PART 484 LOGIC another superior category, or from one suggestion to another superior suggestion. Speaking em pirically, we should have in this case to admit regress also, because it is a fact that a return is made to inferior categories and suggestions. Philosophically, we can speak in this case, neither of progress nor of regress, seeing that those cate gories and suggestions are eternal and outside time.
Finally, this conception of philosophic history itself declares its untenability, since in its last term it is logically obliged to posit a definitive philosophy (which is that represented by him who constructs such a history of philosophy), whereas there is nothing definitive in reality, which is perpetual development. Those very historians of philosophy themselves, who have desired and in part attempted to give actuality to that conception, have been perplexed at the assumption of so great a responsibility as to pro claim a definitive philosophy, that is to say, to decree the retirement of Thought and so of Reality.
The error which appears in this conception of fahe view and philosophic history, is the same that we have of the formula concerning already studied under the name of philosophism, the identity of philosophy and which appears here in one of its special and history of philosophy, applications. The formula of the error is the identity of Philosophy with the History of p kiloin PHENOMENOLOGY OF ERROR 485 sopky. The sense in which this is meant is at once shown by the tendency which exists in this identity of the two terms, to be enlarged into a third term, that is to say, into the recognition of the identity of philosophy and of the history of philosophy with the Philosophy of history. And this Philosophy of philosophic history, like every philosophy of history, converts representations and empirical concepts into pure concepts assign ing to each one the function which properly belongs to the categories, corrupting philosophy and history and becoming shipwrecked in a sort of mythologism and propheticism.
But, as in the case of the philosophy of history Distinction between this in general, so also in this application of it to the false idea of a history of history of philosophy, it is necessary to recognize philosophy and the elements of truth. These lie in the works of are so efntitled or profess genius in historical characterization, which under a this guise have been achieved by various thinkers and in various epochs of philosophy. Certainly Plato is not only transcendental, nor is Aristotle only immanentist; nor Kant only agnostic, nor Hegel only logical, nor Epicurus only materialist, nor Descartes only dualist; nor is Greek thought concerned only with objectivity, nor modern thought with subjectivity alone. But history takes shape as historical narrative, by noting the 486 LOGIC PART 486 LOGIC PART prominent traits of the various individuals and of the various epochs. Without this process it would be impossible to divide, to summarize, or to record it; without the introduction of empirical concepts, history could not be fixed in the memory.1 By means of those characteriza tions, it also happens that historical names can be taken as symbols of truths and errors: all the crudity of dualism is expressed in Descartes, the paradox of determinism in Spinoza, that of abstract pluralism in Leibnitz. We owe (as is admitted by all those competent to judge) the elevation of the history of philosophy from a chronicle or an erudite collection to history properly so-called, to historians of philosophy who were tainted with philosophism. And since Hegel was the first and greatest of those historians, we must impute to Hegel the arbitrary act that he committed, but also the merit of having been the first to give a history of philosophy worthy of the name and accord to him all the more merit, in so far as he almost always corrected in execu tion the errors of his original plan.2 This original plan (and in general the position taken up by the system of Hegel) may perhaps 1 See above, Part II. Chap. III.
2 See ch. ix. What is Living and What is Dead of the Philosophy of Hegel, by the Author, English translation by Douglas Ainslie.
in PHENOMENOLOGY OF ERROR 487 be considered as a deviation and aberration from Exact formula: identity of a just impulse, which still awaits its legitimate philosophy and J of history.
