This book is the account of the life and activity of one who is living and acting. Herodotus tells us the Greeks had a proverb which forbade them to pronounce any man happy before he is dead. We may certainly take his warning to this extent,—that we should refrain from attempting to fix a philosopher's thought so long as he continues to think. Benedetto Croce has, it is true, presented his Philosophy of Mind in such "questionable shape," that it gives the student the impression of finality, the

When, about a year ago, I undertook to write this little book for its present publishers, all that I had in my mind was a brief exposition of the solutions given by Croce to a number of philosophical problems of vital interest to the students of what were once called the Moral Sciences. I thought at the time that it would be possible to abstract such solutions and problems from the body of his Philosophy of Mind, which is a coherent and austere theory of knowledge of a kind that in the modern de

Croce's family, and early education—His religion—Life in Rome in the eighties—Labriola's influence—Meditations on ethics—Return to Naples; life as a scholar—Travels; and the problem of history —Philosophus fit—The intellectual conditions of Italy after the Risorgimento—Contemporary European culture—American analogies —Two leaders of Italian thought—Francesco de Sanctis—Giosuè Carducci—Croce's approach to philosophy, and his method of work—His relations to the philosophical practition—Vico and th

A retrospective view of the system—Germs of development—The return to history—Croce's attitude during the war—Essays on the great poets. To the reader of the three volumes of the Filosofia dello Spirito , which were published before 1910, the whole of Croce's thought appeared as a solidly constructed system, in which the four grades or forms of spiritual activity were studied in their intrinsic essence, and presented in their relations as completing the cycle of living reality, in contrast with

Two meanings of the word history—History as contemporary history— History and chronicle—The spirit as history—Philology, and philological history—Poetical and rhetorical history—Universal history—The universality of history: history and philosophy—The unity of thought—Philosophy as methodology—The positivity of history—The humanity of history—Distinctions and divisions—The history of nature. There are two meanings to the word history, in English as well as in other European languages; on one han

Beyond the system—The universality of art—The discipline of art—Poetry, prose and oratory—Classicism and impressionism— Practical personality and poetical personality—The monographic method in criticism—The reform of æsthetic history—Criticism as philosophy—Sensibility and intelligence. The identification of history and philosophy, in the form in which we have expounded it in the preceding chapter, is the turning point of Croce's thought; the system which in the first three volumes of the Filoso

Quid est veritas? —Platonism, or transcendental idealism—Naturalism, or transcendental realism—The idea of progress—Progress and truth: evolutionism—Pragmatism—Croce's new pragmatism—The immanence of value—The actuality of Truth—Truth as history: the function of error and of evil—The foundations of Croce's thought. There is one problem in the history of human thought, which, however conscious we might be of the multiplicity and historical contingency of philosophical problems, yet can appear to

Croce's Complete Works form a collection of twenty-eight volumes, in four distinct series, published by Laterza e Figli, of Bari, who are also the publishers of La Critica , and of the following collections initiated or directed by Croce: Scrittori d'Italia, Scrittori Stranieri, Classici della Filosofia Moderna. We give here a full list of the Opere di Benedetto Croce , adding to the title of each volume the year of the last available edition, the years of their composition having already been i