PHILOSOPHY
_Apriorism._
Philosophy is, according to Herr Duehring, the development of the
highest forms of consciousness of the world and life, and embraces, in
a wider sense, the principles of all knowledge and volition. Wherever
a series of perceptions, or motives or a group of forms of life
becomes a matter of consideration in the human mind the principles
which underly these forms, of necessity, become an object of
philosophy. These principles are single, or, up to the present, have
been considered as single ingredients out of which are composed the
complexities of knowledge and volition. Like the chemical composition
of material bodies, the entire universe may be also resolved into
fundamental forms and elements. These elementary constituents and
principles serve, when once discovered, not only for the known
tangible world but for that also, which is unknown and inaccessible.
Philosophical principles therefore constitute the last complement
required by the sciences in order that they may become a uniform
system by means of which nature and human life are explained. In
addition to the examination of the fundamental forms of all existence,
philosophy has only two particular objects of investigation, Nature
and Humanity. Hence our material may be classified into three main
groups,--a general scheme of the universe, the teaching of the
principles of nature and finally the principles which regulate
Humanity. This arrangement at the same time comprises an inner
logical order, for the formal principles which are true for all
existence take precedence, and the concrete realms in which these
principles display themselves follow in the gradation of their
successive arrangements. So far, this is Herr Duehring's conception of
things given almost in his very words.
He is therefore engaged with principles, formal conceptions, which are
subjective and not derived from the knowledge of external phenomena,
but which are applied to Nature and Humanity, as the principles
according to which Nature and Humanity must regulate themselves. But
how are these subjective principles derived? From thought itself? No,
for Herr Duehring himself says: the purely ideal realm is limited to
logical arrangements and mathematical conceptions (which latter as we
shall later see is false). Logical arrangements can only be referred
to forms of thought, but we are engaged here only with forms of
existence, the external world, and these forms can never be created by
thought nor derived from it but only from the external world. Hereupon
the entire matter undergoes a change. We see that principles are not
the starting point of investigation but the conclusion of it, they are
not to be applied to nature and history but are derived from them.
Nature and Humanity are not steered by principles, but principles are,
on the other hand, only correct so far as they correspond with nature
and history. That is just the materialistic conception of the matter,
and the opposite, that of Herr Duehring is the idealistic conception,
it turns things upside down and constructs a real world out of the
world of thought, arrangements, plans and categories existing from
everlasting before the world, just like Hegelianism.
As a matter of fact, we prefer Hegel's "Encyclopedia," with all its
fever phantoms, to the "final truths of the last instance" of Herr
Duehring. In the first place, according to Herr Duehring we have the
general scheme of the universe which by Hegel is called "logic." Then
according to both of them we have the application of this scheme to
nature by means of the logical categories, the philosophy of nature,
and finally their application to Humanity, by what Hegel calls "the
Philosophy of the Spirit." "The inner logical arrangement" of
Duehring's scheme brings us therefore logically back to Hegel's
"Encyclopedia" from which it is taken with a fidelity which would move
that Wandering Jew of the Hegelian school, Professor Michelet of
Berlin, to tears.
Such a result follows if one takes it for granted that
"consciousness," "thought," is something which has existed from the
beginning in contradistinction to nature. It would then be of the
greatest importance to bring consciousness and Nature, thought and
existence, into harmony, to harmonise the laws of thought and the laws
of Nature. But one enquires further what are thought and consciousness
and whence do they originate. It is consequently discovered that they
are products of the brain of man, and that Humanity is itself a
product of nature which has developed in and along with its
environment; wherefore it becomes self-apparent that the products of
the brain of man being themselves, in the last instance, natural
products, do not contradict all the rest of Nature but correspond with
it.
But Herr Duehring cannot allow so simple a treatment of the subject.
He thinks not only in the name of Humanity which would be quite a
large affair, but in the name of the conscious and thinking beings of
the whole universe. Indeed, it would be "a degradation of the
foundation concepts of knowledge and consciousness if one should wish
to exclude or even to throw suspicion upon their sovereign value and
undoubted claims to truth by means of the epithet 'human.'" In order
that there may be no suspicion that upon some heavenly body or other
twice two may make five, Herr Duehring does not venture to call
thought a human attribute, and therefore he is obliged to separate it
from the only true foundation on which it rests, as far as we are
concerned, namely, from man and nature, and thereby falls, without any
possibility of getting out, into an "ideology" which causes him to
play baby to Hegel. It is self-evident that one cannot build
materialistic doctrines on foundations so ideological. We shall see
later that Herr Duehring is compelled to push nature to the front as a
conscious agent and, therefore, as that, which people in plain English
call God.
