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p The correct posing of the question "What is philosophy?" also entails clearing up the relative distinction between the sciences and the forms of social consciousness, since philosophy is directly related to both. The sciences are defined (and distinguished from one another) by the subject they investigate; it is the subject of a science that determines its social function. Accordingly, the social function of physics differs essentially from that of political economy.

p With regard to the forms of social consciousness, it should be noted that they are distinguished from one another exclusively by the character of the social function which they perform, and are thus defined by it. It is hardly necessary to prove that art has its own social function, religion. its own social function, and moreover this difference of function cannot be attributed to a difference in their subject of inquiry, in the first place because art and religion are not concerned with inquiry, and secondly, because their specific nature is not defined by any subject whatever. 98 “Consciousness (das Bewusstsein),” Marx and Engels say, "can never be anything else but conscious existence (das bewusste Sein), and people’s existence is the real process of their life.”  [98•1  This proposition is equally applicable to social and individual consciousness. Consciousness of existence differs essentially from investigation of existence—nature and society. Consciousness exists before any investigation takes place, and does not depend on it. The fact that the results of inquiry become part of consciousness does not do away with the qualitative difference between science (inquiry) and consciousness. Morals, for example, are a form of social consciousness. They have no particular subject of inquiry, but they reflect social existence. Ethics has a subject of inquiry, and that subject is morals.

p Thereby, because social consciousness reflects social existence it does not become cognition of social existence; for it to become cognition there must be inquiry, research, which does not always take place and, of course, does not always achieve its goal. The cognition of social existence, like any cognition, has no limits. As for social consciousness, within the framework of historically defined social existence it acquires a relatively perfect form, which changes essentially not in accordance with the progressive process of cognition, but mainly because of deep-going socioeconomic transformations. This is what Marx means when he points out that in studying social revolutions "it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, 99 and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic—in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out".  [99•1  It stands to reason that social consciousness, once it has become the subject of scientific inquiry, may in certain historical conditions become scientifically substantiated consciousness, which does not, however, exclude its specific nature. We shall examine this question in particular when we analyse the ideological function of philosophy.

p One should not, of course, metaphysically juxtapose consciousness and knowledge. Consciousness of social existence implies knowledge of it, but this is not yet scientific knowledge because in consciousness no line is drawn between objective content and subjective imagination. It is also clear that knowledge acquired through inquiry also becomes part of the content of consciousness. But this dialectical unity of consciousness and knowledge does not eliminate the essential difference between them.

In science not only objective reality—natural or social—but also its reflection are subjected to analysis, which separates the true from the untrue; the latter, however, also reflects reality, although in an inadequate form. Therefore science is a peculiar type of reflection, which with the aid of its methods of research and testing forms a kind of theoretical filter. This cannot be said of the forms of social consciousness, if, as has already been stated, they do not become specific scientific forms of consciousness of social existence.

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p The position which philosophy occupies in the history of man’s intellectual development is determined in no small degree by its being both a form of social consciousness and an inquiry; in this latter respect it is, in principle, similar to any other science. As a form of social consciousness philosophy has fulfilled, and is still fulfilling, its social function, analysis of which does not, of course, reveal its subject of inquiry. In this sense, i.e., as a form of social consciousness, it became for the first time the subject of scientific inquiry only thanks to Marxism. / Pre-Marxian philosophers had no notion of philosophy as a form of social consciousness. They conceived of philosophy as a science or a superscientific form of knowledge, independent of historically determined social relations. Hence the illusion of philosophy’s “impartiality”, which has not only economic but also theoretical roots. The concept of social consciousness was evolved by Marxism, by the materialist understanding of history, which singled out social existence as the special object of scientific philosophical inquiry.

p The emergence and development of scientific philosophy became possible thanks to the creation of a scientific form of social consciousness, i.e., Marxism. The social function of Marxist philosophy is inseparably linked with its subject of inquiry, with the most general laws of the mutation and cognition of all natural, social and human existence. Marxist study of the development of philosophy entails overcoming the illusions that blur philosophy’s vision of its own true essence. For the first time the history of philosophy has been understood in its relation to social needs, socio-economic processes, and the class struggle. The materialist understanding of history has 101 become the scientific theoretical basis for philosophy’s self-consciousness, the critical summing up of its own development.

