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p In the specialised sciences problems tend to follow one another in succession. A new problem arises when the previous problem has been solved. Naturally the theoretical mechanics of the 20th century is not concerned with the problems of Newton’s time. These problems have been solved, that is to say, they are no longer problems. We must remember, of course, that even in the natural sciences (not to mention mathematics) there are certain problems that were posed centuries ago and have not been solved to this day. This, however, is an exception to the general rule.

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p The history of science is the history of the rise and development of hundreds, and later thousands, of specialised scientific disciplines. Every one of these disciplines has its own specific problems which could not have existed before that particular scientific discipline came into being. The very possibility of evolving new scientific disciplines presupposes the invention of new technical means of instrumental observation, new experimental apparatus, and the discovery of hitherto unsuspected targets for research.

p Science develops through the conscious, purposeful activity of scientists, but it is not devoid of an element of spontaneity, in the sense that it is in principle impossible to foresee the future and, hence, the problems that will arise in connection with it. The undiscovered is by no means always known to be discoverable. Because he ventures beyond the bounds of what is directly observable, the scientist very often does not know what he does not know. Thus, the advance of knowledge is also a matter of finding out what has not yet been discovered, because this enables us to find the blank spots where there appeared to be none. Every one of these blank spots on the map of knowledge is a problem. This means that the problems of any specialised science record what has not yet been discovered but which new knowledge tells us is discoverable.

p The history of any specialised scientific discipline gives us a more or less accurate notion of the chronology of its problems. The fact that some problems that modern astrophysics, for example, or chemistry, posed centuries ago have not yet been solved does not change the general picture, because such problems were posed in the distant past not by astrophysics or chemistry but by 275 philosophy and, consequently, they were then philosophical problems.

p Philosophical problems are qualitatively different from the problems of any specialised science because in their original historical form they usually lacked scientific method and were purely hypothetical or, at best, anticipatory. It is possible, of course, to speak of a pre-scientific form of posing even certain natural scientific problems but this, as has already been pointed out, relates to the history of philosophy and not the history of science. The fact that philosophical problems are qualitatively different from those of the specialised sciences was wrongly interpreted by August Comte as evidence of the fundamentally pre-scientific character of any philosophical proposition. Actually this fact tells us something quite different. It tells us that philosophy was developing even when there were no specialised sciences. A significant number of philosophical problems arose in this pre-scientific historical epoch. But to infer from this that they were destined always to remain a pre-scientific form of proposition would be to ignore the fact that philosophical problems not only arise but also develop. Such an approach is bound to lead to the metaphysical conception that philosophical problems are immutable and eternal. "The philosophers of all times and all nations have concerned themselves with the same problems,” writes Heinrich Schmidt, the author of a philosophical dictionary well known in the West.  [275•1  This traditional view is intimately connected with the idealist juxtaposition of philosophy to the socio– 276 historical process, to the sciences and practice. This view of philosophy and the juxtaposition it implies are not merely an idealist fantasy; they are a reflection of the real, objective appearance of the historical process. They therefore demand scientific analysis.

p Kant assumed the a priori nature of the basic philosophical problems, that is to say, he believed them to be originally inherent in reason and an essential part of its specific content. But what may be a priori for one individual is a posteriori for the human history that precedes his appearance in the world. Kant attached no importance to the development of philosophy: for him the basic philosophical problems were to be found (cut and dried, moreover) in the work of Plato and, like Plato, he called them ideas. He did, however, add that they were ideas of human reason, which of course, contradicts Platonism.  [276•1  Consequently Kant significantly altered the approach to the problems that he found in Plato, not to mention the fact that he enriched philosophy with new problems that were alien to Platonism in that they were related to the development of the natural science of modern times. This 277 example shows that it is possible to clarify the concept of the eternal philosophical problem, which is usually accepted quite uncritically by the idealists.

p The problem of the unity of the world, the problem of the rational and the sensual, the problem of man, the problem of freedom, like many other philosophical problems, may indeed be described in a certain sense as eternal. The process of the cognition of the world has no limits and the problem of the unity of the world will never be complete and incapable of further change and development. For as long as man exists the problem of man will retain its actuality and any solution to it will remain as incomplete as the history of mankind itself. Even the definition of man as a being distinct from all other beings will always remain a problem, because it is man who gives himself these definitions and he will go on defining himself forever. Hence we are entitled to describe some of the fundamental philosophical problems as eternal in the sense that they always retain their significance for man, for humanity, and for the history of cognition. In every historical epoch the propounding of these problems implies not merely the continuation of an existing tradition but also the discovery of new horizons.

p On the other hand, there are no eternal problems in the sense in which the idealist philosopher, metaphysical or agnostic, interprets them. There are no problems independent of history. There are no immutable problems whose content remains forever one and the same despite the changes occurring in history; there are no insoluble problems. The latter point should be particularly stressed because the problem of the unity 278 of the world, the problem of man, and all other eternal problems acquire fresh solutions in every historical epoch according to the level of knowledge that has been achieved and the character of social change. Subsequent development is at one and the same time the development of eternal problems and their historically defined (and hence inevitably limited) solutions. Eternal problems have their own history; they do not merely change but are actually transformed.

