[1]These relations are examined in thePhilosophy of the Practical,first part.
[1]These relations are examined in thePhilosophy of the Practical,first part.
The characteristics of the pure concept, or simply, concept, may be gathered from what has previously been said.
Expressivity.
The concept has the character ofexpressivity;that is to say, it is a cognitive product, and, therefore, expressed or spoken, not a mute act of the spirit, as is a practical act. If we wish to submit the effective possession of a concept to a first test, we can employ the experiment which was advised on a previous occasion:—whoever asserts that he possesses a concept, should be invited to expound it in words, and with other means of expression (graphic symbols and the like). If he refuse to do so, and say that his concept is so profound that words cannot avail to render it, we can be sure, either that he is under the illusion of possessing a concept, when he possesses only turbid fancies and morsels ofideas; or that he has a presentiment of the profound concept, that it is in process of formation, and will be, but is not yet, possessed. Each of us knows that when he finds himself in the meditative depth of the internal battle, of that trueagony(because it is the death of one life and the birth of another), which is the discovery of a concept, he can certainly talk of the state of his soul, of his hopes and fears, of the rays that enlighten and of the shadows that invade him; but he cannot yet communicate his concept, which is not as yet, because it is not yet expressible.
Universality.
If this character of expressivity be common to the concept and to the representation, itsuniversalityis peculiar to the concept; that is to say, its transcendence in relation to the single representations, so that no single representation and no number of them can be equivalent to the concept. There is no middle term between the individual and the universal: either there is the single or there is the whole, into which that single enters with all the singles. A concept which has been proved not universal, is, by that very fact, confuted as a concept. Our philosophical confutations do not proceed otherwise. Sociology, for instance, asserts theconcept ofSociety,as a rigorous concept and principle of science; and the criticism of Sociology proves that the concept of society is not universal, but individual, and is related to the groupings of certain beings which representation has placed before the sociologist, and which he has arbitrarily isolated from other complexes of beings that representation also placed or could place before him. The theory of tragedy postulates the concept of thetragic,and from it deduces certain necessary essentials of tragedy; and the criticism of literary classes demonstrates that the tragic is not a concept, but a roughly defined group of artistic representations, which have certain external likenesses in common; and, therefore, that it cannot serve as foundation for any theory. On the other hand, to establish a universality, which at first was wanting, is the glory of truly scientific thought; hence we give the name of discoverers to those who bring to light connections of representations or of representative groups, or of concepts, which had previously been separate; that is to say, who universalize them. Thus, it was thought at one time that will and action were distinct concepts; and it was a step in progress to identify them by the creation of the truly universal concept of the will, whichis also action. Thus, too, it was held that expression in language was a different thing from expression in art; and it was an advance to universalize the expression of art by extending it to language; or that of language by extending it to art.
Concreteness.
Not less proper to the concept is the other character ofconcreteness,which means that if the concept be universal and transcendent in relation to the single representation, it is yet immanent in the single, and therefore in all representations. The concept is the universal in relation to the representations, and is not exhausted in any one of them; but since the world of knowledge is the world of representations, the concept, if it were not in the representations, would not be anywhere: it would be inanotherworld, which cannot be thought, and therefore is not. Its transcendence, therefore, is also immanence; like that truly literary language that Dante desired, which, in relation to the speech of the different parts of Italy,in qualibet redolet civitate nec cubat in ulla.If it is proved of a concept that it is inapplicable to reality, and therefore is not concrete, it is thereby confuted as a true and proper concept. It is said to be anabstraction,it is not reality;it does not possessconcreteness.In this way, for example, has been confuted the concept of spirit as different from nature (abstract spiritualism); or of the good, as a model placed above the real world; or of atoms, as the components of reality; or of the dimensions of space, or of various quantities of pleasure and pain, and the like. All these are things not found in any part of the real, since there is neither a reality that is merely natural and external to spirit, nor an ideal world outside the real world; nor a space of one or of two dimensions; nor a pleasure or pain that is homogeneous with another, and therefore greater or less than another; and for this reason all these things do not result from concrete thinking and are not concepts.
The concrete universal, and the formation of the pseudoconcepts.
