The Positive Outcome Of Philosophy - free ebook by Joseph Dietzgen

THE POSITIVE OUTCOMEOF PHILOSOPHYThe Nature of Human Brain Work Letters on Logic. The PositiveOutcome of Philosophy BY JOSEPH DIETZGEN

TRANSLATED BY ERNEST UNTERMANN WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY DR. ANTON PANNEKOEK TRANSLATED BY ERNEST UNTERMANN Edited by Eugene Dietzgen and Joseph Dietzgen, Jr. CHICAGO CHARLES H. KERR &amp; COMPANY 1906 Copyright 1906 By Eugene Dietzgen...

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INTRODUCTION

THE POSITION AND SIGNIFICANCE OF J. DIETZGEN'S PHILOSOPHICAL WORKS BY Dr. Anton Pannekoek In the history of philosophy we see before us the consecutive forms of the thoughts of the ruling classes of society on life and on the world at large. This class thought appears after the primitive communism has given way to a society with class antagonisms, at a stage when the wealth of the members of the ruling class gave them leisure time and thus stimulated them to turn their attention to the productio

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The Nature of Human Brain Work

A Renewed Critique of Pure and Practical Reason BY A MANUAL WORKER Translated by Ernest Untermann THE NATURE OF HUMAN BRAIN WORK...

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PREFACE

It may not be amiss here to say a few words to the kind reader and the unkind critic in regard to the personal relation of the author to the present work. The first objection which I anticipate will be aimed at my lack of scientific learning which is shown indirectly rather, between the lines, than in the work itself. "How dare you," I ask myself, "come before the public with your statements on a subject, which has been treated by such heroes of science as Aristotle, Kant, Fichte, Hegel, etc., w

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I. INTRODUCTION

Systematization is the essence and the general expression of the aggregate activity of science. Science seeks to classify and systematize the objects of the world for the understanding of our brain. The scientific understanding of a certain language, e. g., requires an orderly arrangement of that language in general categories and rules. The science of agriculture does not simply wish to produce a good crop of potatoes, but to find a system for the methods of cultivation and thus to furnish the

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II PURE REASON OR THE FACULTY OF THOUGHT IN GENERAL

When speaking of food in general, we may mention fruits, cereals, vegetables, meat and bread and classify them all, in spite of their difference, under this one head. In the same way, we use, in this work, the terms reason, consciousness, intellect, knowledge, discernment, understanding, as referring to the same general thing. For we are discussing the general nature of the thought process rather than its special forms. "No intelligent thinker of our day," says a modern physiologist, "pretends t

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IV THE PRACTICE OF REASON IN PHYSICAL SCIENCE

Although we know that reason is attached to perceptible matter, to physical objects, so that science can never be anything else but the science of the physical, still we may, according to the prevailing ideas and usage of language, separate physics from logic and ethics, and thus distinguish them as different forms of science. The problem is then to demonstrate that in physics as well as in logic, as also in ethics, the general or intellectual perceptions can be practically obtained only on the

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Letters on Logic

Especially Democratic-Proletarian Logic BY JOSEPH DIETZGEN Translated by Ernest Untermann Editorial Remark. The "Letters on Logic," treating on the same subjects as "The Positive Outcome of Philosophy," were intended by the author to be replaced by this subsequent work. We publish, however, both these works in hopes that the reader will pardon the frequent repetitions on account of the additional light that other parts of the "Letters on Logic" are apt to impart. LETTERS ON LOGIC...

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FIRST LETTER

Dear Eugene: You have now reached the age at which the students go to the university. There, according to custom, they register first of all for a course in logic, whether they choose the study of law, medicine, or theology. Logic is, so to say, the elementary study in all branches of learning. Now you know, my dear, that school and life are regarded as two separate things. I should like to call your attention to their connection. We live also in school, we are schooled also by life. I should li

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SECOND LETTER

Dear Eugene: Having written the first letter by way of introduction, I now am ready for a gradual approach to my subject. Logic aims to instruct the human mind as to its own nature and processes; it will lay bare the interior working of our mind for our guidance. The object of the study of logic is thought, its nature, and its proper classification. The human brain performs the function of thinking as involuntarily as the chest the function of breathing. However, we can, by our will, stop breath

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FOURTH LETTER

Dear Eugene: In my first letter I acquainted you with my purpose, in the second I lifted the subject on my finger tips, so to say, to show it for a brief moment; in the third I showed that its color had inevitably a religious shade. Now, to continue, permit me to introduce another point to your consideration. The great cause of the working class has hitherto always been the beast of burden of a small and exclusive minority. This is most evident in the slave states of antiquity, in Egypt, Greece,

