Читать книгу Logic as the Science of the Pure Concept - Benedetto Croce - Страница 9

The characteristics of the pure concept, or simply, concept, may be gathered from what has previously been said.

Expressivity.

The concept has the character of expressivity; that is to say, it is a cognitive product, and, therefore, expressed or spoken, not a mute act of the spirit, as is a practical act. If we wish to submit the effective possession of a concept to a first test, we can employ the experiment which was advised on a previous occasion:—whoever asserts that he possesses a concept, should be invited to expound it in words, and with other means of expression (graphic symbols and the like). If he refuse to do so, and say that his concept is so profound that words cannot avail to render it, we can be sure, either that he is under the illusion of possessing a concept, when he possesses only turbid fancies and morsels of ideas; or that he has a presentiment of the profound concept, that it is in process of formation, and will be, but is not yet, possessed. Each of us knows that when he finds himself in the meditative depth of the internal battle, of that true agony (because it is the death of one life and the birth of another), which is the discovery of a concept, he can certainly talk of the state of his soul, of his hopes and fears, of the rays that enlighten and of the shadows that invade him; but he cannot yet communicate his concept, which is not as yet, because it is not yet expressible.

Universality.

If this character of expressivity be common to the concept and to the representation, its universality is peculiar to the concept; that is to say, its transcendence in relation to the single representations, so that no single representation and no number of them can be equivalent to the concept. There is no middle term between the individual and the universal: either there is the single or there is the whole, into which that single enters with all the singles. A concept which has been proved not universal, is, by that very fact, confuted as a concept. Our philosophical confutations do not proceed otherwise. Sociology, for instance, asserts the concept of Society, as a rigorous concept and principle of science; and the criticism of Sociology proves that the concept of society is not universal, but individual, and is related to the groupings of certain beings which representation has placed before the sociologist, and which he has arbitrarily isolated from other complexes of beings that representation also placed or could place before him. The theory of tragedy postulates the concept of the tragic, and from it deduces certain necessary essentials of tragedy; and the criticism of literary classes demonstrates that the tragic is not a concept, but a roughly defined group of artistic representations, which have certain external likenesses in common; and, therefore, that it cannot serve as foundation for any theory. On the other hand, to establish a universality, which at first was wanting, is the glory of truly scientific thought; hence we give the name of discoverers to those who bring to light connections of representations or of representative groups, or of concepts, which had previously been separate; that is to say, who universalize them. Thus, it was thought at one time that will and action were distinct concepts; and it was a step in progress to identify them by the creation of the truly universal concept of the will, which is also action. Thus, too, it was held that expression in language was a different thing from expression in art; and it was an advance to universalize the expression of art by extending it to language; or that of language by extending it to art.

Concreteness.

Not less proper to the concept is the other character of concreteness, which means that if the concept be universal and transcendent in relation to the single representation, it is yet immanent in the single, and therefore in all representations. The concept is the universal in relation to the representations, and is not exhausted in any one of them; but since the world of knowledge is the world of representations, the concept, if it were not in the representations, would not be anywhere: it would be in another world, which cannot be thought, and therefore is not. Its transcendence, therefore, is also immanence; like that truly literary language that Dante desired, which, in relation to the speech of the different parts of Italy, in qualibet redolet civitate nec cubat in ulla. If it is proved of a concept that it is inapplicable to reality, and therefore is not concrete, it is thereby confuted as a true and proper concept. It is said to be an abstraction, it is not reality; it does not possess concreteness. In this way, for example, has been confuted the concept of spirit as different from nature (abstract spiritualism); or of the good, as a model placed above the real world; or of atoms, as the components of reality; or of the dimensions of space, or of various quantities of pleasure and pain, and the like. All these are things not found in any part of the real, since there is neither a reality that is merely natural and external to spirit, nor an ideal world outside the real world; nor a space of one or of two dimensions; nor a pleasure or pain that is homogeneous with another, and therefore greater or less than another; and for this reason all these things do not result from concrete thinking and are not concepts.

The concrete universal, and the formation of the pseudoconcepts.

