p The belief evolved in ancient times that the distinctiveness of the philosophical form of knowledge lay in the speculative mode of thought, in which knowledge is formed by means of logical deduction, by conclusions drawn from the analysis of everyday notions and concepts, by elucidation of the meaning of words, and so on. Sensorily observed facts may from this point of view be the subject of explanation, or serve to confirm a conclusion, but in no way can they be a criterion of its truth.

p This view was idealistically substantiated by Plato. In Phaedo, for instance, it is stated that 121 the soul thinks "best when the mind is gathered into herself and none of these things trouble her—neither sounds, nor sights nor pain, nor again any pleasure—when she takes leave of the body, and has as little as possible to do with it, when she has no bodily sense or desire, but is aspiring after true being".  [121•1  Plato deduces the specific nature of the philosophical form of knowledge from his notion of the supersensuous subject-matter of philosophy. However, since philosophy is not an empirical description of what is observed, Plato’s understanding of philosophical speculation contains a rational kernel as well.

p The thinking person, Plato says, approaches everything (in so far as this is possible) with only the forces of intellect, rejecting as far as possible everything that he is told by his eyes, ears, touch and every kind of emotion, etc. Only in thought, according to Plato, is true being, or at least a part of it, revealed to the mind. Plato substantiated this idealist-rationalist interpretation of the philosophical mode of cognition with ontological arguments as well: his teaching on the existence of the human soul before the birth of the human individual, on its independence of the body and immortality. All these postulates were not merely proclaimed but were speculatively “proved”, on the one hand, with the aid of principles that were considered self-evident, and on the other, by appealing to everyday experience and common sense. Also in the Phaedo, Plato’s Socrates, referring to the myth that people’s souls exist before their birth and after death are consigned to a subterranean kingdom, tries to deduce 122 logically the thesis of the immortality of the soul. In doing so, he proceeds from an abstract proposition which to him and his collocutors appears to be an axiom: opposite arises from opposite. Thus, if something becomes bigger, it was smaller before; if, on the contrary, something is growing smaller, it means that it used to be bigger. But if opposite arises from opposite, then ".. .the living come from the dead, just as the dead come from the living".  [122•1 

p Plato supported these arguments, which are reminiscent of the “proofs” employed by the Sophists, with others no less speculative. If the thesis on the existence of the soul before birth was “proved” by interpreting cognition as recollection (the soul remembers what the man does not remember or does not know, or rather, does not know that he knows, consequently, this knowledge was obtained before the soul inhabited a human body), the “proof” of the argument that the soul continues to live after the death of the individual, is obtained by concretising the previously stated proposition on opposites: although all opposites arise from opposites, an opposite itself cannot be opposite to itself. Hence the soul cannot become something opposite to itself, i.e., lifeless or, let us say, visible, changing, selfdestroying, disintegrating.

p Plato criticised the materialist conception of the soul as the harmony of the parts forming the body, a harmony which he compares with a well tuned musical instrument. But a musical instrument, said Plato, may be tuned well or not so well, whereas a soul cannot be more or less a soul. If the soul were the attunedness of the parts 123 of the body, then a bad and sinful soul would be non-attunedness and consequently would not possess the quality of soul.

p Today such idealist speculations would not convince even the theologians. Modern idealism prefers to express propositions related to those of Plato as beliefs without claiming any strict logical proof for them. Speculation should not, however, be identified with its idealist interpretation; the atomic theory of Democritus was also the fruit of speculative reasoning. The essence of speculation is the logical process and the naivete, the faultiness, of Plato’s reasoning is exposed by logic, which shows the vagueness, the indefiniteness of the propositions which he takes as initial, self-evident truths. But the question of the meaning, the correctness, the significance of the speculative mode of reasoning is not thereby removed from the discussion. Historically, philosophical speculation took shape in close connection with the successes of the mathematicians, some of the most eminent of whom were Plato’s pupils. This is what V. Steklov has in mind when he says that "mathematics always was and is the source of philosophy”, that it created philosophy and may be called the "mother of philosophy".  [123•1  One may disagree with the categoricalness of that statement, but it clearly expresses a valid though not altogether impartial point of view. Significant from this standpoint are the metaphysical systems of the 17th century, whose creators were convinced that philosophical reasoning based on the principles of mathematics takes us beyond the bounds of experience.

p The rationalists held that mathematics is the one and only correct form of theoretical knowledge. Kant, who believed that "the doctrine of nature will contain science in the actual sense of the term only to the extent that mathematics can be applied therein”,  [124•1  firmly rejected the possibility of mathematising the philosophical mode of inquiry. This sprang not from an underestimation of mathematics, but from a conception of the specific nature of philosophy that was clearer than that of the 17th century rationalists.

