Philosophy and its main question. Materialism.( see #2)

Vulgar materialism and its main representatives in the 19th century.

Vulgar materialism (German: Vulgärmaterialismus) is the name by which the philosophical movement within the materialism of the mid-19th century is known. The name belongs to Friedrich Engels.

It arose during the period of great discoveries of natural science in the 19th century. The theoretical forerunner of vulgar materialism was the French materialist P. Cabanis, the main representatives were the German scientists C. Focht and L. Buechner, and the Dutchman J. Moleschott. The named authors were engaged first of all in medicine, anatomy and physiology; philosophical studies followed from their scientific and biological activities. The emergence of vulgar materialism was influenced by the Darwinian theory of evolution, the discovery of organic matter. In many ways, the current was a reaction against German idealism.

F. Engels called them vulgar materialists, since they simplified, from his point of view, the materialistic worldview, denied the specifics of consciousness, identifying it with matter ("the brain secretes thought, as the liver secretes bile"; "there is no thought without phosphorus"), rejected the need to develop philosophy as a science. They also explained the human personality physiologically (“Man is what he eats” - Moleschott). The social thought of these authors (especially Buechner) is characterized by social Darwinism. Vulgar materialism popularized the achievements of natural science and atheism.

In Russia, vulgar materialism was quite popular in the 1860s (D. I. Pisarev translated and summarized the physiological pictures of Focht, Buchner and Moleschott), although some revolutionary democrats criticized it. In Dostoevsky's novel The Possessed, nihilists cut down icons and light church candles in front of the works of these three authors. The tendencies of vulgar materialism were characteristic of the "mechanists" in the USSR.

The thinking characteristic of vulgar materialism was reflected in the literature of the 19th century (this is essentially the "scientific approach" to heroes in Zola's naturalism).

Dialectical materialism and its main representatives.

Dialectical materialism (Diamat) is a direction in philosophy, in which the main attention is paid to the relationship between being and thinking and the most general laws of development of being and thinking. According to the main provisions of Marxist-Leninist philosophy, dialectical materialism affirms the ontological primacy of matter in relation to consciousness and the constant development of matter in time.

According to dialectical materialism, matter is the only basis of the world, consciousness is a property of matter, the movement and development of the world is the result of overcoming its internal contradictions. Dialectical materialism is an integral part of Marxist theory, and not an independent philosophical doctrine.

After the death of Marx and Engels, much was done in the development of the provisions of democratic mathematics, mainly in its propaganda and defense, in the struggle against bourgeois ideology, by their most prominent students and followers in various countries: in Germany, by F. Mehring; in France, by P. Lafargue, in Italy - A. Labriola, in Russia - G. V. Plekhanov, who criticized idealism and philosophical revisionism with great talent and brilliance. Philosophical works of Plekhanov in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Lenin rated Marxism as the best in all international philosophical literature.

Dialectical materialism

Dialectical materialism, philosophy of Marxism-Leninism, scientific outlook, general method of cognition of the world, the science of the most general laws of motion and development of nature, society and consciousness. D. m. is based on the achievements of modern science and advanced social practice, constantly evolving and enriching along with their progress. It constitutes the general theoretical basis of the teachings of Marxism-Leninism. The philosophy of Marxism is materialistic, since it proceeds from the recognition of matter as the only basis of the world, considering consciousness as a property of a highly organized, social form of the movement of matter, a function of the brain, a reflection of the objective world; it is called dialectical, since it recognizes the universal interconnection of objects and phenomena of the world, the movement and development of the world as a result of internal contradictions operating in it. D. m. is the highest form of modern materialism, which is the result of the entire previous history of the development of philosophical thought.

The emergence and development of dialectical materialism (d.m.)

Marxism as a whole and the dialectic of mathematics, its constituent part, arose in the 1940's. 19th century, when the struggle of the proletariat for its social emancipation imperiously demanded knowledge of the laws of the development of society, which was impossible without materialist dialectics, a materialist explanation of history. The founders of D. m. - K. Marx and F. Engels, having subjected social reality to a deep and comprehensive analysis, critically reworking and assimilating everything positive that had been created before them in the field of philosophy and history, created a qualitatively new worldview, which became the philosophical basis of the theory of scientific communism and the practice of the workers' revolutionary movement. They developed D. m. in a sharp ideological struggle against various forms of the bourgeois worldview.

The direct ideological sources of Marxism were the main philosophical, economic, and political teachings of the late 18th and first half of the 19th centuries. Marx and Engels creatively reworked Hegel's idealistic dialectic and previous philosophical materialism, especially the teachings of Feuerbach. In Hegel's dialectic, they revealed revolutionary moments - the idea of ​​development and contradiction as its source and driving force. The ideas of representatives of classical bourgeois political economy (A. Smith, D. Ricardo, and others) were of great importance in the formation of Marxism; the works of utopian socialists (C. A. Saint-Simon, F. M. C. Fourier, R. Owen, and others) and French historians of the Restoration (J. H. O. Thierry, F. P. G. Guizot, F. O. M. Mignet). A major role in the development of dialectical mathematics was played by the achievements of natural science in the late 18th and 19th centuries, in which dialectics spontaneously made its way.

The essence and main features of the revolutionary revolution accomplished by Marx and Engels in philosophy lie in the spread of materialism to the understanding of the history of society, in substantiating the role of social practice in the development of people, their consciousness, in the organic combination and creative development of materialism and dialectics. “The application of materialist dialectics to the reworking of all political economy, from its foundation, to history, to natural science, to philosophy, to the politics and tactics of the working class—this is what interests Marx and Engels most of all, this is where they contribute the most essential and most new, that is their brilliant step forward in the history of revolutionary thought” (V. I. Lenin, Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., vol. 24, p. 264).

The greatest achievement of human thought is the development of historical materialism, in the light of which it was only possible to scientifically understand the fundamental role of practice in social existence and knowledge of the world, to materialistically resolve the question of the active role of consciousness.

“... Theory becomes a material force as soon as it takes possession of the masses” (K. Marx, see K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch., 2nd ed., vol. 1, p. 422).

Marxism considers social being not only in the form of an object that opposes man, but also subjectively, in the form of concrete historical practical activity of man. Thus, Marxism overcame the abstract contemplation of previous materialism, which underestimated the active role of the subject, while idealism absolutized the active role of consciousness, believing that it constructs the world.

Marxism theoretically substantiated and practically carried out the conscious combination of theory and practice. Deriving theory from practice, he subordinated it to the interests of the revolutionary transformation of the world. This is the meaning of Marx's famous eleventh thesis about Feuerbach: "Philosophers have only explained the world in various ways, but the point is to change it" (ibid., vol. 3, p. 4). Strictly scientific foresight of the future and the orientation of mankind towards its achievement are characteristic features of the philosophy of Marxism-Leninism.

The fundamental difference between the philosophy of Marxism and all previous philosophical systems is that its ideas penetrate the masses of the people and are realized by them; it itself develops precisely on the basis of the historical practice of the popular masses.

“Just as philosophy finds its material weapon in the proletariat, so the proletariat finds its spiritual weapon in philosophy…” (Marx K., ibid., vol. 1, p. 428).

Philosophy oriented the working class towards the revolutionary transformation of society, towards the creation of a new, communist society.

After the death of Marx and Engels, much was done in the development of the provisions of democratic mathematics, mainly in its propaganda and defense, in the struggle against bourgeois ideology, by their most prominent students and followers in various countries: in Germany, by F. Mehring; in France, by P. Lafargue, in Italy - A. Labriola, in Russia - G. V. Plekhanov, who criticized idealism and philosophical revisionism with great talent and brilliance. Philosophical works of Plekhanov in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Lenin rated Marxism as the best in all international philosophical literature.

A new, higher stage in the development of Marxist philosophy is the theoretical activity of VI Lenin. Lenin’s defense of democracy from revisionism and the onslaught of bourgeois ideology and the creative development of democracy were closely connected with the development of the theory of the socialist revolution, the doctrine of the dictatorship of the proletariat, of the revolutionary party, of the alliance of the working class with the peasantry, of the socialist state, on the construction of socialism and on the transition from socialism to communism.

The development of dialectical mathematics was organically combined in Lenin's work with the application of the dialectical method to a concrete analysis of the achievements of natural science. Summarizing the latest achievements of natural science from the point of view of dynamic mathematics, Lenin clarified the causes of the methodological crisis in physics and indicated ways to overcome it: “The materialistic basic spirit of physics, as well as of all modern natural science, will overcome all and all crises, but only with the indispensable replacement of metaphysical materialism dialectical materialism” (Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., vol. 18, p. 324). Developing dialectical materialism in the struggle against the idealist trends in philosophical thought, Lenin deepened his understanding of the basic categories of materialist dialectics, and above all the category of matter. Summarizing the achievements of science, philosophy and social practice, Lenin formulated the definition of matter in the unity of its ontological and epistemological aspects, emphasizing that the only property of matter, with the recognition of which philosophical materialism is associated, is the property of being an objective reality, of existing outside of our consciousness.