Expressivity, universality, concreteness, are then the three characteristics of the concept derived from the foregoing discussion. Expressivity affirms that the concept is a cognitive act, and denies that it is merely practical, as is maintained in various senses by mystics, and by arbitrarists or fictionists. Universality affirms that it is a cognitive act sui generis, the logical act, and denies that it is an intuition, as is maintained by the æstheticists, or a group of intuitions, as is asserted in the doctrine of the arbitrarists or fictionists. Concreteness affirms that the universal logical act is also a thinking of reality, and denies that it can be universal and void, universal and inexistent, as is maintained in a special part of the doctrine of the arbitrarists. But this last point needs explanation, which leads us to enunciate explicitly an important division of the pseudoconcepts, which has hitherto been mentioned as apparently incidental.

Empirical pseudoconcepts and abstract pseudoconcepts.

The pseudoconcepts, falsifying the concept, cannot imitate it scrupulously, because, if they did, they would not be pseudoconcepts, but concepts; not imitations, but the very reality which they imitate. An actor who, pretending on the stage to kill his rival in love, really did so, would no longer be an actor, but a practical man and an assassin. If, therefore, with regard to the representations, and when preparing to form pseudoconcepts, we should think representations with that universality which is also the concreteness proper to the true concept, and with that transcendence which is also immanence (and is therefore called transcendentalism), we should form true concepts. This, indeed, often happens, as we can see in certain treatises which mean to be empirical and arbitrary, and from which, currente rota, non urceus, sed amphora exit. Their authors, led by a profound and irrepressible philosophic sense, gradually and almost unconsciously abandon their initial purpose, and give true and proper concepts in place of the promised pseudoconcepts: they are philosophers, disguised as empiricists. In order to create pseudoconcepts, we must therefore begin by arbitrarily dividing into two the one supreme necessity of logic, immanent transcendence, or concrete universality, and form pseudoconcepts, which are concrete without being universal, or universal without being concrete. There is no other way of falsifying the concept; whoever wishes to falsify it so completely as to render the imitation unrecognizable, does not falsify, but produces it; he does not remain outside, but permits himself to be caught in its coils; he does not invent a practical attitude, but thinks. That one mode is therefore specified in two particular modes, of which examples have already been given in our analysis of the pseudoconcepts of the house, the cat, the rose, which are concrete without being universal; and of the triangle and of free motion, which are universal without being concrete. There is nothing left to do, therefore, but to baptize them; selecting some of the many names that are applied, and often applied, sometimes to the one, sometimes to the other of the two forms, or indifferently to both, and giving to each of them a particular name, which will be constant in this treatise. We shall then call the first, that is to say, those which are concrete and not universal, empirical pseudoconcepts; and the second, or those which are universal and not concrete, abstract pseudoconcepts; or, taking as understood for brevity's sake, the general denomination (pseudo), empirical concepts and abstract concepts.

The other characteristics of the pure concept.

Thus, of the three characteristics of the concept which we have exhibited, the second and the third constitute, as we can now see, one only, which is stated in a double form, solely in order to deny and to combat these two one-sided forms which we have called empirical and abstract concepts. But, on the other hand, it is easy to see that the characteristics of the concept are not exhausted in the two that remain, namely, in expressivity or cognizability, and in transcendence or concrete universality. Others can reasonably be added, such as spirituality, utility, morality, but we shall not dwell upon these, because either they belong to the general assumption of Logic, that is, to the fundamental concept of Philosophy as the science of spirit, or they are more conveniently made clear in the other parts of this Philosophy. The concept has the character of spirituality and not of mechanism, because reality is spiritual, not mechanical; and for this reason we have to reject every mechanical or associationist theory of Logic, just as we have to reject similar doctrines in Æsthetic, in Economic and in Ethic. A special discussion of these views seems superfluous, because they are discussed and negated, that is to say, surpassed, in every line of our treatise. The concept has the character of utility, because, if the theoretic form of the spirit be distinct from the practical, it is not less true, by the law of the unity of the spirit, that to think is also an act of the will, and therefore, like every act of the will, it is teleological, not antiteleological; useful, not useless. And, finally, it has the character of morality, because its utility is not merely individual, but, on the contrary, is subordinated to and absorbed in the moral activity of the spirit; so that to think, that is, to seek and find the true, is also to collaborate in progress, in the elevation of Humanity and Reality, it is the denial and overcoming of oneself as a single individual, and the service of God.

The origin of the multiplicity and unity of character of the concept.

