MIA > Archive > Plekhanov > Monist View
Let us once again suppose that “the moment of flowering” overthrows the triad. In that case, “keeping to Hegel’s terminology, we arrive not at a trichotomy but at least at a tetrachotomy, a division into four.” “Hegel’s terminology” reminds us of his Encyclopaedia. We open its first part, and learn from it that there are many cases when trichotomy passes into tetrachotomy, and that generally speaking trichotomy, as a matter of fact, is supreme only in the sphere of the spirit. [15] So it turns out that oats grow “according to Hegel,” as Van Tieghem assures us, and Hegel thinks about oats according to Mr. Mikhailovsky, as is evidenced by the Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse. Marvel upon marvel! “She to him, and he to me, and I to the barman Peter ...” [9*]
Another example borrowed by Mr. Mikhailovsky from Engels, to enlighten the “uninitiated,” deals with the teachings of Rousseau. [10*]
“According to Rousseau, people in their natural state and savagery were equal with the equality of animals. But man is distinguished by his perfectibility, and this process of perfection began with the appearance of inequality: thereafter every further step of civilization was contradictory: they were ‘steps seemingly towards the perfection of the individual man, but in reality towards the decay of the race ... Metallurgy and agriculture were the two arts the discovery of which produced this great revolution. For the poet it is gold and silver, but for the philosopher iron and corn, which have civilized men and ruined the human race.’ Inequality continues to develop and, reaching its apogee, turns, in the eastern despotisms, once again into the universal equality of universal insignificance, i.e., returns to its point of departure: and there-after the further process in the same way brings one to the equality of the social contract.”
That is how Mr. Mikhailovsky sets out the example given by Engels. As is quite obvious, he finds this, too, “debatable.”
“One could make some remark about Engels’s exposition; but it is important for us only to know what precisely Engels values in Rousseau’s work (Discours sur l’origine et les fondements de l’inégalité parmi les hommes) . He does not touch upon the question of whether Rousseau rightly or wrongly understands the course of history, he is interested only in the fact that Rousseau ‘thinks dialectically’: he sees contradiction in the very content of progress, and disposes his exposition in such a way as to make it adaptable to the Hegelian formula of negation and negation of the negation. And in reality this can be done, even though Rousseau did not know the Hegelian dialectical formula.”
This is only the first outpost attack on “Hegelianism” in the person of Engels. Then follows the attack sur toute la ligne.
“Rousseau, without knowing Hegel, thought dialectically according to Hegel. Why Rousseau and not Voltaire, or not the first man in the street? Because all people, by their very nature, think dialectically. Yet it is precisely Rousseau who is selected, a man who stands out among his contemporaries not only by his gifts – in this respect many were not inferior to him – but in his very mental make-up and in the character of his outlook on the world. Such an exceptional phenomenon, you might think, ought not to be taken as a test for a general rule. But we pick as we choose. Rousseau is interesting and important, first of all, because he was the first to demonstrate sufficiently sharply the contradictory character of civilization, and contradiction is the essential condition of the dialectical process. We must however remark that the contradiction discerned by Rousseau has-nothing in common with contradiction in the Hegelian sense of the word. The contradiction of Hegel lies in the fact that everything, being in a constant process of motion and change (and precisely by the consistent triple path), is at every given unit of time ‘it’ and at the same time ‘not-it.’ If we leave on one side the obligatory three stages of development, contra-diction is here simply, as it were, the lining of changes, motion, development. Rousseau also speaks of the process of change. But it is by no means, in the very fact of change that he sees contradiction. A considerable part of his argument, both in the Discours and in his other works, can be summarized in the following way: intellectual progress has been accompanied by moral retrogression. Evidently dialectical thinking has absolutely nothing to do with it: there is no ‘negation of the negation’ here, but only an indication of the simultaneous existence of good and evil in the particular group of phenomena. All the resemblance to the dialectical process is reduced to the single word ‘contradiction.’ This, however, is only one side of the case. In addition, Engels sees an obvious trichotomy in Rousseau’s argument: after primitive equality follows its negation – inequality, then follows the negation of the negation – the equality of all in the eastern despotisms, in face of the power of the khan, sultan, shah. ‘Here we have the extreme measure of inequality, the final point which completes the circle and meets the point from which we set out.’ But history does not stop at this, it develops new inequalities, and so forth. The words we have quoted are the actual words of Rousseau, and it is they which are particularly dear to Engels, as obvious evidence that Rousseau thinks according to Hegel.” [16]
ousseau “stood out among his contemporaries.” That is true. What made him stand out? The fact that he thought dialectically, whereas his contemporaries were almost without exception metaphysicians. His view of the origin of inequality is precisely a dialectical view, although Mr. Mikhailovsky denies it.