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FIFTH LETTER

A man not trained in logical thinking is handicapped by the absence of a monistic method of thought. Monistic is synonymous with systematic, logical, or uniform. If we call a cream puff a tidbit and rye bread a food without remembering that every food is a tidbit and every tidbit food, and if we ignore the fact that both of them, in spite of their difference, belong to the same category and are, therefore, related, then we lack logic. And logic is lacking whenever the fact is ignored that all th

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SIXTH LETTER

My Dear Son: After the third letter had acquainted you with the fact that the subject of logic has a certain religious flavor, the two subsequent letters endeavored to show that the logical subject is interconnected with the universal existence of the world, that the faculty of thought is an inseparable part of actual truth. In the vernacular of theology my last two letters have represented the human mind as a part of the living true God. Christianity teaches: God is a spirit and who would worsh

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SEVENTH LETTER

The philologists distinguish carefully between a science of language and a science of languages. The latter teaches Egyptian, Assyrian, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, English, French, etc., while the former treats of the general characteristics common to all languages, of language itself. Philosophical logic stands in the same relation to other sciences. The latter make us acquainted with special truths, while logic treats of truth in general. Those overintelligent people who claim that truth is merely a

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NINTH LETTER

Repetition, my dear Eugene, is the mother of all study. Logic aims to teach you the proper use of the intellect, not only in this or that branch of study, but in the general branch of truth. Its result is the following precept: In all things always remember the universal interrelation. In order to illustrate this statement a little, let me point out that in the period of scholasticism thinking was practiced without any interconnection with the rest of the world, merely by brown study. The presen

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ELEVENTH LETTER

Dear Eugene: Johannes Scherr relates in the "Gartenlaube," a German family paper, in an article entitled "Mahomet and His Work," that insane doctrinarians are searching for people without religion. This has not succeeded, it is said, although the spark of religious feeling is glowing very dimly in peoples that are close to the animal. But nevertheless, he continues, the expressions of religious feeling mark the boundary line where the beast ceases and man begins. For just as in the higher stages

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TWELFTH LETTER

Logic, the science of correct thought, demands in the first place true, or in other words, reasonable thought. Logic deals with reason and truth. These two things have been endowed with a mysterious nature, while they obviously belong to the entire universe and its tangible nature. Reason and truth are not separated from the other things, are not things in themselves. There is no such thing. Philosophers who have looked for them in the depths of the human brain with their hands over their eyes a

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THIRTEENTH LETTER

In his "Three Books On The Soul," Aristotle discussed at length the question whether the human soul has five senses or one. The commentator, J. H. von Kirchmann, the publisher of the "Philosophical Library," remarks in his footnote 172 that man has six senses. He divides feeling into pure and active feeling. According to this, the phrase of the five senses belongs to the old iron the same as that of the four elements. Now neither you, nor I, nor any reader should worry about the question whether

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FOURTEENTH LETTER

Shoemaking and beet culture are as much sciences as physics, chemistry, and astronomy. Reading, writing, and reckoning are called elementary knowledge, and though I do not deny that they have an elementary value for the culture of the mind, yet I can truly say that I have met well-informed people who could neither read nor write. I wish to indicate by this that there are indeed high and low degrees of knowledge and science, but that such graduations have only a temporary, local, relative, subjec

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FIFTEENTH LETTER

My Son: If on my return from some voyage I were to tell you of all the things I have not seen, you would justly doubt the order of my senses. Sane reason demands that the description of unfamiliar things be given in a positive, not in a negative manner. If that is so, is it not wrong to proceed negatively by trying to prove in explaining the nature of the intellect that it is not a miracle and no mysterious charm of wisdom? I answer: No. For the present, the intellect is still a sort of ignis fa

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SEVENTEENTH LETTER

My subject, dear Eugene, is the simplest in the world, but it requires thorough treatment for all its full understanding. So every letter is in a way but a repetition of the same argument. "It is remarkable," says Schopenhauer, "that we find the few main theses of pre-socratic philosophy repeated innumerable times. Also in the works of modern thinkers, such as Cartesius, Spinoza, Leibniz, and even Kant, we find that their few main theses are repeated over and over." Now I ask you to consider wha

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EIGHTEENTH LETTER

Just as in political history action and reaction follow one another, just as periods of economic prosperity are alternated by periods of depression, so we find in literature a periodical fluctuation between philosophical and anti-philosophical tendencies. After Hegel had for a time thoroughly aroused the spirits, a time of apathy followed, so that this hero of thought who shortly before had been almost idolized could be attacked and reviled. For about a decade, a philosophical breeze has now onc