satisfaction. This satisfaction we have attempted to give, by going deeply into the meaning of the Kantian a priori synthesis and by establishing the identity of philosophy and history. Thus, as regards the question at issue, the formula that we oppose to Hegel's formula of the identity of philosophy and history of philosophy, is that of the identity of philosophy and history. This difference may at first sight seem non-existent or very slight, but yet it is substantial. Philosophy is indeed identical with history, because by solv ing historical problems it affirms itself, and is in this way identical with the history of philosophy, not because this is separable from other histories, or has precedence over them, but for precisely the contrary reason, that it is altogether insepar able from and completely fused in the totality of history, according to the unity in distinction already explained. Hence it is seen that philo sophy does not originate in time, that there are not philosophic men and non-philosophic men, that there are not concepts belonging to one individual which another individual is without, nor mental efforts which one makes and another does not make, and that philosophy, or all the PART PART 488 LOGIC categories, operates at every instant of the spiritual life, and at every instant of the spiritual life operates upon material altogether new, given to it by history, which for its part it helps to create. This amounts to saying that from that concept we obtain the criticism of philosophism and of the formula expressing the identity of Philosophy, History of Philosophy and Philo sophy of history; and a more exact idea of the history of philosophy, free from the chains of an arbitrary classification. The history of It may seem that in this way we destroy all philosophy and.
philosophic idea of philosophic progress; and certainly pniloprogress.
sophy, taken in itself, that is to say as an abstract category, does not progress any more than the category of art or of morality progresses. But philosophy in its concreteness progresses, like art and the whole of life; it progresses, because reality is development, and development, includ ing antecedents in consequences, is progress. Every affirmation of truth is conditioned by reality and conditions a new reality, which, in turn, is in its progress, the condition of a new thought and of a new philosophy. In this respect it is true that a philosophy which comes later in time, contains the preceding philosophies in itself, and not only when it is truly a philosophy, in PHENOMENOLOGY OF ERROR 489 adequate to the new times, which comprehend ancient times in themselves, but even when it is a simple suggestion, of the kind we have called erroneous and in need of correction. As erroneous suggestion it will be, ideally, inferior to the truths already discovered. The scepticism of David Hume, for instance, is inferior from this point of view, not only to Cartesianism, but even to Scholasticism, to Platonism and to Socraticism. But historically it is superior even to the most perfect of those philosophies, because it is occupied with a problem which they did not propose to themselves and initiates its solution, by forming a first attempt at solution, however erroneous. Those perfect philosophies belong to the past, this, though imperfect, has the future in itself. Thus it is explained how we sometimes find far more to learn in philosophers who have maintained errors than from others who have maintained truths; the errors of the former are gold in the quartz, which when it has been purified will add weight and value to the mass of gold, which is already in our possession and has been preserved by the latter. Fanatics content themselves with truths, however poor they are, and therefore seek those who repeat them, even though they be poor of spirit. True thinkers seek for adver- 49° LOGIC PART saries, bristling with errors and rich with truth; they learn from them, and while opposing, love and esteem them; indeed, their opposing them is at the same time an act of esteem and of love. The truth of The philosophy which each one of us professes allphilosophies,..
and critique of at a determinate moment, in so far as it is eclecticism.
adequate to the knowledge of facts and in the proportion in which it is adequate, is the result of all preceding history, and in it are organically brought together all systems, all errors and all suggestions. If some error should appear to be inexplicable, some suggestion without fruit, some concept incapable of adoption, the new philosophy is to that extent more or less defective. But the organic reconciliation, which preceding philo sophies must find in those that follow, cannot be the bare bringing them together in time, and eclecticism, as in those superficial spirits, who associate fragments of all philosophies without mediation. Eclecticism (from the historical point of view also, as for instance in the relation of Victor Cousin to Hegel, whom he admired, imitated and failed to understand) is the falsifica tion or the caricature of the vastness of thought, which embraces in itself all thoughts, though apparently the most diverse and irreconcilable. The peace of the lazy, who do not collide with in PHENOMENOLOGY OF ERROR 491 one another, because they do not act, must not be made sublime and confounded with the lofty peace that belongs to those who have striven and have fraternized after strife, or, indeed, during the actual combat.
