Adrian Johnston offers a first-of-its-kind sustained critical response to Slavoj Zizek's Less Than Nothing and Absolute Recoil, in which Zizek returns to Hegel. Johnston develops what he calls transcendental materialism, an antireductive materialism capable of preserving and advancing the legacies of the Hegelian, Marxian, and Freudian traditions.

: Studies of Chinese dialectical materialism have long neglected the important philosophical dimension of Hegelian thought and its influence on Chinese Marxism. This essay examines the work of Zhang Shiying of Beijing University, whose studies of Hegel's works on dialectical logic in the 1950s sought to clarify the nature of Hegel's speculative dialectic and its relation to dialectical materialism. Like Lenin before him, Zhang believed that Hegel's works on logic offered a more profound reflection on (...) materialism than had previously been recognized by Marxist critics of German idealism. Zhang's sensitive reading of both Hegel's Science of Logic and the Encyclopedia Logic highlights the problem of the speculative dialectic and negativity. Examined here is Zhang's analysis of the Hegelian dialectic in light of contemporary accounts of the role of Hegelian negativity in poststructuralist thought. (shrink)

Studies of Chinese dialectical materialism have long neglected the important philosophical dimension of Hegelian thought and its influence on Chinese Marxism. This essay examines the work of Zhang Shiying of Beijing University, whose studies of Hegel's works on dialectical logic in the 1950s sought to clarify the nature of Hegel's speculative dialectic and its relation to dialectical materialism. Like Lenin before him, Zhang believed that Hegel's works on logic offered a more profound reflection on (...) class='Hi'>materialism than had previously been recognized by Marxist critics of German idealism. Zhang's sensitive reading of both Hegel's Science of Logic and the Encyclopedia Logic highlights the problem of the speculative dialectic and negativity. Examined here is Zhang's analysis of the Hegelian dialectic in light of contemporary accounts of the role of Hegelian negativity in poststructuralist thought. (shrink)

In chapter four of his latest book, _A New German Idealism _(2019), Adrian Johnston seeks to clarify the meaning of ‘materialism’ in Žižek’s philosophy and questions what he sees as potentially problematic aspects of Žižek’s ‘materialism without materialism’. In this article, I propose a possible reply to three problematic aspects of Žižek’s materialism identified by Johnston. First, that Žižek risks losing his materialist credentials by appealing to a Pythagorean-Badiouan mathematical idealism to define matter. Second, that Žižek’s (...) account of the emergence of the subject from substance relies on the idea of a pre-subjective Nature that is whole and balanced, contradicting the key tenet of Žižek’s dialectical materialism that nature is a non-all. Third, that Žižek projects features of human subjectivity onto natural substance, and so problematically anthropomorphizes the pre-human Real, which is evident in how Žižek argues that there are similarities between the behaviour of particles in quantum physics and features of the Lacanian symbolic order. (shrink)

The Book Provides A Genealogy Of `Dialectical Materialism` By Tracing The Development Of Marxist Ideas From Their Origins In German Philosophical Thought To The Ideology Of The Socio-Democratic Groups In Russia In The 1890S, From Which Lenin And The Revolutionary Generation Emerged. It Reconstructs Marx`S Original Conceptions And Examines The Modifications That Were Made To Them By Himself And By His Russian Followers, Which Eventually Gave Rise To The Doctrine Of `Dialectical Materialism`, Expounded By Plekhanov. Condition (...) Good. (shrink)

This is a slightly revised English translation of the third German edition of Bocheński.’s now near-classic introduction to Soviet philosophy. It still remains the best short introduction to the field and can be unhesitatingly recommended for all interested in learning something about philosophy in Soviet Russia. The body of the work is divided into two sections, one historical and the other systematic. The historical section presents both the Western and the Russian origins of dialectical materialism as well as (...) a discussion of the development and characteristics of Soviet philosophy. The systematic section explains and critically evaluates the content of diamat with emphasis on materialism and dialectics. This portion of the book, originally written in 1950, was revised in 1956. The reader should bear in mind that present-tense judgments refer to this latter date. While most of the material is still pertinent, some—for instance the emphasis on Stalin—is not. Newer material appears in the second of the two appendixes. (shrink)

