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p Since numerous definitions of philosophy exist and our task is not merely to state the fact but to give a definition of the concept of philosophy related to the understanding of all philosophical doctrines, the question arises: Is it not possible to set aside what distinguishes these definitions and thus arrive at what they have in common? This operation can, of course, be performed but, as was pointed out earlier, it cannot bring us to a concrete understanding of philosophy, which like anything concrete in science must be a unity of different definitions. However, even a one-sided, abstract definition of philosophy has some significance, if it is not overestimated. Marx observes: "Production in general is an abstraction, but a reasonable abstraction, because it actually delineates the general, fixes it and thus liberates us from repetition—–Definitions that are valid for production in general have to be made in order to ensure that because of the unity that stems from the fact that the subject, man, and the object, nature, are one and the same, the essential difference is not forgotten.”  [219•1  What Marx says about the concept of production in general (which can also be said of the concept of nature in general, society in general, etc.) is naturally also applicable to an appraisal of the general concept of philosophy. Too much should not be expected of it, and yet we need it not only as an indication of identity, but also as the first stage in the ascent from the abstract to the concrete, which the philosophical investigation of philosophy must 220 inevitably perform. If there is any such common attribute in the definitions of philosophy which we have considered they must be well concealed, for there is no outward sign of them. And yet it is still worth trying to detect this general definition of philosophy which is not given in any of the other definitions and is hence precluded by many of them, a definition which, one can say in advance, will not reveal everything that makes up the specific nature of philosophy but may, possibly, point the way to its discovery.  [220•1 

p We believe that world view is such a general, but not specific, definition of philosophy. However, it is clear from the above-mentioned definitions of philosophy that a considerable number of philosophers do not regard philosophy as a world view. Thus the question may be put as follows: If, for example, the linguistic philosophers maintain that philosophy is not a world view, is their own philosophy a world view? To this question there is, in our opinion, only one answer—yes, it is. It is not hard to show that the linguistic 221 philosophers, despite their limiting of the tasks of philosophy to the investigation of language, are, in fact, expressing beliefs on all the basic problems of scientific knowledge, social life, ethics, politics, and so on, i.e., analysis of language is a means by which an extremely wide range of questions is treated. The same may be said of Husserl’s phenomenology and other philosophical doctrines according to which philosophy is not a world view.

p The denial that philosophy is a world view turns out to be an extremely contradictory theoretical position. In some cases world view is declared to be “metaphysics”, in others, a subjective postulation, in others, a system of beliefs. But this means that world view exists and the only matter for argument is philosophy’s relation to it. As I see it, all philosophical doctrines imply a world view, because no limitation of the range of questions dealt with allows one to avoid answering the more general philosophical questions, even if one remains unaware of these questions.

p Every philosophy is a world view, although world view is not necessarily philosophy. There is the religious world view, the atheistic world view, and so on. The polysemy of the concept "world view" is constantly revealed both in scientific and everyday usage. One speaks of the heliocentric world view as opposed to the geocentric world view, and this is profoundly meaningful if one thinks of the revolution in human consciousness that was brought about by the great discovery of Copernicus. A world view may be mechanistic, metaphysical, optimistic, pessimistic, and so on. It is quite legitimate to speak of the feudal, bourgeois, communist world views. Marxism as a whole is a definite world view, the philosophy of 222 Marxism is also a world view. In pointing out the polysemy of the "world view" concept, it is not our intention to cast doubt on its scientific meaning; on the contrary, we wish to emphasise it.  [222•1 

p Definition of the concept of world view, like that of nature, life, man, presents considerable difficulties, which should not, however, be allowed to create the impression that without this definition we have no idea what it is about. The concept treats of fundamental human beliefs concerning nature and personal and social life, beliefs that play an integrating, orientational role in consciousness, behaviour, creativity and people’s combined practical activity. According to the character of these beliefs (religious, scientific, aesthetic, socio-political, philosophical) we distinguish the various types of world view, which incidentally are connected with one another and at some points (sometimes with glaring contradictions) actually merge. The orientational function of a world view presupposes certain definite notions (scientific or unscientific) concerning man’s “whereabouts” in the natural and social scheme of things. These notions help us to discover possible paths of motion, to choose a definite direction corresponding to our particular interests or needs. The orientational function of a world view is made possible by its integrating function, that is to say, the kind of generalisation of knowledge 223 which enables us to single out relatively remote goals, to substantiate certain socio-political, moral, scientific ideals, criteria, etc.

