All this amounts to saying that the things we shall discuss concerning the various forms of knowledge are not to be understood as a special Logic, although they are grouped in a second part for literary reasons. There we shall examine one by one the various forms of know ledge, in order to confirm their identity with the forms of awareness and to demonstrate how the characters adopted by them. are reducible to those already explained for the others, and how the difficulties found in them are overcome by means of the same principles that we employed to overcome the difficulties presented by the PHILOSOPHY 259 others. In so doing, we shall also gain the ad vantage of making more clear the doctrines already laid down as to the elementary forms, by fixing our attention upon those manifestations of them which are presented on a larger scale. To those who forget or deny the existence of the pure concept or of the abstract concept, it will be of assistance, in giving the speculative deduction of those forms, to point out the masterpieces of Art, of Philosophy, or of Mathematics, and to invite an examination of their structure. It is true that in our day preference is given to another method, which is not only antiphilosophical but also antipsedagogic. This method consists in altogether neglecting philosophic demonstration in the attempt to divert the attention from notable and luminous manifestations of the spirit, in order to devote it to rude and uncertain manifestations. Inscriptions of savages are preferred to the art of Michael Angelo, the philosophy that is still crudely enveloped in religion and custom to that of civilized times, something whose nature none can tell precisely, owing to lack of documents and the elements of research, to what is evidently art and philosophy. Such enquirers adopt pre cisely an opposite course to that followed by the sciences of observation, which have made 26o LOGIC PART II telescopes and microscopes to enlarge the little and bring the distant near. They seek for in struments which shall diminish the great and make the near remote. Theirs is a strange empirical caricature of philosophy, which substi tutes the chronologically remote for the funda mentally conceptual, and for the logically simple, the materially small, which is not, on that account, simple and is far less transparent. For our part (and we say it in passing), we believe that to furnish examples of where to fix the attention in logical enquiry, the minds of an Aristotle or of a Kant afford all we require, without there being any necessity to have recourse to the psychology of sucklings and idiots. But to study Aristotle and Kant does not suffice for know ledge of the truth of the concept. We must find in all beings of whatever grade and import ance, the universal Spirit and its eternal forms.
And since we have studied the first and most ingenuous form of knowledge, Art, in a special volume, we shall here begin our examination of the second of its forms, Philosophy; and first of all, of Philosophy in the strict sense.
II PHILOSOPHY ALL the definitions that have ever been given of Philosophy as pure concept philosophy will be found to contain the thought and the various definitions of that philosophy is the pure concept (or to say the philosophy. same thing with more words and less precision), de£?loso h that it has the pure concept as its directive criterion. All, be it well understood, save those which, in negating the pure concept, negate also the peculiar nature of philosophy. But such are not, properly speaking, definitions of philosophy, although even these, by contradicting themselves, imply and assume the definition of philosophy as an original form, and so as the pure concept. Such is the case with the theories already examined, of aestheticism, mysticism, and empiricism (and also of mathematicism), to which we shall return. For them, philosophy is art, sentiment, the empirical (or abstract) concept. But it is an art in some way differentiated from the rest of art, a sentiment that acquires a 262 LOGIC PART peculiar value, an empirical or abstract concept, which raises itself up and looks over the heads of the others. Thus it is something peculiar, a mode of reflecting sui generis, and so precisely the pure concept. Empiricism especially reveals this intimate contradiction, when it advocates a philosophy consisting of a systematization or synthesis of the results of the empirical sciences. That is to say, it advocates something not given by the empirical sciences, because, were they to give it, they would already be systematized and synthesized of themselves, and the further elabora tion asked for would be altogether superfluous. f Those that All the other definitions which presuppose define it as the science of fa& peculiarity of philosophy are reducible, as