Nineteenth-century German science was frequently involved in philosophical disputes and also in political issues. Most thinkers wanted their systems to be considered ‘scientific’, and Marx and Engels were no exceptions. However, they sharply distinguished their approach from that of the popularizing ‘materialist’ philosophers, Büchner, Vogt and Moleschott. In this paper we review the relation of Marx and Engels to these and other tendencies, both in ideas and in personal contacts, and show how they distinguished their ‘dialectical’ materialism from (...) that which they described as ‘vulgar’. (shrink)

A comprehensive study of German materialism in the second half of the nineteenth century is long overdue. Among contemporary historians the mere passing references to Karl Vogt, Jacob Moleschott, and Ludwig Buchner as materialists and popularizers of science are hardly sufficient, for few individuals influenced public opinion in nineteenth-century Germany more than these men. Buchner, for example, revealed his awareness of the historical significance of his Kraft und Stoff in comments made in 1872, just seventeen years after its original (...) appearance. A philosophical book which has undergone twelve big German editions in the short span of seventeen years, which further has been issued in non-German countries and languages about fifteen to sixteen times in the same period, and whose appearance (although its author was entirely unknown up to then) has called forth an almost unprecedented storm in the press,... such a book can be nothing ordinary; the world-calling it enjoys at present must be justified through its wholly special characteristics or by the merits of its form and content. ' Vogt, Moleschott and Buchner explicitly held that their materialism was founded on natural science. But other materialists of the nineteenth century also laid claim to the scientific character of their own thought. It is likely that Marx and Engels would have permitted their brand of materialism to have been called scientific, provided, of course, that 'scientific' was understood in their dialectical meaning of the term. Socialism, Engels maintained, had become a science with Marx. (shrink)

Parallax, or the change in the position of an object viewed along two different lines of sight and more precisely, the assumption that this adjustment is not only due to a change of focus, but a change in that object's ontological status has been a key philosophical concept throughout history. Building upon Slavoj Žižek's The Parallax View, this volume shows how parallax is used as a figure of thought that proves how the incompatibility between the physical and the theoretical touches (...) not only upon the ontological, but also politics and aesthetics. With articles written by internationally renowned philosophers such as Frank Ruda, Graham Harman, Paul Livingston and Zizek himself, this book shows how modes of parallax remain in numerous modern theoretical disciplines, such as the Marxian parallax in the critique of political economy and politics; and the Hegelian parallax in the concept of the work of art, while also being important to debates surrounding speculative realism and dialectical materialism. Spanning philosophy, parallax is then a rich and fruitful concept that can illuminate the studies of those working in epistemology, ontology, German Idealism, political philosophy and critical theory. (shrink)

Reminiscences of the James legacy -- Political context and philosophical locus -- James on understanding and reason : Kant, Hegel, and German idealism -- Hegel's idealism : Marxist materialist -- Reading and inversion -- James's locus as Marxist philosopher : the humanist/anti-humanist debate -- Comparing notes : James and Lenin on Hegel and dialectical materialism -- Lenin's theory of the Vanguard party : contra James's self-activity of the proletariat -- Postscript : beyond the boundary of the Johnson-Forest tendency.

Following a series of textual gestures which suggest that Schelling is the culmination of the German Idealist tradition, this essay is an attempt to articulate the ambiguity of the Hegel-Schelling relationship in Slavoj Žižek's work and its productive potential. Characterizing his own dialectical materialism again and again as Hegelian, but never a Schellingian project, Žižek often belies the central role played by late Schelling of the Freiheitsschrift and the Weltalter in the self-unfolding logic of the tradition. But why (...) is there such an oscillation? Describing the Grundlogik of German Idealism as the radical ontological incompletion of reality announced by the abyss of freedom of the Kantian subject, Žižek's own philosophy suggests that neither Hegel nor Schelling were able of themselves to fully articulate the consequences of the deadlock of freedom. Yet, what I argue is that it is only by an implicit retroactive reconstruction of the inner logic of post-Kantian philosophy, an aprés-coup unearthing of philosophical possibilities hidden within these two thinkers made possible by psychoanalysis, that Žižek is able to present his reading of the radical nature of subjectivity in German Idealism. By unpacking this latent reconstruction I will not only demonstrate the consistency and comprehensiveness that a Žižekian reading of the history of German Idealism can display but also the complex intertwining of Schellingian ontology and Hegelian logic at the core of Žižek's own parallax ontology. (shrink)