In the words of Mr. Mikhailovsky, Rousseau only pointed out that intellectual progress was accompanied in the history of civilization by moral retrogression. No, Rousseau did not only point this out. According to him, intellectual progress was the cause of moral retrogression. It would be possible to realize this even without reading the works of Rousseau: it would be sufficient to recall, on the basis of the previous extract, what part was played in his work by the working of metals and agriculture, which produced the great revolution that destroyed primitive equality. But whoever has read Rousseau himself has not, of course, forgotten the following passage in his Discours sur l’origine de l’inégalité: “Il me reste à considérer et à rapprocher les différents hasards qui ont pu perfectionner la raison humaine en détériorant l’espèce, rendre un être méchant en le rendant sociable ...” (“It remains for me to consider and to bring together the different hazards which have been able to perfect human reason by worsening the human species, making this animal wicked by making him sociable ...” – Ed.)
This passage is particularly remarkable because it illustrates very well Rousseau’s view on the capacity of the human race for progress. This peculiarity was spoken of a great deal by his “contemporaries” as well. But with them it was a mysterious force which, out of its own inner essence, brought about the successes of reason. According to Rousseau, this capacity “never could develop of its own accord.” For its development it required constant impulses from outside. This is one of the most important specific features of the dialectical view of intellectual progress, compared with the metaphysical view. We shall have to refer to it again later. At present what is important is that the passage just quoted expresses with utmost clarity the opinion of Rousseau as to the causal connection between moral retrogression and intellectual progress. [17] And this is very important for ascertaining the view of this writer on the course of civilization. Mr. Mikhailovsky makes it appear that Rousseau simply pointed out a “contradiction,” and maybe shed some generous tears about it. In reality Rousseau considered this contradiction to be the mainspring of the historical development of civilization. The founder of civil society, and consequently the grave-digger of primitive equality, was the man who first fenced off a piece of land and said: “It belongs to me.” In other words, the foundation of civil society is property, which arouses so many disputes among men, evokes in them so much greed, so spoils their morality. But the origin of property presupposed a certain development of “technique and knowledge” (de l’industrie et des lumières). Thus primitive relations perished precisely thanks to this development; but at the time when this development led to the triumph of private property, primitive relations between men, on their part, were already in such a state that their further existence had become impossible.” [18] If we judge of Rousseau by the way in which Mr. Mikhailovsky depicts the “contradiction” he pointed out, we might think that the famous Genevese was nothing more than a lachrymose “subjective sociologist,” who at best was capable of inventing a highly moral “formula of progress” for the curing of human ills. In reality Rousseau most of all hated just that kind of “formula,” and stamped it underfoot whenever he had the opportunity.
Civil society arose on the ruins of primitive relations, which had proved incapable of further existence. These relations contained within themselves the embryo of their own negation. In demonstrating this proposition, Rousseau as it were was illustrating in anticipation the thought of Hegel, that every phenomenon destroys itself, becomes transformed into its own opposite. Rousseau’s reflection on despotism may be considered a further illustration of this idea.
Now judge for yourself how much understanding of Hegel and Rousseau Mr. Mikhailovsky displays when he says: “Evidently dialectical thinking has absolutely nothing to do with it” – and when he naively imagines that Engels arbitrarily registered Rousseau in the dialectical department only on the grounds that Rousseau used the expressions “contradiction,” “cycle,” “return to the point from which we set out,” etc.
But why did Engels quote Rousseau, and not anyone else? “Why Rousseau and not Voltaire, or not the first man in the street? Because all people, by their very nature, think dialectically ...”
You’re mistaken, Mr. Mikhailovsky: far from all. You for one would never be taken by Engels for a dialectician. It would be sufficient for him to read your article: Karl Marx Before the Judgement of Mr. Y. Zhukovsky [11*], for him to put you down without hesitation among the incorrigible metaphysicians.
On dialectical thinking Engels says:
“Men thought dialectically long before they knew what dialectics was, just as they spoke prose long before the term prose existed. The law of negation of the negation, which is unconsciously operative in nature and history, and, until it has been recognized, also in our heads, was only first clearly formulated by Hegel.” [19]
As the reader sees, this refers to unconscious dialectical thinking, from which it is still a very long way to its conscious form. When we say that “extremes meet,” we without noticing it express a dialectical view of things; when we move we, again without suspecting it, are engaged in applied dialectics (we already said earlier that motion is the application of contradiction). But neither motion nor dialectical aphorisms are sufficient to save us from metaphysics in the sphere of systematical thought. On the contrary. The history of thought shows that for a long time metaphysics grew more and more strong-and necessarily had to grow strong-at the expense of primitive and naive dialectics:
“The analysis of nature into its individual parts, the grouping of the different natural processes and objects in definite classes, the study of the internal anatomy of organic bodies in their manifold forms – these were the fundamental conditions of the gigantic strides in our knowledge of nature that have been made during the last four hundred years. But this method of work has also left us as legacy the habit of observing natural objects and processes in isolation, apart from their connection with the vast whole; of observing them in repose, not in motion; as constants, not as essentially variables; in their death, not in their life. And when this way of looking at things was transferred by Bacon and Locke from natural science to philosophy, it begot the narrow, metaphysical mode of thought peculiar to the last century.” [20]
Thus writes Engels, from whom we also learn that “the newer philosophy, on the other hand, although in it also dialectics had brilliant exponents (e.g., Descartes and Spinoza), had, especially through English influence, become more and more rigidly fixed in the so-called metaphysical mode of reasoning, by which also the French of the eighteenth century were almost wholly dominated, at all events in their special philosophical work. Outside philosophy in the restricted sense, the French nevertheless produced masterpieces of dialectic. We need only call to mind Diderot’s Le Neveu de Rameau and Rousseau’s Discours sur l’origine et les fondements de l’inégalité parmi les hommes. [21]
It would seem clear why Engels speaks of Rousseau, and not of Voltaire and not of the first man in the street. We dare not think that Mr. Mikhailovsky has not read that same book of Engels which he quotes, and from which he draws the “examples” which he examines. And if Mr. Mikhailovsky still pesters Engels with his “first man in the street,” it remains to suppose merely that our author, here too, has recourse to the “moment” of substitution with which we are already familiar, the “moment” ... of purposeful distortion of the words of his opponent. The exploitation of such a “moment” might seem to him all the more convenient because Engels’s book has not been translated into Russian, and does not exist for readers who don’t know German. [12*] Here “we pick as we choose.” Here again there is a new temptation, and once again “we can’t help but sin.”
