and the mystics), that
concept afterwards continually assumed a more and more conciliatory
form; an indication that the question must be put in an altogether
different way. This movement culminated in the Kantian theory, in
which freedom, defended against the psychologists, is withdrawn from
natural causality and affirmed _a priori,_ as causality by means
of freedom; but, at the same time, Kant did not succeed in fully
justifying it, owing to his failure in the solution of the antitheses,
the defect of the Kantian philosophy, which never really became a
system. The embarrassments and absurdities to which the unsolved
antithesis between liberty and causality gives rise, are sufficiently
exemplified in a proposition to be found in the _Critique of Practical
Reason_: "It would be possible to foresee what man will do in the
future, if we possessed all the facts; yet he would be perfectly
free."[1] But notwithstanding these contradictions and embarrassments,
the energetic affirmation of the principle of freedom by Kant (which
had an altogether special certitude in Kant, in respect to the other
two postulates of the practical reason, God and immortality, from
which in this respect it was distinguished) helped to make prevalent
the conviction of the impossibility of eliminating that concept or
of escaping from it, and made of it the field of battle, where the
fortunes of philosophy were decided. The problem of the freedom of
willing is really solved or near to a solution, in those philosophies
which do not fatigue themselves with it as a particular problem, but
treat of it as something to be understood of itself, provided there
be a non-mechanistic conception of reality, such as would not need
special defence. This happens, not only with sentimentalists and
mystics such as Jacobi and Schleiermacher, but also and above all in
the Hegelian philosophy. Perhaps no philosopher has been less occupied
with the problem of liberty than Hegel, just because he was always
occupied with it. The will is free (he contents himself with saying);
freedom is the fundamental determination of the will, as gravity is
of matter; thus as gravity is matter itself, so is freedom the will.
Hegel consequently saw true in the contest between arbitrarism and
determinism, recognizing in determinism the merit of having given
its value to the content, the datum, in opposition to the certainty
of abstract auto-determination, so that freedom understood as free
will is considered to be illusion. Free will is both determined and
indetermined.[2] But how Hegel could conciliate this theory of freedom
with the mechanistic concept of nature that persists in him is another
question. His failure to attain to this conciliation was perhaps among
the reasons that made his profound solution of the antithesis between
determinism and indeterminism seem a vain playing with words.
After Hegel, a return was made to the Kantian doctrine, variously
modified, in which is posited, now a double causality, now a
composition of diverging forces, now a double point of view, now two
worlds, the one included in the other and dominated, the one by the
principle of the conservation of energy, the other by that of increase.
Such contradictory doctrines are to be found for example in Lotze
and Wundt, to the latter of whom belongs the formula that the causal
explanation is certainly to be applied to spiritual facts, but _a parte
post,_ not _a parte ante_[3] The philosophy of Bergson represents in a
certain way a return to the sound idealistic view, which declares that
the dilemma of determinism and indeterminism is surpassed.[4]
[Sidenote: _The doctrine of evil._]
II. The conception of the relation between bad and good, as reality
opposed to reality, is mythological and religious (Parseeism,
Manichæism, Jewish-Christian doctrine of the devil, etc.). But evil had
already begun to reveal itself to the philosophical reflection of the
ancients as the unreal, the not being; and this is explicitly affirmed
in Neoplatonism. It was not, however, possible to understand this
function of unreality, real in its way, without a general dialectical
conception, which became very slowly mature. Without a dialectic
conception, evil, conceived as unreality, becomes mere illusion, not
so much a moment of the real as an equivocation of man philosophizing.
This is clearly to be seen in Spinoza, who opposes the full laws of
reality to the narrow laws of human nature, saying: _Quidquid nobis
in natura ridiculum, absurdum aut malum videtur, id inde venit quod
res tantum ex parte novimus, totiusque naturae ordinem et cohaerentium
maxima ex parte ignoramus, et quod omnia ex usu nostrae rationis
dirigi volumus, cum tamen id, quod malum esse dictat, non malum sit
respectu ordinis et legum universae naturae; sed tantum solius nostrae
naturae legum respectu._ For indeed, if evil, error and wickedness
were something that had essence, God, who is the cause of all that
has essence (continues Spinoza), would also be the cause of evil, of
error, and of wickedness. But this is not so, because evil is nothing
real. _Neronis matricidium_ (he observes) _quatenus aliquid positivum
comprehendebat, scelus non erat: nam facinus externum fecit, simulque
intentionem ad trucidendam matrem Orestes habuit, et tamen, saltem ita
uti Nero, non accusatur. Quodnam ergo Neronis scelus? Non aliud quam
quod hoc facinore ostendit se ingratum, immisericordem ac inobedientem
esse. Certum autem est, nihil horum aliquid essentiae exprimere, et
idcirco Deum eorum non fuisse catisam, licet causa actus et intentionis
Neronis fuerit_[5] But Spinoza was not able to determine in what sense
Nero was really ungrateful, implacable, and disobedient, nor in what
way such a judgment could be justified, owing to his idea of Substance,
not as subject, spirit, activity, but as cause.
