The Philosophy of the Practical: Economic and Ethic. Benedetto Croce

stands between Scylla and Charybdis, between a vicious progressus ad infinitum and a not less vicious circle.

      In this way is eliminated the problem, monstrous from whatever point of view it may arise, as to the historical origin of the practical activity (economy or morality). If these activities be categories, which constitute fact and judge it reflected in the spirit, they cannot have arisen historically, as contingent facts. When we prove the historical origin of anything, with that very proof we destroy its universal value. The fears of certain moralists lest, with the indication of the historical origin of morality, its value should come to be denied, have therefore been wrongly mocked. Certainly, if morality had a historical origin, it would also have an end, like all historical formations, even the most grandiose, the Empire of the East or the Empire of the West, the Hunnish Empire of Attila or the Mongolian Empire of Gengiskhan. The fear manifested by the moralists in question was then an instinctive horror of the incorrect method of philosophical psychology, which now presupposes, now destroys the categories that it would wish to establish.

VII

      THE PRACTICAL METHOD, RULES AND CASUISTRY

      Justification of the psychological method and of empirical and descriptive disciplines.

      In repeatedly rejecting the psychological method, as at the end of the last chapter, we have been very careful to make use of a cautious phraseology. Thus we have employed such expressions as "psycho-philosophical method," "speculative-descriptive method," and the like, in order to make it quite clear that our hostility is directed against that mixture, or rather against its introduction into Philosophy, but is not directed against Psychology itself, that is, descriptive psychology. This psychology has always been practised, since the world was world, and we all practise it at every instant, and could not propose to banish it from the spirit, save at the risk of going mad.

      If indeed we know that the true and proper knowledge of theoretical philosophy is resolved into the cycle of art, philosophy, and history, and that we possess no other means of knowing the individual, both ingenuous and reflective, outside the knowledge of the universal given by philosophy, then we also know that the spirit needs to arrange and to classify the infinite intuitions and perceptions given to it by art and history, and to reduce them to classes, the better to possess and to manipulate them. We also know that the method called naturalistic or positive performs this function, and that hence arise natural disciplines or sciences. These do not, as is the popular belief, deal only with so-called inferior reality (minerals, vegetables, and animals), but with all manifestations of reality, including those most strictly termed spiritual.

      Thus we can at this point reduce to a more correct meaning a claim that has been usually maintained by those who have treated of the Practical and of the Ethical in our day. They demand that a science of the practical and of morality should be preceded by a wide historical inquiry and have a great mass of facts as its foundation. If such science be understood as a Philosophy of the practical and as an Ethic, such a demand is an irrational pretension, because the true relation is exactly the opposite: from philosophy to history, not from history to philosophy. But if, on the other hand, this science be understood as a naturalistic and empirical discipline, the claim is rational, because it is not possible to construct a discipline of that sort, save with material that has been historically-verified.

      Practical description and its literature.

      The practical discipline that arranges in groups and classifies the spiritual facts concerning man, is Psychology. But the writer or the professor is not the only psychologist. Man himself is a psychologist; even the savage constructs in some sort of way his psychology of types and classes. And to remain within the circle of volitional acts, their psychology or description by types has always existed. A conspicuous example of this was the Comedy of Menander or the New Comedy in Greece. This partly received and gave artistic form to the results of the observations of the moralists and partly served as material for the elaboration of treatises, to such an extent that the Characters of Theophrastus have been looked upon as a repertory or summary of theatrical types. In the Rhetoric of Aristotle, a whole book is devoted to a description of affections, passions, and habits. In modern times, Descartes lamented the insufficiency of ancient treatises on the subject, and presented as quite a new thing his Traité des passions. In this treatise, six primitive passions being distinguished (admiration, love, hate, desire, joy, and sadness), he maintained that all the others were derived from them: esteem, contempt, generosity, pride, humility, baseness, veneration, disdain, hope, fear, jealousy, certainty, desperation, irresolution, courage, hardihood, emulation, cowardice, terror, remorse, mockery, piety, satisfaction, repentance, favour, gratitude, indignation, anger, glory, shame, and so on. Spinoza, following the example of Descartes and correcting his theories, devoted the third part of his Ethic to the affections or passions, considering them perinde ac si quaestio de lineis planis aut de corporibus esset. Let it suffice to mention the Anthropologia of Kant among the other most celebrated treatises upon the argument.

      Extension of practical description.

      But although we have recorded as examples these general treatises on the passions, it would be impossible to continue the enumeration, because descriptive psychology is carried out, so to speak, with the widest divergences and is infinitely subdivided. An ample bibliography would not suffice to catalogue all the books dealing with this discipline. These are sometimes arranged in chronological divisions (Psychology of the Renaissance, of the eighteenth century, of the Middle Ages, even including prehistoric man!). Sometimes they contain geographical divisions (Psychology of the Englishman, of the Frenchman, of the Russian, of the Japanese, and so on), with subdivisions according to regions. Sometimes they combine the two methods (Psychology of the ancient Greek, of the Roman of the Decadence), and sometimes according to their psychical content (Psychology of the priest, of the soldier, of the politician, of the poet, of the man of science), and so on. And when the treatises that bear a title of the kind above mentioned had been catalogued, it would be also necessary to trace a great mass of descriptive psychology (and of the best sort) in the books of historians, novelists, dramatists, in memoirs and confessions, in maxims and advice for the conduct of life in the sketches of satirists and caricaturists. And when all these had been catalogued (a very difficult task), it would be necessary to take account of all the other psychology, which, formed in the spirit of individuals who are not writers, is poured forth in speech. This is found, but in small part, in collections of proverbs. It would also be necessary not to neglect (an altogether desperate enterprize) everything that each one of us does and forgets and substitutes continually in life, according to his own needs and experiences. Tantae molis would be a complete account, precisely because psychological construction, having for its object actions and individuals in action, is of such common use.

      Normative knowledge or rules: their nature.

      There is another class of mental forms intimately connected with Psychology, and of this also we have denied the justification in the foregoing chapters, but only in the philosophical field, and not at all outside it. These are the norms, or normative knowledge and science, maxims, rules, and precepts. In truth, if philosophy, which commands and wills and judges, when its task is on the contrary to understand willing and commanding, and to make possible correct judgment—if such a philosophy be a contradiction in terms, there is yet nothing to prevent our taking the psychological classes, of which we have indicated the formation, and separating them from one another, according as they do or do not lead to certain other classes, which are called ends and are abstract ends. This is done when those classes are selected which are more efficacious for practical action. Psychological classes and rules are therefore the same, save that in the second the character possessed by knowledge as prior to action is placed in relief, that is to say, its technical character. This is proved by the easy convertibility of rules into psychological observations, and of the latter into the former. It suffices to add the imperative to the first and to remove it from the second. "Do everything so as to seem good, for that helps in many things; but since false opinions do not last, you will have difficulty in seeming good for a long period, if you are not so in reality." That is a rule of Francesco Guicciardini[1] (or rather of the father of Guicciardini, quoted by him). Now