#dialectical logic

🌟 I. ZAIRA RODRÍGUEZ UGIDOS: WHO SHE WAS AND WHY IT MATTERS

Born 1941, died September 11, 1985 — a loss described as "irreparable" for Marxist-Leninist philosophy in Cuba and Latin America, and the description is not hyperbole

Graduated 1965, Doctor in Philosophy and Letters, Universidad de La Habana — trained at the most prestigious Cuban institution of higher learning

1970: defended her Candidacy thesis at the Lomonosov State University of Moscow — topic: "The Problem of Man in Hegel and the Formation of Marxist Philosophy"

Not just any institution — Lomonosov was the intellectual fortress of Soviet philosophical science

Her thesis topic alone signals her entire intellectual program: the human question, Hegel, Marx — the holy trinity of dialectical materialism

Was preparing to defend her Doctorate in Philosophical Sciences at Lomonosov at the time of her sudden death — the academic world lost a fully mature thinker at the height of her powers

Professor of: 🎓

History of philosophy

Contemporary bourgeois philosophy

Dialectical materialism

Dialectical logic

Institutional roles held simultaneously:

Professor at Universidad de La Habana

Researcher and instructor at the Academy of Sciences of Cuba

Sub-Director of Teaching, Department for the Teaching of Marxism-Leninism

Head of the Department of Dialectical Materialism, Faculty of Philosophy and History, Universidad de La Habana

Vice-Director of the Institute of Philosophy, Academy of Sciences of Cuba

Published extensively in national and international journals on:

Dialectical logic

Marxist-Leninist philosophy

History of philosophy

Latin American Marxist philosophy

Major monographs (because one book is never enough when you have something to say): 📖

Problems of Dialectical Logic (1986)

Lectures on Dialectical Logic: Notes for a Textbook (1983)

The Problem of the Specific Nature of Philosophical Knowledge (1984)

Philosophy: Science and Value (1985)

Represented Cuba at multiple international events — including the UNESCO-sponsored Encounter of Latin American Philosophers in Lima, 1985, the very year of her death

Characterized by Professor and historian Sergio Aguirre at her memorial in the Aula Magna of Universidad de La Habana, September 11, 1986:

"A character, a true character, capable of combining the most incredibly sincere modesty and temperamental sweetness with the most impregnable firmness before principles"

"I do not believe there has been any Cuban professor of Philosophy, from the era of the Revolution, capable of surpassing her"

"The stamp of irreducible dignity"

Her death was not merely a personal tragedy — it was a structural wound to the development of revolutionary thought in Cuba and the broader Latin American left

🏙️ II. "EXACT NOTION OF COLOR": HAVANA AS REVOLUTIONARY ANCHOR

Published in: Universidad de La Habana, No. 222, January–September 1984

The premise: Rodríguez Ugidos discovers what Havana means to her from the bridge of the ship Rossia as it pulls her away from the harbor

Not a sentimental exercise — a philosophical act of recognition

The city is not nostalgia; it is epistemological ground zero

Havana as a "mere point on the map" — and yet:

An avalanche of ideas, emotions, plastic images, and feelings

The city as the decisive turning point that opened itself to the Revolution

The place where her notion of the beautiful, the grand, the dignified was forged

Key philosophical claim embedded in lyrical form:

Havana is the "obligatory reference to everything else"

It is responsible for her exact notion of color of the sea, the sky, the texture of air and earth

Responsible for her sense of rhythm, music, language, belonging

The political subtext is unmistakable: 🔴

This is not tourism — this is the argument that revolutionary consciousness is rooted in concrete material and cultural place

The individual is not an abstract subject floating in philosophical ether — she is a Habanera, shaped by specific geography, specific history, specific Revolution

The Marxist concept of the social determination of consciousness appears here in its most intimate personal form

The "nosotros" (we/us) — Havana converts her day by day into a collective subject

The individual dissolves not into Hegelian Absolute Spirit but into revolutionary community

This is not alienation — this is concretely realized freedom

🏛️ III. PROLOGUE TO THE CUBAN EDITION OF EL PENSAMIENTO ANTIGUO BY RODOLFO MONDOLFO

Published in: El pensamiento antiguo de Rodolfo Mondolfo, Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, La Habana, 1971

🧑‍🎓 A. Rodolfo Mondolfo: The Man and His Project

Born 1877 in Senigallia, Italy — studied at the University of Florence under positivist Ardigó

Professor at:

University of Turin (1910–1914)

University of Bologna (1914–1938)

Forced to flee Italy in 1938 when the pro-fascist dictatorial government banned intellectuals of Hebrew origin from their professions

Not a footnote — this is the material condition shaping his intellectual production

Emigrated to Argentina, where he continued his prolific intellectual work

Combat record against fascism: Published anti-fascist articles in the Italian journal Critica Sociale — philosophy as political weapon, not ivory tower decoration

Dedicated over six decades to critical investigation across three major periods:

Classical antiquity

Modern thought (17th–19th centuries): Hobbes, Helvétius, Montesquieu, Condillac, Rousseau, Lassalle, Beccaria

Marxism

Works on Marxism include: El materialismo histórico en F. Engels, Feuerbach y Marx, Marx y el marxismo, Sulle orme di Marx, El humanismo de Marx

Major works on ancient philosophy: El genio helénico, El infinito en el pensamiento de la antigüedad clásica, Problemas del pensamiento antiguo, La comprensión del sujeto humano en la cultura antigua

Published over 50 titles on ancient philosophy alone — including a critical text on Heraclitus, Heráclito: textos y problemas de su interpretación (Siglo XXI, México, 1966)

The Cuban edition of El pensamiento antiguo is taken from the second edition published by Editorial Losada, Buenos Aires, 1945 — originally written in Italian in 1929

📜 B. Mondolfo's Core Argument: Against the Schematic Mutilation of Greek Thought

The target: The "romantic vision" of the classical world defended by critics including Zeller, Gomperz, Burnet, Tannery

These thinkers attribute to ancient culture: freedom and clarity of spirit, harmonic unity of form and content, plastic serenity, pure objectivism

Result: the classical world is rigidly counterposed to the Oriental, the Christian, and the modern

This is intellectual laziness dressed up as erudition — and Mondolfo calls it out

Mondolfo's counter-thesis: The Greek world has a "polyhedral nature" — multifaceted, not unidimensional

It contains pessimistic elements, a "gloomy universal vision of life"

Dionysian elements alongside the Apollonian — not one tonic but a mixture

Elements of subjectivism, dynamism, disharmony — all suppressed by the schematic historians

Three specific corrections Mondolfo makes to received dogma: 🎭 First Correction: The Myth of Pure Greek Optimism

Greek culture also contains meditation on death, consciousness of sin, pessimstic world-vision

The dominant spirit is not purely "Apollonian" — it is always already mixed with the Dionysian

♾️ Second Correction: The Myth That Greeks Had No Concept of Infinity

The exclusive attribution of the concept of infinity as perfection to Christian and modern thought is "absolutely erroneous"

Greeks did conceive of the infinite — temporally, spatially, numerically, dynamically

The idea that infinity meant imperfection or monstrosity to the Greeks is a fabrication

🧠 Third Correction: The Myth of Pure Greek Objectivism

The charge that ancient philosophy had no concept of human subjectivity is unfounded

Mondolfo demonstrates through textual evidence: subjectivity is present in ancient philosophy

Key evidence chain:

Democritus precedes Locke in distinguishing primary and secondary qualities (later taken up by Galileo, Descartes, Locke)

The Cyrenaics precede Berkeley in claiming we know only sensations, not objective causes

Protagoras' relativism of knowledge

The methodical doubt traced back through Socrates to Aristotle

Zeller's claim that modern philosophy begins with doubt (Bacon's critique, Descartes' methodical doubt) must be tempered by acknowledging that Aristotle already recognized doubt as the origin of all philosophy

🔗 C. Mondolfo's Methodology: The Problem of Historical Continuity

Central thesis of his method: There is no absolute novelty in the history of philosophy — only deeper realizations of ancient tendencies

"The possibility that ancient thought offered so many orientations to modern thought cannot be understood except by taking into account the multiplicity of directions in which it moves"

This directly attacks the schematic periodization of philosophy into hermetically sealed epochs

The philosophy of "problematicity" (problematicidad):

For Mondolfo, philosophy is essentially the eternal problematic activity of the human spirit

Philosophy as Socratic ignorance — awareness of problems deepening through critique of systems

The systems fall, but the problems remain — as "imperishable conquests of philosophical consciousness"

Philosophy exists in a double aspect: as system (historically relative, linked to its epoch) and as problem (eternally recurring, pointing to progressive deepening of consciousness)

The historian Mondolfo vs. the Marxist standard:

His continuity thesis is valuable — it demolishes false ruptures and honors genuine intellectual inheritance

But his "essentialist" framework — appealing to the "eternal human condition" — fails to account for the material historical analysis that Marxism requires

He cannot explain why philosophy emerges in specific historical forms — only that it recurs eternally

The materialist and historical analysis of philosophy as a form of social consciousness is absent from his framework

Critics like W. Jaeger, E. Cassirer and Mondolfo himself broaden the scope of philosophical history beyond mere internal development — introducing "sociology of knowledge" (Jaeger's term) — but still remain within the sphere of superstructure, never descending to concrete socioeconomic structure

⚖️ D. Mondolfo's Marxism: A Diagnosis of Profound Misreading

The verdict: "Marx passes through Mondolfo, but Mondolfo does not pass through Marx" 🎯

Mondolfo engages Marx, but from a framework that ultimately cannot absorb him

The specific errors:

Interprets historical materialism through the abstract lens of Feuerbachian humanism

Ignores the radically new theoretical character of Marxist ideology relative to all previous philosophy

Does not use the Marxist analysis of superstructures, their dynamics, and their articulation with economic base

Conceives of historical materialism as the "culmination of German classical philosophy" — the realization of the Spirit's progress toward freedom

Falsely opposes "genuine Marxism" (animated by historical consciousness and freedom) to "Leninism or totalitarian communism" as its adulterator

This is not a scholarly error — this is ideological class interest dressed as philosophical critique

The consequence:

The explanation Mondolfo offers for the advancement of theoretical thought — in terms of "necessity" and "contingency", the interplay of historical preparation and individual genius — remains "vague and abstract"

A complete Marxist critique of philosophical history requires the study of:

The articulation of a philosophy with existing ideological practices (religion, politics, art)

With scientific practices

With the economic-social structure of a specific epoch and place

Only then does the analysis become concrete, multilateral, and genuinely historical

The value of Mondolfo's work despite its limitations:

His erudition on Greek thought is unquestionable

His broadening of the horizon of philosophical history is a genuine contribution

The Cuban edition of El pensamiento antiguo is a living anthology — not a dry history, but fragments organized as successive responses to abiding questions that kept alive the spirit of the ancients

🧩 IV. PROLOGUE TO THE CUBAN EDITION OF HEGEL'S PHENOMENOLOGY OF SPIRIT

Published in: Fenomenología del espíritu de J. G. F. Hegel, Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, La Habana, 1972

👑 A. Hegel as the Apex and End of Speculative Philosophy

The claim: Hegelian thought represents "the most accomplished expression that speculative and systematic philosophy of the modern and contemporary eras has achieved"

With Hegel, philosophical activity acquires disproportionate value relative to all other human praxis — material, ideological, artistic, religious, scientific

All social productions, including the process of natural reality, fall under the domain of philosophical consciousness

Result: "spiritualization of the world" — its complete and essential realization as the "rationalization of the real"

The paradox: 🎪 With Hegel, this universalist and totalizing construction assigned to philosophy reaches its end

The very success of Hegelian philosophy announces its own termination — but for reasons entirely different from those Hegel supposed

Hegel believed his epoch had found its "eternal present" — the dialectical cycle of social and cultural development was closed, crowned by Hegelian philosophy itself

He was catastrophically wrong about the permanence of what he declared permanent — but magnificently right about the structure of the dialectical process

🇩🇪 B. The Historical-Social Roots of Hegelian Rationalism

What produced Hegelian philosophy? Not the internal logic of philosophical discourse — but concrete historical-social conditions:

The social and historical situation of Germany in the early 19th century

Ideological and theoretical presuppositions implicit in his work — operative but not conscious to Hegel himself

The complex and contradictory repercussions of the French Revolutionary process on backward, fragmented Germany

🧮 Pre-Hegelian Rationalism: Descartes and Kant as Foils

Cartesian rationalism (dominant in 18th-century bourgeois thought):

Reason as instrument common to all men — granting privilege over mechanical nature and a certain independence from God

Reason as critical and methodological instrument for science and metaphysics

The individualist subject as foundation of abstract equality and freedom

But: carefully bounded — Descartes took care that his liberal innovations not be read as subversion of established moral, religious, or political values

Faithful exponent of bourgeois ideology in formation: asserting individual value against feudal hierarchy of castes

Inaugurates reflexive, gnoseological-methodological philosophy — the tradition Hegel will combat

The Enlightenment (Iluminismo): 💡

Extends Cartesian ideas with stricter criticism and broader scope

Reason must analyze its own possibilities and limits — renouncing sterile dogmatic metaphysics

But extends its terrain: reason as tool for transforming all spheres of human practice — religion, morality, politics, society

Goal: a more just and human morality inspired by rational norms; a natural religion (deism) subordinated to the demands of thinking humans; a State guaranteeing natural rights

Expressed the most radical theses of the pre-Revolutionary and Revolutionary period of the European bourgeoisie

In gnoseology: critical character; in political-social thought: normative philosophy ("what ought to be")

Hegel's dialectical philosophy also reacts against this — condemning the abstract ideality of this "ought to be" as unworthy of rationality

🔄 The Hegelian Revolution in Rationalism

The new questions Hegelianism formulates are conditioned by the history European nations were living:

Hegelian reflection as an attempt at coherent response to the profound transformations produced by the French Revolutionary process and its contradictory repercussions for Germany

Displacement of philosophical object:

Pre-Hegelian modern philosophy centered on philosophy of sciences, gnoseology, methodology of knowledge — inspired by geometry and Newtonian physics

Hegel redirects attention to historical and social problems

The bulk of Hegelian work concerns Philosophy of Spirit:

Objective Spirit: civil society, property relations, family, law, juridical institutions, the State

Absolute Spirit: spiritual social productions — art, religion, philosophy

The "phenomenological" perspective:

Human consciousness (individual and social) has its history — not external to social and historical-cultural processes

The historical sequence of forms of consciousness expresses the entire material and spiritual social development of humanity

Ideological motivations behind Hegelian solutions:

Reconciliation with his epoch — justification of bourgeois society in general, its economic-social structures, its culture

Attempt to conciliate the contradictory situation of Germany (backward, fragmented) with the model offered by England and France

Hegel sanctions and sublimes the German political-juridical order

His theory of the State attempts to resolve all social conflicts through political institutions (constitutional monarchy)

Result at the theoretical level: the necessity of a "closed system", the finalism of his historical-dialectical conception, the contemplative, positive, and uncritical character of his philosophy of being

📐 C. Hegelian Rationalism in Detail: The Core Concepts

🌐 The Universalization of Reason

Hegel breaks with the concept of rationality as exclusive property of the individual thinking subject

Combats Kantian criticism's view that reason must renounce the superhuman task of grasping Infinite and Absolute Reality

Hegel's famous critique of Kant: "To want to know before knowing is as absurd as the wise proposal of that certain Scholastic, to begin swimming before risking the water"

The panlogist alternative: Rationality is the essential and ultimate principle of infinite reality — man is merely a part, an aspect of this totality

"Everything real is rational; everything rational is real" — Hegel's universalization of reason affects the very foundations of reflexive philosophy

Consequence: Philosophy cannot be conceived as ideality, as abstraction, as "ought to be" — as a "system of cerebral phantoms" prescribing rational norms to non-rational Reality

Philosophy as the "Owl of Minerva" — taking flight at dusk, reading the past rather than predicting the future

Against Kantian resignation: If Kant makes the human subject (as reflective, thinking subject) renounce the problem of the Absolute, Hegel insists philosophy must begin by posing this problem

🔁 The False Infinite and the True Infinite

The key problem: The relationship between "the Infinite" and "the finite"

The Infinite = reason or rational principle of being = the only and total reality

Philosophical reflection must start from the Infinite, not arrive at it from finite subjects

The "false infinite" (falso infinito, infinito malo):

Result of starting from the finite as opposed to the Infinite

Kant's philosophy: tears man apart by opposing philosophical consciousness to the world — his solution is a renunciation of any possible solution

Fichte's Doctrine of Science: starts from the I or subjective consciousness enclosed in itself — the Infinite thus obtained can only be "negative" and "false"

In Fichte: the Infinite is given as perpetual re-creation (ad infinitum) of the I — never reaching its end

Hegel's solution: The finite is "superseded", dissolved, integrated into the Infinite — it is a particularized expression of the Infinite, not a separate term beyond it

The political and philosophical durability of this Hegelian lesson:

Against 20th-century irrationalist currents that sever the individual from the social environment to exalt human personality and freedom

These tendencies offer a false and abstract image of the human being

Marx's Thesis on Feuerbach: "The human essence is not something abstract and immanent to each individual. In its reality, it is the ensemble of social relations" — this is the materialist elaboration of Hegel's social rootedness of the individual

⚙️ D. The System and the Dialectic: Hegel's Method

"The truth is the whole" — Hegel's governing maxim 🎯

Hegel's ambition: systematic integration and unitary explanation of all branches of knowledge:

Logic, philosophy of nature, anthropology, "psychology," philosophy of history, ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of religion, aesthetics, history of philosophy

Caution required: One should not seek perfectly achieved systematic deductions where Hegel is in fact engaged in constant evolution and searching

The triadic construction is not a fatal permanent model — imposing it where it doesn't exist is a falsification of Hegelian thought

🏗️ The Absolute Idealism Behind the System

Hegel's idealism is the idealism of Absolute Reason — unrelated to subjective idealism or Kantian transcendental idealism

The Absolute = Reason itself — accessible to finite human reason because it is of the same nature

Philosophy = "explosion of finite reason" provoked ultimately by Absolute Reason, allowing elevation toward it

Panlogism: A unique ideal principle as ultimate cause of all reality — a "dynamic panlogism" as essential to Hegelian idealism as the "ascending dialectic"

Consequence for scientific procedure:

Where Descartes and Spinoza modeled philosophical discourse on mathematics or geometry, Hegel highlights the specificity of speculative philosophical reflection

Only to philosophy belongs the supreme task of grasping the concrete totality in a unitary, organically integrated construction: the "closed system"

"A philosophizing without system cannot be anything scientific"

💠 The Circle of Circles

History of philosophy as process of totalizations and re-totalizations:

Each system assimilates, supersedes, and integrates previous contents

The totality as "circle of circles" — each singular circle constitutes a necessary moment of the whole

The part, to be truly something, cannot be considered in isolation — only within the totality does it have meaning

Hegel: "The Spirit proceeds by detours and the line of scientific progress is circular"

The Spirit is a circle that returns to itself — presupposes its beginning and only reaches it at the end

Philosophical knowledge as the richest and most concrete knowledge — precisely because it is mediated and enriched by other forms of knowing

Forms of consciousness (feelings, institutions, appetites, volitions) are valid but limited

Philosophy subsumes the contents expressed in other forms of consciousness, elevating them to conceptual thought — seeking the "universal-concrete" in the sea of individualities

⚡ The Dialectic: Its Genius and Its Mystification

Marx's explicit diagnosis: "My dialectical method is not only fundamentally different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite"

For Hegel: the process of thought (converted, under the name "Idea", into a subject with its own life) is "the demiurge of the real" — reality is merely the external form thought takes

For Marx: the reverse — the material is primary, thought its reflection

Three forms of mystification in Hegelian dialectic: 🌀 First Mystification: The Ideal Substance as Starting Point

Hegel begins with an ideal substantial principle (Absolute Idea)

Universal Laws of this unique principle explain all manifestations of natural or social reality indiscriminately

Universal History is the exposition of the Universal Spirit laboring to know what it is "in itself"

This sacrifices the study of real concrete situations to universal principles — infinite variety of phenomena "interpreted" through a universal schema

🤖 Second Mystification: Substance as Self-Determining Subject

The spiritual substance of reality acts as an active, self-determining subject

"To say that substance is subject means, for Hegel, highlighting the capacity for self-creation and self-knowledge of this Spirit"

🎯 Third Mystification: Finalism

Dialectic as the process of a Subject aimed at an ultimate end

This ultimate end Hegel sees realized in his own epoch

The closed system serves to justify the necessity of the present order — not to reveal the necessity of its revolutionary transcendence

Three levels of finalism:

Historical: The Germanic world as the culminating moment

Political-social: Bourgeois society and the constitutional monarchical state (idealization of the Prussian state) as definitive structures

Cultural: Romanticism as supreme art, Christianity as definitive religion, Hegelian philosophy as ultimate philosophy

Marx's authentic dialectic by contrast:

Consists in exhaustive analysis of the concrete laws presiding over the birth, existence, development, and death of a specific historical-social process

Its revolutionary value: "in the positive understanding of what exists it also includes the understanding of its negation, its necessary destruction"

🧬 The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807): A Theory of Knowledge

Written during the period of Jena — Hegel defines his positions against his predecessors, especially Schelling, and constitutes himself as a universal thinker

Function within the system: Introduction to the Logic and to all of philosophy

Shows the path consciousness must traverse if it wishes to elevate itself to philosophical consciousness

While Schelling's access to philosophy occurs at once as "intellectual intuition", Hegel insists subjective finite reason must traverse a long process of development

The political-historical context:

Written during the Battle of Jena — Hegel (like Goethe) celebrates Napoleon's victory over the Prussian army as a triumph of civilization over feudal barbarism

Hegel, as fervent supporter of the Rhenish League, hopes Napoleon will introduce bourgeois social, political, and juridical structures into Germany

The French Revolution signifies a new era for humanity — philosophy must be its intellectual expression

The central idea: Freedom and knowledge are paired

Both Hegel and his disciple-critic Feuerbach attributed to human knowledge the property of liberating or de-alienating humanity

For Feuerbach: freedom conquered through philosophical critique of religion and speculation

For Hegel: conquest of freedom is consequence of a long process of development of social reality and knowledge — it is the daughter of time

The structure of the phenomenological ascent:

Starting point: Immediate object given to natural consciousness

Process: Each grade gives different objects — the subject also intuits itself in the process of knowing the object

The "path to the subject" is an objective path — not the introspective reflection of the cogito

Dialectical base: The experience of "phenomenological" change in the object corresponds to a change in the subject

The whole is experience: Not only consciousness changes, but the object and the criterion — "everything becomes fluid"

Against the charge of relativism:

An "interior necessity" directs the entire series of forms of consciousness

When the process terminates, science discovers that the knowing subject and its object are identical

The subject is the substance itself — the process culminates in the Absolute Spirit's self-knowledge

"The truth is in the whole" = the truth of the Spirit is in the process and its result

✝️ V. PROLOGUE TO THE CUBAN EDITION OF FEUERBACH'S THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY

Published in: La esencia del cristianismo de L. Feuerbach, Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, La Habana, 1976

Epigraph from Marx: "The human essence is not something abstract and immanent to each individual. In its reality, it is the ensemble of social relations"

📣 A. Knowing Marxism Means Knowing Its Critique of What Came Before

Between 1845–1846, through three fundamental works, Marx and Engels "settle accounts with their previous philosophical conscience":

The Holy Family

Theses on Feuerbach

The German Ideology

The rupture: Clear demarcation between their new conception of social reality and the human being and the "ideological" — deformed or illusory — conception of German classical philosophy

Especially: Hegel and Feuerbach, then a leading figure of the Young Hegelians

This rupture enables:

A new theoretical and revolutionary direction

Fundamental critique of the contemplative and "pseudo-revolutionary" position of the German left-Hegelian philosophers

The change of terrain:

From the plane of ideas to the plane of reality

Not what men think or imagine they are — but what men actually are

Abandoning the "old terrain" of philosophical battles (critiquing ideas from within ideas) for the new path of revolutionary transformation of social reality — analyzing production relations within a concrete historical social structure

🧠 B. Feuerbach's Achievement and Its Fundamental Limitation

Feuerbach's attempt: Critique of speculative philosophy and religion through inversion — laying the foundations of what he called "the philosophy of the future": an anthropological philosophy of naturalist and sensualist character

The fatal limitation: Critique through simple inversion cannot break the framework of the philosophical problematic encompassing both German classical idealism and Feuerbach's own contemplative materialism

The materialist inversion of speculative idealism does not allow Feuerbach to transcend the limits of speculative and contemplative thought

Hence: "with Feuerbach precisely takes place 'the end of German classical philosophy'"

Feuerbach's relative merits (credit where it is barely due):

He surpasses other Young Hegelians in philosophical development

Develops a more progressive political ideology

The young Marx, though detecting Feuerbach's insufficiencies early (letter to Ruge, November 30, 1842), openly acknowledges advances of Feuerbachian thought

Marx: "Feuerbach is the purgatory of our epoch" — playing on "Feuerbach" = "river of fire" in German (a Marx wordplay noted by Rodríguez Ugidos)

But passing through "the burning passage" of Feuerbachian thought does not mean permanent residence there — as Marx's development makes abundantly clear

🧬 C. Feuerbach's Anthropology: The Generic Being

The key concept: The human being as "generic being" (ser genérico)

Unlike the animal (which has only feeling of self through an exterior object), man alone possesses consciousness of self — consciousness of his generic essence

Even the objects most remote from man are, as his objects, manifestations of his human essence

The essential relation of the finite individual human is with his genus or species — understood as the ideal sum of perfections present in each particular individual

In the interiority of human consciousness: the relation between the limited, finite subject and his unlimited, infinite genus

Feuerbach as a disciple of Aristotle:

Uses the notion of genus in its double logical-biological sense (per Aristotle's Posterior Analytics)

Man is a generic being biologically (engenders man in the fundamental relation of I and Thou)

And conceptually (recognizes in himself his membership in the species through his relation with the other)

The derivation toward religion:

The individual, thinking of himself, feels limited physically, sensibly, spiritually

Only form of surpassing this: thinking of others or of generic essence

From this Feuerbach derives the natural and necessary origin of human religion

"Not to have religion means: thinking only of oneself; to have religion means: thinking of others"

"God and his difference is the origin of religion: the Thou is the god of the I, for without Thee I am not; I depend on Thee; non-Thou = non-I"

Result: religion becomes the solemn revelation of man's hidden treasures — the "public confession of his love secrets"

🔬 D. Feuerbach's Empiricist Naturalism and Its Contradictions

The philosophical foundation: Empiricist naturalism and sensualism — whose central principle is man (not Nature as abstract, not God)

While Hegelian speculative philosophy found its ally in theology, anthropology develops in alliance with natural sciences

If idealist philosophy reduces man to pure consciousness, anthropology must define man "from head to foot" — as a psychophysical unity, a corporeal and natural being with needs, desires, reason, and sensibility

The principle of the new philosophy:

Not the I, not the Absolute Spirit — but the real and total essence of man

Based on reason, but reason "impregnated with the blood of man"

Science as "consciousness of the genera" — object of anthropological philosophy: humanity or human genus with its essential faculties: reason, will, heart

The fundamental contradiction:

Feuerbach rejects the label of materialist and defines himself as anthropologist

Yet understands the relation between nature and spirit, being and consciousness, as one where the subject is being and the predicate is thinking

"Only where thinking is not a subject for itself but predicate of a real being, is thinking also not separated from being"

🚫 E. The Contemplative Materialism of Feuerbach: Marx's Critique

The central failure of Feuerbach's naturalist empiricism:

Complete ignorance of practical and social activity as the fundamental principle of the man-nature relation and of human relations

German classical philosophy (Kant through Hegel) had, in ascending line, emphasized the active and conditioning character of the subject in cognitive and historical-cultural activity

Feuerbach reverses this — restates the human problem in different terms: "You rise to the object only by lowering yourself to being an object for another"

This is the contemplative character of Feuerbachian materialism that Marx widely highlights in the Theses on Feuerbach

The abstract "concrete" man of Feuerbach:

His naturalist empiricism leads him to completely ignore historical and social practice as the fundamental principle

The instincts, love, sex, sensuality constitute the basis of social relations

Sensation, pathos, love or pain link men to each other and to nature in a relation of ahistorical and asocial passivity

This supposed "concrete, real, singular" man is actually an abstract and ideal construction

To rebut Hegel's speculative-spiritual man, Feuerbach constructs a new modality of speculation: sensualist speculation

The irony: The Hegelian conception of man (as a historical-cultural product, living expression of his epoch's spirit, however essentialist) is more concrete and real than Feuerbach's man of flesh and blood

Feuerbach sought the common and general present in both the proletarian and the peasant, the intellectual, the merchant, the painter — independent of epoch and place

What could he find but an ideological image of man, a man who exists nowhere? 🎪

⚓ F. Freedom in Feuerbach vs. Freedom in Hegel

Both thinkers share: Freedom as central problem; knowledge as liberating force

Hegel: Freedom as product of the slow dialectical, ascending process of Absolute Spirit — a long history of cultural and spiritual struggles and conquests; freedom as consciousness of necessity

Feuerbach: Freedom obtained through the critical and demystifying activity of modern philosophy

The Socratic "know thyself" as method

Religion and theology as products of human self-deception — a "philosophical reading" of religion suffices to bring enlightenment

This makes Feuerbach's method a return to 18th-century rationalism — an illuminist method applied to a 19th-century problem

Feuerbach's "genetic-critical" method:

Understanding religion = understanding its origin

Inverting the inversion: returning to profane man what he had hypostasized in the sacred individual

Suppression of religion is not expressed as "God does not exist" (merely negative or atheist) — but positively: "Man is the God of man"

But this positive suppression remains within the contemplative plane — Feuerbach's utopian communism rests on the premise that social inequality is a product of Christianity rather than the inverse

💥 G. The Mechanism of Religious Alienation According to Feuerbach

The gnoseological and psychological mechanism of religious inversion:

Step 1: Separation of concepts and thoughts (predicate) from real being (subject)

Step 2: Granting independent and primary value to abstract thought (inversion of the real relation)

Result: thoughts and ideas are extrapolated, hypostatized — transformed into an independent substance, an omnipotent creative substantial principle: God or the Absolute Idea

The anti-humanist phenomenon of alienation

For Feuerbach: "if the secret of theology is anthropology, the secret of speculative philosophy is theology"

The empiricist reduction:

Whether God exists reduces to: does the general concept have existence independent of human consciousness?

Religion explained ultimately by psychological reasons — "pathological psychology"

God = the imagined and fantasized principle of the totality of satisfied human wishes and desires

"God is what I am not and desire to be" — the fantasized sublimation of human pain

"To enrich God, man must impoverish himself; for God to be everything, man must be nothing"

Marx's definitive critique:

"Feuerbach starts from the fact of religious self-alienation, the duplication of the world into a religious, imaginary world, and a real one. His work consists in the dissolution of the religious world into its secular basis. But that the secular foundation lifts itself above itself and establishes itself in the clouds as an independent realm can only be explained by the self-cleavage and self-contradictoriness of this secular basis"

(Thesis IV on Feuerbach)

Therefore: one must theoretically critique and practically revolutionize the terrestrial family — not merely discover the earthly secret of the holy family

🕊️ VI. NOTES ON JOHN PAUL II'S ENCYCLICAL LABOREM EXERCENS

Published: September 14, 1981

🎭 A. The Encyclical as Intelligent Anti-Marxist Document

Context: Published 90 years after Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum — the foundational theses of the Catholic Church on the social question

Acknowledges: Growing concern of the Church with economic-political problems — the direction of the international workers' movement, the role of unions, peace, human rights, liberation from exploitation and colonialism

Why? Because objective reality and its contradictions impose themselves — forcing Catholic ideologues and theologians to take sides

Tactical brilliance of the document:

Uses language close to Marxist economic and sociological theory

While defining a political-social option against Marxism and the international communist movement

The language of "worker," "labor," "capital," "exploitation" — deployed to systematically undercut the Marxist analysis

The "third position" illusion:

Claims to oppose both capitalism and collectivism

Rodríguez Ugidos destroys this pretense: "In matters of ideological struggle, third positions are always impossible"

A third position always indicates, in the final instance, an apology for prevailing capitalism or, at best, a reformist policy that can only benefit bourgeois society

📊 B. The Philosophical Foundation: Neothomism and Personalism

Core philosophical base:

Neothomist and personalist philosophies

Based on divine creation and the generic human essence of labor

Apparent paradox: Man is simultaneously a divine creature and a product of his own labor activity

Resolution: The dimension of labor is fundamental, but man receives from God the mandate to dominate the earth

Man is active and creative principle — but "in the image and likeness of his Creator" — a God who appears as "worker-God"

Work defined as: the characteristic that defines man as an active and responsible person

🔍 C. The Strategic Abstraction: Destroying the Class Analysis

The key methodological move:

Establishes difference between objective labor (technique) and subjective labor (man as subject of work)

The Church is interested predominantly in the subjective dimension — because therein lie the sources of human dignity

"If we abstract from the objective aspect of work and the different types of work... 'the very foundation of the ancient division of men into social classes disappears'"

Rodríguez Ugidos: EXACTLY. This is the point. If you strip work of its historical-concrete conditions, of the relations of social production, you obtain the abstract category of labor-in-general — and thereby make class analysis impossible by design 🎯

The result: concepts as vague as "work in general," "man in general," "work for man and not man for work" — behind which there are no real objects, only carefully generated empty ideas in service of well-defined interests

🏦 D. Work and Capital: The Manufactured Unity

Encyclical's claim: Work and capital cannot be separated or counterposed — any more than the men behind them can be

The capitalist error (economism): Treating work and capital in the same perspective — interpreting work only economically

The materialist error (materialism): Establishing primacy of material over spiritual and personal

Result: dialectical materialism is characterized as "anti-humanist" — "incapable of offering to reflection on human work sufficient and definitive bases" for the primacy of man over capital

The hidden conclusion: Since the principle of priority of labor over capital can be violated equally in both social systems — capitalism and "collectivism" — the Church erects itself as guardian of a divine principle applicable regardless of which system is in question

This includes: Cuba, the USSR, Poland, the United States — all equally subject to the Church's humanist critique

The intention is crystal clear: to place both the socialist world and the capitalist world on the same moral plane, denying the fundamental distinction between exploiting and exploited systems

🔑 E. Property and the "Authentic Socialization" Swindle

The encyclical endorses the right to private property — but "in the broader context of the universal right to use the goods of creation"

Rejects: "Rigid capitalism" defending exclusive right to private property as an "untouchable dogma"

Also rejects: Socialist collectivization — because transferring means of production from private owners to society "does not sufficiently" constitute socialization

Under collectivism: they pass to the administration of "another group of people" who "dispose of them" at national scale and could monopolize their administration disregarding human rights

The "authentic" socialization proposed:

Associating labor to ownership of capital through autonomous bodies with respect to public powers and the State

In other words: socialization within capitalism, from capitalism

The eternal structure of work presupposes the unity of work and capital — not their antagonism

The explicit statement: "These multiple and so desired reforms cannot be implemented THROUGH THE APRIORISTIC ELIMINATION OF PRIVATE PROPERTY OF THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION" (emphasis in original)

Rodríguez Ugidos's verdict:

"The social doctrine of the Church, contained in the papal encyclical 'Laborem Exercens,' without doubt represents a reformist formula in the service of the interests of capital, sanctioned by the grace of God and the Holy Scriptures" ✂️

🇨🇺 VII. OBJECTIVITY AND VALUATION IN HISTORY WILL ABSOLVE ME

Presented at: "XXX Anniversary of the Assault on the Moncada Barracks" event, Academy of Sciences of Cuba, 1983

Published in: Revolución y Cultura, No. 7, 1983; Universidad de La Habana, No. 223, 1984

🔫 A. History Will Absolve Me as the First Programmatic Document of the Cuban Revolution

Context: The January 1, 1959 triumph answered demands for economic, political, and social liberation after 57 years of neocolonial dependence

The speech: Pronounced by Fidel Castro during the trial against the Moncada Barracks assailants — collecting the aspirations of over half a century of struggle by the working class, poor and middle peasantry, students, revolutionary intelligentsia, and urban petty bourgeoisie

The social foundation:

A movement of the people and inspired by the people — specifically "that great unredeemed mass"

Not a movement of accommodated and conservative sectors

The revolutionary movement of democratic-popular and anti-imperialist tendency was destined to:

Rescue national sovereignty from imperialist domination

Destroy the dependent structures of an underdeveloped society

Agrarian reform, liquidation of inequality, social injustice, unemployment, illiteracy, racial discrimination

📊 B. The Three Planes of Concrete Analysis in the Document

Political plane:

Progressive process of dependence and subjugation of national sovereignty to Yankee interests

Disappearance of the few democratic freedoms existing before the treacherous coup of March 10, 1952

Central political objective: conquest of public freedom, political democracy, constitutional guarantees

Economic plane:

Denunciation of economic deformation under foreign capital penetration

Domination of latifundist and bourgeois oligarchy

Balance: underdeveloped economy structurally deformed by monocultural agriculture and precarious industrialization

Chronic unemployment as permanent threat

Conclusion: declining living standards of popular masses contrasting with growing enrichment of large industrial and latifundist proprietors

Social plane:

Inhuman living conditions of rural peasantry and agricultural workers

Illiteracy, deplorable public health, racial and gender discrimination

Generalized corruption, looting of public treasury

🔑 C. The Six Revolutionary Problems

"The problem of land, the problem of industrialization, the problem of housing, the problem of unemployment, the problem of education, and the problem of the health of the people" — six points toward which the revolutionary process would resolutely direct its efforts

"The future of the nation and the solution of its problems cannot continue depending on the selfish interest of a dozen financiers, the cold calculations on profits traced in their air-conditioned offices by ten or twelve magnates"

Social problems of this magnitude require revolution and revolutionary procedures that go to the root of problems and eradicate them definitively

"In the modern world, no social problem is resolved by spontaneous generation"

🌀 D. The Marxist Character of the Moncada Program (NOT Socialist, but Marxist)

The paradox: The PCC Platform insists on the Marxist character of the Moncada program while acknowledging it is not a socialist program

Resolution:

The democratic-popular, agrarian, and anti-imperialist objectives respond to a concrete analysis of the contradictions specific to Cuban society at that historical-concrete phase of development

This is an important methodological problem of Marxist-Leninist method regarding the tactics of revolutionary struggle

Lenin: "It would be a cardinal error to think that the struggle for democracy can divert the proletariat from the socialist revolution" — on the contrary, the proletariat cannot prepare for victory over the bourgeoisie without a struggle on all fronts for democracy

The revolutionary method: Given the social conditions of Cuba in the 1950s, the armed struggle is and must be the primary form of combat

Fidel Castro's conclusion: The only way to successfully combat the Batista regime was to organize an independent movement and unleash popular armed insurrection as the highest form of mass struggle

Opposition parties of the bourgeois opposition were incapable of mobilizing the people — vacillating, inept, subordinated to reactionary and anti-communist imperialist policy

📅 E. The Stages of the Cuban Revolutionary Process

October 15, 1960: Fidel Castro proclaims the Moncada program has been fulfilled — only then does the socialist transformation of society become the objective

The specific characteristic of the Cuban transition:

Democratic-revolutionary to socialist stage under the same social-class leadership in a relatively brief period

This transition is explained by the fusion of objective analysis and class-valorative perspective throughout the programmatic document

Objective understanding of the social situation is possible precisely by virtue of the valorative, ideological-class perspective — and this class perspective guarantees the objective analysis of the concrete historical-social situation

🚫 F. Refuting Bourgeois Distortions of the Cuban Revolution

The book Cuba Under Castro: The Limits of Charisma (among others by authors including E. González, Andrés Suárez, C. Mesa-Lago, J. Domínguez, A. de la Cuesta, B. Goldenberg, T. Draper):

"Fidelism became essentially a non-class revolutionary doctrine; therefore, it differed from orthodox Marxism-Leninism, which emphasizes class analysis and prescribes the vanguard role to the Cuban proletariat"

These theorists place subjective factors and voluntarist motivations as determinants of the revolutionary situation

Claim: Cuba in the 1950s was not an agrarian society but an "urban society" with some of the most highly developed socioeconomic profiles in Latin America — therefore no objective conditions for revolution

The "generational phenomenon" theory: Wars of Ten Years = generation of 1868; Independence War = generation of 1895; abortive revolution of 1933 = generation of 1930; Revolution of January 1, 1959 = generation of the Moncada, the young "bearded ones"

Conclusion: The 1959 Revolution is a "purely generational phenomenon" — an elite of young Fidelists, not popular masses

Rodríguez Ugidos's definitive response:

The distortion of statistical data and intentional falsification of reality alone can explain these conclusions

Behind all attempts to falsify the reality of the Cuban revolutionary process: the same idea, the same interest, the same logic — the idea, interest, and logic of reaction

Against the subjectivist logic of reaction stands the objective logic of reality and of Marxist-Leninist theory — "the simple logic of the people", expounded masterfully by Fidel in the Moncada program

🧪 VIII. THE NEO-ALTHUSSERIAN MODEL OF MARXIST PHILOSOPHY IN ITS LATIN AMERICAN VERSION

Published in: Materialismo histórico en la etapa contemporánea, Editorial de la Academia de Ciencias de Bulgaria, 1986

Presented at: Encounter of Philosophers at the Varna Summer School, 1984

🇫🇷 A. Althusser's Influence and the "Chain Reaction" of Vulgarization

Louis Althusser exercises strong influence on Latin American Marxism — particularly in Mexico, where the greatest concentration of Althusserian influence is found

The Latin American exile (from Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, etc.) concentrated many Marxist theorists in Mexico from the second half of the 1960s

Althusser arrived accompanied by other neo-Marxist influences: L. Colletti, K. Korsch, G. Lukács

The two Althussers: Not one but two — whose conceptions are also contradictory and incomplete:

First Althusser: Scientific positions — dialectical materialism as "theory of theoretical practices", philosophy as metacience

Second Althusser: Practicist positions — the "dissolution of philosophy into politics"

The chain reaction:

Althusser pretends to fill the "gaps of Marx"

Latin American neo-Althusserians pretend to fill the "gaps of Althusser"

Result: "untracing the path trod by Marx, Engels, and Lenin" — an impressive feat of intellectual regression

🇲🇽 B. Enrique González Rojo: The Scientificist Neo-Althusserian

Key work: Para leer a Althusser (Editorial Diógenes, S.A., México, 1974)

Three readings of Althusserian texts:

First: "blind reading" from pre-Althusserian traditionalist instruments

Second: properly Althusserian reading — convinces him of the "unjust ideological criticisms" of dogmatism

Third: "post-Althusserian" critical reading — "beyond Althusser"

González Rojo's premises (from Althusser):

Marxist theory comprises: a philosophy (dialectical materialism) and a science (historical materialism)

From the logical viewpoint: dialectical materialism has preeminence over historical materialism (its object is the scientificity of all sciences)

From the "chrono-epistemological" viewpoint: historical materialism has preeminence over dialectical materialism (science of history precedes "theory of theoretical practices")

The two "deviations" González Rojo claims to eliminate:

The "Soviet-Hegelian deviation" — whereby historical materialism is conceived as dialectical materialism applied to social life

The false subordination of philosophy to historical materialism (characteristic of "philosophers of praxis" like Labriola and Gramsci)

Rodríguez Ugidos's critique: These premises are not argued or demonstrated — González Rojo simply declares "the Althusserian truth" and attributes a gratuitous thesis to "Soviet-Hegelian deviations"

Lenin's actual position: Marx's fundamental contribution was the extension of materialist philosophy (not dialectical materialism) to the knowledge of human society — enriched by dialectics as the doctrine of development in its most complete, profound, and non-one-sided form

The scientificist consequence:

Philosophy conceived as science of sciences or metacience — its contents de-ideologized

Philosophy and science coincide: their "theoretical practices" operate from "theoretical means of production" reflecting things objectively

Philosophy's object: the sciences — its practice limited to theoretically and methodologically elaborating the results of science

The "new ontology" demand:

González Rojo criticizes Althusser for not posing the problem of "new ontology" within Marxist philosophy

His "new ontology": the philosophical study of "natural reality in its profundity and infinity"

Rodríguez Ugidos's response: This is not a new ontology — it is a regression to "natural philosophy" of metaphysical and speculative character — precisely what Engels demolished in Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of German Classical Philosophy

The Leninist principle of the unity of dialectics, logic, and theory of knowledge excludes any possibility of an ontology in the traditional sense

González Rojo's "new ontology" separates the theory of being from the theory of thinking — a metaphysical separation foreign to dialectical materialism

🇲🇽 C. Raúl Olmedo: The Practicist Neo-Althusserian

Key work: El anti-método: introducción a la filosofía marxista (Editorial J. Mortiz, S.A., México, 1980)

Goes much further than Althusser — in directions Althusser explicitly rejected (per Althusser's letter to Olmedo, Paris, January 8, 1975, published in Historia y Sociedad, No. 17, Mexico, 1978)

The central thesis: With the emergence of Marxist-Leninist doctrine, the need for a philosophical theory of knowledge procedures disappears — as do the categories and logical or methodological rules that ground the dialectical order of the knowledge process

Any attempt to construct a general theory and logic of the knowledge process within Marxism opens a fissure through which idealism enters and materialism escapes

Therefore: Marxist philosophy neither produces knowledge nor constitutes a methodology — it consists exclusively in a (materialist) taking of position and leaving the particular sciences freely to produce their knowledge and methods

Conclusion: One is a materialist by doing sciences and an idealist by doing philosophy 🤡

The "de-philosophizing of sciences" principle:

Philosophy = politics in the sciences

Function: affirm the primacy of matter over consciousness — and protect science from all idealist (i.e., philosophical) interference

After historical materialism: philosophy has definitively lost its "last refuge" — its real function is to be "condensed reflection of historical materialism"

Even this is not permanent: in practice, philosophy continues to exist as effect of the class struggle — but it has no content of its own, no right to delimit its own field of action

Rodríguez Ugidos's verdict:

The "only unique contribution" of Olmedo to Althusserianism: incorporating a metaphysical and foreign ontology of nature — which degrades the Althusserian conception rather than elevating it

The path from Althusser to González Rojo to Olmedo = the path of progressive vulgarization of Marxism — its simplification and abstract, metaphysical comprehension

Quoting Marx on vulgar economy: "all systems lose what animates and gives them vigor and end up forming a hodgepodge on the compilers' table"

The vulgarization of Marxist philosophy consists in: "smoothing out contradictions, reducing and eliminating the specific character of dialectical and historical materialism vis-à-vis the sciences, ideological forms, and practice"

✝️ IX. PROLOGUE TO THE CUBAN EDITION OF KAUTSKY'S CHRISTIANITY: ITS ORIGINS AND FOUNDATIONS

Published in: El cristianismo, sus orígenes y fundamentos de K. Kautsky, Editorial Política, La Habana, 1986

📜 A. Engels on the Study of Early Christianity

Engels's 1882 article: "Bruno Bauer and Primitive Christianity" — published in Der Socialdemokrat

The revolutionary relevance: Understanding Christianity's origins and triumph is necessary for modern socialism

"It is not possible to get rid of a religion that subjected all the Roman world empire and dominated for 1800 years the greater part of civilized humanity with merely declaring that it is a collection of nonsense gathered by fraudsters"

Must be explained from the historical conditions in which it arose and reached its dominant position

Engels's comparison: Early Christianity and the modern workers' movement share points of similarity and essential differences:

Both are movements of exploited and oppressed masses — a "revolutionary party"

But: early Christian socialism seeks salvation not in transformation of society (as modern labor movement) but in eternal life after death

📚 B. Kautsky's Work (1905–1908): El Cristianismo, sus Orígenes y Fundamentos

Written between 1905 and 1908 — when Kautsky was still considered a faithful interpreter of Marx and Engels

Method: Materialist conception of history applied to religion's origins

Key demonstrations:

The popular and revolutionary origin of primitive Christianity — a movement of the poor, oppressed, and exploited

Christianity did not transform into a world religion until it lost its revolutionary character — following Engels's 1895 theses

"Christianity did not triumph as a subversive force, but as a conservative one, as a new prop of oppression and exploitation, which not only did not eliminate imperial power, slavery, poverty of the masses, and concentration of wealth... but perpetuated these conditions"

🔄 C. Kautsky's Contradictory Evolution: From Marxist to Renegade

Lenin's characterization in The State and Revolution:

"In the person of Kautsky, German Social Democracy seemed to declare: I maintain my revolutionary conceptions (1899). I recognize... the inevitable character of the social revolution of the proletariat (1902). I recognize that a new era of revolutions has begun (1909). But despite all this, I retreat with respect to what Marx said already in 1852, as soon as the question is posed of the tasks of the proletarian revolution in relation to the State (1912)"

Kautsky's evolution:

1880s–1890s: Positive role in spreading Marxist ideas:

Economic Lessons of C. Marx (1887) — popular version of Capital

The Agrarian Question (1899)

Commentary to the Erfurt Program (1892) — exposed central Marxist theses accessibly

Already deviating: Considered the economic struggle the decisive form of class struggle, relegating political struggle — sometimes placed parliamentary struggle as the fundamental means

Engels criticized Erfurt program's errors — particularly the omission of recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat

The Parlamentarism, Popular Legislation, and Social Democracy (1893): defended conquest of state power through parliamentary majority

Anti-Bernstein (1899): inconsistent and vacillating in opposition to revisionism — avoided the cardinal problem of the dictatorship of the proletariat — essentially delivered to the opportunist position

The Road to Power (1909): Lenin's assessment as "the last and best Marxist work of Kautsky" — yet still placed peaceful forms of class struggle in the foreground and avoided the question of armed insurrection and destruction of the bourgeois state machinery

The Vorwärts Scandal:

Engels's 1895 Introduction to Marx's Class Struggles in France was mutilated by the social-democratic editors

Engels wrote to Kautsky on April 1, 1895: "I read today, with astonishment, an extract of my 'Introduction' published without my knowledge, truncated in such a way that I appear in it as a peaceful worshipper of legality at any cost"

Kautsky's own role in the tergiversation was documented — he acknowledged in Neue Zeit (1909) that "revolutionary passages were crossed out... in Berlin... as too revolutionary"

Lenin's notation: Kautsky himself was not innocent of the reformist mutilation

The First World War (final rupture):

Develops the anti-Marxist theory of "ultra-imperialism"

Thought it possible to overcome production anarchy and war by conciliating interests of different countries' capitals through international cartels and trusts — divorcing economics from politics

Lenin demolished this: The Bankruptcy of the Second International (1915); Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916)

After October Revolution: Pronounced against it and against dictatorship of the proletariat — defending "pure democracy"

Lenin's The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky (1918) delivered the definitive verdict

Final works (1927–1929):

The Materialist Conception of History — revises philosophical foundations of Marxism, dissolves the social into the biological, proposes supra-class conception of the State

Admitted the possibility of conciliating dialectical materialist world-conception with positivism, empiriocriticism, and other contemporary idealist doctrines

Lenin's balanced assessment:

"Many of his works tell us that he knew how to be a Marxist historian, and those works will remain as the lasting patrimony of the proletariat, despite the subsequent apostasy of their author"

The Cuban edition presents the Kautsky of the Marxist period — not the Kautsky of the renegade period

🏝️ X. THE RATIONAL SENSUALISM OF JOSÉ DE LA LUZ Y CABALLERO AND HIS STRUGGLE AGAINST 19TH-CENTURY ECLECTIC SPIRITUALISM

Unpublished chapter destined for a scientific work on the History of Philosophy, in collaboration with the Academy of Sciences of the USSR — completed 1984

👤 A. Luz y Caballero: The Man and His Historical Position

José de la Luz y Caballero (1800–1862) — one of the towering figures of Cuban and Latin American thought of the first half of the 19th century

Born into a wealthy Cuban family of clergy and militia:

Father was perpetuo regidor of the Havana City Council from 1797, lieutenant colonel

Renounced 31,701 pesos in chaplaincies — lacked genuine religious vocation

Sympathizer of Protestant ideas — saw Luther as the Descartes of religion and Descartes as the Luther of philosophy 🎯

Intellectual formation:

Read Descartes, Maine de Biran, Malebranche initially; then Bacon, Locke, Condillac, Bentham, Voltaire

Traveled through the United States and Europe — met personally: Walter Scott, Longfellow, Gay-Lussac, Cuvier, Alexander von Humboldt, Goethe

In 1824: Substituted José Antonio Saco in the chair of philosophy at the Seminary of San Carlos

Declared himself disciple of Félix Varela from the opening discourse

Already an admirer of Descartes (method, not innatism), Newton, and physiology

Influenced by Scottish Hamilton, knowledgeable of German classical philosophy (though not a partisan of great speculative systems)

Admired Kant for his critique of dogmatic ontology and metaphysics

Scientific breadth:

Logic, ethics, history, jurisprudence, political economy

Mathematics, hydraulics, mechanics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, psychology, pathology, physiology

A determinist, informed of Lamarck and the debates between E. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire and J. Cuvier

Partisan of phrenologist Juan José Gall's ideas; inclined toward evolutionism and progressive organization of matter

(Darwin published his fundamental work three years after Luz's death)

🏛️ B. The Class Determination of His Political Positions

Represents the interests of the nascent Cuban Creole bourgeoisie — maintaining reformist political positions, fearful that an independence movement could trigger a Black rebellion like Haiti and ruin their properties

His political restraint:

At the time he began as thinker and educator (1820s), independence attempts had already occurred and failed — lacked popular support (movements of Infante and Agüero, the Conspiracy of the Rays and Soles of Bolívar)

The Creole bourgeoisie was willing only to fight for reforms from the Metropolis — at most, autonomous provincial government within the Spanish state

Even Félix Varela, who openly advocated independence, later became skeptical and recommended prudence to disciples

His actual political role:

Defines himself as "active member of the homeland's beehive"

Led the liberal intellectual group after Saco's exile, assumed defense of Saco against Captain General Tacón's despotism

Ramiro Guerra (Cuban historian): The failure of these efforts "ruined his health and led him to make the irrevocable decision to renounce all political activity"

Result: life of Luz as mute protest against the colonial regime — when politics closed, he consecrated himself to teaching

Assessment by Carlos Rafael Rodríguez: 🏆

"Neither revolutionary chief nor retarding force was Don José de la Luz"

"Awakener of consciences, ideologue of bourgeois groups, reformist at the moments when reformism was an acceptable path, though not the only one"

"The political resonance of his work was greater than he himself had thought at the end of his days"

José Martí's characterization:

"He did not write in books, which reward, but in souls, which tend to forget. He knew everything that was known in his epoch, but not to teach what he knew, but to transmit it. He sowed men"

His aphorism on systems: "All systems and no system, there is the system"

🌎 C. Latin American Context: The Ideological Battlefield of the First Half of the 19th Century

🗺️ The Post-Independence Landscape

Independence culminates in 1825 for most Latin American territories — except Cuba and Puerto Rico (remain under Hispanic colonial domination until end of century)

The fundamental contradiction: Independence did not liberate definitively from feudal structures — national bourgeoisies were still weak, the working class not yet constituted as independent social group

After independence wars remain unresolved: conquest of political democracy, final abolition of slavery and peonage, unimpeded development of industry and commerce

The political reality:

Most states fall under the power of oligarchic landowner sectors in structural alliance with the reactionary Catholic Church

Only Paraguay (with a progressive government supported by popular masses) could temporarily expropriate the Creole oligarchy and impede penetration of foreign capital

The rest: from colonized to neo-colonized status — British capital penetrating and subjugating the new states

🧭 The Three Philosophical Currents

Progressive tendencies (inspired by Enlightenment and revolutionary France):

Argentina: Lafinur, Fernández Agüero, Diego Alcorta (under Condillac, Cabanis, Destutt de Tracy influence); Alcorta takes frankly materialist positions under Cabanis's influence; later López and Alsina incline to La Mettrie's materialism and ideas of Condorcet and Turgot

Colombia: Destutt de Tracy and Maine de Biran exercise determining influence

Guayaquil: José Joaquín Olmedo and Vicente Rocafuerte (encyclopedist deism)

Chile: Camilo Henríquez (Rousseau-style encyclopedism)

Cuba: Félix Varela and José de la Luz y Caballero (Lockean ideas in fierce struggle against eclectic spiritualism and scholasticism)

Eclectic spiritualism (dominant in bourgeoisies once in power):

Represented in Brazil (Mont' Alverne, Magalhaes); Uruguay (De la Peña, Ellauri); Bolivia (Terrazas, San Román); and even in Cuba (José Zacarías and Manuel González del Valle — but with limited diffusion due to Cuba's particular conditions)

"Formula suitable" for those wanting to leave Condillac without returning to Saint Thomas

Victor Cousin as the leading figure — his eclectic spiritualism exercises indubitable influence in Cuba and especially in other Latin American countries from the 1830s–1840s

Catholic philosophy (most rigid and intransigent):

Pedro Gual, José Ignacio Moreno, Vicente Solano — defending Thomist world-conception

Later: Jaime Balmes's influence — admitting compatibility of philosophy and religion

Bishop of Michoacán, Jesús Munguía — receives influences of Descartes, Condillac, Destutt de Tracy, Cousin — advocates Catholic world-conception updated to historical requirements

Other progressive currents:

Phrenology (materialist threat to idealist-religious currents) — represented in Mexico by José Ramón Pacheco, with some influence on Luz y Caballero

Bourgeois liberalism — Lastarria and Bilbao (Chile), José María Luis Mora (Mexico) — fighting for reforms against latifundist domination

Utopian socialism (Sainsimonian) — in Argentina: Esteban Echeverría and Juan Bautista Alberdi; spreads to Chile and Uruguay

🔍 The Class Dynamics Behind the Philosophical Struggle

During independence: Landowner class adopts Enlightenment ideas and encyclopedism to fight scholasticism and colonial regime's dominant ideology

Once in power: Landowner class and most reactionary bourgeois sectors abandon Enlightenment ideas and adopt eclectic spiritualist positions

Small bourgeoisie and progressive bourgeois sectors: Radicalize their ideological and philosophical positions

The eclectic current represents a philosophy of compromise with the post-independence social status quo — opposing sensualist materialism and atheism while not openly rejecting the development of sciences and reason

📝 D. Luz y Caballero's Philosophical Forms and Their Significance

Three fundamental forms in which Luz exposes his thought:

Aphorisms: Brief sentences formulating conceptions synthetically — without developed argumentation

Elencos (academic-didactic writings): Central theses as basis for oral development with disciples — don't permit knowing his thought in full amplitude

Philosophical polemic (published in Cuban newspapers and journals, 1838–1840): The key to understanding his whole doctrine — explicitly exposes ideas on philosophical method, origin of ideas, eclecticism, ideology, and ethics

Five tomes of polemical works — the obligatory reference for clarifying aphorisms and elencos

Manuel Sanguily's insight: Luz "identified philosophy with the homeland, truth with justice" — explains why he preferred teaching and polemic to systematic elaboration

The Elencos de Carraguao of 1835:

Elaborated as director of Colegio San Cristóbal de Carraguao in 1834

Served as "primer" for many Cubans before 1868

The "Appendix-Critique" of 152 theses most evidently expresses Luz's empiricist-sensualist positions (per Antonio Sánchez de Bustamante y Montoro)

🔬 E. The Epistemology of Luz y Caballero: Senso-Rationalism

🌡️ The Problem of Method as the Central Question

The "Advertencia" to the Elencos de Carraguao (published May 1838 in the Gaceta de Puerto Príncipe) initiates the famous polemic on method

Opponents: Manuel Castellanos Mojarrieta ("Rumilio"), Miguel Storch ("El Dómine"), and a disciple signing as "El Adicto"

Luz's thesis: The study of natural sciences must precede the study of logic and spiritual or moral sciences

Against scholastic method which began teaching with speculative disciplines: logic and metaphysics

"The method question" = same question debated between spiritualist and sensualist systems — "the to be or not to be of the illustrious British bard" — a matter of life or death for philosophy

Published in 13 extensive articles in the Diario de la Habana and Gaceta de Puerto Príncipe, May 1838–end 1839

🔭 The Theory of Knowledge: Sensualism and Its Rational Completion

Empiricist foundation (Lockean):

First thesis of Elencos de Carraguao 1835: "Experience is the starting point of every kind of knowledge"

"The understanding necessarily begins with the concrete"

Knowledge goes from the particular to the general

The role of abstraction:

Abstraction is not diminished by empiricism — it is required for science

"The invariable law of human reason consists in beginning with the concrete to elevate itself to the abstract; practice before theory, to then with the progress of science be fecundated anew by theory"

Without abstraction: impossible to raise the edifice of science

Abstractions have an objective foundation: geometry elaborates abstractions from observation of nature — "the line was in nature, but not separately, but as the contour or term of extension... and on these bases, and from abstraction to abstraction, the understanding raises the sumptuous edifice of science"

Against Condillac: Luz opposes the idea that reform of the language of science depends on the exactness of language — "observation is the cause, exactness of language is the effect, and not the inverse"

The practice-theory dialectic:

Agriculture and land measurement drove the development of geometry from the needs of Nile inhabitants

Political economy was born in Great Britain stimulated by growing industrial and commercial development

Theory and practice must go together — not only does practice determine theory, but ideas effectively influence actions

The progress of science: A genuinely empiricist conception of sciences founded on practice means understanding that human knowledge is not absolute or immutable but "perfectible" — in constant process of renewal

Even logic is susceptible to development

Languages of science are objects of progress — but language is the effect, not the cause

🧩 Logic: Inductive versus Formal

Traditional formal logic:

"More for avoiding errors than for producing truths, or what is equal, more negative than positive"

Has barely advanced since Aristotle systematized its principles

Modern logic (from Bacon to Kant): Studies mental faculties to direct them to the investigation of truth — is essentially method and guide of knowledge

Needs data from other sciences to obtain the method of knowledge

The key insight:

Logic is not an "instrument or universal key with which all doors of human knowledge are opened"

"In each science is found exemplified the method without it being necessary to bring it from another part"

Logic is "a legitimate child of nature and the sciences, and once formed, it contributes to the development of human knowledge"

Against scholastic belief: All knowledge derives from logic — sciences are simply applied logic

Luz inverts this: Know nature before knowing the instrument of knowledge

"Man must first begin with the exterior than with the interior; better said, he cannot know his interior except precisely by virtue of the knowledge of the exterior"

Logical processes are not innate or instinctive:

Developed from the procedure we necessarily and naturally follow in the investigation of things

Reflection of objects in the mind awakens the desire to know causes — then begins analysis, deduction by induction, analogy, comparison

The human being as both spectator and actor on earth — as intelligence develops, "begins to inquire the why of what has been observed, in which inquiry he fulfills his role as actor"

🏗️ The Reform of Education in Cuba

Based on: Principle of precedence of natural sciences over intellectual sciences AND idea of the unity of sciences

Following Félix Varela's teachings: Shake the yoke of authority and instill critical spirit among Cuban youth

The teacher's task: Develop true critical spirit of philosophical criticism and freedom of thought based on:

Observation of natural facts

Knowledge of all sciences

Critical study of the history of philosophy — serving "to instruct oneself on the achievements and wanderings of the understanding and glimpse their causes"

Why natural sciences first?

History of sciences shows natural sciences developed first — knowledge of natural phenomena is less complex

Knowledge of man is "the most complex, since in his being are united the properties of all bodies and the faculties of all of his genus with the addition of rationality"

Therefore: study of man is first in order of importance but last in the order of time and difficulty

Natural sciences have proven Bacon's method — this must be applied to human sciences as well

A single philosophical-scientific method:

"Will prevent the adult humanity from being lulled with the same instrument, or with the same tone that lulled infant humanity"

Against "flat empiricism":

"As long as the facts are not reduced to a key, but float as independent and scattered, there is no theory, or science properly speaking: one will not have passed the most superficial empiricism"

⚔️ F. The Battle Against Eclectic Spiritualism: Luz vs. Victor Cousin

👻 Cousin's Eclecticism: The Enemy Defined

Victor Cousin's philosophical conception:

Selects "critically" philosophical truths from preceding systems using "common sense" as guiding criterion

Divides philosophical systems into four groups: sensationalism (starts from the object of sensations), idealism (reduces all to objects of reason), skepticism (emerges from contradiction between the two), and mysticism (only way out through faith)

These four = four moments of consciousness — history of philosophy as perpetual transit and fusion between them

Based on Scottish school + Cartesian cogito ergo sum — pretends to fuse the true ideas of all four systems to elevate reason to absolute ideas

The actual function of Cousin's eclecticism:

Open struggle against revolutionary bourgeois ideology and 18th-century materialism whose foundation is in Lockean empiricism and Condillac's sensationalism

Ultimate objective: Confront sensualist-tinged revolutionary ideas and submit university teaching to the Church

From philosophical standpoint: dilutes philosophy into religion, uses decontextualized facts and formulas — instead of multilateral vision it deforms the object investigated

🎯 Luz's Critical Penetration of Eclecticism's Essence

The third position gambit exposed:

Eclecticism adopts a pretended third position — apartándose (distancing itself) from idealism, accusing sensationalists of being "materialists" and "exclusivists" to frighten and confuse the unwary

In essence: explains some phenomena from one doctrine, others from the opposed doctrine — the sensationalism and spiritualism in conflict

Its futile attempt to concile the contradictory and irreconcilable is the characteristic sophistry of eclecticism

The "official" character of eclectic philosophy:

A philosophy "on payroll" — its critique of sensationalism and its connection to the French Revolution expresses the petty sectarianism of those wanting to "lower the carat value of one of the greatest centuries of humanity"

"Being an eclectic means always being prepared for retreat: the pro and the contra: diluting thought with so many supports, distinctions, and tangles that the poor youth (who is the only one I truly pity) doesn't know which card to stick with"

1839: "One of the reasons eclecticism found echo in France was the application made of it to politics: to a people tired of the struggle of opinions, it came to dazzle them with a sedative by speaking of conciliation"

🧪 The Specific Philosophical Errors of Eclecticism

The "psychological method" of Cousin:

For eclecticism, the first and absolute knowledge is the I — supreme criterion of truth

Luz opposes: empiricist principle by which knowledge requires the presence of exterior objects

Observation and objective representation constitute the touchstone of all scientific knowledge — including psychology

Cousin's supposed psychology without this criterion: establishes unjustified abyss between external and internal observation — deducing a pretended spiritualist psychology as aprioristic foundation for subsequent ontological and metaphysical constructions

The critique of ontology:

Luz's empiricist-inductionist principle: the idea of God cannot appear in human understanding except through the exterior world

Man arrives at the idea of God through scientific knowledge of nature — a "grandiose induction"

Therefore the idea of God is relative — derived from objective knowledge of nature

"The science of this century can only be led to the sanctuary of religion through the vestibule of science"

"We feel God everywhere: we see Him, touch Him, admire Him in all phenomena of the exterior world; we feel Him, experience Him, adore Him in the depths of our hearts; but our understanding cannot reach to perceive Him and penetrate His nature"

Explains the diversity of religions throughout human history: polytheism, monotheism, and the true religion or natural religion propounded by Luz

The dialectic of contradictory determinations:

Luz arrives at understanding the dialectic of contrary determinations of reality

"The same object is contingent under one aspect and necessary under another diverse one: thus there does not exist an entity which in all rigor we can call contingent"

And: "Let us suppose that matter is undergoing thousands of modifications; in this sense we will affirm that matter is contingent; but if we notice that it is always extended, impenetrable, resistant, we will say that it is necessary, unalterable in its elements"

Both extremes of the same relation exist alternately in the physical objects themselves: necessary and casual; simple and composed; constant and changeable

This is incipient dialectical thinking — not a fully developed dialectic, but a genuine materialist approach to the contradictory nature of reality

Against ontological substantivation of abstract ideas:

The ontologist attempts "de jure to extract the concrete from the abstract, to construct things with words"

"Ideas have reality only as phenomena of our understanding: they are mere functions of the faculty of thinking, which in no case can produce objects; the latter being the originals from which the former are derived"

Luz reaches the gnoseological roots of metaphysics in the same way as Feuerbach — though by a different route — demonstrating the unjustified ontologization of abstract ideas

🏛️ The Political Roots of Eclecticism: The Final Verdict

Per researcher Antonio Sánchez de Bustamante y Montoro (quoting Marx on Schelling):

Luz's Cuban disciples of eclecticism — the González del Valle brothers, Del Monte, and others — represent not merely a philosophical school but "the colonial politics of Spain sub specie philosophiae"

In Cuba: Unlike Brazil and other Latin American countries, eclectic philosophy does not proliferate and its influence is ephemeral

Because: by the mid-19th century, ideological-political contradictions in Cuba sharpen — culminating in the 1868 revolutionary explosion

The Independence War sweeps eclectical spiritualist ideology from Cuban soil — similar to what occurred in France with the revolutionary movements of 1848

Luz's ultimate significance:

His critique of eclecticism and unconditional defense of empiricism and the scientific-naturalist spirit exercised a liberating function in Cuban philosophical thought

Contributed to accelerating the decomposition of the ideological values propping up colonial power

In the context of Latin American ideological and philosophical struggles of the first half of the 19th century, Luz emerges as a progressive thinker who not only placed himself far above eclecticism and prevailing philosophical idealism but anticipated the positions that would later confront the pseudo-rationalism of Latin American positivism

🚨 The Theoretical Crisis Feminism Cannot Afford to Ignore

Feminist strategy is crippled by the absence of solid theoretical grounding — not because women lack intelligence, but because the entire edifice of Western thought has been constructed by a single gender

Male supremacy's greatest trick: bequeathing to civilization a set of cultural and symbolic forms that present one-sided, distorted gender perspectives as universal truth

Conceptual skewing creates inseparable problems — theoretical, practical, strategic, and historical — that cannot be resolved without dismantling the framework itself

The inescapable prelude to any future: a unity of thought and action, theoretical perspective interacting dynamically with coherent strategy rooted in material reality of lived lives

Without this, feminism risks becoming exactly what Marx and Engels warned about: utopian, identifying injustice without the scientific machinery to dismantle it

📜 Marx Was Brilliant — And Also Profoundly Insufficient

Mary O'Brien's analysis owes a debt to Marx — specifically the concept of praxis, and the insight that alienation is epistemological, not merely emotional, rooted in consciousness opposing itself to Otherness

But make no mistake: this is not orthodox Marxism, and it cannot be

Marx's metatheory cannot make sense of women's oppression, which transcends class — a fact Marx himself never adequately addressed

Marx developed his materialist science in the Hungry Forties, amid industrial devastation, when millions endured the brutality of the Free Market — his framework was historically bounded

The Communist Manifesto (1848) targeted utopian socialism, brilliantly diagnosing how reformers see injustice but cannot precipitate revolutionary change because the socioeconomic reality is not yet ripe

🎯 The parallel to feminism is devastating: feminism risks the same trap — publicizing problems, arousing criticism, but failing to initiate radical social change without adequate theoretical grounding

🏛️ The Utopian Trap: Feminism's Uncomfortable Mirror

Marx and Engels argued utopian thinkers pursue personal initiatives, preach radical rhetoric, chase limited reformist goals, and attack the whole value system indiscriminately

They sweep the present under "the roseate carpet of an ideal future" — eloquent, yes; effective, no

Feminism in the 1970s–80s displayed striking parallels:

Abstract efforts to uncover the "essence" of domestic labor (see Bonnie Fox, ed., Hidden in the Household, 1980)

Attempts to simply remake Marx, Freud, or Aristotle to fit women's experience

The bourgeois world's distrust of theory combined with empiricist liberal scholarship's anti-theoretical bias compounded the problem

Meanwhile, the communist world — blithely ignoring Marx's own insight that history is continuous praxis — made Marx's grave the endpoint of all theoretical development

💀 Result: feminist theory trapped between male frameworks it cannot use and a theoretical vacuum it cannot fill

👁️ The Abstraction of "Woman": Male Praxis at Its Most Insidious

Women cannot simply ignore the history of thought because it is misogynist — you must understand an enemy before you can defeat it

Men created abstract Woman (capital W) just as they created abstract Man — but these abstractions are differentiated, and that differentiation is the ideological weapon

Generalized abstract Woman is a product of male praxis: thought about women, unified with concrete political and legal action to create the social conditions in which real women must live

Male supremacy as historical praxis at its most effective: a millennia-long unity of thought and action — the patriarchy was never accidental, it was engineered

Political theorists from Plato onward devoted enormous energy to elaborating concepts of Woman — in The Symposium, Socrates argued intellectual intercourse between men was more nobly creative than heterosexual reproduction. Convenient, that.

The Eve/Mary dichotomy — Virgin/Whore, sacred/profane — is universally recognized yet endlessly reproduced: women simultaneously worshipped and damned for the same biological fact

🌿 Nature, Woman, and the Ideological Cage

The "Nature of Woman" differs from the "Nature of Man" precisely because she is perceived as more Natural — and this is not a compliment

Men are as ambivalent about Nature as they are about Woman — and these ambivalences are deeply, structurally connected

Classical thought sought harmony between Man and Nature; Hegel and Marx revived this — yet despite dialectics' promise to mediate alienation, Marxism joined male metatheory in perceiving the fundamental opposition of Man and Nature as an invitation to dominate

The constant across all male-stream thought: women are inescapably entwined with Nature, and — as Simone de Beauvoir noted — incapable of transcendence

🔒 Men, however, have two natures: the biological first nature, and the second nature he makes himself — through politics, philosophy, civility, and freedom

This dual nature vs. women's singular nature is not philosophical fantasy — it manifests concretely in the separation of public and private life

🏛️ The Public/Private Divide: The Architecture of Oppression

Hannah Arendt — not the first but among the most recent to argue — positioned the public realm as the space of humanity and the private realm as the space of animality

The private realm: governed by necessity — where Woman lives

The public realm: created in freedom — where Man transcends his first nature through his second

Of course, not all men perform in both spheres — only an elite core acquires the leisure needed for political creativity; the medieval serf and the assembly-line worker are as excluded as any woman

But even for ordinary men, the separation is unreal but consoling — for all women, it is unreal but exploitative

🎭 Women's realm has been fixed theoretically and actually in the private realm — the realm of Nature, Necessity, and Non-freedom

Marxist class analysis partially explains why only some men access the public realm — but Engels' attempt to link women's oppression to private property in The Origin of the Family (1884) retreats to simplified, polemical, non-dialectical analysis about primitive property modes

🧪 Every Theory That Claims Women Are "By Nature" Inferior Is Grounded in the Same Intellectual Quicksand

From Freud's psychic structures to the crude biological determinism of what O'Brien calls "the Tigers of the academic jungle" — all ultimately claim men are superior by nature

Every single one of these theories is grounded in the brute fact of women's reproductive function

Women are tied to nature by the "a-human act of giving birth to humans" — this is the intellectual consensus of millennia of male scholarship, stated with the confidence of those who have never labored to bring a human being into the world

Simone de Beauvoir, despite the power of The Second Sex (1974), accepted without question the evaluation of childbirth as an inferior animal activity — absorbed the enemy's framework wholesale

Shulamith Firestone (The Dialectic of Sex, 1971) pursued this to its logical conclusion: liberation requires evading the reproductive function entirely, relying on cybernetic technology — a dualist rather than dialectical solution, as Juliet Mitchell correctly noted in Woman's Estate (1973)

🤖 Trusting technology to liberate women from reproduction while production technology has already proven catastrophic is, to put it mildly, not a promising strategy

🔬 Reproductive Consciousness: The Category Male Theory Forgot

The real oversight — catastrophic, inexcusable — is the low social value ascribed to women's reproductive function by male supremacist ideology

This low value obscures the sociohistorical necessity for species persistence — humanity literally cannot continue without reproduction, yet reproduction is treated as animal, inferior, beneath serious philosophical consideration

Aristotle in De generatione animalium argued men contribute life and soul to the child while women merely contribute "material" — this is where we started, and much of Western philosophy never left

Marx's historical model gives enormous significance to productive labor's dialectical structure — that unity of thinking and doing by which workers cancel separation from the natural world

🚫 Male-dominated culture has not given equivalent value to reproductive labor — an omission so enormous it invalidates the entire framework

♾️ Hegel's Dialectic of Reproduction: The Insight Nobody Followed

Hegel — master dialectician — was apparently the only major thinker to apprehend the dialectical structure of reproductive process

In "On Love" (Early Theological Writings, trans. Knox & Kroner): reproduction is a process of "unity, separated opposites, reunion"

Unity of man and woman in copulation

Separation and reunion of respective seed

Creation of a new entity: both part of and separate from its progenitors

Transformation from quantity (1+1=3) into quality — a new being potentially independent

The matured unity "breaks free": a negation of a negation, a higher form of embodied unity

But Hegel is prejudiced, evasive, and wrong on crucial points:

The mature infant does not simply "break free" — it is brought into the world by human, female labor

Neither Hegel nor Marx recognized that parturitive labor is crucial to the development of reproductive consciousness

Both assumed that because childbearing is necessary, women are incapable of experiencing and thinking about what they are doing — a logical fallacy of staggering proportions

⚡ The Gendered Asymmetry of Reproductive Alienation

The separations Hegel describes are differentiated by gender — and this is where everything changes

Man's seed: once alienated, permanently estranged — he cannot know whether or not it takes root; paternity is fundamentally abstract, passive, unmediated by involuntary action

Woman's alienation: parts from a whole child, but this alienation is mediated by labor — her labor confirms:

Knowledge of this child as concretely her child, the product of her labor, a value she created

Experience of integration with the actual continuity of her species

🌊 Female reproductive consciousness, mediated by labor, negates the separation between women and genetic continuity — women stand in a relation to time mediated by experience

For men, transcendence of alienation is accessible only through knowledge — specifically, the historical discovery of the relationship between sexual intercourse and conception

Paternity is essentially idea — fundamentally abstract, and while it remains unmediated, it produces alienated consciousness

For men, in a real and devastating sense: physiology is fate — and the entire edifice of patriarchy is the collective historical response

🏛️ Patriarchy as the Historical Solution to Male Reproductive Alienation

The historical record is replete with men's efforts to overcome the uncertainty of paternity — this is not conspiracy theory, it is documented social history

Marriage as institution: the creation of the private realm reserves access to one woman by one man — a property relation dressed as a love contract

Men created social substitutes for genetic continuity from which they are experientially estranged:

⚖️ Law and political constitutions

🛐 Gods who are blessedly eternal

👑 Constitutional and hereditary monarchy

💰 Heritable property

🏛️ The Idea of the State

These phenomena are not random — they are the systematic male response to reproductive alienation

Marriage in its primeval form is not a contract between a man and a woman — it is a treaty among men: mutual back-scratching that restores integrity to male reproductive consciousness

🤝 Paternal uncertainty forces men into social cooperation — "leave my woman alone and I'll return the courtesy" — the sociopolitical dimension of reproductive dialectic

💡 The Discovery of Physiological Paternity: History's Most Consequential Idea

The historical discovery that sexual intercourse causes conception was a world-historical transformation — not just a biological fact but a determinative rupture in human consciousness

It confirmed human reproduction as historical process rather than brute biological accident

It necessarily demanded collective action to objectify it in the world — patriarchal institutions are not natural, they are the political implementation of an idea

Marx, building his theory of history around transformations in modes of production, posited only a couple of such transformations and analyzed only one in detail: feudalism to capitalism

The discovery of physiological paternity is comparably foundational — yet it receives virtually no theoretical treatment in the male canon

💊 Contraceptive Technology as World-Historical Event

Contraceptive technology actually transforms both the process and the social relations of reproduction — in Hegel's terminology, this is a world-historical event

For the first time in history, it provides a material base for gender equality — rescuing equality from mere rhetoric and placing it on material foundations

Men and women are now both in the position of having to mediate the separation of copulation and reproduction

The material and conceptual base of the double standard no longer exists — women are beginning to explore the ramifications of genuine sexual freedom

🚩 But beware: "the banner of the conquering clitoris differs very little from the standard of the penis rampant" — both obscure the deeper alienation of the individual from the continuity of the species

For the first time in history we are forced to ask: how important is species continuity? — this is not a trivial question and cannot be answered by individual consumer choice

Motherhood — no longer a euphemism for the banal and harmless — is about to become a major political issue

☢️ The Dangers of Contraceptive Technology in the Wrong Hands

Contraceptive control can be weaponized by apostles of potency for genocide against politically unreliable peoples

It can be used to balance the law of supply and demand applied to the ratio between productive capacity and mouths to be fed — population control as economic optimization

It can create a new class division: women who breed and women who do not

📊 Countries that have transformed productive relations have not appreciably changed women's status — the Soviet Union being the obvious cautionary tale

This failure lies precisely in the inability to grasp the bipolar dialectical structure of necessity — the relation between production and reproduction

Human emancipation cannot emerge from only one realm of necessity — it cannot come from transforming the public realm while expecting a merely reflexive transformation in the private

🔭 The New Science: Women's Studies as the Political Economy of Reproduction

Just as the 17th-century transformation in productive technology produced a new science — political economy — the current transformation in reproductive process demands its own new science

That science is currently being sought under the "indeterminate rubric of Women's Studies" — still rudimentary, still confronting its practitioners with Marx's famous challenge: the point is not to describe the world but to change it

This new science will necessarily break down the disciplinary walls of male-stream thought — those walls so depressingly raised to shut out difficult critical questions

🏗️ Its object: the rational control of human reproduction and the creation of free and humane social relations to embody that control

The integration of women on equal terms in the productive realm is only one half of the journey to equality

The other half: the integration of men into the relations of reproduction and into the active care of the next generation

The choice by women of motherhood as a freely chosen project — removed from the realm of the merely accidental — becomes cooperation between free human beings undertaken collectively: a genuinely revolutionary idea

⚔️ History now presents — for the first time — the possibility of understanding this, and developing from it an autonomous feminist praxis with entirely original theoretical premises

📜 I. THE DEBATE & ITS STAKES

Wolfgang Harich (Berlin) responds to Ernst Hoffmann's lecture at the Philosophical Conference in Jena, published in the journal Einheit, Vol. VII, No. 1, 1952, Berlin, pp. 51–64

The paper was to be republished in the 1st Supplement to the Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie

Harich's mission: demolish Hoffmann's theses in the name of genuine Marxism, not the vulgar, muddled version Hoffmann peddles

The stakes are enormous — the entire epistemological foundation of dialectical materialism hangs in the balance

If Hoffmann is right, Marxist logic becomes self-contradictory nonsense; if Harich is right, there is a coherent, scientifically defensible Marxist theory of logic

🔍 II. HOFFMANN'S CORE CONFUSION: THE DOUBLE MEANING OF "LOGIC"

🌀 The Equivocation Problem

Hoffmann never clarifies what he means by the word "Logic" — an elementary failure for a philosopher writing about logic

The word carries a double meaning Hoffmann exploits without acknowledging:

Logic as a science (Wissenschaft der Logik) — the academic discipline

Logic as a mode of thinking (Logik des Denkens) — the actual cognitive process

Hoffmann slides silently between these two meanings, mid-argument, while using the same word

🎭 The Self-Referential Absurdity

Hoffmann defines the object of logic — both formal and dialectical — as "thinking and its laws and forms"

He then says formal logic applies the four elementary rules of thought to its object

But wait — if the object of formal logic is the rules of thought, then formal logic is applying the rules of thought to the rules of thought

This is circular nonsense, and Harich calls it out directly: "Formal logic investigates the laws of thought with the help of the known laws of thought"

From this tautology, Hoffmann somehow concludes that formal logic yields only "elementary knowledge of reality" — a leap that makes no logical sense whatsoever

🏛️ III. THE OBJECT OF LOGIC: HARICH'S COUNTER-THESIS

❌ Why "Thinking and Its Laws" Is the Wrong Definition

🧬 First Argument — Psychology Already Owns This Territory

Thinking is a process of consciousness — it is legitimately studied by psychology, especially materialist psychology rooted in Pavlov's theory of the "second signal system"

The role of thinking as a tool of knowledge belongs to epistemology

These disciplines' problems are not the problems of logic

Conflating them obscures the specific, distinguishing character of each science — precisely what Stalin warned against in "Marxism and Problems of Linguistics", p. 42

🧩 Second Argument — "Laws of Thought" Is a Dangerous Misnomer

The term "laws of thought" (Denkgesetze) blurs the crucial distinction between:

The regularities governing thinking as a psychological process

The norms of correct thinking

Logical norms do not rule the thinking process with inevitable compulsion — as demonstrated by the ubiquitous phenomenon of illogical thinking

The mind can be governed by other determinants: psychological association, class prejudice, ideology

German fascists exemplified this: they simultaneously proclaimed the world-dominance of the "Aryan race" while praising Japanese imperialists as the "Prussians of the Far East" — fighting alongside them against "Aryan" Americans and British

This contradiction operated with sociological regularity in fascist ideology — a law of ideological confusion, not of logical coherence

Thinking is a battleground of competing determinants; logical lawfulness is only one and not always the dominant one

⚡ Third Argument — Logical Norms Are Laws of Being, Not Laws of Thought

Logical norms have binding force on all thinking precisely because they are independent of thinking

Their objectivity consists in the fact that thinking processes are external and inessential to them

The Principle of Non-Contradiction: because in reality, the same thing cannot simultaneously belong and not belong to the same subject in the same respect, two contradictorily opposed judgments cannot both be true

The Dictum de omni et nullo and rules of deductive inference hold absolutely because the universal always exists in all its particulars in reality

The laws of identity, non-contradiction, excluded middle — they are all, at their core, laws of Being (Seinsgesetze), laws of objective reality

A "law of thought" can only exist where thinking exists — but where does thinking exist without a thinking subject? And if real subjects don't always think logically, what remains but the neo-Kantian phantom of a "transcendental subject" carrying logical structures as "purely immanent functions"?