p To be able to understand the specific nature of philosophical problems one must take fully into consideration their historical transformation, owing to which transient philosophical problems arise alongside problems that retain their eternal significance. Thus, for example, in the ancient Chinese teaching of “Tao” and in Heraclitus’s “logos” we have no difficulty in perceiving the original naive statement of the problem of a universal law governing all existence, an approach that had not yet freed itself of religious notions. Universal law here means a single law of absolute necessity holding sway over everything, and not various types of interconnection constituting various laws. How does this naive notion differ from the religious idea of eternal and immutable fate? The history of philosophy has not yet fully investigated this question, but in Heraclitus, for example, it differs in so far as “logos” coincides with a natural process, i.e., with fire, in which case “logos” becomes a law immanent in nature and not something dominating nature from the outside. But does there exist any law that may be applied to everything? Here we come to the historical definiteness of the problem.

p The development of the scientific conception of law is related to the discovery of definite laws 279 in certain fields of activity. Archimedes’ law provides a good example illustrating the evolution of the scientific conception of law. The specialised sciences have proved by their discoveries that there are countless laws governing various phenomena, that these laws bear definite relations to one another, some of a more and others of a less general nature. There is no one law for all phenomena. The discoveries of the specialised sciences prove that it is naive to believe in any one universal law, but they themselves create a basis for a new scientific propounding of the question of the nature of laws, the most general laws of development of all that exists, the distinction between laws of social development and laws of nature, and so on.

p The present author believes that the problem of a single law is a historically transient problem of philosophy, despite the fact that it constantly recurs in the philosophy of modern times. This does not mean, however, that the problem of one, universal law is a pseudoproblem, because it incorporates (even in the naive form in which it was originally stated) the idea of most general laws, an idea which admittedly has become established in philosophy only thanks to the dialectical negation of its pre-scientific prototype.

p Problems that are in a certain sense eternal and also problems that are transient do not enter into philosophy at all stages of its development. It has already been shown that early Greek philosophy had no notion of social progress. The ideawas equally unknown to medieval philosophers. This problem was able to gain a place in philosophy only when the constantly accelerating expansion of social production became the dominant economic tendency of social development, that is 280 to say, in the age of the early bourgeois revolutions.

p Ancient philosophy, right up to the Hellenic period, did not in effect concern itself with the problem of freedom, which is one of the major philosophical problems. Aristotle draws a distinction between voluntary and involuntary human action, but does not discuss the essence of the problem.

p The problem of alienation, which is central to German classical philosophy, plays no significant part in any previous philosophies. It is true that the seeds of the idea of alienation may be perceived in Plato’s doctrine of the soul languishing in the human body, in the Platonic conception of things as a corrupted form of transcendental ideas, in the neo-Platonic theory of emanation, in the scholastic interpretation of the legend of original sin, and so on. Essentially, however, the idea of alienation is a product of modern times. The theories of natural law, current in the 17th and 18th centuries, treat of the alienation of everyone’s right to everything in favour of the state. But this is still not the problem of alienation, even in its legal aspect, because the essence of the question is reduced to the legal restriction of arbitrary action in the interests of the individual, restriction of the arbitrary action that is inseparable from man’s “natural” state, alien to civilisation.

p In Fichte’s doctrine the concept of alienation is used to analyse the relationship between the opposing “Ego” and “non-Ego”. The absolute subject generates a reality that opposes it and at the same time constitutes a necessary condition for its activity. These ontological and epistemological aspects of the concept of alienation still do not express its essential social content. It is 281 only Hegel who in analysing social development discloses the actual historical content of the problem of alienation, although it is at once obscured by the idealist identification of alienation with the dialectical process in general: the dichotomy of unity, contradiction, the unity and contradiction between subject and object, and so on.

p Feuerbach rejects the idealist universalisation of the concept of alienation, limiting the sphere of application of this concept to religious and speculative philosophical consciousness. Kierkegaard, who subjects Hegel’s panlogism to irrationalist criticism, treats the problem of alienation as a problem of the transience of all that is human, burdened, as it is, with wickedness, original sin and the wilfulness of existing in the face of an infinitely distant and unknowable God. This subjectivist conception of alienation as the essence of everyday existence has been further developed in existentialism.

p In his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 Marx places the problem of alienation on a fundamentally new basis. He gives an all-round criticism of the speculative-idealist and also of the anthropological conceptions, enriches the problem with a specific historical, economic and political content, reveals its material sources and proves its historically transient character.

