Contents Certain chapters only of the third part of this book were anticipated in the study entitled Reduction of the Philosophy of Law to the Philosophy of Economy, read before the Accademia Pontaniana of Naples at the sessions of April 21 and May 5, 1907 ( Acts, vol. xxxvii.); but I have remodelled them, amplifying certain pages and summarizing others. The concept of economic activity as an autonomous form of the spirit, which receives systematic treatment in the second part of the book, was f

"A noi sembra che l' opera del Croce sia lo sforzo più potente che il pensiero italiano abbia compiuto negli ultimi anni."— G. de Ruggiero in La Filosofia contemporanea, 1912. "Il sistema di Benedetto Croce rimane la più alta conquista del pensiero contemporaneo."— G. Natoli in La Voce, 19th December 1912. Those acquainted with my translation of Benedetto Croce's Æsthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic will not need to be informed of the importance of this philosopher's thought,

This translation of Benedetto Croce's Philosophy of the Practical (Economic and Ethic) is complete....

They constitute therefore the circle of reality and of life, which is duality-unity of thought and being, of subject and object, in such a way that to think the subject is the same as to think the subject of an object, and to think an object is the same as to think the object of a subject. In truth, it sometimes seems strange and almost impossible that such hard and difficult questions should have arisen as to the objectivity of knowledge, and as to whether thought attains to being, or whether t

[Pg 308] [Pg 309] All that has been developed in the preceding book concerns the practical activity in general: therefore no account has been taken of the special distinctions of the practical forms, as though there were none, or they have only been alluded to as something problematical; and when exemplifications have been given, recourse has been had indifferently to one or to the other of the forms commonly admitted, whether or no they are to be held philosophically distinguishable. Now, on th

[Pg 464] [Pg 465] Law is a volitional act, which has for content a series or class of actions. This definition excludes above all from the concept of law a determination that is generally considered essential to it, the determination of society ; this amounts to saying that it also extends the concept of law to the case of the isolated individual. But in order that there may be no misunderstanding in relation to a point like this of the highest importance, it will be well to show that the word "