Indeed, our philosopher had other motives in shifting the foundation
of reality from the material world to that of thought. The knowledge
of this general scheme of the universe, of these formal principles of
being is just the foundation of Herr Duehring's philosophy. If we
derive the scheme of the universe not from our own brain, but merely
by means of our own brain, from the material world, we need no
philosophy, but simply knowledge of the world and what occurs in it,
and the results of this knowledge likewise do not constitute a
philosophy, but positive science. In such a case, however, Herr
Duehring's entire book would have been love's labor lost.
Further, if no philosophy, as such, is longer required there is no
longer the necessity of any philosophy of nature even. The view that
all the phenomena of nature stand in systematic mutual relations
compels science to prove this systematic interconnection in all
respects, in single cases as well as in the entirety. But an
appropriate creative, scientific representation of this mutual
connection in such a way as to show the composition of an exact
thought-picture of the system of the universe in which we live remains
not only for us but for all time an impossibility. Should such a final
conclusive system of the interconnection of the various activities of
the universe, physical, as well as intellectual and historical, ever
be brought to completion at any point of time in the history of the
human race, human knowledge would forthwith come to an end and future
historical progress would be cut off from the very moment in which
society was directed in accordance with the system, which would be an
absurdity, mere nonsense.
Man is therefore confronted by a contradiction, on the one hand he is
obliged to study the interconnections of the world-system
exhaustively, and, on the other hand, he is unable to fully accomplish
the task either as regards himself or as regards the system of nature.
This contradiction, however, does not consist solely in the nature of
the two factors World and Man; it is the main lever also of universal
intellectual progress and is solved every day and for ever in an
endless progressive development of humanity, just as mathematical
problems find their solution in an endless progression of a recurring
decimal. As a matter of fact also every concept of the universe is
subject to objective limitations owing to the conditions of historical
knowledge, and subjectively in addition owing to the physical and
mental make up of the author of the concept. But Herr Duehring
exhibits a mode of thought which is confined in its application to a
limited and subjective idea of the universe. We saw earlier that he
was omnipresent, in all possible forms of the universe, now we see
that he is omniscient. He has solved the final problems of science and
has nailed up tight all future knowledge.
Herr Duehring considers that he can, as with the fundamental forms of
existence, produce aprioristically by means of his own cogitations the
whole of pure mathematics without making any use of the experience
which is afforded us in the objective world. In pure mathematics the
understanding is engaged "in its own free creations and imaginations";
the concepts of number and form are "self-sufficient objects
proceeding from themselves" and so have "a value independent of
individual experience and actual objective reality."
That pure mathematics has a significance independent of particular
individual experience is quite true as are also the established facts
of all the sciences and indeed of all facts. The magnetic poles, the
formation of water from oxygen and hydrogen, the fact that Hegel is
dead and that Herr Duehring is alive, are facts independent of my
experience or that of any other single individual, and will be
independent of that of Herr Duehring himself, as soon as he shall
sleep the sleep of the just. But in pure mathematics the mind is not
by any means engaged with its own creations and imaginings. The
concepts of number and form have only come to us by the way of the
real world. The ten fingers on which men count and thereby performed
the first arithmetical calculations are anything but a free creation
of the mind. To count not only requires objects capable of being
counted but the ability, when these objects are regarded, of
subtracting all qualities from them except number and this ability is
the product of long historical development of actual experience. The
concept form is, like that of number, derived exclusively from the
external world and is not a purely mental product. To it things
possessed of shape were necessary and these shapes men compared until
the concept form was arrived at. Pure mathematics considers the shapes
and quantities of things in the actual world, very real objects. The
fact that these objects appear in a very abstract form only
superficially conceals their origin in the world of external nature.
