Croce, Benedetto

born Feb. 25, 1866, Pescasseroli, Italy

died Nov. 20, 1952, Naples

Italian patriot, aesthetician, critic, and cultural historian.

He founded La Critica, an influential journal of cultural criticism, in 1903 and was its editor until 1937. A passionate antifascist, he helped revive liberal institutions in the years following World War II, including the Liberal Party, which he led from 1943 to 1952. In 1947 he founded the Italian Institute for Historical Studies. His philosophical work has been influential in aesthetics and in studies of Giambattista Vico, which he helped to revive.

Benedetto Croce

H. Roger-Viollet

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▪ Italian philosopher

Introduction

born Feb. 25, 1866, Pescasseroli, Italy

died Nov. 20, 1952, Naples

 historian, humanist, and foremost Italian philosopher of the first half of the 20th century.

Early life.

      Croce belonged to a family of landed proprietors with estates in the Abruzzi region of central Italy but chiefly resident in Naples. His background was religious, monarchical, and conservative. Croce spent almost his whole life in Naples, becoming intimately identified with and a keen observer of its life and a biographer of its heroes. His life, of which he left a too-modest record in his autobiography, falls roughly into four phases; each develops the dual theme of his intellectual and moral growth and his gradual, ever-deepening identification with the moral character and destiny of the Italian nation.

      The first period of Croce's life (until about 1900) was the period of Croce's agony. Orphaned (with his brother, Alfonso) by the earthquake of Casamicciola in 1883, his life became, in his words, a “bad dream.” The stable world of childhood and youth was shattered, leaving him forever marked. Henceforth, he was a solitary figure, despite his considerable activity in the world.

      His salvation lay in work. Disillusioned with the university, he set out upon an austere course of study, to become one of the great self-taught students of history. His writings of this period are universally alert, intelligent, and engaging; although limited in scope, they show a fine sobriety of style, as well as wit, irony, and a fiery polemical spirit, although lyricism, which he eulogized, eluded him. Ostensibly, he had little taste for politics; actually, several basic attitudes were forming. Disillusioned with the nationalistic liberal leaders of the period following the Risorgimento (the 19th-century movement for Italian unity), he began to develop his own convictions on how an ethical, democratic, liberal government should be structured. He “coquetted”—according to his autobiography—with socialism and Marxism, eventually discarding these views after a thorough examination and severe criticism of both positions. Nevertheless, he was subject to a constant and profound malaise. Subliminally, he desired but saw no public relevance for his activity; the limited world of erudition palled on him.

Founding of La Critica.

      He was delivered from this malaise, and the second period of his life was opened in 1903 by the founding of La Critica, a journal of cultural criticism, in which, during the course of the next 41 years, he published nearly all his writings and reviewed all of the most important historical, philosophical, and literary work that was being produced in Europe at the time. At this same time he began the systematic exposition of his “Philosophy of the Spirit,” his chief intellectual achievement. This term designates two distinct, but related, aspects of his thought: (1) In the first aspect, philosophy of spirit designates the construction of a philosophical system on the remote pattern of the Rationalism of classical Romantic philosophy. Its principle is the “circularity” of spirit within the structure of the system and in historical time. The phases, or moments, of spirit in this system are theoretical and practical; they are distinguished, respectively, into aesthetic, logical, and economic and ethical. The circular dynamic moves between both the lesser and the greater moments. The law of this circularity is that of absolute immanence. This system is documented in the volumes Estetica come scienza dell'espressione e linguistica generale (1902; Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic), Logica come scienza del concetto puro (1909; “Logic as the Science of Pure Conception”; Eng. trans. Logic), Filosofia della pratica: economia ed etica (1909; Philosophy of the Practical: Economic and Ethic), and Teoria e storia della storiografia (1917; History: Its Theory and Practice). (2) Croce gradually abandoned, without explicitly renouncing, this schematism in response primarily to methodological considerations in history. Its moments are not dissolved but are concretized into the flow of historical action and thought. History becomes the unique mediational principle for all the moments of spirit, while spirit—i.e., human consciousness—is completely spontaneous, without a predetermined structure. This change is signaled by the publication of La storia come pensiero e come azione (1938; “History as Thought and Action”; Eng. trans. History as the Story of Liberty). To this period some have attached the term historical positivism, but Croce himself has called it absolute historicism and identified it as the definitive form of his thought. The philosophy of spirit in its asystematic form produced the effective method of Croce's later work, as in the anthology Filosofia, poesia, storia (1951; Philosophy, Poetry, History).