Kant did not succeed in understanding the nature of evil; for him good
and evil were "the categories of freedom,"[6] and the view of Fichte
who makes the radical evil to be _vis inertiae,_ laziness (_Trägheit,_)
which is in nature and in man as nature,[7] represents progress in
respect to the Kantian position. But only with the Hegelian dialectical
view of evil, understood as negation, is evil at the same time given
its right place; and its unreality, contradiction, which is no longer
the product of illusion of thought, but of things themselves, in
intimate contradiction with one another, if it be a blemish, is shown
to be the blemish, not of human thought, but of reality.[8]
[Sidenote: _Decision and freedom._]
III. Free will, too, is not considered as a quality and character of
complete liberty, but as its negation, will as contradiction, in the
Hegelian philosophy. It was preceded in this respect, not only by Kant,
but also by Descartes. Descartes wrote of the decision of indifference:
_Cette indifférence que je sens lorsque je ne suis point porté vers
un côté plutôt que vers un autre par le poids d'aucune raison est
le plus bas degré de ma liberté, et fait plutôt paraître un défaut
dans la connaissance qu'une perfection dans la volonté: car si je
connaissais toujours clairement ce qui est vrai et ce qui est bon, je
ne serais jamais en peine de délibérer quel jugement et quel choix je
devrais faire; et ainsi je serais entièrement libre, sans jamais être
indifférent._[9]
Among the false formulæ of the _freedom of choice_ can be mentioned
that of Rosmini, who calls it _bilateral_ freedom, or that of
performing or not performing a given action.[10] But since the spirit
cannot be reduced to complete passivity, not to perform a given action
is equivalent to performing a different one; and if this other action
that presents itself before us be also not willed by us, then it will
be another, and so on. Thus it is not a question of bilaterality, but
of multiplicity of tendencies: not of the choice between two volitions,
but of the synthesis of many appetites in one, which is the will or
freedom.
[Sidenote: _Conscience and responsibility_]
We may mention the disputes that have been preserved in the
_Memorabilia_ as to the greater responsibility of him who knows more
(or wills more), as compared with him who knows less (or wills less),
as to whether he that acts voluntarily be more unjust than he who
acts involuntarily (ὁ ἑκὼν ἤ ὁ ἄκων). In this connection it is to
be observed that he who voluntarily does not write or read well is
certainly more grammatical than he who reads and writes ill through
ignorance; and therefore that he who commits injustice while knowing
what is just, is more just than he who commits it because he does not
know what is just; and that he is better, who says what is false when
he knows what is true, than he who says what is false, not knowing what
is true. The dispute leads to the celebration of knowledge of self, or,
as we should say, of knowing and possessing oneself.[11]
These thoughts are discussed anew in the _Hippias minor,_ where
the multiple difficulties are placed in relief and a conclusion
reached that does not even satisfy those who propose it.[12] It is
henceforward clear that the question must be solved in the sense that
he who is conscious of sinning is certainly a sinner, whereas he who
is not conscious of so doing, does not sin at all; but this being even
incapable of sinning is in itself a sin, and places the man who is in
such a condition yet a degree lower. In the polemic of Pascal with the
Jesuits--who maintained that in order to sin it was necessary to be
conscious of one's own infirmity and of the suitable remedy, the wish
to be healed and to ask it of God--the Jesuits were theoretically on
the side of reason. _Croira-t-on, sur votre parole_ (wrote Pascal),
_que ceux qui sont plongés dans l'avarice, dans l'impudicité, dans
les blasphèmes, dans le duel, dans la vengeance, dans les vols, dans
les sacrilèges, aient véritablement le désir d'embrasser la chasteté,
l'humilité et les autres vertus chrétiennes?_ Nevertheless, it is
inevitably so, if those acts of theirs are to be judged to be vices
(and if they really are so). Hegel places himself on the side of
Pascal, who accepts and refers to the following argument and reduction
to the absurd: _Ils seront tous damnés ces demi-pécheurs qui ont
quelque amour pour la vertu. Mais pour ces francs-pécheurs, sans
mélange, pleins et achevés, l'enfer ne les tient pas: ils ont trompé le
diable à force de s'y abandonner._[13]
A reduction to the absurd which is not such: because the formula given
as absurd expresses at bottom a very simple truth, which Hegel too
stated in his own way, when he said that it was necessary to prefer
self-will, evil, the erring Spirit, to the innocence of plants and
animals, or of Nature.[14]
[Sidenote: _The concept of duty._]
IV. A classical example of the disputes as to the principle of the
Philosophy of the practical, arising from the consideration of this
principle in its empirical formulations, can be furnished from the
polemic of Herbart against Kant on the subject of _duty._ Herbart
demonstrated that duty is not an original but a derived concept,
and that it appears only when there is disagreement between the
practical _ideas_ and the _will_.[15] But it would be possible to
demonstrate with the same method that the practical ideas are derived
concepts, because they do indeed presuppose the moral will, from the
manifestations of which they are constituted by means of abstraction.