Hoffmann opens the door to subjective idealism by defining logic as science of "laws of thought" — even while claiming to oppose idealism

🗣️ Fourth Argument — "Forms of Thought" Is Equally Untenable

Only contents of thinking can be logical or illogical — not its forms

Grammatical forms depend on the language in which one thinks — Japanese "Watakushi no" versus German "Mein" is a genuine difference of thought form that is logically irrelevant

Connecting two propositions with "denn" (because) versus "also" (therefore) changes the syntactic form and even the order of sentences — while the logical subsumption relationship may be entirely identical

The traditional table of judgments confirms this: logical relevance lies in content relationships, not in grammatical form

✅ Harich's Positive Definition

Logic is the science of the norms of correct thinking (Wissenschaft von den Normen des richtigen Denkens)

This definition preserves the fact that incorrect thinking exists — which Hoffmann's definition obscures

Logical norms are binding on all thinking and independent of all thinking, grounded primarily in an inviolable lawfulness of Being (Gesetzlichkeit des Seins)

The norms are not simply a collection of "propositions" and "rules" — their validity predates and grounds those formulations

More concretely: logic deals with correct use of concepts and their well-grounded, consistent, non-contradictory connection

🔭 IV. THE CATASTROPHIC CONFLATION: LOGICAL THINKING ≠ KNOWLEDGE

🚫 Hoffmann's Fundamental Error

Hoffmann equates logical thinking with cognition/knowledge (Erkenntnis) — a conflation with devastating consequences

He speaks of thinking as "the reflection of reality", of logical rules as transmitting "objective truth", of formal logic yielding "elementary knowledge of reality"

If logical thinking as such produced knowledge, then any internally consistent proposition would have cognitive value

Harich's devastating example: the claim that April 25, 1985 will be a warm, sunny day is logically non-contradictory (subject and predicate don't stand in contradictory opposition) — but it tells us absolutely nothing without empirical grounding

Everything in such a statement that is a reflection of reality comes from experience, not from logical consistency

Non-contradiction is the conditio sine qua non of truth — not a positive criterion of truth

What is logically incompatible cannot exist in reality (a Seinsgesetz!) — but what is logically compatible need not therefore exist

The proposition "God is omnipotent, all-good, all-wise" violates no logical rule — and yet it is not knowledge

📚 Engels Is Not on Hoffmann's Side

Hoffmann invokes Engels to justify the equation — but the citations say something entirely different

Anti-Dühring: "Formal logic is above all a method for finding new results, for advancing from the known to the unknown" — this says logic is an indispensable instrument, not that it is knowledge

Dialectics of Nature, p. 25: the consistency of thought has helped compensate for imperfect knowledge — not replaced it

Without concrete content from perception, practice, and experience, logical inference is completely sterile

The truth of conclusions depends on the truth of premises, and the truth of premises is not guaranteed by logic itself

⚖️ The Catastrophic Political Consequence

Hoffmann claims distinguishing between true and correct thinking is "idealistic" (Einheit, p. 56)

He demands that "correct thinking" be understood only in the sense of agreement with objective truth"

Harich's counter-example: the claim that all states with armed forces are interested in war is provably false — yet it would logically follow that socialist states like the Soviet Union are warmongers

This is a coherent logical chain — false conclusion following from false premise — with correct form

Recognizing this is not idealism — it is why Marxist agitators must correct false premises, not merely make logical deductions from them

False from false follows with exactly the same formal rigor as true from true — this is the entire point of distinguishing truth from validity

Hoffmann's thesis implies either that false premises can never yield false conclusions, or that any conclusion is true if validly derived — both positions are insane

Harich diagnoses this as a relapse into Scholasticism — the very error Kant worked to eliminate

🌀 V. LOGIC AND DIALECTICS: NOT OPPONENTS

⚔️ Hoffmann's Contradictory Position on Dialectics vs. Formal Logic

On one hand, Hoffmann claims dialectics and formal logic use "two different, mutually contradictory methods", that dialectics uses a method "which contradicts the method of formal logic", that "formallogical barriers" must be broken through, that humanity could not have survived if it had adhered exclusively to the four rules of thought

On the other hand, he insists that breaking these barriers does not destabilize the foundations of thinking, does not turn logical thinking into illogical thinking

He tries to rescue this self-contradiction with the construct of a "non-antagonistic contradiction" between formal and dialectical logic

Harich's verdict: this is terminological wordplay that conceals a substantive incoherence

🔑 The Correct Relationship: Stalin's Classic Definition

Stalin's "On Dialectical and Historical Materialism" (Moscow, 1947, pp. 647–679) never speaks of "formallogical barriers" to be overcome

Stalin defines dialectics as a method of approaching phenomena, a method of research and cognition — not as a rival logical system

Dialectics examines phenomena in their interconnection, mutual conditioning, movement, development, and internal contradictions

It stands opposed to Metaphysics — not to Logic

Metaphysics: isolates phenomena, treats them as unchangeable, reduces processes to mere quantitative change, denies the struggle of opposites

Logic (formal): connects the same concepts with the same words, makes non-contradictory judgments, draws valid inferences — this has nothing to do with metaphysical vs. dialectical method

🏗️ The True Threefold Distinction

Logical correctness (Richtigkeit): thinking that follows the norms of non-contradiction, consistency, valid inference

Metaphysics (Metaphysik): an epistemological method that isolates phenomena and absolutizes relative constancy

Dialectics (Dialektik): the highest, most scientific epistemological method, grasping phenomena in their universal interconnection and internal contradictions

The opposite of logical correctness is inconsistency of thought — not dialectics

The opposite of dialectics is metaphysics — not logic

Both metaphysics and dialectics share the same formal logic in their inferential structures — they differ in their epistemological method, not in their logical machinery

🔬 Dialectics Presupposes and Requires Logic

Dialectics does not make logical thinking unnecessary — it presupposes it and includes it

Non-contradiction and consistency are not positive criteria of truth, but they are its conditio sine qua non

Dialectical method includes deductive inference: the dialectician applies general dialectical laws to specific phenomena precisely through deductive reasoning, which is governed by the logical norms

Without deduction, dialectical practice would be spontaneous and inconsistent, not methodologically conscious

Marx's Capital is entirely free of the logical contradictions found in Adam Smith — precisely because Marx as a dialectician grasped contradictions in reality without contradicting himself in his propositions (Theorien über den Mehrwert, Vol. I, p. 171)

Harich's brilliant formulation: dialectical cognition uses the same logical norms as "formal" logic — only with heightened consistency

When Hoffmann says the transition to dialectical thinking produces thinking that is "incomparably more determinate, non-contradictory, systematic" — he should have said "metaphysical" instead of "formallogical" every time, and he would have been correct

🔧 VI. THE FOUR "RULES" — HOFFMANN COUNTS WRONG IN BOTH DIRECTIONS

➕ Hoffmann Includes What Doesn't Belong: The Principle of Sufficient Reason

Hoffmann lists the Principle of Sufficient Reason (Satz vom zureichenden Grunde) as one of the four elementary logical axioms

Harich argues this is a relic of Leibniz-Wolffian school metaphysics, inseparable from its speculative presuppositions

Christian Wolff ("Vernünftige Gedanken von Gott...", §30; "Ontologia", §§66, 70) tried to deduce the causal principle directly from the Principle of Non-Contradiction — a colossal logical fallacy that gave Hume's skepticism an easy target

Hume was refuted — not by rehabilitating the Principle of Sufficient Reason, but by Engels's demonstration (Dialectics of Nature, p. 244) that practice provides the proof of causality

The certainty that the world is causally structured rests on practice, not on a norm of correct thinking

The causal principle cannot be a logical axiom because it is far too specific — it does not apply in the domain of pure mathematics (where there are reasons for theorems, but not causal reasons)

A logical axiom that doesn't apply across all domains of thinking is simply not a logical axiom

The inference from cause to effect or effect to cause is actually an inference from general lawfulness to a particular case — a deductive subsumption — whose logical validity rests on the Dictum de omni et nullo, not on the causal principle itself

➖ Hoffmann Excludes What Does Belong: The Rules of Inference

Having improperly expanded the axiom set with the causal principle, Hoffmann completely ignores the Dictum de omni et nullo and the full body of deductive inference rules

These are no less fundamental than the Principles of Identity, Non-Contradiction, and Excluded Middle

Without them, the concept of logical necessity has no determinate meaning

The concept of logical necessity is presupposed by the Principle of Sufficient Reason itself — making Hoffmann's inclusion of that principle and exclusion of inference rules doubly incoherent

🌍 VII. THE ABSOLUTE VALIDITY OF LOGICAL NORMS — HARICH'S DECISIVE ARGUMENT

🔐 Hoffmann Denies Absolute Validity

Hoffmann explicitly subordinates logical norms to epistemological "stages": the four rules govern only the "elementary stage" of cognition — the stage of surface appearances

Dialectics, which grasps the essence of phenomena, accordingly "breaks through" these formallogical barriers

This means logical norms are only valid within the limits of metaphysical cognition — beyond those limits, the dialectician's thought is no longer bound by them

Direct quote from Hoffmann (Einheit, p. 63): formal and dialectical logic "contradict each other", and this contradiction "reflects the objectively real contradiction between essence and appearance, between the absolute character of movement and the relative character of rest"

⚠️ The Consequences of Denying Absolute Validity

This position would legitimize an unimaginable chaos of thought

The logical norms are completely indifferent to the opposition between metaphysics and dialectics — they neither assert nor deny:

The isolated existence of phenomena vs. their mutual conditioning

Continuous process vs. qualitative leaps

Relative constancy vs. universal movement

This is demonstrable for every single logical norm — especially the ones Hoffmann most wants to challenge

🪞 The Principle of Identity: Not About Constancy

The common misreading: the Principle of Identity asserts the constancy and immutability of things — incompatible with dialectics

Hoffmann's attempted rescue: the Principle applies only to relative, temporary constancy

Harich's demolition: this degrades the logical norm to a thesis of metaphysics (which is itself only relatively and limitedly correct)

What the Principle actually does: it forbids confusion of a specific type — it commands thinking to connect the same concepts with the same words, to mean the same thing with the same concepts in any given context

The Principle combats: aequivocations from historical semantic change, the evolution of concepts as knowledge deepens, the generality of linguistic symbols applying to multiple objects, and the varied logical relations in which concepts appear

The underlying Seinsgesetz: the identity of anything with itself — so universal it applies to relations, properties, processes, natural laws, mathematical quantities, and object classes alike

Crucially: affirming this does not assert that anything is unchanging or constant — it says nothing about the opposition between persistence and change

Soviet philosophers K. S. Bakradse ("On the Relation of Logic and Dialectics", Questions of Philosophy, 2/1950, pp. 22) and P. S. Popow ("The Object of Formal Logic and Dialectics", Questions of Philosophy, 1951, pp. 124–125) confirm: the Principle of Identity "does not assert the constancy of all and everything and by no means denies that there is change and development"

Even Kratylos-style Heracliteanism — radical change every millisecond — would not invalidate the Principle; it would rather demand constant revision of concepts, which is exactly what the Principle requires

The Principle abstracts entirely from temporal relations — this is why it applies to the timeless domain of pure mathematics and simultaneously demands radical conceptual revision when an object's change renders old concepts false

⚡ The Principle of Non-Contradiction: Not About Class Struggle

Could dialectical contradictions in reality — the class struggle, the struggle of opposites — invalidate the Principle of Non-Contradiction?

Example: "Bourgeoisie and proletariat have opposed interests" and "Bourgeoisie and proletariat do not have opposed interests" — could both be true simultaneously?

The apparent paradox dissolves immediately: the relatively progressive parts of the bourgeoisie are not identical with the bourgeoisie as a whole; opposition of interest on one specific question is not the same concept as the principled class antagonism between exploiting and exploited classes

When concepts are not determinate and univocal, the Principle of Identity already dissolves the apparent contradiction

The assumption that contradictory judgments with fully univocal concepts could be simultaneously true is simply illogical and has nothing to do with dialectical cognition

The Principle of Non-Contradiction is completely indifferent to the dialectical character of reality — it neither denies dialectical opposites nor is undermined by their existence

The word "Widerspruch" (contradiction) has been burdened since Hegel with equivocations directly linked to his idealist dialectics — recognizing this dissolves the apparent conflict as a pseudo-problem

Logical contradictions exist only in the sphere of human consciousness, thought, and language — things and processes cannot literally "contradict" each other in the logical sense

The Seinsgesetz underlying the Principle: one and the same thing cannot simultaneously belong and not belong to the same subject in the same respect — this is the objective ground of the incompatibility of contradictory judgments

🔬 VIII. THE DIALECTICAL MATERIALIST FOUNDATION OF LOGICAL VALIDITY

🌐 Dialectical Materialism Vindicates Logic — It Does Not Undermine It

The Dictum de omni et nullo and the deductive inference rules have their strict validity grounded in a universal law of Being: the universal always exists in the individual and the particular

Dialectical materialism stands against:

The view that the universal has no real existence but only secondary existence in the abstraction of the understanding (Nominalism)

The view that the universal is a separate entity "beside" or "above" the individual (Platonic Realism)

Both errors metaphysically separate the universal from the particular

Dialectical materialism teaches: the universal really exists, but only in the individual cases themselves, recurring as the common element in their manifold diversity — as form-type, process-type, natural law, real category

By asserting the unity of the universal and the particular as a universal law of Being — against all idealist theories — dialectical materialism simultaneously demonstrates the objective, inviolable foundation of the inference rules

This is not a concession to formal logic — it is dialectical materialism giving logic its scientific grounding for the first time

📖 IX. HARICH VS. HOFFMANN ON SOVIET SOURCES — THE KEDROW PROBLEM

🎭 Hoffmann's Fraudulent Citation Strategy

Hoffmann claims his paper follows B. M. Kedrow's "On the Relation of Logic to Marxism" (Questions of Philosophy, 4/1951; German in the anthology "On Formal Logic and Dialectics", pp. 193–216) "in content and result"

He calls Kedrow's solution "the only correct solution" to the question of the object of formal logic

This claim is, according to Harich, actively misleading

📜 The Actual Divergences Between Hoffmann and Kedrow

On truth vs. correctness: Hoffmann declares distinguishing between true and correct thinking to be "idealistic" — Kedrow makes no such claim

On non-antagonistic contradiction: Hoffmann constructs a "non-antagonistic contradiction" between formal and dialectical logic — Kedrow does nothing of the sort

On essence vs. appearance: Hoffmann assigns appearance to formal logic and essence to dialectical logic — Kedrow explicitly writes: "The attempt to ascribe the domain of appearance to formal logic and the domain of essence to dialectical logic contradicts Marxism" (Kedrow, p. 206)

On eternal truths: Hoffmann denies that any "unchangeable, once-and-for-all fixed truth" can exist — Kedrow cites Lenin directly against this

Lenin in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism: "Napoleon died on May 5, 1821" — if you cannot call this false or inaccurate, you recognize it as true; if you do not claim it might be refuted in the future, you recognize it as eternally true — "Every person can easily find dozens of similar examples of truths that are eternal, absolute, and which only the insane can doubt"

Hoffmann, who holds the opposite view from Lenin, nevertheless claims his paper follows "in content and result" the work of Kedrow who cites Lenin — this is intellectual dishonesty of the highest order

🏅 Harich's Own Soviet Interlocutors

Harich himself does not fully agree with Kedrow

His closest intellectual allies in the Soviet logic discussion: P. S. Popow and K. S. Bakradse — despite certain divergences with both

Bakradse ("On the Relation of Logic and Dialectics") goes furthest in distancing himself from the misleading terminology of "formal logic" vs. "dialectical logic" — a position Harich shares

🗜️ X. THE TERMINOLOGY QUESTION — WHY HARICH ABANDONS "FORMAL LOGIC"

🧨 The Historical Origin of "Formal Logic"

The term "formal logic" did not exist before Kant — it became necessary when "logic" was expanded to cover entirely different things

Kant separated epistemology from scholastic-rationalist logic and simultaneously founded his own epistemology as a "transcendental logic" on subjective-idealist grounds — interpreting the categories of the objective world as "pure concepts of the understanding" derived from so-called "forms of judgment"

Hegel then used "logic" to mean the doctrine of the development of all material, natural, and spiritual things — the entire dialectically interpreted content of the world

Lenin, in his remarks on Hegel's Science of Logic, explicitly characterizes Hegel's use of the word — not proposing that Marxism rename itself "dialectical logic"

"Dialectical logic" can legitimately denote: the materialist-dialectical theory of logic, the dialectical epistemological method, its application to specific problems of logic — but specialized, unambiguous terminology already exists for all these things, making "dialectical logic" redundant

If "dialectical logic" is redundant, there is no reason to distinguish it from ordinary "logic" by adding "formal" — no reason to call logic anything other than the doctrine of the normative laws of correct thinking

⚠️ The Terminological Dangers Hoffmann Illustrates

"Formal logic" evokes associations with "thought forms" (Denkformen) — importing misunderstandings into the definition of logic's object

It leads to constructions like "formal truth" (instead of "correctness") — a misleading and philosophically treacherous term

Engels and Lenin used "dialectical logic" in specific, clearly defined contexts where no equivocation was possible — a luxury Hoffmann does not afford himself, producing equivocations on every page

🏁 XI. SUMMARY: WHAT HARICH ESTABLISHES AGAINST HOFFMANN

✅ The Correct Theses

📌 Logic is the science of the norms of correct thinking — not of "thinking and its laws and forms"

📌 Logical norms are laws of Being — objective, independent of thinking, absolutely valid

📌 Logical thinking is not knowledge — it is the indispensable formal condition of knowledge, not its content

📌 The opposite of dialectics is metaphysics — not logic; the opposite of logical correctness is inconsistency, not dialectics

📌 Dialectics presupposes and includes logical thinking — it does not "break through" logical barriers

📌 Absolute validity of logical norms — the Principles of Identity and Non-Contradiction are not metaphysical theses about constancy; they are indifferent to the opposition of movement vs. rest, essence vs. appearance

📌 The Principle of Sufficient Reason is not a logical axiom — it belongs to Leibniz-Wolff school metaphysics

📌 The Dictum de omni et nullo and deductive inference rules are as fundamental as the classical axioms — Hoffmann ignores them entirely

📌 Eternal truths exist — Lenin said so explicitly; Hoffmann contradicts Lenin while claiming to follow the Marxist tradition

The historical development of human thought is the contradictory unity of individual and general concepts, the infinite cycle moving from the particular to the universal and back again. Every act of research passes through this same movement. Raising a problem, analyzing it, and resolving it constitutes the general progression of investigative work. But how do people manage to raise problems in the first place? On one hand, this depends on investigation and observation; on the other, it requires learning how to analyze and study. We must learn to apply the Marxist method to observe problems, raise them, analyze them, and resolve them. All research work must be guided by a definite theory. And here the contradiction between the individual and the general makes its appearance. To apply the basic principles of Marxism is to employ general concepts; to analyze the research object and arrive at concrete, particular conclusions is to formulate individual concepts. This determines that the research process is itself a process of the contradictory movement between general concepts and individual concepts. If we manage to resolve this contradiction well, we achieve satisfying results; if we cannot, our research suffers, and may even fail entirely.

This contradiction within the research process is rooted in the cognitive process itself. As the order of human cognition proceeds, it always moves from the recognition of individual and particular things, gradually expanding toward the recognition of general things. People always first recognize the special essence of many different things, only then becoming able to carry out the further work of generalization, recognizing the common essence of various things. Having already recognized this common essence, they take it as a guide and continue studying various concrete things not yet deeply investigated, finding their special essence, so as to supplement, enrich, and develop the recognition of this common essence, preventing it from becoming something dry and rigid. These are two cognitive processes: one moving from the particular to the general, one moving from the general to the particular. Human cognition always proceeds in this cyclical fashion, and each cycle, provided it strictly follows scientific method, can raise human understanding one step higher, allowing it to deepen without cease.

The movement of thought is one part of the movement of cognition, and it is cognition's rational stage. The contradiction between the individual and the general in the cognitive process refers mainly to the contradiction at the stage of rational cognition. Whether individual cognition or general cognition, both are cognition of essence, products of rational cognition unreachable at the stage of perceptual cognition. The contradiction between individual and general is therefore in reality the contradiction of the thought process itself. This contradiction determines that the contradiction within the research process is also the contradiction between general concepts and individual concepts. Any research, within the realm of thought, is driven by this contradiction; it is the fundamental contradiction of the research process grounded in practice.

This contradiction between general and individual concepts in the research process is fundamentally different from the logical contradictions spoken of in formal logic. In daily life, when logical contradictions arise in thinking, it is because the laws of formal logic have been violated, and thought has lost its consistency, producing internal contradiction. The appearance of a logical contradiction indicates that people have committed some error in their thinking which ought to be corrected. A logical contradiction, as Lenin pointed out, is not something that should appear under conditions of correct logical thinking, neither in economic analysis nor in political analysis. But the contradiction between general and individual concepts in thought is a reflection within thought of the dialectical contradiction in objective things. It is the source and driving force of thought's dialectical movement, the special form taken by the law of the unity of opposites within the movement of thought, and an expression of the necessity of thought's movement. It therefore cannot and need not be eliminated. As Marx said, the coexistence, struggle, and fusion of two mutually contradictory aspects into a new category is precisely the essence of dialectical movement. Anyone who sets themselves the task of eliminating the bad aspect immediately brings dialectical movement to a halt. When the contradiction between general and individual concepts disappears, thought loses its dialectical character entirely, and that is something absolutely impossible.

The history of science is full of examples that fully confirm this analysis of the thought contradiction within the research process. Consider the study of atomic structure. After the British physicist Thomson established in 1897 that cathode rays were not ether waves but material particles, what came to be called electrons, people recognized that the atom was not the smallest indivisible particle but a material organization with complex structure. Later, when alpha particles were used to bombard thin gold foil and the scattering phenomenon was observed, the analysis of this experiment showed that the atomic mass was mainly concentrated in a condensed nucleus carrying a positive charge. Rutherford therefore proposed that the atom consists of a positively charged nucleus surrounded by electrons moving around it like planets around the sun. But this planetary model of the atom contained an irresolvable logical contradiction. According to classical electrodynamics, an electron moving in a circular orbit around the nucleus would continuously radiate energy, slow down, draw ever closer to the nucleus, and eventually fall into it. This would mean the atom could not be a stable existence but must inevitably be destroyed. Yet everything in the world is composed of atoms, and if atoms were unstable the entire universe could not exist. The planetary model was in contradiction with classical electrodynamics and could not be accepted. It was the Danish physicist Bohr who overcame this logical contradiction by replacing the concept of the continuous orbit of electron motion with the concept of discontinuous orbits, giving the atomic structural model a new development. What we see here is the relationship between logical contradiction and dialectical contradiction. Because the dialectical contradiction between individual and general concepts was not correctly handled, a logical contradiction arose. When that dialectical contradiction was correctly handled, the logical contradiction disappeared, and the movement of thought and the deepening of the research process were thereby advanced.

When analyzing the epistemological roots of idealism, we find that when the general is separated from the individual, when a general concept is treated as an objective entity and particular things are treated as mere forms of the general's existence, one has adopted the method of all idealists. Because people cannot think without using concepts, this easily causes our cognition to split into two aspects: on one side the individual and particular things, on the other side concepts of a general nature. In objective things the individual and the general are inherently interconnected and inseparable; to divide them is to depart from truth. Objective truth presents itself as the unity of the general and the individual. Without the individual, the general does not exist; without the general, there are no individuals. But when people use concepts to recognize these general and individual characteristics of objective things, concepts can exist in relative independence within thought. Any objective thing exists as an individual; the general can only exist as the common character of these individually existing things of the same kind, existing within each individual thing. If someone regards general concepts as things that exist independently, they are treating the forms of thought as primary. And so there exists, whenever people use concepts to think about problems, the possibility of slipping into idealism. The failure to correctly handle the contradiction between general and individual concepts, leading to the acknowledgment of the independent existence of general concepts, is the epistemological root of idealism. All errors in human cognition are, in the final analysis, connected to the handling of the contradiction between general and individual concepts. In our research we must attentively and correctly recognize and handle this contradiction, keeping our research on the correct path, following the objective procedure.

The doctrine of research in three steps contains within it the thought of three basic stages in concept formation. The first step is to recognize the general outline of a thing, forming a general and vague concept. The second step is to analyze the various details of each aspect of the thing, forming analytic concepts. The third step is to synthesize the analytic research of each part, obtaining an overall recognition of the thing and forming a synthetic concept.

The first is the stage of intuitive thinking, producing the vague concept, which reflects the thing only in a general way and obtains a roughly outlined understanding. Although a vague concept is formed at this stage, the concept has not yet achieved a complete grasp of the whole thing's essence. The second is the stage of analytic thinking, breaking down the holistic vague recognition into various parts or aspects, thereby obtaining analytic concepts. These have already lost the character of direct intuition, grasping the essence of some aspect or part of the thing and thereby revealing its partial regularity. The third is the stage of synthetic thinking, reconnecting what was broken apart, obtaining anew an overall recognition of the thing. What is obtained at this stage is the synthetic concept, which is no longer merely a rough outline and no longer merely reflects the essence of some aspect or part, but now reflects the total essence of the entire thing. Corresponding to intuitive thinking, analytic thinking, and synthetic thinking, concepts also pass through the three basic logical stages of the vague concept, the analytic concept, and the synthetic concept, displaying the history of concept formation.

This analysis of the three logical stages of concept formation accords with Engels's thought on the basic stages of scientific development. In Greek philosophy, nature was regarded as a whole and observed from a general standpoint because the Greeks had not yet advanced to the anatomical analysis of nature. The total interconnection of natural phenomena had not yet been proven in detail; this connection was for the Greeks the direct result of intuition. The knowledge of the world in Greek philosophy was intuitive, their concept of the world still a vague and general one, only a general outline. With the development of natural science, the experimental analytical method rose to prominence in modern times, the stage of analytic thinking replacing the ancient stage of intuitive thinking. The further development of science then raised the task of dialectical synthesis, moving thought's development into the stage of synthetic thinking. Philosophical and natural scientific history thus tells us that the historical development of thought has passed through intuitive thinking, analytic thinking, and synthetic thinking as its three basic stages.

The vague concept, as the first stage of concept formation, has already begun to grasp the essence of things but has only just started, has only just come into contact with the essence and has not yet fully grasped it. We cannot treat the vague concept as a completed concept. The reflection of essence in concepts is not completed in a single stroke; it is a process. The analytic concept reflects the essence of things but has still not reflected the total essence of the entire thing; its reflection of essence remains incomplete. The special characteristic of the analytic concept lies precisely in its one-sidedness. Each concept reflects only one aspect of the thing, lacking the connections between aspects, not yet reaching a total recognition. The synthetic concept, on the other hand, is the concrete concept. It absorbs all the positive results of the vague concept and the analytic concept, overcomes their defects, supplements their insufficiencies, and unites the essence of every aspect into a single concept. At this point the concrete is no longer the immediate concrete, the vague concrete, but the concrete that has grasped the total essence, what we might call scientific recognition and concrete understanding.

The three basic stages of concept formation correspond to the three stages of raising a problem, analyzing a problem, and resolving a problem. How can a problem be raised? One must first carry out a rough investigation and study of the two basic aspects of the problem, the contradiction, in order to understand what the nature of the contradiction is. This is the process of discovering the problem. The second step is to analyze the problem, a systematic and thorough process of analysis, because without systematic and thorough analysis no problem can be resolved after it has been raised. The third step is to resolve the problem, which is to perform the work of synthesis on the analysis carried out, for synthesis is the resolution of the problem. The entire process is: raising a problem, proceeding to analyze it, then synthesizing to clarify the nature of the problem and provide the method of resolution. When the problem is raised, it is not yet possible to resolve it immediately, because the internal connections of the thing have not yet been exposed, and recognition of the problem amounts only to a vague concept. But even then it is not the case that the essence of the thing has not been touched at all. To raise a problem already requires analysis; otherwise, facing a mass of confused and disordered phenomena, one cannot know where the problem, the contradiction, lies. That is to say, when a problem is raised, cognition has already begun to penetrate through the phenomena and enter the interior of the thing, beginning to distinguish itself from perceptual cognition. After the problem is analyzed, the nature of each aspect is recognized and a partial understanding of essence is obtained, entering the stage of abstract analytic concepts. After synthesis, the nature of the entire problem is clarified and the method of its resolution is obtained. Only at this point is the concrete concept arrived at; only then is the work of concept formulation completed.

In the research process the method mainly adopted is the method combining analysis and synthesis. According to this analysis, in real life there exists the same process of analysis and synthesis: when one thing negates another, it sublates the other, resolves it into two aspects, absorbs its positive factors, eliminates its negative factors, and thereby undergoes a qualitative change, a leap. This process, reflected in thought, similarly performs decomposition and then synthesis within thinking, absorbing the thinking elements that reflect positive factors, thereby realizing a leap in thinking. This is the qualitative change, the leap in thinking within the research process.

The first mark of the leap is the formation of a new concept. The emergence of concepts is the mark of perceptual cognition leaping to rational cognition. When new concepts are produced in the course of applying analysis and synthesis, guided by existing theory, they mark the leap from old theory to new theory. Through social investigation and the analysis and synthesis of investigative materials using the basic principles of Marxism, a series of new concepts concerning the Chinese revolution were formed: New Democracy, Protracted War, Armed Agrarian Struggle, People's Democratic Dictatorship, and others, all of which represented qualitative leaps in thought. The formulation of new concepts is also the mark of the completion of synthesis. Synthesis is the continuation and development of analysis, and the so-called unity of multiple determinations is not the simple addition of several concepts and thoughts but the production of a new concept, a new thought. Having analyzed both the Guomindang and the Communist Party, synthesis produced the new concept of the united front, or its rupture. Having analyzed the characteristics of both sides in the Sino-Japanese War, synthesis of these characteristics produced the new concept of protracted war and an investigation of its three stages of development.

The second mark of a leap in thinking is the completion of recognition of a law. The formation of this recognition of a law is the result of synthesis. From the emergence of concepts to the constitution of laws, there is another qualitative change in thought. A law is expressed through concepts and appears as the connection between concepts. Not any two concepts can constitute a law; only when the connection between them reflects the essential connection between things can a law be constituted. From the formation of concepts to the revelation of the connections between concepts, a new thought is produced, and when this thought is stated, it is a scientific law. Capital, for example, is the product of the analytic and synthetic study of capitalism; it reveals the laws of development of capitalist society. The method of analysis and synthesis applied to the study of the Sino-Japanese War yielded the laws of the war's development. Regarding the united front, past errors had been committed in two directions: the closed-door tendency, which spoke only of struggle and not of alliance, and the capitulationist tendency, which spoke only of alliance and not of struggle. After analytic study one can understand that within the united front there genuinely exist two aspects, the aspect of alliance and the aspect of struggle. After synthesis, what is the correct policy? It is neither the total alliance that negates struggle, nor the total struggle that negates alliance, but a policy that combines both alliance and struggle. This is the new law, the new theory drawn out through synthesis; it is different from mere alliance alone and from mere struggle alone, being a third thing that fuses the content of both aspects.

The third mark of a leap in thinking is the formation of a theoretical system, which is likewise a result of synthesis. When speaking of the leap from perceptual to rational cognition, the completion of the leap is the creation of a system of concepts and theories. This theoretical system is more complex than individual concepts or laws. It is constituted of a series of concepts and laws, but is not merely their accumulation; they are organically connected. Concepts and laws are already products of qualitative change in thought; the production of a theoretical system requires yet further new leaps in thought, a fresh synthesis of the concepts and laws already obtained. The theoretical system is the result of research and is completed after the fact. The complete system can only be completed later, not at the outset or in the early stages. Those essays and documents of the revolutionary period could only be produced at that time, not earlier, for without having passed through great storms, without the comparison of two victories and two failures, sufficient experience had not yet accumulated and the laws of the Chinese revolution could not yet be fully recognized. Clearly, the formation of the theoretical system comes after the formation of concepts and laws; it requires great work of synthesis, and its completion marks a great leap in the thought process.

Marxism must be combined with the concrete characteristics of each country and realized through a certain national form. The great strength of Marxism-Leninism lies precisely in its connection with the concrete revolutionary practice of each country. For the Chinese Communist Party, this means learning to apply the theories of Marxism-Leninism to the concrete environment of China. A Communist Party member who becomes part of the great Chinese nation and is flesh and blood with it, who speaks of Marxism while departing from Chinese characteristics, possesses only an abstract and empty Marxism. Making Marxism concrete in China, making it carry in every expression the Chinese characteristics it must have, that is to say, applying it according to Chinese characteristics, is a problem the entire Party urgently needs to understand and must resolve.

The problem of combining the universal truth of Marxism with the concrete practice of the revolutions of each country is in essence a problem of the relationship between the general and the individual, the common and the particular. From the standpoint of the order of human cognition, this is the movement from the general to the special. Marxism is the recognition of the common essence of things; Communists in every country take this common recognition as their guide and continue investigating various concrete things, finding their special essence, thereby further supplementing, enriching, and developing this recognition of the common essence. The logical form of the combination of universal truth with concrete practice is therefore the contradictory movement of individual concepts and general concepts.

The central task and highest form of revolution is the armed seizure of political power, resolution of problems through war. This Marxist-Leninist principle of revolution is universally correct, correct both in China and in other countries. But this general concept only has vitality when combined with individual concepts. In different countries and different historical periods, the path of armed seizure of political power differs in each case. In capitalist countries, because of the existence of bourgeois democracy, proletarian parties can educate workers and accumulate forces through long periods of legal struggle, preparing for the final overthrow of capitalism, and only when the bourgeoisie is utterly incapable, when the great majority of the proletariat are resolved to armed uprising and warfare, when the peasant masses are willing to support the proletariat, only then can uprising and armed struggle be initiated, first occupying cities and then attacking the countryside. This path itself embodies the unity of the common and the particular. As for China, it is different. China is not an independent democratic country but a semi-colonial semi-feudal country; internally there is no democratic system but feudal oppression, externally there is no national independence but imperialist oppression. There is no parliament to utilize, no legal right to organize workers in strikes. Here the task of the Communist Party is basically not to enter uprising and war through long periods of legal struggle, nor to first occupy cities and then take the countryside, but to take the opposite road. In places where reactionary rule is weak, to accumulate forces in the countryside, carry out armed agrarian struggle, surround the cities from the countryside, and finally take the cities to win state power throughout the country. This road itself also embodies the unity of the common and the particular, containing both the common character of armed seizure of political power and the particular character of armed agrarian struggle, surrounding cities from the countryside, and finally taking the cities.

The victory of the Russian revolution and the victory of the Chinese revolution were both victories of the universal truth of Marxism, and they simultaneously further enriched and developed that universal truth. This tells us once more that the inner driving force of the development of human thought is the contradiction between general concepts and individual concepts contained within thought itself. This conclusion is confirmed not only by the development of Marxism but also by the development of all the social and natural sciences.

In military science, great contributions were made by inheriting all the rational military theories of the past, both Chinese and foreign, while simultaneously studying the special laws of revolutionary war in China, combining general concepts with individual concepts, thereby advancing the development of Marxist military science. The laws of war are the general concept; the laws of revolutionary war are the special concept; the laws of the Chinese revolutionary war are the individual concept. We are engaged in war; our war is revolutionary war; our revolutionary war is being fought in China, a semi-colonial semi-feudal country. Therefore we must study not only the laws of war in general but also the laws of the special revolutionary war, and further the laws of the more special Chinese revolutionary war. Encirclement and counter-encirclement campaigns are the main form of China's civil war; the strategic principle of protracted war and quick-decision campaigns at the level of battles; such things as these do not exist in general military theory but depend entirely on our own creation. It was because we correctly handled the contradictory movement between general and individual concepts in the course of studying military problems, creating individual concepts under the guidance of general concepts, that we were able to create a military theory with Chinese characteristics.

Dogmatists do not understand the law of identity in dialectical logic; they deny the contradiction between individual and general concepts in the movement of thought; they turn general truths into abstract formulas, refuse to study the actual conditions of the Chinese revolution, and refuse to create individual concepts with their own national characteristics. At the same time, they erroneously treat the individual concept of seizing power through urban armed uprising, from the Paris Commune to the October Revolution, as a general concept and mechanically apply it to Chinese revolutionary practice. The facts proved that urban armed uprising did not work in China, demonstrating that it belongs not to the general concept but to the individual concept. Only the concept of armed seizure of political power belongs to the general concept. But this concept does not tell us the concrete path of how to seize power, nor can it possibly do so, and the dogmatists do not understand this, which is precisely why they can never learn how to think dialectically.

When investigating the special laws of China's revolutionary war, three wrong tendencies that denied the special character of these laws had to be refuted. The first maintained that only the laws of general war need be studied and that it suffices to follow the military regulations of the reactionary Chinese government or reactionary Chinese military schools. This uses the general concept to deny the individual concept, denying the special character of the laws of China's revolutionary war. The second maintained that only the experience of the Russian revolutionary war need be studied, that it suffices to follow the guiding laws of the Soviet civil war and the military regulations of Soviet military organs. This treats the special character of the laws of Soviet revolutionary war as the universality of general revolutionary war, denying the special characteristics of the laws of China's revolutionary war; in other words, erroneously treating an individual concept as a general concept, and then using this misidentified general concept to deny the individual concept. The third maintained that only the experience of the Northern Expedition of 1926 to 1927 need be studied, adopting the policy of long-distance penetration and seizing major cities. This takes a static, unchanging view of China's revolutionary war, denying the change and development of the laws of war, denying the flexibility of concepts, treating an individual concept as something absolutely fixed and unchanging. In response to these three erroneous tendencies, we must study the special characteristics of the directing laws of wars at different historical stages and of different natures, in different regions and among different peoples, giving attention to their special characteristics and their development. Giving attention to special characteristics and development means giving attention to the study and creation of individual concepts, for only such individual concepts can reflect these special characteristics and developments.

Logic is about the question of truth. The contradictory movement of individual and general concepts in thought is in reality a question of the historically concrete unity of theory and practice, a question of how to obtain truth, the main content of dialectical logic. The combination of the universal truth of Marxism with the concrete practice of the Chinese revolution is an important aspect of this question. In the history of our Party, the debates surrounding the question of the laws of revolution and construction show that all truly correct recognition is obtained precisely by correctly resolving the contradiction between individual and general concepts, while failure to do so produces errors. This further proves that the contradiction between individual and general concepts is the fundamental contradiction of the movement of thought, and their unity is the logical form of the combination of the universal truth of Marxism with the concrete practice of revolution in each country. The key question here is to formulate the individual concept that reflects this unity; more concretely stated, to formulate an individual concept that contains the universal principles of Marxism is the logical form of the combination of Marxist universal principles with the concrete practice of revolution in each country. Creating such individual concepts is the task of our research.

Thought divides into the research process and the expository process. The research process is the process of coming from the masses and from practice; the expository process is the process of going to the masses and to practice. These two processes are therefore not unconnected but closely related. The expository process is the result and continuation of the research process; the completion of the research process is the beginning of the expository process. What system of categories and structure is adopted in exposition is itself a result of research. The expository structure therefore exists, as it were, in advance of the exposition's beginning. The expository process is the process of gradually making this structure manifest, ideally reflecting the life of the material. Although the research logic and the expository logic differ in form, they are the same in essence. About the research logic, we propose a doctrine of three steps. The reflection of this doctrine in expository logic is the doctrine of three stages. The three steps are the procedure of research; the three stages are the procedure of exposition. The essence of both is the movement of thought ascending from the abstract to the concrete. Research logic and expository logic are therefore both, in the end, concept logic, the movement of concepts ascending from the abstract to the concrete.

The final task of exposition is to establish a theoretical system. Any theoretical system must be expressed through categories. Categories, through their movement, reveal the relations between categories, ultimately constituting a system of categories, at which point the expository process is declared complete. Expository logic is therefore the logic that begins with the simplest and most abstract categories, passes through the derivation of relations between categories, and finally establishes a system of categories. This involves not only the overall structure of the exposition but also each logical stage, such as the logical starting point, the logical middle term, the logical endpoint, and so forth. Any exposition must be convincing, and so exposition itself is a kind of argument, which is why argumentation is included within exposition.

Starting from the universality of contradiction, all theoretical systems, in their expository content, are dialectics. The exposition of a philosophical theoretical system is the exposition of a general form of dialectics; the exposition of a positive scientific theoretical system is the exposition of a special form of dialectics. Capital, for example, is a classic case of the exposition of a special dialectical form.

When criticizing the formalist method of exposition, we find that writing an article, giving a speech, writing a book, writing a report, using the first big marker, then the small markers one two three four, then the sub-markers A B C, and so forth, filling an article with these symbols without raising a problem, analyzing a problem, resolving a problem, without expressing what one supports and what one opposes, is the lowest, most childish, and most vulgar method, a formalist method, classifying things according to their external signs rather than according to their internal connections. An important article or speech must raise a problem, proceed to analyze it, then synthesize it, clarify the nature of the problem, and provide the method of resolution. Only in this way can formalist methods be avoided.

The so-called logic of exposition is therefore the internal connections between the forms of thought in the expository process, the thought procedure of exposition. The connection between forms of thought is not artificial but a reflection of the essential connections of things. The formalist method commits the error of relying on the external connections of things rather than arranging the forms of thought according to the essential connections of things. Thought is the unity of content and form; the task of the forms of thought is to express the content of thought. Therefore the connections between forms of thought are determined by the content of thought, and the content of thought is in turn a reflection of the essence of things. To correctly express correct views and convey them to others, we must correctly employ forms of thought and constitute the correct connections between them. The thought procedure of the research process is: raise a problem, analyze a problem, resolve a problem. The expository process should follow the same procedure. Exposition that follows this procedure will have genuine content.

