The Positive Outcome of Philosophy. Joseph Dietzgen 1887
The philosopher Herbart declares: “If the meaning of a word were determined by the use to which it is put by this or that person, then the term metaphysics would be ambiguous and scarcely comprehensible. If one wishes to know what meaning of this term has been handed down to us by tradition, he should read the ancient metaphysicians and their followers, from Aristotle to Wolff and his school. It will then be found that the concepts of being, of its quality, of cause and effect, of space and time, have been the objects of this science everywhere ... that it has been attempted to analyze them logically and that this has led to all sorts of disputes. These disputes ... determined the concept of metaphysics.”
Such a declaration is right enough to furnish, by the help of a little criticism on our part, a sketch of the positive outcome of philosophy.
Metaphysics has always been the principal part of philosophy. In the first sentence of his “Handbook for the Elements of Philosophy,” Herbart defines philosophy as the “analysis of ideas.” According to this, metaphysics would have to analyze the special ideas of being, etc. Now it must be remembered that the idea of being is not so much a special concept as the general idea which comprises all ideas and all things. Everything belongs to being, and to understand that is too much for metaphysics. Hence it came into difficulties. Now our authority has just explained to us that the concept of metaphysics was not so much determined by the work it accomplished as by disputes. It did not work, but only made the logical attempt to analyze the concept of being. In so doing it led to disputes and did not distinguish itself very much as a science. The latter, Kant has told us in his preface to his “Critique of Pure Reason,” is recognized by its agreements, not by its disputes.
The metaphysical disputes were overcome by philosophic science, which is the study of ideas or understanding, by arriving at a clear and plain theory of understanding, the demonstration of which I have here attempted.
The faculty of understanding had been transmitted to us by our superstitious ancestors as a thing of another world. But the illusion of another world is a metaphysical one and led to disputes about the idea of being.
The positive outcome of philosophy assures us and demonstrates that there is only one world, that this world is the essence of all being, that there are many modes of being, but that they all belong to the same common nature. Thus philosophy has unified the concept of being and overcome metaphysics and its disputes.
Universal being has only one quality, the natural one of general existence. At the same time this quality is the essence of all special qualities. Just as the concept of herbs includes all herbs, even weeds, so the concept of being comprises not only that which is, but also that which is not, which was once upon a time and which will be in the future.
To free the concept of being from its metaphysical disputes, is a very difficult thing for those who attribute an extravagant meaning to the first principle of logic which says: “Any subject can have only one of two radically different predicates, because it cannot be at the same time A and not-A.”
All previous science of understanding has really revolved around this statement. It is based on something plausible, but still more on misunderstanding. Only when we have become aware of what has finally been the outcome of the science of understanding, only when this statement is backed up by the positive product of philosophy, does this stubbornly maintained and much contested statement receive a lasting value by its just modification.
In the first place, a “subject” is not a fixed, but a variable concept. In the last analysis, as we have sufficiently explained in this work, there is only one sole universal subject which is nowhere radically different.
The first principle of the old and tried Aristotlean logic tells us that a man, a subject, who is lame cannot move about with alacrity. But I have a friend who was totally lame and who today jumps about briskly; there is no contradiction in this. But if I tell another man about my lame friend and in the course of my story have this lame subject all of a sudden jumping over chairs and tables, then such a thing is inconceivable and I contradict myself. Such a contradiction is a violation of all logic, but not because agility and lameness are totally different predicates which cannot be attributed to the same subject, nor because the contradiction cannot exist. Being is full of contradictions, but they are not simultaneous or without mediation. A logical speech or story must not forget to mediate. By mediation, all contradictions are solved. And this is the outcome of philosophy.
In discordant metaphysics, being and not being are irreconcilable and mutually exclusive contradictions. Metaphysics is in doubt whether this common existence is real or only apparent, or whether there is not somewhere in a heaven above the clouds an entirely different life. But philosophy is now fully aware that even the most fictitious being is so positively real that any negation which appearances may attribute to it is outclassed by affirmation to the utter discomfiture of the former. Being and its affirmation is absolute, negation and not being are only relative. Being is everywhere and always dominant, so that there is no non-existence. Though we may say that this or that is nothing, yet we must remain conscious that anything we may call nothing is still something very positive. There cannot be any ignorance which does not at least know a little. There is no evil which cannot be transformed into good. The things that have been, will be, and are, all of them are. There is no non-existence. It is at least a word, though it does not convey any meaning. The world and our language are of so positive a character that even a meaningless word still means something. Nothing cannot be expressed.
The superstition of another “true” world which floats above this world of phenomena or is secretly hidden behind it has so vitiated logic that it is now difficult to remove the discordant metaphysical “concept of being” from the human mind. The belief in something absolutely different will not easily disappear. It is especially difficult to demonstrate that conceived things are of the same nature as real things, that both of them really belong to true nature.