Herbart was in the right against Kant, but he afterwards let the axe
fall on his own feet. The hard formula of the imperative preferred by
Kant had already been combated by Frederick Schiller, who accentuated
the moment of pleasure, sympathy and enthusiasm in the good action.
[Sidenote: _Repentance and remorse._]
As to the other concepts and to the disputes to which they gave rise,
it will be opportune to mention repentance and remorse. Spinoza does
not see that it has value as a necessary negative moment, for he
declared: _Poenitentia virtus non est, sive ex ratione non oritur; sed
is qui facti poenitet bis miser, seu impotens est. Nam primo prava
cupiditate, dein tristitia vinci se patitur;_ and he concludes by
assigning to it value for altogether empirical motives. Men rarely
live (he says) _ex dictamine rationis_; and yet repentance and other
similar affections do more good than harm, and if it be necessary to
sin _in istam partem potius peccandum. Terret vulgus, nisi metuat._[16]
But it was Hegel who instituted a regular persecution of the concept
of repentance and remorse. There are certain passages in his works
that should be read in connection with this question, in order that
we may clearly see how he had an eye to contingent and historical
events in his criticism. "In the Christian world in general (he writes)
there is in force an ideal of the perfect man, who cannot exist as
multitude in a people; and if this ideal is found realized in monks,
quakers, and such-like pious folk, it must be remarked that a mass of
these sad creatures does not constitute a people, just as lice and
parasitic plants cannot exist by themselves, but only on an organic
body. In order to constitute a people, it would be above all desirable
to destroy that lamblike gentleness of theirs, that vanity which is
occupied solely with their own persons, the caring for them and holding
them dear, and has always before it the image and consciousness of
its own excellence. For life in the universal and for the universal
demands, not such vile and listless gentleness, but an energetic
gentleness, not a thinking of oneself and one's own sins, but of the
universal and of what should be done for it. To him who nourishes so
false an ideal, men must always appear to be affected with weakness
and corruption, and that ideal to be so constituted that it can never
be translated into reality. They attribute importance to trifles, to
which no reasonable person pays special attention, and believe that
such weaknesses and defects exist, even when they are not remarked.
Nor should we admire their greatness of soul, but note rather that
their corruption lies precisely in standing still and looking at that
which they call weaknesses and errors, and in making out of nothing
something that exists. A man with such weaknesses and defects is
immediately quit of them, if he do not attach to them importance." The
observations that Hegel makes in his _Æsthetic,_ regarding the type of
the Magdalen in Italian art, are in this respect especially curious.
"In Italian painting the Magdalen appears, both within and without,
as the _beautiful sinner;_ sin in her is as seductive as conversion.
