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p Diversity of doctrines has always been, and still is, typical of philosophy. Its significance can be understood correctly and explained scientifically only by studying the distinctive aspects of philosophy, the evolution of its subject and ideological function, the epistemological and class roots of philosophical errors, the place of philosophy in the system of fundamental sciences, and its relationship to art, religion and other forms of the social consciousness. That is the only approach that explains the wide variety of philosophical doctrines not as a merely empirically obvious and scientifically inexplicable fact, but as a phenomenon of the spiritual life of society that is both historically necessary and historically transient.

p Today’s bourgeois philosophers and historians of philosophy often present the increasing divergence of philosophical doctrines as a unique process rooted in the subjective creativity of outstanding individual philosophers. But the fact that the diversity of philosophical doctrines does not rule out their contradictory unity, and that in the final analysis it is reduced to the fundamental antithesis of materialism and idealism refutes this subjectivist interpretation of the historical process in philosophy.

p The development of philosophical knowledge differs radically from the development of physics, chemistry, biology and other sciences, just as philosophy differs from all those sciences both in subject and in methods of research. However, one should not make an absolute of that radical difference, as today’s bourgeois philosophers and historians of philosophy usually do. The study of the history of philosophy becomes really effective only when the relation between the history of philosophy and the history of science is understood not merely as a difference but also as a dialectical unity. That is the only methodological approach 63 that truly rules out the opposition of philosophy to theoretical as well as practical nonphilosophical activity. That opposition is typical of the entire pre-Marxian, and, especially, idealist philosophy. Even philosophers of dialectical idealism did not escape it. That opposition is not a subjective opinion advanced by philosophers but an objective feature of the process of differentiation between philosophy and specific sciences. The fact that this opposition, long since devoid of any historical justification, has not only survived but is even more intensively emphasised in today’s idealist philosophy, is a graphic illustration of the crisis gripping the latter at present.

p To substantiate the need for a scientific philosophy, classical pre-Marxian philosophers tried to prove that the increasing divergence of philosophies was a transient phenomenon. For example, Fichte was convinced that "there is only one single philosophy, just as there is only one mathematics, and as soon as that only possible philosophy is found and recognized, new ones can no longer emerge; and all the previous so-called philosophies would thereafter be regarded only as attempts and preliminary works". (52; 3, 3) Therefore, he regarded his doctrine as " elevating philosophy to the level of a science". Of course, Fichte was wrong in asserting that the creation of a scientific philosophy would end the development of philosophy and, consequently, the debate in philosophy. But his thought that the situation later described as "anarchy of philosophical system" was historically transient came as a brilliant prediction of the scientific solution of the historicalphilosophical problem.

p Unlike classical philosophical authors, today’s bourgeois theoreticians of the history of philosophy try to prove that philosophy, like art (and, of course, like religion), by its very nature cannot and must not be a science, and that any attempt at creating a scientific philosophy ignores the unique meaning and significance of that basically unscientific "spiritual mode" of human existence. The Swiss philosopher Andre Mercier said at the 15th World Congress of Philosophy, "Philosophy is not a science... Science is neither a philosophy nor philosophy in general." (87; 25) Theorists like Mercier reject the possibility of a scientific philosophy, regard the wide diversity of philosophies as an authentic expression of the sovereign freedom of 64 philosophical thought, and criticize the classics of pre-Marxian philosophy, charging that their attempts at creating a science of philosophy were quixotic errors of optimistic thinkers who lacked bitter historical experience. Such is the “proof” of a viewpoint that actually negates the history of philosophy as a science about the progress of philosophical knowledge, and it negates the very possibility of a scientific philosophical view of the world.

p That negativist trend found its conceptual consummation in the studies in the history of philosophy by a number of French, Italian and West German philosophers who call their trend the "philosophy of the history of philosophy". Martial Gueroult is recognized as the leader of that trend. He is the author of numerous studies of Descartes, Leibniz, Fichte, Malebranche, Maimon and of the methodology of the history of philosophy. Gueroult’s supporters and followers include Henri Gouhier, Paul Ricoeur, F. Brunner, Franco Lombard! and V. Goldschmidt.

p There is nothing surprising about the name "philosophy of the history of philosophy". Both the name and, moreover, the first and the only "philosophy of the history of philosophy" of its kind were created by none other than Hegel, the first to evolve a philosophical theory of the history of philosophy. The theoreticians listed above, however, never mention this fact because their doctrine is directly opposed to Hegel’s theory of the development of philosophical knowledge. The point is that Hegel substantiated the principle of the unity—the contradictory unity, of course—of the history of philosophy by demonstrating the fallacy of the opinion dominant during his lifetime that the many mutually negating systems of philosophy had no substantial connection with one another and were not different aspects of the single, though manifold, development of philosophy. In Gueroult’s opinion that would negate the very possibility of the history of philosophy as a science. Hegel’s history of philosophy he contends, "abolishes the fact it claims to substantiate" (60; 59).