마르크스에게서 철학의 위치는 애매모호해 많은 논쟁을 낳아 왔다. 마르크스는 청년 시절부터 헤겔을 적극 수용하면서도 강력히 비판해 왔다. 그는 포이어바하의 헤겔비판을 수용하여 헤겔의 절대적 반성개념을 비판하고, 이로부터 헤겔의 철학체계가 지닌 현실에 대한 사변적 기술의 난점을 지적한다. 그는 헤겔에 대립해 현실에 대한 비사변적 기술을 시도한다. 이 현실을 포착하는 과학은 비판적으로 수용된 포이어바흐의 철학과 프랑스 유물론, 사회주의, 그리고 영국 공산주의, 그리고 정치경제학 등의 당대의 진보적 학문들의 결합이었다. 이것이 인간과학과 자연과학의 통합으로서의 역사과학이었다. 이런 그의 학문적 기획은 현대적 관점에서 보면 인문사회과학과 자연과학/공학의 융복합연구 프로그램이었다. 그의 (...) 철학적 이성은 사변의 폐기 및 현실적 삶의 서술과 함께 증발해 버린 것이 아니라, 이 연구프로그램 안으로 이전되어 그 안에서 ‘비판’의 형태로 뿌리내린 것이었다. 때문에 삶의 생동하는 현실을 비판적으로 혁명적으로 포착하려는 그의 철학적 이성을 오로지 『자본』에서 사용된 연구방법으로서의 ‘전도된 변증법’에서만 찾으려는 것은 마르크스/마르크스주의 철학적 활력을 지나치게 협소화하는 일이 될 것이다. (shrink)

This article offers a comparative study of seven German biographies of Karl Marx (1818–1883) that were published between the two world wars. The interpretations of Marx’s theory of historical materialism presented in these biographies fall into three groups or approaches: the orthodox, the neo-Kantian, and the psychological. Some biographies place Marx the revolutionary above Marx the theorist, while others reverse this order. Similarly, some of the biographies explain the relationship between Marx’s life and thought by adopting the “experience–psychology–thought” framework. (...) The orthodox approach emphasizes the objectivity of cognition in the base–superstructure relationship. Yet both the orthodox and the neo-Kantian approach, which stresses Kant’s cognitive critique and the “is–ought” dualism, fail to grasp Marx’s subject–object dialectics, while the psychological approach undermines the theoretical significance of historical materialism. In comparing and assessing these works I argue that the biographers’ historical and scholarly horizons are dictated by their political standpoint and academic perspective and thus determine their choice of approach, which not only indicates if they will lean toward the theoretical or the revolutionary Marx, but also why they fail to adequately deal with the relationship between Marx’s life and his thought. Nevertheless, I conclude that these biographies, despite their various shortcomings, establish the basic paradigm and parameters of any biography of Marx. (shrink)

The present work carries us back to a period which, although chronologically no more than a generation or so behind us, has become as foreign to the present generation in Germany as if it were already a full hundred years old. Yet it was the period of Germany's preparation for the Revolution of 1848; and all that has happened in our country since then has been merely a continuation of 1848, merely the execution of the last will and testament of (...) the revolution. Just as in France in the eighteenth century, so in Germany in the nineteenth, a philosophical revolution ushered in the political collapse. But with what a difference! The French were in open combat with all official science, with the church and often also the state; their writings were printed beyond the frontier, in Holland or England, while they themselves were often on the point of landing in the Bastille. But the Germans were professors, state-appointed instructors of youth; their writings were recognized textbooks, and the system rounding off the whole development---the Hegelian system---was even raised, in some degree, to the rank of a royal Prussian philosophy of state! Was it possible that a revolution could hide behind these professors, behind their pedantically obscure phrases, their ponderous, wearisome sentences? Were not the liberals, the very people who then passed as the representatives of the revolution, the bitterest opponents of this brain-befuddling philosophy? But what neither governments nor liberals saw was seen by at least one man as early as 1833, and indeed by a man called Heinrich Heine. (shrink)

Reminiscences of the James legacy -- Political context and philosophical locus -- James on understanding and reason : Kant, Hegel, and German idealism -- Hegel's idealism : Marxist materialist -- Reading and inversion -- James's locus as Marxist philosopher : the humanist/anti-humanist debate -- Comparing notes : James and Lenin on Hegel and dialectical materialism -- Lenin's theory of the Vanguard party : contra James's self-activity of the proletariat -- Postscript : beyond the boundary of the Johnson-Forest tendency.