is easily seen> to the ^^ character of the pure concept. Philosophy (they say) is the science of the supreme principles of the real, the science of ultimate causes, of the origin of things, and the like. In these propositions, the supreme principles are evidently not real things, or groups of real things, or empty formulae, but the ideal generators of the real. Ultimate causes are not causes (for the cause is never ultimate, being always the effect of an antecedent cause), but ideal principles. The origin in question is not the historical origin of this or that single fact, but PHILOSOPHY 263 the ideal deduction of the fact from facts or from omnipresent reality. The same idea is expressed in the imaginative saying that philosophy is the contemplation of death. For what but the indi vidual dies? And is not the contemplation of the death of the individual also that of the immortality of the universal? Is it not contem plation of the eternal? This remark supplies the motive for that other formula which defines philosophy as "the vision of things sub specie aeterni" The character of the pure concept is also as elabora tion of the indicated in the definition of philosophy as the concepts, criticism, elaboration of the concepts, which the other science of norms; sciences leave imperfect and self- contradictory. Indeed, since no human activity has the imperfect and contradictory as its aim, if the other sciences are involved in imperfect and contradictory concepts, this means that they do not aim at constructing concepts and that philosophy alone elaborates true and proper concepts. For this reason, philosophy has sometimes been conceived, not as science, but as criticism, and criticism means placing oneself above the object criticized, in virtue of a concept superior to those criticized. For this reason, finally, philosophy has been conceived as the science of norms and values: 264 LOGIC PART norms and values, which, if they are to surpass singular things, cannot be extraneous to them. Hence it is the same thing to speak of norms and values, or of universal concepts, surpassing and containing in themselves each single thing. as doctrine If philosophy is the pure concept, it is also categories. the distinctions of the pure concept; it is all the pure concepts capable of serving as predicates to individual judgments and so of acting as cate gories. Here tfcere is another definition of philosophy: philosophy is the doctrine of the categories. For this reason we have already refused to assign to Logic the search for the categories: first because the doctrine of the cate gories is the whole of Philosophy, whereas Logic is only one of its links, and consequently seeks only one of the categories, that of logicity. It could also be said that Philosophy is the doctrine of the categories, and that Logic, as a part of Philosophy, is a Category of categories, or a Philosophy of Philosophy. Hence its singular position among philosophical sciences, so that it appears at the same time within and without Philosophy, because it completes by surpassing and surpasses by completing it. In reality, Logic, like every other philosophic science, is within and not without Philosophy; like the ii PHILOSOPHY 265 glassy water which reflects the landscape and is itself part of the landscape.
These definitions which we have selected \Q Exclusion of mathematical record and to interpret (and others which we definitions of philosophy^ leave to the reader to record and to interpret) are all formal, in the legitimate sense of the word. They define the eternal nature of philo sophy, they do not determine actually any special solution of other philosophical problems, although naturally they do potentially determine one solution, in that they can agree only with one solution. Obedient to this formal character, we have not taken and shall not take account of definitions that imply the effective solution of all philosophical problems, or of Philosophy in its totality. Such is, for instance, the definition that Philosophy is knowledge of oneself, as was said at the dawn of Hellenic thought; or that it is the return to the inward man where dwells the truth, as St. Augustine said; or that it is the science of Spirit, as we say. This definition offers something more than the simply logical aspect of Philosophy. Looked at from the purely logical standpoint, Philosophy will be the science of God or of the Devil, of Spirit or Matter, of final cause or mechanism, or of anything else that may be suggested as a hypo- 266 LOGIC PART 266 LOGIC PART thesis for enquiry, provided that this, whatever it be, is thinkable as a pure concept or Idea. Whoever should negate this condition, would not negate this or that philosophy, but as we have seen, philosophy itself, in favour of art, of action, or of something else.