p I have touched very briefly upon the history of the problem of alienation, whose significance in the philosophical doctrines of the 19th and 20th centuries is quite obvious, merely to show how a new philosophical problem comes into being.  [281•1  282 This problem actually acquired tangible shape only in modern times and has retained its significance because alienation is still a social reality which can be overcome only through the communist transformation of social relations. Despite the traditional historico-philosophical view, we maintain that the key to the understanding of philosophical problems is to be found only in the dialectical materialist analysis of their emergence, development and transformation into other problems. It would be an oversimplification to ignore the fact that one and the same name quite often conceals problems that are entirely different. Of course, if we interpret the embryonic form of existence of philosophical problems in the spirit of preformationism, we shall have no difficulty in concluding that the philosophers of Ancient Greece were already posing modern philosophical problems. However, it is enough to compare the discussion of what are formally the same problems in the philosophy of various historical epochs to realise that these problems differ essentially from one another. Thus, for example, what the ancient philosophers have to say about the soul as a peculiarly delicate form of matter may formally be regarded as the first positing of the question of the relationship between the spiritual and the material. In reality, however, the problem is only touched upon and Engels had every reason to emphasise that this fundamental philosophical question "could for the first time be (put forward) in its whole acuteness, could achieve its full significance, only after 283 humanity in Europe had awakened from the long hibernation of the Christian Middle Ages".  [283•1  The same may be said of many other philosophical problems.

p Some contemporary philosophers counterpose to the metaphysical conception of immutable philosophical problems a historico-philosophical relativism which maintains that there are no intransient problems at all, because each great philosopher has his own problems and it is this that lends his teaching its permanent significance. The most resolute defender of this subjectivist interpretation of the history of philosophical problems is the Paul Ricoeur we mentioned earlier, who declares that it is the task of the historian of philosophy "to launch a direct attack on the idea of eternal problems, of problems that are immutable".  [283•2  Ricoeur presents intransient problems as immutable problems, which is of course an oversimplified approach.

p The point of departure of Ricoeur’s historicophilosophical conception is the notion that philosophy is a specific expression of the unique existential originality of the philosophical genius.

p From this standpoint every attempt to typify or classify philosophical problems is presented as the result of an oversimplified view of philosophy and a failure to comprehend the fundamental difference between philosophical knowledge and scientific knowledge, in which answers are alleged to be far more significant than questions and to have the more value the less they reflect the investigator’s individuality. Philosophy, on the 284 other hand, is the realm of self-validating human subjectivity, which rejects the formula "I possess truth" in favour of the belief "I hope to exist in truth”. For this reason every outstanding philosophical system is grounded in the conviction that "if my existence has any meaning, if it is not for nothing, this must mean that I hold a place in life that invites me to pose a question which no one in my place has ever posed before".  [284•1  It would be absurd to deny the greatness of the philosopher who poses a question that nobody has posed before him. But why should we deny the greatness of the philosopher who solves the problems that his forerunners propounded? Simply because, according to the contemporary idealist "philosophy of the history of philosophy" (one of whose representatives is Paul Ricoeur), philosophy does not solve questions, but merely propounds them.

p The essence of this conception lies not merely in the admission that philosophical problems are insoluble. The contemporary idealist "philosophy of the history of philosophy”, by formulating new criteria of the value of philosophical knowledge, also seeks to pose questions that no one has ever posed before, and chief among these problems is the question whether philosophical problems do not belong to a category of problems that should not be solved but only discussed, elucidated and explained. Is not the very attempt to solve a philosophical problem tantamount to forgetting the specific nature of philosophical problems, confusing them with the problems of the specialised sciences? In the specialised sciences it is possible to possess knowledge, but philosophy is 285 merely the hope of existing in truth. Ricoeur’s propositions remind one of the reasoning of the religious person who dares not believe in the possibility of attaining divine wisdom which, though expressed in Scriptures, nevertheless remains unknowable.  [285•1 

p But philosophy is not theological wisdom. Philosophy poses and solves problems, and if its solutions later require development or revision, this by no means discredits them.

p Lenin wrote, "The genius of Marx consists precisely in his having furnished answers to questions already raised by the foremost minds of mankind.”  [285•2  This did not, of course, prevent Marx from posing new questions which no one had posed before him. On the contrary, Marx was able to pose new questions also, because he had solved the problems posed by his predecessors.

p To sum up on this question, we may conclude that the qualitative difference between the problems of philosophy and those of the specialised sciences is relative, like all other differences incidentally. Metaphysical absolutisation of this difference leads to scientifically unfounded 286 conceptions regarding the immutability of philosophical problems or equally unfounded conceptions implying that problems have no objective meaning. Both views are equally one-sided and fail to recognise the diversity of philosophical problems and their development.

As we have already seen, philosophical problems are originally formed out of people’s everyday experience. Thanks to the development of the specialised sciences and theoretical explanation of human history the scope of philosophy undergoes substantial change and is enriched with new problems concerning the natural and social sciences. Idealist philosophy ignores this tendency or, as in the case of neo-positivism, interprets it in the spirit of nihilistic repudiation of the objective content of philosophical problems in general. No one can understand these problems correctly who sees only a yawning chasm between the sciences and philosophy and makes no effort to bridge it.