In order to understand these forms and qualities in their purity it is
necessary to separate them from their content and thus one gets the
point, without dimensions, the line, without breadth and thickness, a
and b, x and y, constants and variables, and we finally first arrive
at independent creations of the imagination and intellect, imaginary
magnitudes. Also the apparent derivation of mathematical magnitudes
from each other does not prove their aprioristic origin, but only
their rational interconnection. Before one attained the concept that
the form of a cylinder was derived from the revolution of a rectangle
round one of its sides, he must have examined a number of rectangles
and cylinders even if of imperfect form. Like all sciences,
mathematics has sprung from the necessities of men, from the
measurement of land and the content of vessels, from the calculation
of time and mechanics. But, as in every department of thought, at a
certain stage of development, laws are abstracted from the actual
phenomena, are separated from them and set over against them, as
something independent of them, as laws, which apparently come from the
outside, in accordance with which the material world must necessarily
conduct itself. So, it has happened in society and the state, so, and
not otherwise, pure mathematics though borrowed from the world is
applied to the world, and though it only shows a portion of its
component factors is all the better applicable on that account.
But as Herr Duehring imagines that the whole of pure mathematics can
be derived from the mathematical axioms, "which according to purely
logical concepts are neither capable of proof nor in need of any, and
without empirical ingredients anywhere and that these can be applied
to the universe, he likewise imagines, in the first place, the
foundation forms of being, the single ingredients of all knowledge,
the axioms of philosophy, to be produced by the intellect of man; he
imagines also that he can derive the whole of philosophy or plan of
the universe from these, and that his sublime genius can compel us to
accept this, his conception of nature and humanity." Unfortunately
nature and humanity are not constituted like the Prussians of the
Manteuffel regime of 1850.
The axioms of mathematics are expressions of the most elementary ideas
which mathematics must borrow from logic. They may be reduced to two.
(1) The whole is greater than its part; this statement is mere
tautology, since the quantitatively limited concept, "part,"
necessarily refers to the concept, "whole,"--in that "part" signifies
no more than that the quantitative "whole" is made up of quantitative
"parts." Since the so-called axiom merely asserts this much we are not
a step further. This can be shown to be a tautology if we say "The
whole is that which consists of several parts--a part is that several
of which make up a whole, therefore the part is less than the whole."
Where the barrenness of the repetition shows the lack of content all
the more strongly.
(2) If two magnitudes are equal to a third they are equal to one
another; this statement is, as Hegel has shown, a conclusion, upon
the correctness of which all logic depends, and which is demonstrated
therefore outside of pure mathematics. The remaining axioms with
regard to equality and inequality are merely logical extensions of
this conclusion. Such barren statements are not enticing either in
mathematics or anywhere else. To proceed we must have realities,
conditions and forms taken from real material things; representations
of lines, planes, angles, polygons, spheres, etc., are all borrowed
from reality, and it is just naive ideology to believe the
mathematicians, who assert that the first line was made by causing a
point to progress through space, the first plane by means of the
movement of a line, and the first solid by revolving a plane, etc.
Even speech rebels against this idea. A mathematical figure of three
dimensions is called a solid--corpus solidum--and hence, according to
the Latin, a body capable of being handled. It has a name derived,
therefore, by no means from the independent play of imagination but
from solid reality.
But to what purpose is all this prolixity? After Herr Duehring has
enthusiastically proclaimed the independence of pure mathematics of
the world of experience, their apriorism, their connection with free
creation and imagination, he says "it will be readily seen that these
mathematical elements (number, magnitude, time, space, geometric
progression), are therefore ideal forms with relation to absolute
magnitudes and therefore something quite empiric, no matter to what
species they belong." But "mathematical general notions are, apart
from experience, nevertheless capable of sufficient characterization,"
which latter proceeds, more or less, from each abstraction, but does
not by any means prove that it is not deprived from the actual. In the
scheme of the universe of our author pure mathematics originated in
pure thought, in his philosophy of nature it is derived from the
external world and then set apart from it. What are we then to
believe?
_The Scheme of the Universe._
"All-comprehending existence is sole. It is sufficient to itself and
has nothing above or below it. To associate a second existence with it
would be to make it just what it is not, a part of a constituent or
all-embracing whole. When we conceive of our idea of soleness as a
frame there is nothing which can enter into this, nothing which
retains twofoldness can enter into this concept of unity. But nothing
can alienate itself from this concept of unity. The essence of all
thought consists in uniting the elements of consciousness in a unity.
The indivisible concept of the universe has arisen by comprehending
everything, and the universe, as the word signifies, is recognised as
something in which everything is united into one unity."