p According to Brunner, Hegel’s history of philosophy is a "despotic solution of the issue of philosophical diversity" (40; 193) because Hegel rejects the autonomy of philosophical doctrines and describes the history of philosophy as a progressing dialectical removal of the actual diversity of philosophies. Goldschmidt charges Hegel with an 65 imperialist interpretation of the history of philosophy (57 a; 40) because Hegel impinges on the unquestionable sovereignty of philosophical systems and makes them dependent on the historical development of philosophical knowledge, describing each system of philosophy as the selfconsciousness of a historically definite era. For the spokesmen of today’s "philosophy of the history of philosophy", as we see, the historical approach to philosophical doctrines is absolutely unacceptable.

p According to Lombardi, Hegel tries to read meaning not only into Plato’s truth but also into Aristotle’s truth; consequently, he presents all thinkers as contributors to the gallery of errors in the temple of human knowledge. But in that case it is perfectly obvious that those thinkers lose their autonomy in order to represent mere special “ moments” of the concept forming Hegel’s doctrine of the idea. Lombardi obviously oversimplifies Hegel’s history of philosophy: the latter considered his philosophy the result of the previous history of philosophy, thus maintaining that he continued and completed that history. Hegel was wrong to believe that his system was the end of the development of philosophy; but Lombardi rejects the development of philosophical knowledge altogether, regarding the pluralism of philosophical systems as the only possible form of existence of philosophy. The German historian of philosophy Gottfried Martin also lapses into this error, except that he ascribes the pluralistic interpretation of the history of philosophy to none other than Hegel. According to Martin, "Dialectics recognizes diametrically opposite judgments as equally meaningful, and in this sense it recognizes the diversity of mutually contradictory judgments. From here it is not far to recognizing the diversity of mutually contradictory philosophies. That was what Plato and Hegel did. It is a fact that there are numerous mutually opposite philosophies and that apparently they will always be in conflict. But from a dialectical standpoint, this fact is not a flaw but rather a necessity. It is important for philosophy that there should be many philosophies; philosophy can exist only as a diversity of philosophies." (85; 283) Martin is obviously wrong in his interpretation of Hegel’s history of philosophy. It is a long way from admitting the diversity of philosophies to pluralistically interpreting the history of philosophy. And Hegel 66 shared the monistic (dialectical-monistic) approach to the history of philosophy.

p The ideological objectives of the "philosophy of the history of philosophy" are obvious. Together with the principle of historicism, it rejects historical materialism, presented as a crude sociological concept reducing original works of philosophy to the immediate historical causes of their emergence. The "philosophy of the history of philosophy" opposes this view (wrongly ascribed and totally alien to Marxism) of philosophy (and of any form of social consciousness in general) as a simple consequence of material conditions independent of consciousness by the idealistic principle of philosophy’s independence from everything nonphilosophical. That principle rejects the materialist interpretation of history. Brunner arrives at these conclusions when he writes: "While Hegel abolishes the autonomy of philosophies by rechristening them as moments of his own system, Marx goes even further: he destroys philosophy itself by depriving it of its inherent autonomy as philosophy. From the supreme discipline it used to be, philosophy turns into an epiphenomenon of man’s life in society." (40; 194) Like other followers of the " philosophy of the history of philosophy", Brunner still thinks in terms of the past. He regards philosophy as a superscience which has every right to ignore “lower” scientific knowledge. Naturally, Marxism resolutely rejects that interpretation of philosophy, which has become an obstacle to the effective development of philosophical knowledge.

p One must note that the principle of the sovereignty of philosophy is rejected even by idealism if it recognizes philosophy’s connection to other forms of spiritual life ( science, art) and its own dependence on religion. Not surprisingly, the Belgian idealistic philosopher Alphonse De Waelhens defines philosophy as "reflection on a nonphilosophical experience" in his article "Philosophy and Nonphilosophy" and stresses the "indelible bond between philosophy and nonphilosophy". (96; 6, 12) But De Waelhens advances a neo-Thomist concept of philosophy that ties it directly to religion.

p The theoretical precepts of the "philosophy of the history of philosophy" reject the unity of the history of philosophy, the possibility of a scientific philosophy, and the development of philosophy. According to one of its adepts, 67 the "philosophy of the history of philosophy" is "radical idealism". That, of course, is antidialectical idealism that metaphysically interprets a generally accepted fact: the difference of the history of philosophy from the history of mathematics, physics and other sciences. In each of the latter the components form a relatively orderly system. The differences between modern physics and classical mechanics exist within their unity which represents a process subject to a law Niels Bohr described as the principle of appropriateness. Naturally, the principle does not apply to the relationship between philosophies.

