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p Abstract objects are relatively easy to define simply because they are abstract, i.e., they are only an idealised image of a definite reality, the deliberate construction of abstract scientific thought. The concept of the abstract object is in fact no more than the meaning of a term (for instance, the absolutely black body in physics) as established by its definition. It is another matter when we speak of real objects in all their diversity, contradiction and changeability, such as nature, life, man, art, and so on. It was of these objects that Engels was thinking when he said that their definition had only formal significance. Omnis determinatio est negatio—any definition is negation. Spinoza’s dictum should, of course, be understood not in the trivial sense that every definition negates other definitions, for that may not be the case, inasmuch as the concrete in theoretical thinking is a unity of different definitions. Every definition is not only an assertion, it is also a negation of its own limited content because it is one-sided, and the concrete object that 179 it seeks to define is many-sided. Every definition is a limitation of the content of a concept and therefore is itself limited.

p Concrete and, consequently, diverse, manysided objects can be defined only in a logically concrete manner, and the logically concrete takes the form of motivated transition from one definition to another, resulting in a system of definitions. Every separate definition is abstract, onesided and therefore untrue because there is no abstract truth (at any rate in relation to concrete objects). Viewed from this standpoint, the existence of a host of definitions of philosophy does not appear to be something exceptional, incomprehensible or discreditable to philosophy. The problem lies elsewhere. Can this mass of definitions be welded into a unity? And if this is impossible, how can one concretely define the concept of philosophy (the concrete being a unity of different definitions), while allowing for the divergence of philosophical systems, trends, doctrines and conceptions that has been going on for thousands of years and continues (perhaps with even greater intensity) to this day, and whose natural result is the abominable pluralism of definitions of the concept of philosophy?

p In considering this question we must duly appreciate the historically changing significance, range and subject of philosophy, and also of the term “philosophy” itself. But despite all the differences of opinion concerning the concept of philosophy, philosophy has remained philosophy, i.e., has been distinguished from all other theoretical knowledge both in form and in content. And if this is so, then does not this create a possibility of scientific synthesis of the various definitions of philosophy? If such a synthesis is possible, it can 180 be made only from theoretical positions that preclude all eclecticism, and only as a result of strict critical analysis, selection and working over of the various definitions of philosophy.

p Unity of various definitions can be substantial, concrete unity only if we single out the actual tendencies of development of philosophy, the progress of philosophical knowledge which dialectically negates its precedent, less developed forms. This synthesis or rather critical rethinking consequently presupposes special historico– philosophical research. Since such an inquiry goes beyond the bounds of this book, we shall confine ourselves to posing the problem and making a preliminary analysis of the possibilities of synthesis of the various definitions, bearing in mind that none of them can be taken ready-made from the history of philosophy, since they all have to be essentially rethought on the basis of past definitions.

p Wilhelm Windelband, having declared his belief that any attempt to synthesise the innumerable definitions of philosophy "would be a completely hopeless task”, explains the futility of such an attempt (which he himself does not entirely renounce, however) on the grounds that "there is no logically definable unity of the essence of philosophy that corresponds to the universality of its name".  [180•1  But the meaning of the word “philosophy” has not changed by accident; in cases when the word has been used arbitrarily, the casually attributed meaning has not usually survived. The fact that the name “philosophy” has been given to the most varied forms of knowledge, apparently completely alien to philosophy, in certain respects actually facilitates the 181 understanding of philosophy and its role in the spiritual development of mankind. The essence of philosophy, as Dilthey wrote, "has turned out to be extremely mobile and variable: the constant raising of new problems, adaptation to the conditions of culture; now it plunges into individual problems, regarding them as important, now it turns away from them again; at one stage of knowledge it believes it can solve problems that it afterwards abandons as insoluble".  [181•1 

p So the concept of philosophy with its many and changing faces must be viewed from its positive side, the more so that in this constant process of change the basic stuff of philosophy comes to light and survives.  [181•2 

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p If the essence of philosophy amounted to that which was identical in all philosophical doctrines, it would be an abstract and meagre essence or rather the mere appearance of essence. Whereas the real essence has numerous aspects—identity, difference, contradiction, etc. If we appraise the essence of philosophy from this point of view, the most general feature of all philosophical doctrines, which has survived in philosophy for thousands of years, turns out to be least of all characteristic of philosophy in its developed form. The historically transient problems of philosophy cannot be regarded as unimportant. What is more, the delimitation of what in the past was called (or actually was) philosophy from that which remains philosophy today, although not a particularly difficult task, is relevant only in so far as it explains the need to apply the word “ philosophy” to questions that no longer have anything to do with philosophy.

