Benedetto Croce, ou, l'affirmation de l'immanence absolue (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 487 about life-relations (Lebensbeziige). Despite changes in his aesthetic views, Dilthey remained constant in his conviction that the arts are useful guides to life. Thus the practical contribution of aesthetics was already recognized in the Einleitung when Dilthey pointed out that it can serve to mediate problems created by one-sided moral theories. Whereas traditional moral theories have either focused on the motives of actions (Kant) or on their results (Mill), aesthetic insights into human character can serve to link motives and deeds in ways that are overlooked in the direct observation of real life (see GS, 1:62). As Johach rightly points out, reflection is essential for the regulation of life. However, we would conceive the interests of life too restrictively were we to claim that the task of reflection is directly to relate theory and social action. Unless the relation between theory and practice is mediated through the interpretation of human culture, the social sciences stand in danger of becoming purely technological. Johach's valuable contribution is to have shown the overriding significance of social considerations in Dilthey's early writings. But how social factors were integrated into the subsequent psychological analysis of human individuality and the hermeneutic approach to cultural achievements is less adequately indicated. It is thus left for the reader to decide whether the social sciences ultimately stand separately from the human studies as suggested by the subtitle of the present work, or whether social theory can be encompassed by the framework of the human studies as Dilthey maintained. RUDOLF A. MAKKREEL Emory University Benedetto Croce, ou l'affirmation de I'immanence absolue. By Paul Olivier. (Paris: l~ditions Seghers, 1975. Pp. 206. Paper, Fr. 23.50) Benedetto Croce (1866-1952) is an anomaly in the annals of twentieth-century philosophers. For example, there exists no volume on him in the "Library of Living Philosophers," though there does exist evidence that such a volume was planned in the 1940s (the story of such a stillborn volume would, I am sure, make interesting and instructive reading, though I for one know almost nothing about it). Or consider Morton White's brilliant observation: By one of those meetings of extremes that frequently occur in the history of philosophy Croce's view [of history] seems as though it might be congenial to those latter-day philosophers who have surrendered the platonism of the early Moore and Russell, who stress the importance of discussing the behavior of words and sentences in their living context, and who view the context itself as an indefinitely long story or passage in which they appear. Where Croce differs from them is in his concentration on stories of general human interest, stories told by historians of human culture rather than nurses at bedtime.' White does immediately add the qualification that "were his powers of logical analysis as acute and as subtle as his subject matter is profound, Croce might have anticipated a good deal of philosophy that is not usually identified with his own tradition." And yet the Croce passage that White includes in his anthology is the one from History as the Story of Liberty where Croce argues that all knowledge is historical, explicitly including scientific and mathematical knowledge. Now it so happens that the historicity of science and mathematics is presently begin hailed as one of the main contemporary achievements of contemporary Anglo-American philosophy of science. If this were an isolated example, it need not have been mentioned; but it is not, as Croce's anticipation of Dewey's philosophy of art shows. Why, then, is there so little appreciation of Croce's work? Finally, it may be mentioned that it is a well-documented fact that Croce exerted considerable influence on R. G. Collingwood, and yet the latter's Autobiography does not mention this fact at all. I have no answer to those three puzzles, but I ' The Age of Analysis: 20th Century Philosophers (New York: New American Library, 1955), p. 48. 488 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY suggest that they are interrelated and that a full story of these matters would shed significant light on the whole Western philosophical and cultural tradition in the twentieth century. I mention...