p I said above that the basic philosophical question is answered by the whole development of materialist philosophy; there are no grounds for revising that answer. All the same, this question still remains a problem in one very essential respect; namely, a problem of the history of philosophy. Its rise did not coincide with the origin of philosophy^^5^^; its history, which covers thousands of years, characterises the development of philosophical knowledge in a specific way.

p There is a multitude of philosophical questions that prove to be modifications of the basic one, which is by no means directly obvious and is only established through inquiry. Let me clarify this idea by a comparison. Marx proved that the price of production is a specific modification of value (in the conditions of developed capitalism), although it functions directly as its negation, this direct relation existing, moreover, not only in ordinary consciousness but also in objective reality. Is there not such a relation between the basic philosophical question and the other numerous problems of philosophy?

p Engels considered that primitive religious beliefs already contained a certain notion about the relation of the psychic and the physical, the soul and the body. Primitive primordial consciousness inevitably recorded the difference between waking and sleeping, between a living and a dead creature, a man and an animal. This difference was not simply ascertained as a consequence of curiosity (though that undoubtedly was inherent in our remote ancestors; for it is inherent in animals 34 that are at a much lower level of development, and is probably a necessary precondition of progress in the animal kingdom). The establishing of this fact is an expression of a practical attitude to the external world, because man treated the roused and the sleeping, the living and the dead, differently. Primitive men were obviously not inclined to reflection; they did not ask what distinguished the living from the dead, the roused from the sleeping. Nevertheless certain ideas about this difference arose, and were manifested not as answers to questions that had not yet been formulated, but as spontaneously built-up notions. When questions originated and new notions became answers, that was already evidence that reflection had begun on facts that had previously been accepted without questioning.

p The first explanations of the established facts obviously could not be based on an exact description of them; a cognitive capacity of that kind took shape comparatively late. The primitive explanation only indicated that the sleeping or even dead person differed from the roused (and living) one not in his body, but in something else, i.e. in the absence of something incorporeal that living, waking creatures had. This unknown later began to be called spirit or soul.

p The soul did not immediately begin to be represented as immaterial, because bodilessness, as philological and ethnographic research witness, was initially understood as the absence of a certain physical form; air and wind, for example, were considered to be incorporeal. Spirit and soul therefore seemed a rather special, very fine substance. That point of view was subsequently substantiated by the materialists of antiquity to counterbalance the then arising spiritualist view of the spiritual.

p One must also remember that, although the notion of the difference between a living and dead creature took shape very early under the influence of urgent practical need, it was a very vague notion, so that the boundaries between the living and the non-living (inanimate) were only realised within very narrow limits. Primitive men seemingly judged the things around them by analogy with themselves, i.e. they transferred their own capacities that they were aware of to all or nearly all phenomena of nature. The habit of measuring by one’s own yardstick was the first heuristic orientation, from which stemmed the humanising (or rather, perhaps, animating) of everything that existed. The inanimate could only be imagined as the previously living, and that, of course, presupposed a very expanded understanding of life. In short, the primitive outlook on the world was seemingly organismic.

p The question of the relation of consciousness to being, and of the spiritual to the material, could thus only be consciously posed when the development of a capacity for disengagement, self-observation, and analysis had reached a comparatively high level. If the origin of the initial religious ideas presupposed the shaping of an abstracting power of thought (which is revealed in all its obviousness in religious fantasy), how much the more that applies to philosophical ideas, however primitive.^^6^^

p Philosophy, as is evidenced by the historical facts, only arose at that stage of social development when private property, a stratification into classes, a social division of labour, and, what is particularly vital, an opposition between intellectual activity and the production of material goods already existed. As the founders of Marxism pointed out:

p From this moment onwards consciousness can really flatter itself that it is something other than consciousness of existing practice, that it really represents something without representing something real; from now on consciousness is in a position to emancipate itself from the world and to proceed to the formation of ‘pure’ theory, theology, philosophy, morality, etc. (178:45).

p That kind of forgetfulness of its origin and real content is manifested as consciousness’s conviction that it does not reflect sensually perceived reality but a special essence differing radically not only from what it perceives but also from what constitutes its corporeal, material basis.