p The concept of development, since it has only the general attributes inherent in any process of development, would appear to be inapplicable to the historico-philosophical process. Philosophy’s development has so many peculiarities of its own that a one-sided conception of these peculiarities quite often leads bourgeois philosophers to deny the fact of its development altogether. Study of the specific nature of development of philosophical ideas is a special task, which cannot be handled within the framework of this book. But to obtain an answer to the question we have posed we must at least have a general notion of this process.

p It is paradoxical that philosophy arose historically as a pre-scientific form of scientific knowledge. For centuries philosophy was considered the chief science or at least the predominant element in man’s intellectual history. The development of the specialised sciences and the elaboration of the concept of scientificality have shown, however, that this concept cannot be applied to philosophy, to the mother of the sciences. The history of science presents a clear picture of systematic progress. In the history of philosophy such a pattern of advancing knowledge can be traced only by means of special inquiry, whose necessary assumptions are usually rejected by the majority of philosophical doctrines.

p Without going into this question in any greater detail, we will assume that the specific nature of the historical development of philosophy from its inception to the emergence of the scientific philosophy of Marxism may be defined as "spiral 102 development”, i.e., a form of progression which involves constant return to initial theoretical positions but at the same time forward movement that shapes the prerequisites for the conversion of philosophy into a specific science. These prerequisites, however, can be realised only in a kind of historical conditions that occur independently of the work of philosophers, that is to say, socioeconomic conditions, the accumulation of historical experience, the development of the sciences concerning nature and society.

p Formation is the unity of the processes of inception and destruction, the transition from one state to another, the necessary moment of development. Hegel’s understanding of formation is characterised mainly by his recognition of its reversibility; whereas he regarded development as change that is irreversible in character. Admittedly, Hegel made an absolute of the reversibility inherent in formation because he was examining the abstractions "pure being" and “nothing”, which, according to his doctrine, are constantly transmuting into each other. But it was the same Hegel who argued that the result of this transmutation is the emergence of a definite existence, thus acknowledging that the reversibility of formation is not absolute, but relative.

p The inconsistency of Hegel’s characterisation of formation is overcome by the philosophy of Marxism, which characterises this process as transition from one definite quality into another, in view of which the extent to which formation may be reversed is limited by its content and conditions.

p Formation as a moment of development should not be understood as a process occurring in a minimal amount of time. The formation of class 103 society, both the feudal and capitalist formations, took place over a number of centuries. The processes of formation in animate and inanimate nature are, of course, even more prolonged, taking millions of years.

p Lenin, in discussing the transitional period from capitalism to socialism, points out that this period is characterised by the existence of qualitatively different, even mutually exclusive social structures. The same may be said, by analogy, of philosophy. Examination of the historical process of the formation of scientific philosophical theory reveals at all stages of the development of philosophy coexistence and struggle between faith and knowledge, between superstitions and scientific opinions, between unfounded, sometimes completely fantastic notions and real discoveries. Within the framework of the historical process of the formation-development of philosophy there are reversions that would be impossible in the development of scientific knowledge, where one and the same mistake is not repeated or, at least, not in the same manner. In philosophy, on the other hand, everything quite often seems to begin all over again, although, of course, repeated progressions from points already passed in the development of philosophy place limits on reversion to the old, on the “arbitrariness” of formation. The progress of philosophy gradually restricts the bounds of reversibility but never eliminates it altogether; in this reversibility there is also a positive element, namely the return to old questions on the basis of the new data provided by science and historical experience.

p The pre-Marxian philosophers, owing to their theoretical and class limitations, generally failed to understand the specific nature of the historico- 104 philosophical process and the role of formation in the development of philosophical knowledge. Their own philosophical doctrines seemed to them to have originated in their own heads, so to speak. These philosophers created complete systems of philosophical knowledge, and the more complete they were the more quickly they were destroyed by subsequent development.

