Benedetto Croce

CROCE, BENEDETTO (1866— ), Italian philosopher, born on Feb. 25, 1866, at Pescasseroli, Aquila, of an Abruzzese family, the seat of which had been transferred to Naples by his grandfather. There Croce was educated at a Catholic school. In 1883, having lost both his parents in an earthquake, he went to live in Rome with his paternal uncle and guardian, Silvio Spa yenta. He entered the university, but did not pursue his studies there, returning to Naples in 1886, where he occupied himself for several years with researches into local history and antiquities. His contributions to philosophy began with two essays (1893) upon the nature of history and the method of literary criticism, the leading ideas of which he developed in two later papers in 190o and 1904-5. Between 1896 and 190o he published also a group of essays on points of Marxian economic doctrine. Shortly after, in 1902, he began the systematic exposition of his Philos ophy of the Spirit, divided into Aesthetic, Logic, Philosophy of Conduct (Economics and Ethics) and Theory and History of Historiography. In 1903 he founded the journal La Critica, in which he reviewed the whole fine literature of Italy for 5o years, and later similarly reviewed its contributions to historical litera ture. His collected works in 1926 filled nearly 20 volumes. Though actively interested in educational administration, he never sought or occupied any university office. In 191 o he was nom inated to the senate of the kingdom, and was Minister of Educa tion in the Giolitti Cabinet (June 192o–July 1921).

Croce's Philosophy.

The philosophy of Croce, often errone ously classed as "Hegelian," had its avowed sources in the ideas underlying the literary criticism of Francesco de Sanctis, and, more generally and remotely, in those adumbrated in the Scienza Nuova of G. B. Vico, both, like himself, Neapolitans. More sig nificantly, it arises from and perpetually returns to his own per sonal experience in his lifelong and multifarious activity as a student of literature and history. Here he finds himself in vital touch with concrete reality, and deliberately confines his reflec tions to the content of actual or enacted history with a view to its interpretation. Hence he has been led to assert the identity of concrete philosophy with history, and to define the task of ab stract philosophy as the discovery and formulation of the imma nent methodology of history. From the common domain of both he excludes any supposed realities which transcend experience, and abstains from speculations about such, as he also does about primal origins and ultimate ends. History as enacted and occur ring and history as interpreting what is thus "given" he views as the work of one Spirit, which there expresses and embodies itself. In every part and moment of history that Spirit is wholly and indivisibly present and active. Its presence and operation are not confined to human history, but extend in all directions to the utmost bounds of experience. The Spirit which is thus omni present throughout the whole content of experience is indivisibly one, but its unity is also a quaternity, and it has in its structure four eternally distinct and distinguishable "grades," the ordered circle of which in its life or progress it perpetually traverses, so endowing or filling itself with experience and ever enriching its being. Its four functions in their conjoint exercise generate the contents of experience, within which we can and must distinguish four corresponding grades, stages, kinds or realms, the respective subject-matters of aesthetic, logical, economic and ethical theory, departments of philosophy, which together without addition con stitute the whole of it.

In its total cognitive function this Spirit manifests itself as art, the first or "dawn" form of knowledge. In this grade it expresses itself in individual embodiments ; in so expressing itself it at once creates and beholds what it creates, and has for its objects (which are also its works) whatsoever in experience presents a char acteristic individuality. In its second cognitive grade, as logic or abstract philosophy, it expresses, brings to existence and view, and so knows whatsoever is universal. Uniting, as it cannot but do, both functions, and thus becoming concrete in history, it effects an a priori synthesis between what is individual and what is universal ; in doing so, it wins actual understanding of the real and enters upon a course of knowledge which runs from sense perception up to explicit history. The history which thus comes to be understood is wholly the work of the same Spirit in the exercise of its total practical function, which has two corre sponding grades, in the lower or earlier of which it enacts what is individual, in the higher or later what is universal, or, rather again, in its actual or concrete exercise, enacts both in one, and so fills the stage of history with its deeds. Still more actually or concretely, it is active at once as making or creating and as know ing or understanding its own history, which is its whole self. The only reality which can truly be called absolute is a history with out beginning and without end, self-begotten and self-explaining.

The developments and applications which Croce gives to this fundamental doctrine are extraordinarily various, and often highly novel and even paradoxical. They have excited widespread interest and evoked abundant criticism and opposition. Against his critics Croce carries on a sustained and skilful polemic. He exercises an increasingly profound influence on higher thought. To many his philosophy seems to have already established a place in the world of contemporary philosophy comparable with that occupied during a great part of the i 9th century by the system of Hegel. For a fuller account of Croce's theory of Aesthetics, see the article under that title, written by him, in volume I. of this Encyclopedia.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.-G.

Prezzolini, Benedetto Croce (Naples, 1909) ; Bibliography.-G. Prezzolini, Benedetto Croce (Naples, 1909) ; H. Wildon Carr, The Philosophy of Benedetto Croce (1917) ; R. Piccoli, Benedetto Croce. An Introduction to his Philosophy (Iq22). Benedetto Croce, An Autobiography, translated into English by R. G. Collingwood (Oxford, 1927), with a preface by J. A. Smith.

The following contain bibliographies of works by and on Benedetto Croce: Benedetto Croce, Contribito alla critica di me stesso (1918, English translation 1926) ; G. Castellano, Introduzione allo studio delle opere di Benedetto Croce (Bari, 192o) ; G. Castellano, Benedetto Croce (Naples, 1924) • (J. A. SM.)