The formula of exposition is therefore: at the beginning, raise a problem and express the vague concept; in the middle, analyze the problem and express the analytic concepts; at the end, resolve the problem and express the synthetic concept. This is the procedure of exposition. A series of works embody this formula very well. In the Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society, the opening raises the problem and expresses the vague concept: who are our enemies and who are our friends? This is the primary question of the revolution. The middle analyzes each class of Chinese society in detail. The ending synthesizes the analysis and answers the question, constituting the synthetic concept. The conclusion specifies the enemy and identifies the friend, establishing the fundamental guiding thought and guiding line for the democratic revolution. Improving Our Study, in its opening, straightforwardly raises the problem of reforming the methods and systems of study of the whole Party, which at this stage remains a vague concept. The middle analyzes the problems of failing to investigate the present situation, history, or the application of Marxism. The ending proposes the three measures constituting the synthetic concept. Against Stereotyped Party Writing opens by identifying the party essay style as the propaganda tool and expression form of subjectivism and sectarianism. The middle systematically analyzes eight major crimes of this style. The ending synthesizes to indicate the nature of the party essay style and the method of overcoming it.

The beginning of exposition generally has two basic elements: the problem and the basis. A problem is the reflection of the internal contradiction of things, the form in which contradiction manifests. What is a problem? A problem is the contradiction of things. Wherever there is an unresolved contradiction, there is a problem. The exposition of thought always first raises the problem and defines it as a vague concept. The problem is the external form of the basis; the basis is the internal contradiction of the research object reflected by the problem. Problem and basis are in reality two aspects of the same thing. The resolution of the problem depends upon the basis. This basis, reflected theoretically, is the reason. Having a sufficient basis is equivalent to having a sufficient reason.

What is the basis for raising the problem of the strategy of guerrilla warfare against Japan? Guerrilla warfare's strategic problem arises because China is neither a small country nor like the Soviet Union, but a large and weak country attacked by a small and strong country, yet a large and weak country living in a progressive era. From this all the problems derive. China's guerrilla war against Japan therefore broke out of the tactical sphere and entered the strategic sphere, requiring that the problem of guerrilla warfare be examined from a strategic standpoint.

The basis for answering the question of where China is going is found in the materialist view of history: economics determines politics, and economics and politics determine culture. The old culture of the Chinese nation that we want to abolish cannot be separated from the old politics and old economics of the Chinese nation; the new culture of the Chinese nation that we want to build cannot be separated from the new politics and new economics of the Chinese nation. The old politics and old economics of the Chinese nation are the basis of the old culture; the new politics and new economics are the basis of the new culture. The so-called new economics and new politics refer to the historical characteristics of the Chinese revolution, namely that the revolution proceeds in two steps: the first is the New Democratic revolution, the second is the socialist revolution.

In examining the basis, we see first that the resolution of a problem does not appeal solely to the internal contradiction of things; the historical environment in which the contradiction is situated, the conditions of the era, is equally important. Different eras bring about fundamental differences in the nature of contradictions. A basis separated from concrete conditions is an abstract basis; a basis combined with concrete conditions is a realistic and concrete basis. Only a concrete basis contains the reasons for explaining problems and the methods for resolving them. We must also attend to seeking a comprehensive basis rather than a one-sided one.

At the beginning of exposition, a problem is raised and a basis sought. When the problem is raised appropriately and the basis sought accurately, a good beginning is achieved, equivalent to completing half the task. The beginning is very important; it determines the content of the subsequent exposition.

After the beginning come the analysis in the middle and the synthesis at the end. The middle, analyzing the problem, is in reality the unfolding of the basis. Analysis has two basic elements: structural analysis and process analysis. Any thing is the unity of structure and process. Structural analysis analyzes the various aspects of the contradiction and their mutual connections; process analysis analyzes the historical evolution of the special characteristics of each contradictory aspect, thereby revealing the historical process of resolving the problem. The expository process is the organic combination of structural analysis and process analysis.

The analysis of the Sino-Japanese War in On Protracted War proceeds along exactly these two lines. First comes structural analysis, revealing the four special characteristics of both sides, and then synthesizing these to analyze their mutual relations, thereby arriving at the conclusion of protracted war. Structural analysis reveals that the enemy is strong and we are weak, that we face the danger of extinction, but that the enemy has other weaknesses and we have other advantages, and that through our efforts the enemy's strengths can be weakened while our own can be strengthened, so that we can achieve final victory. Then comes process analysis, analyzing how the special characteristics of both sides will change, thereby foreseeing the three stages of the development of protracted war: the stage of the enemy's strategic offensive and our strategic defense; the stage of the enemy's strategic consolidation and our preparation for the counteroffensive; the stage of our strategic counteroffensive and the enemy's strategic retreat.

Structural analysis and process analysis are in reality logical analysis and historical analysis. The analysis of problems should therefore follow the principle of the unity of history and logic. Running logical analysis alongside historical analysis, or running historical analysis alongside logical analysis, so that the two kinds of analysis supplement and verify each other, gives the logical analysis of problems much greater vitality.

Generally speaking, the main body structure of an exposition is the analysis of the problem. As long as the analysis stage is completed, the problem will be resolved, naturally transitioning from the problem to its resolution. The key from raising a problem to resolving it lies in the analysis. Thorough analysis demonstrates logical rigor; insufficient analysis fails to serve as the middle link. Writing and speaking should therefore place the emphasis on the analytical stage.

Regarding the ending of exposition, which is the resolution of the problem and is the process of synthesis, the requirements are: to clarify the nature of the problem and to provide the method of its resolution. First, to clarify the nature of the problem through synthesis so as to arrive at an overall recognition of the analyzed object. After analyzing the eight major crimes of the party essay style, synthesis arrives at the recognition that it is the propaganda tool and expressive form of subjectivism and sectarianism, that it not only fails to express the revolutionary spirit but readily suffocates it. After analyzing the special characteristics of both sides in the Sino-Japanese War, synthesis arrives at the recognition that the war is a protracted one and that final victory belongs to China.

After clarifying the nature of the problem, the method of resolution is proposed; this is the purpose of cognition. These methods are naturally derived from the clarification of the nature of the problem. After arriving at the general orientation and specific directives, more specific methods are also needed. All these policies and directives are drawn from the theoretical recognition obtained through analysis and synthesis. Because they are more concrete than the synthesis of the nature, they become in the form of thought the middle link connecting cognition to practice.

In summary, the problem and its basis, structural analysis and process analysis, synthesis of nature and synthesis of method, are the basic logical elements of the expository process. The organic combination of these logical elements constitutes the logical system of exposition.

The thought procedure of exposition and its logical elements articulate the general laws of exposition, which we should consciously observe. But the forms of exposition are manifold and we must learn to apply them concretely. The expository structure can vary according to the different requirements of content. The preface-main argument type divides a work into two large parts: the preface and the main argument. The main argument is the principal content of the exposition; the preface is set up to better expound the main argument. From the relationship between the abstract and the concrete, the preface is abstract and the main argument is concrete, expressing the movement of thought ascending from abstract to concrete. The On the Strategic Problems of China's Revolutionary War exemplifies this type. The analytic type is the form of exposition in which the analytical stage is emphasized. The Founding Declaration of The Communist draws out three main weapons from eighteen years of experience, then analyzes each separately, and then synthesizes to show their relations, with the methods of resolution already contained within the analysis itself. The analytic-inductive type first uses the analytic method to arrive at a general conclusion, and then uses induction to cite facts that verify it. This is a form of exposition with very strong persuasive force. The form of mutual exchange between problem and basis inverts the ordinary procedure, first presenting the basis and then extracting the problem from the basis. This is also very forceful and convincing.

Any rigorous logical system has one category that is the center of the entire work, regulating and influencing all other categories. This is the central category. The central task of research and exposition is to formulate this central category. In On the Tactics of Fighting Japanese Imperialism, the central category is the national united front. In On the Strategic Problems of China's Revolutionary War, it is strategic defense. In On Protracted War, the central category is protracted war, and it has two aspects: why the war is a protracted one and how to persist in it. In On New Democracy, the central category is New Democracy, a new category that runs through the entire work and determines all its exposition. In the Yan'an Talks on Literature and Art, the central category is serving the people, because the problem of for whom is the fundamental and principled question, upon whose resolution all other questions depend. In On the Ten Major Relationships, mobilizing all positive factors is both the starting point and the destination.

From the analysis of these works we can summarize several conclusions about the central category. First, any relatively rigorous theoretical system must contain a central category that runs through the entire system, constituting its hub and axis, playing a foundational role for the entire category system. Second, the central category is an integral category within the logical system; it is the reflection of the totality of things, and therefore can run through the entire category system, becoming the starting point, the process, and the destination of expository content. Third, the central category is the reflection of the most essential, most important relationship in the research field, playing the role of leadership and determination within the category system. Fourth, different central categories are the basic marks of the different ideational content of different theoretical systems. The central category primarily determines the special content of the theoretical system.

Every category system has its logical starting point, the initial concept, which is the reflection of the research starting point. The initial concept reflects the most general, most abstract concept of the thing, and its content is the basis for the thing's development. In On the Tactics of Fighting Japanese Imperialism, the initial category is the class relations after Japan's invasion of China, the current situation. In On the Strategic Problems of China's Revolutionary War, it is the characteristics of China's revolutionary war. In On Protracted War, it is Sino-Japanese war as an abstract concept whose content, when unfolded, reveals the internal contradictions of both sides, generating the conclusion of protracted war. In On New Democracy, it is the historical characteristics of China, from which the central category of New Democracy is derived.

From this analysis we can see the general characteristics of the initial category. First, the initial category is the first category to appear in the category system and is therefore the simplest and most abstract category. The category system proceeds from the impoverished to the rich, from the abstract to the concrete. The initial category is the most abstract and most impoverished. Second, the internal content of the initial category contains the internal contradiction of things, whose development we use to explain the motion and development of the research object, revealing its driving force and source. Third, the relationship between the initial category and the central category is that of a general form to a special form, of existence to essence, of premise to conclusion. The initial category contains the basis, and the central category is the conclusion derived from this basis.

In establishing a theoretical system, the most important work is to explore the initial category and the central category. Once these two categories are determined, the entire system falls into place. We can confirm the initial category from the central category, or confirm the central category from the initial category. All these are effective methods to be flexibly applied according to the concrete circumstances of the research object.

The research process, as already established, begins with the vague concept, passes through analytic concepts, and finally arrives at the synthetic concept. This is the process of thought ascending from the abstract to the concrete. In exposition, we must allow abstract things to return to concrete things. The general is relatively abstract; the individual is relatively concrete. The general and the individual cannot be separated; therefore the abstract and the concrete cannot be separated. If separated from the individual, the general abstraction becomes an empty thing.

Speaking of Marxism apart from Chinese characteristics is only abstract and empty Marxism. Making Marxism concrete in China, making it bear in every expression the Chinese characteristics it must have, is the fundamental demand. The common principles we speak of when we speak of Marxism are abstract when separated from the particular practice of each country; only when general principles are combined with particular practice does Marxism become a concrete truth. Pure general principles can only exist in books; once these principles are applied to actual life, the abstract has returned to the concrete. There is only concrete freedom and concrete democracy in the world; there is no abstract freedom or abstract democracy. In a society of class struggle, freedom for the exploiting class to exploit the laboring people means no freedom for the laboring people from exploitation.

Regarding truth, the same applies. Truth is always concrete. So-called concrete truth is precisely the combination of general principles with concrete actuality. When people do not understand that Marxism is concrete truth and, invoking the Marxist principle of the withering away of the state while departing from social conditions, demand the immediate abolition of state power, they have departed from truth. General principles are correct only when combined with the practical conditions of their applicability. Hanging a general principle in mid-air and treating it as a rigid dogma is to depart from truth.

Human cognition proceeds from the abstract to the concrete; the historical development of human cognition is also this process. The proposition that the Chinese revolution is part of the world revolution was already raised in the period of the first great revolution. But at that time the significance of this theory had not yet been developed, and people still recognized the problem only vaguely. This was the abstract stage of cognition. When New Democracy was written, the Party's recognition of this problem had already ascended from the abstract to the concrete: the Chinese revolution is part of the proletarian-led world revolution, proceeding in two steps, the first being the New Democratic revolution and the second the socialist revolution.

Therefore, the division between abstract and concrete only has meaning within the historical process of the movement and development of thought. They exist in comparison with each other, have only relative definiteness, and can transform into each other under certain conditions. We should treat abstraction as one stage in the movement of thought; this is both rational and necessary to the movement of thought. If cognition stops and treats abstract concepts as absolute truth, this is obviously erroneous. If the existence of abstract concepts is categorically denied, cognition's movement is itself denied, and with it dialectics. The abstract stage of cognition is not only a necessary stage for individual cognitive development but a necessary stage in the historical development of human cognition as well. We cannot simply negate it; we should develop it to the stage of concrete cognition, completing the logical journey of cognition.

At the beginning of exposition and in the middle of analysis, there is also a logical middle term, the category marking the conditions of contradiction's transformation. In reality's contradictory movement, the main manifestation is the mutual transformation of the contradictory sides under certain conditions. Conditions are crucial; without certain conditions, contradiction cannot realize transformation. To expound the transformation of contradiction from one state to another, we must correctly grasp the conditions of this transformation. These conditions are the intermediate category in logic, which can be called the logical middle term, because in the process of contradiction's transformation, the conditions of transformation play the role of an intermediary.

Speaking of combat between opposing sides, the transformation of contradiction refers to the mutual transformation of superiority and inferiority, offense and defense, exterior and interior lines, quick-decision and protracted war. The conditions for these transformations in concrete cases are very different. With regard to the Sino-Japanese War: strategically we are inferior, on the defensive, on interior lines, engaged in protracted war; after long effort this must transform into superiority, offense, exterior lines, quick-decision war. But even while we are strategically inferior, defensive, on interior lines, and engaged in protracted war, tactically we can transform to superiority, offense, exterior lines, and quick-decision, the condition being the concentration of forces, using many against few. The category of concentrating forces thus becomes the logical middle term through which the category of strategic defense ascends to the category of campaign offense.

The good and the bad can be mutually transformed when certain conditions are met. Bad things have a dual character: besides the bad side, they have a good side that can educate people, playing the role of a teacher by negative example. The condition for the transformation of bad into good is the adoption of correct policies. Regarding the transformation from a poor country to a rich country, the determining condition is the socialist system and the united struggle of the people.

Starting from commodity as the logical beginning in Capital, Marx derives the category of money, and then from money derives the category of capital. Commodity transforms into money; money transforms into capital; both require concrete conditions for their transformation. The condition for the transformation of commodity into money is the development of exchange and the formation of the universal equivalent. Money transforms into capital with labor-power as commodity as the intermediary: without free workers selling their labor-power in the market, capital cannot come into existence. If commodity is the logical beginning, money the logical endpoint, then the form of value is the logical middle term, reflecting the actual process by which commodity ascends to money.

Formal logic holds that argumentation is proof and refutation constituted by inference. Dialectical logic goes a step further; it requires not only that argumentation obey all the rules and laws of formal logic but also imposes higher requirements to further ensure the correctness and truthfulness of argumentation. Argumentation is a special form of exposition, or its local condition. Argumentation reveals the necessary connection between the grounds and the thesis. This connection is not only formal but also substantive, being the reflection in thought of the necessity of reality. Raising the grounds to the thesis is equally the movement of thought ascending from the abstract to the concrete, conforming to the logic of exposition.

Formal logic only requires formal correctness in proof and does not require the truth of the conclusion. Dialectical logic advances further, requiring not only formal correctness but also the truth of the judgment. Pure necessity does not exist; to reveal necessity, one cannot depart from contingency but must grasp necessity within contingency. After the failure of the first great revolution, the method was used to argue for the necessity of the coming of a new revolutionary high tide. Against the prevailing pessimism in the Party, the profound metaphor of a single spark starting a prairie fire was employed, arguing that in China's environment the revolutionary forces not only had the possibility of development but the necessity of it. To argue for the necessity of the conclusion, one must point to the uniqueness of the conclusion, arriving at a conclusion for which there is no second alternative. Comprehensively arguing in New Democracy that the road of bourgeois dictatorship could not be taken in China, that the only road could be the socialist society of proletarian dictatorship, required analyzing both the international and domestic environments, demonstrating the historical necessity, eliminating various contingent interfering factors, and showing that China's revolution had only one prospect.

The unity of the truth and logical necessity of argumentation is founded on social practice. Dialectical logic therefore requires that practice be included in argumentation, further reflecting the necessity of the development of things in its content. Many natural scientific theories are called truth not only when natural scientists first create these theories but also when they are subsequently verified by scientific practice. Marxism is called truth not only when Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin scientifically construct these theories but also when they are subsequently verified by the practice of the class struggle and national struggle of the revolutionary classes. The task of argumentation is first, when building theory, to synthesize perceptual materials, arrange and refashion them, constitute concepts, judgments, and inferences, and argue for the truth of the conclusions; and second, after the leap from theory to practice is completed, to correct what is not fully true and what is erroneous in light of new materials provided by practical results, and further argue for the truth of correct judgments.

Including practice in argumentation also requires using the practical standard to determine the boundary of correspondence between judgment and objective actuality. People's cognition always develops with the development of practice and deepens again and again. The correspondence of judgment with objective actuality is also constantly changing. This creates the situation where the scope of applicability of conclusions at times expands and at times contracts. The second law of thermodynamics applies only to finite closed systems and must not be extended without limit to the infinite universe, or it will lead to the erroneous theory of the heat death of the universe. The practice of ten years of internal disorder proved that to initiate one class overthrowing another class through a political great revolution in socialist society had neither an economic nor a political basis; practice determined the boundaries of the correctness and error of this theory.

Including the practical standard in argumentation is directly connected to the requirement that argumentation achieve the unity of standpoint and material in order to determine the connection between the argument and actuality. To separate material from standpoint, speaking of material without standpoint or of standpoint without material, is a very bad method. To present only a large pile of material without presenting one's own standpoint, without making clear what one supports and what one opposes, is even worse. We must learn to use material to explain our standpoint, to have clear standpoints that command the material. This requires not only analyzing the internal connections among materials but also summarizing them as logical connections, thereby generating a powerful logical force that convinces people to accept the truth. Why is it said that imperialism and all reactionaries are paper tigers? Because there is an internal connection between imperialism and all reactionaries and the quality of being paper tigers. The material cited serves this purpose: the tsar, Hitler, Mussolini, Japanese imperialism, all appeared strong on the surface but were one by one toppled, demonstrating that the truly powerful force belongs to the people. People, only the people, are the true motive force in making world history.

The dialectical method of exposition is the method of expounding the contradictory movement of a thing from beginning to end. All dialectical movements of things are special forms of dialectics. The dialectics of the development of the War of Resistance, the dialectics of the development of capitalist society, are all special dialectical forms. Expounding a special dialectical form means expounding the contradictory movement of a special contradiction from beginning to end. In Capital, Marx first analyzed the simplest, most ordinary, most fundamental, most common commodity exchange, and from this simplest phenomenon revealed all the contradictions of modern society. The subsequent exposition showed these contradictions and their development in all the parts of that society and from its beginning to its end, both in its growth and its movement. The value form, money, and capital represent successive stages in this development, each deriving from the preceding one through the contradictions contained within it. The method described by Kaufman, the method of studying the special laws governing the birth, existence, development, and death of a given social organism and its replacement by a higher organism, is precisely the dialectical method. The expository method of dialectics is the method of expounding the contradictory movement from beginning to end, using categories to reflect the transition of contradiction from one form to another.

Regarding the expository method of general dialectics, the core of dialectics is the law of the unity of opposites, and all other categories such as mutual transformation of quality and quantity, negation of negation, connection, development, and others can all be explained within this core law. The connection of things is the mutual connection of opposing entities in time and space; development is the result of the struggle of opposing entities. As for quality-quantity transformation and negation of negation, they should be explained along with phenomenon-essence, form-content, and so on, under the guidance of the core law. The method of listing several laws of philosophy side by side is unsatisfactory; this was already basically resolved by Lenin, and our task is to explain and develop it. All the various categories can have ten or more of them, and they must all be explained through the contradictory unity of opposites in things. What, for example, is called essence? One can only say that essence is the principal contradiction and the principal aspect of the contradiction. And so on in the same way. This means that the expository logic of general dialectics starts from contradiction as the initial abstract category, making the general expository logic a logic of expounding the movement of general contradiction from beginning to end.

Dialectical logic, whose core is the law of the unity of opposites, when this core is treated as a method becomes the method of contradiction analysis. This dialectical method in logic is the method of combining analysis and synthesis. The main component of the dialectical logical method we study is therefore the combination of analysis and synthesis.

Beyond the combination of analysis and synthesis, dialectical logic has a series of other methods whose application depends on the different characteristics of the research process and expository process. In order of the thought procedure, these methods are successively: comparison, abstraction, induction and generalization, deduction, analysis and synthesis, and ascending from the abstract to the concrete.

Contradiction analysis requires first comparing in order to identify differences. Without comparison there is no discrimination, and then there is no recognition of this side and that side. Comparison is the starting point of thought, the first element of dialectical logical method. Having comparison, there is discrimination, and the work of analysis can begin. Analysis in the narrow sense is decomposition, breaking the unity into two contradictory aspects. But decomposition is not the purpose; the purpose is to separately recognize the essence of each aspect, which requires the use of the method of abstraction. As a logical method of thought, abstraction's essence is the abandonment of phenomenon and the extraction of essence. Abstraction is the development of comparison and decomposition; it is the second element of dialectical logical method. The result of abstraction is knowledge of the essence of each aspect of things separately, still only knowledge of individual and partial objects. To raise the individual to the universal, to recognize the infinite from within the finite, one must use induction and generalization. Both methods share the common characteristic of proceeding from the individual to the general. The difference is that the conclusion reached by induction lacks necessity, while the conclusion of generalization carries necessity. Generalization is therefore a higher method than induction. By induction or generalization, what is obtained is a general, universal recognition. To expand this knowledge, under the guidance of the recognition of the common essence, further recognizing special things by using the deductive method is an important aspect. Deduction is the logical method of deducing individual knowledge from general knowledge as a premise. If we do not ask whether the premise is correct and only consider the relationship between premise and conclusion, the conclusion of deduction carries necessity. But this necessity is relative and conditional; the truth of the conclusion depends on the truth of the premise. Only by combining induction and deduction, supplementing each other and compensating for each other's deficiencies, can cognition advance continuously. When cognition develops to the stage of deduction, at the same time it requires synthesis. And in the process of synthesis, it must again combine with analysis; this is what is called the combination of analysis and synthesis. The purpose of synthesis is to arrive at an overall recognition of things, the so-called unity of multiplicity, the synthesis of multiple determinations. This result of cognition is concrete in thought, which is again the unity of the individual and the general, the combination of the particular and the universal. When the stage of synthesis is reached, the task of cognition is complete: we have recognized not only the nature of the contradiction but also found the method of resolving it.

In terms of the thought procedure, from the beginning in the comparison method, all the way through to synthesis, this is a method of ascending from the abstract to the concrete. The content of thought becomes richer and richer, its determinations more and more numerous, and it thereby becomes more and more concrete. The method of ascending from the abstract to the concrete is the method of contradiction analysis, the overall method of research. All the other methods are its stages. Marx and Engels called their own dialectical logic the logic of ascending from the abstract to the concrete, which is entirely correct.

Comparison is an important method of thought. To recognize the specific determinations of a particular thing, distinguishing it from other things, and thereby constituting concepts that reflect various special essences, one must compare. Without comparison there is no difference between different things, and different concepts with different intensions cannot be formed. Comparison is therefore the first logical method we must master, in order to grasp the connections and differences between various things.

Whether recognizing the universality of contradiction or the special character of contradiction, different characteristics must be compared. Because the common character of things cannot exist in isolation but can only be abstracted from individuals, abstracting what is common from different special characters is finding the same within the different. But the identity of dialectics is not abstract identity but concrete identity; so the more important task of cognition is to see difference within sameness, finding the different within the same. The comparative method is the logical method of finding the same within the different and the different within the same, the method of determining the sameness-difference relations between things, and a method that all research must employ.

Comparison has several forms. First, there is the comparison seeking sameness and the comparison seeking difference: finding sameness within difference is moving from the individual to the general, which we call comparison seeking sameness; finding difference within sameness is moving from the general to the individual, which we call comparison seeking difference. Second, there is comparison between things of the same kind and comparison between things of different kinds. Tradition requires that only things of the same kind be compared, which is correct, since items lacking comparability cannot be compared. But the distinction between comparability and incomparability is relative, changing with different practical requirements. What is the same kind in one range becomes different in another; and so comparison within the same kind carries a relative character, while comparison between different kinds becomes possible under certain conditions. In cybernetics, machines, organisms, and humans are treated as control systems and thereby rendered comparable despite being apparently different in kind. Third, there is quantitative comparison and qualitative comparison: quality and quantity are the unity of opposites; qualitative comparison must take quantitative comparison as its condition, and these two should be combined. Fourth, there is analytic comparison and synthetic comparison: the former compares one determination at a time, the latter synthesizes several determinations simultaneously. In the comparison between socialism and capitalism, there are items where analysis shows us inferior to the West, but in overall synthetic comparison, socialism is far superior to capitalism. Synthetic comparison is superior to analytic comparison because it considers the mutual influences of various factors; its conclusions are more rational and more accurate.

Traditional logic studies comparison mainly in terms of the sameness-difference relations of things. Dialectical logic also requires comparison between forms of thought and observed facts. This comparison shows that not only logical laws but also forms of thought are tools for finding new knowledge. Simply applying logical methods and abstract formulas in pure inference is abstract research. Concrete research does not reject the use of logical methods and formulas but requires that these methods and formulas be combined with the actual processes in nature, society, and human thought; that is, forms of thought must be compared with observed facts. A law is a form of thought that can be used as a tool to organize perceptual material. We study the directing laws of war in order to apply these laws to war. We study dialectical law in order to take it as a guide to action. And so doing things in accordance with dialectics means using the laws of dialectics in comparison with the actual observed facts.

Concepts, laws, and other forms of thought can serve as tools of comparison; this is the expression of the active function of forms of thought. This is precisely where theory can be transformed into method. Einstein called this the inventions of the intellect: concepts and categories used to express laws, such as straight line, curve, circle, ellipse, hyperbola, are all inventions of the intellect, the simplest imaginable forms of thought. In celestial motion, ellipses and hyperbolas can express the laws of motion. Kepler, facing the disordered observational data of Tycho Brahe, had to find a method for organizing it, and after countless explorations discovered that planetary orbits are ellipses, with the sun at one focus. Knowledge cannot be derived from experience alone but only from the comparison of the inventions of the intellect with the observed facts.

Social science equally provides analogies for the developmental processes and universal connections occurring in human society. We should compare the laws of social development with the observed facts of society in order to obtain knowledge about society. When we take the form of thought of class struggle and compare it with social phenomena, placing the observed facts into the category of class struggle, we obtain social knowledge. After reading about class struggle in books, the researcher took only four words, class struggle, and began earnestly investigating actual class struggle, spending months investigating peasant movements, taking these four words as a form of thought and comparing them with observed peasant movement facts, thereby producing the Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan. Such knowledge was obtained from the comparison of the invention of the intellect, the category of class struggle, with the observed facts of peasant movements.

Comparison between forms of thought and observed facts is the basic method of scientific discovery and the concrete path of combining theory with practice. Those who theorize without regard for practice, who merely study for the sake of studying, become connoisseurs of antiques because they do not carry out this comparison, have not learned to use theoretical forms of thought as tools of comparison with actuality. In this process of comparison, we must oppose the dogmatist error of treating general truths as things that arise from nowhere, turning them into pure abstract formulas that serve as cure-all wonder medicines. Knowledge comes from observation; without observed facts this comparison cannot be made. Dogmatists deny this while one-sidedly exaggerating the relative definiteness of forms of thought, denying their flexibility, thereby falling into the error of subjectivism.

Abstraction is the deepening of cognition. Through abstraction people can recognize the essence of things, raising the individual to the general, raising the finite to the infinite, obtaining recognition of the laws of things. As a logical method, abstraction involves the abandonment of phenomenon and extraction of essence; as a form of thought, it produces abstract concepts, abstract thinking. Both are inseparably related; the abstract method as a method of thought arrives at abstraction as a form of thought. Abstraction is not something high and mysterious accessible only to scientists. We do the work of abstraction every day, only without yet consciously understanding it.

Simply having comparison and decomposition does not move cognition beyond perceptual recognition or realize deepening. Deepening means entering the internal connections of things, grasping the essence. After comparison and decomposition, one must further abandon phenomena and extract essence; this is the application of the method of abstraction. Scientific abstraction is the deepening of cognition produced by a thousand strains of difficulty in people's practical activity of production and class struggle; it is one of the methods of processing in the deepening movement of cognition. Matter's abstractions, abstractions of natural laws, abstractions of value, and so forth, in a word, all scientific, correct, non-arbitrary abstractions reflect nature more deeply, more correctly, more completely.

There are two points to note in the process of abstraction. First, the role of comparison in abstraction: in forming various concepts during abstraction, various further comparisons must be made; only in the comparison of different attributes can different concepts be formed. General concepts are always abstracted within the comparison with individual concepts; without this comparison, what is common cannot be determined. Second, the process of abstraction is permeated by the contradiction between individual and general concepts: if we take the human as a general concept, reflecting the common point, then the mother is the individual concept. This shows that abstraction is realized within the contradictory movement of individual and general concepts, further proving that the contradiction between individual and general concepts is the fundamental contradiction of the movement of thought.

Generalization is the logical method of raising a concept of lower universality to a concept of higher universality. Philosophy is knowledge of the highest universality, a generalization and summary of natural knowledge and social knowledge. Through generalization, a concept of narrower extension transitions to a concept of wider extension. All the objects of physical science, chemical science, biological science, astronomical science, and so forth, when further generalized, ultimately yield the concept of widest extension, matter, because the single characteristic of all these realities is objective existence, and so they are all matter.

The significance of the example of the sparrow is that one need not investigate all cooperatives across the country before reaching an appropriate conclusion; investigating one or a few thoroughly is sufficient. Generalization does not require having recognized all the objects reflected by the concept before it can be obtained; it only requires typical research on one or two objects. This is possible because of the method of generalization, which finds universality within the individual. Generalization is different from induction: induction reaches its leap through the quantitative accumulation of the same attributes, while generalization grasps necessity through the analysis of the internal contradictions of things, thereby grasping the essence and the truth. We need not deny the necessity of studying phenomena, but phenomena should serve as the introductory guide; through contingency the necessity of things is revealed. Scientific abstraction abandons contingency and abstracts necessity, generalizing it as universality, which is something induction cannot do. The conclusions of generalization carry necessity. Hence generalization is a higher method than induction.

The analytic method is the method of contradiction analysis, that is, the method of one divides into two, which is simultaneously the method of two combine into one. The contradiction between the individual and general determines that the method of cognition is the unity of opposites of analysis and synthesis. The method emphasizing analysis is the analytic method; the method emphasizing synthesis is the synthetic method. Both are methods of combining analysis and synthesis.

In terms of the thought procedure, analysis comes first and synthesis later. Analysis is the necessary preparation for synthesis; synthesis is the inevitable result of analysis. First analyzing each part of capitalist society and then synthesizing to obtain the laws of capitalist motion: this is the model. Analysis alone cannot give us a complete understanding of the special character of each contradictory aspect, because many of the special characters exist only within the connections between the contradictory sides. Therefore, to understand the special characters of both sides, one must not only analyze but also synthesize, understanding their mutual connections, what specific positions each occupies, and what specific forms each uses to relate to the other. The special character of the whole contradiction is primarily determined by the principal aspect but cannot be equated with it; it is the synthesis of the special characters of both sides.

From the synthesis of the special characters of both sides of the Communist Party and the Guomindang at different stages in the Chinese revolution, different historical phases were constituted: the first united front period, the period of its rupture, and the second united front period. It is clear that the special character of the actual contradictory whole is determined by the synthesis of the special characters of both contradictory sides. Through synthesis, the abstract determinations of each side's special characters transition to concrete determinations; each side exists not separately but as one side in connection with the other. This is the result of the combination of analysis and synthesis.

The unity of the contradictory sides in reality is the foundation of the combination of analysis and synthesis in thought. The subjective dialectics of analysis and synthesis are built upon the objective dialectics of the contradiction between reality and its sides, both opposing and unifying. What is real-life synthesis? It is the actual contradictory movement. The Communist Party and the Guomindang were the class contradictions of the past Chinese reality and their expression. The unity and struggle of these contradictory sides drove the development of Chinese society. We achieved victory in the democratic revolution precisely within the unity and struggle of these contradictions. Thought's dialectics are a reflection of objective dialectics. Everything foreign, like food, must pass through our mouth, through saliva, gastric juices, and intestinal juices, broken down into its essence and dross, then the dross expelled and the essence absorbed, so that it benefits our health; it cannot be swallowed whole and uncritically. The foreign culture is decomposed into essence and dross as two opposing aspects; this is analysis. The dross is eliminated, the essence absorbed, fused with the national culture, and our own culture is further developed; this is synthesis. This is the thought that the unity of a thing into two parts and the recognition of its contradictory parts is the essence of dialectics, and the essence of analysis and synthesis.

The unity of induction and deduction is what Marxism has achieved, ending the historical controversy between the inductive and deductive schools. Induction starts from individual complex special things and finds their common simple universal points, following the path of analysis; it is from the particular to the general, from the concrete to the abstract. Deduction uses general principles to explain particular things, following the path of synthesis; it is from the general to the particular, from the abstract to the concrete. These correspond to the order of human cognitive movement. But these two cognitive processes are not cleanly separated; they interpenetrate and interweave.

Deduction from the general principle that revolution requires capitalism can tell us that China needs a bourgeois revolution, but it cannot tell us the special nature of this bourgeois revolution. To recognize this special nature, induction must be applied simultaneously, starting from China's concrete national conditions, investigating and studying the new special contradictions and contradictory tendencies. The combination of the universal truth of Marxism with the concrete practice of revolution in each country requires deduction to recognize the common path of revolution in each country, insisting on Marxism as guide. But when using Marxist principles to recognize the special laws of revolution in each country, investigation and research from the standpoint of the concrete national conditions of that country is required, meaning induction must also be applied simultaneously, otherwise dogmatism and formalism will be the result. Purely relying on deduction leads to living by the book, departing from the concrete national conditions, separating from the concrete actuality of the revolution, committing the errors of formalism and dogmatism.

Induction is important; relying on it, we can discover the special laws of the development of things, find the special path of revolution in each country. But when studying individual, special things, we cannot depart from the guidance of general principles. Only under the guidance of general principles can cognition avoid remaining at the level of pure experience, otherwise empiricism results. So when applying induction, it must be combined with deduction, achieving the cycle from the individual to the general and from the general to the individual, summarizing universal truth from experience. Induction and deduction, thus combined into an integral method, are neither separately discarded nor separately preserved, but absorbed, digested, and refashioned. Dialectics is the integral dialectics; it is not induction and deduction cobbled together.

Logic and history are consistent; this determines the unity of the logical method and the historical method. The logical method encompasses comparison, abstraction, generalization, analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction, and so forth. The results obtained by applying these methods to the research object are consistent, in their logical conclusions as theoretical standpoints, with the results obtained by the historical method, which studies the object according to the historical sequence of its development. We are Marxist historical materialists; we must not cut off history. Historically analyzing the development of contradictions, revealing the special essence of each stage and the connections between them, is the fundamental task of the historical method. What the historical method reveals as the necessity of things' development appears in categorical form as logical necessity, which is consistent with history.

The movement of thought ascending from the abstract to the concrete reflects the historical development of contradictions. The abstract stages of thought and the more abstract categories are reflections of the lower stages of things' development; the concrete stages of thought and the more concrete categories reflect the higher stages. Although at the stage of imperialism, the fundamental contradictory nature of two classes and the capitalist essence of that society have not changed, the contradiction between the two classes has intensified, the contradiction between monopoly and free capitalism has arisen, colonial contradictions have sharpened, inter-imperialist contradictions have become particularly acute, forming the higher stage of capitalism. The category of imperialism is naturally more concrete than the category of capitalism, encompassing more of the special character of the contradictions while retaining the universality contained in the category of capitalism.

Any nation that aspires to stand at the highest peak of science cannot go without theoretical thought, not even for a moment. This principle, affirmed by Engels, stands at the very foundation of what Mao Zedong accomplished in the domain of dialectical logic, and it is the reason that his achievements in this sphere deserve the most serious and sustained attention.

Mao Zedong's dialectical logical thought is an indispensable component of Mao Zedong Thought as a whole. He inherited and developed the dialectical logical ideas of Marx, Engels, and Lenin, and applied them with success to the thinking process itself, solving a series of theoretical and tactical problems in the Chinese revolution, establishing for our Party the correct line, guiding principles, and policies, and ultimately achieving the victory of the revolution. The word does not exist to suggest that his scientific works fail to reflect the laws and methods of this dialectical thinking, or that one cannot discover within them an extraordinarily rich body of dialectical logical thought. One only needs to study carefully, and this precious inheritance reveals itself.

China was, not so long ago, a semi-colonial and semi-feudal country. To accomplish the tasks of the new democratic revolution in this great Eastern nation required confronting and resolving a series of extremely special and complex problems, problems that had never been encountered in the course of European proletarian revolutions. To resolve them, to transform Marxism from its European form into a Chinese form, was a peculiarly difficult undertaking. It required not merely a familiarity with Marxist texts but a high degree of scientific spirit combined with a high degree of revolutionary spirit, rich historical knowledge, social knowledge, and the experience of guiding revolutionary struggle, the capacity for precise scientific analysis, and an inexhaustible devotion to the cause of the proletariat and the people. It was Mao Zedong who accomplished this great work with brilliance and success. The Chinese Communists, with Mao Zedong as their principal representative, took the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism and gave theoretical form to a series of original experiences accumulated over the long practice of the Chinese revolution, forming a scientific guiding thought suited to Chinese conditions, the product of the universal truth of Marxism-Leninism united with the concrete practice of the Chinese revolution, namely Mao Zedong Thought.

Mao Zedong made Marxism concrete in China, made it in its every expression carry the necessary Chinese characteristics, made it a fresh and lively thing, a Chinese style and Chinese spirit that the Chinese common people found congenial and welcome. This kind of work offers immense education to all those engaged in the study of dialectical logic. In our past research on dialectical logic, we seldom combined it with the thinking characteristics of the Chinese nation. Yet the Chinese nation is an ancient people possessing a glorious tradition of dialectical thinking, and Mao Zedong's dialectical logical thought is precisely the inheritance and development of that tradition. To study Hegel, Marx, Engels, and Lenin in the course of dialectical logical research is entirely necessary and constitutes an important dimension of the work. But we cannot, in the manner Mao Zedong criticized when he spoke of those who always say "Greece" before they say anything else, always say "Hegel" before anything else, forgetting our own ancestors, fitting even the logical thought of Mao Zedong's works into Hegel's framework, erasing completely the characteristics of our own nation. The dialectical thinking through which the Chinese Communists united Marxism-Leninism with the concrete practice of the Chinese revolution represents the highest peak of the development of the theoretical thought of the Chinese nation, and is the logically necessary development of theoretical thought in history.

The word of Deng Xiaoping deserves to be recalled: Mao Zedong Thought developed Marxism-Leninism not in individual aspects but in many domains. It is a system, a developed Marxism. Therefore the comrades engaged in theoretical work ought to spend considerable effort clarifying the system of Mao Zedong Thought from each of its domains, and using this system to educate our Party and guide our advance. Dialectical logical thought is precisely one such domain, and it is in this domain that the task falls upon us to clarify the system of Mao Zedong Thought.

Although Mao Zedong left us no scientific monograph on dialectical logic, in a series of works he touched upon various problems of dialectical logic in different ways and at different depths. Several of his most important works can be regarded as applied dialectical logic, containing within them rich dialectical logical thought awaiting our research and discovery. Zhou Enlai put it simply and exactly when he said that the special characteristic of Mao Zedong Thought is the concretization of universal truth, its application to Chinese soil. Mao Zedong left us no Logic with a capital L, but he did leave us the logic of works like On Protracted War, the logic of On New Democracy, and many others.

The question of how to study Mao Zedong's dialectical logical thought must be answered clearly. The fundamental starting point of this study is not Hegel, not even Marx or Lenin, but the whole of Mao Zedong's own scientific works. We cannot gather several viewpoints from Hegel and several others from Marx, Engels, and Lenin, weave them together, design a so-called framework of dialectical logic, and then fit materials and viewpoints from Mao Zedong's works into this frame. That method is fundamentally wrong, and it is wrong not because the viewpoints of Hegel and Marx are incorrect, but because it does not proceed from the actual content of Mao Zedong's works and cannot reflect the actual situation of Mao Zedong's dialectical logical thought. His scientific works are the concentrated summation of his thought, and it is in them that we must seek his dialectical logical ideas.

The word "logic" has, at different periods in history, contained different meanings, understood differently by different people. In ancient times, three great logical traditions appeared in the world, those of China, India, and Greece. The earliest logical system in Greece was that of Aristotle, of which the syllogism was the most fundamental part. Modern logic is the development of that Greek tradition. Beginning with Kant's establishment of transcendental logic, Hegel further developed Kant's theory and built speculative logic, giving a comprehensive and systematic account of the logical development of categorical forms. Marx and Engels transformed Hegel's idealist dialectics and in doing so also inherited the positive results of speculative logic, developing it into dialectical logic, researching the concrete forms of the dialectical development of thought. Lenin called dialectical logic Marxist logic and proposed the famous four basic requirements of dialectical logic, as well as the idea of the identity of dialectics, materialist epistemology, and logic as three in one, advancing the development of dialectical logic further still.

Mao Zedong was a dialectician, not a logician. He repeatedly said he had little research in logic and did not dare to offer opinions on it. But his views on logical problems were extremely penetrating. He affirmed that formal logic attends only to the form of thought, not its content, that formal logic has no class character, that the syllogism cannot produce much new knowledge, and so on, all of which are fundamental truths. From the side of dialectics he delineated dialectical logic, and his discussions of the relationship between formal logic and dialectical logic constitute an immensely rich body of thought.

