p The question "What is philosophy?" also asks what are the subject-matter, significance and limits of philosophical knowledge. No research, no science is possible without the ability to determine its own frame of reference. The clearer the subject, its problems and aims, and even its capabilities, the stricter the process of definition becomes.

p For most of the specialised scientific disciplines, particularly the applied ones, the problem of selfdelimitation solves itself empirically. Things become much more complicated with the socalled fundamental science,  [76•1  where the subject 77 of inquiry (and the frame of reference) cannot be strictly delimited. If, for example, mathematical, physical and chemical methods of research are being more and more widely applied outside the actual framework of mathematics, physics and chemistry, this not only indicates the significance of these methods for other sciences but also, to a certain, though inadequate extent, characterises the subject of mathematics, physics, etc. The questions "What is mathematics?”, "What is physics?" strike no one as lacking in theoretical meaning. Discussion of how these questions should be treated may, of course, prove fruitless if they go no further than mere definitions, but they are undoubtedly effective when they touch upon the new problems, discoveries and methods that alter the scope of the given science and break down obsolete conceptions.

p Not without reason Bertrand Russell wrote more than half a century ago: "One of the greatest triumphs of modern mathematics lies in the discovery of what mathematics actually is,” This sounds paradoxical. Does this mean that till comparatively recently mathematicians did not know what mathematics was? And did this not prevent them from making outstanding discoveries? No definite answer can be given to these questions. Of course, they knew, but within limits that were to be enormously expanded by the latest discoveries, owing to which the former conceptions of the subject of this science became unsatisfactory and limited the prospects of its development.

p The fact that mathematicians give different answers to the question "What is mathematics?" does not seem to worry them much. The discoveries made by some mathematicians are 78 accepted by other mathematicians, regardless of whether they agree about how the concept of mathematics should be defined. In philosophy, on the other hand, where differences of opinion crop up all along the line, there can, of course, be no unanimity either over the question "What is philosophy?”. This question thus becomes a problem and, in posing it, philosophers are compelled to explain why there are cardinal differences of opinion over the definition of a science (or field of knowledge) which all the participants in the argument agree that they are engaged in.  [78•1 

p One of the major triumphs of philosophy in the last hundred years or more of its existence lies in the discovery of what philosophy actually is. This discovery was made by Marxism and constitutes one of the paramount elements in the revolution in philosophy that was brought about by Marx and Engels. The significance of this discovery is made all the greater by the fact that the question of the subject of philosophy differs essentially from the same question applied to other sciences. Delimitation of the subject of inquiry in philosophy also differs from the analogous process in any other science. The very thing that makes philosophy different from other 79 sciences is that it cannot confine itself to particular questions.

p The self-delimitation that has taken place in philosophy consists primarily in excluding from its frame of reference a certain range of problems, namely, the problems dealt with by other specialised sciences. This process of elimination does not occur, however, at the will of the philosophers themselves, but according to the development of the specialised sciences. Philosophy has been freeing itself from particular questions (and thus delimiting itself) historically in the course of more than two thousand years. Does this means that philosophy, since it has been concerned with particular questions, has not been philosophy? Obviously not. Philosophy remained philosophy even when it was trying to answer questions that subsequently became the particular questions of physics, chemistry and so on. Today philosophy and the specialised sciences have largely completed the process of delimitation of their spheres of influence. Philosophy no longer deals with specialised problems, but the answers to these questions given by mathematics, physics, chemistry and other sciences are of enormous importance to philosophy, because without these answers philosophy cannot know itself and establish its identity.

p Thus the question "What is philosophy?”, which in the past arose because philosophy and the specialised sciences were not sufficiently delimited, now arises just because this delimitation has taken place. The processes of the differentiation and integration of scientific knowledge actually pose philosophical questions and intensify the need not only for philosophy to assimilate scientific achievements but also for philosophical 80 inquiry into the structure of scientific knowledge. Philosophy can cope with this task to the extent that it becomes a specific science.

p It follows from this that the question of whether philosophy is a science, or whether it can become one, is one of the variants of the question "What is philosophy?”. Some people hold that science is only a science because it deals with certain, particular questions. Science, however, is characterised not only by its “particular” subject but also by the means—the scientific means—of its inquiry. In this sense philosophy can and should be a science. The elaboration of philosophy as a specific science is a task that modern bourgeois philosophers tend to dismiss. Nevertheless a considerable number of philosophers hold their own views as to the vital importance of this task. One can therefore understand the anxiety expressed by the aged John Dewey in his last university lecture: "The most important question in philosophy today is, What is philosophy itself? What is the nature and function of the philosophical enterprise?”  [80•1 

p Present-day bourgeois philosophers quite often declare the concept of philosophy to be indefinable while stressing that the impossibility of answering the question "What is philosophy?" does not imply that it is a meaningless question. Only the neo-Thomists, and only the most orthodox at that, prefer not to exert themselves over this question and offer standard definitions instead. Regis Jolivet, for instance, defines philosophy as " natural (as opposed to theological.—T.O.) science 81 concerning the first causes of things and their foundations".  [81•1  This definition, of course, belongs not to Jolivet but to Aristotle, from whom it was borrowed by Thomas Aquinas. It is hardly necessary to prove that it is inapplicable to the majority of philosophical doctrines of the past and present since they directly or indirectly deny the possibility or necessity of metaphysical systems of the classical type.  [81•2 

From our point of view the answer to the question "What is philosophy?" presupposes inquiry into the genesis and development of philosophical knowledge, the struggle between philosophical trends, changes in the subject and problems of philosophy, its relationship to the specialised sciences, its ideological function, and so on. Thus it is important to understand that we are in fact confronted not with one question but with a whole set of problems, the content of which has not remained unchanged in the course of history.