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p Let us try to arrange the basic definitions of philosophy in a pattern, indicating with even and uneven numbers the most contrasting definitions.

p 1. Philosophy is the study of being, regardless of its special, particular, transient modifications. This definition of philosophy is to be found in ancient Indian and also ancient Chinese philosophy. In the philosophy of the Eleatic school it stands in contrast to the continuous becoming of Heraclitus. Aristotle defines philosophy as knowledge of essence- in itself or of the essence of all that exists: "And that which from time immemorial and now and forever is the subject of inquiry and has always given rise to difficulties—the question of what is being—this question may be reduced to the question of what is essence.”  [191•1 

p The metaphysical systems of the Middle Ages and modern times also define philosophy as the study of being. In modern bourgeois philosophy this definition is accepted by the neo-Thomists, a substantial number of Christian Spiritualists, and also the Existentialists and N. Hartmann’s "new ontology”. This means that it is accepted by those philosophers who claim to have finally overthrown the metaphysical systems, who counterpose ontology to metaphysics, but interpret the former as a doctrine of being, that is, 192 independent of the objective world perceived by the senses. Among Existentialists this view is formulated most clearly by Karl Jaspers: "While scientific cognition goes to individual objects that everyone must know about anyway, philosophy is concerned with the wholeness of being.”  [192•1  Martin Heidegger defines philosophy as awareness of the original, pre-reflex "existential understanding”, and constantly emphasises that the main thing in philosophy, since it overcomes the errors of metaphysics, is the particular (phenomenological, hermeneutical) mode of thought relationship to being.  [192•2 

p Whereas the idealists interpret being as a supersensory reality, quite frequently describing being as God, materialism, on the other hand, strips the veils of mystery from the concept of being, characterising it as sensorily perceptible reality, nature. Thomas Hobbes reduces the subject of philosophy to study of the bodies, thus giving the concepts of being and substance features of the actually observed and measurable. The materialists identify being with matter, and regard the spiritual as a property of being. Ludwig Feuerbach, criticising Hegel’s conception of abstract “pure” being, wrote: "What man understands by being, if he considers the matter, is presence, being-for-oneself, reality, existence, 193 actuality, objectivity. All these definitions or names express the same thing from different points of view. Abstract being, being without reality, without objectivity, without being-for-oneself, is of course nothing, but in this nothing I express only the nonentity of this abstraction of mine."  [193•1 

p Examination of being as the subject-matter of philosophy signifies as a rule the belief that the philosopher’s task is to study the world as a whole. In this case the juxtaposition of materialism and idealism shows itself in the very understanding of the wholeness, the unity of the world, since in itself recognition of this unity of the world is not yet a formulation of the materialist or idealist position. Even the proposition "being is primary, consciousness secondary" is entirely compatible with the idealist system of beliefs if, of course, being is interpreted as a special form of spiritual reality.

p 2. Philosophy is the study not of being but of cognition, or morality, or happiness, or of man in general. Such definitions of philosophy emerge in ancient times and constantly compete with opposing definitions of philosophy both in metaphysics and ontology. In Indian philosophy Buddha rules out of philosophy such questions as: Is the world eternal? Is it non-eternal? Is it finite? Is it infinite? Is the soul the same as the body? Is it different from the body?  [193•2  He declares these and some other questions to be indeterminable and at the same time having no bearing on the main problem—the elimination of suffering.

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p In modern times, owing to the development of the science of nature, the tendency to exclude ontological problems from philosophy flows directly into agnosticism and subjectivism. Hume questioned the existence of any objective reality that was independent of the consciousness and thus limited the sphere of philosophical inquiry to the study of mental activity, particularly the act of knowing. He was not interested in knowledge in general, however, but in the study of man, in self-knowledge, in which he saw the only way of overcoming the age-long errors of philosophy and arranging human life on rational lines.

