The positive outcome of philosophyDietzgen, Joseph
Philosophy
The positive outcome of philosophy
Dietzgen, Joseph
Knowledge, Theory of; Logic; Philosophy
On the contrary, the sophists confused and disputed everything. They
frivolously flouted all truth and research. This same frivolousness now
relies upon Kant who, misled by the prejudice of his time, removed truth
to a transcendental world and therefore deprecatingly called our actual
world the "world of phenomena." In distinction from him, our logic
teaches that the phenomena of this world without exception are parts of
the one truth, and that the true art of understanding consists in
studying the parts.
The doctrine of the sophists to the effect that everything may be denied
and disputed has a certain similarity with ours in that we declare that
the universe is the truth and all parts of it true parts, that smoke and
fog, reason and imagination, dreams and realities, subject and object,
are true parts of the world. They are not the whole truth, but still
true. For this reason it is well to call your attention to the
difference between the sophistical and the logical method of thought.
The contemporaries of Socrates are still alive to-day. They are teaching
in the name of God and believe in nothing, while to us truth, every day
naked and sober truth, is sacred.
THIRTEENTH LETTER
In his "Three Books On The Soul," Aristotle discussed at length the
question whether the human soul has five senses or one. The commentator,
J. H. von Kirchmann, the publisher of the "Philosophical Library,"
remarks in his footnote 172 that man has six senses. He divides feeling
into pure and active feeling. According to this, the phrase of the five
senses belongs to the old iron the same as that of the four elements.
Now neither you, nor I, nor any reader should worry about the question
whether all sensation may be summed up in the one sense of feeling,
whether there are five senses according to Aristotle, or six according
to Kirchmann, or whether there is even a seventh sense for the
transcendental, the organ of which, as some optimists hope, will
gradually be developed with the growing perfection of man. We are
concerned in this matter only so far as it is connected with the
cardinal question, whether the world is only one thing or a mere
collection of an infinite number of disconnected things; whether the
so-called things are independent subjects and objects, or whether they
are only predicates of the one world subject.
Looking through the window I see the river, the street, the bridge,
houses, and trees. Everything is a thing in itself and yet is connected
inseparably with all others. The qualities of the world are regarded by
the intellect as subjects; but the intelligent subject should also know
that its actions, its distinguishing and understanding, are formalities,
a formal dismemberment of the absolute, which in spite of all division
always remains the undivided whole.
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