Benedetto Croce

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Benedetto Croce : biography

25 February 1866 – 20 November 1952

Croce voted for the Monarchy in the Constitutional referendum of June 1946, after having persuaded his Liberal party to adopt a neutral stance. He was elected to the Constituent Assembly which existed in Italy between June 1946 and January 1948. He spoke in the Assembly against the Peace treaty (signed in February 1947), which he regarded as humiliating for Italy. He declined to stand as provisional President of Italy.

Croce was an atheist.Gramsci, Antonio, Il materialismo storico e la filosofia di Benedetto Croce, Einaudi, 1966, p. 310.

Philosophical works

His most interesting philosophical ideas are divided into three works: Aesthetic (1902), Logic (1908), and Philosophy of the practical (1908), but his complete work is spread over 80 books and 40 years worth of publications in his own bimonthly literary magazine, La Critica. (Ryn, 2000:xiHistory as the story of liberty: English translation of Croce’s 1938 collection of essays originally in Italian; translation published by Liberty Fun Inc. in the USA in 2000 with a foreword by Claes G. Ryn. ISBN 0-86597-268-0 (hardback). See .)

Selected bibliography

  • Materialismo storico ed economia marxistica (1900).# English edition: Historical Materialism and the Economics of Karl Marx. Whitefish, MT: Kessinger, 2004. See also: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/croce/
  • L’Estetica come scienza dell’espressione e linguistica generale (1902), commonly referred to as Aesthetic in English.
  • Logica come scienza del concetto puro (1909)
  • Breviario di estetica (1912)
  • Saggio sul Hegel (1907), (1912)# English edition: What is Living and What is Dead in the Philosophy of Hegel, transl. by Douglas Ainslie. London: Macmillan, 1915. See also: .
  • Teoria e storia della storiografia (1916). English edition: Theory and history of Historiography, translation by Douglas Ainslie, Editor: George G. Harrap. London (1921).
  • Racconto degli racconti (first translation into Italian from Neapolitan of Giambattista Basile’s Pentamerone, Lo cunto de li cunti, 1925)
  • "Manifesto of the Anti-Fascist Intellectuals" (1 May 1925 in La Critica)
  • Ultimi saggi (1935)
  • La poesia (1936)
  • La storia come pensiero e come azione (meaning History as thought and as action) (1938), translated in English by Sylvia Sprigge as History as the story of liberty in 1941 in London by George Allen & Unwin and in USA by W.W. Norton. The most recent edited translation based on that of Sprigge is Liberty Fund Inc. in 2000. The 1941 English translation is accessible online through Questia.
  • Il carattere della filosofia moderna (1941)
  • Filosofia e storiografia (1949)

Beauty

Croce’s work Breviario di estetica (The Essence of Aesthetic) appears in the form of four lessons (quattro lezioni), as he was asked to write and deliver them at the inauguration of Rice University in 1912. He declined the invitation to attend the event; however, he wrote the lessons and submitted them for translation, so that they could be read in his absence.

In this brief, but dense, work, Croce sets forth his theory of art. He claimed that art is more important than science or metaphysics, since only the former edifies us. He felt that all we know can be reduced to logical and imaginative knowledge. Art springs from the latter, making it at its heart, pure imagery. All thought is based in part on this, and it precedes all other thought. The task of an artist is then to put forth the perfect image that they can produce for their viewer, since this is what beauty fundamentally is – the formation of inward, mental images in their ideal state. Our intuition is the basis of forming these concepts within us.

This theory was later heavily debated by such contemporary Italian thinkers as Umberto Eco, who locates the aesthetic within a semiotic construction.Umberto Eco, "A Theory of Semiotics" (Indiana University Press. 1976)

Selected quotations

  • "All history is contemporary history."{}
  • "As an historian, [I] realize how arbitrary, fantastic and inconclusive are theories of race."

Contributions to liberal political theory

Croce’s liberalism differs from the theories advocated by most proponents of liberal political thought, including those in Britain and in the United States of America: while Croce theorises that the individual is the centre of society, he rejects social atomism, and while Croce accepts limited government, he refuses that the government should have fixed legitimate powers.

Croce did not agree with John Locke about the nature of liberty. Croce believed that liberty is not a natural right but an earned right that arises out of continuing historical struggle for its maintenance.

Croce defined civilization as the "continual vigilance" against barbarism, and liberty fit into his ideal for civilization as it allows one to experience the full potential of life.

Croce also rejects egalitarianism as absurd. In short, his variety of liberalism is aristocratic, as he views society being led by the few who can create the goodness of truth, civilization, and beauty, with the great mass of citizens simply benefiting from them but unable to fully comprehend their creations (Ryn, 2000:xii).