p Kant, who unlike Hume, acknowledged the existence of a reality independent of the knower, nevertheless dismissed the problem of being on the grounds that it is unknowable. Accordingly he defined philosophy as a doctrine of the absolute boundaries of all possible knowledge. These boundaries, according to Kant, are determined by the very mechanism of cognition, its a priori forms, which may be applied only to sensory data but not to the transcendental "thing in itself”. Hence the "metaphysics of nature" in Kant’s system does not imply study of a reality that is independent of the knower, but investigation of the fundamental principles of natural scientific knowledge. The ideas that are a fit subject for philosophical (psychological, cosmological, theological) inquiry are a priori in character, i.e., they are not the result of knowledge but precede it. The investigation of these ideas must be reduced to epistemological analysis of their origin, since there are no grounds for asserting that any objective reality corresponds to them. Like Hume, Kant believed the second most important theme of philosophy to be morality (practical reason), the 195 study of which aims at proving, on the one hand, the autonomy of the moral consciousness and, on the other, the necessity of postulating the existence of God, immortality of the soul, freedom of the will, i.e., everything that theoretical reason deems incapable of proof.

p The definition of philosophy as the study of cognition is also developed by the positivists, who argue that philosophy should be reduced to the theory of knowledge, on the grounds that all other possible objects of cognition are studied by the specialised sciences and there is nothing left for philosophy but to study science itself, the fact of knowledge. Besides making this assertion, which acknowledges actual tendencies in the development of cognition, the definition of philosophy as knowledge of knowledge is also substantiated from the standpoint of agnosticism and subjectivism, according to which knowledge cannot be the reflection of a reality independent of the knower, even if the existence of that reality is admitted to be theoretically capable of proof. Herbert Spencer wrote: ".. .In so far as any Philosophy professes to be an Ontology, it is false.” And further on: "To bring the definition to its simplest and clearest form—Knowledge of the lowest kind is un-unified knowledge; Science is partially-unified knowledge; Philosophy is completely-unified knowledge.”  [195•1  This definition of philosophy incidentally implies that philosophy, while refusing to study unknowable being, both investigates the structure of knowledge and synthesises all the knowledge of phenomena available to man in the specialised sciences. In the 196 course of positivism’s further evolution new limits are set on the concept of philosophy by epistemology. For Ernst Mach philosophy is the psychology of knowing. Modern positivism reduces inquiry into the process of knowing to analysis of its linguistic form.

p 3. Philosophy is the study of all that exists, and not any particular sphere of reality or cognition. From Hegel’s point of view, a philosophical system is an encyclopedia of philosophical sciences, interpreting even questions studied by the specialised sciences but from its own peculiar speculative position which is beyond their scope. "Philosophy,” Hegel wrote, "can be preliminarily defined in general as the thinking examination of objects.” What he means by this is that "philosophy constitutes a peculiar mode of thought, a mode of thought by which it becomes cognition, and cognition by means of concepts. . .".  [196•1  This implies that philosophy studies not only everything, but rather that which exists in everything, constituting its universal essence. Hegel is not satisfied by the definition of philosophy as a doctrine of being, since the latter has always been understood as something distinct from thought. But thought, according to Hegel, is also being. What is more, it is the substancesubject, i.e., the creative, developing essence of the world. Hegel interprets being as the first stage in the self-development of the "absolute idea”, i.e., as the immediate, sensorily perceptible, alienated expression of the absolute. Being does not account for the whole of existence; nor is it that which philosophy discovers in what exists as the substantial, that which constitutes the chief object 197 of its inquiry. This is why the subject-matter of philosophy must be not being, but what exists.

p For all his hostility to Hegel’s idealism, Feuerbach also defines philosophy as the study of what exists. "Philosophy is cognition of what is. The highest law, the highest task of philosophy is to conceive of things, to know things as they are."  [197•1  It is quite obvious that this definition of philosophy is pointed against Hegelian and the speculative-idealist understanding of philosophy in general, which, as Feuerbach explains, makes a mystery of what is, and tries to conceive of things and essence not as they are. A convinced materialist, Feuerbach defines philosophy as knowing objective reality, knowing that which exists in its self-sufficing objectivity and, therefore, as knowledge that is objective in its content. However, this definition of philosophy does not imply any delimitation of the subiect-matter of philosophy from that of the specialised sciences.