Expressivity, universality, concreteness, are then the three characteristics of the concept derived from the foregoing discussion. Expressivity affirms that the concept is a cognitive act, and denies that it is merely practical, as is maintained in various senses by mystics, and by arbitrarists or fictionists. Universality affirms that it is a cognitive actsui generis,the logical act, and denies that it is an intuition, as is maintained by the æstheticists, or a group ofintuitions, as is asserted in the doctrine of the arbitrarists or fictionists. Concreteness affirms that the universal logical act is also a thinking of reality, and denies that it can be universal and void, universal and inexistent, as is maintained in a special part of the doctrine of the arbitrarists. But this last point needs explanation, which leads us to enunciate explicitly an important division of the pseudoconcepts, which has hitherto been mentioned as apparently incidental.
Empirical pseudoconcepts and abstract pseudoconcepts.
The pseudoconcepts, falsifying the concept, cannot imitate it scrupulously, because, if they did, they would not be pseudoconcepts, but concepts; not imitations, but the very reality which they imitate. An actor who, pretending on the stage to kill his rival in love, really did so, would no longer be an actor, but a practical man and an assassin. If, therefore, with regard to the representations, and when preparing to form pseudoconcepts, we should think representations with that universality which is also the concreteness proper to the true concept, and with that transcendence which is also immanence (and is therefore calledtranscendentalism),we should form true concepts. This, indeed, often happens, as we can see in certain treatises whichmean to be empirical and arbitrary, and from which,currente rota, non urceus, sed amphora exit.Their authors, led by a profound and irrepressible philosophic sense, gradually and almost unconsciously abandon their initial purpose, and give true and proper concepts in place of the promised pseudoconcepts: they are philosophers, disguised as empiricists. In order to create pseudoconcepts, we must therefore begin by arbitrarily dividing into two the one supreme necessity of logic, immanent transcendence, or concrete universality, and form pseudoconcepts, which areconcretewithout beinguniversal,oruniversalwithout beingconcrete.There is no other way of falsifying the concept; whoever wishes to falsify it so completely as to render the imitation unrecognizable, does not falsify, but produces it; he does not remain outside, but permits himself to be caught in its coils; he does not invent a practical attitude, but thinks. That one mode is therefore specified in two particular modes, of which examples have already been given in our analysis of the pseudoconcepts of the house, the cat, the rose, which are concrete without being universal; and of the triangle and of free motion, which are universal without being concrete. There is nothing left to do, therefore,but to baptize them; selecting some of the many names that are applied, and often applied, sometimes to the one, sometimes to the other of the two forms, or indifferently to both, and giving to each of them a particular name, which will be constant in this treatise. We shall then call the first, that is to say, those which are concrete and not universal,empiricalpseudoconcepts; and the second, or those which are universal and not concrete,abstractpseudoconcepts; or, taking as understood for brevity's sake, the general denomination (pseudo),empirical conceptsandabstract concepts.
The other characteristics of the pure concept.
Thus, of the three characteristics of the concept which we have exhibited, the second and the third constitute, as we can now see, one only, which is stated in a double form, solely in order to deny and to combat these two one-sided forms which we have called empirical and abstract concepts. But, on the other hand, it is easy to see that the characteristics of the concept are not exhausted in the two that remain, namely, in expressivity or cognizability, and in transcendence or concrete universality. Others can reasonably be added, such asspirituality, utility, morality,but we shall not dwell upon these, because either they belong to the general assumptionof Logic, that is, to the fundamental concept of Philosophy as the science of spirit, or they are more conveniently made clear in the other parts of this Philosophy. The concept has the character of spirituality and not of mechanism, because reality is spiritual, not mechanical; and for this reason we have to reject every mechanical or associationist theory of Logic, just as we have to reject similar doctrines in Æsthetic, in Economic and in Ethic. A special discussion of these views seems superfluous, because they are discussed and negated, that is to say, surpassed, in every line of our treatise. The concept has the character of utility, because, if the theoretic form of the spirit be distinct from the practical, it is not less true, by the law of the unity of the spirit, that to think is also an act of the will, and therefore, like every act of the will, it is teleological, not antiteleological; useful, not useless. And, finally, it has the character of morality, because its utility is not merely individual, but, on the contrary, is subordinated to and absorbed in the moral activity of the spirit; so that to think, that is, to seek and find the true, is also to collaborate in progress, in the elevation of Humanity and Reality, it is the denial and overcoming ofoneself as a single individual, and the service of God.