p The development of each science increases and accumulates truths eventually accepted ,by all its scientists. A new stage in scientific development is a step forward that overcomes the limitations of the preceding stage. It is true that in natural science supporters of the old often fight against the new, even though its correctness has already been borne out by the facts. But the situation in philosophy is incomparably more complex: a new system does not always surpass its predecessor.

p Martial Gueroult offers a subjectivist interpretation of all these facts, that call for special epistemological study. He simply declares that the past of science (unlike the past of philosophy) is constantly devalued by its present. Therefore philosophy and science are diametrically opposed, despite the fact that each system of philosophy, like any system of scientific knowledge, searches for the truth. However, the point is that each system of philosophy regards all other systems of philosophy as wrong, while in Gueroult’s view, they are all equally legitimate in their claim to the truth. In the history of science, each new achievement is based on, and surpasses, its predecessors. The " philosophy of the history of philosophy" sees this fact as proof of constant devaluation of scientific achievement. For example, Henri Gouhier states that "the only indisputable fact is that the science of today discredits the science of yesterday, while the philosophy of today does not discredit the philosophy of yesterday". (59; 111) According to the Bergsonian Gilbert Maire, philosophy never grows obsolete: "The physics of Aristotle and Descartes are dead, but their philosophies continue to flourish." (81; 19) Maire is not a supporter of the "philosophy of the history of philosophy". But his views largely coincide with those of 68 that school. The "philosophy of the history of philosophy" expresses the convictions of many bourgeois philosophers, although they may not belong to the relatively small circle of its adherents.

p Of course, those assertions run counter to the true history of science. Newton’s mechanics is not discredited, and neither are other real accomplishments of the natural sciences. It is a different matter that the scientific accomplishments of the past have been surpassed by newer achievements. By misrepresenting the above and laying biased stress on the fact that many philosophical issues posed in the past are still topical, supporters of the "philosophy of the history of philosophy" build an impenetrable wall between philosophy and the sciences. For example, Heinrich Rombach of West Germany who belongs to that school even asserts that "philosophy is not a phenomenon in time. .. It does not develop in a temporal framework, but it itself creates the external framework for all spiritual events . .." (93; 13). The "philosophy of the history of philosophy" thus becomes the theology of philosophy.

p By making an absolute of the radical distinction between the history of philosophy and the development of science, Gueroult attempts (of course, by purely speculative reasoning) to answer why the legitimacy of the history of philosophy as a science has always been and still is being questioned. He wants us to believe that this is because criteria and yardsticks borrowed from science and foreign to philosophy have always been applied to it. Philosophy has been likened to science whose greatest values are its latest accomplishments because they surpass preceding achievements. That point of view obviously oversimplifies the development of scientific knowledge, reducing it to a mere accumulation of new results that are higher than past ones. But the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics remain the greatest accomplishments of 20th-century physics, even though they were followed by many other outstanding discoveries. Having oversimplified the development of science, Gueroult contrasts it to philosophy and asserts that its past is equally, if not more, valuable than its present: "Science and its history have two radically distinct objects: the first, scientific truth which is nontemporal; the second, the acquisition of that truth in time. Therefore the history of science can in no way be part of 69 science. Their respective interests are quite different." (60; 49) Yvon Belaval, a scholar who is close to the "philosophy of the history of philosophy" is even more outspoken: "The scientist does not need to know the history of his science to move ahead: he studies the state it is in, he proceeds from it, and he is not interested in the past." (43 ; 25)   [69•*  According to Gueroult, the picture is totally different in philosophy which always faces its past. Since both ancient and subsequent philosophies retain their significance today, their authors are actually our contemporaries. The opposition of the present and the past, so obvious in the history of science, is described as having little significance in philosophy. "The indivisibility of philosophy and its history," Gueroult emphasizes, "is an essential characteristic of the fact of that history." (60 ; 47) But if philosophy and its history are really indivisible and the millennium separating a doctrine from another is of no consequence, how then is the history of philosophy at all possible as an actual process in time, in radically different social conditions? How does the "philosophy of the history of philosophy" see the transition from one historical era to another? It answers these questions by referring to the numerical increase of philosophical masterpieces. There was no Hegel in Kant’s world, but there was Kant in the world of Hegel, and that inevitably affected the latter’s philosophy. All this means simply that all outstanding philosophers are not on hand in any era, a fact of paramount importance for the " philosophy of the history of philosophy". But if interpreted fully that fact completely refutes the groundless assertion about the extratemporal essence of each philosophy. In their attempts at salvaging that idealist principle the adherents of the trend in question claim that for readers (or students) of philosophical works, their authors are contemporaries no matter when they actually lived. But that assertion is also groundless.