p 4. Philosophy is the study of that which does not exist in reality, of that which is juxtaposed to all reality and any knowledge of it as a measure or value scale, that which has a significance not in the least diminished by the fact that, as an ideal, it does not possess present being. This definition of philosophy is most consistently upheld by the Baden school of neo-Kantianism. Thus, according to Windelband, "philosophy is the science of normal consciousness. It investigates empirical consciousness in order to establish at what points of the latter this immediate evidence of normative general necessity is manifest.”  [197•2  By the term "normal consciousness" 198 Windelband means awareness of the absolute norm as the criterion of evaluation of all that exists. But for this very reason "normal consciousness" is placed outside what exists, and "belief in the reality of absolutely normal consciousness is a matter of personal faith, and not scientific cognition".  [198•1  Whereas Plato believed that Absolute Good, Absolute Truth and Absolute Beauty existed as transcendental realities, neo-Kantian idealism, taking up more realistic positions, declares them to be non-existent, but possessing significance. It goes without saying that this “realism” is of a highly subjective nature.

p Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology defines philosophy as a doctrine that deliberately excludes from its field of study the external world and that which is considered to be knowledge about it, i.e., scientific data. Philosophy, interpreted as intuitive "essential vision”, also refuses to recognise the necessary existence of the ideal essences, ideas and meanings that it cognises in the consciousness of man (but which are independent of that consciousness). The concept of existence presupposes time and hence temporal being and is therefore not to be applied to ideal being, which is outside time and cannot be interpreted as a fact. "Contemplation,” Husserl says, " contemplates essence as essential being, and does not contemplate and does not assume in any sense existence. Accordingly contemplation of essence is not matter-of-fact cognition, and does not imply a trace of any assertion concerning individual (let us say, natural) existence.”  [198•2  Thus truth is juxtaposed to what exists and philosophy refuses 199 to study existing objects of cognition so as to be able to appraise them from positions of the higher values and true essences, the nature of which necessarily excludes the present and empirical by their very characteristics of existence.

p 5. Philosophy is theory, i.e., a system of notions, concepts, knowledge and the methods of acquiring them related to a definite reality (or to all that exists) as the subject of its inquiry. This means that philosophy has its own specific circle of questions with the result that it reaches conclusions that cannot be reached outside philosophy, and makes discoveries the possibility of which is implied not only in the methods of philosophical inquiry but also in the availability of objects of research within its terms of reference. This definition of philosophy is wholly compatible with the definitions of philosophy as a study of being or of all that exists, or as a study only of cognition, and values that do not actually exist. There is no need therefore to illustrate this definition, since it is accepted by nearly all philosophers, no matter how far they differ in their definitions of the concept, essence and the subjectmatter of philosophy. This definition could have been omitted altogether since it appears to be self-evident. But the point is that there is an opposite definition of philosophy, i.e., denial of the possibility of philosophy as theory and condemnation of those philosophies that are elaborated as theories and therefore allegedly fail to answer their purpose.

p 6. Philosophy is not theory but a kind of intellectual activity having a functional purpose but no object of inquiry. This definition springs from the neo-positivist interpretation of philosophy. Neo-positivism rejects the historically formed 200 philosophical problems as imaginary, but does not substitute for them any new problems. Instead it demands of philosophy that it should stop being theory and turn into a method of analysis of scientific or everyday propositions. We find an anticipation of this definition of philosophy in the immediate forerunner of neo-positivism Hans Cornelius, who characterises philosophy as "the desire for final clarity, for conclusive explanation”,  [200•1  which is alien to the positive sciences.

p However, the classical formulation belongs to Ludwig Wittgenstein: "The object of philosophy is the logical clarification of thoughts. Philosophy is not a theory but an activity. A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations. The result of philosophy is not a number of ’ philosophical propositions’, but to make propositions clear. Philosophy should make clear and delimit sharply the thoughts which otherwise are, as it were, opaque and blurred.”  [200•2 