p Alexander the Great’s empire collapsed soon after the death of its founder, the struggle of the diadochs being only the inevitable manifestation of its internal weakness. Philosophical “empires” also collapse, and the wider the sphere of reality they attempt to “conquer” without sufficient means of establishing themselves there, the faster they collapse.

p Scepticism (in its various forms, from that of the ancient Greeks to Humism and 19th and 20th century positivism) is a historically inevitable retreat of philosophy from the positions it had allegedly conquered, a retreat which is conducted, so to speak, in perfect order, but is not generally accompanied by understanding of the true causes of philosophy’s defeat.

p Thus the history of pre-Marxist philosophy proceeds not steadily forward from one conquest to another; philosophy constantly zigzags in time, that is to say, tries in different ways to accomplish a task of which it is still not clearly aware. Philosophy gropes historically for its subject and is constantly diverted from it, although the development of the positive sciences gradually and unswervingly defines the limits of philosophical inquiry, which speculative idealism sought to establish a priori.

p The progress achieved in philosophy in the course of its historical development is resumed 105 not only positively, i.e., as theoretical propositions which retain their significance even though they may be contested or repudiated by opponents, but also in the form of increasing numbers of dissected, differentiated propositions, which reveal new problems and directions of inquiry, indicate difficulties and the possible ways of overcoming them, and disclose the inadequacy or faultiness of previous solutions, which does not, however, prevent repeated attempts to return to a path already discredited by the development of philosophy. These retrogressive movements, this stubborn upholding of errors that have already been overcome give philosophical expression to the aspirations of reactionary and conservative social classes, and also the inconsistency of the progressive forces.

p The inception of the philosophy of Marxism brings a qualitative change in the character of the development of philosophical knowledge. This development still has certain specific features conditioned by the peculiarity of philosophical questions, which are never “closed”, because new scientific data and historical experience make it possible constantly to enrich the solutions to philosophical problems that have already been achieved. The process of formation, which predominated in pre-Marxian philosophy, becomes a subordinate process in the development of the philosophy of Marxism. Thus formation is organically included in the process of development of scientific philosophy, which no longer throws away what it has won but proceeds unswervingly forward, conquering new “territory”, perfecting its methods of inquiry, taking into account the achievements of other sciences and penetrating deeper into the subject of its inquiry. The history 106 of Marxist philosophy is a striking example of this positive process of development. It shows that Marxist philosophy is not something static and immutable, created once and for all the millennia to come in the development of the human race; it is its own principle maintained throughout its subsequent philosophical development and constantly enriched by new historical experience and the achievements of the specialised sciences.

p On the other hand, the bourgeois philosophy that has survived in various changing forms since the emergence of dialectical and historical materialism, remains, owing to its ideological hostility to Marxism, in this historically obsolete process of formation, i.e., in a state of motion from an “existence” which is not yet real existence, toward “nothing” and then back again, galvanising the philosophical doctrines of the distant past and interpreting old questions in the spirit of the new ideological needs generated by the crisis of the capitalist system.

The spirit of denial of the possibility of positive knowledge in philosophy becomes the prevailing tendency in bourgeois philosophy from the second half of the 19th century onwards. Its development is at the same time a process of decay, which may not prevent the posing of new questions and even the more profound examination of certain traditional ones, but does rule out the formation of a scientific philosophical world view; the world view provided by dialectical and historical materialism is naturally unacceptable even to the most outstanding bourgeois philosophers of modern times, since they remain bourgeois thinkers. This is what lies at the bottom of the characteristic modern bourgeois philosophy of denial 107 that any philosophical science is possible. The contradiction between the scientific philosophy of Marxism and modern bourgeois philosophy, which denies the principle of scientificality, makes the traditional question "What is philosophy?" appear to be an insoluble problem, although it has already been solved by the historical process of the formation and development of dialectical and historical materialism.