The sharp separation of Eastern, and particularly Soviet and GDR, scholarship from the West is in part owing to ideological self-isolation, and part due to lack of interest or unwillingness to accept this scholarship in the West - The institutional framework within which historical studies take place in the GDR has placed severe limits on diversity within the historical profession. The official theoretical basis of historiography is represented by dialectical materialism, as a theory of reality, and historical (...) class='Hi'>materialism, as the conception of historical development intertwined with it. The political historian is subject to much closer direction than in social or cultural history, while social history deals primarily with local or regional history, and has begun conducting empirical case studies. Interestingly, biographies have acquired a new significance as historical works in both the GDR and the Federal Republic. In dealing with the German past, there is a conscious attempt in the GDR, as there has been recently in the Federal Republic, to overcome the fixation on 1933 and to reestablish a sense of pride in the past. There has been a greater openness and commitment to understanding historical phenomena with the reevaluation of the course of German history. (shrink)

Russian philosophy underwent many phases: Westernism, Slavophilism, nihilism, pre-revolutionary religious philosophy, and dialectical materialism or Soviet philosophy. At first sight, each one of these phases seems antithetical to the preceding one. Yet, they all appear to have in common a certain negative attitude towards the subjectivism of Kantianism and German Idealism. In contrast to the latter, Russian philosophy typically displays a tendency towards ontologism, which is generally defined as the view that there is such a thing as being (...) in itself, i.e., being independent of cognition, and that this being is to some extent knowable. We discern, in these otherwise diametrically opposed movements, an underlying ontologism that constitutes a common thread running in a straight line through the history of Russian philosophy. In this article, I provide an overview of Russian ontologism. (shrink)

Bd. 1. Abstraktion bis Hegel.--Bd. 2. Historischer Marxismus bis Möglichkeit und Wirklichkeit.--Bd. 3. Naturphilosophie bis Wissenschaft.

The essay takes its point of departure from Monod's reading of dialectical materialism in Chance and Necessity. A passage of Engels's Dialectics of Nature, which identifies Spinoza's concept of causa sui with the Hegelian concept of interaction [Wechselwirkung], provides the opportunity to examine the consequences of Monod's claims more closely. Using Spinoza's philosophy as a litmus test, the essay attempts to demonstrate the debt of Engels's materialism to Hegel's Science of Logic by tracing the development of the (...) concept of Wechselwirkung in classical German philosophy. A profound difference between the Spinozan and Hegelian concepts becomes apparent: while the concept of Wechselwirkung implies a totality present to itself as simultaneity, permitting the flow of a linear, homogenous and empty time upon which stages of development can be inscribed, the concept of causa sui implies a totality without closure, a totality whose eternity is identified with the necessary and infinite network of modal durations. The essay concludes by suggesting that Spinoza's concept of causa sui allows us to rethink the relation between freedom and necessity in the Marxist tradition in conjunctural and aleatory terms. (shrink)

This article explores the recent reception of the German Idealist tradition within the English-speaking philosophical world. Texts by four authors—Fredrick Beiser, Richard Velkley, Dennis Schmidt, and Gregg Horowitz—are examined as to their respective participation in what I call a materialist appropriation of German Idealism. In this article, I explore (1) what the term ‘materialism’ means in this context and (2) the reasons for such a new interpretation. I hold that this interpretation is utilized as a response to the Enlightenment (...) priority of universalizing abstraction. Further, I hold that such an interpretation amounts to a reclaiming of German Idealism from previous interpretations which viewed it as supporting this priority. (shrink)

: This article examines Slavoj Žižek’s reading of F.W.J. Schelling’s Ages of the World from the standpoint of the ontological status of nothingness in Schelling’s idealism as contrasted with Žižek’s methodology of dialectical materialism. Although Schelling’s theosophical theism differs from Žižek’s materialist hermeneutic, Schelling’s thought nevertheless enacts an important breakthrough in Western philosophy that anticipates the dynamics of the Marxist interpretation of the dialectic. In particular, his positing of opposed unconscious drives within the ante-cosmic Godhead prefigures Sigmund Freud’s (...) theory of the death drive. (shrink)