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p Later on Wittgenstein went even further in his rejection of philosophy as theory and tried to reduce it to a logical procedure of analysis of language, in which he perceived not only the source of all philosophical error, but also the source of the philosophical problems themselves. "Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.”  [201•1 

p The representatives of the philosophy of linguistic analysis in England have carried to its logical conclusion Wittgenstein’s idea of the need to turn philosophy into critical analysis of language with the aim of banishing from everyday and scientific usage the “metaphysics” concealed there. The comparison of philosophy to an "intellectual policeman”,  [201•2  whose function is to 202 guard against what is forbidden, rather well describes the actual function (not only heuristic but in several respects also socio-political) of the philosophy of linguistic analysis. It stands to reason that despite its assertions this philosophy is not only a method but also a quite definite idealist-agnostic theory.

p 7. Philosophy is a science, at any rate it can and should be one. This proposition cannot be strictly regarded as a definition of philosophy since it is implied in many definitions of philosophy (as a science of being, a science of cognition, and so on). But it is worth singling out because the opposite view maintains that the specific feature of philosophy is that it is not a science. Accounting philosophy a science implies that it is a system of interconnected, substantiated concepts, logically arranged according to certain definite principles. Such a definition of philosophy arose in Ancient Greece, where philosophy was a synonym of science. Aristotle holds that science in general can only exist in so far as we know the cause of a certain thing, and know that this particular cause is the cause of this thing. "Scientific knowledge and its object differ from opinion and the object of opinion in that scientific knowledge is commensurately universal and proceeds by necessary connections, and that which is necessary cannot be otherwise.”  [202•1 

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p Aristotle’s Analytics is not only a treatise on logic, but also an extensive conception of science, which is understood as a definite structure of knowledge, and not all knowledge at that, but that knowledge which relates to a necessary series of phenomena. As Aristotle aptly observes: "Thus, to have a true opinion that the diagonal is commensurate with the side would be absurd."  [203•1  Descartes, whose name we associate not only with the beginning of modern philosophy but also with fundamental discoveries in natural science, believed that philosophy is above all science: "This science must contain the first rudiments of human reason and in addition serve to extract from any object the truths that it contains.”  [203•2 

p Hobbes who, like most of the philosophers of the period of early bourgeois revolutions, disapproved of Aristotle’s teaching, nevertheless explains the concept of philosophy as a science in an Aristotelean spirit: "Philosophy is such knowledge of effects or appearances as we acquire by true ratiocination from the knowledge we have first of their causes or generation: And again, of such causes or generations as may be from knowing first effects.”  [203•3 

p Although philosophy was treated as a science even in the Middle Ages (Albert Bolstedt, for instance, called it "scientia universalis”), the ancient concept of science was systematically developed only in modern times as a result of the brilliant advances in mathematics which created an ideal of scientific knowledge that inspired all the outstanding philosophers of those days— 204 materialists and idealists. Even the juxtaposition of philosophy to other sciences as a kind of science of sciences usually stems from demands for strict scientificality which, so the philosophers believe, cannot be realised in the specialised sciences. No wonder, then, that along with this juxtaposition, historically justified by the as yet feeble development of natural science, there is to be found in the progressive philosophical doctrines of modern times an awareness of the fact that philosophy has not yet become a genuine science and also the belief that it can and must become one. Hence the question of what is needed to make philosophy a genuine science is constantly discussed by progressive philosophers.

p In his Critique of Pure Reason Kant poses the question on which his whole system pivots: "Is metaphysics possible as a science? If it is possible, under what conditions? In other words, in what sense is philosophy possible as a science?" Speaking of the failure of all previous attempts to build a scientific philosophy, Kant observes: "In this sense philosophy is only an idea of a possible science, which is nowhere given in concrete, but which we strive to approach in various ways."... "Until this happens,” Kant continues, "philosophy cannot be taught; for indeed, where is it? Who commands it? And by what mark shall it be known? We can only teach philosophising, that is to say, exercise the gift of reason on certain available examples in following its principles, while always retaining the right of reason to investigate the very sources of these principles and confirm or reject them.”  [204•1 

