Benedetto Croce. A Question of Method in the History of Philosophy. Preface, translation and commentaries

Abstract

This publication presents a translation into Russian of Benedetto Croce’s essay from one of his later books “Philosophy and Historiography”. Here he raises the question of how the historian of philosophy should interpret those moments when the reasoning of a philosopher who is being studied is accidentally or deliberately not cleared up by him, or its development stops at a certain point. Considering the possible reasons for this, Croce touches on several themes to which his ear­lier writings were devoted and to which he returned throughout his scholarly life. Thus, he draws attention to the contradiction in the theory of knowledge of G. Vico, which consists in the applica­tion of the principle of verum-factum not only to history, but also to the mathematical sciences: on the one hand, only God can achieve truth in knowledge of nature, since he created nature, and on the other hand, truth in mathematics is available to man, since he “creates” mathematical ele­ments and operations, and with them the method of natural science. Croce also points as an exam­ple to one of the contradictions in Hegel’s philosophy of nature, which consists in the confu­sion of empirical and speculative methods. It led to the endowment of the natural sciences with the status of “semi-philosophy”, to the untrue application of dialectics to the facts and concepts of the natural sciences. Convinced that the verum-factum formula can be combined with the teaching of absolute spiritualism, Croce warns against attributing such a connection to Vico himself, as this would mean incorporating later experience and a state of knowledge into his theory.