Das "Kleine Worterbuch der marxistisch-Ieninistischen Philoso­ phie", das 1966 in erster Auflage, 1974 in zweiter und 1975 in dritter Auflage erschienen ist, wird nun in einer vierten, iiberarbei­ teten und erweiterten Auflage herausgegeben. Die Tatsache, dal3 die hohe Auflage der zweiten und dritten Ausgabe vergriffen ist und die Nachfrage unvermindert anhalt, zeigt, da/3 dieses Nach­ schlagewerk sich inzwischen einen festen Platz im geistigen Leben erobert hat. Das wachsende Interesse breiter Kreise an der marxi­ stisch-Ieninistischen Philosophie ist als ein Ausdruck des (...) geistigen Reifeprozesses un serer Gesellschaft objektiv bedingt: Die weitere Gestaltung der entwickelten sozialistischen Gesellschaft in der DDR entsprechend dem Programm der SED und den Beschliissen des IX. Parteitages der SED, die sich vertiefende Zusammenarbeit der sozialistischen Gemeinschaft und auch der sich verscharfende ideo­ logische Kampf zwischen Sozialismus und Imperialismus erfordern einen hoheren Grad an theoretischen Kenntnissen, ideologischer Klarheit und politischer Bewul3theit. Immer mehr Menschen machen sich aus diesen Griinden in den verschiedensten Studienformen mit dem Marxismus-Leninismus und seinen philosophischen Grund­ lagen vertraut, um sich die Weltanschauung des Sozialismus anzu­ eignen, ihre Personlichkeit geistig zu bereichern und die vor ihnen stehenden Aufgaben mit grol3erer Sachkenntnis zu meistern. Mit der vorliegenden vierten, iiberarbeiteten und erweiterten Auf­ lage des,. Kleinen Worterbuchs der marxistisch-Ieninistischen Philo­ sophie" versuchen Autoren und Verlag, diesem wichtigen geseIl­ schaftlichen Bediirfnis noch besser zu entsprechen. (shrink)

In his 1844 Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, Marx famously claims that the human being is or has a ‘Gattungswesen.’ This is often understood to mean that the human being is a ‘species-being’ and is determined by a given ‘species-essence.’ In this chapter, I argue that this reading is mistaken. What Marx calls Gattungswesen is precisely not a ‘species-being,’ but a being that, in a very specific sense, transcends the limits of its own given species. This different understanding of the genus-character (...) of the human being opens up a new perspective on the naturalism of the early Marx. He is not informed by a problematic speciesist and essentialist naturalism, as is often assumed, but by a different form of naturalism which I propose to call ‘dialectical naturalism.’ The chapter starts (I) by developing Hegel’s account of genus which provides us with a useful background for (II) understanding Marx’s original notion of a genus-being and its practical, social, developmental character. In the last section, I show that (III) the actualization of our genus-being thus depends on the production of a specific type of ‘second nature’ that is at the heart of Marx’s dialectical naturalism. (shrink)

A new 2023 translation into American English of Marx's influential 1845 "Die heilige Familie oder Kritik der kritischen Kritik" from the original manuscript. This edition includes a new introduction by the translator and reference materials including a Glossary of Philosophic and Economic Marxist Terminology, an Index of Personalities Associated with Marx and a Timeline of Marx’s Life and Works. This is Volume IV in The Complete Works of Karl Marx by NL Press. The Holy Family is Marx's first foray into (...) building his dialectical materialism, while still attacking the modern Hegelians.The main title itself is mocking Bruno Bauer's "Pure Criticism", which Marx parodies with the nonsense "Critical Criticism". This is the first publication Engels and Marx published together, only one year after meeting in person in 1844. Here he is attacking other Hegelians and Critical Philosophy writ large, arguing against Hegel's idealistic dialectic for his own dialectal Epicurean Materialism which he began to outline in his Ph.D. Thesis "Differenz der demokritischen und epikureischen Naturphilosophie" in 1841. Marx believed that Critical Philosophy in general (kritische Philosophie), which sees the most fundamental task of Philosophy as primarily judging the possibility of knowledge before asserting any claim of knowledge itself, as misguided in its Platonic Ontology. The entire work is a polemic against "The Holy Family" of young Hegelians, mocking and insulting them on every page. He uses sarcastic parody, nearly Horatian satire, specifically towards Christianity- "Criticism so loved the masses that it sent its only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life". Ultimately, he declared these dilettante philosophers "false prophets" and himself the true prophet of Atheistic, Skeptical and Materialistic Humanism. Here he also argues that the only way to deal with "the Jewish problem" is by eradicating Christianity and all metaphysical beliefs because the "bourgeois morality" gets in the way of implementing a true, final solution to the muddying of pure European nationality by the existence of the Jews. Here we see the foundations of the National-Socialist movement which declared "there is no God but the German people" and started eradicating millions in the name of Humanism and Progress. (shrink)

