a) The Concept of a World Outlook

p Philosophy is the sum total of views on the world, but this definition does not specify its distinguishing feature. The fact is that other views exist in society apart from philosophical ones. So how do philosophical views differ from non- philosophical, such as natural-scientific views?

p Special natural and social sciences study the laws inherent in certain areas of reality, or in certain processes. Physics, for example, studies phenomena related to bodies travelling in space, the movement of molecules, “elementary” particles, and so forth; biology deals with problems related to living nature; economic sciences cover the social relations that take shape during the production, distribution and consumption of material values; pedagogy deals with upbringing and teaching, 16 and so on. Philosophy, on the other hand, embraces the entire world and all its processes, rather than confining itself to a certain area of reality or a certain part of the world.

Thus, philosophy develops a system oi views on the world as a whole and gives a general interpretation of processes occurring within it, i.e. it is the people’s world outlook.

b) The Fundamental Question of Philosophy.
Materialism and Idealism

p Philosophy studies the relationship of matter and consciousness, nature and spirit, and determines what is primary and what is secondary. The question of the relation of matter to consciousness is fundamental to philosophy. The answer to it influences the solution of all other philosophical problems.

p This is where the major difference lies between philosophy and the other sciences, which dnTncManalyse the relationship of matter and conscious_ness. They confine themselves to studying only the objective properties of phenomena. Even sciences concerned with psychic phenomena do not contrast Ihe material and thejdeal.^

p Philosophers are divided in two major campsmaterialists and idealists-depending on how they answer the fundamental question of philosophy. Materialists maintain that matter is primary in relation to consciousness and underlies all being. Consciousness is secondary, being a property of matter that manifests itself under certain 17 conditions. Materialists include, among many others, the ancient Greek philosopher Democritus, who held that atoms formed the basis of the world; the 17th-century Dutch philosopher Spinoza who regarded the human mind as an integral property or attribute of matter; and the 18th-century French philosopher Diderot, who maintained that nature existed independently of the mind.

p In contrast to materialist philosophers, idealists maintain that it is the spiritual, i.e. consciousness, thought, or idea, that is primary or basic. Matter, they say, is a derivative of spirit or consciousness, being just a form of the latter’s existence.

p Though the idealists all agree that spirit forms the basis of the world, they give different interpretations to this postulate. Some of them insist that spirit, which underlies all phenomena in the world, exists in the form of human consciousness, sensations, perceptions, notions or ideas, i.e. in the form of subjective human activity. These are called subjective idealists. There are others, the socalled objective idealists, who maintain that the spiritual exists as the so-called Absolute Idea, pure consciousness, and the like.

The 18th-century German philosopher Fichte, for example, was a subjective idealist. He maintained that the surrounding world was derived from the activity of the subject, from the self- consciousness of an “Ego” or “I”. The ancient Greek philosopher Plato, on the other hand, represented objective idealism. In his view, the real world around us consisted of ideal substances, while sensuous things were but imperfect copies of the 18 latter that emerged as a result of the blending of an idea with amorphous matter existing merely as a possibility.

c) Dualism in Philosophy

p Materialism, which explains all phenomena on the basis of matter, and idealism, which derives the existing world from spirit or consciousness, are both monistic (from the Greek monos, meaning one) philosophies. They are based on one philosophical principle and proceed from one premise. Yet there are philosophers who seek to prove that the world has two primary bases-material and ideal. These, they say, are independent of each other. One of them underlies the existence of material things, the physical world, while the other underlies the spiritual world. This doctrine is known as dualism (from the Latin duo, meaning two). The 17th-century French philosopher Descartes, a dualist, held that reality was based on two substances-material, with extension as its attribute, and ideal, with thought as its attribute. Independent of each other, these two substances merged in man and assumed the form of body and soul. Though they existed side by side in man, Descartes maintained, they still remained quite independent and equal.

Dualists rlajrfl to follow their own_f independent line in philosophy, distinct from materialism and idealism. They fail, however, to uphold this line consistently With respect to specific problems they are compelled to take either a materialist or 19 an idealist stand rtms nuking their position inconsistent, contradictory and mechanistic, msoIhuch as they try to reconcile incompatible premises and principled

d) Searching for a Third Line in Philosophy

p Other philosophers, too, who ultimately prove to be idealists, seek to place themselves above both materialism and idealism and find a third line in philosophy.

p Such attempts were especially frequent in the period of developed capitalism, when the victorious bourgeoisie came to realise the danger of the materialist world outlook with its inherent atheistic and revolutionary conclusions.

p At the turn of the 20th century, Ernst Mach, the Austrian physicist and philosopher, made an attempt to define the “third” line in philosophy. He lashed out against both materialist and idealist views, branding them “one-sided”. Mach affirmed that neither matter nor consciousness formed the basis of the world, but rather the “neutral elements of the universe”, which could be both material and ideal. Intertwining, they make up the material or physical world, while in relationship with man’s nervous system they produce the ideal or psychic world. According to Mach, the physical and psychic worlds are intrinsically interconnected. The physical world can thus be constructed from psychic phenomena, but the possibility of constructing the psychic world out of physical phenomena is excluded.