Certainly, the form in which the order of our discourse has led us to establish the characters of the concept—that of enumeration, the one character being connected with the other by means of an "also"—is, logically, a very crude form, and must be refined and corrected. Above all, if we have spoken of characters of the concept, we have done so in order to adhere to the usual mode of expression. The concept cannot have characters, in the plural, but character, that one character which is proper to it. What this is has been seen; the concept is concrete-universal two words which designate one thing only, and can also grammatically become one: "transcendental," or whatever other word be chosen from those already coined, or that may be coined for the occasion. The other determinations are not characters of the concept, but affirm its relations with the spiritual activity in general, of which it is a special form, and with the other special forms of this activity. In the first relation, the concept is spiritual; in relation with the æsthetic activity, it is cognitive or expressive, and enters into the general theoretic-expressive form; in relation with the practical activity, it is not, as concept, either useful or moral, but as a concrete act of the spirit it must be called useful and moral. The exposition of the characters of the concept, correctly thought, resolves itself into the compendious exposition of the whole Philosophy of spirit, in which the concept takes its place in its unique character, that is to say, in itself.

Objections relating to the unreality of the pure concept and to the impossibility of demonstrating it.

This declaration may save us from the accusation of having given an empirical exposition of the non-empirical Concept of the concept, and so committing an error for which logicians are justly reproved (for they have often believed themselves to possess the right of treating of Logic without logic; perhaps for the same reason that custodians of sacred places are wont, through over-familiarity, to fail in respect towards them). But it lays us open to censure very much more severe; which, if it ultimately prove to be inoffensive, is certainly very noisy and loquacious. The pretended characters of the concepts (it is said) are, by your own confession, nothing but its relations with the other forms of the spirit; and the one character proper to it is that of universality-concreteness, that is, of being itself, since the "concrete-universal" is synonymous with the concept, and vice versa. So it turns out that in spite of all your efforts, your concept of the concept becomes dissipated in a tautology. Give us a demonstration of what you affirm, or a definition which is not tautologous; then we shall be able to form some sort of an idea of your pure concept. Otherwise you may talk about it for ever, but for us it will always be like "Phœnician Araby" of Metastasian memory: "you say that it is; where it is, no one knows."

Prejudice relating to the nature of demonstration.

Beneath such dissatisfaction and the claim it implies, we find first of all a prejudice of scholastic origin concerning what is called demonstration. That is to say, it is imagined that demonstration is like an irresistible contrivance, which grasps the learner by the neck and drags him willy-nilly, whither he does not and the teacher does will to go, leaving him open-mouthed before the truth, which stands external to him, and before which he must, obtorto collo, bow himself. But such coercive demonstrations do not exist for any form of knowledge—indeed, for any form of spiritual life—nor is there a truth outside our spirit. Not that truth presupposes faith, as is often said, so that rationality is subordinated to some unknown form of irrationality; but truth is faith, trust in oneself, certainty of oneself, free development of one's inner powers. The light is in us; those sequences of sounds, which are the so-called demonstration, serve only as aids in discarding the veils and directing the gaze; but in themselves they have no power to open the eyes of those who obstinately wish to keep them closed. Faced with this sort of reluctance and rebellion, the pedagogues of the good old days had recourse, as we know, not to demonstrations, but to the stool of penitence and to the stick; so fully were they persuaded that the demonstration of truth requires good dispositions, i.e. requires those who are disposed to fall back upon themselves and to look into themselves. How can the beauty of the song of Farinata be demonstrated to one who denies it, and will neither appreciate the soul contained in that sublime poem, nor accomplish the work necessary to attain to the possibility of such an appreciation, nor will, on the other hand, humbly confess his own incapacity and lack of preparation—how can we forcibly demonstrate to him that that song is beautiful? The critical wisdom of Francesco de Sanctis would be disarmed and impotent before such a situation. How can we demonstrate to one who deliberately refuses to believe in any authority or document, and breaks the tradition by which we are bound to the past, that Miltiades conquered at Marathon, or that Demosthenes strove all his life against the power of Macedonia? He will capriciously throw doubt on the pages of Herodotus and the orations of Demosthenes; and no reasoning will be able to repress that caprice. What more can be said? Even in arithmetic, for which calculating machines exist, compulsory demonstration is impossible. In vain you will lift two fingers of the hand, and then the third and the fourth, in order to demonstrate to one who does not wish for demonstration that two and two are four; he will reply that he is not convinced. And indeed he cannot be convinced, if he do not accomplish that inner spiritual synthesis by which twice two" and four reveal themselves as two names of one and the same thing. Therefore, he who awaits a compelling demonstration of the existence of the pure concept, awaits in vain. For our part, we cannot give him anything but that which we are giving: a discourse, directed towards making clear the difficulties, and towards demonstrating how, by means of the pure concept, all problems concerning the life of the spirit are illuminated, and how, without it, we cannot understand anything.

