p Every science seeks to achieve a theoretical synthesis, and not only of the range of questions comprising its subject, but going beyond that range. Besides bringing into being such sciences as biochemistry and chemical physics, this has made it possible to apply mathematical methods in sciences that for centuries developed independently of mathematics. However, while noting the progressive tendency in the specialised sciences to strike out beyond their own field of research, we must emphasise that the specialised sciences are called specialised because they are concerned with research and synthesis of ideas within the framework of their own deliberately limited field. The specific nature of philosophical synthesis, on the other hand, consists in the fact that it cannot be reduced to synthesis of purely philosophical ideas.

p Philosophers are often reproached for not minding their own business, i.e., for discussing not only philosophical problems but those of physics, biology, history, linguistics and literature. The reproach is justified if the philosopher claims to be able to solve special, non- philosophical problems. But it is quite obvious that the philosopher cannot solve philosophical problems while ignoring the achievements of the specialised sciences.

p One of the basic defects of Hegel’s grandiose historico-philosophical conception is that he reduces the development of philosophy to the dialectical synthesis of philosophical ideas. In his history of philosophy Hegel indisputably proved the paramount importance of the synthesis of 167 philosophical ideas to the development of philosophy and thus exploded the metaphysical juxtaposition of some philosophical doctrines to others. But Hegel virtually lost sight of the fact that philosophy synthesises, interprets and gives meaning to the scientific discoveries of its time and the methods by which they were made. The importance of these philosophical generalisations, which was relatively small in the ancient and medieval epochs, has enormously increased in modern times and particularly today, when philosophy has sometimes, putting it bluntly, to go and learn mathematics, theoretical physics, theoretical biology, and so on.

p Having said this, we must at once stress the peculiar nature of the philosophical synthesis of scientific advances. This synthesis is determined above all by its initial philosophical premises, materialist or idealist. Moreover, one cannot ignore the multiformity of materialism and idealism, their relation to dialectics, metaphysics, rationalism, sensualism, etc. Understandably the possibilities of philosophical generalisation of scientific discoveries are extremely limited in the case of the idealist and metaphysical doctrines. But even so, despite distortion of the actual significance of scientific discoveries, these doctrines constantly seek to comprehend scientific discoveries, express their attitude to them and give them some appraisal, if only a negative one.

p Philosophy cannot exist without this attitude of critical comprehension and summing up not only towards previous philosophy but also towards the science of its day. In the present age, when science has become part of everyday life, penetrated the general consciousness and brought about a revolution in production and consumption, both 168 material and spiritual, this is particularly obvious. It is enough to recall how great an influence the theory of relativity, quantum mechanics, cybernetics, and the contemporary scientific and technological revolution have had on the development of philosophical thought. Present-day philosophical irrationalism, though it sets itself up against science, which it scorns as a system of depersonalised knowledge, with a significance that is unrelated to truth, nonetheless constantly considers the advances of science and interprets them in a subjectivist spirit.  [168•1 

p But philosophy is not solely concerned with making theoretical generalisations about the natural sciences. Equally important for its own self-determination is its attitude to mankind’s historical experience and the everyday experience of individuals (one of whom is the philosopher himself). This does not imply that philosophy is 169 bound to embrace the philosophy of history; strictly speaking, the latter emerged only in modern times. We are concerned with something else. Historical events, particularly the events of the philosopher’s own day, shape his attitude to the world, his frame of mind, and determine his attitude to philosophical tradition and also to problems which, though not philosophical in themselves, excite philosophical interests, suggest new philosophical ideas or lead to the revival or rethinking of old ideas that once appeared obsolete.

p In a later chapter I shall specially consider philosophy as the social consciousness of a historically defined period. Such researches, which could be described as the sociology of philosophy, usually play a subsidiary role in historico- philosophical studies. In my view they deserve much more attention, since they make it possible to appraise the role of philosophy in concrete historical terms, to disclose the changes in its range of problems, its social inspiration and its partisanship or political commitment. For the time being I shall confine myself to suggesting that the analysis of actual historical experience makes it possible in a number of cases to reveal the genesis of philosophical conceptions which at first glance appear to be merely the further immanent development of previous doctrines.

p Hegel’s dialectics, of course, cannot be understood in isolation from the history of dialectics from Heraclitus to Kant, Fichte and Schelling. But how is one to explain this leap in the development of the dialectical understanding of the world that is marked by Hegel’s philosophy? By the achievements of the natural sciences at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th 170 centuries? They did, of course, contain some brilliant dialectical conjectures but Hegel, judging by what he has to say about the natural sciences, simply underestimated them or even failed to notice them altogether. I would suggest that Hegel’s dialectics, since it cannot be reduced to a mere inquiry into the interconnection of the categories, was inspired by the epoch of bourgeois revolutions, which broke down the feudal relations that had dominated Europe for centuries and destroyed that apparently changeless, natural way of life in which the romantics observed a pristine unity of personality and being that was afterwards lost.