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Oh is it true, each god some pleasure feels |
But let us take a rest from Mr. Mikhailovsky, and return to the German idealists, an and für sich.
We have said that the philosophy of nature was the weak point of these thinkers, whose main services are to be sought in various branches of the philosophy of history. Now we shall add that it could not be otherwise at that time. Philosophy, which called itself the science of sciences, always had in it much “worldly content,” i.e., it always occupied itself with many purely scientific questions.. But at different times its “worldly content” was different.
Thus to confine ourselves here to examples from the history of modern philosophy, in the seventeenth century the philosophers mainly occupied themselves with questions of mathematics and the natural sciences. The philosophy of the eighteenth century utilized for its purposes the scientific discoveries and theories of the preceding epoch, but itself, if it studied the natural sciences, did so perhaps only in the person of Kant. In France it was social questions which then came to the foreground. The same questions continued mainly to preoccupy, although from a different aspect, the philosophers of the nineteenth century. Schelling, for example, said flatly that he thought the solution of a certain historical problem to be the most important task of transcendental philosophy. What this problem was, we shall soon see.
If everything flows and everything changes: if every phenomenon negates itself: if there is no such useful institution as will not ultimately become harmful, changing in this way into its own opposite, it follows that it is stupid to seek for “perfect legislation” and that it is impossible to invent a structure of society which would be the best for all ages and peoples: everything is good in its right place and at the right time. Dialectical thinking excluded all Utopias.
It was all the more bound to exclude them because “human nature,” that allegedly constant criterion which, as we have seen, was invariably used both by the writers of the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century and the Utopian Socialists of the first half of the nineteenth century, experienced the common fate of all phenomena: it was itself recognized to be variable.
With this there disappeared that naively idealist view of history which was also maintained in equal measure both by the writers of the Enlightenment and the Utopians, and which is expressed in the words: reason, opinions govern the world. Of course, said Hegel, reason governs history, but in the same sense as it governs the motion of the celestial bodies, i.e.; in the sense of conformity to law. The motion of the celestial bodies conforms to law, but they naturally have no conception of that conformity. The same applies to the historical progress of humanity. In it, without any doubt, there are particular laws at work; but this does not mean that men are conscious of them, and that therefore human reason, our knowledge, our “philosophy” are the principal factors in historical progress. The owl of Minerva begins to fly only at night. When philosophy begins tracing its grey patterns on a grey background, when men begin to study their own social order, you may say with certainty that that order has outlived its clay and is preparing to yield place to a new order, the true character of which will again be-come clear to mankind only after it has played its historical part: Minerva’s owl will once again fly out only at night. [13*] It is hardly necessary to say that the periodical aerial travels of the bird. of wisdom are very useful, and are even quite essential. But they explain absolutely nothing; they themselves require explanation and, probably, can be explained, because they too conform to law.
The recognition of conformity to law in the flights of Minerva’s owl was the foundation of quite a new view of the history of mankind’s intellectual development. The metaphysicians of all ages, all peoples and all tendencies, once they had acquired a certain philosophical system, considered it to be the truth and all other systems to be unquestionably false. They knew only the abstract oppositeness of abstract conceptions – truth and error. There-fore the history of thought was for them only a chaotic tangle of partly sad, partly ridiculous mistakes, whose wild dance continued right tip to that blessed moment when, at last, the true system of philosophy was invented. That was how J.B. Say, that most confirmed metaphysician of all metaphysicians, regarded the history of his branch of knowledge. He recommended not to study it, because there was nothing in it except errors. The dialectical idealists looked otherwise at things. Philosophy is the intellectual expression of its own age, they said: every philosophy is true for its own age, and mistaken for any other.
But if reason governs the world only in the sense of the conformity of phenomena to law: if it is not ideas, not knowledge, not “enlightenment” that direct men in their, so to speak, social housekeeping and in their historical progress, where then is human freedom? Where is the sphere in which man “judges and chooses” without amusing himself, like a child, with some empty toy, without serving as a plaything in the hands of some external force, even though maybe it is not blind?