p It is commonplace that the subject-matter of philosophy has in the course of history been prone to change. The problems that up to a certain point in time were exclusively the province of philosophy gradually came under investigation by the specialised sciences. Does this mean that certain problems which “abandoned” philosophy were never really philosophical problems and remained with philosophy simply because for the time being there was nowhere else for them to go? We do not support this idea, although we fully appreciate the wrath of philosophers who protest against the application of the term “ philosophy” to questions that, at any rate by the beginning of the 19th century, had ceased to qualify as philosophy. Evidently referring to Newton’s Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, 183 Hegel pointed out that Newton had called his physics a philosophy of nature. "With the English,” Hegel observed ironically, "the term philosophy retains this meaning even today, and Newton is still hailed there as a great philosopher. Even in their price lists instruments that cannot be classed as magnetic or electrical apparatus, such as barometers and thermometers, are called ’philosophical instruments’.”  [183•1  Hegel was particularly indignant about this because he believed thought to be the sole instrument of philosophy.

p It was Hegel who pointed out that Hugo Grocci’s theory of law had been called a philosophy of international state law, and that in England political economy was also called philosophy. He cites as an oddity the name of the English journal: Annals of Philosophy or Magazine of Chemistry, Mineralogy, Mechanics, Natural History, Agriculture and Art. The sciences which in this case are called philosophical would be more correctly described as empirical sciences, Hegel observes. But why are they called philosophical? Is it merely a matter of misusage based on the medieval university tradition according to which the natural sciences were included in the philosophical faculty? Hegel, however, points out that 184 in modern times, when the sciences took shape and began investigating a wide variety of empirical material, "any knowledge whose subject is cognition of the stable measure and the universal in the sea of empirical singularities, the study of necessity, of law in the apparent chaos of an infinite multiplicity of accidents ... has come to be called philosophy".  [184•1 

p In our view this observation clears up the question of why the word “philosophy” was still being so loosely used in the 18th and 19th centuries. We have already mentioned that philosophy takes shape historically and for a number of centuries develops as the first and, in fact, the only form of theoretical knowledge. For Aristotle, for example, no other theory existed except philosophy; he considered geometry and physics to be branches of philosophy, distinguishing from them what later came to be called metaphysics as the "first philosophy”. In modern times, when not only mathematics and physics but also biology, law and other sciences have broken away from philosophy, they continue for a long time to be called philosophical because they are concerned with theoretical generalisations and do not merely describe observed facts. Is this not why Carolus Linnaeus called his classification of the vegetable world a "Philosophy of Botany"? This was the work which Rousseau described as the most philosophical he knew. And Rousseau was a philosopher in a far more definite sense than Linnaeus, although we do find profound philosophical ideas in Linnaeus as well.

p We have already mentioned Lamarck’s " Philosophy of Zoology”. It is no accident that this 185 work expounding the theory of evolution should have acquired such a title. Lamarck was well aware that the hypothesis he had developed, although based on certain empirical data, reached far beyond the bounds of direct observation. Besides, in order to explain certain observed facts, the relative purpose of living organisms, for instance, Lamarck constantly had recourse to the arsenal of philosophical concepts.

p Unlike his eminent French predecessor, Charles Darwin had at his disposal far more plentiful empirical material with which to substantiate his theory of evolution. Despite the English tradition, however, he did not call his famous work philosophical. Instead he designated the special subject of his research in the title: The Origin of Species. In Darwinian theory biology finally breaks free of philosophy as a theoretical discipline. Previously it had broken away only in its empirical, largely descriptive section. One cannot divorce the name “philosophy” from that which was previously (for whole centuries) called philosophy merely on the grounds that the specialised sciences, having split off from philosophy or taken shape in other ways, have adopted as their subject of inquiry that which was formerly studied by philosophy. If many scientific disciplines, now independent of philosophy, were once its departments, this in our opinion has a bearing on the significance of philosophy not only in the past. At any rate, in seeking a scientific definition of the concept of philosophy we cannot ignore this important fact which characterises philosophy’s historical destiny.

p Some positivist philosophers, citing the fact that many scientific disciplines were described as philosophical while they were evolving, draw the 186 conclusion that research becomes scientific only to the extent that it segregates itself from philosophy. They ignore the fact, however, that the specialised sciences that have broken away from philosophy and become special fields of research are not now concerned with the same problems that philosophy treated of in the past; the questions themselves have become more specialised. Such questions could have been posed by philosophy only in general terms, preliminary to special investigation. But in their more general form these questions everywhere retain their significance in philosophy even today.

p It cannot be said, therefore, that cosmological, physical and biological problems are entirely removed from the concept of philosophy after they become the subject of specialised research. Rather, thanks to the results obtained by the specialised sciences, these problems acquire new meaning for philosophy, since the results of these special researches are not merely interpreted or assimilated by philosophy but open up before it new horizons, possibilities and problems.

p Thus, the limitation of the concept of philosophy to its present range of problems cannot provide the basis for a definition of philosophy, since we as philosophers (and historians of philosophy) are interested not onlv in what philosophy has become as a result of its development, but also in what it has been in the course of its history. This is not to imply that we are somewhat deviously trying to return to the idea of the immutable essence of philosophy that we ourselves rejected. Our task is rather to single out the fairly numerous, so we believe, specific features of philosophy which make it possible to understand philosophy in its development. Analysis 187 of various definitions of philosophy serves this aim directly. The empirically established basis for their diversity is not merely divergence of opinion concerning one and the same object, but the real diversity of philosophical doctrines, since it is this fact that distinguishes the development of philosophy from the development of any other branch of knowledge.