But here neither sin nor sanctity are to be taken too seriously. She
was pardoned, because she had loved much; she sinned through love and
beauty; and the affecting element lies in this, that she has scruples
about her love, and beautiful and sensible as she is, sheds torrents of
tears. But her error is not that she has loved so much; her beautiful
and moving error is precisely that she believes herself to be a sinner,
whereas her sensitive beauty gives the impression that she could not
have been otherwise than noble and of lofty senses in her love."[17]
[Sidenote: _The doctrine of the passions._]
V. The relation between the passions or desires and the will has rather
been studied at the moment of strife between the will and the passions,
than for itself and within its two terms, although Aristotle had
already begun an analysis as to the diversity of appetites or βούλησις
in respect to the intention or προαίρεσις, observing that the intention
relates only to what can be done, whereas the appetition relates also
to things that are impossible.[18] The opposed schools of the Cynics
and Cyrenaïcs, Stoics and Epicureans, and others such, were chiefly
concerned with the antithesis of the passions and the rational will;
but the formulæ of all these schools, if they have some empirical value
as precepts of life more or less suitable for definite individuals,
classes and times, possess none or very little for philosophy. Cynics
and Cyrenaïcs, Stoics and Epicureans, they seem rather to be monks
following this or that rule than philosophers. The question as to the
mode of freeing oneself from the passions and of dominating them,
which lingered till the treatises of Descartes and Spinoza, has
also a chiefly empirical character. G. B. Vico took up a position
opposed to the two opposed degenerations arising from those practical
tendencies, that of "quenching the senses," and of "making a rule of
them." He despised both Stoics and Epicureans as "monastic or solitary
philosophers," and maintained as "a philosopher politician," that it is
needful "not to tear away his own nature from man, nor to abandon him
in his corruption," but "to moderate the human passions and to make of
them human virtues."[19] Rarely has the defence of the passions enjoyed
an equally limpid philosophical enunciation; as a rule, and even in
Hegel, it has been directed chiefly against certain social tendencies,
rather than against philosophical doctrines.[20] The absolute
abandonment to the passions or their absolute destruction, are theories
that have not had true and proper representatives.--The confusion
between the various meanings of the word "passion," understood now
as appetition, or concrete and actual passion, now as a state of the
soul (joy and sorrow), now as volitional habit, is to be found in the
various treatises that we have already had occasion to record. It is
natural that their character of indifference when understood as habits
should have often been observed. Thus for Descartes, _elles sont toutes
bonnes de leur nature et nous n'avons rien à éviter que leurs mauvais
usages ou leur excès._[21]
[Sidenote: _Virtues and Vices._]
On the other hand, the erroneous form of the defence of the passions,
consisting of making them the preparation or cause of the virtues, is
already to be found in the English philosophers of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries (More, Shaftesbury, etc.); and in the
celebrated _Fable of the Bees_ of Mandeville, it assumes the aspect of
a paradoxical theory, in which the vices are looked upon as promoters
and factors of progress, morality as inefficacious and harmful for this
purpose. And La Rochefoucauld had written: "_Les vices entrent dans
la composition des vertus comme les poisons dans la composition des
remèdes._"[22]
[Sidenote: _The doctrine of individuality: Schleiermacher._]
All these are false or crude forms, in which is involved the doctrine
of the right to individuality, and they have always constituted and
still constitute its danger. This doctrine received its most energetic
expression in the romantic and preromantic period, thanks above all to
Schleiermacher, after it had been referred to in a rather vague way by
Jacobi.[23]
"For some time" (writes Schleiermacher in the _Monologues_) "I too was
satisfied that I had discovered Reason; and venerating equality with
the _Unique Being_ as that which is most lofty, I believed that there
was one single measure for every case, that action should be in all of
them the same, and that each one is distinguished from the other only
in so far as it occupies a place of its own in space. I believed that
humanity manifested itself differently only in the variety of external
facts; but that the internal man, the individual, was not a being
peculiarly (_eigenthümlich_) constructed, and that each was everywhere
equal to the other." "But afterwards was revealed to me that which
instantly raised me to a high state of exaltation: it became clear that
every man must represent humanity in his own way, in an altogether
individual combination of its elements, in order that it may manifest
itself in every mode, and that everything most different may issue from
its bosom and become effectual in the fulness of time and space....
Owing to this thought, I felt myself to be a work individually willed
and therefore elected by the Divinity and such that it must enjoy a
particular form and culture; and the free act to which this thought
belongs has collected and intimately joined together the elements of
human nature in a peculiar existence."
"While I now do whatever I do according to my spirit and sense,
my fancy places before me as very clear proof of the internal
determination, a thousand other modes, in which it would be possible to
act otherwise without offending the laws of humanity: I rethink myself
in a thousand different forms, in order to discover with the greater
certainty that which is especially mine."[24]
[Sidenote: _Romantic and very modern theories._]
But this peculiarity (_Eigenthümlichkeit,_) opportunely placed in
relief by Schleiermacher, and a thought much loved by the Romantics
(Herder, Jacobi, G. Humboldt, the Schlegels, etc.), is often seen to
degenerate into individual caprice, even in those times, as may be
observed in the sort of caricature which Frederick Schlegel made of the
Fichtian I, become the individual I, and in the notorious _Lucinde,_
to which the same Schleiermacher inconsiderately devoted a series of
letters of comment and defence. The last offshoots of the Romantics
were Max Stirner and Frederick Nietzsche: in the former the value
of individuality becomes changed into an affirmation of spasmodic
egotism; in the second there is a continuous mixture of true and false,
of good and of bad individuality, as is natural in a writer whose
_Eigenthümlichkeit_ was rather that of a poet than of a thinker.
[Sidenote: _The concept of development and progress._]