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p Clearly, to negate the historical facts underlying different philosophies, their content and form, means to question the legitimacy of the history of philosophy as a science. Study of a history of philosophy offering no historical evaluation of different philosophies runs counter to its principal purpose. Still, according to Gueroult, the historicity of a philosophy rules out its eternal value, without which it ceases to be a true philosophy. But a study of the actual history of philosophy shows that philosophies retain their outstanding value after their own era precisely because they are the product of a specific time which helped shape subsequent social development.

p In Gueroult’s opinion, the proof of the history of philosophy as a science is the same as Kant’s famous formula: how is pure mathematics possible? How is pure, i.e., theoretical, natural science possible? Kant began by registering that “pure” mathematics and “pure” natural science did exist, and then went on to examining their epistemological premises. Following his example, Gueroult maintains: "Consequently, to say that the history of philosophy exists means, strictly speaking, only that there have long existed studies of past philosophies, aimed at reproducing the philosophical consciousness of that moment in its original sense and assuming that the students understand their authors." (60 ; 47) Kant proved the existence of pure mathematics and pure natural science by assuming the existence of a priori forms of sense perception and thought. The subsequent history of mathematics and natural science fully refuted that assumption. Nevertheless, in defending the idealist principle regarding philosophy’s independence of history, Gueroult actually repeats the errors of Kant’s a priori approach.

p Gueroult describes his history of philosophy as “ dianoematics”,   [70•*  denned as a science "dealing with the conditions in which philosophical works are possible inasmuch as they possess indestructible philosophical value". (60 ; 68) Thus philosophy’s alleged independence of history is what makes the history of philosophy at all possible as a science. But how does one explain the very possibility of a 71 phenomenon that runs counter to the universality of change? Gueroult is aware that the explanation cannot be reduced to the assertion: "If no one [no philosopher] can definitively prove himself right, neither can he definitively refute others." (60 ; 50) That argument, Gueroult holds, will be acceptable to any skeptic who maintains that all philosophies are worthless. But the task is to prove, contrary to the skeptics, that all philosophies—of course, inasmuch as they are original systems—are temporally impregnable spiritual values. "The problem of the possibility of the history of philosophy as a science translates itself (se transpose) into the problem of the possibility of this science’s objects, that is, into the transcendental problem of the possibility of philosophies as permanent objects of a possible history; in short, into the problem of the possibility of philosophy as a plurality of philosophies that cannot be reduced to one another or destroyed because they remain eternally valuable for philosophical reflection." (60; 51)

p Thus, to prove the thesis about the eternal value of each philosophy Gueroult rejects not only the progress of philosophical knowledge but also the fact that one philosophy can solve (or at least pose) the problems another system has failed to solve or pose. Some of Gueroult’s followers go even further. According to Brunner, philosophies can coexist without coming into conflict with one another because they are not true or false copies of the real. (40 ; 198) The word “copy” is clearly out of place here because Brunner rejects even the possibility of philosophies being true or false. But if philosophies are not studies of objective reality, then what are they? Brunner simply calls them objects of art. (40; 198) Philosophical cognition is thus likened to artistic vision of the world, and philosophical systems, to the works of Pheidias, Raphael, Tchaikovsky, etc. Of course, this “artistic” approach to philosophy is not supposed to decide which philosophical precepts are true and which are false. But the solution is too costly: it refuses to recognize the fundamental difference between aesthetic perception of reality and philosophy, the latter not at all the creation of artists. Unlike the poet, the philosopher strives to achieve cognition in concepts, not images. Poets often ascend to great philosophical insights, but philosophers do not produce great poetry. Apparently, that is the reason why Gueroult, although he generally does not 72 oppose likening philosophies to works of art, nevertheless deems it necessary to introduce corrections into that overly straightforward viewpoint.

p According to Gueroult, philosophy cannot be viewed in isolation from the yearning for the truth which inspires every true philosopher. That yearning is not simply a subjective state of mind that slurs over the actual but not at all true content of philosophies. The problem is precisely to grasp each philosophy as a distinct realization of that organic yearning for the truth. But if that is so, then clearly philosophies ought to be compared to one another, to the information supplied by the natural and social sciences, and to historical experience or practice, because that is the only way to ascertain how correctly this or that philosophy understands reality. But that is what Gueroult rejects, and he asserts that there exist philosophical truths totally different from, and independent of, scientific truths, and that the former are based on a special kind of reality foreign to science. The subject of philosophy is totally opposed to the subject of all the natural and social sciences taken together. The conclusion is that the philosopher has no need of scientific knowledge and that scientists are incapable of philosophical discoveries. Gueroult needs this contraposition to justify the right he alleges philosophers have to ignore scientific discoveries. Obviously, this “right” is deduced from a false premise, that of philosophy being independent of history, including the history of science. According to Gueroult, there exists a basis of philosophical truth and of the yearning for it, and that basis is independent of the philosopher’s will (but not of his consciousness). To justify that thesis, he invents the concept of philosophical reality opposed to everyday reality, the subject of science. He interprets the fact that science has long transcended the boundaries of everyday experience to mean that these boundaries are gradually expanding. But that does not bring everyday experience closer to the allegedly suprascientific philosophical reality. The whole thing resembles the claim of theologians that their subject of “study” is not of this world.

