The positive outcome of philosophyDietzgen, Joseph
Philosophy
The positive outcome of philosophy
Dietzgen, Joseph
Knowledge, Theory of; Logic; Philosophy
The understanding of the method of science, the understanding of the
mind, is destined to solve all the problems of religion and philosophy,
to explain thoroughly all the great and small riddles, and thus fully to
restore research to its mission of empirically studying details. If we
are aware that it is a law of reason to require some perceptible
material, some cause, for its operation, then the question regarding the
first or general cause becomes superfluous. Human understanding is then
seen to be first and last cause of all concrete causes. If we understand
that it is a law of reason to require for its operation some given
object, some beginning at which to start, then the question of the first
beginning must necessarily become inane. If we understand that reason
derives abstract units out of concrete multiplicities, that it
constructs truth out of phenomena, substance out of attributes, that it
perceives all things as parts of a whole, as individuals of some genus,
as qualities of some object, then the question regarding a "thing
itself," a something which in reality is back of all things, must needs
become irrelevant. In brief, the understanding of the interdependence of
reason reveals the unreasonableness of the demand for independent
reason.
Now, although the main object of metaphysics, the cause of all causes,
the beginning of all beginnings, the nature of things, causes little
inconvenience to modern science, and even though the needs of the
present have overcome the leaning for speculation, this practical
downfall of speculation does not suffice for the solution of its
problems. So long as the theoretical law is not understood, according to
which reason requires some concrete object for its operation, there is
no hope of abandoning objectless thought, this malpractice of
speculative philosophy, which pretends to generate knowledge without
intercourse with objective reality. Our naturalists demonstrate this
very clearly as soon as they turn from their tangible specialties to
abstract things. The dispute over questions of life's wisdom, of
morality, or the quarrel over the wise, good, right, or bad, reveals
that here is the boundary of scientific agreement. The scientific
explorers of the exact sciences abandon every day their inductive method
when dealing with social problems, and stray off into the regions of
speculative philosophy. Just as in physics they believe in imperceptible
physical truths, in "things themselves," so in social matters they
believe in the reasonable, wise, right, or bad, in the sense of "things
themselves," of absolute phases of life, of unconditional conditions. It
is here where the outcome of our studies, of the critique of pure
reason, must be applied.
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