The old but eternally new question of freedom and necessity rose up before the idealists of the nineteenth century, just as it had arisen before the metaphysicians of the preceding century, and as it arose before absolutely all the philosophers who had concerned themselves with questions of the relationship of being and thought. Like a sphinx it said to each such thinker: unravel me, or I shall devour your system!
The question of freedom and necessity was precisely that problem, the solution of which in its application to history Schelling considered to be the greatest task of transcendental philosophy. Did the latter solve it? Flow did that philosophy decide it?
And note: for Schelling, as for Hegel, this question presented difficulties in its application precisely to history. From the purely anthropological point of view it could already be considered solved.
An explanation is necessary here, and in giving it we shall ask the reader to pay it particular attention, in view of the tremendous importance of the subject.
The magnetic needle turns to the north. This arises from the action of a particular form of matter, which itself is subordinated to certain laws: the laws of the material world. But for the needle the motions of that matter are unnoticed: it has not the least conception of them. It imagines that it is turning to the north quite independently of any external cause, simply because it finds it pleasant so to turn. Material necessity presents itself to the needle in the shape of its own free spiritual activity. [14*]
By this example Leibniz tried to explain his view of freedom of will. By a similar example Spinoza explains his own quite identical view. [15*]
A certain external cause has communicated to a stone a certain quantity of motion. The motion continues, of course, for a certain time even after the cause has ceased to act. This, its continuation, is necessary according to the laws of the material world. But imagine that the stone can think, that it is conscious of its own motion which gives it pleasure, but does not know its causes, and does not even know that there was any external reason at all for that motion. How in that event will the stone conceive of its own motion? Inevitably as the result of its own desire, its own free choice. It will say to itself: I am moving because I want to move.
“The same is true of that human freedom, of which all men are so proud. Its essence amounts to the fact that men are conscious of their inclinations but do not know the external causes which give rise to those inclinations. Thus a child imagines that it is free to desire that milk which constitutes its sustenance ...”
Many even present-day readers will find such an explanation “crudely materialistic,” and they will be surprised that Leibniz, an idealist of the purest water, could give it. They will say in addition that in any case comparison is not proof, and that even less of a proof is the fantastic comparison of man with a magnetic needle or a stone. To this we shall observe that the comparison will cease to be fantastic as soon as we recall the phenomena which take place every day in the human head. The materialists of the eighteenth century were already pointing out the circumstance that to every willed movement in the brain there corresponds a certain motion of the brain fibres. What is a fantasy in respect of -the magnetic needle or the stone becomes an unquestionable fact in relation to the brain: a movement of matter, taking place according to the fatal laws of necessity, is in fact accompanied in the brain by what is called the free operation of thought. And as for the surprise, quite natural at first sight, on account of the materialist argument of the idealist Leibniz, we must remember that, as has already been pointed out, all the consistent idealists were monists, i.e., in their outlook upon the would there was no place at all for that impassable abyss which separates matter from spirit in the view of the dualists. In the opinion of the dualists, a given aggregation of matter can prove capable of thought only in the event of a particle of spirit entering into it: matter and spirit, in the eyes of the dualists, are two quite independent substances which have nothing in common between them. The comparison made by Leibniz will seem wild to him, for the simple reason that the magnetic needle has no soul. But imagine that you are dealing with a man who argues in this way: the needle is really something quite material. But what is matter itself? I believe it owes its existence to the spirit, and not in the sense that it has been created by the spirit, but in the sense that it itself is the spirit, only existing in another shape. That shape does not correspond to the true nature of the spirit: it is even directly opposed to that nature; but this does not prevent it from being a form of existence of the spirit – because, by its very nature, the spirit must change into its own opposite. You may be surprised by this argument as well, but you will agree at all events that the man who finds it convincing, the man who sees in matter only the “other existence of the spirit,” will not be repelled by explanations which attribute to matter the functions of the spirit, or which make those functions intimately dependent upon the laws of matter. Such a man may accept a materialist explanation of spiritual phenomena and at the same time give it (whether by far-fetched reasoning or otherwise, is a different question) a strictly idealist sense. And that was how the German idealists acted.
The spiritual activity of man is subjected to the laws of material necessity. But this in no way destroys human freedom. The laws of material necessity themselves are nothing else than the laws of action of the spirit. Freedom presupposes necessity, necessity passes entirely into freedom, and therefore man’s freedom in reality is incomparably wider than the dualists suppose when, trying to delimit free activity and necessary activity, they thereby tear away from the realm of freedom all that region (even in their opinion, a very wide region) which they set apart for necessity.
That was how the dialectical idealists argued. As the reader sees, they held firmly to the “magnetic needle” of Leibniz: only that needle was completely transformed, or so to speak spiritualized, in their hands.
