The positive outcome of philosophyDietzgen, Joseph
Philosophy
The positive outcome of philosophy
Dietzgen, Joseph
Knowledge, Theory of; Logic; Philosophy
If we call a cream puff a tidbit and rye bread a food without
remembering that every food is a tidbit and every tidbit food, and if we
ignore the fact that both of them, in spite of their difference, belong
to the same category and are, therefore, related, then we lack logic.
And logic is lacking whenever the fact is ignored that all things
without exception: substances, forces, or qualities of the world, are
chips of the same block, finite parts of the infinite, which is the only
truth and reality.
That insects, fishes, birds, and mammals form one and the same animal
kingdom, is an old story which has long been patched up by the logical
instinct. Darwin did not only enrich the natural sciences, but also
perform an invaluable service for logic. In proving how amphibia
developed into birds, he bored a hole into the hitherto fixed order of
classification. He brought motion, life, spirit into the zoological
swamp.
In case you should not be familiar enough with Darwin's work to
understand my allusions, I will enter a little more deeply into the
matter in a few sentences. The zoologists knew well enough that all
species of animals belonged to the animal kingdom; but this
classification was a mechanical affair. Now the "Origin of Species,"
which demonstrates that the zoological classification is not constant
but variable, which outlines the actual transition from one species of
animals to another, reveals at the same time that this alignment of all
animal species in one kingdom is not only a logical mechanism, but also
a fact of actual existence. This classification of all animals from the
minutest to the most gigantic in one kingdom appeared before the time of
Darwin as an order which had been accomplished by thought alone, while
after him it was known as an order of nature.
What the zoologists did to the animal kingdom, must be done by the
logician to existence in general, to the cosmos. It must be shown that
the whole world, all forms of its existence, including the spirit, are
logically or monistically connected, related, welded together.
A certain narrow materialism thinks that everything is done and said
when the inter-connection between thought and brain is pointed out. A
good many things may still be discovered by the help of the dissecting
knife, microscope, and experiment; but this does not make the function
of logic superfluous. True, thought and brain are connected, just as
intimately as the brain is related to the blood, the blood with oxygen,
etc.; but moreover thought is connected quite as intimately with all
other things as all physical objects are.
That the apple is not alone dependent on the stem which attaches it to
the tree, but also on sunshine and rain, that these things are not
one-sidedly but universally connected, this is what logic wants to teach
you particularly in regard to the spirit, the thought.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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