Lenin worked out the main problems of the theory of reflection, creatively developed the teaching of Marxism on the role of social practice in the theory of knowledge, emphasizing that "the point of view of life, practice must be the first and main point of view of the theory of knowledge" (ibid., p. 145). Analyzing the main stages of human cognition and considering practice as the basis of the process of cognition and as a criterion of truth, Lenin showed that cognition proceeds from living contemplation to abstract thinking and from it to practice.

In connection with his criticism of Machism, which stood on the positions of subjective idealism and relativism, Lenin further developed the Marxist doctrine of objective, relative, and absolute truth and showed their dialectical interconnection. In Lenin's doctrine of truth, the problem of the concreteness of truth occupies a central place:

“... that which is the very essence, the living soul of Marxism: a concrete analysis of a concrete situation” (ibid., vol. 41, p. 136).

Lenin formulated the position on the unity of dialectics, logic and the theory of knowledge, and defined the basic principles of dialectical logic. Lenin emphasized the need for a critical study and dialectical processing of the history of human thought, science and technology. The historical method, according to Lenin, is the very core of D. m. “The whole spirit of Marxism, its whole system requires that each proposition be considered only (a) historically; (b) only in connection with others; (g) only in connection with the concrete experience of history” (ibid., vol. 49, p. 329).

In the development of the Marxist-Leninist worldview, its theoretical basis—d. At the present stage, dialectical materialism is the result of the creative activity of Marxists in many countries.

Matter and consciousness.

No matter how diverse the philosophical teachings, all of them, explicitly or implicitly, have as their starting point the theoretical question of the relationship of consciousness to matter, thinking to being. This question is the main, or the highest question of any philosophy, including D. m. It is rooted in the fundamental facts of life itself, in the existence of material and spiritual phenomena and their relationships. All philosophers are divided into two camps - materialism and idealism - depending on how they solve this issue: materialism proceeds from the recognition of the primacy of matter and the derivative of consciousness, while idealism is the other way around. D. m., proceeding from the principle of materialistic monism, believes that the world is moving matter. Matter as an objective reality is uncreated, eternal and infinite. Matter is characterized by such universal forms of its existence as motion, space and time. Motion is a universal way of existence of matter. There is no matter outside of motion, and motion cannot exist outside of matter.

The world is a picture of inexhaustible diversity: inorganic and organic nature, mechanical, physical and chemical phenomena, the life of plants and animals, the life of society, man and his consciousness. But with all the qualitative diversity of the things and processes that make up the world, the world is one, since everything that is included in its composition is only different forms, types and varieties of moving matter, subject to certain universal laws.

All components of the material world have a history of their development, during which, for example, within the planet Earth, a transition was made from inorganic to organic matter (in the form of flora and fauna) and, finally, to man and society.

Matter existed before the appearance of consciousness, possessing in its “foundation” only a property similar to sensation, the property of reflection, and at the level of living organization, matter has the ability of irritability, sensation, perception and the elementary intelligence of higher animals. With the emergence of human society, a social form of the movement of matter arises, the bearer of which is a person; as a subject of social practice, he has consciousness and self-consciousness. Having reached a high organization in its development, the world retains its material unity. Consciousness is inseparable from matter. The psyche, consciousness constitute a special property of highly organized matter, they act as the highest, qualitatively new link in a number of various properties of the material world.

According to D. m., consciousness is a function of the brain, a reflection of the objective world. The process of understanding the world and mental activity in general arise and develop from the real interaction of a person with the world through his social relations. Thus, outside of epistemology, consciousness does not oppose matter and “the difference between the ideal and the material ... is not unconditional, not überschwenglich (excessively. - Red.)”, (Lenin V.I., ibid., vol. 29, p. 104). Objects, their properties and relationships, being reflected in the brain, exist in it in the form of images - ideally. The ideal is not a special substance, but a product of the activity of the brain, a subjective image of the objective world.

In contrast to agnosticism, D. m. proceeds from the fact that the world is cognizable and science penetrates more and more deeply into the laws of being. The possibility of cognition of the world is unlimited, provided that the process of cognition itself is infinite.

Theory of knowledge.

The starting points of the theory of knowledge of D. m. are the materialistic solution of the question of the relationship of thinking to being and the recognition of the basis of the process of cognition of social practice, which is the interaction of a person with the outside world in the concrete historical conditions of social life. Practice is the basis for the formation and source of knowledge, the main stimulus and goal of cognition, the scope of knowledge, the criterion for the truth of the results of the cognition process and “... the determinant of the connection of an object with what a person needs” (Lenin V.I., ibid., vol. 42, p. 290).

The process of cognition begins with sensations and perceptions, that is, from the sensory level, and rises to the level of abstract logical thinking. The transition from sensory cognition to logical thinking is a leap from knowledge about the individual, random and external to generalized knowledge about the essential, regular. Being qualitatively different levels of cognition of the world, sensory reflection and thinking are inextricably linked, forming successively ascending links of a single cognitive process.

Human thinking is a historical phenomenon that implies the continuity of knowledge acquired from generation to generation and, consequently, the possibility of their fixation by means of language, with which thinking is inextricably linked. The knowledge of the world by an individual is comprehensively mediated by the development of knowledge of the world by all mankind. The thinking of modern man is, therefore, a product of the socio-historical process. From the historicity of human cognition and, above all, the historicity of the object of cognition, the need for a historical method follows, which is in dialectical unity with the logical method (see Historicism, Logical and Historical).

The necessary methods of cognition are comparison, analysis, synthesis, generalization, abstraction, induction and deduction, which are revealed in different ways at different levels of cognition. The results of the process of cognition, since they are an adequate reflection of things, their properties and relations, always have an objective content and constitute an objective truth.

Human knowledge cannot immediately completely reproduce and exhaust the content of an object. Any theory is conditioned historically and therefore contains not complete, but relative truth. But human thinking can exist only as the thinking of past, present and future generations, and in this sense the possibilities of cognition are endless. Cognition is the development of truth, and the latter acts as an expression of a historically determined stage of the never-ending process of cognition. Proceeding from the recognition of the relativity of knowledge in the sense of the historical conventionality of the limits of approach to complete knowledge, D. m. rejects the extreme conclusions of relativism, according to which the nature of human knowledge excludes the recognition of objective truth.

Each object, along with common features, has its own unique features, each social phenomenon is due to the specific circumstances of place and time. Therefore, along with the generalized, a specific approach to the object of knowledge is necessary, which is expressed in principle: there is no abstract truth, the truth is concrete. The concreteness of truth presupposes, first of all, the comprehensiveness and integrity of the consideration of the object, taking into account the fact that it is constantly changing and, therefore, cannot be correctly reflected in fixed categories. Warning against errors associated with a non-concrete approach to truth, Lenin wrote that “... any truth, if it is made 'excessive' ... if it is exaggerated, if it is extended beyond the limits of its actual applicability, can be brought to the point of absurdity, and it even inevitably , under the indicated conditions, turns into absurdity” (ibid., vol. 41, p. 46).

Categories and laws dialectical materialism

Categories - the most general, basic concepts and, at the same time, essential definitions of the forms of being and the relations of things; categories generally express the universal forms of being and cognition (see Categories). They accumulated all the previous cognitive experience of mankind, which has passed the test of social practice.

In the system of materialistic dialectics, each category occupies a certain place, being a generalized expression of the corresponding stage in the development of knowledge about the world. Lenin considered categories as steps, key points in the cognition of the world. The historically developing system of materialist dialectics must be based on a category that does not need any prerequisites and itself constitutes the initial prerequisite for the development of all other categories. Such is the category of matter. The category of matter is followed by the main forms of the existence of matter: motion, space and time.

The study of the infinite variety of forms of matter begins with the isolation of an object, the statement of its being, i.e., existence, and aims to reveal the properties and relations of the object. Each object appears before a practically acting person with its qualitative side. Thus, the knowledge of material things begins directly with sensation, “... and quality is inevitable in it ...” (Lenin V.I., ibid., vol. 29, p. 301). Quality is the specificity of a given object, its originality, its difference from other objects. Awareness of quality precedes knowledge of quantity. Any object is a unity of quantity and quality, that is, a quantitatively defined quality, or measure. Revealing the qualitative and quantitative certainty of things, a person at the same time establishes their difference and identity.

All objects have external aspects, directly comprehended in sensation and perception, and internal, knowledge of which is achieved indirectly, through abstract thinking. This difference in the levels of cognition is expressed in the categories of external and internal. The formation of these categories in the mind of man prepares the comprehension of causality or the relationships of cause and effect, the relationship of which was originally conceived only as a sequence of phenomena in time. Cognition proceeds "from coexistence to causality and from one form of connection and interdependence to another, deeper, more general" (ibid., p. 203). In the further process of the development of thinking, a person began to comprehend that the cause not only generates an action, but also presupposes it as a counteraction; thus, the relationship of cause and effect is designated as interaction, i.e., as a universal connection of things and processes, expressed in their mutual change. The interaction of objects among themselves and various aspects, moments within the object, expressed in the struggle of opposites, is a universal reason rooted in the nature of things for their change and development, which occur not as a result of an external impetus as a unilateral action, but due to interaction and contradiction. The internal inconsistency of any object lies in the fact that in one object at the same time both interpenetration and mutual exclusion of opposites take place. Development is the transition of an object from one state to a qualitatively different one, from one structure to another. Development is both a continuous and discontinuous process, both evolutionary and revolutionary, spasmodic.

