Library:Elementary principles of philosophy

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Preface by Maurice Le Goas

This elementary textbook reproduces the notes taken by one of the students of Georges Politzer, during the classes taught by him at the Workers' University (l'Université Ouvrière) in the school year 1935-1936. In order to understand its character and scope, it is first necessary to specify the aim and method of our teacher.

We know that the Workers' University was founded in 1932 by a small group of professors to teach marxist science to manual workers and to give them a method of reasoning that would allow them to understand our times and to guide their actions, as much in their technique as in the political and social fields.

From the very beginning, Georges Politzer took on the task of teaching marxist philosophy, dialectical materialism, at the Workers' University: a task all the more necessary as official teaching continued to ignore or distort this philosophy.

None of those who had the privilege of attending these courses – he spoke each year before a large audience of people of all ages and professions, but dominated by young workers – will forget the deep impression that everyone felt before this big redheaded young man, so enthusiastic and learned, so conscientious and fraternal, so attentive to bringing an arid and ungrateful subject to an inexperienced audience.

His authority imposed on his class a pleasant discipline, which knew how to be severe, but always remained just, and there was emanating from his person such a power of life, such a radiance that he was admired and loved by all his pupils.

In order to make himself understood, Politzer first removed from his vocabulary all philosophical slang, all the technical terms that only the initiated could hear. He wanted to use only simple words known to all. When he was forced to use a particular term, he did not fail to explain it at length using familiar examples. If, in discussions, one of his students used learned words, he would take it back and mock it with the biting irony that was familiar to all who approached him.

He wanted to be simple and clear and always appealed to common sense, without ever sacrificing the accuracy and truthfulness of the ideas and theories he put forward. He knew how to make his lessons extremely lively by involving the audience in discussions before and after the lesson. At the end of each lesson, he would give what he called one or two control questions, which were designed to summarize the lesson or apply the content to a particular topic. Students were not required to cover the topic, but many did and brought a written assignment with them at the beginning of the next lesson. He would then ask who had completed the assignment, raise his hand, and select a few of us to read our text and complete it with oral explanations if necessary. Politzer would criticize or praise and provoke a brief discussion among the students, and then he would conclude by learning from the discussion. This lasted about half an hour and allowed those who had missed the previous class to fill in the gap and relate it to what they had learned before; it also allowed the teacher to see how well it had been understood; he insisted on delicate or obscure points if necessary.

He would then begin the day's lesson, which lasted about an hour; then the students would ask questions about what had just been said. These questions were generally interesting and insightful, and Politzer would take the opportunity to clarify and rephrase the essence of the lesson from a different perspective.

Georges Politzer, who had a thorough knowledge of his subject and an intelligence of admirable flexibility, was concerned above all with the reactions of his audience: he took the general "temperature" each time and constantly checked the degree of assimilation of his students. He was also followed by them with passionate interest. He helped to train thousands of activists, many of whom are now in "responsible" positions.

We, who understood the value of this teaching and who thought of all those who could not hear it, and especially our provincial comrades, wanted the publication of his lectures. He promised to think about it, but, in the midst of his immense work, he never found the time to carry out this project.

Then, during my second year of philosophy at the Workers' University, where they had created a higher course, I had the opportunity to ask Politzer to correct some homework for me, and I gave him, at his request, my course notebooks. He found them well done, and I suggested that he write the lessons of the elementary course according to my notes. He encouraged me to do so, promising to review and correct them. Unfortunately, he could not find the time. His occupations being more and more heavy, he left the upper course of philosophy to our friend René Maublanc. I informed him of our plans and asked him to review the first lessons I had written. He eagerly accepted and encouraged me to finish this work which we were then to present to Georges Politzer. But the war came: Politzer was to die a heroic death in the struggle against the Hitlerian occupier.

Although our professor was no longer there to finalize a work he had approved and encouraged, we thought it would be useful to publish it according to my lecture notes.

Georges Politzer, who began his philosophy course at the Workers' University each year by establishing the true meaning of the word materialism and protesting against the slanderous deformations that some people subjected him to, energetically recalled that the materialist philosopher is not lacking in ideals and that he is ready to fight to make this ideal triumph. Since then he has been able to prove it by his sacrifice, and his heroic death illustrates this initial course, in which he affirmed the union, in marxism, of theory and practice. It is not useless to insist on this devotion to an ideal, this abnegation and this high moral value at a time when, once again, one dares to present marxism as "a doctrine which transforms man into a machine or an animal barely superior to the gorilla or the chimpanzee" (Lenten Sermon at Notre-Dame de Paris, pronounced, on February 18, 1945, by the R. P. Panici.).

We can never protest enough against such outrages to the memory of our comrades. Let us only remind those who have the audacity to pronounce them the example of Georges Politzer, Gabriel Péri, Jacques Solomon, Jacques Decour, who were marxists and who professed at the Université Ouvrière de Paris: all good comrades, simple, generous; fraternal, who did not hesitate to devote a good part of their time to come to a lost neighborhood to teach the workers philosophy, political economy, history or science.

The Workers' University was dissolved in 1939. It reappeared, after the Liberation, under the name New University. A new team of dedicated professors, taking over from those who had been shot, came to resume the interrupted work.

Nothing can encourage us more in this essential task than to pay tribute to one of the founders and animators of the Workers' University, and no tribute seems to us more just and useful than to publish Georges Politzer's Elementary Principles of Philosophy.