idealism But if Philosophy is by its logical nature pure philosophy. concept or idea, every philosophy, to whatever results it may attain, and whatever may be its errors, is in its essential character and deepest tendency, idealism. This has been recognized by philosophers of the most different and antagonistic views (for example, by Hegel and by Herbart). It should be taught as truth to those who are ignorant of it and those who have forgotten should be reminded of it. Determinism negates the end and affirms the cause; but the cause which it posits as its principle, is not this or that cause, but the idea of cause. Materialism negates thought and affirms matter; but not this or that matter, which composes this or that body, but the idea of matter. Naturalism denies spirit and affirms nature; not this or that manifestation of nature, but nature as idea. Finally, when a single natural fact seems to be posited as the principle of explanation of reality, this fact is idealized and stands as the idea of itself, generii PHILOSOPHY 267 ating itself and everything else. Thus (it has been repeatedly remarked) the water of Thales, by the very fact that it is taken as a principle, is no longer any given empirical water, but metaphysical and ideal water. In like manner, the numbers of Pythagoras are not those of the Pythagorean table, but cosmic principles and ideas. Theism does not believe it possible to obtain the sufficient reason of reality, without positing a personal God, above and beyond the world. But this God is always something non- representative, however much he may be involved in sensible representation, and placed upon Sinai or Olympus. He is the idea of personal divinity, the idea of Jehovah or of Jove. The philosophy which is called idealist in the strict sense of the word (it would be better called activist or finalist or absolute spiritualism), strives to prove that, for instance, cause, matter, nature, number, water, Jehovah, Jove and the like, are not thinkable as pure concepts and as such imply contradictions, and that therefore such philosophies are in sufficient. This means that it holds the idealism of those philosophies insufficient, that they are not equal to themselves and are inadequate to the assumption on which they rest; but it does not imply that this assumption is not idealistic.
268 LOGIC PART Were it not idealistic, it would not be philo sophical, and so it would not be possible to submit it to criticism from the philosophical point of view. systematic From the identity of philosophy with the pure character of philosophy. concept can be also deduced its necessarily systematic character.
To think any pure concept means to think it in its relation of unity and distinction with all the others. Thus, in reality, what is thought is never a concept, but the concept, the system of concepts. On the other hand, to think the concept in general is only possible by arbitrary abstraction. To think it truly in general, means to think it also as particular and singular, and so to think the whole system of distinct* concepts. Those who wish to think an isolated concept philosophically without paying attention to the others, are like doctors who wish to cure an organ without paying attention to the organism. Such a mode of treatment may cure the organ, but the organism dies and with it dies the healed organ a moment after. The true philosopher, when he makes even the smallest modification in a concept, has his eye on the whole system, for he knows that this modification, however small it may seem, modifies to some extent the whole.
PHILOSOPHY 269 The systematic character of philosophy, under- Philosophic J and literary stood logically, belongs to every single philo- significance of sophical proposition which is always a philosophical cosmos, as every drop of water is the ocean, indeed, the whole world, contracted into that drop of water. It is hardly necessary to dis tinguish from this the literary sense of system, which is the name given to certain forms of exposition, which embrace definite groups of problems, traditionally held to be those in which philosophy is contained. When some or many of those groups do not receive explicit literary treatment, it is said that system is wanting. It is true that there is wanting the fulfilment of a literary task (or what here amounts to the same thing, of a pedagogic task); but the system is there, even in the case when a very specialized problem is treated, provided it be approached with philosophic and so with systematic energy. That the same thinker, when he passes to another problem, should give a wrong solution contra dictory to that previously given, does not prove that he had not at first a system, but that he has lost it when faced with the new difficulty. He was at first a philosopher and so systematic; afterwards, not philosopher enough, and so not sufficiently systematic.
270 LOGIC PART • Advantages The traditional groupings of problems, and and disadvantages the construction of system in the literary and of the * J Pedagogic sense, certainly have their utility (all that exists has its proper function and value). They preserve and promote culture already acquired, by obliging it to examine difficulties, which, were they neglected, might unexpectedly become a great hindrance and loss. Hence the love for system, or for the literary form of system, a love which the author of these pages also nourishes in his soul and of which he has sought to give some proof, by writing a system, although it is long since systems have been written, in Italy at least (unless scholastic manuals be thus called), and it is no slight merit to have braved the ridicule of the enterprise. But systems have also the disadvantage of sometimes leading to a tiresome re-exposition of problems that are out of date and whose solutions have passed into the common patrimony of culture. The treat ment of these problems is better left to be under stood, that time and space may be gained for the treatment of others more urgent. Hence the rebellion against system, or against the pedantry which can adhere to that form of exposition. This rebellion is similar at all points with that against the pedantry of definition, which is a PHILOSOPHY 271 PHILOSOPHY 271 legitimate rebellion, yet cannot eliminate the logical form of definition. Instead of systems, we write monographs, essays, and aphorisms, but these, if philosophic, will always be inwardly systematic.