A proof of this constancy of philosophy, which Researches ^ concerning the is immanent in all philosophies and in all the authors and L *• precursors of thoughts of men, and also of its perpetual variation and novelty of historical form, is to be ^t found in the questions that have been and are e" raised, concerning the origin or discovery of truth. Hardly has the truth been discovered, when the critics easily succeed in proving that it was already known, and begin the search for precursors. And there can be no doubt that they are right and their researches deserve to be followed up. Every assertion of discovery, in so far as it seems to make a clear cut into the web of history, has something arbitrary about it. Strictly speaking, Socrates did not discover the concept, or Vico aesthetic fancy, or Kant the a priori synthesis, or Hegel the synthesis of opposites; nor even perhaps, did Pythagoras discover the theorem of the square on the hypotenuse, or Archimedes the law of the dis placement of liquids. If a discovery is repre sented as an explosion, this happens for reasons of PART III 492 LOGIC PART III 492 LOGIC practical and mnemonic convenience in narrating and summarising history; and, for that matter, the explosion, the eruption and the earthquake are continuous processes. But the rational side of the search for precursors must not cause the acceptance of the irrational side, which is the denial of the originality of discoveries, as though they were to be found point for point in the precursors, or as though they consisted only in the aggregation of elements which pre-existed, or in like insignificant changes of form. To attach oneself to precursors, does not mean to repeat them, but to continue their work. This continuation is always new, original, and creative and always gives rise to discoveries, be they small or great. To think is to discover. The reduction to absurdity of the wrong meaning of the search for precursors is to be found in the fact that every one of the most important thoughts can be discovered in a certain sense in common beliefs, in proverbs, in ways of speech, and among savages and children. This is so much the case that by this path we can return to the Utopia of an ingenuous philosophy, outside history; whereas philosophy is truly ingenuous or genuine only when it is, and it is not, save in History.
VIII DE CONSOLATIONE PHILOSOPHIAE " ATTACKS upon Philosophy and defences of it Logic and the defence of have been made as more or less academic philosophy. exercises. But the true defence of it can only be Philosophy itself, and above all, Logic, which, by determining the concept of Philosophy, recognizes its necessity and function. And since Logic itself teaches that a concept is not truly known, save in the system where it is shown in all its relations, the complete defence is obtained in our opinion only, when this treatise dedicated to Logic is placed in relation to the preceding, which treats of Esthetic, and with that which follows and has for its object the Philosophy of the practical.
To this last must be relegated the complete The utility of .. Philosophy and elucidation 01 the problem concerning the utility the philosophy of the practical.
or non-utility of philosophy. It is a problem about which we can here raise no fundamental question, if the equation posited by us be true: philo- PART 494 LOGIC sophy = thought = history = perception of reality. Thus the doubt concerning the utility of philo sophy would be of equal value with the extravagant doubt as to the utility of knowledge. The philosophy of the practical also demonstrates that no action is possible, save when preceded by knowledge, and that presupposed in action there is always historical or perceptive know ledge, that is, the knowledge which contains in itself all other knowledge. And it also demon strates that reality, being always will and action, is always thought, and that therefore thought is not an extrinsic adjunct, but an intrinsic category constitutive of the Real. Reality is action, because it is thought, and it is thought because it is action. consolation of If thought is so useful that without it the philosophy, as joy in thought Real would not be, the common concept of an and in the truth. unconsolatory philosophy cannot be accepted.
Impossibility of a pleasure Consolation, pleasure, joy, is activity itself, which arising from J J J rejoices in itself. So far as is known, no other mode of pleasure, joy and consolation has yet been discovered. Now, knowledge of the true, whatever it is, is activity and promotes activity, and therefore brings with it its own consolation. " The truth, known, though it be sad, has its delights" Not a few would wish to attribute "DE CONSOLATIONS" 495 these delights, not to truth, but to illusion. But illusion is either not recognized as illusion, or it is so recognized. When it is not recognized as such and yet truly satisfies the mind, it cannot be called illusion, but truth, which has its own good reasons, since nothing can be held to be true without good reasons; it is that much of truth which can be noted in the given circumstances and which from the point of view of a more complete truth can only arbitrarily be called illusion: the consolation given by the pretended illusion resides, therefore, in its truth — or it is recognized as illusion, because the actual circum stances have changed; and then it is anguish and desire to attain to the truth. If there is no desire to attain to this truth, and if in order to avoid it, affirmations are brought forward, which are not adequate to the new conditions in which we find ourselves, there is error, which, as such, is always more or less voluntary; and from error, which is self-critical, arise evil conscience, and remorse, and so again anguish and desire for the ^ truth, which dissipates illusion and produces consolation, because..." the truth though it be sad, yet has its delights."