p It has been stated above that philosophy critically comprehends, analyses and synthesises man’s everyday experience. This subject, as the history of philosophy shows, is not ousted by the development of the specialised sciences which, in creating a new and unusual picture of the world, compel philosophy to reappraise the data of everyday experience.

p The fate of the individual, his emotions and aspirations, his life and death have always been one of the most important themes in philosophy. The tendency to ignore this range of human problems, so characteristic of neo-positivism, is regarded as one-sided “scientism”. The philosophical untenability of scientism lies not in its being orientated on the problems raised by the development of the sciences but in its turning away from the question of man, which in recent times, and particularly today, has become the key problem of philosophy.

p The early Greek philosophers were, it is true, mainly concerned with cosmological problems. But the essential thing about this most ancient 171 form of philosophising is that the Greeks, as we have already emphasised, proceeded from everyday human experience, criticised commonplace notions and evolved ideas that differed from them. These philosophers concentrated on those elements of everyday experience that could be interpreted as a confirmation of their views; they had nothing else to appeal to.

p In modern times, when the achievements of mathematics and celestial mechanics rather than immediate everyday experience have become the point of departure for philosophical reflection on the nature of the universe, what may seem to be extremely remote abstract systems of metaphysics always lead up to the questions of the essence of man, his position in the world, his purpose and so on. To a considerable extent these problems determine the concept and specific form of philosophical knowledge.  [171•1 

p Thus, since philosophy synthesises, critically analyses and interprets the diverse types of human knowledge and experience, both the posing and solution of philosophical problems are synthetic in character. In philosophy qualitatively different types of knowledge, which cannot be reduced to the mere scientific reflection of reality, merge into a single whole, and at various stages 172 in its development one or another type of knowledge may predominate. At the same time, however, philosophy remains theoretical knowledge. In this connection it must be stressed once again that theoretical knowledge is by no means always scientific in character, that is to say, theory and science are by no means one and the some thing. Scientific knowledge may be theoretical or empirical; philosophical knowledge, however, cannot in principle be empirical. But the important point is that philosophy, while developing as theoretical knowledge, may be unscientific and even anti-scientific.

p Thus the distinction between theoretical and scientific-theoretical knowledge, which we do not usually find in bourgeois historians of philosophy, helps us to elucidate the specific nature of philosophy even when, as in the Middle Ages, for example, it is largely swallowed up by theology, which, though it was called a science, certainly was not one.

p Wilhelm Dilthey in his article The Essence of Philosophy, suggesting that the various philosophical doctrines cannot be reduced to a unity, emphasises that the thing they have in common is the principle of scientificality, the demand for universally applicable knowledge. "Philosophy,” he writes, "means striving for knowledge, knowledge in its strictest form—science.”  [172•1  According to Dilthey, the chief attribute of scientificality is the reduction of all assumptions to their legitimate logical foundations. He draws no distinction between science and theory, i.e., any theory, if it answers the demands of logic, may be 173 considered scientific. Hence follows the obviously ill-founded conclusion that all philosophical doctrines strive to realise the ideal of scientific knowledge. However, the history of philosophy indicates quite the opposite. All philosophical doctrines attempt theoretically to prove, substantiate, deduce their propositions from certain assumptions; they all try to uphold the principle they have adopted. As for the ideal of scientific knowledge, it has not always existed, of course, not to mention the fact that it has undergone historical change.

p Dilthey tried to reconcile rationalism and irrationalism. But irrationalism is clearly opposed to science (particularly natural science) and rejects the ideal of scientific knowledge in principle. Dilthey counterposed to natural science the irrationally interpreted "sciences of the spirit”. Modern irrationalism substantiates its denial of the philosophical significance of the natural sciences with a system of carefully thought-out, refined and not obviously unscientific arguments. This means that the drawing of a dividing line between theoretical synthesis and scientific synthesis, which of course is also theoretical in character, has fundamental significance. Theoretical knowledge, as the whole history of pre-Marxian philosophy testifies, has existed in two basic forms: philosophical and scientific. This fact is ignored by those philosophers and historians who fail to see that idealism, no matter how perfect its theoretical form, is organically hostile to science, which is basically materialist.