The origin of the multiplicity and unity of character of the concept.
Certainly, the form in which the order of our discourse has led us to establish the characters of the concept—that of enumeration, the one character being connected with the other by means of an "also"—is, logically, a very crude form, and must be refined and corrected. Above all, if we have spoken ofcharactersof the concept, we have done so in order to adhere to the usual mode of expression. The concept cannot have characters, in the plural, butcharacter,that one character which is proper to it. What this is has been seen; the concept is concrete-universal two words which designate one thing only, and can also grammatically become one: "transcendental," or whatever other word be chosen from those already coined, or that may be coined for the occasion. The other determinations are notcharactersof the concept, but affirm itsrelationswith the spiritual activity in general, of which it is a special form, and with the other special forms of this activity. In the first relation, the concept is spiritual; in relation with the æsthetic activity, it is cognitive or expressive, and enters into the general theoretic-expressive form; in relation with the practical activity, it isnot, as concept, either useful or moral, but as a concrete act of the spirit it must be called useful and moral. The exposition of the characters of the concept, correctly thought, resolves itself into the compendious exposition of the whole Philosophy of spirit, in which the concept takes its place in its unique character, that is to say, in itself.
Objections relating to the unreality of the pure concept and to the impossibility of demonstrating it.
This declaration may save us from the accusation of having given an empirical exposition of the non-empiricalConcept of the concept,and so committing an error for which logicians are justly reproved (for they have often believed themselves to possess the right of treating of Logic without logic; perhaps for the same reason that custodians of sacred places are wont, through over-familiarity, to fail in respect towards them). But it lays us open to censure very much more severe; which, if it ultimately prove to be inoffensive, is certainly very noisy and loquacious. The pretended characters of the concepts (it is said) are, by your own confession, nothing but its relations with the other forms of the spirit; and the one character proper to it is that of universality-concreteness, that is, of being itself, since the "concrete-universal" is synonymous with the concept, andvice versa.So it turns out that in spite of all your efforts, your concept of the concept becomes dissipated in a tautology. Give us a demonstration of what you affirm, or a definition which is not tautologous; then we shall be able to form some sort of an idea of your pure concept. Otherwise you may talk about it for ever, but for us it will always be like "Phœnician Araby" of Metastasian memory: "you saythat it is; where it is,no one knows."
Prejudice relating to the nature of demonstration.
Beneath such dissatisfaction and the claim it implies, we find first of all a prejudice of scholastic origin concerning what is calleddemonstration.That is to say, it is imagined that demonstration is like an irresistible contrivance, which grasps the learner by the neck and drags him willy-nilly, whither he does not and the teacher does will to go, leaving him open-mouthed before the truth, which stands external to him, and before which he must,obtorto collo,bow himself. But such coercive demonstrations do not exist for any form of knowledge—indeed, for any form of spiritual life—nor is there a truth outside our spirit. Not that truth presupposesfaith,as is often said, so that rationality is subordinated to some unknown form of irrationality; buttruth is faith,trust in oneself, certaintyof oneself, free development of one's inner powers. The light is in us; those sequences of sounds, which are the so-called demonstration, serve only as aids in discarding the veils and directing the gaze; but in themselves they have no power to open the eyes of those who obstinately wish to keep them closed. Faced with this sort of reluctance and rebellion, the pedagogues of the good old days had recourse, as we know, not to demonstrations, but to the stool of penitence and to the stick; so fully were they persuaded that the demonstration of truth requires good dispositions,i.e.requires those who are disposed to fall back upon themselves and to look into themselves. How can the beauty of the song of Farinata be demonstrated to one who denies it, and will neither appreciate the soul contained in that sublime poem, nor accomplish the work necessary to attain to the possibility of such an appreciation, nor will, on the other hand, humbly confess his own incapacity and lack of preparation,—how can we forcibly demonstrate to him that that song is beautiful? The critical wisdom of Francesco de Sanctis would be disarmed and impotent before such a situation. How can we demonstrate to one who deliberately refuses to believe in any authority or document, and breaksthe tradition by which we are bound to the past, that Miltiades conquered at Marathon, or that Demosthenes strove