Every emerging link in the chain of phenomena includes its own negation, i.e., the possibility of a transition into a new form of being. That. it is revealed that the being of things is not limited to their present being, that things contain hidden, potential, or "future being", that is, a possibility that, before its transformation into a present being, exists in the nature of things as a tendency of their development (see .Possibility and reality). At the same time, it turns out that in reality there are various possibilities, but only those for the realization of which there are necessary conditions are converted into existence.

An in-depth awareness of the connection between external and internal is revealed in the categories of form and content. The practical interaction of people with many similar and different things served as the basis for the development of the categories of the individual, the special and the general. Constant observation of objects and phenomena in nature and production activities led people to understand that some connections are stable, constantly recurring, while others rarely appear. This served as the basis for the formation of the categories of necessity and chance. The comprehension of the essence, and at a higher stage of development - the disclosure of the order of essences means the disclosure of the internal basis contained in the object of all the changes that occur to it when interacting with other objects. Cognition of phenomena means revealing how the essence is revealed. Essence and appearance are revealed as moments of reality, which is the result of the emergence of existence from a real possibility. Reality is richer, more concrete than possibility, because the latter constitutes only one of the moments of reality, which is the unity of realized possibility and the source of new possibilities. The real possibility has the conditions of its occurrence in reality and is itself a part of reality.

From the point of view of D. m., forms of thinking, categories are a reflection in the mind of the universal forms of the objective activity of social man, who transforms reality. D. m. proceeds from the assertion of the unity of the laws of being and thinking. “… Our subjective thinking and the objective world are subject to the same laws…” (Engels F., Dialectics of Nature, 1969, p. 231). Every universal law of development of the objective and spiritual world is, in a certain sense, at the same time a law of knowledge: any law, reflecting what is in reality, also indicates how one should think correctly about the corresponding area of ​​reality.

The sequence of development of logical categories in the composition of D. m. is dictated primarily by the objective sequence of the development of knowledge. Each category is a generalized reflection of objective reality, the result of centuries of socio-historical practice. Logical categories “... are the steps of selection, i.e. knowledge of the world, key points in the network (of natural phenomena, nature. - Red.), helping to cognize it and master it ”(V.I. Lenin, Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., vol. 29, p. 85). Any of the logical categories is determined only by systematically tracing its connection with all others, only within the system of categories and through it. Explaining this proposition, Lenin outlines the general sequence of development of logical categories:

“First, impressions flash, then something stands out, - then the concepts of quality ... (definitions of a thing or phenomenon) and quantity develop. Then study and reflection direct thought to the knowledge of identity - difference - basis - essence versus (in relation to. - Red.) phenomena, - causality etc. All these moments (steps, steps, processes) of cognition are directed from the subject to the object, being tested by practice and coming to the truth through this test…” (ibid., p. 301).

The categories of dialectics are inextricably linked with its laws. Each area of ​​nature, society and thought has its own laws of development. But due to the material unity of the world, there are certain general laws of development in it. Their action extends to all areas of being and thinking, developing differently in each of them. Dialectics is precisely the study of the laws of all development. The most general laws of materialistic dialectics are: the transition of quantitative changes to qualitative ones, the unity and struggle of opposites, the law of negation of negation. These laws express the universal forms of the development of the material world and its cognition and are the universal method of dialectical thinking. The law of the unity and struggle of opposites lies in the fact that the development of the objective world and knowledge is carried out by bifurcating the one into mutually exclusive opposite moments, aspects, tendencies; their relationship, “struggle” and resolution of contradictions, on the one hand, characterizes this or that system as something whole, qualitatively defined, and on the other hand, it constitutes the internal impulse of its change, development, transformation into a new quality.

The law of mutual transition of quantitative changes into qualitative ones reveals the most general mechanism of development: a change in the quality of an object occurs when the accumulation of quantitative changes reaches a certain limit, there is a jump, i.e., a change from one quality to another. The law of negation of negation characterizes the direction of development. Its main content is expressed in the unity of progressiveness, progressiveness and continuity in development, the emergence of a new one and the relative repetition of some elements that existed before. Knowledge of universal laws is the guiding basis for the study of specific laws. In turn, the universal laws of the development of the world and knowledge and the specific forms of their manifestation can be studied only on the basis of and in close connection with the study and generalization of particular laws. This interrelationship of general and specific laws constitutes the objective basis for the mutual connection between dynamic mathematics and the specific sciences. Being an independent philosophical science, dynamic mathematics provides scientists with the only scientific method of cognition that is adequate to the laws of the objective world. Such a method is materialistic dialectics, “... for only it represents an analogue and thus a method of explanation for the processes of development occurring in nature, for the universal connections of nature, for transitions from one field of study to another” (Engels F., see Marx K. and F. Engels, Soch., 2nd ed., vol. 20, p. 367). Of course, the universal properties and relations of things reveal themselves in different ways, depending on the specifics of the area that is studied by a particular science.

Dialectical materialismand specific sciences.

The historical mission of D. m. consists in the creative development of the scientific worldview and general methodological principles of research in the field of natural and social sciences, in the correct theoretical orientation of the practical struggle of progressive social forces. It rests on a solid foundation for all science and social practice. D. m., as Engels noted, is “... a worldview that must find confirmation for itself and manifest itself not in some special science of sciences, but in real sciences” (ibid., p. 142). Each science investigates a qualitatively defined system of regularities in the world. However, no special science studies the patterns common to being and thinking. These universal patterns are the subject of philosophical knowledge. D. m. overcame the artificial gap between the doctrine of being (ontology), the theory of knowledge (epistemology), and logic. D. m. differs from the special sciences in the qualitative originality of its subject, its universal, all-encompassing character. Within each special science there are various levels of generalization. In dynamic mathematics, the generalizations of the special sciences themselves are subject to generalization. Philosophical generalizations rise, therefore, to the highest "floors" of the integrating work of the human mind. D. m. brings together the results of research in all areas of science, thereby creating a synthesis of knowledge of the universal laws of being and thinking. The subject of scientific knowledge also determines the nature of the methods used in the approach to it. D. m. does not use special methods of private sciences. The main tool of philosophical knowledge is theoretical thinking, based on the cumulative experience of mankind, on the achievements of all sciences and culture as a whole.

Possessing a certain specificity, DM is at the same time a general science that plays the role of a worldview and methodology for specific areas of knowledge. In various fields of scientific knowledge, constantly and the further, the more and more there is an internal need to consider the logical apparatus, cognitive activity, the nature of the theory and methods of its construction, analysis of the empirical and theoretical levels of knowledge, the initial concepts of science and methods of comprehending the truth. All this is the direct duty of philosophical inquiry. The solution of these problems involves the unification of the efforts of representatives of special sciences and philosophy. The methodological significance of the principles, laws, and categories of dynamic mathematics cannot be understood in a simplified way, in the sense that without them it is impossible to solve a single particular problem. When they have in mind the place and role of dynamic mathematics in the system of scientific knowledge, then we are not talking about individual experiments or calculations, but about the development of science as a whole, about putting forward and substantiating hypotheses, about the struggle of opinions, about creating a theory, about resolving internal problems. contradictions within the framework of this theory, about revealing the essence of the initial concepts of science, about comprehending new facts and evaluating the conclusions from them, about methods of scientific research, etc. In the modern world, the revolution in science has turned into a scientific and technological revolution. Under these conditions, the words of Engels, reproduced by Lenin in "Materialism and Empirio-Criticism", are especially relevant under these conditions, that "..." with each discovery that constitutes an epoch, even in the field of natural history ... materialism must inevitably change its form "..." (Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed. ., vol. 18, p. 265). The transformations in modern science are so profound that they concern its very epistemological foundations. The needs of the development of science brought to life significant changes in the interpretation of most categories of D. m. - matter, space and time, consciousness, causality, part and whole, etc. The complication of the subject of scientific knowledge has dramatically complicated the procedure itself, the methods of cognitive activity. The development of modern science has put forward not only many new facts and methods of cognition, setting more complex tasks for human cognitive activity, but also many new concepts, at the same time often requiring a radical rethinking of previous ideas and ideas. The progress of science not only poses new questions to D. m., but also draws the attention of philosophical thought to other aspects of old problems. One of the symptomatic phenomena of modern scientific knowledge is the tendency for a number of special concepts to become general scientific and philosophical categories. These include probability, structure, system, information, algorithm, constructive object, feedback, control, model, modeling, isomorphism, etc. Concrete contacts are being established between Marxist philosophers and representatives of various other fields of knowledge. This contributes to progress both in the formulation of questions and in the solution of a number of important methodological problems of science. For example, in understanding the uniqueness of the statistical regularities of the microworld, substantiating their objectivity, showing the inconsistency of indeterminism in modern physics, proving the applicability of physics, chemistry and cybernetics in biological research, clarifying the “man-machine” problem, developing the problem of the relationship between physiological and mental, understanding the interaction of sciences in brain study, etc. The growing abstractness of knowledge, the “escape” from visualization is one of the trends of modern science. Dynamic mathematics shows that all sciences are developing along the path of a gradual move away from descriptive research methods to an ever greater use of precise methods, including mathematical ones, not only in natural science but also in the social sciences. In the process of cognition, artificial formalized languages ​​and mathematical symbols play an increasingly important role. Theoretical generalizations become more and more complexly mediated, reflecting objective connections at a deeper level. The principles, laws, and categories of dynamic mathematics actively participate in the synthesis of new scientific ideas, of course, in close connection with the empirical and theoretical ideas of the corresponding science. In recent years, the heuristic role of D. m. in the synthesis of the modern scientific picture of the world has been manifested in detail.