Yet (it will be said), the true can be sad] true, critique of the but sad. This prejudice also should be eliminated. 7rutl.. ° 496 LOGIC PART Truth is reality, and reality is never either glad or sad, since it comprehends both these categories in itself, and therefore surpasses them both. To judge reality to be sad, it would have to be admitted that we possessed besides the idea of it, the idea of another reality, which should be better than the reality known to us. But this is contra dictory. The second reality would be not real and therefore not thinkable, and so no idea at all of it could be formed. And if we did attempt to form an idea of it, thought, entering into contra diction with itself and striving in a vain effort, would be seized with terror, and would produce, not that ideal reality, but at the most an aesthetic expression of terror, like that of a man who looks upon a bottomless abyss. Examples: Once upon a time and even to-day many found philosophical criticism and and find consolation in the idea of a personal God, the concepts of God and of ^Q has created and governs the universe, and of Immortality.
an immortal life, above this life of ours, which vanishes at every instant. And this consolation seems to have diminished in our times, or to many of us, owing to Philosophies. But he who does not limit himself to the surface and analyses the state of soul of sincere and noble believers, realizes that the God who comforted them is the same who comforts us and whom our Philosophies "DE CONSOLATIONE" 497 call the universal Spirit, immanent in all of us— the continuity and rationality of the universe — just as the Immortality in which they reposed was the immortality which transcends our in dividual actions, and in transcending them, makes them eternal. All that is born is worthy to perish; but in perishing, it is also preserved as an ideal moment of what is born from it; and the universe preserves in itself all that has ever been thought and done, because it is nothing but the organism of these thoughts and actions. Philosophy has rendered those concepts of God and of Immortality more exact, and has liberated them from impurities and errors and thus at the same time from perplexities and anguish; it has rendered them more, not less, consolatory. On the other hand, the absurdity which mingled with those concepts, has never consoled any one who seriously thought them — and serious thinking of them is an indispensable condition of obtaining consolation from concepts. If they are not thought, but mechanically repeated, the con solation is obtained from something else, from distraction and occupation with life lived, not from the concepts. In the effort to think a God outside the world, a Despot of the world, we are seized with a sense of fear for that God, LOGIC PART who is a solitary being, suffering from his omni potence, which makes activity impossible for him and dangerous for his creatures, who are his playthings. That God becomes an object of maledictions. Equally, in seriously thinking our immortality as empirical individuals, immobilized in our works and in our affections (which are beautiful only because they are in motion and fugitive), we are assailed by the terror, not of death, but of this immortality, which is unthink able because desolating and desolating because unthinkable. Ideal immortality has generated the poetic representations of Paradise, which are representations of infinite peace; the false con cepts of an empirical immortality can generate no other representation than Swift's profoundly satirical picture of the Struldbrugs or immortals, plunged in all the miseries of life, unable to die, and weeping with envy at the sight of a funeral. consolatory But we do not wish to close these new convirtue belonging siderations upon the old theme de consolatione to all spiritual activities. Philosophic^) without noting that philosophy is not the sole or supreme consoler, as the philo sophers of antiquity believed, and some among the moderns, who assumed the same attitude. It is neither the sole nor the supreme consoler, because thought does not exist alone, nor does it exist above life: thought is outside and inside life; and if on one side it surpasses life, on the other it is a mode of life itself. Philosophy brings consolation in its own kingdom, putting error to flight and preparing the conditions for practical life; but man is not thought alone, and if he has joys and sorrows from thought, other sorrows and joys come to him from the exercise of life itself. And in this exercise action heals the evils of action and life brings consolation for life. The error of Stoicism and of similar doctrines consists in attributing to philosophy a direct action upon the ills of life and of making it in consequence the whole totality of the real. But philosophy has no pocket-handkerchiefs to. dry all the tears that man sheds, nor is it able to console unhappy lovers and unfortunate husbands (as sentimental people pretend): it can only contribute to their comfort by healing that part of their pain which is due to theoretic obscurity. Such part is certainly not small: all our sorrows are irritated and made more pungent by mental darkness which paralyses or fetters the purification of action. But it is a part and not the whole. Every form of the activity of the Spirit, art like philosophy, practical life like theoretic life, is a fount of consolation and none suffices alone.