p It was the sceptics among the ancient philosophers who enunciated the belief that the existence of incompatible philosophical doctrines is, first, inevitable and, second, insuperable. The opponents of scepticism in subsequent periods re-establish the notion that the diversity of philosophical doctrines is due to the erring of philosophical thought in quest of the truth, which, as distinct from error, does not exist in the plural. The errors of philosophy, however, are regarded as accidental.

p Some philosophers of modern times have tried to single out the elements of truth in various philosophical doctrines, i.e., to make a positive appraisal of their diveristy; but these attempts have as a rule been eclectic in character. Hegel in his criticism of philosophical scepticism, in whose views on philosophy he detects the prejudices of commonplace consciousness, argued that one should not exaggerate the distinctions between philosophical doctrines since the essence of philosophy has always been one and the same and all these countless differences (and contradictions) of philosophical belief exist in the heart of fundamental identity by virtue of its dialectical nature. No matter how different philosophical systems may be, he says, their differences are not so great as the differences between white and sweet, green and rough; they are at one in agreeing that they 188 are all philosophical doctrines, and it is this that is left out of consideration.  [188•1  In itself this statement of the philosophical character of all philosophical doctrines does not get us very far, of course. But Hegel goes much farther in his teaching on the dialectical unity of the diverse philosophical doctrines, which constitutes the basis of his historico-philosophical conception: he sees them as temporally developing stages, principles of one and the same encyclopedic philosophy, diverse in content, which arrives at its ultimate perfection in his own philosophical system.

p Hegel obviously exaggerated the element of identity and played down the element of difference (contradiction) in philosophical doctrines, although he often stressed that difference, contradiction, is no less important than identity, and is inseparable from it. Nonetheless, according to Hegel, errors in the development of philosophy occur only through absolutisation of universal truth (absolute knowledge), which every philosophical system presents to the world. Moreover, in saying this, Hegel does not consider it necessary to trace the cause of this absolutising, despite the fact that it is treated as law-governed.

p In general, Hegel portrays the development of philosophy as the harmonious process of the advance of knowledge in which "the latest philosophical doctrine in time is the result of all previous philosophical doctrines and must therefore embrace in itself principles for all of them".  [188•2  But the actual relationship of any philosophical doctrine to its predecessors is far more complex: 189 continuity, progress, the development of philosophy through the critical impropriation of previous advances of philosophical knowledge, all this does not preclude irreconcilable contradiction between philosophical trends, incompatibility of philosophical doctrines, since these doctrines reflect various historical situations, demands, interests and take different attitudes to religion, science, and so on. The relationship of continuity between philosophical doctrines is not a relationship of determinism. Like any other form of social consciousness, philosophy is conditioned ultimately by social being.

p While rejecting the metaphysical juxtaposition of philosophical doctrines which is characteristic of scepticism, one must make certain essential amendments to Hegel’s understanding of the relationship between them. According to Hegel, it is in the final analysis the "absolute spirit" which philosophises and never makes mistakes, so all the mistakes arise only out of the historically limited human form of expressing this absolute self-knowing self-consciousness. Correct understanding of the interrelationship of philosophical systems (and different definitions of the concept of philosophy) must overcome not only the metaphysical conception of the history of philosophy, whose untenability was brilliantly proved by Hegel, but also Hegel’s own idealist monism, in the framework of which the historical law of the unity and conflict of opposites could not find adequate expression.

p It is quite impossible even to enumerate all the definitions of philosophy that have been given in the course of the history of philosophy. Nor is this necessary. It would be desirable, of course, to offer a rational classification of these 190 definitions, but it is doubtful what principle could be used for a sufficiently comprehensive classification.

p At first glance the principle might seem to be obvious: the fundamental opposition between materialism and idealism. However, although the content of every definition of philosophy is undoubtedly determined by the materialist (or idealist) character of the philosophical doctrine, there are certain definitions of the concept of philosophy to which both the materialist and the idealist would subscribe, although they would, of course, interpret them in entirely different ways. This is where the formal character of definitions makes itself felt. "The only real definition,” Engels wrote, "is the development of the thing itself but this is no longer a definition.”  [190•1 

It seems to me that the best way of arriving at a more or less clear and systematic notion of the variety of philosophical definitions, bearing in mind the above-mentioned fundamental historico-philosophical fact of the progressive divergence of philosophical doctrines, is to review the basic mutually exclusive definitions of philosophy. Moreover, it should be remembered that the polarity of materialism and idealism manifests itself even within such opposed doctrines as sensualism, rationalism, naturalism, pantheism, and so on. Each of these doctrines defines philosophy in its own way. Therefore it is a matter of finding out how far the opposition between different definitions of philosophy goes, to what degree they exclude or, on the contrary, supplement each other. In this way we shall to some extent 191 establish the scope of the concept of “philosophy”, the boundaries of its historically changing problems.