p These essays on the history of philosophy deal, above all with methodology. They also examine world outlook, because a Marxist study of the history of philosophy must analyze the relation of dialectical materialism to the philosophy that preceded it.

p The Marxist approach to the development of pre- Marxian philosophy first of all singles out classical German philosophy, one of the theoretical sources of Marxism. Therefore, this book poses a number of important although not yet sufficiently analyzed issues, related to the historical aspect of the emergence and development of dialectical idealism, whose outstanding role as the precursor of dialectical materialism was repeatedly stressed by the founders of Marxism.

p This book supplements my monographs Problems of the History of Philosophy (Moscow, 1969; English translation published in 1973, German in 1962 and 1979, and French in 1973) and Major Trends in Philosophy (Moscow, 1971), and discusses issues that were not sufficiently examined in them. Consequently, this book omits the topics which, although very important, were discussed at length in those monographs.

p The principal objective of this book is to use the study of certain aspects of methodology and of dialectical idealism to outline the fundamental role the dialectical- materialist theory of the history of philosophy plays in shaping the world outlook. A comprehensive analysis of that theory is certainly relevant, and its importance transcends the bounds of a purely historical study of philosophy.

p As Frederick Engels emphasized, the history of theoretical thinking, and consequently the history of science, are inseparable from the history of philosophy. According to Engels, the rejection of philosophy as "the science of sciences" that is opposed to specific sciences is inseparable 6 from a critical evaluation of the legacy of philosophy, because "the art of working with concepts is not inborn and also is not given with ordinary everyday consciousness but requires real thought, and . . . this thought similarly has a long empirical history, not more and not less than empirical natural science. Only by learning to assimilate the results of the development of philosophy during the past two and a half thousand years will it rid itself on the one hand of any natural philosophy standing apart from it, outside it and above it, and on the other hand also of its own limited method of thought, which was its inheritance from English empiricism." (8; 20)

p Theoretical thinking is essentially thinking in concepts, and it develops by perfecting the conceptual scientific system, by creating new concepts and categories. Theoretical thinking operates with concepts that vary greatly in quality. Some concepts register special qualities characteristic of a certain group of objects, the qualities that are grasped by sense perception and singled out by abstract thinking. Others generalize processes and relations perceived only through theoretical thinking. Still others have a strictly heuristic value—that is, they express operations by the perceiving subject and not the qualities of things or the general qualities of objective reality. Such, for example, is the concept of the infinitesimal in mathematics. Another, even more graphic example of a heuristic concept—that is, one discharging an operational function— is the identification abstraction in logic. This listing of types of concepts is far from complete. However, it is enough to demonstrate the conceptual nature of theoretical thinking and its inevitable links with the history of philosophy and with the creative conceptual effort.

p Theoretical thinking is not confined to ready-made concepts. The actual study process develops concepts: it differentiates between them, binds them together, limits and enriches them, unites them into definite systems, coordinates, subordinates, extrapolates, generalizes and develops them, etc. Nor does cognitive theoretical thinking stop here. Research discovers new phenomena, laws and objects of cognition, and it therefore presupposes the formulation of new categories and even new systems of categories (within a specific field of study).

p I am speaking here about the development of concepts 7 —a necessary logical expression of the historical process of the development of knowledge—only because I am trying to define the role of the history of philosophy in the age-old development of theoretical thinking. We know that even the greatest of the pre-Marxian philosophers saw no link between the development of knowledge and the development of the ability to think in concepts. For example, Kant said that the ability to exercise judgment (to make empirical data fit the more general concepts and categories) was an inborn quality, and that no education or training could make up for the absence of that essential trait. Kant’s view fitted perfectly in the way his system underestimated the role of the history of science, particularly the history of philosophy. Had Kantian criticism been capable of grasping the heuristic importance of the history of knowledge, Kant would probably have concluded that not only the ability to exercise judgment but also the productive power of the imagination (whose role in cognition he emphasized) could be consciously developed only through a critical and systematic study of the history of science.