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NINETEENTH LETTER

"Philosophy should not try to be edifying," said Hegel. This means that religious feeling is far below scientific thought. But there is a reverse side to this sentence, viz., that thoughts which do not rise to the edifying interconnection of all things, no matter whether they remain stuck in some specialty on account of frivolousness or of narrowmindedness, are far below a wise world philosophy. In a former letter I have already emphasized, and I hope to prove it more convincingly, that the conc

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TWENTIETH LETTER

Dear Eugene: Today I am going to present my case with the precision of a schoolmaster. The concept of white cabbage embraces all white cabbage heads that ever were and ever will be. The concept of cabbage embraces red, white, and many other kinds of cabbage. The concept of vegetable embraces a still wider range. The organic field is still more comprehensive. And finally the world concept embraces everything which we know and don't know, the end of which we cannot conceive, and which therefore is

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TWENTY-FIRST LETTER

The proletarian logic of the working class searches after the supreme being. The working class knows that it must serve but it wants to know whom to serve. Shall it be an idol or a king? Where, who, what, is the supreme being to which everything else is subordinate, which brings system, consistency, logic, into our thought and actions? The next question is then: By what road do we arrive at its understanding? Any transcendental revelation being of no use to us, there are only two ways open: Reas

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TWENTY-SECOND LETTER

Dear Eugene: Socrates teaches: When we walk, it is not walking, when we stand still, it is not standing which is our purpose. We always have something ulterior in view, until finally the general welfare is the true end of our actions, in other words, the "good." And on closer analysis you will find that your individual welfare, the socalled egoistic good, is not enough in itself. You are not only related to your father, mother, brothers, sisters, relatives and friends, but also to your community

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TWENTY-THIRD LETTER (A)

Although we know that there is no actual beginning, because we are living in the universe without beginning and end, still we mortals must always begin at a certain point. So I have begun one of my retrospects over the history of my subject with Plato, and at another time I have ended with Hegel, although before and after them there has been much philosophical thought. These two names are luminant points which throw their light over everything which is situated between them. The errors of our pr

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(B)

We are still the guests of Plato today, my son, and I should like to show you that this philosopher, in whose time natural science had barely developed its first downy feathers, already suspected its stubborn narrowness, although in a certain sense the Platonic logic was no less narrow than that of the so-called exact sciences still is to-day, at least in part. Still Platonic logic had at least the advantage of its outlook toward the Supreme Being, the absolute, while modern naturalism is still

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TWENTY-FOURTH LETTER

The art of thought, my son, for which we are striving, is not pure and abstract, but connected with practice, a practical theory, a theoretical practice. It is not a separate and isolated thing, not a "thing in itself," but is connected with all things; it has a universal interrelation. Hence our logic, as we have repeatedly stated, is a philosophy, world wisdom, and metaphysics. I include the latter, because our logic excludes nothing, not even the transcendental. It teaches that everything, ev

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The Positive Outcome of Philosophy

BY JOSEPH DIETZGEN Translated by Ernest Untermann THE POSITIVE OUTCOME OF PHILOSOPHY...

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PREFACE

As a father cares for his child, so an author cares for his product. I may be able to give a little additional zest to the contents of this work by adding an explanation how I came to write it. Although born by my mother in 1828, I did not enter my own world until "the mad year," 1848. I was learning the trade of my father in my paternal shop, when I saw in the "Kölnische Zeitung," how the people of Berlin had overcome the King of Prussia and conquered "liberty." This "liberty" now became the fi

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I POSITIVE KNOWLEDGE AS A SPECIAL OBJECT

That which we call science nowadays was known to our ancestors by a name which then sounded very respectable and distinguished, but which has in the meantime acquired a somewhat ludicrous taste, the name of wisdom. This gradual transition of wisdom into science is a positive achievement of philosophy which well deserves our attention. The term "ancestors" is very indefinite. It comprises people who lived more than three thousand years ago as well as those who died less than a hundred years ago.

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II THE POWER OF COGNITION IS KIN TO THE UNIVERSE

The way of Truth, or the true way, is not musing, but the conscious connection of our thoughts with the actual life—that is the quintessence of the teachings of philosophy produced by evolution. But this is not everything. If I know that a tanner makes leather, I do not by any means know everything he does, because there still remains the manner and method of his manipulations. In the same way, the doctrine of the interrelation of mind and matter, which is the product of the entire social develo

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III AS TO HOW THE INTELLECT IS LIMITED AND UNLIMITED

Understanding taught by experience no longer muses about universal nature, but acquires a knowledge of it by special studies. By degrees philosophy, first unconsciously and lately clearly and plainly, has taken up the problem of ascertaining the limits of understanding. This philosophical problem first assumed the form of polemics. It became opposed to the religious dogma which represented the human mind as a small, subservient, limited and restricted emanation of the unlimited divine spirit. Th