p Thus Gueroult claims that philosophy fences itself off from everyday reality and turns to quite another, in-depth reality. Moreover, only that is philosophy which deals with that reality. The perceptible, tangible everyday reality is 73 subjected to harsh and derogatory philosophical criticism.

p Gueroult maintains that the differences among philosophies need no justification in the eyes of everyday reality which is itself questioned by philosophical thought. Thus it is everyday reality and not philosophy that must defend itself before reason. Philosophy discovers in everyday reality (or rather, on the other side of it) its cognizable essence—philosophical reality. The latter, unlike everyday reality, is inseparably linked to free but not random philosophical judgment, because always and everywhere (even among irrationalists) it is based on the rational, and logic is its intellectual tool.

p For Gueroult, everyday reality does not stand for the external world that can be perceived through the senses. He expands the concept to cover everything studied and understood by nonphilosophy. The knowledge about that allegedly everyday reality thus coincides with the knowledge based on experience or practice. And this actual knowledge, to which mankind owes so much, without which modern civilization is impossible, is contrasted to the great philosophies, presented as a self-sufficient whole independent of everyday reality, as a closed world of thought determining itself through a priori precepts. Brunner calls that concept monadological realism. Each philosophy is presented as something similar to Leibniz’s monad, at least in the sense that it forms a closed realm of the ideal." The philosopher both creates and perceives being, the subject of his reflection. According to Brunner, the realities examined by philosophy are similar to the world of Plato’s transcendental ideas which opposes the exoteric world of things perceivable by the senses. Thus, for all their claims about the fundamental equality of all great philosophies, the proponents of the "philosophy of the history of philosophy" reject materialist doctrines and defend "Plato’s line", i.e., idealism. Of course, this does not mean that they adhere to Plato’s philosophy. The idealism of today cannot accept Plato’s doctrine as created 2,000 years ago. And the "philosophy of the history of philosophy" presents that much-vaunted philosophical reality as a world of intelligible ideas no matter what their ontological status. Incidentally, that interpretation of Plato’s philosophy is a salient feature of Husserl’s phenomenology.

p Plato used myths to explain the fundamentals of his 74 system. Some adherents of the "philosophy of the history of philosophy" try to do the same. For example, in his article "Myth, History and Mystery", Albert Wagner de Reyna, one of the more consistent followers of that school, maintains, fully in the spirit of Christian theology, that "myth is a word of truth, because it is a word of trust". (97 ; 24) Myth, he asserts, "is true inasmuch as it discovers reality from its point of view". (97 ; 24) This paean to myth has a definite theological connotation. According to this concept, a myth is not even a symbol but a sign of cosmic mystery coming to man as a revelation. The entire meaning coded into a myth is incalculably greater than the one understood or expressed verbally. Therefore, myth " reveals the being, the essence of the transcendental, of ’ cosmos’ ". (97 ; 23-24) Myth is unavoidable because "it is impossible for man to express his vision in the language of logic or science, in which self-contemplation from the outside is an impossible and absurd venture". (97 ; 25) Myth can be expressed only in metaphors or symbols. It cannot be grasped by reason, its mission is to shift the intellect that trusts it into the transcendental reality which it denotes.

p Naturally, not all proponents of the "philosophy of the history of philosophy" proceed as resolutely from abstract judgments to “specific” theological statements. Therefore, in order to fully decode the "philosophy of the history of philosophy" we would do well to return to its allegedly scholarly arguments and to the facts (or at least what appear to be facts) that it cites.

p According to Gueroult and his supporters, the history of philosophy must employ a strictly scientific method. But this much publicized demand for a scientific approach is in actual fact made for the sake of appearances, because it absolutely rules out the evaluation of the method applied by how it reflects objective reality and the corresponding objective truth. In this connection, Paul Ricoeur’s definition of scientific objectivity is significant: "Here we must understand objectivity in its strictly epistemological sense: that which has been dveloped by methodical thinking, arranged in an orderly way, is understood and can be understandable to others is objective. That is true of physical and biological disciplines; that is also true of history." (92; 26) This reduction of the objectivity of a study 75 to technical requirements, although they are no doubt necessary, leads Ricoeur to the conclusion that the historical (and above all, historical-philosophical) study is subjective despite its epistemological objectivity. But that is "scientific subjectivity", not to be confused with "ill- intentioned subjectivity"—in other words, with bad faith or incompetence.