p While admitting that inborn intellectual abilities do exist, Engels, unlike Kant, accords priority to the study of the history of culture, and particularly to the conscious and scientifically sound study of the history of cognitive thinking, especially the results of the two and a half thousand years of philosophy. Developing this concept in his Dialectics of Nature, Engels stresses that the study of the history of philosophy—the understanding of the experience accumulated in the course of philosophy’s development—is truly a school of theoretical thinking. The latter, as he put it, is an "innate quality only as regards natural capacity. This natural capacity must be developed, improved, and for its improvement there is as yet no other means than the study of previous philosophy". (9; 42-43) Naturally, one must not lose sight of the fact that Engels wrote this when natural science was still poorly developed theoretically. Hence his "as yet". The century that has elapsed since the appearance of Anti-Diihring and Dialectics of Nature has witnessed great advances in this field, and they have played an important part in the development of philosophy, and of theoretical thinking in general.

p Engels described the great discoveries of natural science in the mid-19th century (the discovery of the cell and its formation, the law of energy transformation, Darwin’s theory of evolution) as revolutionary turning points in the historical shaping of theoretical natural science and as the scientific foundation of dialectical materialism. In this connection Engels formulated the law of the creative development of materialist philosophy: "With each epochmaking discovery even in the sphere of natural science it [materialism] has to change its form; and after history also was subjected to materialistic treatment, a new avenue of development was opened here too." (3; 3, 349) In the early 20th century V. I. Lenin in his Materialism and Empirio-Criticism offered a profound philosophical analysis of the crisis in the methodology of physics, caused by the revolution in that science. The roots of that crisis were directly related to the great theoretical discoveries that influenced the shaping of the world outlook. That explained why Lenin, while developing Engels’ theses about the heuristic role of the history of philosophy (those quoted above), also stressed the heuristic importance of the history of natural science: "The results of natural science are concepts, and ... the art of operating with concepts is not inborn, but is the result of 2,000 years of the development of natural science and philosophy." (10; 38, 262)

p Of course, admitting the outstanding heuristic role of the history of natural science does not at all detract from the importance of the history of philosophy as a school of theoretical thinking. On the contrary, underestimating the history of science—and that is still true of some scholars —combines inexorably with disdain for the history of philosophy. But as a rule, the scientists responsible for important discoveries systematically studied the history of theoretical thinking, both in natural science and in philosophy. The works of Einstein, Heisenberg, Vernadsky and Timiriazev are a case in point.

p Like any historical process, the history of science (and philosophy) can be studied by two essentially different but organically interconnected methods: the historical and the logical. The historical method aims to reproduce the process in question in all its general, typical and unique features. The logical method, based on the sum-total of the results in a specific historical study, pursues a different 9 objective: that of revealing the laws that govern the development of the given sum-total of phenomena in a definite historical framework laid down in the study. The latter case is thus a logical reconstruction of the process in question. Karl Marx’s Capital is a classic example.

p According to Engels, the logical method "is indeed nothing but the historical method, only stripped of the historical form and diverting chance occurrences. The point where this history begins must also be the starting point of the train of thought, and its further progress will be simply the reflection, in abstract and theoretically consistent form, of the historical course. Though the reflection is corrected, it is corrected in accordance with laws provided by the actual historical course, since each factor can be examined at the stage of development where it reaches »jts full maturity, its classical form." (6; 225) Since the study of the history of philosophy is regarded essential for developing theoretical thinking, it should not be merely an empirical-historical study but also, and above all, logicaltheoretical, theoretically general, and epistemological. In Engels’ words, the point is to understand the results of the development of philosophy over the past two and a half thousand years. Dialectical materialism considers this theoretical summing up of the history of philosophy (and science) as a special task of epistemology, a branch of philosophy studying the development of knowledge taken in its more general form denned in the major philosophical categories.

