LOGIC AS THE SCIENCE OF THE PURE CONCEPT
TRANSLATED FROM THE ITALIAN OF
BENEDETTO CROCE
BY
DOUGLAS AINSLIE
B.A. (OXON.), M.R.A.S.
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1917
Benedetto Croce's Philosophy of the Spirit, in the English translationby Douglas Ainslie, consists of 4 volumes (which can be read separately):
1. Aesthetic as science of expression and general linguistic. (A firsted. is available at Project Gutenberg. A second augmented ed. follows.)
2. Philosophy of the practical: economic and ethic. (In preparation)
3. Logic as the science of the pure concept.
4. Theory and history of historiography. (In preparation)
Transcriber's note.
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
The publication of this third volume of the Philosophy of theSpirit offers a complete view of the Crocean philosophy to theEnglish-speaking world.
I have striven in every way to render the Logic the equal of itspredecessors in accuracy and elegance of translation, and have takenthe opinion of critical friends on many occasions, though morefrequently I have preferred to retain my own. The vocabulary will befound to resemble those of the Æsthetic and the Philosophy of thePractical, thereby enabling readers to follow the thought of theauthor more easily than if I had made alterations in it. Thus the word"fancy" will be found here as elsewhere, the equivalent of the Italian"fantasia" and "imagination" of "immaginazione"; this rendering makesthe meaning far more clear than the use of the words in the oppositesense that they occasionally bear in English; this is particularly soin respect of the[Pg vi] important distinction of the activities in the earlypart of the Æsthetic. I have also retained the word "gnoseology" andits derivatives, as saving the circumlocutions entailed by the use ofany paraphrase, especially when adjectival forms are employed.
I think that this Logic will come to be recognized as a masterpiece, inthe sense that it supplants and supersedes all Logics that have gonebefore, especially those known as formal Logics, of which the averagelayman has so profound and justifiable mistrust, for the very goodreason that, as Croce says, they are not Logic at all, but illogic—hishealthy love of life leads him to fight shy of what he feels wouldlead to disaster if applied to the problems that he has to face in theconduct of life. It is shown in the following pages that the prestigeof Aristotle is not wholly to blame for the survival of formal Logicand for the class of mind that denying thought dwells ever in the ipsedixit. Indeed, one of the chief boons conferred by this book will bethe freeing of the student from that confusion of thought and word thatis the essence of the old formal Logic—of thought that rises upon thewings of words, like an aviator upon his falcon of wood and metal tospy out the entrenchments of the enemy.
One of the most stimulating portions of the book will, I think, befound in Croce's theory of error and proof of its necessity in theprogress of truth. This may certainly be credited to Croce as adiscovery. That this theory of the uses of error has a great future,I have no doubt, from its appearance at certain debates on Logic thathave taken place at the Aristotelian Society withi