p Thus, a world view, whatever its form, substantiates principles—ethical, philosophical, natural scientific, sociological, political, etc. These principles deserve special examination, but even without that it is clear how great a part they play in research work, for instance. We may quote from the scientists, who are usually reticent in making any statements about the role played by world view, philosophy or anything of the kind. Max Planck in his lecture Physic* in the Struggle for a World View said: "The research scientist’s world view will always determine the direction of his work.”  [223•1 

p Today this belief of the materialist Max Planck has been taken up by most theoreticians of natural science. The great discoveries of science in the last half century have revolutionised our understanding of nature to such an extent that the question of world view has become particularly important to the scientists themselves. This is reflected in their changed attitude to philosophy.

p Scientists in the modern world literally reach out to philosophy and the contemptuous attitude towards it that Engels once ridiculed is sustained mainly by those exponents of science who have little to show in their own fields of research.

p This striking enthusiasm of scientists for philosophy (particularly noticeable today in the capitalist countries, where indifference to philosophy lingered on by inertia until some 25 or 30 years ago) has even affected the neo-positivists, 224 some of whom have renounced their philosophical nihilism and noted the prime importance of the philosophical world view for natural science. Philipp Frank, for instance, declared in the fifties that the most eminent scientists always strongly stressed the point that a close tie between science and philosophy is indispensable.  [224•1  He shares the view of de Broglie that the separation of science and philosophy that occurred in the 19th century "has been harmful to both philosophers and scientists".  [224•2 

p Philosophy is essential to science, particularly in periods of revolutionary change, when the latter’s basic assumptions are being reviewed. According to Frank, the examples of Newton, Darwin, Einstein and Bohr show that "actually great advances in sciences have consisted rather in breaking down the dividing walls, and a disregard for meaning and foundation is only prevalent in periods of stagnation".  [224•3 

p Admittedly, Frank, since he still remains a neopositivist, dismissing the problem of objective reality and its reflection, speaks of the necessity 225 not of a philosophical world view but of a " philosophy of science”. But his philosophy of science, like any other philosophy, inevitably implies a certain world view.

p World view is a wider concept than philosophy. So in calling philosophy a world view, do we not multiply the difficulties confronting us in arriving at a scientific definition of the concept of philosophy? After all, if philosophy is a world view, it is certainly a world view sui generis, of its own peculiar kind, in other words, a philosophical world mew. This gets us into a kind of logical circle. But the way out is to find the specific features of the type of world view that can be called a philosophy. What then is the peculiarity of the philosophical world view? Unlike the spontaneously formed religious world view, a philosophy is always a theoretically substantiated world view. But the natural scientific world view, for example, the mechanistic world view, was also theoretically substantiated. The same applies to the bourgeois, or, as Marx and Engels called it, legalistic world view. Hence there are various types of theoretically substantiated world views. The peculiar feature of the philosophical world view consists mainly in its being a synthesis effected by means of the most general categories that are of equal significance for all the sciences. Remembering what was said earlier about the specific nature of the philosophical form of cognition, it may be stated that the philosophical world view is a theoretical synthesis of the most general views of nature, society, man, and cognition, a synthesis implying an appraisal of all that makes up the content of these general views, an appraisal that is not only epistemological, but also ethical, social, and so on.

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p The philosophical world view is not, therefore, a generalisation that simply sums up the available data as fully as possible; attitude and appraisal are key attributes of the philosophical generalisation, because the philosopher singles out what he believes to be most important in the knowledge available, what he believes to be most important for man.

p The significance of the appraising attitude for the philosophical world view is not difficult to show by comparing existentialism with classical philosophy, for instance. The long-standing philosophical tradition, whose beginnings we noted far back in the ancient world, declared that philosophy, rising above everyday consciousness and thus above personal, subjective, human appraisals and opinions, regards all that exists from the standpoint of eternity, i.e., from positions of universal human reason, which is superior to the anthropological limitations of individual human beings. Existentialism repudiated this initial philosophical principle and proclaimed that the human “I” is human only because it is finite. Existentialist philosophising is examination of the world from the standpoint of transient human existence, from the positions of man who is aware of his mortality, his absolute oppositeness to the intransient "being in itself”. The existentialist “I” is diametrically opposed to the “I”’ of Fichte, which knows neither death, nor fear, nor insuperable anxiety as to one’s existence in the world, and so on. Thus, this appraising world-view principle expresses the specific nature of existentialism.

