On the understanding of history in the philosophy of Benedetto Croce and Emilio Betti

Abstract

This paper aims to compare the interpretations of history put forward by Benedetto Croce and Emilio Betti. In view of the serious differences between the theoretical foundations of their respective positions (Croce’s neohegelianism and ‘absolute historicism’, on the one hand, and methodological hermeneutics in the case of Betti), the present author has chosen for comparison some of the opinions expressed and statements made by either philosopher, as well as such fragments of their works, where their views seem to converge, or, on the contrary, where the divergences are manifested with greatest clarity, in particular in the passages containing reciprocal criticism. The author comes to the conclusion that, contrary to the widespread belief, Betti’s theory of the interpretation of history had not been influenced by the historicism of Croce to any considerable degree. Analyzing, among other things, the idea of ‘modernity’ of history in Croce with its similarity to Betti’s canon of ‘actuality’ of the understanding, she demonstrates that Betti arrived at the same thesis independently of Croce as a result of his own investigations in the history of law, giving it initially a more restricted juridical formulation.