Horkheimer's work contains many passages concerning moral and morally relevant problems, but one searches in vain for a completely elaborated moral philosophy. The rudiments thereof may be found primarily in “Materialism and Ethics” (1933) and in various passages of the “Juliette” portion of the Dialectic of Enlightenment. These would be quickly summarized, but could not thereby be adequately elucidated. If the matter were to remain with the mere reproduction of these thoughts, one would have to reach the regrettable conclusion (...) — given the paucity of texts — that early critical theory had an ethics deficit. The attempt to read Horkheimer in such a way that the relevant passages open one's vision to an implicit moral philosophy — that is, one amenable to reconstruction—must rely upon other approaches. (shrink)

This paper addresses theoretical challenges, still relevant today, that arose in the first decades of the twentieth century related to the concept of the organism. During this period, new insights into the plasticity and robustness of organisms as well as their complex interactions fueled calls, especially in the UK and in the German-speaking world, for grounding biological theory on the concept of the organism. This new organism-centered biology understood organisms as the most important explanatory and methodological unit in biological investigations. (...) At least three theoretical strands can be distinguished in this movement: Organicism, dialectical materialism, and holistic biology. This paper shows that a major challenge of OCB was to describe the individual organism as a causally autonomous and discrete unit with consistent boundaries and, at the same time, as inextricably interwoven with its environment. In other words, OCB had to conciliate individualistic with anti-individualistic perspectives. This challenge was addressed by developing a concept of life that included functionalist and metabolic elements, as well as biochemical and physical ones. It allowed for specifying organisms as life forms that actively delimit themselves from the environment. Finally, this paper shows that the recent return to the concept of the organism, especially in the so-called “Extended Evolutionary Synthesis,” is challenged by similar anti-individualistic tendencies. However, in contrast to its early-twentieth-century forerunner, today’s organism-centered approaches have not yet offered a solution to this problem. (shrink)

The article gives an overview of works on philosophy published in the 19 th and 20 th centuries in Belarus, widely influenced by the reception of philosophical views and trends of leading Western European thinkers. The main philosophical ideas of German philosophers (I. Kant, G.W.F. Hegel, K. Marx, F. Nietzsche and others) found creative reflections among the intellectuals of the Northwestern Krai (Region) of the Russian Empire, which included Belarus in the 19 th century. The authors analyze the role of (...) foreign ideas in the first third of the 20 th century on the example of one of the first textbooks on dialectical materialism published by S.Ya. Wolfson in the 1920s (has undergone seven editions). On the basis of the analysis of dissertations (over 800 dissertation of the 1950s–1980s), the authors demonstrate the significance of Western socio-philosophical ideas for the development of philosophical culture in Belarus. Considering the content and features of the processes of transfer of foreign philosophical ideas for two centuries, it can be concluded that is the dominance of the conceptions of German philosophy, especially in the 19 th century. Interest in German philosophy also prevailed in pre-war Soviet philosophy, while the focus was on Marxism and materialistic philosophy in general. Another trend is the significant role of works on the history of philosophy, including personalities and approaches. All this demonstrates that national Belarusian thought developed in the context of European philosophical culture. (shrink)

Philosophical literature in Soviet Russia displays the same arid uniformity as before and is almost entirely confined to the exposition of dialectical materialism. That can be seen from the very titles of the books published within the last year: Dialectical Materialism–the Philosophy of the Proletariat, by V. Pozner; Dialectical Materialism, extracts from Marxist classics, selected by the students of the Institute of Red Professorship; Marxism and Natural Science, a collection of articles; The Problem of (...) Causality in the History of New Philosophy and in Dialectical Materialism, by B. Bogdanov and Mihailov. The latter is a digest of papers read at the seminars on the history of philosophy at the Institute of Red Professorship and does not contain a single original idea or throw any fresh light on what has already been said on the subject by Engels, Lenin, Byhovsky, and others. The very quotations from Engels and Lenin are the same as are generally made in Soviet works on dialectical materialism. Arzhanov's Hegelianism in the Service of German Fascism is a critique of neo-Hegelian theories from the orthodox Marxist point of view. But although Hegel's name is often used merely as a bludgeon against the infidels, the non-Marxists, there is a genuine interest in Hegel's work in U.S.S.R. and a desire to introduce it to the general public. In 1929 the Marx and Engel Institute undertook the publication of a Russian edition of Hegel's works, except his lectures on the “Philosophy of Religion” this year two volumes of Kuno Fisher's History of Modern Philosophy, dealing with Hegel, have been republished. (shrink)

