A Research On The Core Of Croce's Historical Philosophy

Benedetto Croce is a famous Italian philosopher of history,who has training and practice in historiography that general philosophers not possessing and has philosophical thinking capability that professional historian can not be unattainable.The argument of identity of history and philosophy and the proposition on "All the history is contemporary history" which were raised at the beginning of the 20th century caused a general discussion.The deliberations about the nature of history was against historical positivism. Before the argument of identity of history and philosophy raised,history was placed under the category of Art by Croce.After poring over the work of Hegel,Croce drew a conclusion of the argument of identity of history and philosophy,by reasoning the relation between history and philosophy,which was mutually antecedent and mutually conditioned.Establishing in the argument of identity of history and philosophy,Croce put forward the proposition on "All the history is contemporary history".This proposition reflected the core of the Croce's philosophy of history:The nature of the history is the thought or spirit of human.The argumentation of the famous proposition began with distinguishing contemporary history and un-contemporary history,emphasizing history is the true history as long as it was related with real life.It's one of Croce's contributions to the theory of historiography to distinguishing the true history and the chronicle.He melting un-historical thinking manner into the chronicle,making a vivid history.But he do go to the other extreme.He imposed the un-historical thinking manner on the historical thinking,making the history to un-history. Moreover,he confounded the identity and unity.Of course,there is rationality in the proposition on "All the history is contemporary history",it presented the subjective factors in the history knowledge.But he do go from one extreme to the other again,he deny the objectivity of history knowledge absolutely.Inherent contradictory of Croce's theory contributed to our thought on history knowledge with Scientific attitudes.The problem about the position and the value of Philosophy of history,would have a good solution by analyzing Croce's thought.