p In his Philosophical Notebooks, Lenin mapped out a program of fundamental epistemological studies based on a theoretical interpretation and generalization of the history of various sciences (the history of the mental development of animals, the history of technology, language, etc.) and the history of knowledge in general. Lenin accorded priority to the task of summing up the historicalphilosophical process aimed at further developing the epistemology of dialectical materialism. (10; 38, 351) Methodologically, that is a point of tremendous importance. It expressly indicates the organic relationship of dialectical materialism to the entire philosophy that preceded it. That relationship has a bearing not only on the origin and shaping of dialectical materialism but also on its problems, content and development. That expains why Lenin, in 10 compiling his notes on Hegel’s Lectures on the History of Philosophy and The Science of Logic, singled out several extremely important tenets of philosophy. Failure to see them precludes any comprehensive evaluation of Lenin’s stage in the development of Marxist philosophy. It also explains Engels’ following assessment of the attitude of Marxist philosophy to the 2,000-year history of idealism: "For it is by no means a matter of simply throwing overboard the entire thought content of those two thousand years, but of criticism of it, of extracting the results—that had been won within a form that was false and idealistic but which was inevitable for its time and for the course of evolution itself—from this transitory form." (9; 198-99)

p Each school of philosophy is in some way connected with the previous history of philosophy. It is impossible to understand a particular system of philosophy without studying the history of philosophy as a whole, without critically analyzing the’ various philosophical schools, approaches, hypotheses, achievements in all fields, including those that later turn out to be spurious. It is an antinomy of sorts between the whole and its part: understanding a part presupposes knowledge of the whole, but the latter is impossible without knowledge of the parts. ’This dialectical antinomy is solvable, because understanding a part means, to a certain degree, understanding the whole, and knowledge of the whole presupposes a certain knowledge of its constituent parts.

p Thus it would be an error to believe that the historical (or, to be more precise, historical-philosophical) way leading to the truth is only relevant inasmuch as the truth has not yet been reached; that once the truth is reached, the way to it can be forgotten. In actual fact, everything is much more complicated because the truth is the process of the development of knowledge, and the arrival at this or that truth reveals the epistemological significance of the road cognition has taken.

p Philosophy is essentially a deeply controversial subject. Each point it makes is not only an affirmation but also a negation, both thesis and antithesis. Substantiating the materialist world outlook means rejecting idealism. A correct understanding of the dialectical method, of the basic sense precepts of the dialectical-materialist theory of reflection, of the fundamentals of the materialist 11 interpretation of history, is impossible without negation, that is, without a scientifically sound critical attitude to metaphysical thinking, to agnosticism, the a priori approach, subjectivism, the idealistic interpretation of the life of society, etc. Scientific philosophical criticism is, in the final analysis, positive. Error is regarded as an epistemological phenomenon, and its scientific understanding does not merely ’ record the error as such; it presupposes the study of the historically transient necessity of that error, its gnosiological roots, and consequently, of the real content (a correlate of the truth) of the philosophical error. This approach to philosophical analysis—an approach not only legitimate but also obviously necessary to a certain degree—largely eliminates the distinction between study of the problems of dialectical materialism and a Marxist study of the history of philosophy. Engels’ Anti-Duhring and Lenin’s " Materialism and Empiric-Criticism are good examples.

p The nature of criticism depends to a certain degree on the object of criticism. This book examines the relation; of dialectical materialism to the legacy of classical philosf^: phy, particularly classical German idealism. The history of Marxism bears out that any critique of the latter creatively assimilates its profound insights. That is what positive dialectical-materialist negation is all about. Lenin described it as follows: "Not empty negation, not futile negation, not sceptical negation, vacillation and doubt is characteristic and essential in dialectics,—which undoubtedly contains the element of negation and indeed as its most important element—no. but negation as a moment of connection, as a moment of development, retaining the positive, i.e., without any vacillations, without any eclecticism." (10; 38, 226)

p Each philosophical doctrine is essentially distinguished by its relation to the philosophical legacy. The issues raised by any doctrine are born of definite historical circumstances and are theoretically linked to the issues treated by the philosophy that preceded it. It reviews these issues, interprets them differently, enriches and generally develops them. There is a contradiction in the unity of each philosophical doctrine and the philosophy that preceded it. Apart from relations of historical succession, it also comprises struggle against the doctrines that were its theoretical sources. For example, Spinoza, while directly 12 following Descartes, was also a dedicated opponent of dualism, psychophysical parallelism, the free will concept, deism and other fundamentals of the Cartesian doctrine.