"Mysl"‘ Publishers timed the appearance of this book to mark the one hundredth anniversary of Friedrich Engels's work Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy. Engels quite pointedly dubbed the theories which emerged in Germany in the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries as "classical philosophy." It was among the highest achievements of the world's wisdom, and it prepared the ground for the genesis of dialectical and historical materialism. German classical philosophy is (...) the theoretical wellspring of Marxism. (shrink)

This intervention concerns the different statute of abstraction in Marx's work. By means of a critical confrontation with Chris Arthur's work, Finelli presents his thesis of the presence of a double theory and fuction of abstraction in Marx's work. In the early Marx, until the German Ideology, abstraction is, in accordance with the traditional meaning of this term, a product of the mind, an unreal spectre. More exactly, it consists in negating the common essence belonging to labouring humanity and projecting (...) it, as alienated universal, into the idea of philosophy, into the state of politics and into the money of the market. In the later Marx, the nature of abstraction is, rather than mental, practical. It is directly related to the quantity without quality of capitalist labour, and it is the product of the systemic connection of machines to labour-power. In contrast to Arthur, Finelli maintains that practical abstraction in the Marx of Capital is not located in the zone of exchange and the market, where there is the mediation of money. On the contrary, it is located in the zone of production, which, for Marx, is a social ensemble not mediated by money but by relations of technological domination. (shrink)

This study treats the writings of Fuchs as an example of recent materialistic historiography. Critical appreciation of his work involves critical appreciation of the whole concept of cultural history which prevailed in Socialist popular science in the last decade of the nineteenth century. The influence of dialectical materialism was slight, that of positivism greater. An excursus attempts to show how, with technical progress, the work of philosophers and scholars was impaired by this positivism even in the middle of (...) the century. The way in which Fuchs, writing from a Socialist position, attacked the bourgeois art history of a man like Wölfflin is described, but without neglecting his kinship to great bourgeois scholars like Brandes and Bastian. His biological conception of art is then analyzed in its historical conditions, and its close relationship to the intuitive methods of the collector demonstrated. As a collector Fuchs was rooted in the French tradition, but he brought to it the strict morality of German historiography. The Jacobin element in his historical writing is traced back to Schlosser. It appears that Fuchs could not entirely avoid collisions between his Jacobin morality and the materialist conception of history. His work displays a similar tension between that theory of history and his sexual ethics. On the other hand, he was able to throw much light on creative art from the study of sex. His most brilliant theoretical work is in his studies of Daumier. Daumier was also one of his chief subjects as a collector. The study closes with Fuchs’s role in the history of art collecting.Ce travail porte sur les écrits de Fuchs, considérés comme exemple de la méthode matérialiste contemporaine.Le jugement critique porté sur l’oeuvre de Fuchs se confond avec un jugement critique sur la notion d’histoire de la culture, qui dominait alors la science populaire d’inspiration socialiste. L’influence du matérialisme dialectique sur celle-ci était limitée ; Finfluence du positivisme était d’autant plus grande. Une disgression essaie de montrer, comment déjà au milieu du xixe siècle, ce positivisme avait nui aux réflexions des philosophes et des savants sur le progrès technique. On indique comment Fuchs, d’un point de vue socialiste, s’oppose à l’histoire de l’art bourgeois d’un Wölfflin, sans méconnaître la parenté entre Fuchs et de grands savants bourgeois comme Brandes et Bastian. On précise ensuite les conditions historiques dans lesquelles Fuchs a développé son interprétation biologique de l’art ; la méthode intuitive qui correspond à la tendance spontanée du collectionneur, se révèle étroitement liée à cette interprétation. Le collectionneur Fuchs se rattache à la tradition française, à laquelle se joint le moralisme rigide qui vient de l’historiographie allemande. On remonte jusqu’à Schlosser pour expliquer les origines du jacobinisme qui apparaît dans les récits historiques de Fuchs. On aperçoit que celui-ci n’a pu éviter complètement les conflits entre jacobinisme moraliste et matérialisme historique. De même, son mode de considération historique n’est pas toujours en accord avec son éthique sexuelle. Par ailleurs, il apporte à la science des connaissances importantes sur le rôle de la sexualité dans la création artistique. Les études sur Daumier sont sans doute l’oeuvre la plus haute du théoricien Fuchs. Daumier a été également pour le collectionneur Fuchs un des thèmes les plus significatifs.La fin de l’article éclaire le rôle de Fuchs dans l’histoire des collections artistiques. (shrink)