p Philosophical definitions, Kant pointed out, differ essentially from those of mathematics. Philosophical definitions "are made only in the form of exposition of the concepts given to us, while those of mathematics take the form of construction of originally created concepts; the former are made analytically by means of dissection (the completeness of which is not apodictically reliable), and the second synthetically; hence mathematical definitions create the concept itself, while those of philosophy only explain it".’  [124•2 

p Kant’s point of view is that definitions, in the precise sense of the word, are possible only in mathematics. Mathematical definitions cannot by their very nature be incorrect, because any mathematical concept is actually given only as a definition and consequently contains precisely 125 what the definition has put into it. So, in mathematics there is no argument about definitions.  [125•1  And since mathematical definitions cannot be untrue, it is only in mathematics that axioms are possible.

p Admittedly, since philosophy elucidates the concepts it uses, it cannot do without definitions. But whereas mathematics begins with definitions (because there can be no concept without them), in philosophy definitions should only complete the inquiry. This idea does not, of course, apply to the exposition of philosophy, which, like any exposition, differs essentially from an inquiry, the result of which cannot be foreseen.

p Declaring that the mode by which philosophy reaches its conclusions is qualitatively different from that of mathematics, Kant tried to give epistemological grounds for the possibility and necessity of a specifically philosophical type of speculation. Such speculation, according to Kant, proceeds from the fact, asks how this fact is possible, and reveals the conditions that make the 126 fact possible. Mathematics, Kant said, consists of synthetic judgements that have indubitable universality and necessity. In fact, it never occurred to him to prove this proposition. It struck him as being self-evident and requiring only explanation. So now the question to be answered was what made this fact possible. And Kant replies: the a priori nature of space and time.

p In his Critique of Pure Reason Kant proceeds from the fact of the existence of morality. How is morality possible? he asks. His well-known answer is that the condition for the existence of morality is the a priori moral law, the categorical imperative. Further analysis of the fact culminates in the conclusion that the moral consciousness presupposes such postulates as recognition of the immortality of the soul, God—and the republican order of society.

p Thus what Kant considered to be a fact was nothing of the kind. He mistook the appearance of the fact, which is, of course, also a fact, for its essence. This appearance was not accidental; since only Euclid’s geometry existed, it was bound to appear to be the only possible one. The conclusions reached by Kant were inevitable for any thinker who based his theory of knowledge on the thesis that Euclidean geometry was the only possible geometry.  [126•1 

p Hegel criticised Kant’s understanding of philosophical speculation for the very reason that Kant believed it unnecessary to deduce logically that which was accepted as fact. Philosophy, in Hegel’s view, does not so much proceed from facts as arrive at them. Since philosophy is thought, it proceeds from thought and strives to know the content of thought (the content of science) as the product of its own development. Thus Hegelian panlogism ontologically substantiates the traditional belief regarding the ability of philosophy by means of reason alone, "by pure thought”, to arrive at discoveries which are in principle beyond the scope of empirical knowledge. Kant, as we know, rejected this rationalist illusion. Hegel reinstated it on the basis of dialectical idealism, which understands the relationship between sense and reason as contradiction, negation and the negation of negation. " Philosophy,” Hegel wrote, "takes experience, immediate and reasoning consciousness as its point of departure. Bestirred by experience, as by some irritant, thought proceeds in such a way as to rise above the natural, sensual and reasoning consciousness, and rises to its own pure and unadulterated element.. . ."  [127•1  However, this initial negation of sensory experience, according to Hegel, is completely abstract, with the result that the initial philosophical conception of the universal essence of sensorily observed phenomena turns out to be similarly abstract. Philosophy removes this abstract negation, this alienation, and addresses itself not to people’s everyday experience 128 but to the whole totality of data of the specialised sciences. But even this cannot satisfy philosophy because the specialised sciences synthesise only empirical data, and this synthesis does not take us beyond the bounds of possible experience or physical reality. In Hegel’s view dissatisfaction with knowledge of that which is empirically given, with accidental content, is the stimulus that spurs philosophical thought to break free from this empirically limited universality in order "to enter upon the path of development out of itself”,  [128•1  i.e., to register pure ideas and move within them.

p Hegel counterposes philosophical thinking to that of the natural sciences, since the latter, according to his doctrine, is concerned with the alienated form of the absolute. This juxtaposition revealing the real relation between them is theoretically expressed in the doctrine of philosophy as pure thought, that is to say, thought purified of all empirical content.