p Furthermore, the unity is relative. It is always a definitely oriented unity, its social and philosophical bias accounting for its selectivity. This philosophical selectivity assesses different predecessors differently, and chooses the concepts that fit its principles. For example, Spinoza, unlike other materialist philosophers, turned to the pantheist and rationalist tradition in philosophy, obviously underestimating the importance of philosophical empiricism and empirical natural science.

p Because of their distinctive content and social gravitation, philosophical doctrines differ substantially in their ability critically to analyze the results of the preceding development of philosophy. This refutes Hegel’s assertion that since the latest philosophical doctrine is the result of everything previous philosophies have achieved until then, it "must then contain the principles of all; it is therefore, when it is a philosophy, the most developed, the richest, and the most concrete". (64; 6, 21) That line of reasoning would mean that since Berkeley and Hume came after Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke and Hobbes, their doctrines were a synthesis of the principles laid down by their predecessors and they built fuller and more developed philosophical systems. Obviously, this was not so. Hegel examined Berkeley and Hume, harshly criticized their subjective idealism and skepticism, and showed how far removed those outstanding philosophers were from any critical assimilation of everything philosophy had accomplished before them. Berkeley and Hume were by their nature incapable of such assimilation; their philosophical leanings, historical choice and relation to the preceding philosophical doctrines were clearly one-sided.

p Hegel’s error is connected with the fundamentals of absolute idealism which pictures philosophy as developing on two planes. On the one hand, it is an extra-temporal process in the realm of the "absolute idea". Hegel describes the latter as authentic philosophical thinking. In this suprahistorical sphere where actual historical development is replaced by logical succession, by the self-development of the Concept, each successive stage, necessarily includes the preceding logical stages and subordinates them to a 13 new and more meaningful fundamental precept. On the other hand, the actual history of philosophy—which Hegel does not at all ignore—develops on a temporal plane, within the frameworks of essentially different historical ages. And on this plane—and Hegel fully admits and systematically demonstrates that—there is no such one-sided and direct relationship between the preceding and following philosophical systems.

p The theoretical interpretation of the actual history of philosophy shows that many outstanding philosophers could not arrive at any positive evaluation of their predecessors’ doctrines even though they followed and developed the latter (usually, not even quite consciously). Even Hegel, who unlike other creators of philosophical systems considered his doctrine the result of the preceding history of philosophy, failed to arrive at a correct evaluation of the historical role of materialist philosophy, sensationalist epistemology, natural science and the generally nonphilosophical methods of research that had a tremendous bearing on all the philosophy of the New Age.

p The revolution in philosophy brought about by Marxism is often described as a radical break with all the preceding philosophical doctrines.

p Such an assessment of the Marxist relation to the philosophical legacy refers only to one aspect of the complex and contradictory historical process of the negation of philosophy in the old sense of the term. True, dialectical materialism differs radically from all other philosophical doctrines, including progressive ones. But it was precisely dialectical materialism that critically assimilated, creatively revised and developed the accomplishments of all the preceding history of philosophy, and this much more than any other philosophical doctrine. An adequate reflection of the Marxist revolution in philosophy is precisely this relation to the preceding philosophy which, free from any sectarian narrow-mindedness, is revolutionary-critical, creative, partisan and scientifically objective.

p In his Philosophical Notebooks, Lenin stresses and systematically explains that dialectical idealism is closer to dialectical materialism than metaphysical, antidialectical, materialism. (10; 38, 274) My essays on the history of philosophy, especially those analyzing classical German idealism, explain this extremely important tenet which 14 leads to the conclusion that dialectical materialism (and only dialectical materialism) offers the methodological foundation for a truly scientific history of philosophy.

p Kant creatively posed the issue of whether scientific theoretical knowledge is possible. According to Kant, the existence of pure mathematics and pure (that is, theoretical) natural science is an obvious fact because those sciences comprise truly apodictic and universal judgments. Kant believed that the theory of knowledge was to explain how pure mathematics and pure natural science were possible. A still more important and central issue in Critique of Pure Reason, the work Kant considered a fundamental introduction to his philosophical system, poses an even more important problem: how is metaphysics ( philosophy) possible as a definite intellectual occupation? Can metaphysics be a science? What are the conditions and ways of transition from nonscientific philosophizing to philosophy as a true science?