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p Kant held that by creating a "critical philosophy" he had solved the problem of turning philosophy into a pure science. Fichte saw the solution to this problem in his Wissenschaftslehre, and Hegel in his Science of Logic, in an encyclopedia of the philosophical sciences. In the bourgeois philosophy of the second half of the 19th century and first half of the 20th, the idea of a scientific philosophy was idealistically interpreted by the neoKantians, who tried to create a "scientific idealism”, by the positivists, and by Husserl’s phenomenology, whose founder conceived it as "rigorous science”. All this offers grounds for regarding the definition of philosophy as science as one of its key definitions.

p 8. Philosophy is not, cannot be and should not be, a science. This definition (and understanding) of philosophy was enunciated by Greek scepticism, which did not, however, seek to demolish the ideal of scientific knowledge, but simply maintained that this idea is unrealisable, at any rate for philosophy. This attitude of the Sceptics to the idea of a scientific philosophy was subsequently expressed by other philosophical schools. At present it is represented by neo-positivism, on the one hand, and the irrationalist doctrines, on the other.

p Neo-positivism regards "philosophical propositions" as “metaphysical” or devoid of scientific meaning because they are in principle unverifiable and logically incapable of proof. When Karl Popper proved that the major theoretical propositions of natural science are also unverifiable in principle (in the neo-positivist sense of the term, of course) and counterposed falsifiability to verifiability as an attribute of any scientific theory concerned with facts, this did not lead to a revision of the neo-positivist definition of philosophy as 206 non-science in principle. Thus, A. J. Ayer in his article Philosophy and Science maintains that philosophy can hardly be considered a science, since its propositions cannot in principle be scientifically verified. "The philosophers,” A. J. Ayer says, "have their theories, but these theories do not allow them to make predictions; they cannot be proved or disproved by experiment, as is the case with scientific theories.”  [206•1 

p While neo-positivism, despite its inherent subjectivism and agnosticism, regards science as the most effective means of knowing phenomena and in accordance with its conception of science criticises philosophy as a specific form or unscientific belief, modern philosophical irrationalists, while agreeing with the neo-positivist formula " philosophy is not a science”, interpret this formula as an expression of the superiority of philosophy to science, which, they allege, is fundamentally incapable of decyphering irrational reality and constantly gets further away from it just because of its achievements, which are vain attempts to rationalise the irrational, to express the inexpressible in concepts, to present internally chaotic reality as an orderly realm of regularities and laws. This line of thought had already made itself felt in the irrationalist philosophy of the 19th century. Emile Boutroux, for instance, expressed it quite categorically. "Philosophy,” he wrote, "either becomes exclusively scientific as a synthesis of the sciences and then cannot be called philosophy any more, or else it remains philosophical, in which case it is anti-scientific.”  [206•2 

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p Religious irrationalism reproaches science for its lack of religion, for its indifference to the “mystery” of the universe and the human soul. From this standpoint philosophy towers above science by being closer to the transcendental through its religious attitude of mind. "Philosophy,” Nicholas Berdyaev maintained, for example, "is one of the ways of objectifying mysticism; but the highest and fullest form of this objectification can be only positive religion.”  [207•1 

p The Catholic existentialist Gabriel Marcel believes that the idea of scientific philosophy contradicts the nature of philosophy, which never commands the truth but always seeks it, since it is aware that even revealed truth is essentially inexpressible. Only the "particular truths" of science can be expressed because they are impersonal; their value and their impersonality are inseparable from each other. ".. .For in so far as it is accepted as itself, that is to say, independent of the research of which it is the result, it tends to appear as exterior to the subject. Here lies the root of scientism, understood as degradation of true science.”  [207•2  From this point of view one may of course assert that only philosophy is a true science, and thus agree with the definition of philosophy as a special kind of science. But it is quite obvious that this "true science" which no one has yet created is the negation of actual science with all its actual achievements.

p Truth and being, from Marcel’s point of view, are identical and unknowable; neither may belong 208 to man. Philosophy is "metaphysical disquiet”, the individual’s search for his own centre. Therefore ".. .the only methaphysical problem is: What am I?”  [208•1 

p The definition of philosophy as a science, as well as the definition that it is not, cannot and should not be a science, are of enormous importance for an understanding of the objective, historically formed relation between philosophy and science, which to no small extent determines the significance of philosophy. In this sense one finds a real connection between logical definitions and the historical, objective conditionality of philosophy. This connection deserves special examination since it may throw light on the evolution of philosophical definitions.