But the rebellion against systems has another Genesis of the systematic more serious cause, less literary and more prejudice and J rebellion philosophical. Sometimes the demand for a system becomes a systematic prejudice. This fact merits explanation, because thus stated it may reasonably appear to be paradoxical. However could the demand inherent in a function be changed into a prejudice, or into an obstacle to that function? Stated in these terms, it certainly seems inconceivable. But it becomes clear and admissible, when we remember that philosophical enquiry is both induction and deduction, the thinking of distinction and the thinking of unity in distinction. Neither of the two processes, which are one single thing, should be substituted for or dominate the other. If we think the concept of morality, it should be placed in relation to and deduced from the other forms of the spirit and thus from unity; but it must also be thought in itself. The thinking of the peculiar nature of the moral act cannot remain isolated and atomic, but unity in its turn cannot give the PART Sacred and philosophical numbers; meaning of the demand which they express.
272 LOGIC character of the moral act, unless this act be present to the spirit and make itself known for what it is. In the process of research, it is possible to deduce the moral act from the con sideration of the other activities of the spirit, without thinking it in itself. But here a heuristic process is adopted, a hypothesis is made, and this hypothesis must afterwards be verified, in order to become effective thought and concept. Now the systematic prejudice consists precisely in thinking the unity without thinking the dis tinctions, in deduction without induction, in changing the hypothesis into a concept without having seriously verified it. Hence analogical constructions (or falsely analogical, and so meta physical and fantastic), which take the place of philosophical distinctions, and hence the systematic prejudice, which is a false idea of 'system. Against this rebellion is justified. But the mistake is usually made of discarding the true demand for system through horror of the false, or of denying the utility of the analogical process, which is blameable in the system, but useful in enquiry.
Another aspect of this same rebellion which has become universal in most recent times, is the distrust of or open hostility towards the search for symmetry, the arrangement^ of philosophic conn PHILOSOPHY 273 cepts in dyads^ triads, quatriads, or in other such like numbers, which precisely express symmetry in the ordering of those concepts. And such dis trust will be judged reasonable by any one who recalls the excesses caused by this love of symmetry and the puerilities to which some even of the loftiest philosophers abandoned them selves, owing to their excessive attachment to certain numbers. The pedantry of the Kantian quatriads and triads is truly insupportable, nor are Hegel's triads less artificial. These were very often reduced by his disciples to conjuring tricks and almost to buffoonery. It was natural that there should be a reaction towards the search for the asymmetrical and towards the doctrine that the concepts attained cannot be arranged in a beautiful order, for they change their order from one sphere to another, but that nevertheless they and no others are the concepts of reality — in elegant but honest; asymmetrical but true. The reaction is comprehensible, the distrust justifiable; but the hostility is certainly unjustifiable. If distinct concepts constitute a unity, they must of necessity constitute an order or symmetry, of which certain numbers, that can be called regular, are the expression or symbol. The concepts of an empirical science may be thirty-seven, eighty- T 274 LOGIC PART three, a hundred and thirteen, or as many as you like according as they are arranged. But the concepts of philosophy will always be dyads, triads, quatriads and the like, that is to say, an organic unity of distinctions and a correspondence of parts. For this reason, the human race has always had sacred numbers in religion and philosophic numbers in philosophy. Let him laugh who wills; but we do not say that he laughs well. The criterion of symmetry must not become a prejudice. It must, however, act as a control upon the enquiry that has been accom plished, since it greatly aids, as a heuristic process, the enquiry that is yet to be made. Astronomers are praised, when, thanks to their calculations, supported by the criterion of proportion and symmetry, they form a hypothesis that a star, unseen at the time, but which the \ telescope eventually discovers, must be at a certain place in the sky. Why should not a philosopher be equally praised, who deduces that for reasons of symmetry, there must be in the spirit a form, as yet unobserved, or that for the same reasons, there should be eliminated a form which does not seem to be eliminable, but which spoils the sym metry? Why should the spirit be less rhyth mical and less symmetrical than the starry sky?
