Arte e storia in Benedetto Croce

The issue of Croce’s history depends on the relation to his aesthetics which is in appearance symbolic, as it is in Hegel, but is in essence allegorical. As Croce states in the 1893 essay and in the Estetica, history is an hybrid form of art that partakes of the allegorical and falls under the general concept of art. In the Logic of 1908-1909, however, Croce claims that history is a symbolic form and identical with philosophy.The result of this forced marriage generates, on the one hand, Croce’s philosophy of absolute historicism but, on the other, a conception of history which is allegorical and in error.