all his life against the power of Macedonia? He will capriciously throw doubt on the pages of Herodotus and the orations of Demosthenes; and no reasoning will be able to repress that caprice. What more can be said? Even in arithmetic, for which calculating machines exist, compulsory demonstration is impossible. In vain you will lift two fingers of the hand, and then the third and the fourth, in order to demonstrate to one who does not wish for demonstration that two and two are four; he will reply that he is not convinced. And indeed he cannot be convinced, if he do not accomplish that inner spiritual synthesis by which twice two" and four reveal themselves as two names of one and the same thing. Therefore, he who awaits a compelling demonstration of the existence of the pure concept, awaits in vain. For our part, we cannot give him anything but that which we are giving: a discourse, directed towards making clear the difficulties, and towards demonstrating how, by means of the pure concept, all problems concerning the life of the spirit are illuminated, and how, without it, we cannot understand anything.
Prejudice concerning the representability of the concept.
But another prejudice, perhaps yet more tenacious than the first, accompanies this extravagant idea about demonstration. Accustomed as men are to move among things, to see, to hear, to touch them, while hardly or only fugitively reflecting upon the spiritual processes which produce that vision, hearing and touching; when they come to treat of a philosophic question, and to conceive a concept (and especially when it is necessary to conceive precisely the concept of the concept), they do not know how to refrain from demanding just that which they have been obliged to renounce in their new search, and which they have already renounced, owing to the very fact of their having entered into it: the representative element, something that they can see, hear and touch. It is almost as though a novice, on entering a monastery, and having just pronounced the solemn vow of chastity, should ask, as his first request upon taking possession of his cell, for the woman who is to be his companion in that life. He will be answered that in such a place his spouse cannot be anything but an ideal spouse, holy Religion or holy Mother Church.
Protests of the philosophers against this prejudice.
All philosophers have been compelled to protest against the request, which they have hadaddressed to them, for an impossible external demonstration and for something representative in a field where representation has been surpassed. "In our system (said Fichte) we mustourselveslay thefoundationof our own philosophy, and consequently that system must seem to be without foundation to one who is incapable of accomplishing that act. But he may be assured beforehand that he will never find a foundation elsewhere, if he do not lay such an one for himself, or remain not satisfied with it. It is fitting that our philosophy should proclaim this in a loud voice, in order that it may be spared the pretence of demonstrating to mankind fromwithoutwhat they must create in themselves."[1]Schelling appropriately compared philosophic obtuseness with æsthetic obtuseness: "There are two only ways out of common reality. Poetry, which transports you into an ideal world, and Philosophy, which makesthe real world disappear altogether from our sight.One does not see why the sense for Philosophy should be more generally diffused than that for Poetry."[2]And Hegel, giving explanations which precisely meet the present case, says: "What is called theincomprehensibilityofPhilosophy, arises, in part, from an incapacity (in itself only a lack of habit) to think abstractly, that is to say, to hold pure thoughts firmly before the spirit and to move in them. In our ordinary consciousness, thoughts are clothed in and united with ordinary sensible and spiritual matter; and in our rethinking, reflecting and reasoning we mingle sentiments, intuitions and representations with thoughts: in every proposition whose content is entirely sensible (for example: this leaf is green) there are already mingled categories, such as being and individuality. But it is quite another thing to take as our object thoughts by themselves, without any admixture. The other reason for its incomprehensibility is the impatience which demands to have before it as representation that which in consciousness appears only as thought and concept. And we hear people say that they do not know what there isto thinkin a concept, which is already apprehended; whereasin a concept there is nothing to be thought but the concept itself.But the meaning of this saying is just that they want a familiar and ordinaryrepresentation.It seems to consciousness as if, with the removal from it of the representation, the ground had been removed which was its firm and habitual support. When transported into thepure region of the concepts, it no longer knowswhat world it is in.For this reason, those writers, preachers and orators are esteemed marvels ofcomprehensibilitywho offer their readers or hearers things which they already know thoroughly, things which are familiar to them and which are self-evident."[3]
Reason for their perpetual recurrence.