p 9. Philosophy is a world view (Weltanschauung) possessing specific features that distinguish it from other types of world view. This definition, just like the two previous ones, is partial, i.e., is part of wider definitions of the concept of philosophy, but its significance is not thereby reduced. In other words, the argument as to whether philosophy is or may be a world view, has played and continues to play a tremendous role in philosophy’s development, despite the fact that the concept of world view is variously interpreted by philosophers. Some admit the possibility of a world view, others deny it. There are rationalist, irratio-.. nalist, voluntarist, subjectivist, “scientist”, and various other definitions of the concept of world view.

p Wilhelm Dilthey in his list of the types of world view distinguishes them as religious, poetic and “metaphysical”; all these types take their 209 source not from knowledge but from the will to knowledge, position in life, historical situation, which are contrasted to theoretical, scientific knowledge as allegedly not expressing the essence of man’s spiritual life. A world view is thus characterised as specifically human knowledge—as though some other non-human knowledge exists! The idea behind this interpretation of world view lies in its denial of the importance of the objective content of a world view, in stressing its purely personal features that are said to have nothing to do with knowledge. Dilthey’s ideas are further developed in Karl Jaspers’ psychology of world views, which intensifies the irrationalist colouring of this concept.  [209•1 

p Materialism has always associated the concept of world view with denial or criticism of idealism, with the conceptual synthesis of scientific views of nature, society and knowledge, with the theoretical substantiation of humanism.

p 10. Philosophy is not a world view, either because philosophy is a science, and world view is not scientific in character, or because world view summarises scientific data, whereas philosophy is nourished by its own source and does not regard science as being on the same scale as itself. The denial that philosophy is a world view is thus based on extremely varied arguments; it is to be found in the works both of those who accept the idea of a scientific philosophy and those who do not.

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p Since the term "world view" was coined only in modern times and was not widely used in philosophy until the second half of the 19th century, the question of the relationship between philosophy and world view was never consciously posed in the majority of philosophical doctrines of the past. To this must be added the fact that in some modern European languages the term virtually does not exist, with the result that many works written in English or French use the German Weltanschauung.  [210•1 

p However, denial of the world-view character of philosophy cannot, of course, be attributed to these philological facts. Some base their denial on the idea that only religion can have a world view, while others justify it by the need for a strict delimitation of the tasks of philosophy and repudiation in principle of the possibility of a world view as a scientific theoretical synthesis. The evolution of neo-positivism is a unique combination of these two tendencies. In their first collective declaration of programme the members of the Vienna Circle announced that they were engaged in evolving a scientific world view.  [210•2  Later, however, they abandoned this aim and 211 proclaimed the holding of a world view to be a matter of faith, inspired by emotional considerations, and reduced the task of philosophy to elaboration of the logical syntax of science, and so on.

p Thus, the definitions stating that philosophy is a special type of world view, and also the opposite definitions are of substantial importance, since they call for the theoretical analysis of the relationship between philosophy and world view, which is no less important than the relationship between philosophy and science.

p Before launching upon our analysis of the above-mentioned definitions, it must be emphasised that all these definitions, even if their number were considerably increased, would not provide a full conception of the virtually unencompassable variety of mutually exclusive concepts of philosophy. One could, of course, compile a dictionary of definitions of philosophy, but even this would not reflect all the definitions because, as has already been said, the same definitions are interpreted in a multitude of different ways, giving rise to completely different notions of the essence, subject and tasks of philosophy. The rationalist Hegel and the irrationalist Schopenhauer understood philosophy as a doctrine of the spiritual essence of the world, but the universal mind in Hegel’s philosophy and the world will in Schopenhauer’s express mutually exclusive trends in the development of idealist philosophy. Naturally, these differences come to light as soon as the definitions are subjected to philosophical analysis. Nevertheless the fact that incompatible philosophical doctrines can define philosophy in exactly the same terms does to a certain extent blur the distinction between these doctrines.