p The philosophical world view thus has two starting points, as it were. On the one hand, the world, as everything that exists outside and 227 independently of man, and on the other, man himself, who does not exist outside the world, and regards it as the external world only because he distinguishes it from himself as reality existing independently of him, while recognising at the same time himself as a part of the world and indeed a special part, which thinks, feels and is aware that the world, as distinct from the part which is him, is infinite, eternal, indestructible, and so on. This attitude of man to the world forms the basic peculiarity of the philosophical world view, a peculiarity that may be defined as bipolarity, not only objective but also subjective, since some attach primary importance to the former, and others to the latter.

p Man’s attitude to nature, to society—his epistemological, ethical, physical, biological, social attitudes—these are all questions of his philosophical world view. The man-nature, nature-man relationships imply an element of confrontation since man as an individual differs from both nature and society or humanity. But when we come to analyse this relationship, we discover not only this distinction but also the related identity, i.e., the natural in man, the social in man. The psychophysical problem ceases to be a special problem of the natural sciences and becomes a philosophical problem, since the question of the spiritual-material relationship acquires universal significance. Similarly, the problem of the knowability of the world is a philosophical world-view problem precisely because it is posited in the most general form (not the knowability of certain concrete phenomena—this question has no philosophical meaning, even if it is stated that a particular phenomenon cannot be known), and also because, of course, it refers to man. Can man, humanity, 228 know the world? Some philosophers, in answering this question, have in mind the separate human individual and draw the appropriate conclusions; others, on the contrary, speak in terms of mankind, whose cognitive activity is not limited by any temporal boundaries. Different conclusions are obtained, of course, when the question is posited in this way.

p Thus we see that philosophy as a special kind of world view is equally a conception of the world and a conception of man, knowledge of both and a special mode of generalising this knowledge which has the significance of a social, moral, theoretical orientation in the world outside us and in our own world; it is the expression of a comprehended relationship to reality and the theoretical substantiation of this relationship, which manifests itself in man’s decisions, behaviour, spiritual selfdetermination, and so on.

p The philosophical world view is above all the posing of questions which one is aware of as the main questions. These questions arise not only from scientific researches but also from individual and socio-historical experience, as we have already indicated. They may be called the main questions because, in posing these questions, philosophy enters upon a discussion that is important for all mankind. Such, for example, are the famous questions, the solution of which, according to Kant, constitutes the true vocation of philosophy:

p (1) What can I know?

p (2) What must I do?

p (3) For what may I hope?  [228•1 

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p These questions express and interpret but, of course, do not exhaust the content of the philosophical world view. In answering these questions Kant poses new ones. Questions give rise to questions and, in so far as they are all recognised as of importance both for the individual and the whole human race, and not only for the present but also for the future, so do they retain their philosophical, world-view significance.

p The fact that philosophy as a world view implies criteria of appraisal applicable to an unlimited range of facts and knowledge has often been interpreted by idealists as absolute juxtaposition of the ideal to the real. Thus, Heinrich Rickert seeks to substantiate the absolute meaning of ideals and the value criteria of all that exists by postulating a realm of values which does not have the status of being but has undoubted significance in the world of phenomena and therefore belongs to the world, although it cannot be defined as existing. Correspondingly the world view is defined as unity of the knowledge of being and awareness of the absolute values, or norms. "By world view,” Rickert says, "we understand actually something more than mere knowledge of the causes that brought us and the rest of the world into being; an explanation of the causal necessity of the world is not enough for us. We also want to have a grasp of the world that will help us, as one often hears said, to understand the meaning (Sinn) of our life, the significance of our T in the world.”  [229•1 