Prejudice concerning the representability of the concept.

But another prejudice, perhaps yet more tenacious than the first, accompanies this extravagant idea about demonstration. Accustomed as men are to move among things, to see, to hear, to touch them, while hardly or only fugitively reflecting upon the spiritual processes which produce that vision, hearing and touching; when they come to treat of a philosophic question, and to conceive a concept (and especially when it is necessary to conceive precisely the concept of the concept), they do not know how to refrain from demanding just that which they have been obliged to renounce in their new search, and which they have already renounced, owing to the very fact of their having entered into it: the representative element, something that they can see, hear and touch. It is almost as though a novice, on entering a monastery, and having just pronounced the solemn vow of chastity, should ask, as his first request upon taking possession of his cell, for the woman who is to be his companion in that life. He will be answered that in such a place his spouse cannot be anything but an ideal spouse, holy Religion or holy Mother Church.

Protests of the philosophers against this prejudice.

All philosophers have been compelled to protest against the request, which they have had addressed to them, for an impossible external demonstration and for something representative in a field where representation has been surpassed. "In our system (said Fichte) we must ourselves lay the foundation of our own philosophy, and consequently that system must seem to be without foundation to one who is incapable of accomplishing that act. But he may be assured beforehand that he will never find a foundation elsewhere, if he do not lay such an one for himself, or remain not satisfied with it. It is fitting that our philosophy should proclaim this in a loud voice, in order that it may be spared the pretence of demonstrating to mankind from without what they must create in themselves."[1] Schelling appropriately compared philosophic obtuseness with æsthetic obtuseness: "There are two only ways out of common reality. Poetry, which transports you into an ideal world, and Philosophy, which makes the real world disappear altogether from our sight. One does not see why the sense for Philosophy should be more generally diffused than that for Poetry."[2] And Hegel, giving explanations which precisely meet the present case, says: "What is called the incomprehensibility of Philosophy, arises, in part, from an incapacity (in itself only a lack of habit) to think abstractly, that is to say, to hold pure thoughts firmly before the spirit and to move in them. In our ordinary consciousness, thoughts are clothed in and united with ordinary sensible and spiritual matter; and in our rethinking, reflecting and reasoning we mingle sentiments, intuitions and representations with thoughts: in every proposition whose content is entirely sensible (for example: this leaf is green) there are already mingled categories, such as being and individuality. But it is quite another thing to take as our object thoughts by themselves, without any admixture. The other reason for its incomprehensibility is the impatience which demands to have before it as representation that which in consciousness appears only as thought and concept. And we hear people say that they do not know what there is to think in a concept, which is already apprehended; whereas in a concept there is nothing to be thought but the concept itself. But the meaning of this saying is just that they want a familiar and ordinary representation. It seems to consciousness as if, with the removal from it of the representation, the ground had been removed which was its firm and habitual support. When transported into the pure region of the concepts, it no longer knows what world it is in. For this reason, those writers, preachers and orators are esteemed marvels of comprehensibility who offer their readers or hearers things which they already know thoroughly, things which are familiar to them and which are self-evident."[3]

Reason for their perpetual recurrence.

Thus have all philosophers protested, and thus will all protest still, from age to age, because that intolerance, that immobility, that recalcitrance before the very painful effort of having to abandon the world of sense (though but for a single instant, and in order to reconquer and to possess it more completely) will perpetually be renewed. They are the birth-pangs of the Concept, to escape which no plans for virginity and no manoeuvres to procure abortion are of any avail. They must be endured, because that law of the Concept ("thou shalt bring forth in suffering") is also a law of life.

[1] System de Sittenlehre (in Sämmtl. Werke), iv. p. 26.

[2] Idealismo transcendentale, trad. Losacco, p. 19.

[3] Encyclopædia, Croce's translation, § 3, Observations.