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p Although we have not cited all the possible definitions of philosophy, those listed here show clearly enough that such definitions cannot on principle be synthesised. But this does not mean that they exclude each other in all respects.  [212•1  The definitions we have marked with uneven numbers quite often supplement one another and can therefore be coordinated to a certain extent. There are, for example, philosophers who define philosophy as a scientific theory, a special kind of science, a science of being or even of all that exists.

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p The definitions, marked with even numbers, can also to some extent be unified. Those who deny philosophy as a doctrine of being or of existence in general reduce philosophy to epistemological analysis, to a specific mode of analysing the forms of knowledge, and they are naturally inclined to regard it not as objective knowledge, and hence not as science, as a world view, as a theory with its own circle of questions. Moreover, a large part of the contrasting definitions (marked with even and uneven numbers) have quite often been combined. Besides the philosophers who claim that philosophy is a doctrine of being, and their opponents, who argue that philosophy is possible only as a theory of knowledge, there have been a good many philosophers who reject both definitions and believe that philosophy is a doctrine of being and of cognition. Hegel proceeded from the unity, the identity of being and cognition (thought). Feuerbach, who turned Hegel’s teaching upside down and put it on a materialist basis, argued the unity of cognition and being that could not be reduced to cognition. Hence, of course, Fischer was wrong in stating that the decisive turn brought about by Kant in philosophy, lies in his making the subject of philosophical inquiry not being but cognition. The study of cognition in Kant’s philosophy is at the same time a study of being.

p No matter how narrowly a philosopher limits the concept of philosophy, excluding various fundamental problems, he is compelled directly or indirectly to answer these very questions. The same may be said of the positivists, who exclude from philosophy the problem of objective reality. In practice, in their analysis of cognition or even only its logical or empirical form they arrive at a 214 subjective-idealist interpretation of objective reality. Thus it turns out that this or that definition of philosophy only formally removes certain fundamental philosophical problems, since in essence they cannot be dismissed from philosophy.

p The history of philosophy shows that exclusion of any fundamental problems from the concept of philosophy amounts merely to pushing them into the background, i.e., bringing forward other questions, the answer to which turns out to be directly or indirectly an answer to these “ eliminated” problems.

p The definitions cited differ from one another in what they include in philosophy and what they exclude from it, and also their interpretation of the form of philosophical knowledge (theory, science, method, world view, etc.). But since the basic philosophical problems cannot be completely removed, that is to say, they can be excluded only in definitions, definitions of philosophy largely fail to express the content of philosophy and are even misleading about it. Engels’ remark about the formal character of definition and Spinoza’s idea that a definition is a negation of the limitations of one’s own subject are both extremely apposite in this context.

p At best a definition indicates the key aspects of a philosophical doctrine, expressing what its creator believes to be most important in that doctrine. We can say that the existentialist, Bergsonian and pragmatic concepts of philosophy are primarily definitions of the existentialist, Bergsonian and pragmatic philosophies, although each of their creators was trying to give a concept of philosophy in general. Consequently their definitions are as difficult to coordinate as their 215 doctrines. And even if they can be coordinated, this will be only a synthesis of definitions, and not of the doctrines that they represent; the limited diversity of philosophical definitions conceals an unlimited diversity of philosophical doctrines, whose incompatibility cannot be overcome even if certain common views on certain questions are discovered in some of them. It is not just a matter of the incompatibility of the materialist and the idealist doctrines, but of the incompatibility of the various historical forms of materialism, the various idealist doctrines, and so on.

p Of course, in natural science, too, there are mutually exclusive theories, but here they exist as divergences over certain definite questions, which presupposes common ground on other questions that are not in dispute. To be more exact, mutually exclusive theories in natural science, in so far as they are only partially recognised, are merely hypotheses which do not rule out agreement between opponents on questions that are considered already solved. Only in philosophy does the split run all along the line between the two opposing philosophical doctrines. Moreover the mutually exclusive philosophical conceptions are quite often equally mistaken, although there can of course be other cases where one of these concepts is approaching objective truth and another (or others) is getting further away from it.