The word of the logician Zhou Gucheng is worth recalling here. Formal logic and metaphysics are different things: metaphysics holds positions about things, but formal logic holds no positions about anything whatsoever. It is precisely because formal logic holds no positions about things that it can serve metaphysics. But we cannot for this reason oppose formal logic itself when we oppose metaphysics. And equally, we cannot conflate formal logic with dialectics, just as we cannot conflate it with metaphysics. Formal logic is a science of the forms of thinking, of modes of inference, with its own set of rules extracted from countless experiences, and these rules distinguish it both from metaphysics and from dialectics.

Mao Zedong agreed with this view entirely. Formal logic, he said with characteristic directness, is by nature formal. To try to conflate it with dialectics, or even to transform it into dialectics, is impossible. It is an independent discipline, and everyone should study a little of it. He said plainly that formal logic is a specialized science, belonging to the domain of logic, not a methodology of thought, not a worldview. It studies the forms of thinking, attends to non-contradiction in thought, manages only the correctness of the form of thinking, and does not manage the truth of the content of thought. It is a science without class character. Just as natural science in itself has no class character, though who researches and utilizes it does, the same applies to formal logic.

In the thirties, Mao Zedong read enormous quantities of philosophical works, including the Soviet philosophical textbooks of Shirokov and Eisenberg, and those of Mitin and his collaborators, and Li Da's Outline of Sociology. On the question of formal logic, he was influenced by these Soviet philosophical works and initially shared their misunderstanding, treating formal logic as a kind of metaphysics. But in the spring of 1938, Pan Zinian sent Mao Zedong his book Logic and the Science of Logic, and reading it caused a major change in Mao Zedong's conception of logic. The book distinguished between logic as a science, which has the significance of a methodology, and logic as an art, which serves only as a technical account of thinking. The science of logic, in this understanding, is dialectics, while the art of logic is formal logic, which is therefore not a methodology and is distinct both from dialectics and from metaphysics. This distinction allowed formal logic to be separated from metaphysics and the misunderstanding to be overcome. When the selected works of Mao Zedong were being prepared for publication after liberation, the section in On Contradiction that had discussed the identity law of formal logic and the law of dialectical contradiction was entirely deleted, eliminating the misunderstanding and overcoming the influence produced by Soviet philosophical circles' criticism and negation of formal logic.

Dialectical logic, by contrast, is dialectics itself in its logical aspect, the logic of thinking's own dialectics. Engels spoke of it as not merely listing and arranging without connection the various forms of thought, the various forms of judgment and inference, but rather deriving them from one another, not placing them in parallel but making them subordinate to one another, developing higher forms from lower ones. Lenin called dialectical logic Marxist logic, and the big Logic, the Logic with a capital letter. He was clear that big logic is nothing other than dialectics, and dialectics is the science of philosophy. Mao Zedong in his Outline on Dialectical Materialism called materialist dialectics the only scientific epistemology and also the only scientific logic, saying that dialectics researches the most general laws of development of the objective world and the forms in which these laws of the objective world's development are reflected in thought, and that this is the unity of dialectics and logic.

Yet it must be said that formal logic is not metaphysics. Metaphysics is a worldview, and as such is the diametric opposite of dialectics. It looks at the world with an isolated, static, one-sided view, regarding all things as eternally separate from one another and eternally unchanging. The identity law that appears in formal logic is the identity law of the form of thinking, not the identity law of things in the metaphysical sense. Formal logic requires that within the same process of thinking, a concept reflects a certain attribute of a thing and continues to reflect it, and this says nothing whatsoever about whether things remain fixed and unchanging. It is the formal identity, and it by no means denies the existence of difference and change in content. We must strictly distinguish formal logic, understood as a science of the forms of thinking, from metaphysics, understood as a worldview opposed to dialectics, and not mistakenly treat formal logic as metaphysics and negate it on that basis.

What then are the basic contents of Mao Zedong's dialectical logical thought? The science of formal logic has defined concept, judgment, and inference as the basic forms of thinking. Dialectical logic, on the foundation of formal logic, has developed the theory of the forms of thinking. In his Practice, Mao Zedong proposed that the task of cognition is to arrive at thought, and that thinking must reflect the inner lawfulness of things and form a system of concepts and theory. Three basic forms of thinking that reflect the contradictory movement of thinking were proposed here. The first is the concept: the starting point of rational knowledge is in the form of the concept, and the concept is therefore the most basic form of thinking and the basic sign that thinking has been reached. The second is the law: this is the form of the connection and transformation among concepts and categories, the only form capable of reflecting the inner connection and inner lawfulness of things. The third is the theoretical system: the system is the terminus of rational knowledge, formed after concepts take shape, using laws as intermediaries, filtering through to theoretical systems. These three, concept, law, and theoretical system, are the basic forms of thinking.

Mao Zedong on the basis of the dialectical relationship between practice and cognition, and the dialectical development of cognition, divided thinking into two basic processes, the process of research and the process of exposition. The process of forming concepts and judgments and the process of inference, he said, constitute the process of investigation and research, the process of thinking. But one must also have a comparatively suitable way of expressing one's correct viewpoints and thoughts and conveying them to others. The process of forming concepts and judgments and the process of inference is the process of coming from the masses; the process of conveying one's viewpoints and thoughts to others is the process of going to the masses. This division of the thinking process into two, connecting them with the subject of cognition, the people's masses, was a major development of Marxist dialectical logical theory, appearing for the first time in the history of logic. It further clarified the object of dialectical logical research as including not only the process of research but also the process of exposition, so that there is not only a logic of exposition but also a logic of research.

The concept is the cell of thinking. Mao Zedong began with the two-sidedness inherent in all things and studied the two-sidedness of concepts, finding that the unity of contradictions and their division is also a law of thinking, that objective contradictions reflected into subjective thought form the contradictory movement of concepts. The so-called internal structure of the concept's intension is its contradictory structure, the relationship of unity of opposites among opposing content within the concept's intension. It is precisely this structure of the concept's intension that determines the content of judgment and inference. From the affirmative concept to the affirmative proposition, from the negative concept to the negative proposition, and the mutual derivation among affirmative, negative, and synthetic propositions, all are built on the foundation of the concept's internal structure.

The concept is what arises when sensory knowledge makes the leap to rational knowledge. Mao Zedong said clearly that social practice continues, the things that have caused sensation and impression in people are repeated many times, and in the minds of people a sudden change in the process of cognition arises, namely a leap, and concepts are produced. The concept is no longer the phenomenon of things, no longer the various fragments of things, no longer their external connections. It has grasped the essence of things, the whole of things, the internal connections of things. The concept differs from sensation not only quantitatively but qualitatively. Sensation can only resolve the problem of phenomenon; the concept can resolve the problem of essence.

Concepts must be clear. Among the main defects Mao Zedong identified in documents and writing were: first, concepts are unclear; second, judgments are improper; third, in using concepts and judgments to make inferences, logical rigor is lacking. If concepts are unclear, how can one make proper judgments? Without clear concepts and proper judgments, naturally one cannot make logically sound inferences. The method for making concepts more precise and revealing their intension involves several aspects. First, one must accurately grasp the essence of things, especially their particular essence, and give it scientific summation and abstraction, revealing the intension that plays the determining role in the structure of the concept's intension. Second, one must grasp the relations among the multiple attributes of a thing, distinguish primary essence from secondary essence, and focus especially on grasping the primary essence. Third, to accurately grasp the intension of a concept, one must comprehensively understand the relations among things, grasp all intermediaries, and determine the intension of concepts in terms of relations. Fourth, by using spatial and temporal comparison, one grasps the primary and secondary essence, the various different relations and their changes, and thereby gradually clarifies the intension of the concept.

Mao Zedong said with great concision and depth: concepts must not be fixed. Lenin pointed out that human concepts are not immobile but in eternal movement, mutually interpenetrating, flowing back and forth; otherwise they cannot reflect living life. Mao Zedong gave a comprehensive analysis of the mobility of concepts, studying both its forms, its content, and its laws. He distinguished between numerical mobility, mobility within the stable quality of the concept, such as a narrowing or widening of its range of application, and qualitative mobility, the fundamental change whereby an old concept is abolished and a new one formed. The mobility and the determinateness of concepts are unified: mobility is absolute, but at each developmental stage there is a specific relative fixedness. The concept of the people, for instance, has different content in different countries and in different historical periods within the same country. In the period of the war of resistance against Japan, all classes, strata, and social groups that opposed Japan were within the scope of the people; after liberation, in the period of socialist construction, all those who supported and participated in socialist construction were within the scope of the people. This is the temporal mobility of concepts, flowing with the development of the revolutionary task. And habitual thinking is one of the greatest obstacles to this kind of mobility. The theory of the two absolutes denied both the spatial and temporal mobility of concepts and was a manifestation of habitual thinking.

The logical formula expressing the two-sidedness of the concept is A equals A-and-not-A. Mao Zedong explained it: dialectical logic holds that A is A and at the same time is not A, a thing is identical with itself and at the same time is not identical with itself. This formula represents the synthesis of identity and non-identity. The A-and-not-A within it has two meanings. First, it means that A and not-A in certain conditions mutually depend on each other and mutually contain each other. In the intension of any concept there are two mutually opposing content elements that are inseparable and mutually determine each other. Democracy contains centralism as its hidden intension, and centralism contains democracy as its hidden intension. To grasp democracy and centralism scientifically means understanding them as democracy concentrated on a democratic basis and democracy under the guidance of centralism, and any democracy severed from centralism or any centralism severed from democracy falls short of what we require. Second, A-and-not-A means that A and not-A can under certain conditions transform into each other. Any specific content of a concept will, as the process of thinking develops, transform toward its opposite at a certain point. This is the concrete expression of the unity of contradictions within the concept.

Mao Zedong identified four logical formulas in relation to this. The first is A is A, which sees only identity and not difference or opposition, and is in worldview terms the metaphysical formula. The second is A is not-A, which sees only difference and opposition and not identity, and is a relativist formula. The third is to split these two formulas apart, placing them side by side as one-A-is-A on the one side and A-is-not-A on the other, combining them mechanically, which is the eclectic formula. The fourth is to synthesize them into A is A-and-not-A, seeing both identity and difference and opposition, not splitting A-and-not-A apart but treating it as a whole, which is the dialectical formula. From the standpoint of worldview, only the fourth is correct.

The contradictory movement of thinking takes the form of propositions in relation to one another. Any process consists of the affirmative proposition, the negative proposition that negates the affirmative, and the synthetic proposition that negates the negation of the negative, constituting the whole life cycle of development. In the affirmative proposition contradictions and the negative proposition are already contained; in the negative proposition the affirmative proposition is contained; in the synthetic proposition both the affirmative and the negative are contained. As with the concept, so with the judgment: any affirmative judgment contains elements of negation, and any negative judgment contains elements of affirmation.

Mao Zedong's application of this framework to the analysis of the two-sidedness of imperialism is memorable and exact. On the strategic level, all imperialists and reactionaries are paper tigers; this is the affirmative proposition. On the tactical level, all imperialists and reactionaries are real tigers; this is the negative proposition. The synthetic proposition unifying them is: all imperialists and reactionaries are both paper tigers and real tigers. This is not a mechanical combination of two propositions. The relationship between them is simultaneous, mutually interpenetrating, mutually connected, a whole unity, not a mechanical joining, not something that can be mechanically taken apart. If taken apart, it becomes eclecticism. The key is that among the affirmative and negative propositions, there must be one that occupies the commanding position and plays the determining role. In the relationship between despising the enemy on the strategic level and taking the enemy seriously on the tactical level, the strategic proposition is the primary contradiction. The great majority of human beings, and above all the proletariat and the Communists, will always place the strategic despising of all things, the optimism, in the first position of their hearts. Only then do they take things seriously, take every piece of work seriously, take scientific research seriously, analyze every contradictory aspect of things, penetrate deeply, and gradually understand the laws of natural and social movement.

The logic of research concerns itself with the logical rules governing the evolution of forms of thinking within the process of research. Mao Zedong's main contribution here is the three-stage doctrine of the research process, driven by the contradictory movement of the general and the individual within the concept. The first stage is the large-scale investigation and research by which one recognizes the general outline of a thing and forms a general, sweeping concept. The second stage is the systematic and thorough investigation and research by which one penetrates into the internal details of a thing and forms analytical concepts. The third stage is the use of synthesis to combine the analyses of the various parts, arriving at an understanding of the whole and forming a synthetic concept. Research begins with the question, develops through analysis, and reaches completion through synthesis. Sweeping concept, analytical concept, synthetic concept: the process of thinking is in this way the movement from abstract to concrete, and this is the logic of research.

Scientific laws are also forms of thinking. Objective laws are the intrinsic movement forms of things, existing independently outside human consciousness. Scientific laws are the reflections of objective laws in human thinking. The law as a form of thinking provides a model for grasping the world. Once we understand a law, it becomes a thought-weapon for observing and handling problems, a guiding law for action, what Mao Zedong called the art of swimming in the vast sea of war. Categories, laws, and rules are one thing, differing only in the angle from which they are examined. The movement and transformation of categories constitutes laws, the interconnection and transformation of laws constitutes the system of laws, and this is the theoretical system. The most fundamental element within any theoretical system is the concept. The so-called logic of the theoretical system is at bottom the logic of the concept.

Human cognitive history concretely manifests itself as the historical development of the theories of each branch of science, and dialectics, by summarizing and drawing conclusions from these branch theories, also thereby summarizes the history of human cognition. This is what Mao Zedong drew from Lenin's formulation: logic is the sum, the summation, the conclusions of the history of the world's cognition. Dialectics is the history of cognition. In the work of Capital, this unity of logic and history and epistemology is most perfectly exemplified. The logic of Capital is both the reflection of the actual history of capitalist society and the summation of the theoretical historical development of the theory of capitalist society. In Capital the unity of logic and epistemology has already been realized, and this is the strongest evidence in the history of dialectical logic for their identity.

Formal logic and dialectical logic are both most fundamental. Logic is not merely a tool of proof but firstly a method of scientific exploration, and simultaneously the weapon for expressing and communicating thought. Mao Zedong himself required that articles and documents have three qualities: accuracy, clarity, and vividness. Accuracy belongs to the problems of concepts, judgments, and inferences, which are all logical problems. To make the leap from sensory knowledge to rational knowledge, to form concepts and grasp the essential knowledge of things, one must correctly employ logic. What Mao Zedong always called thinking it through, what in Three Kingdoms appears as furrowing the brow until a plan comes to mind, is in logical terms precisely the work of using concepts to make judgments and inferences, what people call logical thinking. Logic pervades the whole, and the entire internal structure of an essay or speech produces its irresistible logical force. Stalin described Lenin's logic in the rostrum: what struck him was the invincible logical force of Lenin's speeches, which though somewhat dry, firmly seized the audience, moved them step by step, and then captured every one of them as prisoners. Many delegates said that Lenin's logic was like countless omnipotent tentacles seizing you from all sides so that you could not escape, and you either surrendered or were utterly defeated. Such is the extraordinary logical power that is the strongest feature of great oratory, and it is precisely what Mao Zedong meant by the internal connections of an essay's or speech's entire structure.

🔬 I. DIALECTICAL DEFINITION: REQUIREMENTS AND STRUCTURE

🎯 A. The Mission of Dialectics in Defining Concepts

Dialectics does NOT invent new forms of definition — it demonstrates how the dialectic of the objective world reflects itself through ALL possible forms

Numerous forms of defining concepts exist — including those indicated by V.I. Maltsev

Dialectics does NOT oppose "dialectical definitions" against "metaphysical definitions"

Instead, dialectics provides a method of defining concepts through which concepts acquire content

Any definition, regardless of form, CAN have content

📐 B. First Requirement of Dialectics: Comprehensive Coverage

The definition must encompass the object from ALL points of view

Must reveal ALL essential traits, aspects, and properties that constitute the concept's content

We cannot grasp all facets simultaneously — but must strive to do so

This requirement protects knowledge from dogmatism and routine

A brief, single definition CANNOT reflect the object from all its points of view

Multiple distinct definitions are necessary to reveal the object's full richness

Only the TOTALITY of definitions can claim a concrete reflection of the object's essence

⚗️ C. The Marxist Definition of Capitalism — A Model of Comprehensiveness

The Marxist definition of capitalism references THREE essential traits revealing the true essence of the capitalist socio-economic formation:

1st trait: Commodity production as the GENERAL form of production — the product takes the form of a commodity not as an exception but universally

2nd trait: Not only the product of labor but labor itself — i.e., human labor power — takes the commodity form

3rd trait: The existence of the system of exploitation of wage labor

The classics of Marxism-Leninism did NOT merely enumerate essential traits but revealed their INTERCONNECTION — how under certain conditions one trait is deduced from another

📖 D. Marx on the Development of Capitalism (from Capital, Vol. II, p. 113)

Marx shows the process of development and formation of capitalism — impossible to express in a brief definition

Capitalist production is commodity production as the general form — but exclusively so, and increasingly so as it develops

The producer becomes an industrial capitalist as labor converts to wage labor

Capitalist production (and therefore commodity production) achieves its COMPLETE expression only when the direct agricultural producer is also included in the category of wage workers

⏳ E. Second Requirement: Showing the Object's Development

The definition must show the development of the object — its self-movement

Must include a historical approach when analyzing the object's essence

A brief, isolated definition records only ONE STATE of the object

The mission of definition is to show the becoming of the object — the law of its movement

Marx's method is characterized not merely by seeking the law governing the phenomenon, but primarily the law of its variability, of its development — the law governing the transition from one form to another, from one order of reciprocal relations to another

⚡ F. Contradictions Must Be Revealed in the Definition

A definition that does NOT reveal contradictions in the development of the object is NOT a true definition

A metaphysician, upon observing contradictions, tries to EVADE them as anomalies

Metaphysical economists, operating with categories like capital, are astonished by contradictions — they want capital to be ONLY a thing OR only a social relation, showing total ineptitude when capital appears as both

The classics of Marxism-Leninism, by contrast, placed the discovery of contradictions at the base of their definitions

Lenin wrote: "The proletariat that struggles learns what capitalism is not from definitions (as one learns from textbooks) but from the practical knowledge of the contradictions between capitalism and the development of society"

🛠️ G. Third Requirement: Including Human Practice

Human practice must be included in the definition as the criterion of truth and the practical determinant of what humanity needs from the object at a concrete stage of social development

All scientific definitions are based on the generalization of human practice

Practice establishes the connections of the object's various aspects with what humanity needs

Depending on historical conditions and practical needs, one or another definition comes to the foreground as most essential and important

🌍 H. Practice Applied: The Question of National Self-Determination

When revolutionary movement practice acutely posed the problem of national self-determination, the question arose: what IS national self-determination and where is the answer found?

Adversaries of Marxism attempted to answer with juridical definitions deduced from general notions about law

Marxists demonstrated the fruitlessness of this method — definitions must be deduced from the historical-economic study of national movements

Only the generalization of the practice of national movements can lead to a correct theoretical approach to the national question

🌐 II. LENIN'S DEFINITION OF IMPERIALISM — THE MASTERWORK OF DIALECTICAL DEFINITION

💰 A. The Practical Necessity That Drove the Definition

The need to define and discover the essence of imperialism was dictated by the practice of the international workers' movement generally, and the Russian proletariat particularly

Without Lenin's discovery of imperialism's essence, no new theory of revolution would have been possible

This theory illuminated the path to victory not only for the Russian proletariat but for the working class of the entire world

The practice of Bolshevism's struggle against international opportunism necessitated clarifying the essence of capitalism's development at its new stage

Lenin's analysis of imperialism cannot be divorced from the practice of the struggle of the two fundamental tendencies of the workers' movement: Marxism against ALL forms and varieties of opportunism

📊 B. Lenin's Brief Definition — The Monopoly Stage

Lenin's definition is the result of analysis and generalization of an immense quantity of data on the economic development of various countries over a considerable period

It appears NOT as a point of departure but as a BALANCE — the fruit of the given analysis

Lenin's compact formulation: "Imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism"

This brief definition includes the essential: financial capital = bank capital of a few crucially important monopolist banks fused with the capital of industrial monopolist alliances

Division of the world = the transition from a colonial policy extending without obstacles over territories seized by no capitalist power, to a policy of monopolist possession over territories of a world completely divided

🔑 C. Lenin's Expanded Definition — Five Fundamental Traits

Lenin includes FIVE fundamental traits of imperialism:

1st: Concentration of production and capital reaching so high a level that monopolies are created, playing a decisive role in economic life

2nd: Fusion of bank capital with industrial capital, forming "financial capital" and the financial oligarchy

3rd: Export of CAPITAL — as distinguished from export of commodities — acquires particularly important significance

4th: Formation of international monopolist alliances of capitalists dividing up the world

5th: Completion of the territorial division of the world among the greatest capitalist powers

🏛️ D. Lenin's Full Synthesizing Definition

"Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital has established itself; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun; in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed"

The five traits are NOT the only ones — merely the fundamental ones

These five traits refer primarily to the economic concept of imperialism

The number CAN be augmented by characterizing imperialism from the standpoint of changes in politics and ideology, and from the angle of struggle between fundamental tendencies of the workers' movement

Lenin underscores this definition is conventional and relative — it does not embrace complete connections in their full development

🔗 E. Interconnection of the Five Traits — Genetic Nexus

The multiple traits in the definition of imperialism do NOT simply coexist — they presuppose each other mutually

Genetic connections exist among them — the development of one contributes to the development of another

Concentration of production and capital creates the premises for fusion of bank capital with industrial capital, for exporting capital, and for forming international monopolist alliances

All remaining factors in turn contribute to concentration of production and capital

The FOCUS of all traits of imperialism = concentration of production, creation of monopolies

Therefore Lenin says imperialism is briefly defined as the monopoly stage of capitalism

⚰️ F. Imperialism as Dying Capitalism

Lenin's definition takes imperialism in its DEVELOPMENT — showing it is a PHASE in capitalism's trajectory

Shows not only HOW imperialism arose but the paths of its disappearance

Imperialism = dying and putrefying capitalism — the antechamber of the socialist revolution

Pre-monopolist capitalism was transformed under certain conditions into monopolist capitalism — but the latter perishes, torn apart by contradictions leading directly to socialist revolution

Since imperialism is a phase of capitalism's development, all capitalist contradictions are preserved within it — sharpened and taken to their extreme

Contradictions that in the pre-monopolist period were only sketched reach maturity in the imperialist epoch

🧠 III. REASONING AS A FORM OF APPREHENSION OF NEW KNOWLEDGE

💡 A. The Enormous Role of Reasoning

Reasoning plays an enormous role in the appearance and development of judgments and concepts

In reasoning, the mediate and creative character of human thought is best observed

The majority of knowledge humanity possesses has a deductive character — obtained in the process of reasoning

Formal logic's specific task: study of reasoning — the rules and forms for deducing one judgment from others

Dialectics must NOT substitute for formal logic in this domain

The sphere of dialectics = study of the gnoseological nature of reasoning, its function in the dynamic of thinking toward truth, the role of deduction in the formation and development of scientific theories

❌ B. The False Path: Special Dialectical Syllogisms

The false and sterile path = creation of special dialectical syllogisms or forms of reasoning

The doctrine of reasoning, analyzing the real, living, concrete process of knowledge, must study those forms of reasoning FOUND IN IT

Must clarify their essence, their place, their reciprocal connections, and connections with OTHER forms of knowing

Materialist dialectics can give a scientific interpretation to both simple and complex forms of reasoning, revealing their movement from the simple to the complex

Among Soviet authors: widespread but incorrect opinion that dialectical logic operates with special forms of reasoning constructed on the principle of development and change — yet these forms are never described or clarified in their structure

If no established and described structure exists — the form does not exist

⚠️ C. The Wine Syllogism Error — A Damning Example

Some authors claim: when a false deduction is inferred according to formal logic, according to dialectical logic the conclusion IS true

Logical analysis of such examples shows they do not meet the criteria of formal logic either — they are also erroneous from the standpoint of formal logic's own laws

Example of the faulty syllogism on aged wine:

Major premise: The price of commodities according to the law of value is determined by the quantity of socially necessary labor invested in production

Minor premise: Aged wine is a commodity

Conclusion alleged: The price of this wine is determined by the quantity of labor necessary for its production

The author claims this "contradicts the true situation" since wine sells at a price far exceeding its real value

Reality: The syllogism is false from formal logic's own standpoint — for it to be modus Barbara of the first figure, the major premise would need to state: "ALL commodities ALWAYS have a price that coincides with the quantity of socially necessary labor" — but this premise is NOT true

The issue is NOT a failure of formal logic but the falsity of the premises

Engels: "If our premises are correct and we apply the laws of thinking correctly, the conclusion must coincide with reality" (Anti-Dühring, p. 449)

🔩 D. What Formal Logic Actually Is — And Isn't

Formal logic in modern conditions is NOT a method of philosophical knowledge

NOT the doctrine of formation of concepts, of scientific theses that deeply reflect the objective world

Does NOT establish rules on how to obtain true premises permitting correct deductions

Its mission is simpler: establishes HOW and through WHAT forms correct deductions are made from true premises

Many authors first convert formal logic into a method of philosophical knowledge, then demonstrate its limitations — confusing the theory of deductive knowledge with the philosophical method of knowledge

The form of reasoning does NOT change its nature depending on philosophical explanation

Science uses ALL forms of reasoning that ensure the truth of the deduction when premises are true

🏗️ E. The Structure of Reasoning

Reasoning = a form of thinking that helps deduce new knowledge from previously established knowledge

A process of mediation and deduction of judgments, whose system reasoning constitutes

Three classes of knowledge integrate this system:

Fundamental knowledge: contained in the premises of the reasoning

Deductive knowledge: obtained as the result of the reasoning

Argumentative knowledge: determines the possibility of passing from premises to the conclusion

Argumentative knowledge includes: axioms, rules, definitions, laws, and other true or probable theses

Argumentative knowledge determines the FORM of the reasoning — the transition from premises to conclusion

Always general in relation to knowledge in premises and conclusion

Therefore: the process of reasoning always proceeds THROUGH the general and on its basis — knowing the laws governing connections between phenomena

🦴 F. The Power of Inference — From Mandible to Organism

Science knows the laws governing connections between parts of organisms

Thanks to this knowledge, scientists can deduce from the mandible of an unknown animal what its teeth were like, then infer the quality and quantity of food the animal used, and then the structure of its stomach and intestines

If the viscera were destined to digest meat → mandibles adapted for chewing → claws for seizing and tearing → teeth for cutting and mincing → the entire system for pursuing prey → sensory organs for perceiving it

Natural sciences: from fossil bone structure → conclusions about extinct species

Social sciences: from remains of instruments of labor → determination of vanished socio-economic formations

🌉 G. The Possibility of Reasoning: Objective Laws

The possibility of reasoning — of passing from the known to the unknown — is based on the existence of objective laws in nature and society

Knowledge of these laws permits passage from particular to general, from general to particular, and from knowledge of one degree of generality to knowledge of that same degree

All reasoning proceeds on the basis of the general — confusing those who include all so-called "non-syllogistic" reasonings in deduction

Induction CAN be considered a deduction: inductive reasoning also rests on a certain general principle arguing the conclusion from knowledge of isolated facts to knowledge of all objects of a class

Analogy also rests on the general

🌍 H. Reasoning Connected to the Objective World Through Its Parts

The principle of reasoning — axioms — determines the objective content of its form

Example (false premises, correct form):

"Moscow is south of Kiev; Kiev is south of Odessa; therefore Moscow is south of Odessa"

Correct in form — though the conclusion does not correspond to reality (premises are false)

The formal correctness has its objective cause: the axiom on which the reasoning is based IS true

If A is south of B and B is south of C, then A must be south of C — this reflects spatial relations existing in the objective world

Formal correctness is independent of the truth of the premises — but in direct relation to the truth of the conditioning knowledge

The form of reasoning is determined by the content of the principle implicit in its base

✨ I. The Relative Autonomy of Formal Correctness — Its Positive Value

Relative independence of correctness of reasoning forms from truth of premises has POSITIVE VALUE

It confers an active, creative character on reasoning

To attain truth, correct-in-form reasonings must be made not only on the basis of true premises but also false ones

Reasoning would NOT be an active force in apprehending and demonstrating truth if it could only proceed on the basis of premises whose truth was known in advance

Since the form of reasoning is NOT tied to a determined content of premises, it can possess diverse contents

One can speak not only of the correctness of a reasoning's form but also of its objective truth

Violation of the form = the deduction is NOT made in consonance with the content of the axiom, principle, or rule on which the given form is based

📈 J. Development of Forms of Reasoning

Development of forms of reasoning is connected to changes in the content of argumentative knowledge

Mathematical equality/inequality: Until axioms of equality and inequality (confirmed by practice) were established, there was NO mathematical equality/inequality in science and reasoning

Perfect mathematical induction: when the axiom did not exist, the reasoning of this form did not exist

Knowledge of the most general relations of phenomena conditions the appearance in real life of new forms of reasoning

Precision and deepening of certain theses and axioms known previously → perfection of old forms

Forms resting on a doubtful principle are used less frequently and end by disappearing

Not only the content of reasonings varies — so does their very form: old forms are complemented by new ones arising from discovery of new laws, formation of new true axioms, principles, and rules

🔢 K. Mathematical Induction — An Illustration of Development

Euclid did not know the principle of mathematical induction

This principle was first clearly formulated in the 17th century — in the theorem of binomial coefficients

Only in the 19th century did scientists understand that mathematical induction was the fundamental property of the natural number series

This exemplifies how forms of reasoning develop in connection with the development of objective knowledge

⚒️ L. Reasoning and Creative Human Labor

Reasoning is an indispensable element of the creative character of human labor

Labor cannot do without reasoning — development of labor, of practice in general, = development of reasoning

The human in the process of labor: produces (deduces) things and phenomena that do NOT exist in nature

Marx: living labor, embracing things, seems to resuscitate them, give them life, convert possible use-values into effective ones

The things existing as the result of labor (seized by the fire of labor) acquire functions consonant with their idea and designation

Herein lies the creative character of human labor — radically distinguished from the laborious activity of animals

Key distinction: Before the process of transformation occurs in reality, it occurs in the mind of the worker — ideally

The specifically human peculiarity of labor: the human possesses in consciousness, BEFORE beginning work, the RESULTS of that work

The human grasps in the intellect the means of production and the process of their transformation into product — reproduces ideally the entire production from start to finish

This process of ideal production of a new thing with existing means of production is NOTHING OTHER THAN REASONING

🔄 M. The Essence of Reasoning: Intellectual Reproduction

The essence of reasoning = intellectual reproduction of the thing OUTSIDE the conditions of its existence

Knowledge of the conditions of the thing's existence = the premise of the reasoning

Knowledge of the new thing = the conclusion

Knowledge of the logical connections of things with their conditions of existence = argues the possibility of the deductive process itself

When a scientist encounters any object of nature, they establish through reasoning — relying on prior human experience and all available knowledge — the connections between that natural object and the conditions of its existence

All knowledge = mental reproduction of certain phenomena on the basis of others

All scientific discovery = result of reasonings based on already existing and newly acquired knowledge, observed phenomena, and conducted experiments

Socialist society: was once merely an ideal representation, reproduced through enormously complex reasonings thanks to knowledge of the laws of social development — later appearing in reality thanks to the conditions of capitalist society

🎯 N. Practice as the Criterion of Reasoning's Truth

Practical activity, besides requiring and engendering reasoning, is also the CRITERION of its truth

Has the thing been correctly deduced theoretically from the conditions of its existence?

Only practice can answer this — the effective, practical deduction of the thing from the conditions of its existence

The exactness of our way of conceiving a concrete phenomenon of nature is demonstrated "by reproducing it ourselves, creating it as the result of its own conditions and putting it at the service of our own ends" (Marx & Engels, Selected Works, Vol. II, p. 345)

Example: To resolve whether water is composed of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom → must practically obtain water from these two gases

Historical-social practice: as it repeats itself multiple times, it judges our thinking — responds to the question of whether the connection of thoughts in reasoning corresponds to objective connections of phenomena

Correct connections, paths, forms, figures of human thought become consolidated and acquire the status of axioms

Incorrect ones — not supported by practice — are rejected

Forms of reasoning, arising as generalizations of anterior practice, are checked by the successive practice of humanity

🏭 O. Reasoning and the Development of Historical-Social Practice

Development of historical-social practice → development and perfection, growing complexity of the reasoning process

As human productive activity develops → instruments of work develop → become more varied and perfect → more complex and multiple products can be created

The very process of labor becomes more complicated = the production of new things from existing means becomes more complex

The process of intellectual production also develops — the theoretical production of the thing from existing knowledge and accumulated experience

Initial knowledge, made more exact and perfect, permits formulation of judgments and deductions about deep processes, laws presiding over nature and society

Just as powerful modern means of production permit manufacturing enormously complex mechanisms, utilizing atomic nuclear energy — so also the enormous baggage of scientific knowledge permits modern humanity, through reasoning, to make bold conjectures, genial predictions about phenomena and processes it will dominate and govern in the future

Modern scientific thought has at its disposal forms of reasoning unknown to the science of the 17th and 18th centuries — e.g., the method of mathematical hypothesis in modern physics

🔄 IV. INTERRELATIONS OF INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION

📜 A. The Historical Separation — Aristotle's Framework

Since the doctrine of forms of thought appeared, one of the most essential vices in the theory of reasoning = the metaphysical separation of one type of reasoning from another

This separation was already sketched in Aristotle's works — for whom the only secure means of obtaining knowledge was, in fact, the syllogism, which he identified with general demonstration

Aristotle elaborated the doctrine of the syllogism most profoundly, completely, and in detail

Aristotle's definition: "A syllogism is an enunciation of which, when something is affirmed, something distinct from what is affirmed is necessarily deduced — in virtue of its existence"

🌿 B. Aristotle's View of Induction

Aristotle NEVER doubted that through reasoning, and through the syllogism in particular, new knowledge is obtained

Did NOT separate the form of reasoning from the content of premises

Divided all reasonings into: apodeictic (for scientific demonstration from true premises), dialectical (for discussions, probable conclusions), and eristic (least cognitive value, apparently probable conclusions)

Aristotle analyzed forms of reasoning from the angle of their relation to knowledge of essence and causes

Two types of syllogisms: syllogism of WHAT EXISTS vs. syllogism of WHY THEY ARE (most perfect — most perfect nexus)

Aristotle DID NOT ignore induction — as empiricist and rational naturalist, understood the role of experience and observation

Understood that general concepts form through the study of singular examples

Only complete induction can serve as a form of rigorous demonstration — he considered it "a class of syllogism" (the syllogism starting from induction)

In the end, Aristotle recognized: demonstration is impossible without induction — but could not give a concrete solution to the problem of induction as a method for knowing the general

The scientific practice of that epoch did not promote the doctrine of induction to the foreground — the ancient world possessed no true science of nature

🔭 C. The Rise of Induction in Modern Philosophy — Natural Sciences

Second half of the 15th century: appearance and development of natural sciences → rise of the doctrine of induction

Natural sciences arose in revolutionary circumstances: disintegration of feudalism, formation of bourgeois relations

The bourgeoisie was interested in scientific knowledge because:

First: Study of properties of bodies and natural phenomena was indispensable for perfection of production technique

Second: Scientific knowledge contributed to the struggle against feudal ideology and the Church

Until late 18th century, natural sciences were primarily a science of compilation — describing and systematizing facts

The most developed science: mechanics; physics beginning to form; chemistry and biology in embryonic state

This level of development created favorable conditions for the dominance of the metaphysical method — studying phenomena in repose and invariability

However, this period of assimilation of materials was necessary — without it, natural sciences could not have progressed or given deep explanations

🔬 D. Galileo and the Unity of Induction and Deduction

Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, F. Bacon tried to apprehend the laws governing knowledge of nature

These thinkers highlighted the role of TWO factors in apprehending true knowledge of laws: experience and mathematics

True science bases itself on conscientiously realized and verified experiments, profound observations; experiment conducts through true conclusions to knowledge of laws

Leonardo da Vinci: "A science lacks all truth that does not admit the application of one of the mathematical sciences or that is not connected with mathematics"

Galileo's scientific method included induction AND deduction in their UNITY:

Starting from experiment → formulated general theses

From those theses → deduced new particular facts

New observations verified the deduction and confirmed the truth of previously formulated general theses

⚔️ E. Bacon's Critique of Scholastic Syllogism

"In a correct logic, all attention centers on the syllogism. Apparently no serious thought has been given to dialectical induction... We reject demonstration by means of syllogisms because it acts in an irregular way and loses sight of nature"

Bacon's manifestations should NOT be taken literally — he did not deny the syllogism's value in general

Bacon aimed to create a method of thought that would help achieve: prolongation of human life, rejuvenation, conversion of bodies into others, creation of new species, dominion over air and sky

The scholastic logic of the time, with its sterile and extremely formal syllogistic system, was evidently NOT consonant with the epoch's demands

📋 F. Bacon's Tables — The Method and Its Limitations

Bacon composed THREE tables:

Table of Presence: all cases of presence of the phenomenon whose cause is being investigated (for heat: all cases where heat is present)

Table of Absence: analogous facts but WITHOUT the given phenomenon (e.g., light that illuminates but does not heat)

Table of Degrees: cases where the property manifests with varying intensity — noting increase or decrease

After tables are composed → inductive reasoning begins: elimination of properties NOT participating in the phenomenon's formation

Exclusion rule: the form (cause) of a property is present where the property exists, absent where it does not; its increase and decrease parallel the property

Result: through negation and exclusion → quite meager and abstract concepts

Bacon's doctrine served as the foundation of the theory of abstraction that dominated 17th-18th century philosophy and natural sciences

🌡️ G. Evaluations of Bacon's Method

Critics (Draper, Sigwart, Liebig, Bain, Wundt, etc.): Bacon's induction was absolutely useless — cannot achieve invention, domination, or power through it

Admirers (Darwin): "I worked relying on Bacon's method and without any theory (created in advance) collected facts in a very wide scale..."

BUT: Darwin's observation that he had no great confidence in deductive reasonings shows he did NOT understand deeply the logic of his own discovery

Difficult to believe he gathered a massive collection of facts without any idea, hypothesis, or deductive reasoning

Positive aspect of Bacon: underscores the immense role of practice, observation, experiment

Scholastic logic: "Cain is mortal because man is so" → Bacon's logic: man is mortal because Cain was so (empirical fact becomes the fundamental first premise)

However — Bacon's doctrine bears the stamp of metaphysics:

Considered causes and forms of phenomena as stagnant and invariable

Bacon's induction based on metaphysical, unilateral analysis — decomposition of nature into loose, isolated elements

Therefore could NOT reveal the true path of knowledge from singular to general

The sterility of the scholastic application of deduction does NOT mean deduction is sterile in general

🧮 H. Descartes — Deduction and Intuition as the Secure Path

Both Bacon and Descartes aimed to create a "practical philosophy" — knowing the force and action of water, air, stars, and all bodies to use them "as masters and lords of nature"

They did NOT diverge in objectives — only in MEANS

Bacon: Experience = solid foundation of knowledge → induction leads to knowledge of causes and laws

Descartes: Based his theory of knowledge on intuition and deduction — adjudicated them a decisive role

"Only deduction and intuition are secure — everything else is suspect and subject to error; intuition is MORE secure than deduction"

Induction (which Descartes called enumeration) = NOT reasoning from isolated facts to general principles — but the compilation of effects deduced from numerous and diverse theses

Induction assigned a very modest role: systematizing data obtained through intuition and deduction

Descartes' logic DID NOT KNOW true induction — reasoning passing from experimentally obtained singular facts to generalizations

⚖️ I. Two Mutually Exclusive Tendencies — And Their Errors

Since the beginning, in the doctrine of modern logic's reasoning, two mutually excluding tendencies emerged:

One: Exaggeration of experiment and induction — disregarding deduction — taking experimental natural sciences as scientific model, fixating only on that aspect

Other: Denial of essential value of experience and induction — recognizing intuition and deduction as decisive — taking mathematics as the ideal of science (claiming it needs no experience, based exclusively on intuition and deduction)

Deductive tendency (Leibniz, Wolf, Kant, Herbert, Drobich, etc.): underestimated induction, declared inductively achieved truths as accidental and lacking universal value

🏛️ J. Locke's Omni-Inductionism and Arguments Against the Syllogism

Locke followed the path of omni-inductionism and formulated several arguments AGAINST the syllogism:

The syllogism is NOT a powerful weapon of the intellect — the soul relates to ideas directly, without needing any syllogism

Humans reasoned well before and after Aristotle without knowing how to construct a syllogism

The syllogism cannot serve as a means for discovering new truths

To construct a syllogism one must have an already discovered truth; the syllogism only puts old truths discovered by other means "in battle order"

"I freely recognize that every correct reasoning can be reduced to syllogistic forms. However, I can affirm, apparently without harm to Aristotle, that these forms are not the only ones nor constitute the best method of reasoning"

The most useful reasonings for science are NOT those going from general to particular, but from particular to particular and from particular to general

Assessment: Locke's arguments are NOT directed against the correct use of deduction in knowledge — but against deductivism applied to everything and the scholastic use of the syllogism — a critique of one extreme from another equally extreme position, equally far from the truth

📉 K. Mill's Degeneration of the Empirical Tendency

J.S. Mill (1806-1873): Analysis of his logical doctrine of reasoning shows HOW the positive empirical tendency degenerated in the conditions of 19th century bourgeois society

In gnoseology: Mill aligned with positions of subjective idealism and agnosticism

Matter = understood in Berkeley's manner — as a permanent possibility of sensations

James declared himself Mill's disciple — to whom he owed (by his own confession) the pragmatist revelation of the spirit

Mill's doctrine of reasoning tends to demonstrate the impossibility of knowing the essence of things — not science or philosophy but religion can apprehend it

We do NOT know things themselves — only the sensations they produce: the fundamental thesis of Mill's logic

"A general thesis cannot only not demonstrate a particular case — it also cannot be recognized as true without exception while a demonstration aliunde does not dispel every shadow of doubt concerning each particular case of the given genre. And this being so, what is left for the syllogism to demonstrate?"