Resumen En este ensayo ofrezco una comparación entre la filosofía del pensador marxista alemán Ernst Bloch y la del pensador francés Quentin Meillassoux a propósito del hecho de que ambos plantean una fundamentación ontológica de la esperanza y de una política de la esperanza. En el primer apartado, presento el concepto religioso de esperanza que critican los filósofos mencionados; en el segundo, abordo la concepción dialéctico-materialista de Bloch; en el tercer apartado, expongo la concepción de Meillassoux, que interpreto como una (...) radicalización crítica de una filosofía inmanente y materialista de la esperanza. A lo largo del ensayo y en la breve conclusión, muestro las semejanzas y diferencias entre las concepciones de ambos pensadores y apuesto por la superioridad, por su mayor consistencia teórica, de la perspectiva de Meillassoux.In this essay I offer a comparison between the philosophy of the German Marxist thinker Ernst Bloch and that of the French thinker Quentin Meillassoux apropos of the fact that both put forward an ontological foundation of hope and a politics of hope. In the first section I present the religious concept -criticized by Bloch and Meillassoux- of hope; in the second I explore the dialectical-materialist conception of Bloch, and in the third section I present the conception of Meillassoux, which I interpret as a critical radicalization of an immanent and materialist philosophy of hope. Throughout the essay and in the brief conclusion I show the similarities and differences between the conceptions of both thinkers and, due to its greater theoretical consistency, favor the perspective of Meillassoux. (shrink)

Following an initial section, in which the relation of materialism to positivism and agnosticism is discussed, and the latter views criticized, a formal definition of dialectical materialism is given. Materialism is contrasted to idealism and dualism. Dialectics is contrasted to metaphysics. Some additional assumptions, usually included in dialectics, such as the interpenetrating character of the levels of science, and rationalism, are listed. In a section devoted to the relation between matter and spirit, the foundations of materialist (...) ethics are laid by stating the humanist axiom of purpose. In the last section, historical materialism is defined, and some reasons for the occasional entanglement of scientific, philosophical, and political controversies are discussed. (shrink)

Con el objetivo de contribuir al debate actual sobre la necesidad del esclarecimiento de los fundamentos filosóficos de la investigación científica y su declaración en el discurso que expone sus principales resultados, se valoró la forma en que se asume la perspectiva dialéctico-materialista y se precisó en torno a algunos enfoques polémicos sobre la necesidad de su empleo consecuente como referente cosmovisivo en la construcción de la ciencia y la legitimación de sus resultados. Se enfatizó en la necesidad de su (...) consecuente empleo en el proceso de investigación. In order to contribute to the current debate on the necessity for clarification of the philosophical foundations of scientific research and its interpretation in discourse that exposes its main results, it was assessed how dialectical materialistic perspective is assumed and it was clarified around some controversial approaches about the necessity of its consistent use as a comprehensive reference in building science and the legitimacy of its results. It was emphasized on the need of its consistent use in the research process. (shrink)

This edition contains a new introduction by Stefan Kipfer, explaining the book’s contemporary ramifications in the ever-expanding reach of the urban in the ...

An introduction to the basic ideas of philosophy as a science, materialism, the categories and laws of motion of nature, society and human thought, dialectics, the theory of knowledge.

There is a sense in which a philosophic theory can be confirmed. We may ask what its effects were on the development of scientific theory,—did it clarify ideas and help open up new areas of research, or did it constrain the work of science? In this essay, we shall try to judge the significance of dialectical materialism from this standpoint. We shall be concerned with the bearing of this philosophy on scientific work, especially in the Soviet Union.Now (...) class='Hi'>dialectical materialism is not a “philosophy” in the same sense which the word has when applied to, let us say, logical empiricism. The difference is evident when a writer like Haldane asks, for instance, how far scientific discoveries have verified the principles of dialectical materialism.' We could not ask in a similar way whether scientific discoveries have confirmed the principles of logical empiricism. For the latter affirms no factual propositions concerning the world; it enunciates solely the principle of verifiability, and there is clearly no scientific discovery which could possibly refute the requirement of verification. If it makes sense to ask how far scientific discoveries verify dialectical materialism, then the latter must obviously contain factual propositions concerning nature which should be stated in a way to permit of confirmation of rejection. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and (...) made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)