The positive outcome of philosophyDietzgen, Joseph
Philosophy
The positive outcome of philosophy
Dietzgen, Joseph
Knowledge, Theory of; Logic; Philosophy
Plato thus says that the immediate purposes of men are not their real
purposes, but means to an end, means to welfare or for "good." He
therefore continues: "It is in pursuit of good, then, that we go when we
go, because we are after something better, and we stand still for the
sake of the same good."
Now let us go a step farther than Socrates and Plato. Just as men's
actions are truly done, not for the sake of some immediate purpose, but
of the ulterior, of welfare, and just as their socalled ethical actions
are justified only by the general wellbeing, so all things of the world
are not substantiated by their immediate environment, but by the
infinite universe. It is not the seed planted in the soil which is the
cause of the growing plant, as the farmer thinks, but the Earth, the
Sun, the winds, and the weather, in short, the whole of nature, and that
includes the seed germ.
If we apply this reasoning to our special object, the faculty of
understanding, we find that it is not a narrowly human, nor a
transcendental, but a universal cosmic faculty. According to Homer, the
immortal gods call things by other names than mortal men. But once you
have grasped the concept of the absolute, you understand the language of
the gods, you understand that the intellect by itself is but a minute
particle, while in the interrelation with the universe it is an absolute
and integral part of the universal absolute.
All things have a dual nature, all of them are limited parts of the
unlimited, the inexhaustible, the unknowable. Just as all things are
small and great, temporal and eternal, so all of them including the
human mind are knowable and unknowable at the same time. We must not
idolize the faculty of thought nor forget its divine nature. Man should
be humble, but without bowing in doglike submission to a transcendental
spirit, and he should be sustained by the sublime consciousness that his
spirit is the true one, the spirit of universal truth.
Everything can be seen by eyes, including those of a hawk. Just as the
eye is the instrument of vision, so the intellect is the instrument of
thought. And just as spectacles and glasses are means of assisting the
eye in seeing, so senses, experience, and experiments are means of
assisting the intellect in understanding. With this equipment the
intellect can assimilate everything in its conceptions. It understands
"all," but "all" only in a relative sense. We understand all, just as we
buy everything for money. We can buy only what is for sale. Reason and
sunshine cannot be valued in money. We can see everything with eyes, and
yet not everything. Sounds and smells cannot be seen. Just as everything
is great and small, so everything is knowable and unknowable, according
to the meaning given to "everything" in the language of men or gods.
That word has the dual meaning of applying to any particle and to the
whole universe. So is the human mind universal, but only a universal
specialty.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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