Mill's gnoseological basis for dismissing deductive reasoning: denial of objective laws of nature and the possibility of knowing them; separation of the general from the particular

🎰 L. Positivism's Reduction of Induction to Psychology/Physiology

Positivists (modern) claim induction and deduction are NOT connected — they rest on different bases:

Deduction: logical necessity derived from the properties of accepted denominations (NOT conditioned by laws of the outer world)

Induction: properties of the nervous system of animals (physiological/psychological, NOT grounded in objective necessity)

Russell: "Confirming induction as such is impossible, since it can be demonstrated that it leads to error as often as to truth. However, in appropriate cases it retains supreme importance as a means of elevating the probability of generalizations"

Inductive reasoning takes the form: "if this is true, so is that" — but such a conclusion is NOT logically consistent

We can only BELIEVE it will be so — psychologically we have habituated ourselves to such conclusions due to properties of the nervous system

Russell's example: Laws of statics, verified in numerous cases, are used in bridge construction. With respect to the bridge being constructed, they have NOT been verified → cannot predict in advance the bridge will bear a certain load. Why then is it supposed it will? → Pavlov's conditioned reflexes oblige us to expect combinations humans have already had in their experience

Assessment: The old idea of Hume, tinged with a new color (Pavlov's doctrine falsified), constitutes the base of ALL Russell's reasoning on induction

🌟 M. Hegel — First Serious Attempt to Overcome the Metaphysical Divorce

Hegel was the first in the history of philosophy to seriously attempt to overcome the metaphysical divorce between induction and deduction

Positive factor of his theory: attempts to reveal the interrelation, dynamics of forms of reasoning; to specify their cognitive value

For Hegel: most important = sketching the transitions from one form to another — from deduction to induction and from induction, through analogy, back to deduction

🏔️ N. Hegel's Three Grades of Reasoning

Reasoning of existence: very reduced cognitive value — reveals only the surface of the phenomenon

Example: "This rose is red; red is a color; therefore this rose has color"

Jurists reason thus when seeking a juridical basis for their conclusion

Reasoning of reflection: more content, expresses the object's essence more profoundly — the middle term is not abstract but concrete universality embracing all the singular in its aggregate

Three forms: reasoning of totality, of induction, and of analogy

Reasoning of totality: traditional syllogism ("All men are mortal; Cain is a man; therefore Cain is mortal") — the truth of the major premise is NOT demonstrated; presupposes induction

Induction example: "Copper, gold, silver, etc., are metals; copper, gold, silver are conductors of electricity; therefore metals are conductors of electricity"

Induction surpasses defects of totality's syllogism BUT has radical vices: does NOT fully surpass the subjective character; synthesis is accidental; ALL induction is incomplete since individualities can never be exhausted

Analogy (form S-U-P): "The Earth is inhabited; the Moon is a kind of Earth; therefore the Moon is inhabited" — can be vacuous; problematic character of induction is NOT surpassed in analogy but REINFORCED

Reasoning of necessity: superior form where a perfect conclusion is reached — the transition from analogy

🔧 O. Hegel's Limitations

Hegel DID NOT separate induction from other types of reasoning — only tried to specify its place

Correct: The deduction must rely on induction to argue its P-U premise; incomplete experiment provides only a problematic conclusion

HOWEVER: Hegel could not fully overcome the vicious underestimation of induction

The superior type of reasoning for Hegel = reasoning of necessity — deductive in essence

By cognitive value, he placed induction BELOW even analogy

Critical observation: If induction cannot by form provide a reliable conclusion, deduction in turn rests on induction by the content of its premises

Hegel interrupted development at a certain phase — but in reality, development and perfection of forms of reasoning HAS no end and CANNOT have one

Crucially: Hegel found NO place for practice in the becoming and dynamics of forms of reasoning — therefore could NOT determine the role played by induction in knowledge

🏆 P. Marxist Philosophy Overcomes the Metaphysical Interpretation

Engels showed the place and significance of each type of reasoning in knowledge

On omni-inductionism: induction is NOT an infallible method

Inductive conclusions are problematic and need verification

"If induction were really as infallible as is said, how could those radical shifts of classification occur, so violent and so frequent in the organic world? They are the most genuine product of induction, yet they annul each other" (Engels, Dialectics of Nature)

Lavoisier example: Observed oxygen in ALL acids he investigated → deduced oxygen is indispensable element of all acids → LATER SHOWN FALSE (hydrochloric acid contains no oxygen; hydrogen is the indispensable element)

Boyle-Mariotte law: 17th-18th century physics considered it applicable to all gases without exception — LATER established action ceases at critical temperatures and with pressure of hundreds of atmospheres, gases acquire larger volumes than the law indicates

Conclusions from induction are very close to truth — hypotheses of great cognitive importance are argued through induction; after verification and demonstration they become reliable scientific theories

📐 Q. Induction in Mathematics — Indispensable

Mathematics as a science is impossible without inductive reasonings

Applied: not only complete and mathematical induction, but ordinary incomplete induction

F. Klein: "The first judge exclusively by the crystallized form in which finished mathematical theories are usually presented; but the researcher works in mathematics, as in any other science, in a different way: uses fundamentally fantasy and advances inductively, relying on heuristic auxiliary means. We can adduce not a few examples of how great mathematicians discovered important theories without being able to demonstrate them exactly"

Euler: "Even in numbers there are many properties that we know well but are not yet capable of demonstrating... We see, consequently, that in the theory of numbers, which remains very imperfect, we can place the greatest hopes in observation: it will lead us incessantly to new properties, which we will also later attempt to demonstrate"

D. Polya: confirms with the history of many mathematical discoveries that "in mathematical research we can find the clearest examples of the method of induction"

🔗 R. The Necessary Unity — Engels' Definitive Formulation

"Induction and deduction form necessarily a whole, neither more nor less than synthesis and analysis. Instead of unilaterally exalting one at the cost of the other, one should try to place each in its place, which can only be done if one does not lose sight of the fact that both form a unity and complement each other mutually" (Engels, Dialectics of Nature, pp. 193-194)

The classics of Marxism-Leninism not only proclaim theoretically the unity of induction and deduction — they PRACTICALLY applied each form of reasoning in its opportune place and in relation to others

The unity of induction and deduction is found in Marx's analysis of the commodity and in Lenin's imperialist research

Induction is impossible without deduction — because induction itself is incapable of explaining the process of inductive reasoning: "Absurd of Haeckel: induction against deduction. As if deduction were not = conclusion, which means that induction also is a deduction" (Engels)

All reasoning, including induction, is the product of a knowledge, of a general principle — in this sense, all reasoning is a certain deduction

Induction and deduction form the dialectical unity of two aspects of one same process of thought in the form of reasoning

In the becoming of knowledge they mutually transmute — BUT their unity and reciprocal conversion do NOT exclude but presuppose in the most decisive way their OPPOSITION

📏 S. Engels on Other Forms of Reasoning — Beyond the Binary

"People have become so accustomed to contrasting induction and deduction that they reduce all logical forms of discourse to these two, not realizing: 1) that unconsciously they apply under those names other discursive forms; 2) that they renounce the entire wealth of forms of discourse when they cannot forcibly encuadrate them in any of those two; and 3) that with this, they convert into pure nonsense the two forms of induction and deduction" (Engels, Dialectics of Nature, pp. 191-192)

🗂️ T. Classification of Reasonings — Three Essential Criteria

Dialects requires division of reasonings by THREE traits:

1) Composition

2) Truth of the conclusion

3) Direction of the deductive process

By Composition:

Simple: formed by a single reasoning of whatever form (inductive, deductive, etc.)

Example: a = b; b = c; therefore a = c

Complex: formed by several simple reasonings of one or diverse forms

In real knowledge and reasoning we confront, as a rule, complex discursive forms — a chain of diverse types of reasoning

By Degree of Truth (Certainty):

Certainty reasoning: the conclusion is a true judgment (e.g., "all acids contain hydrogen; this combination is an acid; therefore this combination contains hydrogen")

Probability reasoning: the conclusion is a problematic judgment (e.g., "if a chemical combination is an acid it will contain hydrogen; this combination contains hydrogen; therefore it CAN BE an acid")

Probability of conclusion depends on:

Probability of premises (probability of fundamental knowledge)

Probability of the axiom/principle implicit in the form's base (probability of argumentative knowledge)

Conclusions by analogy — even with true premises — are probable, since the very principle of analogical reasoning is of the character of problematic judgments

Deduction, complete induction, mathematical induction — provide obligatorily (with reliable premises) a true conclusion (their axioms are true; their truth has been demonstrated by human practice)

Formal probability vs. content probability — but all certainty/probability of discursive form ultimately rests on the certainty/probability of the content (the character of the judgment figuring as argumentative knowledge)

By Direction of the Deductive Process (Rutkovski's contribution):

Traductive: passes from knowledge of one degree of generalization to knowledge of the SAME degree of generalization

Inductive: passes from knowledge of a LESSER degree of generalization to a GREATER degree

Deductive: passes from knowledge of a GREATER degree of generalization to a LESSER degree

Note: This classification compares the inferred knowledge WITH THE BASIC knowledge (conclusion vs. premises) — NOT with the argumentative knowledge (since relative to the argumentative, the conclusion appears always as the particular in relation to the general, and in this sense ALL reasoning is a deduction)

🧩 U. The Value of the Tripartite Classification

Exhaustively embraces ALL possible classes of reasonings

Takes as basis an essential trait: the relation between inferred and fundamental knowledge by degree of generalization — of enormous importance for clarifying the cognitive value of reasoning

Permits showing in fact the connection and reciprocal conversion of diverse discursive forms as we come to know more of the object's essence

Contributes to a deeper understanding of the reasoning process itself — the dialectic of the general and the singular in this process

🔬 V. FORMS OF SYSTEMATIZATION OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE

🏗️ A. Theory, Idea, Hypothesis — Beyond Concept/Judgment/Reasoning

Thought is NOT constituted by isolated, loose judgments, concepts, and reasonings — but by their SYSTEMS

Formation of concepts, judgments, and reasonings is NOT an end in itself — only a MEANS for the mind to reproduce the object in all its plenitude and objectivity

T. Pavlov: Formal logic cannot limit itself to concept, judgment, reasoning alone

Scientific forms of thought include: "the concept, the judgment (and reasoning), a special scientific system and a special scientific method (including hypothesis, scientific experiment and statistics) and, finally, a system or philosophical theory of the world and a most generally possible philosophical method (including social practice as criterion)"

Systematization of scientific knowledge = NOT the simple addition of isolated concepts/judgments/reasonings — NOT mechanical incorporation of one into another — but SYNTHESIS IN ITS HIGHEST FORM

🔍 B. Analysis and Synthesis — Historical Development

Euclidean Phase (Geometric):

In the analysis of something to be investigated, it is considered indisputable in order to arrive at truly indisputable truths

In synthesis: starting from truly indisputable truths → arriving at what was not evident

Analysis and synthesis = two opposed procedures of deductive demonstration — movement from the unknown to the known, and conversely

Limitation: Not about finding new true theses but about modes of demonstrating already obtained theses

Newton's Advance:

Analytical method: make experiments and observations → deduce general conclusions → passes from the complex to the simple, from actions to causes, from particular causes to more general ones

Synthetic method: "consists in explaining, with the help of principles, the phenomena these principles originate and in demonstrating the explanations"

Through analysis → NEW truths are found; through synthesis → they are ARGUED, demonstrated

Limitation: Analysis and synthesis accommodated within frames of diverse reasoning forms; presented as independent processes — one for obtaining truth, the other for demonstrating it

Kant's Contribution:

Important fertile thesis: ALL knowledge is only possible as synthesis

Synthesis presupposes obligatorily the union of concepts and perceptual representations

"Without sensibility no objects would be given to us, and without understanding none would be thought... These two faculties cannot exchange their functions"

Synthesis = unifying representations into a single knowledge

Supreme condition of ALL synthesis = the unity of self-consciousness as the possibility of referring all representations to a single one: "I think"

CRITICAL DEFICIENCY: Kant denies the existence of the objective cause of synthesis — therefore the knowledge obtained as its result will NOT have the value of objective truth

Kant could NOT overcome the metaphysical opposition of synthesis and analysis — synthesis occurs by itself, apart from analysis

Hegel's Discovery of Their Dialectical Interrelation:

Hegel corrected the poverty and abstract character of the definition of analysis as passage from known to unknown and synthesis as its reverse — observing that BOTH definitions are simultaneously correct

Knowledge BEGINS with analytic process: "decomposing the given concrete object, isolating its differences, and communicating to it the form of abstract universality"

Synthetic knowledge (in opposition to analytic): "proceeds toward comprehension of what exists — proceeds to grasp the multiplicity of determinations in their unity"

Synthesis does NOT merely unite the results of analysis, reproducing what existed before it — if so, both processes would be superfluous

The factors of the synthetic process: 1) definition; 2) division; 3) theorem (synthetic process culminates)

"From the form of the objects themselves we wish to know depends which of the two methods we will have to apply"

Marx's Idea — The Objective Basis:

The objective basis of the analytic and synthetic process = the existence of multiple forms of movement of matter amid its substantial, internal, and necessary unity

Because the world is simultaneously one and multiple — there is in it identity and difference

Knowledge must apprehend the nature of the objective world: "the thought consists as much in the separation of objects of consciousness into their elements as in the unification of corresponding elements into a unity. There is no synthesis without analysis" (Engels, Anti-Dühring, p. 29)

Engels: "If I bring together shoe brushes under the unity 'mammals,' I will not by this make them have mammary glands"

The cause of the synthetic activity of thought does NOT lie in the transcendental unity of apperception in the intellect — but in the material unity of the world

Analysis and synthesis have creative character — their result is the advance of knowledge — but creation in knowledge does NOT mean departing from the objective world and its laws — but apprehending them in all their plenitude and objectivity

The BOND between analysis and synthesis is organic, intrinsic: in doing analysis, we synthesize; synthesis includes analysis as one of its elements

🏛️ C. Scientific Theory — Definition and Requirements

Theory = a vast sphere of knowledge that describes and explains the aggregate of phenomena, makes known the real bases of all enunciated theses, and subsumes the laws discovered in that sphere under a single unifying principle

Conditions for knowledge to become theory:

Knowledge must refer to a determined object (organically connected by aggregate of phenomena) — the agglutination by the object itself determines the objective character of nexuses in the theory

Must reach a determined degree of maturity — description alone is merely a mode of approaching theory, not theory itself

Must go beyond description → explanation: discovery of the laws to which phenomena are subordinated

Various theses expressing connections governed by laws must be agglutinated by a single general principle reflecting the fundamental law of the object — this unifying principle fulfills the fundamental synthesizing function

Argumentation (demonstration) of the composing theses is obligatory — without demonstration, no theory

💡 VI. THE IDEA — GENESIS, ESSENCE, AND ROLE IN KNOWLEDGE

🏺 A. Genesis in Ancient Philosophy

Democritus:

Among the first to use the term "idea" — wrote a treatise On Ideas

For Democritus, ideas were atoms ("indivisible forms")

Content was purely ontological — the idea was not a thought about atoms but the atom itself — the primary base, the essence of all things

Invariable and eternal — apprehended not by the senses but by reason/intellect

Plato — A New Stage:

Both Democritus and Plato agree: the idea exists in reality and is apprehended not by senses but by intellect

But Plato as idealist adjudicated the idea NOT material but ideal essence — introducing traits inherent to human thought

Key factors in Plato's concept of idea:

1st: The idea is that which stands out under the denomination of the universal, the generic — inherent to an infinite quantity of singular things — not formal universality but universality in essence

2nd: The idea constitutes the essence of things and corresponds to the concept of the given thing

3rd: Ideas lack sensoriness — they are essences apprehended by the intellect, existing in reality (in opposition to what is perceived by the senses)

4th: Ideas are invariable and eternal — all real things are their effect

Plato (Parmenides): "Ideas are found in nature as in the form of models; other things resemble them and come to be their semblance"

Plato (Symposium, on beauty): "It exists always; it is not born and does not perish, nor increases, nor diminishes... it will not have the form of a face, arm, or anything related to the body, nor as a thought, a knowledge... but as an essence in itself, always equal to itself"

Critical assessment: Plato's theory is NOT merely gnoseological but fundamentally ontological — the idea is a real spiritual essence

Element of rational content (noted by Hegel): Plato's idea does express substantiality of the thing, the intimately universal — this is the specific character of the idea as means of apprehending reality

Mystification: ideas converted from forms of human knowledge expressing true essence of things → into effective spiritual essences endowed with mystical creative power

Aristotle — Third Stage:

With Aristotle, the idea ceases to be understood from a purely ontological point of view and is understood as a form of thought

Aristotle criticized Plato's doctrine of ideas from the standpoint that they are metaphysical essences:

The theory of ideas duplicates the number of things to be explained

Logically internally contradictory, conducts to absurd deductions

"To say that ideas are models and that everything else participates in them means pronouncing vain words and expressing oneself by means of poetic metaphors" (Aristotle, Metaphysics)

In Aristotle's ontology: the place of the idea was taken by FORM as the active principle of things

In gnoseology: concepts and categories through which knowledge apprehends the universal and necessary in things

🔭 B. The Idea in Modern Empirical and Rationalist Philosophy

Locke — Empirical Line:

By idea: any object that fills the human mind during the act of thinking

Two sources: sensation OR reflection

Criticized Descartes' theory of innate ideas — argued all ideas are of experimental origin

Simple ideas: uniform, simple psychic representations (cold, solidity, smell, whiteness) — reproductions of sensations of diverse qualities and properties of the object — constitute the material of all knowledge

Complex ideas: formed by combining several simple ones (beauty, gratitude, man, universe)

Limitation (Hegel's critique): empiricism uses metaphysical categories — matter, force, unity, multiplicity, universality, infinity — without spirit or consciousness; observation gives perceptions but NOT the necessity of their connection

Hidden path to idealism: Locke's division of qualities into primary (ideas similar to the bodies themselves) and secondary (ideas producing sensations having no similarity to things in bodies) — subjectivism enters

From Locke: TWO lines diverge

Berkeley → Hume → positivism → phenomenalism (subjectivism)

French materialists → Feuerbach (materialism)

Berkeley:

Ideas = sensations, representations, lacking material substance

"All sensible things are perceived directly and things perceived directly are representations; but these do not exist except in the mind"

Hume:

Ideas = vivid but less intense representations — differentiated from impressions (most intense)

The idea = NOT the result of rational elaboration of data of perception and sensation — but a pale copy of them, the image of their memory

French Materialists and Feuerbach:

Helvétius: "If all words signify nothing other than objects and relations of these objects... the intellect, therefore, reduces to comparing our sensations and ideas — observing the likenesses and differences, the concordances and disagreements existing between them"

Feuerbach: "It is indubitable and directly true only what is sensible, what is an object contemplated and perceived" — sensoriality alone = the truth of the idea

Descartes — Rationalist Line:

By idea: "all object that is thought, insofar as it is represented in the mind by some object"

Theory of innate ideas: "Although the idea of substance is in me by being myself a substance, I would not have the idea of infinite substance if it were not implanted in me by some actually infinite substance"

Consequence of the metaphysical division of experience and thought: Rationalists tried to prove objectivity of ideas' content BUT isolated thought from experience → resorted to God and innate ideas

Hegel's critique: "The premise of old metaphysics was identical to the premise of naive faith: the thought apprehends things as they exist by themselves and things are what they truly are only in their quality of being thought"

Leibniz:

The idea is NOT a discursive form but its immediate, intrinsic object — the nature or qualities of things

"If the idea were a discursive form, it would appear and disappear together with the actual thoughts that correspond to it; but being the object of thinking, it can precede thought and follow it"

Spinoza (Materialist Rationalist):

Clear delimitation between idea and its object: "The idea of the circle is not something round and with a center, as the true circle"

This delimitation = fundamental premise of the materialist conception of the idea (though not sufficient to determine its relation with the objective world)

Method = idea of ideas: "a good method is one that shows how the spirit should be directed in concordance with the norm of said true idea"

But like all rationalists: Spinoza could NOT maintain materialist positions — fell into idealism by isolating ideas from experience

⚖️ C. Kant's Gnoseology of the Idea

The Hierarchy of Knowledge:

Sensoriousness → Understanding → Reason (above which nothing higher exists for elaborating the material of intuition)

Understanding = faculty of the unity of phenomena through rules

Reason = faculty of the unity of the rules of understanding according to principles

Never refers immediately to experience but to the understanding — to give it a priori unity

Logical function: understanding → JUDGMENT; reason → REASONING

All reasoning subsumes the particular under the general through premises

Kant's Definition of Idea:

"I understand by idea a necessary concept of reason, for which no coincident object can be given in the senses"

Pure concepts of reason = transcendental ideas — not invented arbitrarily but proposed by the nature of reason itself

They are transcendent — exceed the limits of all experience — an object adequate to the transcendental ideas can never be presented

Kant's Advances:

1st positive element: Division of thought into intellectual and rational — limitation of understanding's capacity to apprehend reality (argued by analysis of scientific knowledge of his epoch)

2nd positive element: The idea = the superior form of theoretical knowledge — via idea, superior unity of knowledge is achieved, ascending to the unconditioned and absolute

3rd positive element: Systematization of knowledge linked to the idea — "I understand by system the unity of diverse knowledge under an idea"; the idea provides the architectural unity of knowledge; sciences must be explained by the principal idea on whose base the synthesis of knowledge is effected

4th positive element: Discovery of the antinomy of reason — these contradictions are natural and inevitable — inherent to reason in virtue of its own nature, even after their phantom has been discovered

Kant's Defects:

Idealism and metaphysics prevented clarification of the true methodological significance of ideas

Since he identified the idea with the thing-in-itself in its second sense (as an insoluble problem, a tendency toward the ideal) → the idea is something that OUGHT TO BE — not what is

Ideas can fulfill only a very modest role in knowledge and practice — serving only as canons (not organs) of the understanding

Hegel's critique: "In regard to the idea, Kant also fixed only on the negative and solely on what ought to be"

The discovery of antinomies led — due to Kant's metaphysics — to NEGATIVE results: inferring that reason is incapable of knowing the essence of things in themselves

🌀 D. Hegel's System — The Idea as Central Category

Position in the Logic:

The idea culminates the logical process of becoming of categories — the threshold of transition of thought from the sphere of logic to nature

Third part of Science of Logic (doctrine of concepts): Subjective concept → Object → Idea as synthesis of concept and object

For Hegel: the concept is NOT merely the form of human theoretical activity — it constitutes the real and true essence of ALL things

Hegel's Critique of Kant:

"In speaking of the idea one should not believe it is something distant and beyond. On the contrary, the idea is something immediate to us, is at our side and is also found in each consciousness, although deformed and weakened"

"The idea is the adequate concept, the true objective or the true as such. If something has truth, it has it through its idea, or something has truth only insofar as it is idea"

The Idea as Form and Reality — The Idealist Deformation:

Hegel's idealist premise: the idea is true because the object itself possesses the idea inside itself and expresses it

"The object, the objective and subjective universe in general, not only must be congruent with the idea, but are themselves the congruence between concept and reality"

Lenin's materialist interpretation: "The idea (read: human knowledge) is the coincidence (conformity) of the concept and the objective"

Three Stages of the Idea's Development:

1st stage — Life: the idea acquires the form of immediacy; logic must contain not merely empty, dead forms of thought but ALL of life (individual and generic); the idea is NOT isolated from life

Lenin's interpretation: "The thought of including LIFE in logic is comprehensible and genial from the standpoint of the process of reflection of the objective world in human consciousness and the verification of this consciousness (of the reflection) by practice"

2nd stage — Knowledge: the form of mediation and differentiation; fractures into theoretical idea (tendency toward truth) and practical idea (tendency of the good toward its realization — the will)

Lenin highlights §222 of the Encyclopedia: knowledge ("theoretical") and will, practical activity = two facets, two methods, two means to end the "unilateralism" and subjectivism of objectivity

Hegel placed the practical idea ABOVE the theoretical — practice above theory — though presenting practice as an element of the idea (mystically)

Marx noted: the active side was developed by idealism, but only abstractly — idealism does not know real, sensory activity as such

3rd stage — Absolute Idea: overcomes both the unilaterality of practical and theoretical knowledge; unity of subjective and objective idea; union of concept with reality; resolution of all contradictions; contains the content of all prior development

Lenin's interpretation: "Life engenders the brain. In the human brain nature is reflected. Verifying and applying in his practice and technique the correctness of these reflections, man arrives at objective truth"

Lenin: "Man with his practice DEMONSTRATES the objective truth of his ideas, concepts, knowledge, science"

Hegel's Method — Elements Revealed in the Absolute Idea:

a) The Principle: being or the immediate — the primary and abstract act of self-determination of the idea; fusion of principle and end — all movement from the indeterminate beginning = return to that beginning in the sense of increasingly profound comprehension of its true nature and significance

b) Progressive movement through resolution of contradictions: the contradictions are not the idea's defect but its internal content

c) Negation as form of self-movement — elimination of contradictions through negation of negation

Transformation of method into system: "The method itself is amplified now, due to this moment, into a SYSTEM" — true method must form a system of knowledge with content; conversely, every knowledge system based on an objectively true idea becomes a scientific method

Hegel's Limitations:

Hegel's idealism presented practice as an element of the idea — but his dialectical sensibility placed the practical idea above the theoretical

Hegel did NOT find a place for practice in the becoming and dynamics of reasoning forms

His idealism prevented the CLEAR scientific understanding of how ideas are formed from experience

🌹 E. The Marxist-Leninist Gnoseology of the Idea

Point of Departure — Materialist Theory of Reflection:

Engels: "All ideas are taken from experience; they are reflections — correct or distorted — of reality"

The idea understood as a reflection of reality resolves the difficulties in which all pre-Marxist philosophy debated

Marxism-Leninism, for whom the idea is thought, overcomes the extremism of ontologism; the recognition that the idea is thought with objective content closes the way to subjectivism

Lenin's Characterization of the Dialectic of Cognition:

"Knowledge is a constant, infinite approximation of thought to the object. The reflection of nature in human thought must not be understood in a 'lifeless,' 'abstract' way... but in an eternal process of movement, of the appearance and resolution of contradictions"

The thought arrives at objective content ONLY in the process of its movement — an inert thought cannot capture living reality

Only a gnoseology starting from the dialectic of the process of knowing can scientifically argue the objectivity of the content of the idea

Four Governing Factors:

1st: The idea comprehended as a FORM OF REFLECTION of reality

2nd: Recognition of the experimental origin of ideas

3rd: Interpretation of the idea as a PROCESS of apprehension of the object by the intellect

4th: Inclusion of practice as the material base and as the criterion of the truth of ideas

🎯 F. The Idea as Gnoseological Ideal

The Peculiarity of the Idea as Form of Reflection:

The idea does NOT reflect the thing or the property as they exist — but the development of things amid all their concatenations and mediations

The idea captures the tendency of development of the phenomena of reality

Therefore the idea not only reflects what EXISTS but also what MUST BE

The idea appears as a peculiar gnoseological ideal toward which knowledge aspires in its becoming

Lenin: "Begrif is not yet the superior concept: above it is the idea = unity of the Begrif with reality"

The idea stands out among other forms for the fact that in it the most complete coincidence occurs between the content of thought and objectivity

Lenin's Characterization of the Idea:

"The idea... is the coincidence (the concordance) of the concept and objectivity ('the general')"

"In 2nd [place], the idea is the relation of the subjectivity (= man) existing for itself... with the objectivity that differs (from that idea)..."

"The idea, knowledge, is a process of immersion (of the intellect) in inorganic nature in order to submit it to the power of the subject and to generalize it..."

The Gnoseological Ideal Is Real AND Relative:

The ideal gnoseological, the ideal image of all knowledge, is simultaneously REAL — it is attained, ceases to be ideal, and arises anew as an ideal toward which knowledge tends

"The idea also carries with it a formidable contradiction: repose for human thought is the firmness and security that helps it to create this contradiction (between thought and object) and to overcome it constantly"

Conceptual relativity: "Human concepts are subjective in their abstraction, in their isolation, but objective in their aggregate, in the process, in the balance, tendency and origin"

Example — Darwin's Idea of Selection:

K.A. Timiryazev: "Only Darwinism, having eliminated the two great obstacles impeding the acceptance of any evolutionist doctrine... only Darwinism, starting from a single principle of natural selection explaining both the mysterious congruence of all organization and the apparent separation of species and other groups, permitted not only admitting but also understanding the unity and perfection of the organic world"

The idea of selection as gnoseological ideal: conferred on knowledge of evolution a relatively complete and finished character; contributed powerfully to practical activity directed at transforming living nature

The idea of selection existed in human practical activity BEFORE science had formulated and demonstrated it

Michurinist doctrine: developed the idea of selection into a directed and planned selection — the modification of the nature of the organism

🔭 G. The Role of the Idea in the Synthesis of Knowledge

The Idea as Synthesis and Synthesizing Function:

Lenin: "Isolated being (object, phenomenon, etc.) is (only) an aspect of the idea (of truth). For truth other aspects of reality are also needed... Only in their aggregate (zusammen) and in the midst of their relations (Beziehung) is truth realized"

The idea CANNOT not be the synthesis of knowledge of diverse aspects of the object — otherwise it would not be an idea

Outside synthesis, the precise plenitude of coincidence between thought content and object is unachievable

From Abstract to Concrete — The Idea's Central Role:

Concrete knowledge = always a system, an aggregate of judgments in which objective truth is contained

The passage from the abstract to the concrete is IMPOSSIBLE without the formation of an idea that groups numerous abstractions into an integral image

Example: Development of knowledge about light → idea of its dual nature (simultaneously particle and wave); this idea laid the foundations of the modern theory of light, grouping the entire aggregate of knowledge achieved into a determined system

The idea about the dual nature of light was NOT the result of a casual revelation but of the logical process of development of scientific knowledge, through the succession of diverse hypotheses (corpuscular, undulatory, electromagnetic)

The Idea and the Cell of a Theory:

The primary abstraction serving as the cell of a theory must satisfy determined requirements — Lenin on Marx's Capital:

"Marx in Capital analyzes first what is most simple, ordinary, fundamental, most massive, most daily... the relation of bourgeois (commodity) society: the exchange of commodities. The analysis reveals in this simplest phenomenon all the contradictions (or embryos of all the contradictions) of modern society. The ulterior exposition shows us the development... of these contradictions and of this society"

The initial abstraction must reflect the most simple and massive, contain in embryo the contradictions of the whole

From it, as from something simple, the complex arises — the aggregate of abstractions expressing a determined idea = scientific theory

Idea and Theory — Mutual Indispensability:

The idea constitutes the BASE of scientific theory — but the idea does NOT exist as something separate from the theory that can be extracted and examined independently

Without theory there is no idea; but without idea there is no theory

While the idea has NOT matured and crystallized, a new theory CANNOT be created

Determining an idea ultimately means revealing ALL the system of scientific knowledge based on it — the process of its formation and development

Scientific theory = an organic synthesis of concepts — the concepts themselves are the elements that permit revealing the idea

🎨 H. The Idea and the Artistic Image

The Mistake of Two Extremes:

First extreme: The artistic image as mere transmission of feelings and experiences (Tolstoy's formulation: art transmits feelings, not thoughts) — denies the specific character of the artistic image as a form of reflection

Second extreme: The artistic image = thought transferred into the language of images (thought in artistic form) — denies the specific character by the OTHER direction

The Correct Understanding:

Belinski: "Art is the direct intuition of truth or thinking through images... What will strike many readers in our definition of art as something unusual is, without doubt, the fact that we qualify art as THOUGHT, thus joining two completely opposed and inseparable representations"

Turgenev's protest: "I have heard and read on more than one occasion in various critical articles that I, in my works, 'start from the idea'... I must confess that I never attempted 'to create an image' without having as a point of departure, not an idea, but a LIVING PERSON"

Tvardovsky (at the XXII Congress of the CPSU): Castigated writers who, instead of studying life seriously and personally and generalizing it into literary images, dedicate themselves to creating artistic illustrations of concepts and ideas already known to the people

The Artistic Idea — Different from the Scientific Idea:

The idea in the artistic image manifests and develops without leaving the system of the sensory-concrete — not strictly delimited, can be interpreted in different ways, can be developed further by the perceiving subject

It is the general but NOT the argued universal — its mission is not to reveal and demonstrate the law but to make known its factors and influence people (their feelings and thoughts), incite them to determined acts

The truth of the idea = the criterion of the artistic truth of the image: "A work has artistic merit when its form corresponds to the idea... Only a work that embodies a true idea will have artistic merit" (Chernyshevsky)

The Artistic Creative Process:

Fadeyev's three periods: 1) accumulation of data; 2) reflection or "maturation" of the work; 3) realization

In period 1: images file through the artist's mind chaotically — not artistic images yet — just rough data of reality, impressions

In period 2: accumulated material fuses with fundamental ideas and thoughts; images start to structure into an integral whole; begins the conscious selection of the most valuable data

Artistic ideas arise and mature DURING the study of life and the creation of the artistic image — they CANNOT precede and exist independently

The idea of the work continues to live and develop even AFTER the artist finishes — the reader/listener/spectator continues to develop it

Tolstoy's Principle of the Half-Loose Button:

"No trifle must be despised in art, because sometimes a half-loose button can illuminate a facet of the life of the given character. It is necessary to represent the button too. But it is necessary, equally, that all details, including the half-loose button, be directed exclusively to the internal essence of the matter"

📊 I. Idea and Principle — Methodological Significance

The Formal Identity of Idea and Concept:

The idea possesses NO formal-logical criterion distinguishing it from the concept

Neither by logical structure nor verbal expression does the idea distinguish itself from the concept

The idea is the form of the concept

The concept converts into an idea when it fulfills a determined function in the formation and development of a system of knowledge — when it constitutes its BASE

The same concept can play different roles in different systems: in one, the function of an idea; in another, merely a concept reflecting one aspect of some more general law

The Idea as a Stage in the Development of the Concept:

For a concept to convert into an idea and fulfill a synthesizing function in the structuring of theory, it must reach a determined degree of maturity — must clothe itself with an aggregate of definitions

Example: Marx's concept of surplus value converted into an idea when Marx relied on it to create the theory of surplus value — which revealed the secret of capitalist production

The Principle vs. the Idea:

Principle = the basic initial thesis of any theory; expresses the general fundamental law valid for a sphere of extraordinary amplitude

The principle is NOT merely a single property but establishes an essential and necessary connection between the property and the object or between the properties of the object — which precise and essential connection IS nothing other than the law

The principle CAN be misidentified with the idea — Kant called ideas "principles of reason"

However: The principle is ONE OF THE FIRST AND MOST ABSTRACT DEFINITIONS of the idea

The idea is revealed in a system of concepts — it is the concept of concepts

The principle = its first, most abstract definition — figures as the point of departure in the structuring and exposition of scientific theory

The principle formulates the idea in an abstract, unilateral, most generally abstract form

Developing the principle still represents only the beginning — the idea is revealed in ALL the system of knowledge

Example: Mendeleev's periodic system

Idea: periodicidad — the fundamental idea of the entire system

Principle (original formulation): "The physical and chemical properties of the elements... are in periodic dependence on their atomic weight"

Modern formulation: "The properties of the elements are periodic functions of the number of electrons in the atom equal to the charge of the nucleus"

Modern science found a more abstract form to express the idea of periodicity — meaning our knowledge of periodicity has deepened — but the idea is NOT exhausted in the principle; it is revealed in the ENTIRE periodic system

Methodological Significance of the Idea:

Ideas in science help obtain new knowledge — the idea gives rise to scientific methods

Every method of scientific knowledge is originated when a certain system of knowledge exists with its own center

When a new idea appears, scientists apply it to the analysis of accumulated facts and discovered laws — try to discover, with the help of this idea, new facts and new laws

Dogmatists are characterized by reducing the dialectical method to isolated examples or an aggregate of theses — analyzing reality by applying ONE law, however fundamental — arriving easily at abstract, unilateral truth bordering on the deformation of reality

⚡ VII. THE IDEA AND PRACTICAL ACTION

🏗️ A. The Idea as Form of Objectively True Knowledge

What Knowledge Must Be for Practical Realization:

Knowledge must be objectively true — only objectively true knowledge, through material activity, converts into an objective reality

Through practice, one form of objectivity (the objectivity of knowledge) is transformed into another (real objectivity)

As more objective the knowledge by content → closer it is to practical realization

Individual judgments or isolated concepts are abstract and subjective in this sense

This deficiency in the reflection of reality in human concepts is overcome through their continuous development, the formation of complex and mobile systems of knowledge in which the IDEA is contained and expressed

The Idea and the Ideal Form:

Practical activity of humanity, from the gnoseological standpoint, appears as the objectivization of the idea

The idea seems to precede the practical creation of the object — idealism erects this aspect into the absolute — adjudicates human ideas creative power

But in reality: the relations between the idea and the object are MORE COMPLEX

First aspect (often noted by materialism): The idea is primarily the reflection of objects and phenomena of the objective world — the object constitutes the objective content of the idea

Second aspect (often noted by idealism but in deformed way): On the basis of an objectively true knowledge of the object, its transformation through practical activity is produced

The defect of pre-Marxist materialism: Conceived the object, reality, sensoriness only under the form of object or contemplation — not as sensory human activity, as practice, not in a subjective manner — veiled the active role of ideas

The defect of idealism: Comprehended the active side of ideas but did not know real, sensory activity as such — Hegel knows only one class of work: spiritual-abstract work

The Creative Character of Reflection:

Lenin: "The consciousness of man not only reflects the objective world but also creates it"

This is NOT purely idealist — taken in its full context, it means: thought, to be a truly objective reflection of reality, must be creative

Reflection is creative: apprehends not only what is but — on the basis of knowledge of the laws governing movement — what will be and must be to satisfy human practical needs

The idea = the form of thought where this coincidence between reflection and creation reaches a superior form of organic unity and harmony

The Distinctive Trait of the Idea:

The idea includes, besides the theoretical knowledge of the object, the practical end of its transformation in consonance with a determined ideal form

The idea = theoretical knowledge from which a practical end is DIRECTLY deduced

If a knowledge has not reached the level necessary to pose a practical end on its basis → it has NOT yet converted into an idea

The end is derived from the objective content of the idea — Lenin: "The ends of man seem at first alien ('other') with relation to nature. The consciousness of man, science, reflects the essence, the substance of nature; but at the same time this consciousness is exterior with relation to nature (does not coincide immediately and simply with it)"

🌐 B. The Place of the Idea in the Dialectic of Subject and Object

Schema of the Interaction:

Object → Idea → Object (where the first object = the initial element, the idea = the mediate link, the second object = the result)

Relations of the idea with the FIRST object (initial): dialectic of identity — non-correspondence of idea with object AND the image of the ideal new object (which as such does not yet exist in real life — the prior object carries only the effective possibility)

Relations of the idea with the SECOND object (result of practice): the object was not identical to the idea, or the idea does not coincide with the object — but they converge, the distance is reduced

The Contradiction as Premise:

The contradiction between the idea and the object (within the frame of a certain unity between them) = the theoretical premise for the practical transformation of the object

The idea reveals to the subject the imperfection of the object — thus theoretically arguing the necessity of its change

For the idea to have practical value and be realizable in time, it must obligatorily contain BOTH aspects:

Reflection of the real existing object — without this, practical activity will be undefined and condemned to failure a priori

Creative principle expressing the aspiration to create the image of the future, ideal object — without this, practical activity will lack perspective and lose its fundamental designation

The Dialectic of Practice:

Practice resolves contradictions between subject and object and unites them — this union is complete in the sense that what is subjective converts into objective, not only by content but by form of existence

BUT it is relative — each act of practical activity, while uniting subject and object, establishes new contradictions between them

Practice is simultaneously the absolute and relative criterion of the truth of ideas

Practice surpasses existing ideas and simultaneously cannot embrace, in any of its concrete results, all the content of the idea — cannot fully realize it

When an idea is realized → it ceases to be a subjective image with objective content to convert into the object itself

The Social Function of Ideas:

Idealist sociology hypertrophied the role of ideas in social life — seeing them as the principal motive force, divorced from material practical activity

Marxism-Leninism determined the true transforming and active role of ideas in social development

The communist idea in the last decades: "The content of our epoch is the transition from capitalism to socialism" — one third of humanity building a new life under the banner of communism — demonstrates the enormous role of Marxist-Leninist ideas that revealed the laws of social development

The CPSU Program: "The Party sets the task of educating the entire population in the spirit of scientific communism, so that workers understand profoundly the course and perspectives of world development..."

Ideas convert into a powerful force of social development when they transform into the patrimony of the masses and act practically, modifying reality in consonance with those ideas

Anticientific ideas (religious, idealist, philosophical) brake the progressive development of society — hence the fight against surviving old and outdated ideas

Principles of Materialist Dialectics as a Theory of Cognition Moscow, 1984, pp. 89-131

Contents

Introductory Remarks 89

Essence and Existence, Essence as a Systemic Quality 90

Systemic Relativism and Dialectical-Materialist Monism 94

The Logic of Systemic Movement and “Theoretical Senses” 106

The Completeness of Formal and Contentful Systems 115

1. Introductory Remarks

In essence, the unity of dialectics, logic, and the theory of cognition in Marxism represents the highest realization of the principle of monism in materialist dialectics. Only the latter was able to unite into one such not only different but even opposite domains of reality as being and thinking—something over which all pre-Marxist philosophical thought had struggled in one way or another.

Monism is not a new idea in philosophy. As G.V. Plekhanov noted, “the most consistent and profound thinkers have always inclined toward monism, i.e., toward explaining phenomena with the help of some single basic principle.”¹ But only in Marxist philosophy is this idea brought to the level of scientific cognition, elevated not only theoretically but also practically into a principle of its methodology and logic. Thereby, dialectical-materialist philosophy also substantiates the necessity of applying the principle of monism not only in the sphere of philosophical ideas but in the sphere of any other science.

Monism in philosophy expresses the monism of thinking, toward which it always consciously or unconsciously strives. This is an objective law of thinking and its specificity. “To think,” wrote Hegel, “means, properly speaking, to grasp and express multiplicity in unity... Thinking consists in bringing all multiplicity into unity.”² And the highest form of development of human thinking—science—is bound up with the consistent implementation of the principle of monism.

“In a whole series of scientific disciplines the question posed once by K. Marx in the course of analyzing economic relations arises anew: how to develop science in its own, internally inherent connection and what is this connection? How to separate that specific sphere in which a given science can and must render competent judgments about facts from the sphere in which its judgments can only confuse the essence of the matter? What kind of facts can, and what kind cannot, be placed in mutual connection in the systematic development of theory; what are the conditions and logical criteria of this juxtaposition?”³

All progressive tendencies in the history of philosophy have in one way or another striven toward an integral worldview, and the latter always requires a clear definition of the boundaries of individual sciences, individual branches of knowledge, and spheres of people’s spiritual activity. “The mixing of the boundaries of different sciences,” Kant wrote in his time, “leads not to the expansion of these sciences but to their distortion.”⁴ And a clear definition of the boundaries of a given science and its subject matter is impossible without the consistent reduction of a certain multiplicity to unity.