p Wilhelm Windelband, even more adamantly than Dilthey, argued that the significance of philosophy, its cultural and historical role throughout history, lies in the scientificality that has 174 constantly inspired it and whose key feature, in his opinion, is the desire for knowledge for knowledge’s sake. When Windelband claims that the history of Greek philosophy is the history of the birth of science, there is no reason to object. But he is clearly wrong in extending this argument to the whole subsequent history of philosophy. "The history of the name of ’philosophy’" he writes, "is the history of the cultural meaning of science. When scientific thought asserts itself as an independent urge towards knowledge for knowledge’s sake it acquires the name of philosophy; when subsequently the unity of science breaks up into its separate branches, philosophy is the last, culminating generalising knowledge of the world. When scientific thought is again reduced to the degree of being a means of ethical education or religious meditation, philosophy becomes a science of life or the formulation of religious beliefs. But as soon as scientific life is once again liberated, philosophy, too, re-acquires the character of self-sufficient knowledge of the world and, when it begins to renounce this task, it transforms itself into the theory of science."  [174•1 

p I have no intention of underestimating the role of philosophy in the development of the sciences, or the role of the sciences in the development of philosophy. Windelband correctly notes a certain common rhythm that is to be observed in the changes that both philosophy and science undergo in the course of world history. But as a typical representative of idealist historiography he utterly disregards the enormous part that non- philosophical factors play in the history of both 175 philosophy and science, factors such as the development of social production, and changes in social relations. For him the sole motive force in philosophy and science is the desire for knowledge. Like Dilthey, he offers a very elastic interpretation of the concept of science, regarding it, for example, in the Middle Ages as a means of ethical education and religious meditation. His grounds for this kind of interpretation of science are given in the above-mentioned refusal to make a fundamental distinction between theory and science. Yet the concept of theory is incomparably wider than the concept of science. That is why not every theory is a scientific theory. The scientificality of a theory is determined not so much by its form as by its content. This is extremely important to bear in mind when studying the countless philosophical theories that have replaced one another through the centuries.

p Idealism by its very nature cannot be a scientific theory. At best it may acquire scientific form but never scientific content.

p It may appear that the distinction between theoretical and scientific theoretical knowledge, while undoubtedly important to the understanding of pre-Marxian (and particularly idealist) philosophy, loses its meaning when applied to dialectical and historical materialism, which, having put an end to the opposition between philosophy and the positive sciences and practice, is a scientific philosophy that fully accepts and applies in practice the principles of scientificality that have historically taken shape in science. But since there is still a difference between scientific philosophy and the specialised sciences, the above-mentioned distinction becomes the distinction between scientifico-philosophical and scientific knowledge.

p It has been stated above that any science presupposes the conscious segregation of a definite group of objects from the infinite diversity of phenomena of nature or society. The progressive limitation of the subject of inquiry is a characteristic tendency of the development of the sciences, which constantly breaks down the object of research into parts. This tendency, due to new scientific discoveries, gives rise to new scientific disciplines and therefore becomes one of the conditions of scientific progress, and though the circle of objects of scientific cognition is constantly expanding, scientific research is becoming increasingly specialised, despite the constant integration of scientific knowledge owing to the interaction and interpenetration of the sciences.

p The philosophy of Marxism can limit the subject of its inquiry only by excluding questions that are not actually philosophical. Such limitation is basically methodological and epistemological in character, since dialectical and historical materialism, unlike the specialised sciences, cannot limit itself to any part of nature, society or the process of cognition. This is clearly demonstrated in the Marxist philosophical study of any problem, for example, the problem of matter (as an objective reality existing outside and independently of the consciousness) or of cognition as its reflection.

p The principle of maximal limitation of the subject of philosophy, proclaimed by some doctrines, mainly those of positivism, contradicts the very nature of philosophy and its function of providing a world view. This principle, which presupposes the transformation of philosophy into a specialised science, is fundamentally unscientific. The specialised sciences, no matter how different 177 they may be from one another in subject-matter and method of research, are united in the sense that they are all specialised, and this characterises not only the subject-matter but also the specific form of scientific research. In this sense philosophy, even scientific philosophy, differs essentially from any other science in that it cannot be a specialised science. And this also characterises not only the content of philosophy but also the specific form of cognition that we call philosophy.

Consideration of philosophy as a specific form of cognition brings us to the conclusion that the peculiarities of philosophical thinking do not belong to philosophy alone; in some measure they are inherent in scientifico-theoretical thinking in general. These peculiarities are possessed by various philosophical doctrines in varying degrees and are manifested both positively and negatively. Analysis of the philosophical form of thought proves the untenability of the metaphysical juxtaposition of philosophy to the sciences and the possibility of a specifically scientific form of philosophical knowledge that is fulfilled in dialectical and historical materialism.