Party spirit of dialectical materialism

D. m. has a class, party character. The partisanship of any philosophy is, first of all, belonging to one of the two main philosophical parties - materialism or idealism. The struggle between them ultimately reflects the contradictions between the progressive and conservative tendencies of social development. The partisanship of D. m. is manifested in the fact that he consistently pursues the principle of materialism, which is in full accordance with the interests of science and revolutionary social practice.

Democracy emerged as the theoretical basis for the worldview of the revolutionary class—the proletariat—and constitutes the worldview and methodological basis of the program, strategy, tactics, and policy of the communist and workers' parties. The political line of Marxism is always and on all issues "... inextricably linked with its philosophical foundations" (V. I. Lenin, ibid., vol. 17, p. 418).

Bourgeoisie ideologists and revisionists extol non-partisanship, putting forward the idea of ​​a "third line" in philosophy. The idea of ​​non-partisanship in the worldview is an erroneous idea. Lenin emphasized that non-partisan "... social science cannot exist in a society built on the class struggle" (ibid., vol. 23, p. 40). The revisionists assert that partisanship is allegedly incompatible with science. It is really incompatible in the reactionary outlook. But partisanship is quite compatible with science, if we are talking about a progressive worldview. At the same time, communist party membership means a truly scientific approach to the phenomena of reality, since the working class and the Communist Party, in order to transform the world in a revolutionary way, are interested in its correct knowledge. The principle of party membership requires a consistent and uncompromising struggle against bourgeois theories and views, as well as the ideas of right and "left" revisionism. The partisanship of democratic mathematics lies in the fact that it is precisely this worldview that consciously and purposefully serves the interests of the great cause of building socialism and communism.

D. m. develops in the struggle against various trends in modern bourgeois philosophy. Bourgeois ideologists, seeing in D. m. the main obstacle to the dissemination of their views, more and more often come out with criticism of D. m., distorting its essence. Certain bourgeois ideologists seek to deprive the materialist dialectic of its revolutionary content and, in this form, to adapt it to their own needs. The majority of modern bourgeois critics of DM try to interpret it as a kind of religious faith, to deny its scientific character, to find common features between DM and Catholic philosophy - neo-Thomism. These and other “arguments” of bourgeois critics are also used by various representatives of modern revisionism in their attempts to revise and “correct” individual propositions of D. m.

Revisionists of the right and "left" in essence deny the objective nature of social laws and the necessity for the revolutionary party to act in accordance with these laws. The same applies to the laws of dialectics. Reformist and right-wing revisionist ideologists do not recognize the struggle, but the reconciliation of opposites, deny qualitative changes, advocating only flat evolutionism, they do not recognize the law of negation of negation. In turn, left-revisionist theorists consider only antagonistic contradictions and their chaotic “struggle” to be real, deny quantitative changes, advocating continuous “leaps”, and advocate a complete rejection of the old without preserving the positive that was contained in it. For reformists and right-wing revisionists, this serves as a methodological basis for justifying opportunism, while for "left" revisionists, their methodology is the basis for extreme voluntarism and subjectivism in politics.

In its struggle both against bourgeois philosophy and against modern revisionism and dogmatism, Marxism consistently upholds the partisan principle of philosophy, considering the philosophy of dialectical and historical materialism as a scientific weapon in the hands of the working class and the working masses, fighting for their liberation from capitalism, for the victory of communism.

Lit.: Marx K. and Engels F., German ideology, Soch., 2nd ed., vol. 3; Marx K., Theses on Feuerbach, ibid.; Engels F., Anti-Dühring, ibid., vol. 20; his own, Dialectic of Nature, ibid.; Lenin V. I., Materialism and empirio-criticism, Poln. coll. soch., 5th ed., v. 18; his, Three sources and three components of Marxism, ibid., vol. 23; his own, Philosophical Notebooks, ibid., vol. 29; Morochnik S. B., Dialectical materialism, Dushanbe, 1963; Rutkevich M. N., Dialectical materialism, M., 1961; Marxist-Leninist philosophy. Dialectical materialism, M., 1970; Fundamentals of Marxist-Leninist Philosophy, M., 1971.

A. G. Spirkin.

Until now, the story of dialectical materialism has dealt mainly with the second part of this term - materialism. Its other part - dialectical - is related to the characteristics of the processes of development and movement of matter.

At different times, Soviet thinkers shared two different views on dialectics; according to one of them, matter-energy in its development obeys not only the most general laws, but these laws are identical to the three laws of dialectics, which will be discussed below. This view has many supporters, and it is also presented in the official Soviet textbooks on dialectical /50/ materialism. According to another view, matter-energy is also subject to general laws, but the laws of dialectics themselves should be regarded as temporary; they can be changed or, if necessary, caused by the development of science, completely replaced by others. This unofficial view emerges from time to time in the Soviet Union and is gaining ground especially among professional philosophers and young scientists.

The dialectic that Engels applied to natural science was based on his interpretation of Hegelian philosophy. This interpretation included not only the well-known transformation of Hegelian philosophy from idealistic to materialistic, but also the reduction of the entire wealth of Hegelian thought to a simple scheme of dialectical laws and triads.

In The Science of Logic, Hegel spoke of "dialectic" as "one of those ancient sciences that has been misjudged in modern metaphysics and in both ancient and modern popular philosophy." Hegel was convinced that until now dialectics had been interpreted as the opposition of two concepts (dualisms, antinomies, opposites); he referred to Kant's discussion of "transcendental dialectics" in his Critique of Pure Reason - here Kant put forward the view that the human mind is essentially dialectical, and every metaphysical argument can be countered by an equally convincing counterargument. Hegel saw the means of overcoming this opposition in "negation, negation", which he considered "the most objective moment of Life and Spirit, making the subject a free personality."

Contrary to popular belief, Hegel never used the concept of "thesis-antithesis-synthesis"; he understood, however, the importance of the opposition thesis-antithesis, which was discussed in the works of Kant, Fichte and Jacobi, and very rarely used the concept of "synthesis" to denote the moment of overcoming this opposition. Hegel himself was against reducing his own analysis to a triadic formula and drew attention to the fact that this scheme can only be used as a “simply pedagogical tool”, as a “formula for memory and reason”.

Hegel did not provide a method of analysis that simply had to be "put on its head" in order for it to become dialectical materialism. Engels' use of the Hegelian dialectic involved not only its inversion, but also its codification, which is a dubious reduction of a rather complex concept. Nevertheless, many elements of Engels' dialectical materialism can indeed be found in Hegel. The very fact that Engels sought to simplify Hegel's concept does not seem surprising - many, including Goethe, accused the great Prussian philosopher of the excessive complexity of his theoretical constructions - however, the fact that Engels concentrated his attention precisely on the laws of dialectics /51/ had its own the corollary of Marxism's binding to three codified laws of nature, and not simply to the principle that nature is subject to laws more general than those of any science, laws that can be established with varying degrees of success.

According to Engels, the material world is an interconnected whole governed by certain general laws. As a side effect, the development of science over the past few centuries has led to such a differentiation of knowledge that important general principles have fallen out of sight. As Engels writes in Anti-Dühring, the scientific method or

At the same time, the method of study left us with the habit of considering things and processes of nature in their isolation, outside their great common connection, and because of this - not in motion, but in a stationary state, not as essentially changeable, but as eternally unchanging, not alive and dead."

Engels says that by "dialectic" he means the laws of all motion - in nature, history and thought. He names three such laws: the law of the transition of quantity into quality, the law of mutual interpenetration of opposites, and the law of negation of negation. It is assumed that these dialectical principles or laws represent the most general forms of matter in motion. Like Heraclitus, the dialectical materialist is convinced that nothing in nature is at absolute rest; dialectical laws are attempts to describe the most general moments in the process of those changes that occur in nature. Thus, the concept of evolution or development of nature is fundamental to dialectical materialism. Dialectical laws are principles according to which the complex arises from the simple.

According to Engels, these laws are equally valid in science as they are in human history. And this universality of the laws of dialectics is, on the one hand, the source of strength, and on the other, the weakness of dialectical materialism. On the one hand, the possession of dialectics gives the Marxists a fairly powerful conceptual tool of knowledge; many thinkers were attracted to dialectical materialism precisely by its Hegelian frame. The desire to possess the key to knowledge has been perhaps the most powerful motivation throughout the history of philosophy.