PHILOSOPHY 275 When the systematic character of philosophy is impossibility conceived in this way, it is seen that the system philosophy into general is not something superadded, like a thread and particular. used for binding together the various parts of philosophy and quite external to the objects that it unites, so that we can consider separately the objects and the thread, the parts and the system. In philosophy, none of the parts are without the whole, and the whole does not exist without the parts. Translated into other terms, this means that there are not particular philosophic sciences, just as there is not a general philosophy. We have made use of this proposition, in order to confute the usual conception of Logic as a prologue to philosophy, and to show how this error (which in the case of Logic is supported by special reasons) is the principal source of other like errors. Thus Metaphysic or Ontology, or some other science, which is supposed to give the unity of the real, of which the special philosophic sciences give only the distinctions, is placed before or after the special philosophic sciences like a prologue or an epilogue. The truth is that ^ general philosophy is nothing but the special r philosophic sciences, and vice versa. The plural and the singular cannot be separated in the pure concept, where the plural is plural of the 276 LOGIC PART singular, and the singular is singular of the plural. of the The destruction of this erroneous idea of a a general general philosophy has direct practical import - separated from ance. For, once the so-called science has been particular philosophies, constituted, by means of a group of arbitrarily isolated problems, which really belong to the various sciences called particular, we are led to believe that true philosophy consists of a medley, in constant agitation and shock, and that, thanks to this agitation and these shocks, it becomes ever more worthy of itself, that is, of being a medley. But the problems of God and of the world, of spirit and of matter, of thought and of nature, of subject and of object, of the in dividual and of the universal, of life and death, torn from Logic, from ^Esthetic, from the Philo sophy of the practical, become insoluble or are solved only in appearance (that is to say, verbally and imaginatively). Many young men, ignorant of all particular philosophical knowledge, attack them as if they were the first step in philosophy, and many old professors find themselves at the end of their lives in the same state of mental confusion as at the beginning, indeed with their confusion increased and henceforth inextricable, owing to the false path that they have followed ii PHILOSOPHY 277 ii PHILOSOPHY 277 for so many years. They have not respected philosophy, in their first relations with it; they resemble those men who will never really love a woman, because they failed of respect to women in their youth. On the other hand, the so-called particular philosophical sciences, deprived of some of their organs and become blind or deaf or otherwise maimed, fall into the power of psycho- logism and empiricism. Hence the empirical and psychological treatment of Morality, of ^Esthetic, and of Logic itself. In regard to this evil, now more than ever rampant in philo sophic studies, it is necessary to remember, that the history of philosophy teaches that no philosophic progress has ever been achieved by so-called general philosophy, but always by dis coveries made in one or other of the so-called special philosophies. The concept of Socrates and the dialectic of Hegel are discoveries in Logic. Kant's concept of freedom is a discovery in Ethics. The concept of intuition is a dis covery in ^Esthetic. The critique of formalist logic is a discovery in the Philosophy of language. The old idea of God has been dissolved by those most modest, yet greatest of men, who contented themselves with formulating a new proposition on the syllogism or on the will, on art or history, 278 LOGIC PART II or with defining the abstract intellect or with fixing the limits of the fancy. Had we been obliged to await these solutions from the culti vators of that anaemic general philosophy, the old idea of God would now be more rife than before. And in truth it is still rife among those philo sophers of whom we have spoken, for it reappears from the midst of the medley which they stir, either with the name of the Unknowable, or with the old name that still is reverenced.
Ill HISTORY SINCE all the characteristics assigned to Philo- History as individual sophy are verbal variants of its unique character, which is the pure concept, so all the character istics of History can be reduced to the definition and identification of History with the individual judgment.
History, being the individual judgment, is the synthesis of subject and predicate, of repre sentation and concept. The intuitive and the logical elements are both indispensable to it and both are bound together with an unseverable link.
Owing to the necessity for the subject or inelement and tuitive element, history cannot be constructed historical sources; by pure reason. The vision of the thing: done relicsand narratives.