So far Herr Duehring is quoted. The mathematical method, "Everything
must be decided on simple axiomatic foundation principles, just as if
it were concerned with the simple principles of mathematics," this
method is for the first time here applied.
"The all-embracing existence is sole." If tautology, simple repetition
in the predicate of what has been stated in the subject, if this
constitutes an axiom, then we have a splendid specimen. In the subject
Herr Duehring tells us that existence comprehends everything, in the
predicate he explains intrepidly that there is nothing outside it.
What a system-shaping thought. It is indeed system-shaping until we
find six lines further down that Herr Duehring has transformed the
soleness of being by means of our idea of unity into its one-ness. As
the work of all thought consists in the bringing together of all
thought into a unity so is existence, as soon as it is conceived,
thought of as a unity, an indivisible concept of the universe, and
because existence so conceived is the sole universal concept, so is
real existence, the real universe, just as much an indivisible unity,
and consequently "the beings in the beyond have no further place as
soon as the mind has learned to comprehend existence in the
homogeneous universality."
That is a campaign with which in comparison Austerlitz and Jena,
Koeniggratz and Sedan sink in insignificance. In a couple of
expressions after we have set the first axiom moving we have
abolished, put away, and destroyed all the inhabitants of the
spirit-world, God, the heavenly hierarchies, heaven, hell and
purgatory as well as the immortality of the soul.
How do we arrive at the idea of the unity of existence from that of
its soleness? As a matter of fact, we generally conceive it. As we
spread out our idea of unity as a frame around it the concept of
existence becomes the concept of unity, for the existence of all
thought consists in the bringing of elements of consciousness into
unity.
This last statement is simply false. In the first place thought
consists in the decomposition of objects of consciousness into their
elements as well as in the uniting of mutually connected elements into
a unity. There can be no synthesis without analysis. In the second
place, thought can, without error, only bring those elements of
consciousness into a unity in which or in the actual prototypes of
which this unity already existed beforehand. If I comprehend a
shoebrush under the class mammal, it does not thereupon become a
milk-giver. The unity of existence is therefore just the thing which
had to be proved in order to justify his concept of thought as a
unity, and if Herr Duehring assures us that he regards existence as a
unity and not as twofold he tells us nothing more than that he himself
personally thinks so.
To give a clear explanation of his method of reasoning, it is as
follows, "I begin with existence. Therefore I think of existence. The
idea of existence is an idea of unity. Thought and existence must
therefore belong together, they answer one another, they mutually
cover each other. Therefore existence is in reality a unity and there
are no beings beyond." But if Herr Duehring had spoken thus plainly
instead of entertaining us with oracular statements, the ideology of
his argument would have been completely exposed. To attempt to
undertake to prove from the identity of thought and existence the
reality of the result of thought, that indeed were one of the
fever-phantoms of a Hegel.
If his entire method of proof were really correct Herr Duehring would
not have gained a single point over the spiritists. The spiritists
would curtly reply, "The universe is simple from our standpoint also.
The division into the hither and the beyond only exists from our
special earthly original sin standpoint. In its essence, that is God,
the entire universe is a unity." And they will take Herr Duehring with
them to his beloved heavenly bodies, and will show him one or more
where no original sin can be found, and where there is therefore no
antagonism between the hither and the beyond, and the oneness of the
universe is a demand of faith.
The most comical thing about the matter is that Herr Duehring in order
to prove the non-existence of God from his concept of existence,
furnishes the ontological proof of God's existence. This runs as
follows--If we think of God we think of Him as the concept of complete
perfection. To the idea of perfection existence is a first essential,
since a non-existent being is of necessity imperfect. We must
therefore add existence to the perfections of God. Therefore God must
exist. Thus Herr Duehring reasons exactly. If we think of existence we
think of it as a concept. What is united into a concept is a unity,
therefore existence would not correspond with its concept if it were
not a unity. Therefore it must be a unity, therefore there is no God,
etc.
If we speak of existence and merely of existence, the unity can only
consist in this that all objects with which it is concerned
are--exist. They are comprised under the unity of this common
existence, and no other, and the general dictum that they all exist
cannot give them any further qualities, common or not common, but
excludes all such from consideration in advance. For as soon as we
take a step beyond the simple fact that existence is common to all
things, the distinctions between these separate things engage our
attention, and if these differences consist in this that some are
black, some white, some alive, others not alive, some hither and some
beyond, we cannot conclude therefrom that mere existence can be
imputed to all of them alike.
