My Philosophy

MY PHILOSOPHY AND OTHER ESSAYS ON THE MORAL AND POLITICAL PROBLEMS OF OUR TIME by BENEDETTO CROCE. Contents include: Translators Note page 5 Discourses on Philosophy I. My Philosophy n a. The Moral Problem of Our Time 21 3. Why We Cannot Help Calling Ourselves Christian 37 Philosophy of Politics 4. Unpolitical Man 51 5. The State as Friend and as Enemy 55 6. An Essay in Communist Philosophy 64 7. Note on the History of Communism as Practical Politics 68 8. The Idea of Classes as Real Entities 79 9. Aristocracy and the Masses 84 10. Political Truth and Popular Myths 88 n. Liberalism and Democracy 93 12. Justice and Liberty 97 13. Liberty and Revolution 109 14. The - Theory of Liberty Once More in 15. Justice as a Legal Conception 115 16. Peace and War 117 17. The Idealisation of War 120 18. Patriotism a Disused Word 125 19. Denationalisation of History 127 Problems of Ethics and Aesthetics 20. The Intellectual Life Morals and Aesthetics 131 21. Art as the Form of Pure Knowledge 137 22. The Two Profane Sciences Aesthetics and Economics 140 23. The Conflict of Duties 153 24. Manual Work and Work of the Mind 158 Philosophy of History 25. Providence or the Cunning of the Idea 167 26. The History of Ends and the History of Means 172 27. The History of Events and Judgments of Value 176 28. In Praise of Individuality 180 29. Proust An Example of Decadent Historical Method 208 Various Thoughts 30. Sexuality and Spirituality 217 31. Our Debt to Thought 219 32. The Eternal Problems 221 33. Eternal Truth 222 34. The Final Philosophy 224 35. Eternal Life 225 36. The Identity of Philosophy and the Moral Life 226 37. Soliloquy of an Old Philosopher 233. DISCOURSES ON PHILOSOPHY. MY PHILOSOPHY: I HAVE ALWAYS DECLINED the request to expound my philosophy shortly in a popular way, partly because philosophy, like any other work of man, can only be really understood by those who are of the trade, and partly because this possessive my has a bad sound. Any craftsman who takes up the job which a fellow-worker or pre decessor has dropped, and carries it on towards perfection does not call it his but our work. But I have now reached the age when, as Giovanni Prati wrote, there rises in the heart the sadness of the days that are no more. It was his fortune to know sadness but not, as we do, to despair in the encircling gloom of slaughter and destruction of all that we held dear or sacred. I have reached the age when a mans life seems a past that he can survey at a single glance, and when he himself takes his place in history, or to put it more plainly, he looks at himself as if he were dead. That is why I am now willing to comply briefly, so far as is modest and reasonable, with the request. Consistently with my simile of a craft as always a matter of colla boration, we must get rid of the pretence or illusion that a philo sophers work or system is a self-completed revelation of the so-called mystery of reality...