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p Needless to say, Rickert’s mistake lies not in his demanding from the world view something more than "mere knowledge of the causes”, namely, an explanation of man’s place in the world. The world view is indeed a unity of knowledge and appraisal, but the whole point is that the criteria of appraisal, the norms of value, despite the beliefs of Plato, Kant, the neo-Kantians and other idealists, are not absolute but historical, i.e., they change and develop. The anti-historical interpretation of value criteria puts them in opposition to being, i.e., deprives them of real existence, which incidentally the neo-Kantians themselves realise when they assume that non-existence does not deprive absolute value of its unconditional significance. However, they lose sight of the very notion that absolute values, the absolute ideal, arose historically and has changed historically in content; it is enough to compare Plato’s ideal of justice with that of Kant or the neoKantians. Thus, absolute values lose the timeless significance attributed to them, and become historical values which are nevertheless endowed with unconditional significance outside history. But this merely implies an attempt to perpetuate historically determined values and value criteria, and thus also to perpetuate their real socio-economic basis.

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p Marxist philosophy, disclosing the historically relative character of the knowledge and appraisals forming the world view, at the same time completely excludes the relativist belittlement of the role of the world view. Marxist philosophy reveals its objective content and progressive development, the objective laws of the origin and development of the scientific philosophical world view, which, however, does not lay claim either to absolute knowledge or to the appraisal of reality from absolute positions. Thus from the standpoint of Marxism, philosophy as a world view is primarily a formulation of theoretical positions, from which an appraisal can be made of the significance of any knowledge, experience, activity and historical event.

p Philosophy is interested in the knowledge and the significance of the knowledge or phenomenon that is not limited by the boundaries of some special field of human activity and, consequently, is fit for more or less general application. This or that scientific proposition rises to world-view status only in so far as it is found possible to apply it outside the special field of knowledge where it was first formulated and applied, that is to say, in so far as it becomes a principle that is relevant to all knowledge, all human activity. Needless to say, the further development of science and philosophy, limiting the possibilities of applying this knowledge beyond the bounds of a specialised field, also limits its world-view significance. This limitation is at the same time also concretisation and enrichment of the content of the theoretical proposition.

p The natural scientific proposition on the existence of an infinite number of worlds became part of materialist philosophy because it gave rise to the conclusions that the Universe could not 232 have been created and cannot be destroyed. These conclusions undermined theism, creationism and provided solid grounds for the atheist world view. The mechanistic explanation of the phenomena of nature acquired world-view significance when it was carried beyond the bounds of mechanics and natural science in general. Descartes, who regarded animals as a special kind of machine, Hobbes, who declared that the human heart is a pump, Lamettrie, who claimed that not only the animals but man himself is a machine, were the people who transformed the mechanical explanation of phenomena into a philosophical worldview principle. Marx pointed out that the atoms of Democritus amount to a natural scientific theory, which in the hands of Epicurus, thanks to his using it to explain human behaviour, becomes a philosophical theory.

p Extrapolation, universalisation of certain propositions and even the principles of specialised science, i.e., their conversion into world-view principles, may arouse legitimate objections. After all, it is quite obvious that absolutising the principles of mechanics cannot lead to a scientific understanding of non-mechanical phenomena, particularly the individual and social phenomena of human life. This is true, of course, but one has to take into consideration the fact that the mechanistic world view, which ousted the theological and also the hylozoistic interpretation of the world was undoubtedly a tremendous step forward in the development of cognition. And this is its historical justification.

p Science and philosophy’s overcoming of mechanicism did not involve its being replaced by a new, one-sided theory about the nature of phenomena. The progress of science and the development of 233 dialectical materialism has increasingly tended to rule out such unfounded universalisation of principles, the bounds of whose application are revealed by the development of related sciences.

p Darwin’s evolutionary theory evoked furious attacks not so much from the biologists as from the theologians and idealist philosophers, because it rejected the ideological explanation of the vital processes and thus became the basis for the materialist repudiation of all teleology in general.

p World-view conclusions from the discoveries of natural science are often drawn by natural scientists themselves. It sometimes happens that philosophers oppose the world-view comprehension of scientific discoveries, since these discoveries come into conflict with their own world view. Some idealists, for instance, argued that Darwin’s theory had no significance beyond the bounds of biology. Bergson tried to disprove the theory of relativity not on natural scientific but on philosophical grounds.