Thus have all philosophers protested, and thus will all protest still, from age to age, because that intolerance, that immobility, that recalcitrance before the very painful effort of having to abandon the world of sense (though but for a single instant, and in order to reconquer and to possess it more completely) will perpetually be renewed. They are the birth-pangs of the Concept, to escape which no plans for virginity and no manoeuvres to procure abortion are of any avail. They must be endured, because that law of the Concept ("thou shalt bring forth in suffering") is also a law of life.
[1]System de Sittenlehre(inSämmtl. Werke), iv. p. 26.
[1]System de Sittenlehre(inSämmtl. Werke), iv. p. 26.
[2]Idealismo transcendentale,trad. Losacco, p. 19.
[2]Idealismo transcendentale,trad. Losacco, p. 19.
[3]Encyclopædia,Croce's translation, § 3, Observations.
[3]Encyclopædia,Croce's translation, § 3, Observations.
Disputes of materialistic origin.
Disputes as to the nature of the concept have sometimes had their origin (notably in the recent period of philosophic barbarism, which "renews the fear of thought," whence we have with difficulty emerged) in materialistic, mechanical and naturalistic prejudices. Therefore, as already mentioned, discussion has arisen as to whether the concept should be considered logical or psychological, as the product of synthesis or of association, or of individual or hereditary association. But these are controversies which, for the reasons we gave before, we shall not spend time in illustrating.
The concept as value.
Nor shall we pay attention to the other controversy, as to whether concepts arevalues or facts,whether they operate only asnormsor also aseffective forcesof the real; because the division between values and facts, between norms and effective existence (betweenGeltenandSein,asit is expressed in German terminology), is itself surpassed and unified, implicitly and explicitly, in all our philosophy. If the concept or thought has value, it can have value only because itis;if the norm of thought operate as a norm, that implies that it is thought itself, its own norm, a constitutive element of reality. There is not to be found in any form of spiritual life any value which is not also reality—not in art, where there is no other beauty than art itself; nor in morality, where no other goodness is known than action itself directed to the universal; nor in the life of thought. The concept has value, because it is; and is, because it has value.
Realism and nominalism.
But the greater part of these dissensions, which have existed for centuries and are yet living, rests on the confusion between concepts and pseudoconcepts, and the consequent pretension to define the concept by denying one or other of these two forms. This is the origin of the two opposite schools ofrealistsandnominalists,which are also called in our times rationalists and empiricists (arbitrarists, conventionalists, hedonists). The realists maintain that concepts are real: that they correspond to reality; the nominalists, that they are simple names to designate representations and groups ofrepresentations, or, as is now said, tickets and labels placed upon things in order to recognize and find them again. In the former case, no elaboration of representations higher than the universalizing act of the concept is possible; in the latter, the only possible operation is that which has already been described—mutilation, reduction and fiction, directed to practical ends.
Critique of both.
The consequence of these one-sided affirmations has been that the realists have defined as concepts, and therefore as having a universal character, all sorts of rough pseudoconcepts; not only the horse, the artichoke and the mountain, but also, logically, the table, the bed, the seat, the glass, and so on; and they have exposed themselves from the earliest beginnings of philosophy to the sarcastic and irresistible objection that the horse exists, but not horsiness, the table, but not tabularity. This conceptualization of pseudoconcepts is the error of which they have really been guilty, not that of conferring empirical reality on the concepts by placing them as single things alongside of other things, an extravagance which it is doubtful if any man of moderate sense has ever seriously committed. The realists who rendered the concepts real in this sense at the same time rendered themunreal, that is to say, single and contingent, and in need of being surpassed by true concepts. The nominalists, on the other hand, considered as arbitrary and mere names all the presuppositions of their mental life—being and becoming, quality and final cause, goodness and beauty, the true and the false, the Spirit and God. Without being aware of it, they have fallen into inextricable contradictions and into logical scepticism.