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IV THE UNIVERSALITY OF NATURE

The positive outcome of philosophy concerns itself with specifying the nature of the human mind. It shows that this special nature of mind does not occupy an exceptional position, but belongs with the whole of nature in the same organization. In order to show this, philosophy must not discuss the human mind as if it were something separate from nature, but must rather deal with its general nature. And since this general nature of our intellect is the same of which every other thing partakes, it

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V THE UNDERSTANDING AS A PART OF THE HUMAN SOUL

The human intellect or understanding, the special object of all philosophy, is a part, and in our case the most prominent part, of the human soul. Gustav Theodore Fechner, a forgotten star on the literary firmament, posed the question of the soul in his time and attempted to answer it. In so doing he clothed the result of past philosophies in a peculiar garb which looked fantastic enough at first sight. He regards the outcome of philosophy merely as an individual product and he is so full of ven

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VII THE RELATIONSHIP OR IDENTITY OF SPIRIT AND NATURE

"There is a natural law of analogy which explains that all things belonging to the universe are members of the same family, that they are related to one another by bonds which permit of the greatest variety in individual differences and are not nullified even by the distance between extremes." If we grasp the meaning of these words in their full bearing, we recognize the outcome of philosophy up to date. They teach us how to use our intellect in order to obtain an accurate picture of the univers

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VIII UNDERSTANDING IS MATERIAL

Whether we say that philosophy has the understanding for the object of its study, or whether we say that philosophy investigates the method of utilizing subjective understanding in order to arrive at genuine, correct, excellent, objective knowledge, that is only a matter of using different terms for the same process. It makes no difference whether we designate the object of our special science as a thing or as a process. It is much more essential to understand that the distinction between the th

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IX THE FOUR PRINCIPLES OF LOGIC

Since this work wishes to demonstrate the positive outcome of philosophy, the reader may ask the author what are his proofs that instead of the quintessence of thousands of years of philosophical work he is not offered the elaboration of any individual philosopher, or even that of the author himself. In reply I wish to say that my work would be rendered uselessly voluminous by quotations from the works of the most prominent philosophical writers, without proving anything, since the words of one

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X THE FUNCTION OF UNDERSTANDING ON THE RELIGIOUS FIELD

We took our departure from the fact that philosophy is searching for "understanding." The first and principal acquisition of philosophy was the perception that its object is not to be found in a transcendental generality. Whoever wishes to obtain understanding, must confine himself to something special, without, however, through this limitation losing sight of all measure and aim to such an extent that he forgets the infinite generality. A modern psychologist who occupies himself with "Thoughts

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XI THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN CAUSE AND EFFECT IS ONE OF THE MEANS OF UNDERSTANDING

The processes of the human mind and their subjective composition cannot be analyzed in a pure state and without regard to their objective effects any more than handiwork can be explained without the raw material to be handled and the products derived therefrom, any more than any work can be described in a pure state without regard to the product. That is the sad defect of old time logic which is an obstacle to its further advance: it literally tears things out of their connections and forgets th

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XIII THE EXTENT TO WHICH THE DOUBTS OF THE POSSIBILITY OF CLEAR AND ACCURATE UNDERSTANDING HAVE BEEN OVERCOME

A contemporaneous professor of philosophy, Kuno Fischer, of Jena, says: "The problem of modern philosophy is the understanding of things." But this problem does not occupy modern philosophy alone; it was also considered by ancient philosophy. Even more, it belongs to the whole world. All the world, I mean the whole human world, and especially the sciences, search after understanding. I do not say this for the purpose of setting the Professor right, for I acknowledge that he is a fairly deserving

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XIV CONTINUATION OF THE DISCUSSION ON THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DOUBTFUL AND EVIDENT UNDERSTANDING

Let us divide the history of civilization into two periods. In the first, the less civilized period, the doubtful perceptions predominate, in the second period the evident ones. Our special investigation of the correct way of evident understanding began in the first period in which the doubtful perceptions, commonly called errors, predominated. In this period, the gods rule in heaven and imagination on earth. To get rid of errors meant originally to lose gods and heaven. The ideal world was the

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XV CONCLUSION

The philosopher Herbart declares: "If the meaning of a word were determined by the use to which it is put by this or that person, then the term metaphysics would be ambiguous and scarcely comprehensible. If one wishes to know what meaning of this term has been handed down to us by tradition, he should read the ancient metaphysicians and their followers, from Aristotle to Wolff and his school. It will then be found that the concepts of being, of its quality, of cause and effect, of space and time

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