p The subjective aspect of research cannot be ignored. But recognizing or denying the subjective approach by the scholar is not the point; the important thing is to see the way leading to the objective truth, to its criterion—in other words, to have a materialist understanding of the subjective aspect of cognition and human subjectivity in general. That is precisely what the adherents of the " philosophy of the history of philosophy" lack, and that leads them to a subjective approach to the history of philosophy, despite their strict observance of the requirements of " epistemological objectivity". The principle of subjectivity— that is the principle of personal brilliance—is the key concept in the "philosophy of the history of philosophy". The true content of each philosophy is its expression of the unique creativity of the philosophizing individual, a means of self-assertion. For example, Henri Gouhier maintains, "In our view, no ism gives rise to another ism. Had Baruch died as a child, there would have been no Spinozism." (59; 20)

p Actually, the "philosophy of the history of philosophy" merely rehashes old idealist ideas. In the 1920s William James claimed that "you, ladies and gentlemen, have a philosophy, each and all of you". (71 ; 3) He reduced the struggle between materialism and idealism, rationalism and empiricism, and all other differences among philosophers to the incompatibility of temperaments. This view which obviously originated in Schopenhauer’s doctrine, later led to the existentialist concept of philosophy as a purely subjective vision of the real.

p Needless to say, continuity in philosophy does not mean that each philosophy gives birth to a successor. But Gouhier proceeds from this elementary (at least for a Marxist) fact to conclude, quite illogically, that the content of different philosophies merely reproduces the creative personality of their authors. He forgets that personal creativity is not only a feature of philosophy or art but also 76 of science and other spheres of human activity. That Einstein created the theory of relativity was no accident. But that in itself did not affect the content of his theory to any substantial degree, for it is a system of objective truths.

p Naturally, Gouhier and other exponents of the subjective interpretation of philosophy cannot accept this because they oppose philosophy to science and the history of philosophy to the history of science. Gouhier flatly refuses to differentiate between the subjective and the objective, the personal and the social in different philosophies. That is why he denies the obvious fact that Spinoza’s materialistic pantheism develops ideas which took an entire historical era to shape. According to Gouhier, "Cartesianism, Malebranchism, Comtism and Bergsonism refer us to the thoughts of Rene Descartes, Nicolas de Malebranche, Auguste Comte and Henri Bergson." (59; 20) He thinks he is merely stating obvious facts that prove philosophy is a completely individual way of conceptual thinking. But such statements deliberately proceed from the groundless assumption that Descartes, Malebranche, Comte and Bergson worked in a social vacuum, that their philosophies expressed no real socio-historical needs, and that they did not assimilate the historical experience or scientific achievements of their time. But Bergson’s doctrine of "creative evolution" was an irrational interpretation of Darwin’s evolution theory and an attack on Einstein’s theory of relativity.

p The subjectivist interpretation of the history of philosophy is rooted in the subjectivist interpretation of the "philosophical reality" discussed above. Philosophies are said to be essentially not comparable, since each allegedly studies its own world. According to Gouhier, " Differences of opinion between philosophers are not accidental: they are at the source of all philosophy. Different philosophies exist because the philosophers’ field of vision does not cover one and the same world; the differences among philosophers precede their philosophies: there is no agreement in their thoughts because they do not proceed from the same data." (59 ; 42) A closer examination will show that according to the "philosophy of the history of philosophy" philosophers themselves create the philosophical reality used to substantiate the pluralistic concept of the history of philosophy; in other words, that reality is a philosophical construction, How can one then explain the 77 eternal and therefore intersubjective significance ascribed to philosophies? That question remains unanswered.

p Adherents of the "philosophy of the history of philosophy" make no scientific analysis of the concept of subjectivity. Neither do they differentiate between subjectivity and subjectivism. They completely ignore the fact that subjectivity, as the actual difference of one human subject from another, has an objective content. According to Lenin, "There is a difference between the subjective and the objective, BUT IT, TOO, HAS ITS LIMITS." (10; 38, 98) As to Gouhier, he bestows a sort of ontological status on the subjectivity of the philosopher: subjectivity is the source of the philosopher’s personal universe.

p According to Ricoeur, true subjectivity in an outstanding philosopher makes his doctrine a free work of his genius, a work completely independent of other, also brilliant, philosophical works. The study of the history of philosophy is therefore called upon to provide a maximum “ singularization” of each philosophy—that is, to establish its uniqueness. That would prevent it from being included in some specific trend of philosophical thought. According to that theory, the concepts of materialism, idealism, rationalism, irrationalism, etc. are merely artificial categories obscuring the uniqueness of each philosophy, and that uniqueness makes it impossible to classify them. This approach makes an absolute of the moments of interruption, relative independence and uniqueness in the history of philosophy. But each of these moments is organically linked to its opposite: discreteness necessarily implies continuity, independence presupposes dependence, and uniqueness—succession. By making an absolute of the essentially irrationalist notion about the total incompatibility of great philosophies, Ricoeur even denies that many of them have to do with the same problems. As he sees it, recognition of even a relative unity of philosophical problems throughout the long history of philosophy is bound to lead to skepticism, a doctrine he rejects. "The history of philosophy is, frankly speaking, a lesson of skepticism if it is seen as a series of various solutions to immutable problems called eternal (freedom, reason, reality, soul, God, etc.)." (92 ; 57) But apparently he does not understand that rejection of continuity in the history of philosophy also leads to skepticism: the latter maintains that philosophers can neither 78 learn from their predecessors nor teach their successors. Ricoeur himself is rather close to philosophical skepticism (although he rejects it) precisely because he, like the skeptics, essentially denies that philosophical problems can be inherited.