But the transformation of the needle did not yet solve all the difficulties involved in the question of the relation-ship between freedom and necessity. Let us suppose that the individual is quite free in spite of his subordination to the laws of necessity, or moreover just because of that subordination. But in society, and consequently in history too, we are dealing not with a single individual but with a whole mass of individuals. The question arises, is not the freedom of each infringed by the freedom of the rest? I have the intention of doing this and that – for example, of realizing truth and justice in social relations. This intention has been freely adopted by myself, and no less free will be those actions of mine with the help of which I shall try to put, it into effect. But my neighbours hinder me in pursuing my aim. They have revolted against my intention, just as freely as I adopted it. And just as free are their actions directed against me. How shall I overcome the obstacles which they create? Naturally, I shall argue with them, try to persuade them, and maybe even appeal to them or frighten them. But how can I know whether this will lead to anything? The French writers of the Enlightenment used to say: la raison finira par avoir raison. But in order that my reason should triumph, I require that my neighbours should recognize it to be their reason as well. And what grounds have I for hoping that this will take place? To the extent that their activity is free – and it is quite free – to the extent that, by paths unknown to me, material necessity has passed into freedom – and, by supposition, it has completely passed into freedom – to that extent the acts of my fellow-citizens evade any foretelling. I might hope to foresee them only on the condition that I could examine them as I examine all other phenomena of the world surrounding me, i.e., as the necessary consequences of definite causes which are al-ready known, or may become known, to me. In other words, my freedom would not be an empty phrase only if consciousness of it could be accompanied by understanding the reasons which give rise to the free acts of my neighbours, i.e., if I could examine them from the aspect of their necessity. Exactly the same can my neighbours say about my own acts. But what does this mean? This means that the possibility of the free (conscious) historical activity of any particular person is reduced to zero, if at the very foundation of free human actions there does not lie necessity which is accessible to the under-standing of the doer.
We saw earlier that metaphysical French materialism led, in point of fact, to fatalism. For in effect, if the fate of an entire people depends on one stray atom, then all we can do is to sit back, because we are absolutely incapable and never will be capable, either of foreseeing such tricks on the part of individual atoms or of preventing them.
Now we see that idealism can lead to exactly the same fatalism. If there is nothing of necessity in the acts of my fellow-citizens, or if they are inaccessible to my understanding from the angle of their necessity, then all I can do is to rely on beneficent Providence: my wisest plans, my most generous desires, will be broken against the quite unforeseen actions of millions of other men. In that event, as Lucretius has it, out of everything anything may come.
And it is interesting that the more idealism attempted to underline the aspect of freedom in theory, the more it would be obliged to reduce it to nothingness in the sphere of practical activity, where idealism would not have the strength to grapple with chance, armed with all the powers of freedom.
The dialectical idealists understood it perfectly well. In their practical philosophy necessity was the truest and only reliable guarantee of freedom. Even moral duty cannot reassure me as to the results of my actions, Schelling said, if the results depend only on freedom. “In freedom there must be necessity.” [16*]
But of what necessity, then, can there be any question in this case? I am hardly likely to derive much satisfaction from constant repetition of the thought that certain willed movements necessarily correspond to certain movements of the substance of the brain. No practical calculations can be founded on such. an abstract proposition, and there is no further prospect of progress in this direction, because the head of my neighbour is not a glass beehive, and his cerebral fibres are not bees; and I could not observe their motions even if I knew with certainty-and we are still a long way from that situation-that after such and such a movement of such and such a nervous fibre there wil! follow such and such an intention in the soul of my fellow-citizen. Consequently we have to approach the study of the necessity of human actions from some other angle.
This is all the more necessary because the owl of Minerva flies out, as we know, only in the evening, i.e., the social relations between men do not represent the fruit of their conscious activity. Men consciously follow their private and personal ends. Each of them consciously strives, let us suppose, to round off his own property; yet out of the sum-total of their individual actions there arise certain social results which perhaps they did not at all desire, and certainly did not foresee. Wealthy Roman citizens bought up the lands of poor farmers. Each of them knew, of course, that thanks to his efforts such and such Tullies and Juliuses were becoming landless proletarians. But who among them foresaw that the great estates would destroy the republic, and with it Italy itself? Who among them realized, or could realize, the historical consequences of his acquisitiveness? None of them could, and none of them did. Yet these were the consequences – thanks to the great estates, both the republic and Italy perished.
Out of the conscious and free acts of individual men there necessarily follow consequences, unexpected for them and unforeseen by them, which affect the whole of society, i.e., which influence the sum-total of mutual relationships of the same men. From the realm of freedom we thus pass into the realm of necessity.
If the social consequences of the individual acts of men, arrived at unconsciously for themselves, lead to the alteration of the social system-which takes place always, though far from with equal speed-then new individual aims arise before men. Their free conscious activity necessarily takes a new form. From the realm of necessity we again pass into the realm of freedom.
Every necessary process is a process taking place in conformity to law. Changes in social relations which are unforeseen by men, but which of necessity appear as a result of their actions, evidently take place according to definite laws. Theoretical philosophy has to discover them.
The same evidently applies to changes introduced into the aims of life, into the free activity of men, by the changed social relations. In other words, the passing of necessity into freedom also takes place according to definite laws, which can and must be discovered by theoretical philosophy.
