The positive outcome of philosophyDietzgen, Joseph
Philosophy
The positive outcome of philosophy
Dietzgen, Joseph
Knowledge, Theory of; Logic; Philosophy
The subsequent philosophers, especially the Hegelian philosophy, opposed
this separation which assigned to the intellect only the study of
phenomena and to faith the absolute and infinite for veneration. But
they did not yet succeed in completely mastering the matter, they did
not fully arrive at an indubitably clear exposition of the fountain of
understanding and of the unity of truth, so that reaction nowadays can
again sound the retreat after the melody: "Back to Kant." You know that
Lessing complained about the treatment of "a dead dog" accorded to
Spinoza, and Marx added pointedly: "Hegel is more of a dead dog to-day
than Spinoza was at Lessing's time." The enemies of the working class
are the enemies of evolution. They wish to preserve the existing order
of things and the good old time in which they feel at home. For this
reason it is the mission of the proletariat to continue the work of
logic. It is our duty to show clearly that the metaphysical truth which
Kant opposed to the phenomena of nature and could not eliminate from the
intellect, is nothing but just a metaphysical, a fantastically
exaggerated, thing.
According to our logic, the universe is the truth and everything
partakes of it. That such a truth is logical and such a logic true, is
shown by the interconnection of things, so that this science is
applicable to everything which the sciences respect as reasonable and
true.
In order to help you in the understanding of the absolute and liberate
your thought from all special miracles, I refer to Kant's critique of
reason. It teaches that our intellect becomes a source of understanding
only in connection with other phenomena of nature. Only his critique
stuck fast in the mysterious fountain of causality. Thus he showed that
he was only a seeker after logic, not its master. The conclusion that
there must be _something_ that does appear where there are phenomena is
certainly correct. But that which Kant was thinking of, something of a
transcendental or metaphysical nature, led him to the radically wrong
conclusion that there must be something different, peculiar, miraculous,
mysterious, wherever there are phenomena.
The Kantian conclusion that there must be an absolute truth by itself
behind a phenomenon, an absolute truth that exists independent of and
disconnected with such phenomenon, was due to his fetish-like conception
of truth. It is the first requirement for a correct use of the faculty
of logical reasoning to know that truth is the common nature of the
universe.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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