p In the past, historians of philosophy usually said that all philosophers had always posed and tried to solve the same “eternal” issues. The history of philosophy was likened to a closed cycle of ideas and unsolvable problems. Unlike that traditional concept already exposed as fallacious by Hegel, the "philosophy of the history of philosophy" denies that the philosophical problems treated by different philosophies have anything in common. How to explain this leap from one metaphysical extreme to the other, from the typology of philosophical problems to their “ singularization”, or, as Italian existentialist Nicola Abbagnano puts it, their “individualization”? The answer may be gleaned from what we have just discussed. The " philosophy of the history of philosophy" attacks the idea of a scientific philosophy, while its defense was a progressive feature of pre-Marxian philosophy. For the school in question (and for most of today’s bourgeois philosophies) philosophy and scientific approach are incompatible. Hence the struggle against “scientism” in which there surfaces a most contradictory combination of criticism of some negative consequences of one-sided scientific specialization and rejection of the significance of science as a world outlook in general. Therefore, the opposition of today’s bourgeois philosophy to Marxism is expressed in a rejection of the concept of scientific philosophy, scientific world outlook—just as the bourgeois refusal to accept the inevitability of socialism is expressed in a negativist rejection of historical necessity in general.

p Ricoeur goes beyond the mere rejection of historical continuity in philosophical problems. He attacks any solution of these problems, claiming that this is not the function of philosophy: philosophy only poses questions, it should not answer them. Therefore, the uniqueness, the genius of a philosopher cannot be in essence expressed in answering the questions posed by his predecessors. His genius is in the fact that he poses problems in a new way, and the answers come from less significant and essentially nonphilosophical individuals.

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p It is true that correct posing of a problem is very important in philosophy. Everybody knows the importance of posing such problems as the unity of the world, substance, self-motion of matter, criteria of the truth, and so on. To a considerable degree, philosophy’s distinctive nature stems from the fact that it advances new issues left unnoticed in the past and for whose solution the requisite scientific information is often lacking. It is therefore clear that the way philosophical problems are posed develops cognition. If the important thing here is not the answer, then at any rate it is the suggestion of possible ways of arriving at it. But philosophy not only poses questions, it answers them too. It is a different matter that, as seen from the history of philosophy, those answers were very often unscientific. Still, that does not mean they should be underrated. If there is a grain of truth in an answer, that, too, is progress. Philosophical problems differ radically from the specific issues of any special science because their solution calls for different types of information supplied by science, practice and historical experience, and therefore cannot be the result of a specific experiment or demonstration based on limited data and equally limited theoretical premises.

p The "philosophy of the history of philosophy" does not merely deny the possibility and necessity of a scientific philosophy. It extolls the unscientific approach (that of idealism, of course) as the highest form of theoretical insight into the nature of things. This cult of the deliberately unscientific, presented as an authentic expression of theoretical reason, is an idealist attempt to debase science, the highest form of theoretical cognition.

p Gueroult charges Kant with having tried to assess the value of metaphysics (philosophy) by its capacity for becoming a science. Gueroult is convinced that despite their unscientific nature, all metaphysical systems possess everlasting, value. He preaches the following: that which imparts everlasting intellectual value to a philosophy does not depend on its correct judgments but on the "fullness of being" individually expressed in it.

p According to Wilhelm Dilthey, one of the founders of the German "philosophy of life", the history of philosophy expresses the substantiality and irrationality of human life. Its impulsive, sensitive and spontaneous nature is incompatible with the orderly succession and regularity 80 typical of lifeless entities. Therefore, Dilthey holds, the history of philosophy can only be understood as anarchy of philosophies; each philosophy intellectually reproduces the spirit of life inevitable in any given historical era and cannot be described as true or false: like life, it simply is. Although the adherents of the "philosophy of the history of philosophy" dispute Dilthey’s “historicism” and typology of world outlooks, they too try to substantiate a pluralistic concept of the history of philosophy, rejecting Brunner’s "fiction of progress" and maintaining that the notion of development cannot be applied to the history of philosophy at all.