But monism is not only a characteristic of an integral worldview; it is, as has already been said, a necessary mode of existence of science. The task, consequently, consists in methodologically substantiating the monistic principle as a necessary principle of any science and demonstrating its necessary and universal significance. And the substantiation of monism is possible only with the systematic development of science. In other words, monism can be realized only in a system of theoretical definitions of the subject matter. Therefore, the necessity of monism presupposes the necessity of the systemic organization of science.

2. Essence and Existence, Essence as a Systemic Quality

“If the form of appearance and the essence of things directly coincided,” Marx often liked to repeat, “then all science would be superfluous...”⁵ Science, therefore, is necessary only where we are interested in the essential, which does not coincide with the deceptive appearance of things.

The essence with which science is concerned is a systemic, i.e., a quality that manifests itself in relation to another (reflexive, as Hegel puts it), and it can consequently be reflected only in a system of concepts that “reflect” one another. A human being in his immediate, given being as a human individual does not reveal his essence; he reveals it only when he relates to another human being, and this relation can manifest itself in the most varied ways. That is why Marx defines the essence of man as “the ensemble of all social relations.”⁶ In the original it literally reads “the ensemble of all social relations,”⁷ and this more accurately conveys the essence of the matter: human relations do not represent a simple unordered “sum” but a quite definite system, an “ensemble” of relations with its own coordination and subordination, its own “levels,” spheres, etc.

What, then, from the standpoint of such an understanding of essence, does its scientific definition mean? It means the construction or, better, the development, unfolding, and rational reproduction of that system of relations in which and thanks to which the given essence exists. The latter represents nothing other than precisely this totality and wholeness of relations. All the mystifications of the category of essence that it has undergone in various systems of idealism from Plato to Hegel are connected precisely with this “sensuous-supersensuous” mode of its objective existence.

Idealism played upon the essential weaknesses of empiricism, which was characteristic of all forms of pre-Marxist materialism. The latter adhered to the principle of sensuous certainty and therefore could not distinguish essence from existence. It tried to discover the essential through abstraction by isolating some abstract that belongs to a certain multitude or “sum” of individual individuals, and it consistently arrived at a denial of the objective significance of the category of the universal, which manifested itself especially clearly in positivism. Meanwhile, the path to essence, and thereby to truth, lies along the path of concretization, the “growing together” of individual moments expressed and fixed by means of abstraction into a system of scientific definitions.

It is therefore no accident that historically the “systemic” side of human cognition, like its active side, developed within idealism. Hegel, for example, in setting himself the task of turning philosophy into a science, identifies the latter with a system. “The true form in which truth exists,” he wrote, “can only be its scientific system.”⁸

“Systemic” conceptions also developed earlier in the works of Kant, Schelling, and especially Fichte. We will not dwell on this in detail but will only note that to limit the genealogy of the systemic approach to the bounds of our 20th century, as A. Rapoport does, for example,⁹ means either not to know the history of the question or consciously to ignore it.

What, then, does the “true form of the existence of truth” mean? Is this expression an empty tautology or a manifestation of a specific “Hegelianism”?

We find the “decipherment” of this proposition in K. Marx, who gives it a clear expression. “Not only the result of the investigation,” he writes, “but also the path leading to it must be true. The investigation of truth itself must be true; true investigation is the unfolded truth, whose separate links are joined together in the final result.”¹⁰

The “unfolded truth” is precisely the scientific system or the true form in which truth exists, because “the essence of the matter is not exhausted by its goal but by its realization, and the result is not the actual whole but the result together with its becoming.”¹¹

Here the traditional empiricist conception of truth as the correspondence of our subjective representations to immediately given facts is radically altered. The point is that there can be cases when neither an individual subjective representation taken separately nor their simple sum corresponds to the objective essence of the matter, even though they correspond to individual external manifestations of this essence and to individual facts. The fact is that the facts themselves may not correspond to their own essence.

Marx noted, for example, that undeveloped forms of political economy as a science corresponded to undeveloped, “untrue” forms of bourgeois society. In these forms capital had not yet corresponded to its concept. Political economy in its undeveloped forms thus fully corresponded to the facts, but it did not subject the facts themselves to criticism and did not go beyond the facts.

The unsoundness of empiricism consists in the fact that it does not and does not wish to go beyond the empirical fact. However, truth does not lie in the facts themselves but in their interconnection. And not in a simple connection but in a necessary one. And the fact that the necessary connection even of such simple facts as sunlight and the heating of a stone is far from obvious was already well shown by Hume.

Authoritarian-empiricist thinking stops precisely where genuine thinking should begin, and genuine thinking must bring facts into mutual connection and thereby reveal their true essence. This constitutes the merit of human thinking as distinct from animal thinking, which in all cases remains an “empiricist,” holds only to the fact, and does not go beyond it. “Animals are pure empiricists and are guided only by examples.”¹²

Thus, the systemic organization of scientific knowledge, the scientific system, is necessary in order to grasp and express truth. The system of scientific knowledge is the unfolded truth.

But does every system necessarily express and represent objective truth? By no means every one.

In Turgenev’s Rudin, in a dispute with Pigasov, who wants to hold only to facts and sensuous certainty, Rudin points out to him that feelings can deceive us; for example, feeling tells us that the Sun revolves around the Earth, while Copernicus proved the opposite.

Every day people observe that the Sun “rises” in the east in the morning and, having completed its usual daily path, “sets” in the west. And for a long time people had not the slightest doubt that this was so “in reality,” i.e., that our Earth is motionless and the Sun and other celestial bodies revolve in some way around our motionless Earth. Now every schoolchild knows that “in reality” everything is not so but the opposite: within our solar system the Sun is motionless and our Earth, among the other planets of this system, revolves around the Sun.

It is known that the first “in reality” was realized in the system of Ptolemy and the second in the system of Copernicus. And if the second is truth, then the first...

Let us not draw hasty conclusions and not say that Ptolemy’s system is completely false; let us rather say that it is simply insufficient for expressing the whole truth. After all, the result is not the actual whole but the result together with its becoming. But was not Ptolemy’s system an essential stage on the path of the becoming of Copernicus’s system, which truly corresponds to the essence of the matter?

It was precisely that. It was not merely an essential but a necessary stage on the path of the becoming of the system of Copernicus that truly corresponds to the essence of the matter.

Thus, there exist at least two kinds of scientific systems, which could be called empirical and theoretical systems, although this does not yet fully express the whole essence of the matter. And the essence of the matter consists in their subordination and the mode of transition from the first to the second.

3. Systemic Relativism and Dialectical-Materialist Monism

If there exists a definite sequence of stages of the systemic organization of knowledge, then this sequence itself, if it is regular and necessary, represents a definite hierarchy and is systemically organized. As such it is already the subject matter of logic and the theory of cognition.

Hegel characterized the development of human cognition as an ascending movement from content to content. “This forward movement,” he wrote, “determines itself first of all in such a way that it begins with simple determinatenesses and that the determinatenesses following them become ever richer and more concrete. For the result contains its beginning, and the movement of this beginning has enriched it with a new determinateness. The universal constitutes the foundation; therefore forward movement should not be taken as a process proceeding from something other to something other. In the absolute method the concept is preserved in its otherness, the universal in its particularization, in judgment and reality; at every stage of further determination the universal raises the entire mass of its previous content and not only loses nothing from its dialectical forward movement, not only leaves nothing behind itself, but carries with it everything acquired and becomes enriched and condensed within itself.”¹³

If we return to our example with the systems of Ptolemy and Copernicus, the transition from the first to the second does not leave the first “behind itself” but carries it with itself. Therefore the second is more concrete than the first; it is “denser” than it, for it contains within itself not only the first but also its other and its opposite. After all, it not only describes the actual position but also explains the apparent movement of the planets on the visible firmament, from which Ptolemy’s system started. The difference here is the same as the difference between the fact of the apparent bending of a teaspoon in a glass of tea and the same fact comprehended theoretically.

And here there is not merely a quantitative but a fundamental qualitative difference: when we say “the Copernican system” we may have in mind both the theory created by the great Polish astronomer and the solar system itself as it existed before and independently of anyone’s theoretical conceptions of it. We do, of course, distinguish the two, but we notice no essential difference in content between them: the Copernican system as Copernicus’s theory is the solar system that has become “transparent” to us. It is not one of equally possible variants of a systemic representation of our solar system but the system itself, unfolded before us thanks to the genius of Copernicus.

It is another matter with Ptolemy’s system. This is precisely a “projection” of the solar system, and precisely the projection in which the solar system is given to the earthly observer. Here we clearly distinguish in content the system as a “model,” “projection,” representation, theory, etc., and the original—the objectively existing system.

Since at the present time “system” is most often understood as precisely this kind of representation of an object, when it is only a “projection,” “model,” etc., coinciding with the original only in a “certain respect,” it is sometimes considered that everything depends on in which system the object is considered and which “frame of reference” is chosen. In other words, an objective picture of reality turns out to be altogether impossible. And if it is possible, then only as the result of some integration or summation of the greatest possible number of “projections” and “models.” There is no privileged system, just as there is no privileged frame of reference—that is the ultimate conclusion of this kind of reasoning. And this is precisely “systemic” relativism.

The matter looks different if we turn to our example of the transition from Ptolemaic to Copernican conceptions. Here the movement proceeds not from “projection” to “projection,” not from other to other, but in full agreement with the image of dialectical movement that we cited. In this “absolute method,” as Hegel calls it, the result contains its beginning. Here things proceed as in the case of a rolling snowball, which “not only leaves nothing behind itself but carries with it everything acquired and becomes enriched and condensed within itself.” This is not merely extensive but also intensive movement simultaneously, not only outward but also inward. In the Copernican system the content of Ptolemy’s system was not simply discarded but was “condensed and enriched within itself.” It turned out to be “sublated,” i.e., subjected to negation and at the same time raised to a higher stage.

“Science is always wrong,” Bernard Shaw said at a banquet in honor of Einstein in 1930. “Copernicus proved that Ptolemy was wrong... Galileo proved that Aristotle was wrong... The Newtonian universe fell dead, and in its place appeared the Einsteinian universe.” But if we take into account that with each step, similar to one of those named by Shaw, there occurs an “enrichment” and scientific knowledge becomes ever more “dense,” then we can with full right assert the opposite of what Shaw said—science is always right, but right within definite limits.

Both Ptolemy and Aristotle and Newton were right within definite limits, but these limits were defined later. At the same time, the relative character of the theoretical conceptions developed by the named thinkers was defined, and thereby relativism was sublated: after all, we can assert the relative character of something only when we know relative to what the given conception is relative.

What is systemic relativism based on? It is based on the fact that we cannot, as is sometimes asserted (and within certain limits correctly asserted), directly compare a certain system with reality itself; for this we must adopt some “third” position. And for this we must construct a broader system of theoretical conceptions in which the first system and reality itself would be comparable. But for this third system to serve us as a reliable criterion for comparing the first system with reality, it itself must be compared with this reality, and for this a fourth system must be constructed, and so on to infinity. L.N. Volgin presents the matter approximately in this way in his book The Principle of Coordinated Optimum,¹⁴ and therefore he sees the only way out in practice.¹⁵

But to rely on practice in this case is the same as relying on the fact that printer’s type in a case, if shaken for a very long time, will arrange itself into the text of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. “The criterion of practice,” wrote V.I. Lenin, “can never, by the very nature of the case, fully confirm or refute any human representation.”¹⁶ Ptolemy’s system was generated and confirmed by the historically limited practice of its time. Theory therefore cannot be regarded as a mechanical supplement to practice, as something “other.” Only practice taken in its historical tendency, as a whole, can be a reliable criterion of the objective truth of our theoretical conceptions.

It is precisely this kind of unity that we have in the case of the Copernican system. After all, our practice, as long as we live on Earth, has been and remains Ptolemaic: a modern navigator sees the same sky that Ptolemy observed, and therefore he must translate any calculations made, so to speak, in the “Copernican system” into the “Ptolemaic system” in order to orient himself practically on the open sea. And only thanks to this is it possible to compare the Copernican system with the “original”—this comparison is possible only through its own opposite; it contains the “third” within itself.

In no other case is there or can there be a “third” position in relation to the object and knowledge of this object if this knowledge is not in itself divided into itself and its own opposite, if it simply serves practice and is its simple duplication and does not explain the limited character of our earthly practice. The representation of this position simply duplicates our knowledge and considers one as the object and the other as knowledge. Try to adopt a “third” position in relation to Copernicus’s theory and the heliocentric system itself. You will not succeed, because what you will consider in this case as the object will simply be a model constructed according to this theory in your imagination. After all, you have never seen this system with your own eyes. It is true that with the state of modern technology it is in principle possible to transfer an observer to a point in cosmic space from which our solar system would look exactly as Copernicus imagined it. But this is possible only today. And in general the principled possibility of empirical verification in this case is a shortcoming of our example. And imagine such a theory as, for example, various systems of non-Euclidean geometry or some other examples of this kind...

Thus, systemic completeness and wholeness are based on the fact that systemic movement closes upon its own beginning. This “closing,” and thereby wholeness and completeness, Hegel considered an advantage of philosophy. “Philosophy,” he wrote, “forms a circle: it has a first immediate proposition that is not proved but appears as a result, since in general it must begin with something. But that with which philosophy begins is only relatively immediate, since it must appear as a result at another final point. It is a chain that does not hang in the air, does not begin immediately, but circles.”¹⁷

But this is by no means an advantage of philosophy alone. Philosophy, and so Hegel himself considered, expresses the profound essence of every science. But in Hegel’s time for all sciences this was only an ideal toward which it was necessary to strive: the “chain” had not yet closed and hung helplessly in the air. However, the development of science after Hegel showed that it proceeds in exact correspondence with that ideal image of developing human cognition that dialectics gives us.

Euclidean geometry, for example, took its foundational propositions—two straight lines can intersect only at one point; through a point outside a straight line only one straight line parallel to the given one can be drawn, etc.—as immediate and unproved, which cannot be proved, because any proof presupposes some foundational propositions. And if Euclid had wanted to prove the foundational propositions that he took as immediate, he would have had to presuppose some other immediate foundational propositions.

History has shown that his immediate foundational propositions are only relatively immediate; in reality they are very much mediated, and they are mediated by earthly conditions in which man lives and acts, conditions of relatively small masses and relatively low velocities, which condition and mediate precisely such a geometry of space. That is why, incidentally, in reflections on what human thinking is, what science is, what its methods are, etc., one cannot take a single thinking individual, a single scientific theory in its completeness or only at one of the historical stages of its development, but one must take Thinking (with a capital T) of all humanity in its historical progressive development in close connection with historically progressing human practice. But since such a lesson has already been given us by the history of cognition, we must exercise caution and circumspection before asserting anything as absolutely immediate. Dialectics values history so highly precisely because it itself was its result and generalization.

The fact that the foundational propositions of Euclidean geometry are only relatively immediate was proved by the construction of systems of geometry based on a principle opposite to the principle of Euclidean geometry and including Euclidean geometry as a special case. But thereby the immediate is mediated, and the mediating is substantiated practically by its own opposite. Here, as in the case of the Copernican and Ptolemaic conceptions, non-Euclidean conceptions must each time be “translated” into the language of Euclidean conceptions in order to be usable for practical needs, for practical calculations and measurements, while Euclidean conceptions are the completed system of geometrical conceptions of the surveyor, navigator, architect, engineer, etc. And therefore Euclidean geometry is not something opposite to practice but merely its duplication, its direct continuation.

“What does it mean,” wrote Einstein, “when it is asserted that our three-dimensional space has a Euclidean character? The meaning of this is that all logically proved propositions of Euclidean geometry can be exactly confirmed by actual experiment. With the help of solid bodies or light rays we can construct objects corresponding to the idealized objects of Euclidean geometry.

The edge of a ruler or a light ray corresponds to a straight line. The sum of the angles of a triangle constructed from thin rigid rods equals 180 degrees. The ratio of the radii of two concentric circles constructed from thin elastic wire equals the ratio of the lengths of the circumferences. Interpreted in this way, Euclidean geometry becomes a chapter of physics, albeit a very simple one.”¹⁸

If for every object of Euclidean geometry a physical model can be constructed, this indicates that its objects are merely a duplication of real physical objects: a geometrical cylinder is merely an “ideal” cylindrical column, a millstone, etc., with which man deals in his economic practical life. Here there is still no transition into theory as into something other and opposite, although physical geometry is a necessary historical stage in the becoming of geometry.

“It is considered,” writes the American logician and mathematician H. Curry, “that geometry began with the establishment of rules of measurement found already by scholars of Ancient Egypt. Geometry in this sense is part of physics. But alongside it there is also geometry as part of mathematics, in which mathematical systems connected in a certain way with the study of space are considered.”¹⁹

What does it mean that mathematical systems of geometry are connected in a certain way with the study of space? This means first of all: not in an immediate way. And this, in turn, means that mathematical geometry must contain within itself at least one proposition that in principle cannot be directly physically interpreted, that must differ essentially from the foundational propositions of physical geometry.

But an essential difference is always an opposition. Consequently, a monistic geometry, i.e., a geometry having its own logical space, must embrace opposite principles in unity. And the unity of opposites is contradiction; consequently, a monistic system has as its foundation contradiction, A and not-A. This will be the true definition of system.

But this is already the result of a certain historical and logical development. If we return again to the example with systems of political economy, this is already the system of Capital. However, the capitalist mode of production is not in its essence what it represents in its immediacy, in its given being, as Hegel would say. Truth is the unity of given being and the concept. And the entire process of its historical becoming and development must enter into the definition of the concept of capital. Into the representation of capital there must enter an understanding, so that it may become true, thanks to which it also becomes a concept. And understanding in this case consists only in the fact that we must know the entire process of the development of simple commodity production into capital. This constitutes the objective meaning of the dialectical proposition that truth is a process.

Therefore, with respect to a system, neither its first nor its last definition is true; its true definition is the entire process of transition from the first to the last, including both.

Now the essential difference between systems of the Euclidean type and systems of the non-Euclidean type should become clear. If the logical image of the first is A, then the image of the second is A and not-A, A and its negation; the second contains within itself the principle of the first and negates it. And from this it should be understandable that science is not only “always wrong” but also that this is not the labor of Sisyphus, that the stone raised to the summit of the mountain by Newton is not cast down again to its foot by Einstein but is raised to an even higher summit. And for this one must have a very clear representation of the logical structure of systems that have as their foundation the contradiction A and not-A.

There is a representation coming from formal logic. If we give a graphic representation of A in the form of a circle, then what will the negation of this A represent? Everything else, answers this logic. Graphically this can be depicted as follows: [drawing]

What do A and not-A together give? The entire Universe, answers logic.

This means that A and not-A together exhaust the entire Universe. In this case it is some indefinite, formal Universe, because A is taken as indefinite and formal. But what if A is a definite A? Suppose it is Euclid’s postulate about parallels. Then the negation of this A will also be definite. What, then, will A and not-A together represent? Also some universe, only not a formal one but the universe of all definitions of space. Science becomes universal when it grasps and comprehends in unity the opposite definitions of a certain reality, a certain concreteness. Hegel and Marx characterized the wholeness and completeness of systems of this kind as totality. Totality cannot be subjected to negation in the logical sense; it contains its own negation within itself, it “integrates” it within itself, and therefore does not fear it, just as a person who has already had measles once does not fear it.

Now the difference between systems of the Euclidean geometry, Ptolemy’s system, etc., type and systems of the Lobachevsky geometry, Copernicus’s system, etc., type should become understandable. The former are definite “projections,” “slices” of a certain totality or concreteness; the latter describe the totality itself and the concreteness itself; they themselves are therefore concrete, whereas the former are abstract and one-sided.

In connection with this a new dichotomy of systems is outlined, which in essence coincides with the already drawn division into empirical and theoretical, into abstract and concrete systems. Moreover, concreteness in this case coincides with the property of organicity. According to Marx, in any organic system “every posited is at the same time a presupposition.”²⁰ In this sense it is contradictory and closed within itself.

An organic system can no longer be subjected to negation in the same sense in which it itself is the negation of an abstract or empirical system. In relation to an organic system negation can only be destructive. After all, the principle of an organic system is the identity of opposites, the contradiction A and not-A. The negation of this principle gives us A or not-A, i.e., this negation simply “breaks down” our principle into its components and returns us, on the one hand, to the principle of the abstract system, to the self-equal A, and on the other hand, it is a simple tautology, because not-A contains within itself itself and its other, not-A and A. Althusser therefore not accidentally connects the representation of contradiction with the representation of “overdetermination,” i.e., the invulnerability of a certain kind of systemic organization.

What, then, does it follow that we can attain absolute truth? Yes, we can, but... within the limits of a completely definite quality, a definite logical space, a definite concreteness, and not of the entire Universe. That is first. And second, one must remember that we are speaking of essence and not of the entire multiplicity of forms of its manifestation. The multiplicity of forms of manifestation of life, past, present, and future, on our Earth and on other planets is infinite, but the essence of the living remains one and the same.

Furthermore, absolute truth is merely the opposite of relative truth, which is presupposed by the latter: relative to what is the given truth relative. And as long as we do not know that relative to which this or that of our knowledge is incomplete, abstract, etc., we cannot say that it is relatively true. After all, the Euclidean system before the appearance of non-Euclidean ones was considered not relatively but absolutely true, even to the point that Kant cited this fact in substantiation of the a priori (absolute) character of the forms of our intuition of phenomena in space. Ptolemy’s system was also considered absolutely and not relatively true even after the appearance of Copernicus’s system. People learned that all these were relative truths only when they learned absolute truth. Absolute only because it appeared as the result of the negation of relative truth; after all, relative and absolute truths are opposites.

Since human cognition is systemic and organic in character, its “trajectory” cannot be depicted as a simple straight line—it represents a series of circles. “Man’s cognition,” wrote Lenin, “is not (respectively does not proceed along) a straight line but a curved line that infinitely approaches a series of circles, a spiral. Any segment, fragment, or piece of this curved line can be turned (one-sidedly turned) into an independent, whole, straight line, which (if one does not see the forest for the trees) then leads into the swamp, into priestcraft (where it is consolidated by the class interest of the ruling classes). Straightforwardness and one-sidedness, woodenness and ossification, subjectivism and subjective blindness—voilà—the epistemological roots of idealism.”²¹

Both dogmatism, which knows only absolute truth, and relativism, which knows only relative truth, are merely definite “projections” of the spiral-shaped curve of human cognition.

In the history of philosophy all possible conceptions of human cognition turn out in one way or another to be possible projections—moreover, as a rule with a certain aberration—of the spiral of human cognition. But the most interesting thing is that the historical sequence of these conceptions in one way or another corresponds to the sequence of logical elements from which the true “figure” of the logic of human cognition is constructed. Moreover, in the historical chaos of philosophical systems, schools, and directions, etc., a quite definite sequence is discovered, and the logic of this sequence becomes clear only after the passage of a definite period, when the “curve” of human cognition has already been sufficiently clearly drawn.

The logic of the historical development of human cognition thus coincides with the logic of the construction of scientific theory, and the mode of construction of the latter coincides in the final analysis with the essential characteristics of the object itself and of reality itself. Therefore dialectics, which is the highest mode of theoretical mastery of reality, is simultaneously the theory of cognition and the theory of the development of objective reality itself. Therefore also the mode in which human knowledge and cognition is organized into a system is the same as that in which reality itself is organized.

In other words, we may and should be interested not simply in different modes of systemic organization, such as the planetary system, the life-support system of a spacecraft, or the circulatory system of an animal—the general-logical analysis cannot replace concrete-scientific analysis; the “logic of the matter” cannot be completely “covered” by the “matter of logic”—but we may and should be interested in different principles of approach to the study of this or that systemic organization of real reality. And as has been preliminarily clarified, we have two such principles—the principle of formal identity A = A and the principle of contradiction A and not-A; in other words, the principle of metaphysics and the principle of dialectics.

“The universal modesty of spirit,” wrote K. Marx, “is reason, that universal independence of thought which relates to every thing as its essence itself requires.”²² Sometimes independence of thought is understood in such a way that one should firmly hold to “one’s own” convictions. But such “independence” very easily turns into simple stubbornness if the right to one’s own opinion and one’s own principles is placed above the “right” of the object itself. And then such “independent” thought turns out to be in slavish dependence on the deceptive appearance of things.

Genuine universal independence of thought consists in the ability to subordinate oneself entirely to the essence of the thing itself. And the essence of the thing itself and the mode of its immediate manifestation do not coincide; as a consequence scientific truths are always paradoxical if judged on the basis of everyday experience, which grasps only the deceptive appearance of things.²³ Thus true independence of thought and “universal modesty of spirit” mean the ability to renounce one’s own habitual representations and one’s own opinions, of which every person has more than enough, in the name of truth and in the name of the “rights” of the object itself. And this means the ability to grasp the dialectical contradiction, which in thinking held captive by ordinary representations often arouses open hostility.

If thinking is incapable of grasping the dialectical contradiction, it will never attain genuine monism and systematic consistency, as happened with bourgeois political economy, in whose system yawning “cracks” formed precisely where, in the person of its vulgar representatives, it tried formally to reconcile opposite and mutually contradictory propositions and thereby rid itself of contradiction. It is in this that the basic pathos of K. Marx’s critique of vulgar political economy consists.

Thus, as long as opposites are not synthesized within a single theory and a single monistic system, systemic relativism is not overcome to the end: then at least two theoretical systems realizing opposite principles are possible. The systemic organization of knowledge is presupposed by dialectics as the logic and theory of cognition of Marxism with its principle of monism. And the main question of the dialectics of systemic thinking consists in showing by what paths the systematic organization of human knowledge and cognition is attained.

4. The Logic of Systemic Movement and “Theoretical Senses”

Logic, as Hegel considered, is the science not directly of things but of things grasped in thoughts; although the definitions of things themselves necessarily enter into logic, not all definitions do so but only universal ones. When we speak of the logic of systemic cognition, we should be interested not in objectively existing systems directly but in the mode of grasping the systemic organization of reality. At the same time, of course, we cannot bypass the universal definitions of the systemic organization of reality, but within the framework of logic they can interest us only insofar as thinking that grasps the systemic organization of reality must itself be systemically organized.

Despite the entire obviousness of the proposition that human thinking must be systemically organized, there can be fundamentally different and even opposite answers to the question of why it must be systemically organized. “Systems everywhere”—this is what Ludwig von Bertalanffy, considered one of the founders of the so-called “systems movement,” called the first chapter of his well-known work General System Theory. And this should, judging by everything, serve as the answer to the question posed. Indeed, if one looks around, then both organic life and human society and the Universe—all will appear before us as an aggregate of systemic organizations.

But such an answer, if one thinks about it, cannot satisfy us at all, which once again proves that in science one must by no means be guided by simple obviousness. The fact that the Sun revolves around the Earth and not vice versa was also once obvious. After all, the obvious always lies in the sphere of appearances; it is what we see with our eyes. And essence and appearance do not directly coincide, and what we take as obvious often turns out to be mere appearance.

The concrete reasons why we cannot be satisfied with the answer in question are the following. First, no simple inductive generalization can be reliable. What does “systems everywhere” mean? After all, one can point to a mass of cases where there is not only no system at all but complete unsystematicity reigns.

The external individual facts of social life, for example, seem scattered and devoid of any necessary connection. “But this teeming arbitrariness,” writes Hegel, “generates from itself universal determinations, and facts that seem scattered... are governed by necessity... The search here for this necessity is the task of political economy, a science that does honor to thought, because having before it a mass of contingencies it seeks their laws. It is interesting to see how all dependencies here exert a reverse action, how particular spheres group themselves, influence other spheres and experience assistance or hindrance from them. This interconnection, whose existence one does not at first believe because it seems that everything here is left to the arbitrariness of the individual, is remarkable mainly in that—and similar in this to the planetary system—it presents to the eye only irregular movements, and yet one can cognize its laws.”²⁴

With respect to human society many bourgeois philosophers still hold the opinion that it represents nothing more than a “forest,” and human history only a series of “irregular” movements. The merit of having discovered the “correct” movement behind the “irregular movement” of human history belongs, as is known, to K. Marx, although pre-Marxist history of scientific and philosophical thought was already leading toward this. And if today we say that “systems everywhere,” it is only because we know about it: it is therefore no accident that they began to speak about it loudly at the end of the 19th–beginning of the 20th century, when as a result of a long history of scientific searches science already knew a significant number of facts of the systemic organization of reality. Consequently, the systemic attitude was known to science long ago.

Thus, and this is already second, one can assert the complete opposite: we know that reality is systemically organized because our thinking and our cognition of reality are systemically organized. But this will be just as one-sided and abstract an assertion as the first, although true in its abstractness. However, truth is always concrete, and in our case it consists not in proceeding directly from the systemic organization of reality itself and the systemic organization of thinking itself but in proceeding from the systemic organization of the interaction of man with reality, above all practical interaction, as Marxism teaches. Otherwise the systemic and integral character of human thinking in its intention is incomprehensible and inexplicable.

The ancients observed only the “irregular” movements of celestial bodies. What impelled them to think and represent them to themselves as “regular”? Whence that certainty of the greatest significance that the world is arranged according to the laws of beauty and harmony, which manifested itself with special force in the teaching of the Pythagoreans and Plato?

K. Marx gave the first rational explanation of this fact. Man sees measure and harmony in everything because, he said, he produces universally, i.e., observing a universal measure, because “he knows how to produce according to the measure of any species and knows how to apply everywhere to the object the measure inherent in it; by virtue of this man also builds according to the laws of beauty.”²⁵

Measure is the essential both in human life and in all natural reality simultaneously, because it is observed first of all in the practical interaction of man with reality, in which he himself acts as a force of nature, as something entirely and completely identical with it.

“The eye has become a human eye,” writes Marx, “just as its object has become a social, human object created by man for man. Therefore the senses have directly in their practice become theoreticians. They have a relation to the thing for the sake of the thing, but this thing itself is an objective human relation to itself and to man, and vice versa. As a consequence need and the use of the thing have lost their egoistic nature, and nature has lost its bare utility, since utility has become human utility.”²⁶

The contemplative character of ancient Greek science, which is sometimes still considered its shortcoming, was at the same time its greatest advantage. The ancient Greek could contemplate nature in its wholeness. And it is therefore no accident that precisely when the use of a thing became purely egoistic, when a system of universal “bare utility” developed, the feeling of beauty was emasculated, and with it the integral character of the perception of reality. In place of the disinterested search for truth, which was inseparably linked with the ideas of the good and beauty, comes the pragmatic philosophy of positivism.

Thus, the starting point of the systemic movement of cognition is the wholeness grasped and retained in representation by the “theoretical senses,” a certain integral image of the whole... This is what constantly “hovers,” in Marx’s words, before the mental gaze throughout the entire path of theoretical analysis. “Theory,” according to the etymology of this word and in essence, is “contemplation.” And as such it is opposite to activity and practice. Vanity is contraindicated to wisdom—that is the basic proposition characteristic of the entire ideology of the ancients. And this is not only because this is the ideology of slave-owners who consider any practical occupation degrading to themselves; there are here its own, and very weighty, “epistemological” grounds: practical activity, although universal measure is present in it, deals directly with particulars and loses sight of the whole. But it is precisely this opposition of theory and practice that, as has already been shown in part, is the foundation of their genuine, firm unity.

“The unity of thinking and representation,” wrote Hegel, “is what is most difficult to show.”²⁷ This unity is difficult to show precisely because thinking and representation are opposites: representation is contemplative, thinking is active. Hence arises the false representation according to which when we think we represent nothing to ourselves, and when we represent we think about nothing. Thinking discovers its practical, active nature precisely when it overcomes the contemplativeness of ordinary representation. It is therefore in its essence always negative and negating in relation to ordinary representation, and dialectics therefore constitutes its essence. At the same time it also discovers that representation is merely resting activity, an image drawn by the activity of our “theoretical senses,” and therefore contains within itself something more than what is “immediately” given by sense. And then thinking becomes convinced that any abstraction of “pure” sensuous experience, experience fully freed and cleansed of all reflection, is merely an unreal abstraction.

But in order to be negated by the activity of thinking, the image of representation must be integral and “resting.” It is in this, in this “relation,” that the logical significance of the wholeness and systematicity of our knowledge in its original, contemplative form manifests itself, and not at all in the fact that it passively reflects, expresses, etc., the integral and systemic character of reality.

Thinking the determinate and changeable necessarily runs up against contradictions. And what is especially important, these contradictions occur precisely when thought strictly adheres to the initial theoretical definitions it has worked out, i.e., when it is consistently logical and monistic. Dialectics is the product of developing logic and the condition of its further development. Outside this logic of clearly fixed definitions, outside this immanent movement of thought, dialectics will be simply confusion, because thought moving unsystematically at the tail of accidental experience never suffers from a lack of contradictions. However, these contradictions have no scientific value. Dialectics fixes not simply contradictions in the definitions of things (for the latter may also be accidental) but contradictions precisely in theoretical, i.e., essential and necessary, definitions of things.

As has already been said, dialectics is contradiction in the essence of things expressed in theoretical definitions and concepts. A thing not fixed in a scientific definition, taken in its immediate given being, as an object of experience, admits any interpretation, both dialectical and metaphysical or relativistic. It is important only to clarify that this abstraction is set not by our relation to the thing but by its objective position in the system of things, its “objective function positing it as determinateness, as essence, i.e., a ‘practically true abstraction’” (K. Marx).

As long as this system of things positing their determinateness has not been established, no dialectics is possible. Such a “thing” as commercial profit in one system, say in feudal relations, represents one essence, and in another system another. It is precisely the system in which every thing is “weighed” as essence that science establishes.

Theoretical definitions therefore represent the conditions of the cognition of the dialectics of things and the mode of being of scientific dialectics. That is why Hegel with full right speaks of the Eleatics: “Here we find the initial stage of dialectics, i.e., precisely the initial stage of pure movement of thinking in concepts...”²⁸ It is another matter when the question of the source of this movement is posed: is this “purified” content posited by thinking, or is it supplied by practice and experience? Only here does the real boundary between idealist and materialist dialectics lie. As for the “purification” itself, without it there is no dialectics, just as without it there is and can be no science.

In the “purification” of the material of experience by monistic thought, dialectics becomes the possession not only of aesthetic feeling, which grasps contradiction in the immediate form of its discovery, but also of theoretical thought. Monistic logic is the condition of this mastery.

The dialectics of “positive” understanding, which posits a system of formal definitions of a certain concreteness, and “negative” (dialectical) reason, which reflects this system and uncovers behind it more essential determinations of reality, is well illustrated by the same example of the relation between Ptolemy’s and Copernicus’s systems. The negativity of reason means in this case the negation of Ptolemy’s system, this completed system of subjective appearance. The objective picture of the actual state of things can be obtained only as a result of the negation of this system of subjective appearance. And in this its logical significance as a system and the logical significance of its systemic form manifest themselves.

Otherwise it is incomprehensible what we are negating. In order for negation to be constructive and lead to something, it must be determinate negation, i.e., the negated content must be strictly defined. After all, Ptolemy’s system includes the proposition that the Sun “rises” in the east and “sets” in the west. But it is not this that we negate. Otherwise we would be asserting complete absurdity.

However, with respect to one proposition of Ptolemy’s system we can and must assert something opposite. And such a proposition must exist. The Copernican system asserts that the Sun is motionless and the Earth and other planets of the solar system revolve around this motionless center. This is directly opposite to what we observe from the Earth and what forms the basis of Ptolemy’s system.

On what basis does the opposition with respect to only one proposition extend to the entire system of propositions? Only on the basis that we have not a simple sum but a system of propositions. And the proposition with respect to which opposition is discovered is what can be called the system-forming principle.

Here the true significance of the systemic organization and systemic character of human cognition manifests itself, if it is understood as genuinely universal and logico-methodological significance. It consists in the fact that thinking cannot reflect the essential properties of reality, which always manifest themselves as systemic properties, without organizing itself in a systemic way. And its systemic organization as opposing the systemic organization of reality is merely a part of the systemic organization of reality itself, opposing it and contradicting it, for thinking itself also represents a definite kind of reality.

The formal difference between the systemic organization of thinking and its logic, on the one hand, and the systemic organization of reality itself, on the other, from the standpoint of the revealed duality consists in the fact that in reality every individual moment of a certain wholeness is determined from the side of the whole—while in the rational grasping and theoretical definition of this wholeness we proceed the other way around: from formal moments to the system of the whole, in the theoretical picture of which this formal opposition is sublated. But since it nevertheless exists as precisely such a disappearing moment of the movement of cognizing thinking, and moreover a “disappearing” one sometimes on the scale of centuries of the development of human cognition, this gives a fully understandable “epistemological” foundation for the assertion of the specific organization of human thinking and its logic in comparison with the logic of the essence of the matter itself.

And it is very important to understand that this is not simply a subjective illusion but an illusion fully analogous to the one that the Sun “rises” in the east and “sets” in the west. We leave aside here the question of the social roots of this delusion, although such roots also exist here.

Thus, the necessity of the systemic organization of thinking is conditioned by the needs of its self-movement and self-development. The genuine objective scientific picture of the solar system is obtained as a result of a peculiar “inversion” of the initial and system-forming principle of Ptolemy’s system as a system of subjective appearance, which is why the latter must be systemically organized. Otherwise we cannot obtain a true theory: it is not given immediately in our experience and our narrow earthly practice that our Earth revolves around the Sun. Such is in this case the necessary sequence of the development of science. And if it is necessarily such, then the transition of cognition to a higher stage, to the stage of objective knowledge, is impossible without strict monism from the very beginning. Our knowledge from the very beginning must be organized into a monistic system in order to discover its system-forming principle: after all, there cannot be a system-forming principle without a system.

A strange and paradoxical picture results: subjective vision of reality must be systemically formed in order to be then sublated and refuted by a theory expressing the objective state of things. The strangeness and paradoxicality here stem from the same proposition according to which essence and appearance do not directly coincide. This proposition applies in full measure also to human cognition: subjective motives that move a person in the cognition of reality not only do not coincide with the objective meaning of this or that cognitive operation that he performs but are often directly opposite to this objective meaning. It is clear that the subjective motives by which Ptolemy and Aristotle were guided in constructing their systems of vision of the universe did not presuppose the appearance of Copernicus, who turned the entire created system of representations upside down.

Incidentally, this turn of events, despite its seeming “paradoxicality,” also explains many other moments that turn out to be completely inexplicable from other positions. Let us leave aside for a while our habitual example with the solar system and turn to another case—the history of the development of geometrical representations.

First of all, it is not difficult to notice here a completely analogous course of events. We know that geometrical representations were systematized in the Elements of the ancient Greek mathematician Euclid and in this form existed in their basis right up to the beginning of the 19th century, when the so-called non-Euclidean geometries, the geometries of Lobachevsky and Riemann, appeared. The transition to these geometries occurred analogously to the way it occurred from Ptolemy’s system to Copernicus’s system; moreover, here this transition received an even more characteristic and pure expression. In this transition the system-forming principle of Euclidean geometry—the postulate about parallel straight lines—was replaced by its opposite. In Euclid’s geometry this postulate sounded approximately as follows: through a point outside a straight line only one straight line parallel to the given one can be drawn. In non-Euclidean geometries it sounds as follows: through a point outside a straight line any number of straight lines parallel to the given one can be drawn. This assertion, in view of its obvious “paradoxicality,” aroused and still arouses no less consternation in minds than Copernicus’s assertion in his time that it is not the Sun that revolves around the Earth but the Earth around the Sun.

What, then, was the meaning of Euclid’s system in this connection? Moreover, it must be noted that the systemic qualities of Euclid’s Elements are more obvious than the systemic qualities of Ptolemy’s theory of the solar system. It turns out that the genuine historical meaning of Euclid’s system—the genuine objective meaning of any scientific theory always manifests itself as its historical meaning—consists in isolating the system-forming principle of empirical geometrical representations.

The point is not only that Euclidean geometry fully served the practical needs of people in various spheres of their activity: for practical needs the empirically found rules of measuring areas and volumes, which were already known in Ancient Egypt, are quite sufficient. Proofs of theorems, strange as it may seem, are needed not in order to make them irrefutable but, on the contrary, in order to make them refutable if considered from the standpoint of the needs of the historical and logical development of scientific knowledge.

The structure and character of non-Euclidean geometrical representations are the key to understanding the structure and character of Euclidean geometrical representations. Only from the standpoint of historical genesis and historical development can one understand the logical meaning of the structural peculiarities of definite theoretical constructions. And in this historical development of science the pure logical form of this development and the logical significance of its systemic character manifest themselves.

The logical significance of the systematic form of science is dual and contradictory. This presents a certain difficulty for its understanding. Thus, Hegel, with some variations in different places in his works, advances the proposition that the plow is more honorable than the fruits it delivers. The fruits are consumed—the plow is preserved, and thereby it preserves the possibility of repeating a new cycle and, consequently, new consumption. In the tool, and not in the things produced with its help, man possesses power over nature. In exactly the same way the systemic quality of knowledge is more valuable than its immediate pragmatic utility. The former forms the possibility of further movement and the repetition of ever new cycles. In it, therefore, as in the tool, I possess universal content; it, like the tool, is the focus of the unity of being and thinking, where, in K. Megrelidze’s words, it is easiest to observe it.²⁹

But this pure form of the movement and development of science manifests itself only in the historical dimension of this movement and development and is sublated as a definite historical result. Only in the historical transition from one theoretical system of representations to another does the logical significance of the basic properties of the systemic organization of science, as well as these basic properties themselves, manifest themselves. One of such properties of the systemic organization of science is the completeness of the system, to the consideration of which we now turn.

5. The Completeness of Formal and Contentful Systems

Hegel, as has already been said, considered his task to be the substantiation of the true form of the existence of truth, which can only be the scientific system. It goes without saying that in order to fulfill this task he had to give a scientific form to the substantiation of the true form of science itself: after all, this substantiation must be true, and the true form of the existence of truth, as he rightly considered, can only be the scientific system. Thus, the task of the philosophical substantiation of the scientific form, and thereby of any science, immediately turns into the task of giving philosophy a scientific form. And since the scientific form is a system, philosophy, in order to fulfill its task in relation to science, must be brought into a system.

A system can be refuted only by a system, as Marx noted. Correspondingly, only a system can be refuted by a system. This has already been shown in part. One cannot logically refute that which has no logic at all beneath it. Therefore any knowledge and any doctrine can become a step of progressive forward movement only when it is systemically organized. Hegel was by no means the first to pose the question of turning philosophy into a science. This question was posed by all classical German philosophy beginning with Kant. But this tendency manifested itself especially vividly in Fichte’s philosophy, and it is on this that we would like to dwell specially, the more so since Fichte posed the question not only of the scientific system but also of its completeness, which was done for the first time only by him.

