Benedetto Croce

Dzieła

• 1902Estetyka jako nauka o wyrazie i językoznawstwo ogólne

  Określa sztukę jako intuicję, która jest tożsama z wyrazem, oddziela ją od pojęć, użyteczności i moralności oraz dodaje historię estetyki, w której Vico występuje jako jej odkrywca.

• 1907Co żywe, a co martwe w filozofii Hegla

  Zachowuje heglowską dialektykę przeciwieństw, lecz krytykuje jego mieszanie przeciwieństw z odrębnymi formami ducha oraz jego filozofię przyrody i dziejów.

• 1938Historia jako myśl i działanie

  Przedstawia wiedzę historyczną jako myśl teraźniejszości o przeszłości, a wolność jako ideał moralny nadający historii sens.

Stanowisko

Croce is on the map as the central figure of Italian neo-idealism and, for half a century, of Italian culture. His philosophy of spirit distinguishes two theoretical forms, intuition and concept, and two practical ones, economic and ethical will; against Hegel he held that these are “distinct” forms, related as degrees, not opposites to be overcome in a dialectical synthesis. The “Aesthetic” of 1902 defined art as intuition identical with expression, independent of concepts, utility and morality, and presented Vico as the discoverer of aesthetics; it influenced R. G. Collingwood and literary criticism in Italy and beyond, and in 1948 Croce argued that Dewey’s aesthetics rested on idealist premises, which Dewey denied. In his theory of history Croce held that all true history is contemporary history, the thought of the present about the past, and later presented liberty as the moral ideal of history. Gramsci devoted a notebook to an “Anti-Croce” and criticised the speculative and politically moderate traits of this historicism. Croce interpreted fascism as a moral illness and an interruption of Italy’s liberal history; Piero Gobetti had seen it instead as the “autobiography of the nation”, and later historians have debated how far Croce’s reading spared the liberal elites who had helped fascism to power.

Życie i kontekst

Benedetto Croce was born on 25 February 1866 in Pescasseroli in the Abruzzi into a wealthy landowning family and grew up in Naples. In 1883 he lost his parents and his sister in the earthquake of Casamicciola on Ischia and was himself buried under the rubble for hours. He then lived in Rome with his uncle, the politician Silvio Spaventa, enrolled in law without taking a degree and attended Antonio Labriola’s lectures. Back in Naples from 1886, he lived as a private scholar on his own means and wrote first on the history and literature of Naples. In 1903 he founded the journal “La Critica”, in which Giovanni Gentile collaborated until 1922, and edited it until 1944. He became a senator in 1910 and was minister of public education in Giovanni Giolitti’s last government in 1920–21. In June 1924, after the murder of Giacomo Matteotti, he voted in the Senate for confidence in Mussolini’s government; on 1 May 1925 he published the manifesto of antifascist intellectuals in reply to Gentile and thereafter remained an opponent of the regime in Italy, watched by the police but tolerated. After 1943 he led the refounded Liberal Party, was a minister without portfolio in 1944 and sat in the Constituent Assembly. In 1946 he founded the Italian Institute for Historical Studies in Naples. He died in Naples on 20 November 1952.

Dalsze główne dzieła

• Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic (Estetica come scienza dell’espressione e linguistica generale, 1902)
• What Is Living and What Is Dead of the Philosophy of Hegel (Ciò che è vivo e ciò che è morto della filosofia di Hegel, 1907)
• Logic as the Science of the Pure Concept (Logica come scienza del concetto puro, 1909)
• Philosophy of the Practical (Filosofia della pratica. Economica ed etica, 1909)
• Theory and History of Historiography (Teoria e storia della storiografia, 1917)
• History as the Story of Liberty (La storia come pensiero e come azione, 1938)