p Professing to support more profound analysis of the history of philosophy and thereby single out the distinctive quality of philosophy as a form of cognition and of mankind’s spiritual life, Gueroult and his followers question the significance of philosophy and reject the ideal of scientificphilosophical knowledge, an ideal it took the entire history of philosophy to shape. But the "philosophy of the history of philosophy" is seen as a perfect science rising above the biased approach of the authors of philosophies who are incapable of objectively evaluating all other philosophies. According to Brunner, "the object of a historical study must remain an object, and that quality is guaranteed by the impartiality of the historian. The strictness of the method demands that philosophies be examined as external things quietly viewed by the historian." (40 ; 184-85) Thus the "philosophy of the history of philosophy" has a unique place in the history of philosophy. It is allegedly a nonpartisan, disinterested judge. According to Brunner, a historian of philosophy must neither support nor oppose the system of views he studies. A liking for a particular philosophy makes a historian of philosophy disregard the difficulties that philosophy is unable to overcome and deprives him of the critical approach to the subject, so important in a scholar. Viewed from that standpoint, adherence to a particular doctrine means an uncritical approach to that doctrine and a biased attitude to all others. In this connection Brunner quotes Edmond Scherer, a mid19th century historian of philosophy who said: "To understand a philosophy we must be alien to it and able, as it were, to regard it from the outside." (40 ; 185)

p Nobody questions the fact that a scholar who is guided 81 by his personal likes, tastes and interests instead of scientific objectivity is very far from being a true researcher. But the point here is scientific good faith which does not at all rule out partisanship in philosophy. A philosopher (or historian of philosophy) cannot be partisan or “ nonpartisan” by choice. Partisanship in science—and in philosophy—is not a personal but a social position and must naturally be free from any subjective preferences.

p Partisanship in philosophy means, above all, a definite and consistent philosophical position of principle. A consistent differentiation and contrasting of major philosophies is thus a necessary expression of partisanship in philosophy. Lenin describes it as a position of principle incompatible with eclecticism and stresses that "this refusal to recognize the hybrid projects for reconciling materialism and idealism constitutes the great merit of Marx, who moved forward along a sharply-defined philosophical road." (10; 14, 337-38) Obviously, such partisanship conforms to, and even essentially coincides with, the requirements of scientific objectivity.

p Exponents of the "philosophy of the history of philosophy" rightly stress that a historian of philosophy must be a historian in the strictly scientific sense of the term. But a historian of philosophy is inevitably a philosopher. Then how is one to interpret the fundamental precept of the "philosophy of the history of philosophy" that the historian of philosophy is outside past and present philosophies? The historian of philosophy is supposed to place himself above all philosophies no matter how meaningful they may be. But he is a historian of philosophy precisely because he is not outside philosophy. Admitting this obvious truth, adherents of the "philosophy of the history of philosophy" talk about the inevitable antinomy of the history of philosophy, and in the final analysis plunge into total confusion.

p Attempting to iron matters out, the "philosophy of the history of philosophy" says that rejection of any adherence to philosophies that are being studied does not rule out a philosophical position for the historian of philosophy. He is less a philosopher than a metaphilosopher. His philosophical position is the "philosophy of the history of philosophy", or the philosophy of philosophy, or the philosophical theory of the history of philosophy.

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p Tims a critical analysis of the "philosophy of the history of philosophy" points to the conclusion that it is an idealist interpretation of the history of philosophy. The much-vaunted nonpartisanship is, not surprisingly, revealed as pseudo-nonpartisanship—in other words, disguised bourgeois partisanship. And that partisanship is indeed incompatible with scientific objectivity. We have seen that the "philosophy of the history of philosophy" has a definite ideological function. The pluralistic interpretation of the history of philosophy is also an attempt at substantiating pluralism in social development in general. That ideological conclusion, contrasted to the doctrine about the inevitable transition from capitalism to socialism, is more than just implicitly present in the "philosophy of the history of philosophy". Martial Gueroult spoke of it at the 14th World Congress of Philosophy in 1968.   [82•* 

p For all its suprahistorical claims, the contemporary bourgeois "philosophy of the history of philosophy" is a historically definite subjectivist expression of the current state of affairs in idealist philosophy gravitating to irrationalism. Justification of the anarchy of philosophies is a salient feature of contemporary bourgeois philosophy. Not surprisingly, exponents of the school in question consider both the pluralism of philosophy and the existence of any number of "philosophies of the history of philosophy" fully justified.

The crisis of bourgeois philosophy, the ideological confusion, the absence of the passion for the truth that had imbued the great philosophies of the past, the pseudodemocratic protest against “standardization” of philosophy ascribed to dialectical materialism, the opposition of philosophy to scientific knowledge, the irrationalist concept of a distinct everlasting value of philosophies that is independent of their correctness or scientific worth—all that illustrates the degeneration of bourgeois philosophy. Although the "philosophy of the history of philosophy" raises important and topical issues, its approach and answers only disguise the crisis of bourgeois philosophy, extolled as a normal state of affairs fully consistent with the very nature of philosophical knowledge.