And once theoretical philosophy has performed this task, it will provide quite new and unshakeable foundation for practical philosophy. Once I know the laws of social and historical progress, I can influence the latter according to my aims, without being concerned either by the tricks of stray atoms or by the consideration that my fellow-countrymen, as beings gifted with free will, are every. moment getting ready for me whole piles of the most astonishing surprises. Naturally, I shall not be in a condition to go bail for every individual fellow-countryman, especially if he belongs to the “intellectual class”; but in broad outline I shall know the direction of the forces of society, and it will remain for me only to rely on their resultant to achieve my ends.
And so if I could arrive, for example, at the blissful conviction that in Russia, unlike other countries, it is the “foundations of society” that will triumph, this will only be to the extent. that I succeed in understanding the actions of the glorious “Russ” as actions which are in conformity to law, and in examining them from the stand-point of necessity and not from the standpoint of freedom. World history is progress in the consciousness of freedom, says Hegel, progress which we must understand in its necessity. [17*]
Further, however well we may have studied “the nature of man,” we shall still be very far from understanding those social results which follow from the actions of individual men. Let us suppose that we have admitted, just as the economists of the old school did, that striving for profit is the chief distinguishing feature of human nature. Shall we be in a position to anticipate the forms which that striving will take? Given definite social relations, known to us-yes; but these given, definite, known social relations will themselves change under the pressure of “human nature,” under the influence of the acquisitive activity of our fellow-citizens. In what direction will they change? This will be just as little known to us as that new direction which the striving for profit itself will take, in the new and changed social relations. We shall find ourselves in quite the same situation if, together with the German “Katheder Sozialisten,” we begin asserting that the nature of man is not exhausted by the mere striving for profit, but that he also has a “social sense” (Gemeinsinn). This will be a new song to an old tune. In order to emerge from ignorance, covered up by more or less learned terminology, we have to pass on from the study of the nature of man to the study of the nature of social relations; we have to understand those relations as essential process conforming to law. And this brings us back to the question: what underlies, what determines, the nature of social relations?
We saw that neither the materialists of last century nor the Utopian Socialists gave a satisfactory reply to this question. Did the dialectical idealists succeed in answering it?
No, they too did not succeed, and they did not succeed precisely because they were idealists. In order to grasp their view, let us recall the argument referred to earlier about what depends on what the constitution on manners, or manners on the constitution. Hegel rightly re-marked on this discussion that the question had been put here quite wrongly, as in reality, although the manners of a particular people undoubtedly influence its constitution, and its constitution its manners, nevertheless both of them represent the result of some “third” or special force, which creates both the manners influencing the constitution and the constitution influencing manners. But what, according to Hegel, is this special force, this ultimate foundation on which stand both the nature of men and the nature of social relations? This force is “Notion” or, what is the same thing, the “Idea,” the realization of which is the whole history of the particular people concerned. Every people puts into effect its own particular idea, and every particular idea of each individual people represents a stage in the development of the Absolute Idea. History thus turns out to be, as it were, applied logic: to explain a particular historical epoch means showing to what stage of the logical development of the Absolute Idea it corresponds. But what, then, is this “Absolute Idea”? Nothing else than the personification of our own logical process. Here is what a man says of it who himself passed through a thorough grounding in the school of idealism, and himself was passionately devoted to it, but noticed very soon wherein lies the radical defect of this tendency in philosophy [18*]:
“If from real apples, pears, strawberries and almonds, I form the general idea ‘Fruit’; if I go further and imagine that my abstract idea ‘Fruit,’ derived from real fruit, is an entity existing outside me, is indeed the true essence of the pear, apple, etc.; then, in the language of speculative philosophy, I am declaring that ‘Fruit’ is the substance of the pear, the apple, the almond, etc. I am saying, therefore, that to be a pear is not essential to the pear, that to be an apple is not essential to the apple; that what is essential to these things is ... the essence that I have abstracted from them and then foisted on to them, the essence of my idea – ‘Fruit.’ I therefore declare apples, pears, almonds, etc., to be mere forms of existence, modi, of ‘Fruit.’ My finite understanding, supported by my senses, does, of course, distinguish an apple from a pear and a pear from an almond; but my speculative reason declares these sensuous differences to be unessential, indifferent. It sees in the apple the same as in the pear, and in the pear the same as in the almond, namely ‘Fruit.’ Particular real fruits are no more than semblances whose true essence is ‘the Substance’ – ‘Fruit.’
“By this method one attains to no particular wealth of definition. The mineralogist whose whole science consisted in the statement that all minerals are really ‘Mineral’ would be a mineralogist only in his imagination ...
“Having reduced the different real fruits to the one fruit of abstraction – ‘Fruit,’ speculative philosophy must, in order to attain some appearance of real content, try somehow to find its way back from ‘Fruit,’ from ‘Substance,’ to the different profane real fruits, the pear, the apple, the almond, etc. It is as hard to produce real fruits from the abstract idea ‘Fruit’ as it is easy to produce this abstract idea from real fruits. Indeed, it is impossible to arrive at the opposite of an abstraction without relinquishing the abstraction.
“The speculative philosopher therefore relinquishes the abstraction ‘Fruit,’ but in a speculative, mystical fashion ... Thus he rises above his abstraction only in appearance. He argues like this:
“‘If apples, pears, almonds and strawberries are really nothing but Substance, Fruit, the question arises: Why does Fruit manifest itself to me sometimes as an apple, sometimes as a pear, sometimes as an almond? Whence this appearance of diversity which so strikingly contradicts my speculative conception of Unity, Substance, Fruit?