p According to Hegel, philosophy’s ability to know the absolute is commensurate to its ability to negate dialectically the empirical as the outward, alienated expression of absolute reality. Absolute reality is attained by pure thought because this thought itself "is thought which is identical with itself, and this identity is at the same time activity consisting in the fact that thought juxtaposes itself to itself in order to be for itself and in this other self to remain still only in its own self".  [128•2  This is why, according to Hegel, thought is autonomous, independent of sensorily perceived reality and, hence, of 129 experience in which this “external” reality finds its expression. Philosophical thought, since it expresses the "absolute idea”, like this transphenomenal reality, "is present in itself, relates to itself and has itself for its subject".  [129•1  Herein, Hegel declares, lies the essence of philosophy as a specific and at the same time the highest form of consciousness, forming the spiritual centre of all the sciences, the science of sciences, or absolute science, which alone has as its subject the truth as it is in itself and for itself, and not in its alienated objectivised form.

p There is no need to prove that the inadequacy of Hegel’s initial philosophical position—the identity of being and thinking—makes his conception of the logical process of cognition inadequate also. The dialectics of the transition from the sensual to the rational, from the empirical to the theoretical and back virtually escapes Hegel. Idealism prevented him from seeing that thought is based on empirical data, even when it enters into contradiction with them. And yet Hegel is right about many things. Theoretical knowledge is indeed not reducible to the diversity of empirical data. Agreement with sensory data cannot be the principle of theoretical thought, since these data are themselves to be critically analysed. Sensory data are what separate individuals may have at their disposal, but science belongs to -all mankind. Theoretical thought commands a wealth of empirical data that are completely inaccessible to separate individuals. On the basis of the whole historically developing social practice, the accumulation, the summing up of its data, there evolves a relative independence of theoretical 130 thought from the empirical data that may be at the command not only of separate individuals but of all mankind at each separate stage of its development. This finds its expression in theoretical discoveries that reach far beyond the bounds of present experience, paving the way for subsequent observations and even creating possibilities which, on being realised with the help of certain definite theoretical means, make it possible to register empirically that which has been discovered by means of theory, i.e., to confirm the truth of “speculative” conclusions.

p Hegel discovered and at the same time obscured the real, historically culminating process of the development of the ability of theoretical cognition, whose power is certainly not dependent on the quantity of sensory data that it may have at its command. Hegel portrayed this process as escape beyond the bounds of all possible experience, transition from physical to transphysical reality, to the realm of the noumena, which Kant, who understood cognition only as the categorial synthesis of sensory data, declared to be, though existent, fundamentally unknowable.

p Hegel correctly pointed out the dialectical juxtaposition of theoretical and empirical knowledge, but he absolutised this juxtaposition. His mistake lies not in the fact that he believed this juxtaposition to be unlimited; it is indeed unlimited, but only potentially.

p The genuis of Hegel’s doctrine on the power of thought, on the role of the logical process in discovering facts and laws is, despite its idealist distortion, particularly obvious today. Modern “speculative” theoretical thought, particularly in mathematics and physics, has led to discoveries that irrefutably testify to the progressive relative 131 independence of theory from empirical data. Moreover, it comes to light that the free (in the dialectical sense, i.e., also necessary) motion of theoretical cognition, which Hegel considered to be the attribute of philosophy, forms the essential characteristic of theoretical thinking in general, in so far as it attains a sufficiently high degree of development.  [131•1 

p Counterposing philosophical cognition, particularly in its dialectical form, to non- philosophical cognition (mainly empirical), Hegel wrote: "True cognition of a subject should be on the contrary such that it defines itself from itself, and not by receiving its predicates from outside."  [131•2  This proposition is a vivid example of the idealist mystification of the perfectly correct, in fact, brilliant idea of the nature of theoretical thought, which does not merely describe the properties in the object under investigation but logically deduces them, thus revealing their interdependence, showing that which cannot be immediately observed and penetrating through appearance to essence, so as afterwards to explain the necessity of this appearance, tracing the motion and mutation of the subject thanks to which its empirically observable properties arise. The necessity for such a “speculative” inquiry, which is today becoming obvious in all fields of theoretical knowledge, first emerged in philosophy inasmuch as 132 it has more to do with the analysis of concepts than any other science. It was in this sense that Hegel discovered the essence of the dialectical method. Emphasising the main aspect of Hegel’s dialectics, Lenin pointed out, "The determination of the concept out of itself (the thing itself must be considered in its relations and in its development).”  [132•1  This remark throws light on the possibility of the materialist interpretation of what seems at first sight to be Hegel’s completely absurd and mystical idea of the self-motion of the concept. And this in its turn brings us to an understanding of the nature of philosophical “speculative” thinking, which Hegel characterised precisely as the self-motion of the concept.

