Читать книгу Logic as the Science of the Pure Concept - Benedetto Croce - Страница 11

The pseudoconcepts, not a subdivision of the concept.

Precisely because they are heterogeneous formations, pure concepts and pseudoconcepts do not constitute divisions of the generic concept of the concept. To assume that they did, would be a horrible confusion of terms, not far different (to use Spinoza's example) from that of the division of the dog into animal dog and constellation dog; though poets used at one time to talk of the celestial dog also, as "barking and biting," when the sun implacably burned the fields.

Obscurity, clearness and distinction, not subdivisions of the concept.

And seeing that our point of view is philosophic, we can take no account of another division of the concept, which had great fame and authority in the past: that into obscure, confused, clear and distinct concepts and the like, or of the degrees of perfection to which the concept attains. Such a division can retain at the most but an empirical and approximate value, and under this aspect it will be difficult altogether to renounce it in ordinary discourse; but it has no logical and philosophic value whatever. The concept is what is truly concept, the perfect concept, not at all the encumbered or wandering tendency toward it. Yet that division had great historical importance. By means of it, indeed, the attempt was made to differentiate the concept, under the name of clear and distinct thought, from the intuition, which was clear but confused thought, and both of these from sensation, impression, or emotion, which was called obscure. This was attempted, but without success; the problem was set but not solved; for the solution was only attained when it was seen that, in this case, it was not a question of three degrees of thought, as absolute logic claimed, but of three forms of the spirit: of thought or distinction, of intuition ox clearness; and of the practical activity, obscurity or naturality.