The positive outcome of philosophyDietzgen, Joseph
Philosophy
The positive outcome of philosophy
Dietzgen, Joseph
Knowledge, Theory of; Logic; Philosophy
The intellect is also called by the name of faculty of discrimination.
If in the science of the powers of this faculty we place ourselves on
the standpoint of present-day natural knowledge, we possess the clear
and plain insight that there are no exaggerated distinctions, no
unrelated extremes, in the universe. The infinite is related to the
finite. For all developed and perishable things are the direct offspring
of the imperishable, of the eternal universe. General nature and its
special parts are inseparably interlaced. There is nothing among all
that has a name which is fundamentally different from other things known
by name.
There will hardly be any objection against these sentences, until we
proceed to draw their last consequences. If all things are related and
without exception children of the universe, it follows that mind and
matter must also be two yards of cloth from the same piece. Hence the
difference between human understanding and other natural human faculties
must not be magnified into that of irreconcilable extremes.
In order to become accustomed to scientific distinctions, the reader
should consider that a man can remain under the sway of a belief in
ghosts only so long as he ignores the relationship of all existing
things. He believes in real ghosts whose reality is supposed to be
radically different from his own. Such a distinction is exaggerated and
illogical, and whoever believes in it does not know how to discriminate
scientifically and has not the full use of his critical faculties.
Just as common parlance opposes art to nature and then forgets that art
is a part of nature, similarly as night is a part of day, so the
language of the believer in ghosts does not know that reason and wood,
mind and matter, in spite of all their differences, are two parts of the
same whole, two expressions of the same universal reality. Everything is
real and true, because in the last instance the universe is all, is the
only truth and reality. So I call it a slip of the tongue to speak of
natural nature as opposed to natural art or artificial nature, of
imaginary reality as distinct from real reality. There ought to be a
different name for the day of twelve hours than for the day of
twenty-four hours, so that it might be better understood that day and
night are not fundamentally different, but two prongs of the same fork.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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