p We have examined certain points that characterise the speculative nature of philosophy, deliberately referring to the idealist philosophers in whose doctrines this speculativeness reached its highest development and at the same time became a form of mystification of reality. Analysis of philosophical speculation discloses certain peculiarities and tendencies in the development of theoretical knowledge (including that of the natural sciences). It may be conceded that speculation, which to a certain extent breaks away from facts, is of course a very dangerous path, on which mistakes may occur at every step and discoveries take the shape of lucky finds. All the same this is the path that theoretical knowledge must inevitably take, undaunted by the danger of becoming a mere concoction of ideas. This is the path taken by philosophy, and it characterises the specific nature of the philosophical form of cognition.

p In contrast to the idealists, the French materialists of the 18th century made no claim to have discovered a transcendental reality (they denied its existence); nor did they oppose philosophical knowledge to that of science. They advocated an alliance of philosophy with the natural sciences. However, the teaching of these materialists reached out far beyond the bounds of the scientific data of their day, not despite these data but on the basis of them. This reaching out beyond the bounds of available knowledge inevitably became mere conjecture, hypothesis and often, of course, error. But it was on this hazardous path that the materialist philosophy of the 18th century made its greatest discovery—the discovery of the selfmotion of matter. This idea that matter moves itself could not be empirically proved in the 18th century; it was an anticipation of future knowledge, and such anticipation is perhaps a more difficult task than the prediction of future events. This idea was obviously at odds with the mechanistic understanding of motion, but it was in tune with the spirit of the natural sciences, which were ever more confidently taking the path of explaining nature out of nature itself. The denial of the supernatural, and the atheism that was the logical deduction from it, were the theoretical sources of the idea of the self-motion of matter. The philosophers, who proposed and substantiated this idea, thus expressed one of the basic sides of theoretical and particularly philosophical thought—the speculative thrust forward which is absolutely essential for the development of knowledge.

p The first atheists appeared when there were still not sufficient scientific data to disprove the tenets of religion. But the theologians had even 134 less data with which to substantiate their beliefs. Atheism was a heroic undertaking not only because the atheists were persecuted. Atheism was also a feat of the intellect. From this standpoint one can appreciate the true value of the fearless philosophising which, armed with logic, broke through into the unknown, and the astonishing assurance of every one of these philosophers that he was revealing the truth, despite the fact that his predecessors had obviously fallen into error. Truly, as Heraclitus remarked, man’s character is his demon.

p When we speak of the speculative nature of any scientific theory, we realise that this theory will sooner or later be confirmed or discredited by experience, by experiment. Philosophy is far more speculative than theoretical natural science, but it cannot appeal to future experiments or observations. What is it then that sets a limit upon the philosopher’s speculative licence, if he is not to be intimidated by mere isolated facts, since they can neither confirm nor deny his conception? Logic? Yes, of course, the philosopher respects logic; it is his own chief weapon. But a logical inference is possible only from logical premises, which are not contained in logic itself. Logic provides no criteria of the truth sought by the philosopher or any theoretical scientist. We assume that the significance (and to a certain extent the truth) of philosophical propositions is to be inferred from their being applicable in various sciences and practical activity.

p Philosophical propositions may be regarded as a kind of theoretical recommendations. If these recommendations arm science in its pursuit of the truth, arm man in his practical, transforming activity, then they acquire, thanks to this, the 135 possibility of real verification. So the point is not that philosophical propositions are true because they work; this approach to the question is alien to Marxism and, as we know, is propagated by pragmatism. The point we are making is that in so far as philosophical propositions become part of the diversity of human activity they may be indirectly tested, corrected and improved. This reveals yet another important characteristic of speculative philosophical thought. Philosophical propositions, even when they are not true, possess (to a greater or less extent) an implicit or explicit idea which becomes obvious in so far as these propositions are applied. The true significance of Hegelian dialectics was revealed by Marx and Engels, who saw it as the algebra of revolution. The hidden significance of presentday philosophical irrationalism is revealed in its characteristic apology for an “irrational” (chiefly capitalist) reality.

p Hegelian dialectics embodies a great truth, which has been fully revealed by history. Philosophical irrationalism is a tremendous error, which nevertheless reflects a definite historical reality and is therefore by no means devoid of meaning. Ideas that afterwards turn out to be untrue, though they were once believed to be true,  [135•1  also 136 have quite considerable and often positive significance in the history of science as well.

Thus the peculiarities of philosophical thought that we have considered are to a certain extent (and in various historical periods) inherent in any theoretical thought in general, in so far as it achieves high levels of abstraction. It is not the speculative mode of developing concepts that is specific to philosophy, but the degree of speculativeness of thought, organically connected, as it is with the concept of philosophy (and some philosophical doctrines in particular), with its apparatus of categories, initial theoretical propositions, etc. But degree is a definition of quality and in this sense actually helps us to define the specific nature of the philosophical form of cognition, excluding at the same time the metaphysical juxtaposition of philosophy to other forms of theoretical inquiry.