It may not be amiss here to say a few words to the kind reader and the
unkind critic in regard to the personal relation of the author to the
present work. The first objection which I anticipate will be aimed at my
lack of scientific learning which is shown indirectly rather, between
the lines, than in the work itself. "How dare you," I ask myself, "come
before the public with your statements on a subject, which has been
treated by such heroes of science as Aristotle, Kant, Fichte, Hegel,
etc., without being thoroughly familiar with all the works of your
famous predecessors?"
At best, will you not merely repeat what has long since been
accomplished?
In reply, I wish to say that the seeds sown by philosophy in the soil of
science have long since blossomed and borne fruit. The product of
history develops historically, grows and passes away, in order to live
eternally in another form. The original deed, the original work, is
fertile only in the contact with the conditions and relations of the
time in which it is born. But it finally becomes an empty shell, when it
has yielded its kernel to history. Whatever of a positive nature was
produced by the science of the past, lives no longer in the words of
the author, but has become more than spirit, has become flesh and blood
in present science. In order, e. g., to know the products of physics and
produce something new in its field, it is not necessary to first study
the history of this science, nor derive the hitherto discovered laws
from their fundamental source. On the contrary, historical research
might only be an obstacle to the solution of a definite physical
problem, for concentrated strength will naturally accomplish more than
divided strength. In this sense, I consider my lack of other knowledge
an advantage, because I am thus enabled to devote myself so much more
intensely to my special object. I have striven hard to study this object
and to learn everything which is known about it in my time. The history
of philosophy has in a certain sense been repeated in the development of
my individuality, since I speculated from my earliest youth on the means
of satisfying my longing for a consistent and systematic conception of
the world, and I believe I have finally found this satisfaction in the
inductive understanding of the human faculty of thought.
Note that it is not the faculty of thought in its various
manifestations, not the different forms of it, but its general form, its
general nature, that satisfied me and that I propose to discuss. My
object is then very plain and circumscribed, indeed it is so simple,
that I had difficulties in showing its nature from different points of
view and was compelled to resort to numerous repetitions. At the same
time, the question concerning the nature of the mind is a popular one,
which is not limited to professional philosophy, but concerns all
sciences. And whatever the history of science has contributed towards
the solution of this question, must be generally alive in the
scientific conceptions of the present. I could well be satisfied with
this source.
I may, then, confess in spite of my authorship, that I am not a
professor of philosophy, but a mechanic by profession. If any one should
feel justified in telling me: "Shoemaker, stick to your last!" I would
reply to him with Karl Marx: "Your non plus ultra professional wisdom
became enormously foolish from the moment when the watchmaker Watt
invented the steam engine, the barber Arkwright the loom, the jeweler
Fulton the steamship." Without classing myself among these great men, I
can strive to emulate them. Besides, the nature of my object is
especially pertinent to the class, a member of which I have the
pleasure, if not the honor, of being.
I treat in this work of the faculty of thought as the organ of the
general. The oppressed fourth estate, the working class, is the true
exponent of this organ, the ruling classes being prevented by their
special class interests from recognizing the demands of general reason.
Our first consideration is, of course, the relation of our object to
human conditions. However, so long as conditions are not equalized for
men in general, but vitiated by class interests, our view of things is
influenced by these class limitations. A truly objective understanding
requires a subjective theoretical freedom. Before Copernicus saw the
Earth was moving and the Sun stationary, he had to place himself outside
of his terrestrial standpoint. The faculty of thought, having all
relations for its object, must abstract from all of them in order to
grasp its own real nature. Since we can understand things only by means
of thought, we must abstract from everything in order to understand
thought in general. This task was too difficult, so long as man was
bound to some limited class standpoint. Not until historical development
has proceeded to the point of striving at dissolution of the last
society based on a ruling and a serving class, can prejudices be
overcome to the extent of enabling the faculty of understanding to grasp
the nature of human brain activity in the abstract. It is only a
historical movement aiming at the direct and general liberty of the
masses, the new era of the fourth estate based on much misunderstood
premises, which can dispense with the spirit cult sufficiently to be
enabled to expose the real author of every spook, the "pure" mind. The
man of the fourth estate represents at last the "pure" man. His
interests are no longer mere class interests, but mass interests,
interests of humanity. This indicates that we are now approaching the
end of a development in which the interests of the mass were dependent
on the interests of a ruling class and in which humanity made progress
not so much in spite of as by means of continuous oppression by Jewish
patriarchs, Asiatic conquerors, antique slaveholders, feudal barons,
guildmasters, modern capitalists and even capitalist Caesars. The class
conditions of the past were inevitable in the general development. Now
this development has arrived at a point where the mass becomes conscious
of itself. Man has hitherto developed by class antagonism. By this means
he has now arrived at the point where he wants to develop himself
consciously. Class antagonisms were _phenomena_ of humanity. The working
class strives to abolish class antagonism in order that humanity itself
may be a _truth_.
Just as the Reformation was conditioned on the actual environment of the
sixteenth century, so, like the discovery of the electric telegraph, the
research of the theory of human understanding is based on the actual
conditions of the nineteenth century. To this extent the contents of
this little work are not an individual, but a historical product. In
writing it, I feel myself, if I may use this mystic phrase, as a mere
organ of the idea. Only the form of presenting the subject is mine, and
I beg the kind reader to judge it leniently. I ask that the reader may
direct his or her silent or loud objections, not against the form, but
against the substance of my remarks, not to cling to the letter, but to
understand the spirit of my words.
If I should not succeed in developing the idea, and if my voice should
thus be drowned in the hubbub of our overstocked book market, I am
nevertheless certain that the cause itself will find a more talented
champion.
JOSEPH DIETZGEN, _Tanner_.
SIEGBURG, May 15, 1869.