Conceived things are pictures, real pictures, pictures of reality. All the limbs of an imaginary dragon are copied from nature. Such creations of imagination are distinguished from truths only by their fanciful composition. To connect nature and human life according to the given order, that is the whole function of understanding. Knowing, thinking, understanding, explaining, has not, and cannot have, any other function but that of describing the processes of experience by division or classification. The famous scientist Haeckel may call this contemptuously “museum zoology” and “herbarium botany,” but he simply shows that he has not grasped the secret of the intellect, but still wonders at it in a metaphysical way, the same as his predecessors.
What Darwin ascertained about the “origin of species” and about the transitions and evolutions in organic life is a very valuable expansion of museum zoology. Whoever expects anything else from the nature of intellectual faculties, shows that he is not familiar with the outcome of philosophy, that he has not emancipated himself from the vain wondering and its accompanying edification, which the wonder of human intelligence caused to primitive ignorance.
Understanding has hitherto been in error about itself and was, therefore, inadequately equipped for the task of giving a true account of its relatives, of the phenomena of nature and life. Nevertheless it has acquired training in the course of culture and has progressively accomplished better things. Its errors have never been valueless, and its truths will never be sufficient. That this is so, is not due to the defective condition of our intelligence, but to the inexhaustibleness of being, the indescribable wealth of nature.
The self-conscious, philosophically trained understanding and intelligence has now the means of knowing that the accuracy of all investigation is limited, that for this reason all its future results will be affected by error. But a science which is backed up by such an enlightened understanding, is reconciled to its limitations and transforms them into a hall of glory. Self-conscious limitation is aware of its partnership in the absolute perfection of the universe.
The self-conscious intellect improved by the positive product of philosophy knows that it can understand, describe, the whole world in a natural, sensible way. There is nothing that can resist it. But in the sense of a transcendental metaphysics, our understanding is not worthy of that name. In return, this metaphysics is pure vagary in the eyes of critical reason.
Taking its departure from fantastical ideals, from contradictions, especially between being and not being, metaphysics has gradually transformed itself in the course of civilization and become philosophy, which in its turn has progressed step by step the same as all other science.
Philosophy was at first impelled by the nebulous desire for universal world wisdom and has finally assumed the form of a lucid special investigation of the theory of understanding.
This theory is part, and the most essential part at that, of psychology or the science of the soul. Modern psychologists have at least divined, if not recognized, that the human soul is not a metaphysical thing, but a phenomenon. Like Professor Haeckel, they also complain about the dead classification in their specialty. The human soul is presented to them as a multitude of faculties. There is the faculty of understanding, of feeling, of perceiving, etc., without number and end. But how is life infused into them? Where is the consistent connection?
There is, for instance, the conception and feeling of beauty in the human soul. The beautiful again is divided into the artistically beautiful and the ethically beautiful, and each of these into other subdivisions. There is beside the beautiful also the pretty, the charming, the graceful, the dignified, the noble, the solemn, the splendid, the pathetic, the touching. Psychology also treats of the ridiculous, of the joke, the wit, the satire, the irony, the humor, of a thousand subtleties and distinctions, the ideological separation of which it attempts just as do botany, zoology, and every other science in their field.
To all of them, being is the object of study. What is the use of metaphysics under these circumstances? Only because it had in mind a different being, a transcendental one, could it induce Kant to sum up all his studies in the question: How is metaphysics possible as a science?
It is the merit of philosophy to have demonstrated that metaphysics is possible only as fantastical speculation.
It is the business of metaphysics to treat being transcendentally. It is the business of special sciences to classify being after the manner of herbarium botany. Classical order is already present in the vegetable kingdom, otherwise no specialist in botany could classify it.
But the objective arrangement of the vegetable kingdom in infinitely more multiform than the subjective arrangement of botany. The latter is always excellent, if it corresponds to the scientific progress of its period. Whoever is looking for absolute botany or psychology, or for any other absolute science, misunderstands the universally natural character of the absolute as well as the relative special character of the human faculty of understanding.
Philosophy familiar with its historical achievement understands being as the infinite material of life and science which is taken up by the special sciences and classified by them. It teaches the specialists to remember throughout all their classifications according to departments and concepts that all specialties are connected by life and not so separated in life as they are in science, but that they are flowing and passing into one another.
Thus our science of understanding finally culminates in the rule: Thou shalt sharply divide and subdivide and farther subdivide to the utmost the universal concept, the concept of the universe, but thou shalt be backed up by the consciousness that this mental classification is a formality by which man seeks for the sake of his information to register and to place his experience; thou shalt furthermore remain aware of thy liberty to progressively improve the experience acquired by thyself in the course of time, by modifying thy classification.
Things are ideas, ideas are names, and things, ideas, and names are subject to continuous perfection.
Stable motion and mobile stability constitute the reconciling contradiction which enables us to reconcile all contradictions.