On the other hand, the universality of dialectical materialism often put its supporters at a disadvantage. Many philosophers outside the Soviet Union have turned their backs on it, convinced that it contains exactly those elements of Western philosophy that should have been abandoned before they even appeared; in their opinion, dialectical materialism is a vestige of medieval scholasticism. Instead of describing, in the post-Newtonian tradition, how matter moves, dialectical materialism, following the Aristotelian tradition, explains, Why she is moving. Moreover, the universality of dialectics is achieved at the price of such a vagueness of its provisions that its usefulness seems to many critics to be very insignificant. As one of these critics, H.B. Acton, the law of negation of negation is "so general that it almost disappears" when it is tried to explain things as different as mathematics and growing barley; when this law is then extended to explain the transition of society /52/ from capitalism to communism, then "the only thing in which this law turns out to be similar to reality is the words that are used in this case." Responding to this criticism, the dialectical materialist will say that if we accept the existence of a single reality from which all aspects of human knowledge are derived, then it would be fair to believe that there must be at least several principles that are common to all these aspects of character. The most sophisticated of the dialectical materialists of the post-Stalin period may add to this that they are ready in principle to abandon the three laws of dialectics formulated by Engels if a better formulation of them can be found, and that attempts to achieve this with the help of the concepts of information theory and systemic analyzes have been undertaken.

The principle or law of the transition of quantity into quality is derived from Hegel's statement that “quality implicitly contains quantity and, conversely, quantity implicitly contains quality. In the process of measurement, therefore, both of them pass into each other: each of them becomes what it was in the filmed form ... ".

Engels gives numerous examples of how this law works in nature. These include cases when in natural phenomena the continuous chain of quantitative changes is suddenly interrupted by a noticeable change in their quality. One such example given by Engels is the homologous series of carbon compounds. The formulas of these compounds (CH 4; C 2 H 6; C 3 H 8, etc.) fit into the progression C N H 2N + 2. The members of the progression, writes Engels, differ only in the amount of carbon and hydrogen they contain. However, these compounds have different chemical properties. And it is in this that Engels sees the operation of the law of the transition of quantity into quality.

Among the most unusual examples of the operation of the law of the transformation of quantity into quality, cited by Engels in Anti-Dühring, is the case of Napoleon's cavalry during the Egyptian campaign. During the clashes between the French and Mamluk horsemen, an interesting pattern was discovered. In clashes of small groups, the French always (even in those cases when they had a small numerical superiority) lost. On the other hand, in clashes of large groups, the Mamluks always (even in cases where they had a slight numerical superiority) lost. Engels' descriptions can be represented by the following table:

/ 53 / The reason for these apparently paradoxical results was the fact that the French were very disciplined warriors, trained to participate in large-scale maneuvers; however, they were not very good riders. The Mamluks, being excellent riders from childhood, had little idea of ​​tactics and discipline. Hence, there are such quantitative-qualitative relations that give different results at different quantitative levels.

Darwin's theory of evolution also acted for Marx and Engels as one of the most important illustrations of the principle of the transition from quantity to quality. Of course, as part of dialectics, this principle was put forward by Hegel before Darwin, but Marx and Engels considered Darwinism as a confirmation of the dialectical process. During the process of natural selection, various species appear that have a common ancestor; this process can be considered as an example of the emergence of a new quality based on the accumulation of quantitative changes; the emergence of a new quality is determined by the moment when representatives of different groups can no longer interbreed with each other.

The principle of transition from quantity to quality has always been considered in the Soviet Union as one of the most important warnings against reductionism in the course of interpreting science. At the same time, reductionism is understood as the belief that all complex phenomena can be explained using combinations of simpler or elementary phenomena that make them up. Reductionists argue that if a scientist wants to understand some complex process or phenomenon (crystal growth, stellar evolution, the process of life, thinking, etc.), then he must build such an understanding starting from the most elementary level. In this regard, reductionism is characterized by a tendency to emphasize the role of physics to the detriment of other sciences. This point of view was widespread among the materialists of the 19th century. and today continues to be very popular all over the world among representatives of the so-called "exact" science. Soviet dialectical materialists criticize reductionism very strongly, carefully separating themselves from earlier materialism. The presence of quantitative-qualitative relations, especially in the biological sciences, is interpreted in the Soviet Union as a fact that excludes the possibility of explaining life processes - primarily thinking - in terms of elementary physical and chemical reactions. Soviet philosophers view the process of development of matter (beginning with its simplest inanimate forms, through the process of the emergence and development of life and man, and ending with the social level of organization) as a series of quantitative transitions, including corresponding qualitative changes. Thus, there are "dialectical levels" of the laws of nature. Social laws cannot be reduced to biological laws, and the latter, in turn, cannot be reduced to physical and chemical laws. For dialectical /54/ materialism, the whole is something more than the sum of its parts. In the views of materialists, this principle has always served as a kind of defense against various kinds of simplified explanations, but sometimes it bordered on the opposite danger - the concepts of organicism or even vitalism.

The principle of the transition of quantity into quality distinguishes dialectical materialism from mechanistic materialism. Thus, for example, a materialist like Democritus might say that the human brain is essentially like the brain of an animal, with the only difference being that the former is more efficiently organized. According to such ideas, this difference is purely quantitative. A Marxist materialist, on the other hand, will say that the human brain is qualitatively different from the brain of an animal, and that this qualitative difference is the result of an accumulation of quantitative changes that have taken place in the course of human evolution. In other words, the mental activity of a person cannot be reduced to a similar activity in an animal. The processes of vital activity themselves in general are also irreducible to physical and chemical processes, understood from the point of view of modern science. Emphasizing the qualitative differences between complex and simpler entities has led dialectical materialists in recent years to show interest (albeit cautiously) in the concepts of "integrative levels" (integrative levels) and "organismic biology" - approaches that have been widely discussed in Europe and America in the 1930s and 1940s, and began to be discussed with renewed vigor after the birth of cybernetics. The views of Soviet scientists on these concepts will be elucidated in detail in the corresponding chapter (see Chapter 4).

The approach of Soviet philosophers to the explanation of organic processes can serve as an illustration of the complex and perhaps even contradictory nature of the concept of dialectical materialism. Essentially, dialectical materialism asserts that "there is nothing but matter, but all matter is not the same." Some of the critics see this expression as a paradox underlying dialectical materialism. For example, Berdyaev writes that "dialectics, symbolizing complexity, and materialism, characterized by a narrow and one-sided view of reality, are as incompatible as water and oil." Of course, one can notice that almost any philosophical or ethical system contains an element of contradiction: the contradiction that exists between the ideal of individual freedom and the public good is inherent in Western thought, but on the whole this does not detract from its value. In the same way, the well-known tension between complexity and simplicity inherent in dialectical materialism is in itself of relatively little importance in assessing the adequacy of the approaches of this system as a whole to the problems that confront it. For the practical scientist, the existence of this contradiction has the advantage that, on the one hand, it allows one to be confident in the possibility of a fruitful study of nature, and on the other hand, it serves as a kind of warning against the fact that the success of such research, achieved in one area or at one level, considered as an answer to the final questions.

Thus, the well-known contradiction between complexity and simplicity, inherent in the principle of the transition of quantity into quality, should be regarded simply as a permanent feature of dialectical /55/ materialism, which, manifesting itself in different ways at different times, characterizes both the strength and weakness of this concept. In the 1920s, this feature of dialectical materialism was a source of discussion in Soviet philosophy. A partial rationalization of the named dichotomy is proposed in another principle or law of dialectics - the law of the interpenetration of opposites, which is sometimes also called the law of unity and struggle of opposites. Hegel formulated his view of this principle with the help of the concepts of "positive" and "negative":

“It is generally assumed that the positive and the negative are the expression of an absolute difference. However, both of these concepts actually express the same thing: each of them can be replaced by another. So, for example, debts and incomes are not some kind of independently existing types of property. What is positive for the lender is negative for the borrower and vice versa. The path to the east is also the path to the west. Thus, the positive and the negative condition each other internally and act as such only in their relations. The north pole of a magnet cannot exist without the south pole and vice versa. And if we divide the magnet into two parts, then this will not mean that we can get “north” in one part and “south” in the other. Similarly, when we are dealing with electricity, positive and negative charges are not completely independent of each other. The same can be said about opposites in general.

Engels understood the principle of the unity of opposites in the sense that harmony and order are the result of a synthesis of two opposite forces. Engels also saw the operation of this law in the process of rotation of the Earth around the Sun, which is the result of the action of opposite - gravitational and centrifugal - forces. The same law can be observed in the process of salt formation as a result of the chemical interaction of an acid and a base. Other examples of the unity of opposites given by Engels include the atom (as a unity of positive and negative charge), life (as a process of birth and death), and the phenomena of magnetic attraction and repulsion.