True realism.
It is henceforth clear that this secular dispute cannot be decided in favour of one or other of the contending parties, for both are right in what they affirm and wrong in what they deny, that is, both are right and wrong. The two forms of spiritual products, of which each of those schools in its affirmations emphasizes only one, both actually exist; the one is not in antithesis to the other, as the rational is to the irrational. The true doctrine of the concept is realism, which does not deny nominalism, but puts it in its place, and establishes with it loyal and unequivocal relations.
Solution of other difficulties concerning the genesis of concepts.
By establishing such relations we emerge from the vicious circle, which has given such trouble to certain logicians, who have striven to explain the genesis of the concepts in terms of nominalism, but were afterwards, when probingtheir doctrine to the bottom, compelled to admit thenecessity of the conceptsas afoundationfor thegenesis of the concepts.They believed that they had got out of the difficulty by distinguishing two orders of concepts, primary and secondary, formative models and formations according to models; and they thus reproduced, in the semblance of a solution, the problem still unsolved. In different words, others admitted the same embarrassment. They attempted to obtain the concepts fromexperience,but recognized at the same time that all experience presupposes anideal anticipation.Or they declared that the concept fixes theessentialcharacters of things, and, at the same time, that the essential characters of things are indispensable for fixing theconcept.Or, finally, they based the formation of concepts uponcategories,which, enumerated and understood as they understood them, were by no means categories and functions, butconcepts.Primary concepts, formative models, ideal anticipations, essential concepts, concept-categories, and the like, are nothing but verbal variants of the pure concepts; the necessary presupposition, as we know, for the impure concepts or pseudoconcepts.
Disputes arising from neglect of the distinction between empirical and abstract concepts.
Other disputes, far enough apart in significance and nature, concerning the nature of the concept,acquire a more precise meaning when referred to our subdivision of pseudoconcepts intoempiricalorrepresentative,andabstract.Thereby we can understand why it has been asked if the concepts areconcreteorabstract, generaloruniversal, contingentornecessary, approximateorrigorous;if they are obtaineda posterioriora priori,byinductionordeduction,bysynthesisoranalysis,and so on. This series of disputes likewise cannot be settled, save by admitting that both contending parties are right and wrong, and demonstrating that pseudoconcepts (which are alone here in discussion) are constructed by analysis, and by deduction area priori,and have the characters of abstractness, rigorousness, universality and necessity, if it be a question ofabstractpseudoconcepts, that is to say, of empty fictions, outside experience; while, on the other hand, they are constructed by synthesis, and by induction area posteriori,and have the characters of concreteness, approximation, mere generality and contingency, if they be empirical orrepresentativepseudoconcepts, that is to say, groups of representations, which do not go beyond representation and experience. Indeed, from this last point of view, no error was made in denying any difference between the (representative)conceptand thegeneral representation.It is false that this latter is the result of psychical mechanism or association, and the former of psychical purpose, because there is nothing mechanical in the spirit; and the general representation, if it is a product of the spirit, is as teleological as the other, indeed is absolutely one with the other. It obeys, like it, the law ofeconomy,or, as we have shown, the practical ends of convenience and utility.
Crossing of the various disputes.
But these last disputes have crossed with that which we first examined between realism and nominalism, and have sometimes taken on the same meaning. This must be kept in mind, to serve as a guide in the dense forest. Is the concepta prioriora posteriori,universal or general, necessary or contingent? These questions and others like them were sometimes understood as equivalent to the question: is it real or nominal, truth or fiction?
Other logical disputes.
Certain problems of Logic, not yet solved in a satisfactory manner, arise from the failure to make clear the confusion between concepts and pseudoconcepts, and between empirical and abstract concepts. Is it or is it not true that every concept must have an individual representation, taken from its own sphere, as anecessarysupport? Are concepts ofthingspossible, or is there a special concept corresponding to every thing? Is a concept of theindividualpossible? These three questions may be answered in the affirmative, in the negative, and in the affirmative-negative, according as they are referred to the empirical concept, the abstract concept, or the pure concept.