p One and the same natural scientific discovery is differently interpreted in different philosophical doctrines. From Darwin’s teaching, for instance, some philosophers deduced the reactionary, pseudoscientific conception of social Darwinism. A philosophical world view is never a mere summing up, a simple generalisation of the data obtained by the natural sciences; it is a unique integral interpretation of these data from certain philosophical (for instance, materialist or idealist, rationalist or irrationalist) positions.

p Our characterisation of the philosophical world view would be incomplete if we did not take into account its emotional charge, which is conditioned by its social, practical basis, by people’s various aspirations, needs, beliefs and hopes, their attitude 234 to the world around them and to themselves. If we describe as emotions people’s feelings about their relationship to the world around them and themselves, it becomes clear that the philosophical (and scientifico-philosophical) world view cannot confine itself to the analysis and comprehension of the theoretical aspect of this relationship. The personal character of human emotions acquires general expression in any philosophical world view. Hence philosophers not only discuss various questions, explain and interpret certain phenomena or processes; they condemn some views and affirm others, condemn one thing and defend another, in other words, they feel, struggle, hope, believe and so on. And this is true not merely of the personality of the philosopher taken separately from his doctrine, but also of the doctrine itself, in which human passions are transformed into a specific philosophical form, but of course do not disappear. This is why the scientifico– philosophical world view has a social and emotional implication.

p The scientifico-philosophical world view develops by means of theoretical synthesis of scientific data and historical experience with certain definite social, party positions, which thus become part of its content, and form its social inspiration and moral ideal. Hence a world view is a critical summing up of scientific data that makes it possible to draw conclusions not directly obtainable from any of the specialised sciences. Needless to say, the critical character of the scientific philosophical world view does not consist in correcting the findings of the specialised sciences; philosophy does not possess the expertise for that. The scientifico-philosophical world view takes into consideration both the history of cognition and its 235 promise for the future, and thus rules out any absolutising of the conclusions reached by science at any particular, historically limited stage in its history. Any specialised science inevitably and with good reason limits its field of vision. But this restriction cannot be absolute because the fragment of reality which it studies is part of the whole and in some way expresses that whole. In this sense, any science in some way or another considers the world as a whole. Not a single science can absolutely isolate the object of its specialised research.

p On the contrary, it must be aware of its connection with the whole, which any scientist directly appreciates as a connection with the research targets of other sciences. No one can be a specialist in all fields of knowledge, and this is not essential for any science. But what is undeniably needed in any specialised science is an awareness of historical horizons, of prospects, of the methodological assumptions of scientific knowledge at the level it has reached. And this is what the scientificophilosophical world view, the building of which, as the development of Marxism has shown, presupposes complete overcoming of the metaphysical juxtaposition of philosophy to the specialised sciences and social practice, gives the scientist. N. N. Semyonov says, "Philosophy can play its active part in the development of the scientific world view only if it takes its place on a par with the other sciences as their fully established colleague, that is to say, as a specialised science with its clearly defined subject of inquiry, available for thorough and concrete study like the subjectmatter of any other science.”  [235•1 

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p The contradiction between the all-embracing character of human knowledge and its necessary embodiment in a specialised scientific form, the contradiction between specialisation and the trend towards integration of scientific knowledge—this is what makes the scientifico-philosophical world view absolutely necessary, growing as it does from science and social practice, from the greatest social movement yet known in the history of man, the objective content of which is the communist transformation of the world.

Marxism’s scientifico-philosophical world view is a radical dialectical repudiation of philosophy in the old sense of the word, i.e., the philosophy that could not find any rational means of comprehending the data of science and practice so that it could on equal terms with the other sciences, without claiming any special benefits or privileges, serve the theoretical cognition and practical transformation of the world. "It is no longer a philosophy at all, but simply a world outlook which has to establish its validity and be applied not in a science of sciences standing apart, but in the positive sciences. Philosophy is therefore ’ sublated’ here, that is, ’both overcome and preserved’; overcome as regards its form, and preserved as regards its real content.”  [236•1  The conversion of philosophy into a scientifico-philosophical world view is the fulfilment of a trend that was present embryonically in the very earliest materialist doctrines; as philosophical thought has developed, this trend has steadily gathered strength, becoming with the emergence of Marxism a law of development.