p In Greek philosophy a system of idealist views was first created by Plato. It is not difficult to disclose a process in his doctrine of ideas of the shaping of an idealist outlook on the world. In Greek the word ‘idea’ signified form, appearance, image. Plato interpreted form and image as something independent of a thing and even preceding it. From the very start idealism distorted the sense of already formed concepts. But it did not simply invent and make things up; it interpreted the act of creation, in which the ideal image preceded its embodiment, universally and ontologically. Analogy, having become a principle of the explanation of phenomena, led to idealism, which came out, for example, in Aristotle’s doctrine.^^7^^

p The opposition of materialism and idealism is thus clearly traced out only at the pinnacle of the development of Greek philosophy. But there was still no conscious posing then of the basic philosophical question, which was paradoxical since idealism arid materialism were already giving opposing answers to this question. How could answers be possible to a question 36 that had not yet been posed or formulated? To answer that historical paradox it is necessary to concretise our understanding of the origin of the counterposing of the main philosophical trends.

p Investigation of the epistemological necessity of the basic philosophical question brings out the theoretical sources of the polarisation of philosophy into two mutually exclusive trends. But one must not oversimplify the historical process of the forming of this opposition, i.e. consider the peculiar content of the basic philosophical question, a content that implicitly includes the inevitability of two diametrically opposite answers, the cause of the rise of materialism and idealism. Like any other phenomenon of social consciousness the forming of the opposition of materialism and idealism was due in the final count to historically determined social relations. As for the theoretical grounds of the radical antithesis of materialism and idealism, they took shape after these trends had arisen. Their formation testified that the split in philosophy had become generally recognised, which called for theoretical explanation. It goes without saying that the socio-economic conditioning of the polarisation of philosophical trends did not in the least lessen the role of the basic philosophical question in the system of internally mutually connected philosophical views.

p All these considerations enable one to understand Engels’ conclusion more profoundly: the basic philosophical question

p could achieve its full significance, only after humanity in Europe had awakened from the long hibernation of the Christian Middle Ages (52:346).

p It is hardly necessary to demonstrate that in an age when religion was practically the masses’ sole spiritual food, the very posing of the question of which existed first, matter or spirit, was perceived as an infringement of the holy of holies, for, according to the scholastic definition, God was the physical and moral cause of everything that existed. That same scholasticism also taught that the highest cannot arise from the lowest. Matter was interpreted as the source of every kind of deformation and monstrosity, as the element from which arose worms, bugs, lice, etc. (not without the help of the devil). Even the mediaeval philosophers who were close to materialism had not, as a rule, broken completely with the doctrine of creationism. The idea of the co-eternity of nature and God signified a revolutionary challenge to the prevailing ideology. Whole historical epochs were thus needed for the development of 37 philosophical thought before the basic philosophical question took on all its actual significance.

p The bourgeois transformation of social relations, trie liquidation of the Church’s spiritual dictatorship, and the emancipation of philosophy from the shackles of theology completed the historical process of the forming and confirmation of the question of the relation of consciousness and being, of the spiritual and the material, as the basic philosophical question, giving it a definite content that could only be analysed by appeal to facts. Engels linked this historical process directly with the struggle against the Middle Ages:

p The question of the position of thinking in relation to being, a question which, by the way, had played a great part also in the scholasticism of the Middle Ages, the question: which is primary, spirit or nature—that question, in relation to the church, was sharpened into this: Did God create the world or has the world been in existence eternally? (52:346).

It would be naive, however, to suppose that a correct theoretical understanding of the basic philosophical question took shape (and was generally accepted) in philosophy from that time. There is no doubt that the development and realisation of the radical opposition of materialism and idealism, and the conscious counterposing of the main philosophical trends to one another, characteristic of classical bourgeois philosophy, fostered the shaping of this understanding and frequently came close to it. But the fact that the opposition of materialism and idealism developed within the context of one and the same • bourgeois ideology created certain difficulties for bringing out the whole depth and ideological significance of this antithesis of ideas. Only the creation of the dialectical-materialist conception of the historical course of philosophy made it possible to fully reveal the real sense and significance of the basic question of philosophy.