The representative accompaniment of the concept.
For, if we consider the first question, we must resolutely deny that the abstract concept has any need of a particular representation as its necessary support. The geometric triangle, as such, is neither white nor black, nor of any given size; if the representation of a particular triangle unites itself to it, geometry discards it. But we must just as resolutely affirm than an empirical or representative concept has always an image to support it; the concept of a cat needs the image of a cat, and every book on zoology is accompanied with illustrations. The image may be varied, but never suppressed; and it may be varied only within certain limits, because, if these be exceeded, the concept itself loses its form and is dissipated. Thus, for the concept of the cat, we could frame a representation of a white or black or red cat, or a small or big one; but if scarlet colour or the size of an elephant beattributed to the cat, which serves as symbol of the fiction, the concept must be changed. That concept has at its command the images of cats, upon which it has been formed, which, as we know, are always finite in number. Finally, with reference to the pure concept, it must be said that every image and no image is in turn a symbol of it; as every blade of grass (as Vanini said) represents God, and a number of images, however great it be, does not suffice to represent Him.
The concept of the thing and the concept of the individual.
In like manner, as regards the second question, it must be answered that the empirical concept is nothing but a concept of things, or a grouping of a certain number of things beneath one or other of them, which functions as a type; that the abstract concept is by definition, the not-thing, incapable of representation; and that the pure concept is a concept of every thing and of no thing. And as regards the third, we must answer that the abstract concept is altogether repugnant to individuality; the pure concept alights upon every individual, only to leave it again, and in so far as it thinks all individual things, it renders them all, in a certain way, concepts, and in so far as it surpasses them, it denies them as such; while the empirical conceptcan be theconcept of the individual.Because if in reality, the individual be the situation of the universal spirit at a determinate instant, empirically considered the individual becomes something isolated, cut off from the rest and shut up in itself, so that it is possible to attribute to it a certain constancy in relation to the occurrences of the life it lives; so that that life assumes almost the position of the individual determinations of a concept. Socrates is the life of Socrates, inseparable from all the life of the time in which he developed; but empirically and usefully we can construct the concept of a Socrates a controversialist, an educator, endowed with imperturbable calm, of which the Socrates who ate and drank and wore clothes, and lived during such and such occurrences, is the incarnation. Thus we can form pseudoconcepts of individuals as well as of things, or, to express it in terms that are the fashion, we can formPlatonic ideasof them.
Reasons, laws, and causes.
It is also well to note that to adduce thereasons,thelaws,thecausesof things and of reality, is equivalent to establishing concepts, and since the word "concepts" has been applied in turn to pure and to empirical and abstract concepts, laws and causes have been alternately described as truths and as fictions. It belongsto the discussion of terminology to remark that in general the word "reason" has been used only for researches into pure and abstract concepts, "cause" for empirical concepts, and "laws" almost equally for all three, but perhaps a little more for empirical and abstract than for pure concepts. But to the confusion of these three forms of spiritual products is to be attributed the fact that there have been discussions, as, for instance, whether there beconcepts of lawsin addition to concepts of things, the issue of which was at bottom the desire to ascertain whether there exist abstract and pure concepts, in addition to empirical concepts.
Intellect and Reason.
The profound diversity of the concepts and of the pseudoconcepts suggested (at the time when it was customary to represent the forms or grades of the spirit as faculties) the distinction between two logical faculties, which were calledIntellect(or, also,abstractIntellect), andReason.The first of these formed what we now call pseudoconcepts; the second, pure concepts.
The abstract intellect and its practical nature.
But the proper character of neither of the two faculties was realized by those who postulated them; they fell into the error, which we have already had occasion to criticize, of conceiving the Intellect as a form of knowledge, whicheither lives in the false, or is limited to preparing the material for the superior faculty, to which it supplies a first imperfect sketch of the concept. But the faculty required for this should be, not of a theoretical nature, but of a practical. It is a terminological question of slight interest, whether the name "Intellect" should be retained for the production of pseudoconcepts, or whether the purely theoretic meaning, which it first had, should be restored to it, and it should thus be made synonymous with "Reason." It can only be observed that it will be very difficult to remove henceforth from "Intellect," from "intellectual formations," and from "intellectualism," the suspicion and discredit cast upon them by the great philosophic history of the first half of the nineteenth century; so much so, that only where a rather popular style is employed, can Intellect and Reason be used promiscuously.