      According to Croce, “The foundation of La Critica marked the beginning of a new period in my life, the period of maturity or harmony between myself and reality.” Through this journal he found the larger public theatre he sought. “La Critica was the most direct service I could render to Italian culture. . . . I was engaged in politics in the broad sense . . . uniting the role of a student and of a citizen.” Through La Critica Croce's public role as teacher of modern Italy emerged. Count Camillo Benso di Cavour, the prime minister who presided over the formation of a unified Italy, had said, “Having made Italy, we must make Italians.” La Critica took up this task.

      The image of the Italian which animates this work is severe and beautiful. Creative effort, a passion for freedom united to a profound sense of civic duty, a life-style purged of all rhetoric and sentimental romanticism, unambiguous norms of public and private truth, a sense of history united to an obligation to the future, unceasing but constructive self-criticism: these were its elements. This image strongly reflected the personal ideal that Croce had gradually formed for himself. But history was preparing to put this ideal to the test.

Struggle with fascism.

      The test was to be fascism, the political attitude that places the nation or race at the centre of life and history and disregards the individual and his rights. So gradual was this preparation that Croce himself did not at once perceive it. He confessed that he first saw in fascism a movement to the right of the political spectrum that might restrain and counteract the leftist tendencies toward unrestricted individual freedom released by World War I. But as the character of the Benito Mussolini regime revealed itself, his opposition hardened, becoming absolute, beyond compromise. He became, within and without Italy, the symbol of the opposition to fascism, the rallying point of the lovers of liberty. In fascism Croce saw not merely another form of political tyranny. He saw it as the emergence of that other Italy, in which egoism displaced civic virtue, rhetoric dislodged poetry and truth, and the pretentious gesture replaced authentic action.

      His consciousness of his role as the moral teacher of Italy was strengthened. Instruction now took the form of the composition of the great histories—a history of Europe in the 19th century, of Italy from 1871 to 1915, and of the Kingdom of Naples. Their didactic character was unmistakable; in them Croce pointed out how the historical path of Italy had become la via smarrita (“the lost way”). Moreover, the lesson was intended for Europe and for the entire Western world as well.

      In the maelstrom of conflict and ambiguity that followed Italy's defeat in World War II, a voice of moral authority that could speak for the true Italy was demanded. Croce's was unanimously recognized as that voice. And with authority that voice recalled Italy to the inner spiritual resources through which it might renew itself. It matters little that Croce's own project for the rebuilding of Italy—the retention of the monarchy with certain dynastic changes, the return to the principles of a revived Liberal Party in government—was not the one realized in history. More important is the fact that the new Italy, in its democratic form, was inspired by his spirit.

      This last public duty fulfilled, Croce returned to his studies. In his own library—one of the finest collections in Europe within its own scope—he established the Italian Institute for Historical Studies as a research centre. Asked his state of health, he replied with true stoic equanimity, “I am dying at my work.” He died at age 86.

A. Robert Caponigri Ed.

Additional Reading

Cecil Sprigge, Benedetto Croce: Man and Thinker (1952), is a compact, most informative biography by a longtime friend and interpreter of Croce to the English-speaking world. Angelo A. De Gennaro, The Philosophy of Benedetto Croce (1961), provides a short introduction. A. Robert Caponigri, History and Liberty: The Historical Writings of Benedetto Croce (1955), is considered the most objective presentation of the whole range of Croce's historical writing, with careful evaluations relative to his theory of historiography; see also David D. Roberts, Benedetto Croce and the Uses of Historicism (1987). Gian N.G. Orsini, Benedetto Croce: Philosopher of Art and Literary Critic (1961), is the best book in English on Croce as literary critic.

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