p In actual fact, however, these assertions do not constitute any “third” line in philosophy. If the theory of “neutral elements" is reason to affirm that the physical world can be constructed out of psychic phenomena, but not vice versa, then this line of reasoning fully conforms with idealism, since the psychic or the consciousness are primary in his case.

p Karl Jaspers, a prominent existentialist likewise tries to find a “third” line in philosophy. He agrees with Mach that neither matter nor consciousness form the basis of the world, but rather something else which includes both of these. According to Jaspers, this “else”, or this third, is the “universal” which manifests itself either as pure “existence”, or “supernatural”, or “consciousness”, or the “universe”, and so forth. If, however, the “universal” proves able to manifest itself as the universe, consciousness, the natural and the supernatural, it in no way differs from the God declared by theologians to be the source of all being. Thus, Jaspers’ views coincide with those shared by objective idealists, who believe that consciousness is the maker of all that exists.

p Apart from those philosophers who place themselves above both materialism and idealism by ignoring matter and consciousness and searching for a “third” way, there are thinkers, and even schools of thought, that strive for the same goal by neglecting the fundamental question of philosophy and declaring it a pseudo-problem devoid of any meaning. This view is upheld by the neo-positivists Bertrand Russel, Rudolf Carnap, and others.

p The neo-positivists argue that philosophy is unable to determine what is primary-matter or consciousness-and so should ignore the problem. It should confine itself exclusively to logical analysis of scientific data, semantic analysis of words and propositions. A meaningful analysis of scientific data, of the semantics of words and propositions, however, is inconceivable without first determining what is primary-matter or consciousness-in so far as such an analysis makes it necessary to establish whether scientific data reflect definite aspects and relations in the existing world or are products of the creative activity of consciousness, thought. The neo-positivists opt for the latter view. They derive the essence of sensuous data and the meaning of words and propositions from the creative activity of consciousness or thought, rather than from the outside world, and thus objectively assume an idealist position.

Thus all attempts to find a “third” line in philosophy can only lead to idealism.

e) The Social and Epistemological Roots of Idealism

p There are many reasons for the appearance of the idealist view of the environment. Some of them stem from the economic system of society, the social position of its classes and their requirements, while others take root in knowledge, in the cognitive activity of man.

p The factors of social life that are conducive to the emergence and spread of the idealist view of man’s environment constitute the social roots of 22 idealism. They include, primarily, the separation of mental from physical labour and their transformation into opposites. Marx and Engels wrote: “Once the ruling ideas have been separated from the ruling individuals and, above all, from the relationships which result from a given stage of the mode of production, and in this way the conclusion has been reached that history is always under the sway of ideas, it is very easy to abstract from these various ideas ’the idea’, the thought, etc., as the dominant force in history, and thus to consider all these separate ideas and concepts as ’forms of selfdetermination’ of the Concept developing in history.”  [22•1 

p The social roots of idealism also include the strivings of the exploiting classes to provide an idealist answer to the fundamental question of philosophy and to spread idealist views which provide a theoretical justification of religion, and thus are conducive to the spiritual enslavement of the working people and divert them from the revolutionary struggle to transform the existing situation in the world.

p As for the epistemological roots of idealism, they are to be found in the realm of knowledge.

p Knowledge or cognition is a complex and contradictory process by which reality is reflected in the consciousness of man. Exaggerating any aspect of knowledge, depriving it of bonds with its other aspects and with matter, and absolutising it 23 inevitably lead to idealism. The epistemological roots of idealism lie therefore in making an absolute of some aspect or peculiarity of the process of cognition, which leads to one-sided interpretation and distortion of it. “Rectilinearity and one-sidedness,” Lenin wrote, “woodenness and petrification, subjectivism and subjective blindness-yoiM the epistemological roots of idealism.”  [23•1 

p Sensations and perceptions are the forms of sense knowledge that depend on man, his nervous system, psychic state, experience, and the like. If, however, we exaggerate this dependence, forget that sensations and perceptions depend not only on man, but also on the objects influencing his sense organs, that they reflect the corresponding aspects of these objects, we come inevitably to subjectivism, i.e. we shall affirm that the content of sensations and perceptions is determined by the subject (man), by his emotions, which will bring us to idealism-the recognition of sensations and perceptions as the basis of all being. This was how idealists, such as Berkeley, Mach, Avenarius, reasoned.

By cognising the surrounding world, people pinpoint the general qualities of the objects and phenomena they encounter in everyday life. On this basis, they develop general notions and then concepts of such qualities. These notions and concepts pass from one generation to the next, while the objects reflected by them are constantly changing. This creates the impression that concepts are 24 stable, constant, eternal, while objects, on the contrary, are unstable, transient, temporary. The concept “man”, for example, emerged in ancient times, but since the process of its formation has long been forgotten one is inclined to believe it eternal. Individuals, however, are not eternal-they are born and they die. So, exaggerating the relative stability of concepts, depriving them of their bonds with the external objects which they emerged to reflect and turning them into something independent and basic, necessarily leads to idealism.