The law of unity and struggle of opposites is used by dialectical materialists as an explanation of the internal energy inherent in nature. In other words, in response to the question about the source of the movement of matter, dialectical materialism says that matter has the property of self-movement, which is the result of the interaction /56/ of the opposites contained in it; this kind of interaction is seen as a contradiction. Thus, there is no need for dialectical materialists to postulate some kind of “first mover” that would give impetus to the movement of planets, molecules and other material objects. The concept of self-movement as a result of internal contradictions is also present in Hegel, who wrote in his "Science of Logic": "Contradiction is the source of all movement and life in general."

The law of negation of negation is closely related to the second law, since it is assumed that synthesis is carried out by negation. According to Hegel, negation is a positive concept. The constant struggle between the old and the new leads to a higher synthesis. In the most general sense, the principle of negation is simply a formal expression of the conviction that there is nothing fixed, permanent in nature. Everything changes, each entity is eventually denied by the other. Engels considered the principle of the negation of negation to be one of the most important for dialectical and historical materialism, he wrote that it is “a very general and, precisely because of this, a very widely operating and important law of the development of nature, history and thinking; the law which, as we have seen, manifests itself in the animal and vegetable kingdoms, in geology, mathematics, history, philosophy...”. He gives a number of examples of the operation of this law: socialism's rejection of capitalism (which was the negation of feudalism), and the rejection of plants such as orchids by artificial cultivation, and the rejection of a butterfly larva by the birth of a butterfly itself, which then lays more larvae, and the negation of a barley grain by the growth of the plant itself, which then produces a greater number of grains, and the processes of differentiation and integration and a number of other mathematical operations.

Obviously, Engels often puts different meanings into the concept of "negation": replacement (replacement), succession (succession), modification (modification), etc. It seems that the last of the above examples requires a more detailed commentary. Engels proposes to designate any algebraic quantity as "a", and its negation as "-a", and then multiply "-a" by "-a" (thus producing the "negation of the negation") and get "a 2". He writes that in this case "a 2" will be a "synthesis of the highest level" of the original positive value, but already "in the second degree." The question may arise: why, in fact, in order to obtain the negation of the negation, Engels multiplies, and does not add, subtract or divide? And why does he multiply exactly by “-a”, and not by another value? The obvious answer is that, out of the many available examples, Engels chose exactly the one that corresponded to his tasks. The example with the square root of "-1", cited by Engels to prove the validity of the law of the interpenetration of opposites, led one mathematician to write a letter to Marx complaining that Engels " boldly touched honor".

For many years the dialectical laws of Marxist philosophy remained essentially the same as Engels formulated them. /57/ In the period that immediately followed the revolution in Russia, Soviet philosophers neglected the appeal to the laws of dialectics. At that time they were not yet aware of either Engels' Dialectics of Nature or Lenin's Philosophical Notebooks. The last work, published in a separate edition in 1933, made one significant change in the Soviet interpretation of the laws of dialectics: Lenin singled out the law of the unity of opposites as most important of these three laws. Lenin even hints that the law of the transition of quantity into quality is in fact only another formulation of the description of the unity of opposites; and if these two laws are in fact synonymous, then only two of the three laws formulated earlier remain.

Although most Soviet philosophers today argue that the operation of the three laws of dialectics can be observed everywhere (in nature, society and thinking), some of them believe that these laws operate only in the field of human thinking, and not in organic and inorganic nature. This minority belongs to the camp of "epistemologists" (epistemologists), opposed by "ontologists" (ontologists). Such an epistemologist was V.L. Obukhov, who, in his book published in 1983, criticized his Soviet colleagues for the zeal with which they tried to see the operation of the laws of dialectics everywhere. Obukhov's point of view was rejected by the authors of a review published in 1985 by one of the leading Soviet philosophical journals; the review noted that Obukhov's ideas "lead only to confusion."

Before finishing the discussion of the problems of dialectics, it is necessary to say at least a few words about its "categories". In dialectical materialism, the term "categories" is used to refer to those basic concepts through which the forms of interconnectedness in nature are expressed. In other words, while the laws of dialectics that have just been discussed are an attempt to establish the most general laws of the development of nature, the categories are such concepts through which these laws are expressed. Examples of categories cited in Soviet discussions in the past include "matter," "motion," "space," "time," "quantity," and "quality."

Nowhere does dialectical materialism reveal its proximity to traditional philosophy with such clarity as in emphasizing the meaning of categories; and this despite the fact that dialectical materialists often put a new meaning into the classical philosophical categories. For the first time the word "category" as an integral part of the philosophical system was used by Aristotle. In his treatise On Categories, Aristotle identified the following ten categories: substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, posture, state, action, and passion. Objects or phenomena belonging to different categories were considered by him as having nothing in common, and therefore not subject to comparison. In his works /58/ Aristotle often listed only some of these ten categories, without indicating that the rest were not mentioned by him. What is certain is that Aristotle considered questions about the exact number of categories and the best terminology to describe them as open questions. Following Aristotle, many thinkers based the construction of their own philosophical systems on systems of a priori categories, which often differ both in their number and in essence. Medieval philosophers usually considered the ten-categories system first put forward by Aristotle to be complete, ignoring Aristotle's own broad approach to the subject.

The two greatest reformers of the Aristotelian system of categories were Kant and Hegel. For Kant, categories refer to logical forms, not things in themselves. The category "quality" for Kant did not mean "bitter" or "red", as it did for Aristotle, but expressed logical relations, such as "negative" or "affirmative". In the same way, "quantity" did not mean "five inches long" to him, but "general", "special" and "singular". Thus, Kant carried out a radical reform of Aristotle's categories.

In approaches to the problem of categories, Soviet philosophers borrowed a lot from Aristotle and Kant, adding to this Hegel's conviction that categories are not absolute. As noted in the Concise Dictionary of Philosophy, Aristotle was one of the first to attempt to consider categories as a reflection of the general properties of objectively existing objects and phenomena, “however, he did not always adhere to this materialistic point of view, and, moreover, he failed to reveal the internal dialectical relationship of categories. According to Soviet philosophers, Kant's merit is the study of the logical functions of categories, their role in thinking, in the processing of these feelings. However, they continue, Kant made a big mistake by tearing off the categories from the objective world and considering them as products of the mind. According to the reasoning of Soviet dialectical materialists, Hegel's achievement in the question of categories is that he considered categories not as static, eternally given, but in the process of movement, as internally interconnected. So, for example, the category "quantity" could, in his opinion, develop into the category "quality".

The main difference between the approach of dialectical materialism to the problem of categories lies in the emphasis on the role of the natural sciences. Since, according to Marxism, being determines consciousness, and not vice versa, the material world, reflected by consciousness, determines every concept, every category in which a person thinks. Thus, “in order for materialist dialectics to be a method of scientific knowledge, to direct human thought in search of new results, its categories must always be at the level of modern science, its results and needs” (p. 120).

Since human knowledge about the material world changes over time, the definitions of categories also change. The “Concise Dictionary of Philosophy”, published in Moscow in 1966, gives the following definition of them: “Categories are the most general concepts that reflect the main properties and patterns of phenomena of objective reality and determine the nature of the scientific and theoretical thinking of the era” (p. 119) . The same source cites /59/ as examples of categories. matter, motion, consciousness, quality and quantity, cause and effect etc." (p. 119).

The words "and so on" following the enumeration of examples of categories are an important indicator of the flexibility of the system of categories of dialectical materialism. Like Aristotle, the question of the number of categories remains open. As Lenin notes in Philosophical Notebooks, “If All develops, is this one of the most common concepts And categories thinking? If not, then thinking is not connected with being. If so, then there is a dialectic of concepts and a dialectic of cognition, which has an objective meaning. ” The same approach can be found in the article “Categories”, placed in the already mentioned dictionary, which says that “categories are considered as flexible, mobile, i.e. to The very properties of objective objects and phenomena are mobile and changeable. Categories don't appear out of the box. They are formed in the long historical process of the development of knowledge” (p. 120). Thus, categories develop along with the development of science itself.

The open recognition of the flexibility, variability of categories implicitly indicates the possibility of interpretations of the laws of dialectics themselves, since these laws are expressed through categories. For the purposes that were set when writing this work, the possibility of revising the categories is especially important; we are talking about the discussion of the problems of cosmology in the corresponding chapter of this book - in the course of the discussion on the problems of cosmology that unfolded after 1956, some authors came to a new interpretation of the term "infinity", which became possible after the analysis of this category. "Time" and "space" were included in the categories in the works of the 50s, already being revised[26 . Acton H.B. The Illusion of the Epoch: Marxism - Leninism as a Philosophical Creed. Boston, 1957. P. 101.

The Logic of Hegel. W. Wallace, trans. Oxford, 1892. P. 205.

Cm.: Marx K., Engels F. Op. T. 20. P. 131. Since each of these laws has the same significance for economics and science, then, according to Soviet dialectics, the transition from capitalism to socialism and communism is carried out through qualitative leaps resulting from sufficient quantitative changes in the methods of production and organization of society .

See for example: Marx K., Engels F. Selected works. In 2 vol. M., 1958. T. 2. S. 388-389.