With greater truth, Reason was considered as unifying what the Intellect had divided, and therefore as unifying abstraction and concreteness, deduction and induction, analysis and synthesis. With greater truth, although complete exactness would have demanded here, not so much that to Reason should be given the power of unifying what has been unduly divided, as that to theIntellect, that is to say, to the practical faculty, should be given the power of dividing extrinsically what for Reason is never divided: a power which the Intellect, as a practical faculty, possesses and exercises, not in a pathological, but in a physiological way.
The synthesis of theoretic and practical, and the intellectual intuition.
The incomplete survey of the so-called Intellect, the theoretic character of which was preserved, though in a depreciatory sense, issued in the result that finally to Reason itself was attributed a character, no longer theoretic, or rather,more than theoretic.Knowledge, presenting itself in the form of Intellect, seemed inadequate to truth; to attain to which there intervened Reason, or speculative procedure, thesynthesis of theory and practice,a knowledge which is action, and an action which is knowledge. Sometimes, Reason itself, thus transfigured, seemed insufficient, owing to the presence of ratiocinative processes, which came to it from the Intellect, and were absorbed by it; and the supreme faculty of truth was conceived, not as logical reasoning, but as intuition; an intuition differing from the purely artistic and revealing the genuine truth, an organ of the absolute,intellectual Intuition.It was urged against intellectual intuition that it created irresponsibilityin the field of truth, and made lawful every individual caprice. But a similar objection could be brought against Reason, which is superior to knowledge, and is the synthesis of theory and practice: while, on the other hand, it cannot be denied, both of intellectual Intuition and of Reason, that on the whole they affirmed or tended to affirmthe rights of the pure Concept,as opposed to empirical and abstract concepts.
Uniqueness of thought.
For our part, we have no need to lower the cognitive activity beneath the level of truth, by attributing to it an intellectualiste and arbitrary function; nor, on the other hand (in order to supplement knowledge and intellect thus pauperized), to exalt Reason above itself. Thought (call it Intellect, or Reason, or what you will) is always thought; and it always thinks with pure concepts, never with pseudoconcepts. And since there is not another thought beneath thought, so there is not another thought superior to it. The difficulties which led to these conclusions have been completely explained, when we have distinguished concepts from pseudoconcepts, and demonstrated the heterogeneity which exists between these two forms of spiritual products.
The pseudoconcepts, not a subdivision of the concept.
Precisely because they are heterogeneous formations, pure concepts and pseudoconcepts do not constitute divisions of the generic concept of the concept. To assume that they did, would be a horrible confusion of terms, not far different (to use Spinoza's example) from that of the division of the dog intoanimaldog andconstellationdog; though poets used at one time to talk of the celestial dog also, as "barking and biting," when the sun implacably burned the fields.
Obscurity, clearness and distinction, not subdivisions of the concept.
And seeing that our point of view is philosophic, we can take no account of another division of the concept, which had great fame and authority in the past: that intoobscure, confused, clearanddistinctconcepts and the like, or of the degrees ofperfectionto which the concept attains. Such a division can retain at the most but an empirical and approximate value,and under this aspect it will be difficult altogether to renounce it in ordinary discourse; but it has no logical and philosophic value whatever. The concept is what is truly concept, the perfect concept, not at all the encumbered or wandering tendency toward it. Yet that division had great historical importance. By means of it, indeed, the attempt was made to differentiate the concept, under the name ofclearanddistinctthought, from the intuition, which wasclearbutconfusedthought, and both of these from sensation, impression, or emotion, which was calledobscure.This was attempted, but without success; the problem was set but not solved; for the solution was only attained when it was seen that, in this case, it was not a question of three degrees of thought, as absolute logic claimed, but of three forms of the spirit: of thought ordistinction,of intuitionox clearness; and of the practical activity,obscurityornaturality.