500 LOGIC PART in sorrow and " He that increaseth knowledge increaseth the elevation of sorrow. sorrow " is a false saying, because the increase of knowledge is the overcoming of sorrow. But it is true, in so far as it means that the increase of knowledge does not eliminate the sorrows of practical life. It does not eliminate, but elevates them; and to adopt the fine expression of a contemporary Italian writer, superiority is "no thing but the right to suffer on a higher plane." On a higher plane, but neither more nor less than others, who are at a lower level of knowledge, — to suffer on a higher plane, in order to act upon a higher plane.
FOURTH PART HISTORICAL RETROSPECT I THE HISTORY OF LOGIC AND THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY THE three terms, Reality, Thought and Logic, Reality, and their relations, could be represented by a and Logic. system of three circles, the one included in the other, and by marking at will as the first term that which includes all, or that which is included in all: R T L or L T R. Limiting ourselves to the first method, the first circle would be Reality, which Thought (the second circle) would think, in the same way that it would in its turn be thought in the third circle, formed by Logic, the Thought of thought, or the Philosophy of philosophy. This graphic symbol is probably destined to some fortune; but the reader must not seek it in our pages, because knowing how much inadequacy, clumsiness and danger it contains, we share the repugnance, " almost instinctively felt at such materializations, which seem to be and are of slight value.
504 LOGIC PART Relation of The vice of that spatial figuration is that it these three terms. divides into three circles what is three, but three in one, and should consequently be expressed as a triple circle which should also be a single circle, in which all the three coincide; which is geometrically unrepresentable. The relation of Reality, Thought of Reality and Thought of Thought, divided into three circles, legitimately gives rise to the question: Why should there not be a fourth, a fifth, a sixth circle (and so on to infinity) which should include respectively the third, the fourth, the fifth (and so on to infinity)? Why should not a Logic of Logic, or a thought of the thought of thought, and so on, follow the thought of thought, which is Logic? For us, this question raises no objection that need bring us to a halt for a single instant, just because we have never divided the one reality into two or more different realities (matter and spirit, nature and idea, and so on), nor into a series of different realities, the one following the other; but we have conceived it as a system of relations and of correlations, constituting a unity, indeed the only unity concretely thinkable. There is no progress to infinity, when the terms are coincident and correlative; hence to think the thought of thought would not be a new act, but equivalent HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 505 to thinking thought. The mental act will be new (and any mental act is new) for the individual who accomplishes it in conditions that are always new; but its spiritual form will always be that of Logic, which thinks thought and contains within itself, on its side, the process of reality. Further, the indifference exhibited by the symbol of the triple circle as to the determination of the first as last and the last as first, confirms for us the non-existence of a first that is only first and of a last that is only last; confirms, that is to say, the coincidence of unity in relation that is first and last. Reality is not only thought by thought, but is also thought; and thought is not only thought by Logic, but is also Logic. Those who wish to expound philosophy and history, proceeding from the centre of the logos or Logic, and those who wish to expound them, proceeding from the periphery of facts, are both right and wrong, because the centre is periphery and the periphery centre.
By adopting this view, which affirms the most Non-existence of a general complete immanence, it has never happened that philosophy outside the in any part of the Real we have discovered a Particular philosophic division between idea and fact, between general and particular, between primary and secondary sciences: LOGIC PART and consequently of a History of general philosophy outside the histories of particular philosophic sciences.
reality and the like, but we have found, in every part, relation and correlation, unity and distinction in unity. There is no general philosophy opposed to, or consequent on, or alongside particular philosophies; particular philosophy is general, and the general is the particular; nor is there a general history, which is not also particular history, and vice versa. History is always the history of man as artist, thinker, economic pro ducer, and moral agent, and in distinguishing these various aspects, it gives their unity, which does not transcend these various aspects, but is these various aspects themselves.