Fichte, like other representatives of classical German philosophy, saw the true task of philosophy in answering one simple and clear question: “How are content and form of science possible in general, i.e., how is science itself possible?”³⁰ But the answer to the question of how science is possible can be given only by science; this must be the science of science in general.

“Whether up to now the word ‘philosophy’ meant precisely this or not is of no significance; and then this science, if it really became a science, would not without right cast off the name it has hitherto borne far from excessive modesty, the name befitting quackery (Kennerei), dilettantism...”³¹ So-called philosophy up to now would thus become the Science of science in general.

Following Kant, Fichte pronounces a death sentence on all previous philosophy as knowledge about everything. Philosophy receives from him a concrete subject matter—science in general and its form. The doctrine of science must deal with the substantiation of the form of science. What, then, is the form of science?

“Every science,” answers Fichte, “if it is to be not a separate, isolated proposition but a whole consisting of many separate parts, has a systematic form... This form, the condition of the connection of derived propositions with the foundational proposition and the ground of the right to conclude from this connection, so that the first propositions must necessarily be as certain as the last, also cannot be proved in a separate science if only the latter is to have unity and not deal with alien subjects not belonging to it, just as the truth of its foundational proposition cannot be proved in it but is already presupposed for the possibility of its form. The general doctrine of science is therefore obliged to substantiate the systematic form for all possible sciences.”³²

Any science can be dogmatic, i.e., take its foundational propositions as something immediate and unproved and proceed from this. The doctrine of science, on the other hand, must be critical in relation to the other sciences, since it substantiates their foundational propositions. But it must also be critical in relation to itself, i.e., substantiate its own foundational propositions; otherwise an infinite regress is inevitable. Here the image of a chain that does not hang helplessly but “circles” is outlined: Fichte with his doctrine of science paves the way to the dialectical method—the method of the self-substantiation of science.

Only the doctrine of science substantiates itself in Fichte. “Every possible science,” writes Fichte, “has a foundational proposition that cannot be proved in it but must be certain beforehand before it. Where, then, must this foundational proposition be proved? Undoubtedly in the science that must substantiate all possible sciences. In this respect the doctrine of science must do two things. First of all it must substantiate the possibility of foundational propositions in general; show how, to what extent, under what conditions and perhaps to what degree something can be certain; further, in particular, it must uncover the foundational propositions of all possible sciences that cannot be proved in them themselves.”³³

What, then, follows further in Fichte? It must be noted that he reasons very strictly and consistently, and it is precisely this consistency that leads him in the end to a result whose value repays all the costs associated with the ultimately subjectively-idealist substantiation of his entire doctrine of science.

Further Fichte states that “the doctrine of science itself is a science.”³⁴ And from this all the consequences connected with it follow. “It also,” he writes further, “must therefore have a foundational proposition that cannot be proved in it but must be presupposed as a condition of its possibility as a science. But this foundational proposition also cannot be proved in any other higher science; for otherwise this higher science would itself be the doctrine of science, and the science whose foundational proposition must still be proved would not be it. This foundational proposition of the doctrine of science, and through the doctrine of science of all sciences and all knowledge, is therefore absolutely incapable of proof, i.e., cannot be reduced to any higher proposition from relation to which its certainty would flow. Nevertheless it must give the ground of all certainty; it must therefore be certain and certain in itself for the sake of itself and through itself.”³⁵

This “in-itself-for-itself-through-itself” is by no means a Hegelian invention, as is sometimes represented, but a general formula for the solution of a definite task that was not even first posed by Hegel but by the very history of the development of philosophy and the development of the doctrine of method. The foundational proposition of the doctrine of science cannot be and at the same time must be certain—here is the contradiction that the doctrine of science must resolve; the doctrine of science therefore inevitably generates dialectics from itself historically and logically, passes over into dialectics, and becomes dialectics.

In individual sciences this contradiction can be “resolved” by the fact that they postulate and accept without proof their foundational propositions, as well as the systematic mode of their further development: each science itself does not substantiate its, as they are now called, deductive means. Only the doctrine of science can give sciences this systematic form of development. “But it,” Fichte reasons further, “cannot borrow this systematic form from any other science in relation to its definition, nor refer to its proof in another science in relation to its validity, for it itself must establish for all other sciences not only foundational propositions and through this their inner content but also the form and thereby the possibility of the connection of many propositions in them. It must therefore have this form in itself and substantiate it through itself.”³⁶

It is in this “in itself” and “through itself” that the principle of substantial wholeness and totality consists, as we have seen. And the form of this principle is A and not-A; substance is at the same time both cause and result, the self-existing contradiction, as Hegel would say. Criticism carried to its logical end by Fichte is Spinozism “the other way around.” Jacobi therefore with full right could assert that there exist only two consistent philosophical systems: criticism and dogmatism, i.e., Kantianism and Spinozism.

Here another new moment appears. The fact is that in solving the problem of the “beginning” we simultaneously solve the problem of the “end.” This is one and the same problem: if the “chain” of our cognitive movement is not closed, then we will not be able to attain not only its beginning by going along the path of adducing ever new and new grounds, but we cannot attain its end either by going along the path of deducing ever new and new consequences. In other words, the problem consists in whether we can in general have a guarantee that we have obtained all the consequences from the accepted foundational proposition and in what these guarantees may consist. The problem can also be formulated in this form: what is the guarantee that the concreteness that interests us is described completely. Fichte formulates this problem as the problem of completeness.

In general form the guarantee of the completeness of a certain system of propositions can only be that at the “end” we again come to the “beginning”: if we have returned to the beginning, then we simply have nowhere further to move. And this means that from the very beginning we take such a foundational proposition that is divided within itself and internally contradictory. In Fichte the course of reasoning is approximately analogous; from the problem of completeness he arrives at the necessity of recognizing contradiction in the foundation of a complete system. “Human knowledge,” he writes, “in general must be exhausted; this means that it must be unconditionally and necessarily determined what man can know not only at the present stage of his existence but at all possible and thinkable stages.”³⁷ Such claims usually frighten people. Therefore Fichte hastens to “calm” the reader whom the thought that everything has already been cognized and there is nothing more for him to do frightens.

“The proper tasks of the human spirit,” he writes in a note, “are infinite both in their number and in their volume; their solution would be possible only through perfect approximation to the infinite, which is impossible in itself, but they are such only because they are given as infinite. There exists an infinite multitude of radii of an infinite circle whose center is given; and as soon as the center is given, the entire infinite circle and its infinitely many radii are given. One finite point of the latter, it is true, lies in infinity, but the other lies in the center and this latter is common to all. The center is given, the direction of the lines is also given, for they must be straight lines; consequently all radii are given (individual radii from the infinite number of such are determined through the gradual development of our original limitedness as those that must be drawn, but they are not thereby given; they are given simultaneously with the center). Human knowledge is infinite in degrees, but in its quality it is completely determined by its laws and can be fully exhausted. Tasks are posed and must be exhausted, but they are not solved and cannot be solved.”³⁸

In other words, if we have before us an infinite series of truths, this by no means means that for this we must have an infinite alphabet. The point is the exhaustion of the laws of human cognition and the creation of a complete and finished system of the doctrine of science, and such a task not only can but must be posed if we consider cognition possible at all: we would have no guarantee that we are in a position to grasp any truth if we were not certain that we possess all the necessary and sufficient means for achieving any cognitive goal.

“This is possible,” Fichte develops his thought further, “only under the following conditions: first it must be shown that the established foundational proposition is exhausted, and then that no other foundational proposition is possible except the established one.

The foundational proposition is exhausted if a complete system is built upon it, i.e., if the foundational proposition necessarily leads to all the established propositions and all the established propositions necessarily lead back to it again. If in the whole system there is encountered no proposition that can be true if the foundational proposition is false, or false if the foundational proposition is true, this will be negative proof that no proposition has been superfluously taken into the system, for one that did not belong to the system could be true if the foundational proposition is false and false if the foundational proposition were true.”³⁹

Thereby, Fichte notes further, “it is proved that science in general is systematic, that all its parts are connected in one single foundational proposition. Science is a system; in other words, it is finished when no further proposition can be deduced: and this gives positive proof that there is no missing proposition in the system.”⁴⁰ A scientific system, if it wishes to be a genuine system, must therefore be a complete system. There cannot be a fragmentary system; otherwise it would be only a fragment of a system and not the system itself. Completeness turns out to be the most important property of a system, identical with being. The problem now rests only on criteria of completeness, and if they can be clearly indicated, then thereby we will fully define the concept of system.

“The question consists only in the following,” Fichte writes further on this score, “when and under what conditions can some further proposition be deduced, for it is clear that only the relative and negative sign—I do not see what can follow further—proves nothing. After me another may come who will see something where I saw nothing. We need a positive sign for proof that further absolutely and necessarily nothing can be deduced; and such a sign can only be that the foundational proposition itself from which we proceed is at the same time the last result. Then it would be clear that we could not go further without traversing anew the path we have already once traversed. In the subsequent establishment of science it will be seen that it really traverses this circle and leaves the investigator at that very point from which it set out with him, that it thus also gives a second positive proof in itself and through itself.”⁴¹

The last remark is very important: science can prove its completeness from the positive side—that there is no proposition not contained in the system—only “in itself and through itself.” But such a complete and integral system can only be one single system—the system of the Doctrine of Science itself. Why? Because only it is capable of “enduring” contradiction. “The doctrine of science,” Fichte remarks in this connection, “has therefore absolute wholeness. In it one leads to everything and everything to one. It is the only science that can be finished. Finishedness is therefore its distinctive sign. All other sciences are infinite and can never be finished; for they do not return back to their foundational proposition. The doctrine of science can prove this for all and give the ground for this.”⁴²

Why did Fichte think so? In order to answer this question one must clearly imagine the situation in science in which Fichte historically found himself when he created his Doctrine of Science. The fact is that any science at that time represented a chain of propositions that did not “circle” and did not close upon itself, where the result substantiates its beginning, but “hung,” one end of which pointed to its incompleteness and the other did not belong to it itself, because the foundational propositions of all sciences were substantiated in metaphysics.

And even sciences that were apparently finished and integral, such as Euclidean geometry and those approaching it in their mode of construction—classical mechanics and Aristotelian syllogistics—were built on certain foundational propositions that were not substantiated in these sciences themselves. At that time these sciences were the most developed and best known, and Fichte here repeats the error of almost all philosophy of modern times, which saw the form of science in general in the “geometrical” method, which is now usually called the deductive-axiomatic method.

This method is even today considered by many philosophers the ideal of the scientific method, and mathematics, in which this method is realized in its most complete expression, is considered the ideal of science. It is difficult to argue against this.

But such an understanding of the general form of science inevitably preserves the subordination characteristic of the old metaphysics and ontology: the beginnings and basic concepts of the sciences do not belong to the sciences themselves but to some science of sciences—metaphysics or ontology—which ties the beginnings of all sciences into one knot. The well-known pyramid results, the summit of which is formed by philosophy.

Science itself cannot substantiate itself. “Contenting themselves with the leavings of the old metaphysics,” wrote Engels, “natural scientists still continue to leave philosophy some appearance of life. Only when natural science and historical science have absorbed dialectics into themselves will all philosophical lumber—except for the pure doctrine of thinking—become superfluous and disappear into positive science.”⁴³ In other words, as soon as science is in a position to substantiate itself and its own foundational propositions, all metaphysics will become superfluous. Dialectics is therefore more radical in its negation of all metaphysics than contemporary positivism, which in this case boasts of its imaginary radicalism but in essence restores the same metaphysics, only “the other way around.”

Historically each individual science arrives at dialectics with its basic principle—the principle of contradiction A and not-A—by a long and difficult path. This has already been shown in part. By Fichte’s time no science had yet discovered this principle in its own foundation; but even when some science discovers it in its own foundation and in its bases, as happened, for example, with mathematics at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, it by no means immediately realizes it as its own immanent principle.

Such is the situation at the present time. Fichte would have liked to but could not admit dialectics beyond the bounds of the Doctrine of Science; contemporary philosophers of a positivist bent can but do not want to admit dialectics beyond the bounds of “philosophy,” which as a consequence acquires the character rather of a negative than of a positive ideal.

How difficult the path to dialectics is, can be seen precisely from the caution and in what limited form Fichte admits it, recognizing the possibility of contradiction only within the framework of the Doctrine of Science but by no means beyond its bounds. For Fichte it is clear that in the completeness and finishedness of the system we can be convinced only when we obtain as a consequence its own foundational proposition, when the circle closes. But he sees here only a circle and consequently only a formal contradiction and therefore understands it as merely an exception to the formal law prohibiting contradiction. “Here there is a circle,” he declares, “from which the human spirit can never emerge; and it will be entirely correct—definitely to recognize this circle so as not to fall into difficulty someday upon its unexpected discovery.”⁴⁴

In reality in Fichte’s further development of his Doctrine of Science there is no simple circle: the I that is posited at the beginning as the foundational proposition and the I that is obtained at the end as a result of mediation are different in content; the latter has become enriched and “condensed” within itself, turning the first into its own abstract moment and thereby becoming the ground of its own ground while at the same time being its consequence and the consequence of its development. This is not simply a circle, because the I at the end and the I at the beginning are only formally one and the same I; in essence they are two different and opposite I’s. Here there occurs not a formal but a material contradiction.

Formal and material (contentful) principles in human cognition were already clearly distinguished by Fichte’s predecessor I. Kant. Here is how he explains the difference between these principles. “Every proposition must have a ground—this is the logical (formal) principle of cognition, which does not stand alongside the principle of contradiction but is subordinate to it. Every thing must have its ground—this is the transcendental (material) principle, which no one has ever proved from the principle of contradiction (and in general from concepts alone without relation to sensuous intuition) and no one will prove.”⁴⁵

According to the idea of transcendentalism, every transcendental principle is at the same time a principle to which being is subordinate and a principle to which cognition of any being is subordinate. For example, the principle of causality is a principle of reality itself and a principle of thinking about any reality. Therefore transcendental logic is not a simple extension of formal logic—it is a qualitatively different logic, a logic that treats of transcendental principles or categories.

Transcendental (material, contentful) principles are higher than formal ones and therefore cannot be deduced from the latter. This is one of the most important propositions of Kant’s transcendental Logic that does honor to its creator. But Kant did not even attempt to show the subordinate and derivative character of formal principles in relation to material ones. The first attempt in history to do this belongs to Fichte, who developed the idea of transcendentalism further. In any case he was the first to fix that a system based on the contradiction A and not-A must “contradict materially”⁴⁶ a formal system based on the principle of formal identity A=A.

Here there finds confirmation that dialectical truth that every essential difference manifests itself in one way or another as opposition and contradiction. Is there such an opposition and consequently an essential difference between the formal and the material principle? In order to answer this question a certain inventiveness is needed, as, however, for any non-formal question.

Let us imagine such a case. Let us take an ordinary geometrical circle. Where is its beginning and where is its end? It has neither. One can answer in this way too. But one can also say that any of its points is at the same time both beginning and end, at one and the same time and in one and the same relation.

Let us now see what is the real ground of such a coincidence of opposites. It is the special form of the circle or, more simply, the circle itself. By formal ground this cannot be, but by real (material) ground it must be; after all, what we have considered is merely an implicit property of the circle and nothing more. It turns out that the formal principle can contradict the material one. Form can, and under definite conditions must, contradict content. What remains unconditional from the formal principle is only that it prohibits contradicting oneself. But do I contradict myself when I assert that any point of the circumference is at the same time its beginning and its end, when I assert that motion is contradictory, etc.?

The fact that the formal principle contradicts the real one was, properly speaking, discovered long ago. And the Eleatics essentially gave proof of this. In the analytic decomposition of motion a contradiction inevitably results, but nevertheless motion is real, and it itself is the real ground of its own implicit property: a body in motion is at a given moment in a given point and is not in it. And although these principles contradict each other, they are nevertheless both accepted and neither is discarded.

The dialectics of the formal and the material is in itself very complex, and one can and must speak about it in detail. Here, unfortunately, there is no possibility of unfolding it fully, and here there may remain unclear points. At least one of them may consist in the following. The material principle turns out to be more important than the formal one, and it is asserted by dialectics as such. It negates the formal principle in the process of its historical and logical assertion. The question arises why, after the insufficiency of the formal principle is discovered, it nevertheless is preserved as a universal logical principle. Sometimes on this basis an attempt is made to ascribe to dialectics the completely absurd idea that it allegedly does not recognize the laws of formal logic.

The laws of formal logic cannot be negated just as the rules of Russian grammar cannot be negated if one wants to be understood by one’s compatriots at all. But this is by no means sufficient in order to communicate truth to people, because for this one must have it. However, neither formal logic nor grammar decides the question of the truth of our concepts and representations. Kant already clearly realized that any nonsense can be expressed in non-contradictory form and therefore “general logic” is insufficient and must be supplemented by another logic, which Kant called transcendental. Logical form is to a certain degree neutral in relation to truth and falsehood, as is grammar: one can very coherently and even observing all the canons of elegant literature say a lot of things, but... this does not free us from the necessity of observing the same rules if we want to express some serious and true things.

The formal principle is negated by the material principle, and thereby it is turned into a subordinate principle, but at the same time it also discovers its genuine logical meaning. The historical negation of this principle, which manifested itself most clearly in Hegel’s dialectics, is merely a reflection of the logic of thinking in the history of its theoretical mastery; here we are dealing with one of the forms of manifestation of the unity (identity) of the logical and the historical, about which special discussion occurs in the section on historism. Therefore it is absurd to ascribe to Hegel what has no relation to him—he was fulfilling in this case a definite historical mission and nothing more.

Fichte’s dialectics still suffers from a quite definite formalism, which Hegel noted and for which he criticized him. But despite all its formalism, Fichte nevertheless understood that a system based on a principle contradicting the formal principle can contradict it only materially, and therefore it itself, in contrast to the formal system, bears a material character and reveals the material meaning of the formal system.

We have already seen that every contentfully complete system contains within itself its own negation. If we recognize as the own constitutive moment of every complete system the principle or foundational proposition A and not-A, then the negation of this system will be first of all the negation of its principle, i.e., the principle opposite to the first, A=A. Can the latter be a non-formal, material principle? No, it cannot, because about any content and any “matter” one can say that it is equal to itself. The concrete form of this matter itself is here completely indifferent in relation to the form of the assertion A=A. The principle A and not-A, being the negation of the principle of abstract identity A=A, is at the same time the negation of the formalism connected with it—it is always connected with a definite content and a definite concrete form, as with the concrete form of the circle in the example given above. Therefore when one speaks of formal contradiction one can have in mind only that this is a contradiction only in form but not in essence and not in content, that it is not a genuine contradiction. When there is only the assertion of A and its negation not-A, this means that we have only the form of contradiction and not the contradiction itself. In order to become a genuine contradiction this form must be mediated by concrete content: A through the development of its own content must change its form into not-A; it must by the force of its own content pass over into its own opposite.

From this it should be understandable that every system having as its foundational proposition the principle A and not-A, although in this case only the form of the principle and not the principle itself is indicated, can only be a material or contentful system and not a formal one. And every system based on the formal principle of abstract identity A=A can only be a formal system. The first is full, completely and exhaustively describes systemic reality; the second can be full only relatively: completely it can describe only the formal conditions of cognition but not the logic of cognition itself, similar to the way, in Hegel’s words, “formal deduction is the deduction of formal rules and laws of inference but is not inference itself.”⁴⁷

From this flows a very important consequence. Since a formal system can be filled with any content, any identification of systematicity in general with formal systematicity—and this is precisely what happens with the founders of the so-called systems movement A.A. Bogdanov and L. von Bertalanffy—inevitably leads to systemic relativism and a peculiar systemic agnosticism, which finds one of its most vivid manifestations in the so-called principle of tolerance advanced in its time by one of the apostles of contemporary positivism, R. Carnap. According to this principle, the choice of “language” with the help of which reality is described is a matter of the arbitrariness of the one who describes this reality. The question of the relation of the given “language” to reality cannot be formulated in this same “language,” and therefore within the given system of rules defining the given “language” it has no meaning. Reality itself thereby inevitably turns from objective reality existing independently of that “language” in which we describe it into a certain “epistemological postulate” that is admitted only because we must after all cognize something.

Thus, there is system and system. There is a formal system and there is a material or contentful system. And in this consists one of the most cardinal points of the dialectical-materialist doctrine of systems and systematicity. Every complete contentful system always has as its foundation and foundational proposition one or another form of contradiction. And one can escape from this contradiction only at the price of the incompleteness of the system.

What, then, do formal and contentful systematicity represent in their interrelation with real science? Fichte considered that only the Doctrine of Science substantiates its own presuppositions, while other sciences cannot do this: their presuppositions are substantiated only in the Doctrine of Science. Therefore only in the Doctrine of Science is contradiction admissible, while in the other sciences it is in no way admissible. And it is precisely for this reason that only the Doctrine of Science can be an organic system, while the remaining sciences can only be formal systems. This prejudice passed in part also to Hegel, who considered natural science, for example, the sphere of purely rational and empirical cognition of nature. In other words, no science by itself can be a full science; it receives its deepest foundations in the philosophy of nature or, as Kant called this sphere of investigations, in the “metaphysical principles of natural science.” This is a metaphysical appendage from which even the most consistent critic of all previous metaphysics, Hegel, was unable finally to free himself.

Only dialectics represents an organic system, so Hegel considered. But the point is not that he did not recognize any manifestations of organicity in the sphere of nature but that where they do occur, Hegel considered, we are dealing with manifestations of “reason” in nature, and empirical natural science with its rational metaphysical method has nothing to do there; here logic of rational comprehension—dialectics—must come into play, and the sphere of application of dialectics to natural phenomena must, according to Hegel, constitute the subject matter of the philosophy of nature. Only dialectical philosophy imparts wholeness and completeness to any other science, but... beyond the bounds of this science itself. Here are the epistemological sources both of Schelling’s and Hegel’s philosophy of nature.

In such a treatment of the question only that is correct which, as has already been said, historically was indeed the case, that dialectics as a mode of thinking and as a method was first developed within philosophy, while natural science as a whole still used the “metaphysical” method, whence, as Engels noted, it was transferred by Bacon and Locke into philosophy.⁴⁸ This created the illusion that natural science is characterized only by this mode of thinking, while the other, dialectical one, can come into it only together with philosophy. This constitutes the historical justification of the philosophy of nature in its Schellingian and Hegelian form. But it is justified only up to the moment when in natural science there objectively arises a demand for the dialectical mode of thinking.

“To a dialectical understanding of nature,” wrote Engels, “one can arrive by being compelled to it by the accumulating facts of natural science; but it can be more easily attained if one approaches the dialectical character of these facts with an understanding of the laws of dialectical thinking.”⁴⁹ Dialectical logic gives a method for the dialectical understanding of nature—herein lies the true interrelation of dialectics and natural science, and not only natural science but any other science. And therefore when natural science, as Engels writes, “learns to assimilate the results attained by the development of philosophy over two and a half thousand years, it will precisely thanks to this free itself, on the one hand, from any special philosophy of nature standing outside it and above it and, on the other, from its own inherited from English empiricism limited mode of thinking.”⁵⁰

Thus, dialectics, in contrast to previous metaphysics and previous philosophy of nature, gives not foundational propositions for the systematic development of other sciences and not grounds but a method of theoretical thinking leading to the construction of an integral and systematic picture of reality. Each science must itself find its own grounds; it cannot receive them ready-made, but at the same time it must necessarily use the dialectical method, because only dialectics gives a method for the solution of genuine contradictions, while the grounds of any science in their essence are always contradictory. Therefore dialectics gives a method for the construction of organic systems, but it does not simultaneously solve all problems connected with the construction of any organic system.

Such is the dialectics of method and system. The dialectical method does not exist separately from the system of dialectical logic, and its exposition, as Hegel already noted, “in the proper sense belongs to logic or, more correctly, is logic itself. For method is nothing other than the whole edifice erected in its pure essentiality.”⁵¹

As for formal systematicity, the following must be said with respect to it. Since every organic system has contradiction as its foundation, no systemic reality can be exhausted in a system of formal definitions.

🔬 I. THOUGHT AS A PROPERTY OF MATTER — NOT SOME GHOST IN THE MACHINE

The relationship between thought and brain is identical to the relationship between any property and the matter it belongs to — not some mystical soul-substance hovering above gray matter

Asking whether thought is "ideal or material" is a categorically false question — like asking whether the color of gold is gold

The categories "material" and "ideal" exist to express thought's relationship to the external world it reflects, NOT to express the relationship between an object and its own properties

Vulgar materialism's fatal error: identifying thought with other properties of matter — treating neurons firing like billiard balls colliding — missing thought's qualitatively unique specificity

Dialectical materialism's monist principle: only matter exists, in diverse forms and classes, endowed with diverse properties — thought is one such property, but a specially organized one

🧬 The brain's property of thought differs from metabolism, heredity, and chemical exchange the same way an eagle differs from a rock — same universe, radically different organizational level

The singular qualitative peculiarity of thought: its capacity to reproduce external reality through conceptual images — this is what distinguishes it from every other property of matter

Dividing properties into "ideal" and "material" leads inevitably to dualism — that philosophical zombie apocalypse where mind and body become permanent strangers

🌐 II. THE SOCIAL NATURE OF THOUGHT — BECAUSE NO ONE THINKS ALONE

Thought depends on the brain, yes — but the brain itself is mediated by social practice

Human biological nature, including the brain and sensory organs, has been transformed by the action of social practice across millennia

Marx in The German Ideology (t. 3, p. 24): consciousness was initially "directly interwoven with the material activity and material relations of men, the language of real life"

Spiritual production eventually separates from material production — consciousness can "emancipate itself from the world" and become pure theory, theology, philosophy, morality

But this independence is relative, not absolute — thought's content remains the objective world

🎯 Thought is goal-directed — humans set objectives with objective value, originating in practical necessities — verifying results materialistically

The material basis of the ideal: thought processes operate through words and propositions — Marx's formulation: "On the «spirit» weighs from the beginning the curse of being «burdened» with matter, which appears in the form of agitated layers of air, sounds, in a word — language"

🗣️ Ideal images of objects acquire material-sensory form in language — without this, they remain inaccessible to other humans and even to the thinking subject itself

🤖 III. "THINKING MACHINES" — THE MOST GLORIFIED CATEGORY ERROR IN HISTORY

The terms "mechanical thought" and "thinking machine" are frankly unfortunate — imported from cybernetics out of terminological desperation

Pierre Latil (Thinking by Machine, London, 1956, p. 354): it's tempting to use the word "thought" for electronic calculators — but the machine does not think — there is no such phenomenon as mechanical thought

The machine cannot create an ideal image of reality through abstraction — this is a function of the human brain alone — without this, there is no thought in even its simplest form

Engels already identified this: "The calculating understanding of a calculating machine! Ridiculous confusion of mathematical operations... with purely logical operations" (Anti-Dühring, pp. 333-334)

🚜 The excavator helps man move earth; the telescope helps him observe celestial bodies — electronic calculators help him think — none of these are the activities themselves

What machines do:

Operate with sensory signs, not ideal images

Copy the standard process of deduction — the formalized, schematized skeleton of reasoning — not reasoning itself

Mechanize processes based on the laws of formal logic, where connected/disconnected electrical networks correspond to true/false propositions

The machine operates with signs according to formal logic's laws — the human then interprets those signs — the meaning exists in the human, not the device

📈 The more perfect thought becomes, the more complex the machines it creates — new scientific theories generate new machines — limiting mechanical progress means limiting human social practice itself

Machines will increasingly handle more functions performed during thinking — leaving humans with the irreplaceable function: reflecting reality through abstractions

🔭 IV. EMPIRICAL VS. THEORETICAL — THE TWO STAGES EVERYONE CONFUSES

The great historical mistake: treating sensory and rational as two independent, mutually exclusive phases of knowledge

Empiricism absolutized sensation; rationalism absolutized intellect — both had partial truth inflated into dogma

Sensory and rational are not two phases but two factors — neither exists without the other at any level of cognition

👁️ Even simple observation involves thinking — translating results into the language of ideas — it is impossible to conceive human knowledge without language

Lenin's formulation: the movement goes "from living contemplation to abstract thought, and from this to practice" — but living contemplation already contains a rational factor

The correct distinction: empirical vs. theoretical — not sensory vs. rational

These are autonomous categories expressing the logical development of knowledge from one level to a higher one

Soviet works wrongly identify empirical=sensory, theoretical=rational — this is an error

🔬 Empirical knowledge: sensory in content, rational in form — thought plays a limited role, mainly expressing what the senses deliver

🧮 Theoretical knowledge: thought becomes a means of obtaining new content — surpassing what is directly accessible to sensation, perception, and representation

Lenin: "Representation cannot encompass movement in its entirety; for example, it cannot grasp movement at a speed of 300,000 km per second, but thought grasps it and must grasp it" (Works, t. 38, p. 220)

⬆️ V. FROM ABSTRACT TO CONCRETE — HEGEL'S GREAT DISCOVERY AND MARX'S GREATER CORRECTION

The metaphysical error: opposing thought to both abstract and concrete sensory experience — treating theoretical knowledge as necessarily abstract, unilateral, impoverished

Hegel's genuine advance: demonstrating that abstraction is not vacuous if it is rational — the concept is not an empty generalization but a totality of multiple determinations

Hegel: "When speaking of concepts, general abstract traits usually come to mind... but the concept, in its development, passes from the abstract to the concrete"

The concept in its becoming reaches a certain level — has as its content an effective property of reality — it separates from concrete-sensory, delimiting its definitions

🔴 Hegel's fatal idealism: the concrete concept engenders itself at the margins of contemplation and representation — Hegel undervalued the passage from sensory-concrete to abstract — considered it irrelevant to the concept's truth

Marx's materialist rectification: the method of ascending from abstract to concrete is not a means of creating the concrete — it is a means of assimilating what already exists objectively — reproducing it spiritually, not generating it

Marx in Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (Gospolitizdat, 1963, p. 213): "The concrete is concrete because it unites numerous determinations and constitutes the unity of the multiple. Hence it appears in thought as a process of unification..."

📚 The classical model of ascension from abstract to concrete: Capital by C. Marx — applicable not only in political economy but in any science

This law — sensory-concrete → abstract → concrete in thought — constitutes the basic principle of dialectical logic, to which all other laws of thought's dynamic are ultimately subordinated

✅ VI. OBJECTIVE TRUTH — THE ONLY KIND THAT EXISTS

Aristotle's classical definition: truth is the correspondence of judgment with reality — containing a materialist tendency but insufficiently determined

Pragmatism (James): truths are "processes of verification" — thoughts have "force" as long as nobody contradicts them, like banknotes no one refuses — this is philosophy as financial metaphor, which is about as deep as it sounds

Semantic idealism (Schlick, Gesammelte Aufsätze, Wien, 1938, p. 340): the value of a judgment rests on establishing rules for its use — verification procedures constitute meaning — this substitutes the subjective for the objective

Conventionalism: truth is agreement — today we agree space is flat, tomorrow we'll agree it curves — truth as social contract, which collapses the moment contracts are inconvenient

🎯 The Marxist concept of objective truth (Lenin, Materialism and Empirio-criticism, p. 126): "Is there objective truth, i.e., can there be in human representations a content that does not depend on the subject, that does not depend on man or humanity?" — Yes. Unequivocally.

Formal vs. material truth (Kant's division): Kant recognized only formal truth — correspondence of a judgment with other judgments — denied material truth as impossible, without criterion — dialectical materialism recognizes only ONE truth: the objective

Formal correctness is not autonomous — it is a necessary but insufficient condition — a means toward objective truth, not an alternative to it

🌍 The content of a true judgment does not depend on the mode of its demonstration — "The Earth is round" was true before Magellan and before GPS

⚖️ VII. ABSOLUTE AND RELATIVE TRUTH — WHERE DOGMATISTS AND RELATIVISTS BOTH FAIL

Absolute truth and relative truth are two forms of objective truth expressing different degrees of knowledge of the objective world — not opposites but aspects of a single process

🐌 Dogmatists: truth is a finished, static result — eternal and unchanging — achieved outside the dynamic of thought — this is how people defended geocentrism with theological passion

⚡ Relativists (Ayer, Russell, Frank, Popper): scientific laws are "hypotheses, more or less verisimilar" — from which "practical deductions" may be made — the most fantastic hypothesis with practical utility beats an irreproachable theory with no immediate results — truth doesn't matter, success does — this is pragmatism with a PhD

C. Popper (British Philosophy in the Mid-Century, London, 1957, p. 159): "A theory that cannot be refuted by any conceivable fact is not scientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue but a defect" — relativism of the superior class, speculating on science's peculiarities

🔄 Relativism is dialectical in form, metaphysical in essence — it separates elements of thought, absolutizes the aspect of relativity, divorces relative knowledge from its objective content

Lenin (Works, t. 38, p. 358): "The difference between subjectivism and dialectics consists, among other things, in that in dialectics the difference between the relative and the absolute is also relative. For objective dialectics, in the relative there is the absolute. For subjectivism and sophistry, the relative is only relative and excludes the absolute"

Lenin on the cumulative nature of absolute truth: "Human thought is by nature capable of giving us, and does give us, absolute truth which is made up of the sum of relative truths. Each step in the development of science adds new grains to this sum" (Materialism and Empirio-criticism, p. 141)

🔬 VIII. PRACTICE AS CRITERION — WHY THEORY ALONE IS ALWAYS INSUFFICIENT

🏗️ Practice's characteristics:

Material character — sensory-concrete, not logical — its results are accessible to empirical contemplation

Specifically human form of activity — the human appears not as individual but as member of society

Congruent, goal-directed activity

Practice is simultaneously: base of thought, determinant of its objective, and criterion of its truth

Practice has both merits that cognition alone lacks:

The merit of living contemplation (it is material-sensory activity)

The positive facets of abstract thought (it possesses universal character, in it concepts are realized)

🧪 The scientific experiment — properly understood: not an absolute oracle but a relative, limited form of practice — experiments derive from the level reached by technique and science — many historical hypotheses were confirmed by the experiments available, which were themselves limited

The experiment always tests the singular to demonstrate the universal — extrapolation across object types requires theoretical frameworks (the theory of similarity in engineering)

Lenin (Materialism and Empirio-criticism, p. 150): "The criterion of practice can never, in essence, fully confirm or refute any human representation whatsoever" — therefore practice as criterion is simultaneously absolute and relative

⚠️ Practice is NOT a stage or element within cognition — it is activity different from cognition — including it within knowledge as a stage is an error — Marxism includes practice not in knowledge but in the theory of knowledge

⚡ IX. CONTRADICTIONS IN THOUGHT — THE ONLY HONEST WAY TO THINK

The false dichotomy: is thought contradictory or non-contradictory? — Both camps miss the point entirely

The law of formal logic's non-contradiction: in a given system of judgments forming a reasoning, cannot simultaneously be true judgment A and the judgment contradicting it (not-A) — this is not metaphysical — it is as valid as the laws of mechanics or chemistry

But this law refers only to logical contradictions — not to the dialectical contradictions objectively present in reality

Lenin: "Neither in economic nor in political analysis must there be «logical contradiction»" (Works, t. 32, p. 29) — formal logic's domain is clear and legitimate within that domain

🌊 Dialectical contradictions are the condition of existence of thought and its forms — without them, no form of thought is possible

The internal contradiction of thought's forms constitutes their primordial condition of existence

The light example: "light has corpuscular nature" AND "light has wave nature" AND "light is simultaneously wave and corpuscle" — all three judgments true — formal logic doesn't prohibit the third — it only prohibits affirming and the third and its negation in the same reasoning

🏗️ The development of concepts proceeds through contradiction:

New facts contradict existing concepts → either concepts are refined or replaced

In physics: classical mechanical concepts (isolated object, stable individual) failed when confronting nuclear phenomena → new concepts were born

Academician Vavílov: "Mechanism is educated in us by daily experience... it requires great concentration and internal struggle against ingrained habits to examine calmly facts and recognize the actual complex dialectical nature of things"

Science must eliminate only those contradictions that impede thought's advance toward objective truth — not all contradictions — eliminating all contradictions would eliminate thought itself

📐 X. THE JUDGMENT — CELL OF ALL THOUGHT

The dialectical hierarchy of thought's forms: judgment → concept → reasoning → scientific theory

The judgment is the most simple and important form of abstraction — the distinctive mark of the entire thinking process — present everywhere: in concepts, in reasonings, in theories

All knowledge, when it exists in reality for another human, has the form of a judgment or system of judgments

Aristotle's essentials on judgment: truth and error exist only where there is affirmation or negation — a judgment is true if it unites what is united in reality and separates what is separated — containing a fundamentally materialist tendency that idealist logicians spent centuries trying to obscure

🎭 Kant's formalist corruption: judgments are not connections with objective reality but unions of representations in consciousness through "pure" aprioristic categories — the objective world drops out entirely

Semantic idealism (Serrus): the judgment is formed by the predicate alone — thought is not directed at or reflecting any objectively existing things — stripping the judgment of its objective determination, isolating it from the external world

Russell's "aRb" formula: presenting two imagined objects and a thought relation between them — claiming the relation is the only reality — creating objects through judgment rather than recognizing pre-existing ones

The judgment's subject-predicate-copula structure reflects the dialectic of singular-universal relations in the objective world — Hegel was right about this structure even if his idealist interpretation inverted everything

Engels on the copula: "That identity carries in itself difference, expressed in every proposition, in which the predicate is necessarily different from the subject..." (Dialectics of Nature, p. 181)

📊 XI. ENGELS' CLASSIFICATION OF JUDGMENTS — THE ONLY ONE THAT MATTERS FOR KNOWLEDGE

Traditional classification (Aristotle-Kant): based on formal characteristics of subject, copula, predicate — useful for reasoning theory, inadequate for understanding knowledge's development

Engels' classification: based on the movement from singular to universal — expressing the actual trajectory of scientific knowledge

🔹 Judgment of the singular: "Friction generates heat" — establishes a fact

🔸 Judgment of the particular: "Mechanical movement can transform, under certain conditions, into heat" — one particular form of movement becomes another

🔶 Judgment of the universal: "Every form of movement of matter is capable of converting, under certain conditions, into any other form" — the universal law

The crucial difference from traditional "singular-particular-universal": Engels' categories differ not by formal quantity of the subject (all, some, one) but by the content's depth — the degree of penetration into essence

Judgments of singular, particular, universal acquire their quality only in relation to each other — not in isolation — unlike formal logic's singular/particular/universal which are self-standing

📜 The historical correspondence: men first knew friction produces heat → then discovered all mechanical movement converts to heat → finally grasped the law of conservation and transformation of energy — logic reflects history

🏛️ XII. THE CONCEPT — REFLECTION OF THE UNIVERSAL, NOT EMPTY ABSTRACTION

The concept is not the starting point of knowledge but its result — the product of a long process — the concentrated expression of already achieved knowledge

Against idealism: concepts are objective in their content — even the most abstract have analogies, prototypes in the objective world

🔢 Against conventionalism about mathematical concepts: Engels demonstrated in Anti-Dühring that number concepts reflect quantitative relations and spatial forms of objective world objects — not arbitrary symbols or pure intuitions

Lobachevski: "Concepts, for example geometric ones, are an artificial product of our mind, taken from the properties of movement..."

The concept reflects the universal — but this does not exhaust its essence — it reflects the universal in relation to the singular — without this connection, no concept

⚠️ The idealist trap: the relative independence of the universal in the concept — its "own life and dynamic" — is converted by idealism into absolute independence — divorcing concept from singular, thought from world

Lenin (Works, t. 38, p. 370): "The splitting of human knowledge and the possibility of idealism (=religion) is already present in the first elementary abstraction «house» in general, and individual houses..."

Kolmogórov (academician): "The development of modern mathematics brings it closer to reality, allows it to embrace a greater diversity of real phenomena and study them with less degree of schematization than classical mathematics could" — abstraction deepens contact with reality, it does not sever it

📖 XIII. THE DEFINITION — WHERE CONCEPT BECOMES EXPLICIT

Spinoza: "For a definition to be called perfect, it must express the inner essence of things and not permit taking any property of the thing for it" — the standard all subsequent idealism tried to undercut

Hobbes' nominalist reduction: definition = explanation of the name — a retreat from essence to convention

Mill: "Definition is only a proposition of identification; it tells us only the habitual use of the word" — stripping definitions of cognitive value entirely

The Kantian division of judgments into analytic/synthetic gave spurious "rigor" to the idea that some truths are empty (analytic=tautological) and others are uncertain (synthetic=empirical) — neopositivists today conserve this division while denying objective content to both

Trendelenburg's correct criticism: whether "weight" is an analytic or synthetic predicate of "body" depends on whether you're a physicist or a mathematician — "A subjective determination cannot serve as objective ground for classifying judgments"

Karinski's materialist contribution: "this plant exists," "the molecule of water consists of two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen," "Moscow is east of Minsk" — three classes based on what is actually being said about the object — superior to Kant but still limited by metaphysical approach

The dialectical requirement for definitions: limited, historically conditioned — no definition can exhaust the object

Engels: "Definitions are of no value to science because they are always insufficient. The only adequate definition is the development of the thing itself"

Lenin: definitions are "not sufficient, since from them must be deduced extremely essential features of the phenomenon being defined" (Works, t. 22, p. 253)

🔄 XIV. THE HISTORICAL AND THE LOGICAL — THEY ARE THE SAME THING SEEN DIFFERENTLY

The historical = the trajectory of changes the object undergoes, the stages of its appearance and development — the object of thought; its reflection is thought's content

The logical = the historical in theoretical form — reproducing the essence of the object and the history of its development in a system of abstractions — history purged of accidental zig-zags

Engels (Selected Works, t. 1, Ediciones en Lenguas Extranjeras, Moscow, p. 385): "Where this history begins, so must the course of thought begin... a corrected reflection, but corrected according to laws furnished by the actual historical process itself"

🔑 The investigator's dilemma: understanding an object requires knowing its history — but studying the history requires knowing the object's essence — dialectical materialism breaks this circle

Start with the most mature form of the object — essential aspects are more developed there, less obscured by accidents

These initial definitions are abstract but necessary — they serve as guiding thread in investigating historical evolution

The theory of the object provides the key to studying its history; the investigation of history enriches, corrects, and develops the theory — thought spirals: theory → history → richer theory → richer history — never a simple circle but the law of negation of negation

C. Marx's method in Capital: the logical succession of value forms — simple→deployed→universal→monetary — corresponds both to thought's movement from simple to complex and to real historical changes in value forms