The concept of dialectical levels of the laws of nature is especially important for understanding the views of A.I. Oparin, known for his work on the problem of the origin of life (see Chapter 3 of this book). It is also important for understanding the discussions in physiology and psychology discussed in Chap. 5.

. Berdyaev N. Wahrheit und Luge des Kommunismus. Lucerne, 1934, p. 84.

Cit. By: Hegel G.W.F. The Logic of Hegel. Oxford, 1892. P. 22.

The principle of the struggle of opposites has an ancient tradition in the philosophy of nature. Fire and water were considered by Aristotle as one of the most important pairs of opposites. Some medieval alchemists combined some parts of Aristotle's philosophy with an essentially materialistic point of view on nature, according to which simple forms of matter pass into higher forms in a natural way, and this path, at least potentially, can be repeated by man.

Of course, in these questions Engels approaches the natural-philosophical views of the beginning of the 19th century. An interesting attempt to present this natural philosophy as important for the development of field theory is contained in the book by L. Williams. "The Origin of Field Theory" ( Williams L. The Origins of Field Theory. N. Y., 1966) Of particular interest is Williams' discussion of the views of H.K. Oersted, many of whose ideas about polarities in nature resembled those of Engels ( Williams L. Op. cit. P. 51ff).

. Hegel G.W.F. Science of Logic. London, 1951, 2:66ff.

. Marx K., Engels F. Op. T. 20. S. 145.

See ibid. pp. 133-146.

There. pp. 140-141.

Engels accepts this complaint, but does not name the mathematician (see ibid. p. 11).

Cm.: Lenin V.I. Philosophical notebooks. M., 1938 (1965). P. 212. In the History of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, published in 1938. A Short Course” Stalin in his article “On Dialectical and Historical Materialism” does not mention the law of negation of negation in general, and thereby presents the laws of dialectics in a new way.

Cm.: Goncharov S.3., Molchanov V.A., Manuilov I.M. Review of the book "Dialectics of negation of negation" (M., 1983)//Questions of Philosophy. 1985. No. 3. S. 163.

Brief Dictionary of Philosophy. M., 1966. S. 119. Further references to this edition will be given directly in the text with page numbers.

. Lenin V.I. Full coll. op. T. 29. S. 229.

The categories listed in the Concise Dictionary of Philosophy (M., 1966) included matter, motion, time, space, quantity, quality, interaction, contradiction, causality, necessity, form and content, phenomenon and essence, possibility and reality, etc. For more details, see: Wetter G.A. Soviet Ideology Today. N.Y., 1966. P. 65.

With characteristic sharpness, he expressed in the work "German Ideology" with the words: "Philosophy and the study of the real world are related to each other, like onanism and sexual love." At the same time, Marx not only knew perfectly well, but also masterfully applied dialectical approaches in his works, including Capital. Marx spoke of "materialist dialectics" and "materialist understanding of history", which Friedrich Engels later referred to as "historical materialism". The term "dialectical materialism" was introduced into Marxist literature by the Russian Marxist Georgy Plekhanov. Vladimir Lenin actively used this term in his works.

The next stage in the development of materialist dialectics was the work of G. Lukacs History and class consciousness, where he defined the orthodoxy of Marxism on the basis of loyalty to the Marxist method, and not to dogmas. For this book, together with the work of Karl Korsch, Marxism and Philosophy became the subject of condemnation at the Fifth Congress of the Comintern by Grigory Zinoviev. In biology and other sciences, the promoters of dialectical materialism were Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin.

Popper notes that the vagueness of the basic concepts of dialectics (“contradiction”, “struggle”, “denial”) leads to the degeneration of dialectical materialism into pure sophistry, making any criticism meaningless under the pretext of “misunderstanding” of the dialectical method by critics, which further serves as a prerequisite for the development "dialectical" dogmatism and the cessation of all development of philosophical thought.

- Popper K. Logic and the growth of scientific knowledge. - M ., 1983. - S. 246.

At the same time, Doctor of Philosophical Sciences Metlov V.I. believes that Popper's criticism of dialectics is untenable, justifying it as follows:

It is impossible not to pay attention to the fact that the inconsistency of the proper dialectical order arises in Hegel in fact in the course and on the basis of the relationship between the subject and object levels as a form of development of the relationship between the "I" and the "thing" and that, consequently, the possibility of a collision of this kind inconsistency with rational thinking, at the level of which linguistic and logical activity is described, subject to the action of the well-known law of formal logic - logic, as already noted, of the same level, is completely excluded here, and Popper's criticism of dialectics misses the mark. ... Dialectical contradiction is ultimately a certain type of relationship between the subject and the object and, further, the material and the ideal, it is not something completed once and for all, it has its own history, unfolding from the initial forms, antinomy, to more developed forms in which the removal of inconsistency is carried out, the acquisition by the subject of a thing in itself, overcoming alienation, both epistemological (I. Kant) and social (A. Smith). This two-dimensionality of the dialectical contradiction, which is realized in the relationship between the named levels, excludes the very possibility of correlating it with a formal-logical contradiction, and therefore makes criticism of Popper's type of dialectics irrelevant.

Dogmatism

A clear confirmation of Popper's words was the fate of dialectical materialism in the USSR and other socialist countries. The tough and cruel struggle for power, the desire to introduce unanimity and suppress any intellectual competition led to the fact that dialectical materialism became a quasi-religious cult with its own "holy scripture" - the works of the "classics of Marxism-Leninism" considered infallible, quotes from which were absolute arguments in any discussion. The dogmatism of dialectical materialism found its extreme expression in the Short Course on the History of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, which became the catechism of this cult.

see also

Notes

Links

• The most accessible textbook in reading, even rather just a book on this philosophy - Rakitov "Marxist-Leninist Philosophy"
• Marx K., Engels F., Lenin V.I.
• Stalin I. V. On dialectical and historical materialism
• Lucio Colletti Hegel and Marxism
• Ilyenkov E. Top, end and new life of dialectics
• Ilyenkov E. Falsification of Marxist dialectics for the sake of Maoist politics
• Althusser L. Contradiction and overdetermination
• Lauren Graham"Natural science, philosophy and the sciences of human behavior in the Soviet Union" - a book about the interaction of Soviet science with the prevailing philosophical trend at that time - dialectical materialism
• Bertel Allman Dance of the Dialectic: Steps in Marx's Method
• Yuri Semyonov"Dialectical (pragmo-dialectical) materialism: its place in the history of philosophical thought and contemporary significance"

Literature

• Ai Si-chi. Lectures on Dialectical Materialism. M., 1959.
• Cassidy F. H. Heraclitus and Dialectical Materialism // Questions of Philosophy. 2009. No. 3. P.142-146.
• Oizerman T. I. Dialectical materialism and the history of philosophy (historical and philosophical essays). Moscow: Thought, 1979 (2nd edition - 1982, in English - Dialectical Materialism and the History of Philosophy: Essays on the History of Philosophy, Moscow: Progress, 1984).
• Rutkevich M. N. Dialectical materialism. M., 1973.

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See what "Dialectical Materialism" is in other dictionaries:

DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM.- DIALECTIC MATERIALISM. Contents: I. The subject of dialectical materialism 479 II. The emergence of dialectical materialism.... 480 III. Lenin's Stage in the Development of Dialectical Materialism 481 IV. Matter and consciousness 483 V.… … Philosophical Encyclopedia

DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM- the philosophy of Marxism-Leninism. According to the characteristics of Yu. Bohensky, D.M., who was a philosopher. doctrine of communist society, is the unification of Aristotelian philosophy with Hegelian dialectics: “Dialectical materialism in essence ... ... Philosophical Encyclopedia

Dialectical materialism- (dialectical materialism) The theory of the development of nature, formalized mainly by Soviet ideologists on the basis of the works of Engels; Dialectical materialism proceeds from the fact that all phenomena are motions of matter. The movement itself is... Political science. Dictionary.

dialectical materialism- DIALECTIC MATERIALISM is a concept that denoted the theoretical part of Marxism in Soviet philosophy and ideology. In Soviet philosophical literature, the emergence of D. m. belonged to the 1840s. However, Marx and Engels did not have this term ... Encyclopedia of Epistemology and Philosophy of Science

DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM- DIALECTIC materialism, the philosophical doctrine of Marxism. The basic principles of dialectical materialism were formulated in the 40s. 19th century K. Marx and F. Engels, and at the beginning of the 20th century. were developed by V.I. Lenin. During the existence of the USSR ... ... Modern Encyclopedia

DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM- the philosophical doctrine of Marxism. The basic principles of dialectical materialism were formulated in the 40s. 19th century K. Marx and F. Engels, and in the 20th century. were developed by V. I. Lenin. During the existence of the USSR, the dogmatized dialectical ... ... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary

DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM- see DIALECTIC MATERIALISM. DIALOGUE (from the Greek dialogos a conversation between two people) eng. dialog; German Dialog. A form of direct speech interaction between two or more persons, consisting of a successive alternation of stimulating and responsive ... Encyclopedia of Sociology

Dialectical materialism- DIALECTIC MATERIALISM, the philosophical doctrine of Marxism. The basic principles of dialectical materialism were formulated in the 40s. 19th century K. Marx and F. Engels, and at the beginning of the 20th century. were developed by V.I. Lenin. During the existence of the USSR ... ... Illustrated Encyclopedic Dictionary

DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM- self-designation of the dialectical philosophy of the objectivist type, the main provisions of which were formulated by Engels ('Anti Dühring') and I. Stalin ('On Dialectical and Historical Materialism'). D.M. was the official Soviet ... ... History of Philosophy: Encyclopedia

DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM- self-designation of the dialectical philosophy of the objectivist type, the main provisions of which were formulated by Engels ("Anti Dühring") and Stalin ("On Dialectical and Historical Materialism"). D.M. was the official Soviet philosophy... The latest philosophical dictionary Read more

CRYPTOGRAM #3 ONTOLOGY.