“‘This,’ answers the speculative philosopher, ‘is because Fruit is not dead, undifferentiated, motionless, but living, self-differentiating, moving. The diversity of profane fruits is significant not only to my sensuous understanding, but also to Fruit itself and to speculative reason. The different profane fruits are different manifestations of the life of the one Fruit ... In the apple, Fruit gives itself an apple-like existence, in the pear, a pear-like existence ... Fruit presents itself as a pear, Fruit presents itself as an apple, Fruit presents itself as an almond, and the differences which distinguish apples, pears and almonds from one another are the self-differentiations of Fruit making the particular fruits subordinate members of the life-process of Fruit.’” [23]
All this is very biting, but at the same time undoubtedly just. By personifying our own process of thought in the shape f an Absolute Idea, and by seeking in this Idea the explanation of all phenomena, idealism thereby led itself into a blind alley, out of which it could emerge only by abandoning the “Idea,” i.e., by saying good-bye to idealism. Here, for example: do the following words of Schelling explain to you to any extent the nature of magnetism? “Magnetism is a general act of animation, the embedding of Unity into Multitude, Concept into Diversity? That same invasion of the subjective into the objective, which in the ideal ... is self-consciousness, is here expressed in being.” [19*] These words don’t explain anything at all, do they? Just as unsatisfactory are similar explanations in the sphere of history. Why did Greece fall? Because the idea which constituted the principle of Greek life, the centre of the Greek spirit (the Idea of the Beautiful) could be only a very short-lived phase in the development of the world spirit. [20*] Replies of this kind only repeat the question in a positive and, moreover, a pompous form, as it were on stilts. Hegel, who gave the explanation of the fall of Greece which has just been quoted, seems himself to have felt this, and hastens to supplement his idealist explanation by a reference to the economic reality of ancient Greece. He says: “Lacedaemon fell mainly on account of inequality of property.” And he acts in this way not only where Greece is concerned. This, one may say, is his invariable approach in the philosophy of history: first a few vague references to the qualities of the Absolute Idea, and then much more extensive and, of course, much more convincing indications of the character and development of the property relations of the people to whom he is referring. Strictly speaking, in explanations of this latter kind there’s really nothing at all idealist left and, in having recourse to them, Hegel – who used to say that “idealism proves to be the truth of materialism” – was signing a certificate about the poverty of idealism, tacitly admitting as it were that in essence matters stand in exactly the opposite way, and that materialism proves to be the truth of idealism.
However, the materialism which Hegel here approached was a quite undeveloped, embryonic materialism, and immediately passed once more into idealism as soon as he found it necessary to explain whence came these or those particular property relations. True, here also it would happen that Hegel frequently expressed quite materialist views. But as a rule he regarded property relations as the realization of conceptions of Right which developed by their own internal force.
And so what have we learned about the dialectical idealists?
They abandoned the standpoint of human nature and, thanks to this, got rid of the utopian view of social phenomena: they began to examine social life as a necessary process, with its own laws. But in a roundabout fashion, by personifying the process of our logical reason (i.e., one of the sides of human nature), they returned to the same unsatisfactory point of view, and therefore the true nature of social relations remained incomprehensible for them.
Now once again a little digression into the sphere of our own domestic, Russian philosophy.
Mr. Mikhailovsky has heard from Mr. Filippov, who in his turn has heard from the American writer Frazer, that all the philosophy of Hegel amounts to “galvanic mysticism.” What we have said already of the aims which the idealist German philosophy set before itself will be enough to show the reader how nonsensical is Frazer’s opinion. Messrs. Filippov and Mikhailovsky themselves feel that their American has gone too far: “It is sufficient to recall the successive course and influence (on Hegel) of preceding metaphysics, beginning with the ancients, with Heraclitus ...” says Mr. Mikhailovsky, adding immediately, however: “Nevertheless the remarks of Frazer are in the highest degree interesting, and undoubtedly contain a certain element of truth.” We must admit, although we cannot but recognize ... Shchedrin long ago held up this “formula” to ridicule. But what would you have his former assistant, Mr. Mikhailovsky [21*], do, when he has undertaken to interpret to the “uninitiated” a philosopher whom he knows only by hearsay? Willy-nilly you will go on repeating, with the learned air of a scholar, phrases which say nothing ...