p Obviously, the problems that Kant raised and failed to answer in a scientific-philosophical way have also a direct bearing on the history of philosophy as a science. How is the science of the history of philosophy possible? In other words, what are the philosophical requisites of that science? The skeptics would not accept that definition of the problem. They would pose it differently: is the history of philosophy possible as a science at all? Apparently, this formulation also merits attention, because there exist many mutually exclusive philosophical doctrines, each offering its own—whether materialist or idealist, metaphysical or phenomenalistic—interpretation of the history of philosophy. For example, the followers of Henri Bergson have their distinctive view of the history of philosophy which underlies their approach to all philosophical doctrines, they gauge everything by irrational intuitive idealism. A neopositivist historian of philosophy naturally accords priority to representatives of philosophical—- especially idealist—empiricism, agnosticism, etc.

p A dialectical-materialist study of the history of philosophy substantiates and uses a radically different, dialectical-materialist approach to philosophical doctrines, their relation to one another, etc. Naturally, to a bourgeois historian of philosophy, the dialectical-materialist view of the history of philosophy would appear biased too, because it 15 rejects the idealist, metaphysical interpretation and eclecticism, often paraded as “objectively” taking into consideration all viewpoints, as a synthetic approach, etc. But in fact, this “bias” is a consistent scientific approach to the history of philosophy. Obviously, it presupposes uncompromising rejection of any unscientific interpretation. The struggle against idealism which, in the eyes of a bourgeois historian of philosophy who considers himself to be above the “extreme” viewpoints, is a fault of dialectical materialism, is a necessary expression of scientific consistency in a study of the history of philosophy. According to Leonid Brezhnev, "There is no room for neutralism or compromise in the struggle between the two ideologies." (11; 89-90)

p A dialectical-materialist, partisan approach to idealism, far from impeding scientific assessment of the role played by idealistic philosophy, offers a consistent methodological basis for such assessment. The Holy Family by Marx and Engels is significant in this regard. Here the authors both consistently expose idealist speculations and stress that their outlook is materialist, "which has now been perfected by the work of speculation itself". (1; 4, 125) This means that Marxist philosophy materialistically revises and critically assimilates all the genuine accomplishments of idealist philosophy. Which explains why dialectical materialism, accepted as the theoretical basis for study of the history of philosophy, is the scientifically sound central avenue of research into the history of philosophy. The only scientific philosophical outlook, which the philosophy of the New Age proclaimed as its goal, is dialectical- materialist. That is borne out not only by the creative development of Marxist philosophy but also by the record of bourgeois philosophy in the 20th century. Contemporary idealist philosophy rejects both dialectical materialism and the very notion of a scientific-philosophical outlook. Actually, all non-Marxist (including contemporary) philosophical doctrines reject the concept of the preceding development of philosophy. An examination of philosophy as it emerges and changes is alien to all non-Marxist philosophical doctrines, for they are not, nor can be, developing systems. They view the past of philosophy as something petrified: it either fully belongs to an irretrievably lost historical era or, on the contrary, is the work of brilliant 16 minds unaffected by the march of time. Both these approaches exclude the past of philosophy from the actual and many-sided social history.

Dialectical materialism, a philosophical theory of development, is itself a developing system of philosophical knowledge and, therefore, though created over a hundred years ago, it remains the philosophy of today. Critically summing up the preceding development of philosophy, dialectical materialism also answers questions posed by today’s philosophical doctrines. Marxist philosophy offers theoretical interpretations and scientific solutions not only to its own philosophical problems; its outlook sums up the most important accomplishments in all fields of fundamental research, practical activity, and mankind’s historical experience. The fundamental difference of dialectical and historical materialism from all non-Marxist philosophical doctrines, its organic links with i&ll progressive traditions in philosophy, its dedication to the future and uncompromising rejection of anything that defends social oppression and exploitation—all that makes the scientificphilosophical outlook of Marxism the only possible basis for a scientific theory of the history of philosophy.