The unity of the universe does not consist in its existence, although
its existence is a presumption of its unity, since it must first exist
before it can be a unit. Existence beyond the boundary line of our
horizon is an open question. The real unity of the universe consists
in its materiality, and this is established, not by a pair of juggling
phrases but by means of a long and difficult development of philosophy
and natural science.
With respect to the subject in hand; the existence which Herr Duehring
presents to us is "not that pure existence which is self sufficient
and without any other qualities, in fact, only representing the
antithesis of no-idea or absence-of-idea." Now we shall very soon see
that the universe of Herr Duehring has its origin simultaneously with
an existence which is without essential differentiation, progress or
change, and is therefore merely in fact a contradiction of absence of
thought, therefore really nothing. From this non-existence is
developed the present differentiated, changeable universe which
represents progressive growth; and when we grasp this idea, only by
virtue of this eternal change do we arrive at "the concept of the self
sufficing, universal existence." We have therefore now the concept of
existence on a higher plane where it comprises within itself stability
as well as change, being as well as development. Arrived at this point
we find that "species and genera in fact the special and the general,
are the simplest forms of differentiation, without which the
constitution of things cannot be grasped."
But this is a means of distinguishing quality and after a discussion
of this part of the subject we proceed "Over against the idea of
species stands the idea of the whole, a homogeneity, as it were, in
which no differentiation of species can longer be found," so we pass
from quality to quantity and this is always "capable of measurement."
Let us compare this "clear analysis of the actual, universal scheme of
things" and its "real, critical standpoint" with the fever-phantasies
of a Hegel. We find that Hegel's "Logic" begins with existence as does
that of Herr Duehring; that existence displays itself as nothing, as
with Herr Duehring; that out of this not-being, a leap is made into
being, and that existence is the result of this, that is a more
complete and higher form of being, as with Herr Duehring. Being leads
to quality, quality to quantity, just as with Herr Duehring. And in
order that no essential shall be lacking Herr Duehring tells us
elsewhere "from the realm of absence of sensation man leaps to that of
sensation in spite of all the quantitative steps with but one
qualitative leap ... from which we can show that he is entirely
differentiated from the mere gradation of one and the same quality."
This is just the Hegelian standard of measurement according to which
mere quantitative expansion or contraction causes a sudden qualitative
change at a given point, as for example with heated or cooled water,
there are points where the spring into a new set of conditions is
fulfilled under normal circumstances, and where therefore quantity
suddenly changes into quality.
Our investigation has likewise sought to penetrate to the deepest
roots, and discovers the rooted Duehring foundations to be the
"fever-phantasies" of a Hegel, the categories of the Hegelian logic,
in the first place, teachings in regard to existence after the antique
Hegelian method, and an ineffective cloak of plagiarism.
And not content with purloining the whole scheme of existence from his
despised predecessors, Herr Duehring after giving the above example of
a change of quantity into quality has the coolness to say of Marx, "Is
it not comical, this appeal (of Marx) to Hegelian confusion and
mistiness, that quantity changes into quality." Confused mixture, who
changes his ground, who is a comical fellow Herr Duehring?
All these pretty little statements are not only not "axiomatic
utterances" according to label, but are simply taken from foreign
sources, that is, from Hegel's "Logic." Of a truth there is not
revealed in the whole chapter the shadow of any "inner connection,"
except so far as it is borrowed from Hegel, and the whole talk about
stability and change finally runs out into mere garrulity on the
subject of time and space.
From existence Hegel comes to substance, to the dialectic. Here he
treats of reflex-movements, antagonisms and contradictions, positive
and negative for example, and thence proceeds to causality, or the
conditions of cause and effect and closes with necessity. Herr
Duehring does not vary this method. What Hegel calls the "doctrines of
existence" Herr Duehring has translated into "logical properties of
existence." These exist, above all else in the antagonism of forces,
in antithesis, Herr Duehring denies the antithesis in toto, but we
shall return to this matter later. Then he proceeds to causality and
thence to necessity. If Herr Duehring says of himself, "I do not
philosophise from a cage," he must mean that he philosophises in a
cage, the cage of the Hegelian arrangement of categories.