Let us however recall the “successive course” of development of German idealism. “The experiments in galvanism produce an impression on all the thinking people of Europe, including the then young German philosopher Hegel,” says Mr. Mikhailovsky. “Hegel creates a colossal metaphysical system, thundering throughout the world, so that there’s -no getting away from it even on the banks of the River Moskva.” ... The case is represented here as though Hegel had become infected with “galvanic mysticism” direct from the physicists. But Hegel’s system represents only the further development of the views of Schelling: clearly the infection must have previously influenced the latter. So it did, reassuringly replies Mr. Mikhailovsky, or Mr. Filippov, or Frazer: “Schelling, and particularly some doctors who had been his pupils, carried the teaching of polarity to the last extreme.” Very good. But the predecessor of Schelling was, as is known, Fichte. How did the galvanic infection affect him? Mr. Mikhailovsky says nothing about this: probably he thinks that it had no influence at all. And he is quite right if he really does think so; in order to be convinced of this, it is sufficient to read one of the first philosophical works of Fichte, Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, Leipzig 1794. In this work no microscope will discover the influence of “galvanism”; yet there, too, appears that same notorious “triad” which, in the opinion of Mr. Mikhailovsky, constitutes the main distinguishing feature of the Hegelian philosophy, and the genealogy of which Frazer, allegedly with “a certain element of truth,” traces from the “experiments of Galvani and Volta.” ... We must admit that all this is very strange, although we cannot but recognize that nevertheless Hegel, etc., etc.
The reader knows already what were Schelling’s views on magnetism. The defect of German idealism lay not at all in its being founded allegedly on an excessive and unjustified captivation (in a mystical form) by the scientific discoveries of its age, but, on the contrary, in its attempt to explain all the phenomena of nature and history with the help of the process of thought which it had personified.
In conclusion, one comforting piece of news. Mr. Mikhailovsky has discovered that “metaphysics. and capitalism are most intimately connected; that, to use the language of economic materialism, metaphysics is an essential component part of the ‘superstructure’ over the capitalist form of production, although at the same time capital swallows up and adapts to itself all the technical advances of science, founded on experiment and observation, which is hostile to metaphysics.” Mr. Mikhailovsky promises to discuss “this curious contradiction” some other time. Mr. Mikhailovsky’s examination will be “curious” indeed! Just think: what he calls metaphysics underwent a brilliant development both in ancient Greece and in Germany of the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth centuries. Up to now it was thought that ancient Greece was not a capitalist country at all, and in Germany, at the time indicated, capitalism had only just begun to develop. Mr. Mikhailovsky’s research will demonstrate that from the point of view of “subjective sociology” this is quite untrue, and that precisely ancient Greece and Germany in the days of Fichte and Hegel were classical countries of capitalism. You see now why this is important. Let our author, then, hasten to publish his remarkable discovery. Sing, my dear, don’t be shy!
15. Enzyklopädie, Erster Teil, §230, Zusatz.
16. All these extracts have been taken from the volume of Russkoye Bogatstvo already quoted.
17. For doubters there is another extract: “J’ai assigné ce premier degré de la décadence des mœurs au premier moment de la culture des lettres dans tous les pays du monde.” Lettre a M. l’abbé Raynal, Œuvres de Rousseau, Paris 1820, Vol.IV, p.43. (“I have assigned this first degree of the decadence of morals to the first moment of the art of letters in all countries of the world.” Letter to the Abbé Raynal, in Rousseau’s Works, Paris 1820, Vol.IV, p.43. – Ed.)
18. See the beginning of Part II of Discours sur l’inégalité.
19. F. Engels, Anti-Dühring, Moscow 1954, p.197. – Ed.
20. Ibid., p.34.
21. Ibid., pp.32-33.
22. Let the reader not blame us for these quotations from La Belle Helene. We recently read again Mr. Mikhailovsky’s article, Darwinism and the Operettas of Offenbach, and are still under its potent influence.
23. The quotation is from Marx, The Holy Family (Gesamtausgabe, Part I, Vol.3, pp.228-29). – Tr.
9*. Somewhat changed words of a character from A. Griboyedov’s Wit Works Woe.
10*. The reference is to what Engels says about rousseau in Chap.XIII of Anti-Dühring.
11*. Mikhailovsky’s article Karl Marx Being Tried by Y. Zhukovsky was printed in Otechestvenniye Zapiski, 1877, No.10. (Cf. N.K. Mikhailovsky, Collected Works, Vol.IV, St. Petersburg 1909, pp.165-206.
12*. The first complete Russian edition of Anti-Dühring appeared in 1904.
13*. Hegel wrote in the preface to his Philosophy of Right: “When philosophy begins to paint in grey colours on the grey background of reality, it cannot be rejuvenated, it can only be cognized; Minerva’s owl only flies at night.”
Plekhanov speaks of these propositions of Hegel in his article For the Sixtieth Anniversary of Hegel’s Death.
14*. Leibniz, Essais de Théodicée, in the book, Die philosophischen Schriften von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Vol.6, Berlin 1885, p.130.
15*. Cf. B. Spinoza, Letter to G.G. Schuller, October 1674, in Spinoza’s Correspondence.
16*. Cf. F.W.J. Schelling, System des transzendentalen Idealismus, Hamburg 1957, p.271.
17*. Hegel develops these thoughts in his Philosophy of History.
18*. Plekhanov has Marx in mind. The quotation given lower is from The Holy Family, pp.78-80.
19*. Cf. Schelling, Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Natur, Landshut 1803, p.223.
20*. See Hegel, Philosophy of History.
21*. At one time Mikhailovsky contributed to Otechestvenniye Zapiski of which Shchedrin was an editor (from 1868 to 1884).
Last updated on 12.2.2005