p The truth in philosophy is not unanimously acknowledged. There are many reasons for this. Some are connected with the theory of knowledge in general. In philosophy objective truth cannot be checked experimentally or by any other relatively simple means. This is a typical situation all through the history of philosophy, whereas it is fundamentally untypical in the natural sciences, 216 and particularly in the applied sciences. Does this mean that the concept of philosophy cannot in general be given any substantial definition? We believe it does, if one goes no further than an empirical statement of the obvious diversity of incompatible philosophical systems. Anyone who believes the progressive divergence of philosophical knowledge to be a permanent form of the development of philosophy is, of course, morally obliged to give up the idea of defining the concept of philosophy. Only by recognising the pluralism of philosophical systems as a historically transient form of the formation-development of philosophy, i.e., by admitting the possibility and necessity of overcoming it, can we arrive at a definition of the concept of philosophy which, it is true, will not embrace all the philosophical doctrines that have ever existed, but which will express the prospects of development of scientific philosophy.

p It goes without saying that those who rule out any possibility of philosophy’s being a science and consequently any possibility of its development through scientific teamwork, as in the natural sciences, cannot possibly agree to such a definition of philosophy. For such people the progressive divergence of philosophical doctrines is the highest manifestation of the free philosophical spirit, whose sole need is self-assertion. In other words they are rather like novelists, each trying to write a novel that bears no resemblance to any that has been written before.

p Thus, from our standpoint, the scientific definition of philosophy requires theoretical premises that are fully accepted only by dialectical and historical materialism. Recognition of the historically transient character of the diversity of philosophical doctrines does not, of course, imply denial 217 of its necessity and progressive significance for certain historical periods. In other words, this progressive divergence of philosophical beliefs, the polarisation of philosophy into irreconcilably opposed systems has played its progressive role. It was essential because humanity had to develop and exhaust all the possible philosophical hypotheses in order to be able to accept the one which is most fully confirmed by experience, practice and scientific data.

p This divergence of philosophical beliefs was justified while the development of science and practice had not created the necessary preconditions for the development of scientific philosophy. Philosophy seeks to know the infinite, the universal, the intransient, to know the essence of essence. Hence it is inevitable that at certain stages in its development there should be mutually exclusive conceptions and doctrines. But since philosophy develops and does not merely vary in time, these historically inevitable errors are overcome and not merely replaced by fresh errors. Even idealist philosophy is compelled to turn to positive scientific data to reinforce its ill-chosen positions. The diversity of incompatible philosophical beliefs loses its historical justification not because of the convergence of philosophical beliefs, which is impossible in principle, but because of the development of a scientific approach to the solution of philosophical questions, an approach which demands of a philosophical doctrine that it should be not just something that a certain thinker invents, but a special kind of investigation, understanding and interpretation of reality.

p Leaving the motley variety of incompatible philosophical doctrines to the past, Marxist– Leninist philosophy offers in place of this pluralism of 218 speculative conceptions the all-round development of philosophical propositions that are confirmed by life, practice and science. This theoretical position differs fundamentally from the prevailing belief in bourgeois philosophy, which holds that philosophising is a kind of striving for knowledge which is rewarded by a certain intellectual satisfaction but not by any fruit that may be described as truth. The supporters of this view regard philosophy as a labyrinth from which only those who have no love of philosophy or overestimate their philosophical potential wish to escape. Ariadne’s thread does not exist. There is no need for it. Philosophy will never become a science, i.e., will not betray itself and consequently will always remain a realm of absolutely sovereign philosophical systems, like Leibnitz’s world of the monads, with the only difference that it will know no coordination, subordination of predetermined harmony. Any common ground between different philosophies seems from this standpoint to be merely unoriginal. Philosophising must remain only an attempt whose unrealisability may be interpreted according to mood either as failure or as eternal promise. Hence there can be no definition of the concept of philosophy; definitions are made only for the sake of the uninitiated.

The philosophy of Marxism, which besides rejecting mysticism and idealism, also rejects the scornful treatment of established scientific facts, truths and laws, naturally does not accept this latest, somewhat snobbish conception of philosophical elitism. Dialectical and historical materialism is elaborating a concept of philosophy which proceeds from recognition of the objective necessity for philosophical science and the fact that this necessity is being historically fulfilled.