Horizontally:

1. According to dialectical materialism, one of the attributes of matter, from a modern point of view, is a set of relations expressing the coordination of coexisting objects, their location relative to each other and relative size.

2. According to dialectical materialism, one of the attributes of matter, in the modern sense, is the way of its existence, “change in general”: any interaction that unfolds in space and time, any process of change.

3. In modern materialistic philosophy, this category designates the entire objective reality, i.e. a reality that exists outside and independently of human consciousness. In the philosophy of the New Time, this was understood as a substance. In ancient philosophy - as the primary substance (fire, water, air ...)

4. Consistent monist and pantheist, rationalist and determinist, who in the 17th century developed the doctrine of a single substance, its attributes and modes. He wrote: “By substance I mean that which exists in itself and is represented by itself through itself ... By attribute ... that which the mind represents in substance as constituting its essence. Under the modus ... the state of substance ... what exists in the other and is represented through this other.

5. This “weeping” philosopher of antiquity, being an elemental materialist, believed that material, eternal and living fire was the beginning of all things.

6. From the point of view of religious philosophy, this is precisely what is an independent essence and the beginning of the objective world. And for number 4, for example, it is nature. For Feuerbach, it is the “objectified essence of man” turned into a person, into a subject.

7. This philosopher of the New Time believed that the Absolute, the World Spirit, possessing self-consciousness and the ability to create, the root cause of the whole world, was the only true reality.

8. Its types in different philosophical teachings can be: real and ideal, genuine and inauthentic, virtual, potential and actual, absolute, objective and subjective, natural and social, human, bodily and spiritual, etc.

9. According to dialectical materialism, one of the attributes of matter, from a modern point of view, is a set of relations expressing the coordination of successive states of objects and phenomena, their sequence and duration.

Exercise:(1) Can Pantheism #4 be considered materialism? (2) What opposing concepts of ratio #1, #3, and #9 are known today? What is their essence? (3) Who introduced category #8 into philosophy? (4) What is meant by #6 vertically? (5) What signs do materialists and scientists today identify in No. 1, No. 2, No. 9?

CRYPTOGRAM #5 Ontology

Vertically:

1. The ancestor of ancient Greek philosophy, who reduced all the diversity of the world of things and phenomena to the primary element - water.

2. A Dutch philosopher who substantiated the idea that substance (nature = god) is the cause of itself - causa sui.

3. An ancient Greek philosopher, known for his logical paradoxes about movement (aporias).

4. Italian physicist and astronomer who established the law of inertia, the law of free fall of bodies and the principle of relativity.

5. One of the characteristics of time.

6. Philosopher, who argued that the unity of the world should be sought in its materiality, since "there is nothing in the world but moving matter ..."

7. The concept introduced by Heraclitus to express the universal meaning, rhythm and proportion of being.

8. This is how fundamental particles are called in the physics of the microworld.

9.Physical characteristic of matter, which determines its inert and gravitational properties.

10. Today it is understood as one-dimensional, homogeneous and irreversible.

Exercise:(1) what forms of motion of matter did Engels single out, besides the one obtained in the answer? What important ideas did his classification contain? What structural levels of matter stand out in the modern picture of the world?

(2) Engels wrote: “Matter, as such, is a pure creation of thought and an abstraction. We digress from the qualitative differences of things when we unite them, as soon as they exist, under the concept of matter. Matter as such, unlike determinate, existing matters, is thus not something sensuously existing. “When natural science sets itself the goal of finding uniform matter as such ... then it acts in the same way as if instead of cherries, pears, apples, it would like to see the fruit as such, instead of cats, dogs, sheep, etc. - a mammal as such, a gas as such, a metal as such, a stone as such, a chemical compound as such ... ”At the same time, it is known that Engels is a materialist. So does matter really exist? If yes, in what form?

(3) Are the attributes of matter material? Justify.

(4) If we imagine that matter has disappeared, then what will happen to space, time, movement? And vice versa: with the disappearance of attributes, what should happen to matter as a substance?

(5) A.F. Losev wrote that matter is an abstract concept (see: c.2), which means that materialism is based on a special kind of intellectual intuition and the starting point of materialism is the revelation of matter, just as there is the appearance of angels, luminous cross in the sky. Losev believes: “materialists must admit: 1. their teaching is based not on logic and knowledge, but on direct and, moreover, supersensible revelation (given in sensations); 2. This revelation gives an experience that claims to be absolute exclusivity, i.e. that this experience blossoms into a religious myth (matter is objective, specific, a reality that we cannot grasp and perceive objectively with external senses); 3. and that this myth receives absolute affirmation in thought, i.e. becomes a dogma. Dialectical materialism is the same coherent and consistent theory as were the teachings of Platonism, Neoplatonism, any dogmatic theology, since the question of the foundation of its last object, grasped only by faith, in myth, as the highest revelation, is not raised. The appearance of things from matter is a miracle.

Is it possible to object to Losev or should we agree? Reflect on this.

CRYPTOGRAM #4 Ontology: post-nonclassical paradigm

Horizontally:

1.It is defined as an ordered set of interrelated elements; as a whole, consisting of interrelated parts; as a collection of elements and relationships between them. As you can see, the definitions are close to the etymology of this concept: since in translation from Greek it means “connection; whole made up of parts.

2. This is the name of an open system that interacts with the environment and maintains its existence due to the constant exchange of matter and energy with it. According to No. 6, this is the name given to structures that spontaneously arise far from equilibrium: under strongly non-equilibrium conditions, a transition from disorder, thermal chaos, to order can occur; new, No. 2, structures can arise, i.e. dynamic states of matter, reflecting the interaction of a given system with the environment. The term is derived from the Latin word for "scatter".

3. One of the conditions No. 11, one of the conditions for development No. 1, the condition and source of the emergence of “order” from chaos.

4. According to one of the main ideas No. 12, this is a feature of the evolution of most complex systems, associated with the possibility of multivariate development.

5. We owe the existence of this term to the Latin word "forked" or the English word "fork". Near the points of this phenomenon in the systems significant No. 8 are observed, leading to the transition of the system to a new level of order. These are critical points of development, its "forks", branching points - non-uniqueness, multivariance of the paths of evolution of a dynamic system.

6. Belgian scientist of Russian origin, founder of non-equilibrium thermodynamics, confirming the dialectical-materialistic idea of ​​self-movement, self-development of matter. He writes: "Matter is no longer a passive substance, described within the framework of a mechanistic picture of the world, it is also characterized by spontaneous activity." Together with Glensdorf, he formulated a theorem called the principle of physical evolution, according to which it is impossible to uniquely determine evolution in strongly nonequilibrium systems, i.e. there are several alternative development paths for these systems.

7. He designs No. 12 vertically, and he also came up with the name for No. 12, which comes from the Greek word for "joint action." He also defined the concept of "chaos" as an irregular movement, described by deterministic equations.

8. This is the deviation of a value from its average value. This forces the system to choose the branch along which its further evolution will take place and, at the same time, destroys the old structure. In Latin, this term means "fluctuation". In general, we can say that these are random fluctuations and deviations that are constantly inherent in matter, occurring near critical points No. 5.

9. Non-equilibrium "………….", as well as the theory of dynamical systems, became the most important theoretical sources No. 12 vertically. Its second law - the law of increasing entropy - showed the inconsistency of the hypothesis of "heat death of the Universe".

10. In a holistic understanding (from the Greek - “whole”), this is understood as No. 1, and No. 1 as elements plus connections between elements. The second understanding distinguishes this from #1 by defining it as the internal organization and orderliness of an object.

11. As a result of this process, spontaneous emergence of order from chaos is possible. This process implies the presence of a sufficient number of interacting elements, symmetry breaking, the presence of a positive feedback of the system, the influx of energy and matter from outside, remoteness from the point of thermodynamic equilibrium, the presence of No. 8. In a narrow sense, this is a spontaneous transition of an open non-equilibrium system from simple and disordered forms of organization to more complex and orderly. In a broader sense, this is a general trend in the development of matter - from less to more complex and ordered forms of organization, the reproduction and evolution of matter without the participation of external forces, thanks to its own internal activity: matter generates irreversible processes, and irreversible processes organize matter.

Vertically:

12. Interdisciplinary scientific direction that develops general methods of analysis