Maurice Le Goas.

The philosophical problems

I. Introduction

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Why should we study philosophy?

In the course of this book, we propose to present and explain the elementary principles of materialist philosophy.

Why is this? Because marxism is intimately linked to a philosophy and a method: those of dialectical materialism. It is therefore indispensable to study this philosophy and this method in order to understand marxism and to refute the arguments of bourgeois theories as much as to undertake an effective political struggle.

Indeed, Lenin said: "Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement. "(Lenin: What is to be Done?) This means, first of all: it is necessary to link theory with practice.

What is practice? It is the act of realizing. For example, industry, agriculture realize (i.e., put into reality) certain theories (chemical, physical or biological theories).

What is theory? It is the knowledge of the things we want to achieve.

We can only be practical - but then we realize by routine. We can be only theoretical - but then what we conceive is often impossible to achieve. So there has to be a connection between theory and practice. The whole question is to know what this theory should be and how it should relate to practice.

We think that the worker activist needs a method of analysis and reasoning that is just in order to be able to carry out a just revolutionary action. That he needs a method that is not a dogma giving him ready-made solutions, but a method that takes into account facts and circumstances that are never the same, a method that never separates theory from practice, reasoning from life. Now this method is contained in the philosophy of dialectical materialism, the basis of marxism, which we propose to explain.

Is the study of philosophy a difficult thing?

It is generally thought that the study of philosophy is for workers a difficult thing, requiring special knowledge. It must be admitted that the way in which bourgeois textbooks are written is well done to confirm these ideas and can only repel them.

We do not intend to deny the difficulties involved in the study in general, and in the study of philosophy in particular; but these difficulties are perfectly surmountable, and they come above all from the fact that they are new things for many of our readers.

From the outset, we will, moreover, by making things clearer, call upon them to review certain definitions of words that are distorted in everyday language.

What is philosophy?

Vulgarly, we understand by, philosopher: either the one who lives in the clouds, or the one who takes things in the right direction, the one who does not "worry". But, on the contrary, the philosopher is the one who wants to give precise answers to certain questions, and, if we consider that philosophy wants to give an explanation to the problems of the universe (where does the world come from? where are we going? etc.), we see, therefore, that the philosopher is concerned with many things, and, contrary to what is said, "cares a lot".

We will therefore say, in order to define philosophy, that it wants to explain the universe, nature, that it is the study of the most general problems. Less general problems are studied by the sciences. Philosophy is therefore an extension of the sciences in the sense that it is based on the sciences and depends on them.

We immediately add that marxist philosophy provides a method for solving all problems and that this method comes under what is called: materialism.

What is the materialist philosophy?

Here again, there is a confusion that we must immediately denounce; vulgarly speaking, the materialist is the one who only thinks of enjoying material pleasures. By playing on the word materialism - which contains the word matter - we have thus come to give it a completely false meaning.

By studying materialism - in the scientific sense of the word - we are going to give it back its true meaning; being materialistic does not prevent us, as we shall see, from having an ideal and from fighting to make it triumph.

We have said that philosophy wants to give an explanation to the most general problems of the world. But, in the history of humanity, this explanation has not always been the same.

The first men did try to explain nature, the world, but they did not succeed. What makes it possible to explain the world and the phenomena that surround us are the sciences, and the discoveries that have allowed the sciences to progress are very recent.

The ignorance of the first men was therefore an obstacle to their research. This is why, in the course of history, because of this ignorance, we see religions arise, which also want to explain the world, but by supernatural forces. This is an anti-scientific explanation. But as, little by little, over the centuries, science will develop, men will try to explain the world by material facts based on scientific experiments, and it is from there, from this desire to explain things by science, that materialistic philosophy is born.

In the following pages, we are going to study what materialism is, but, from now on, we must remember that materialism is nothing other than the scientific explanation of the universe.

By studying the history of materialist philosophy, we will see how bitter and difficult the struggle against ignorance has been. It must be noted that this struggle is not yet over, since materialism and ignorance continue to exist side by side, side by side.

It is at the heart of this struggle that Marx and Engels intervened. Understanding the importance of the great discoveries of the nineteenth century, they enabled materialist philosophy to make enormous progress in the scientific explanation of the universe. This is how dialectical materialism was born. They were the first to understand that the laws that govern the world can also explain the workings of societies; they formulated the famous theory of historical materialism.

In this book, we propose to study first materialism, then dialectical materialism and finally historical materialism. But, above all, we want to establish the relations between materialism and marxism.

What is the relationship between materialism and marxism?

We can summarize them as follows:

1. The philosophy of materialism constitutes the basis of marxism (See Lenin: "Materialism and the Philosophy of Reformism", Karl Marx and his Doctrine, Social Editions 1953, p. 60).
2. This materialist philosophy which wants to bring a scientific explanation to the problems of the world progresses, in the course of history, at the same time as the sciences. Consequently, marxism stems from the sciences, rests on them and evolves with them.
3. Before Marx and Engels, there were, on several occasions and in different forms, materialistic philosophies. But in the nineteenth century, with the sciences taking a great step forward, Marx and Engels renewed this ancient materialism from the modern sciences and gave us the modern materialism, which is called dialectical materialism, and which forms the basis of marxism.

We see from these few explanations that the philosophy of materialism, contrary to what is said, has a history. This history is intimately linked to the history of science. Marxism, based on materialism, did not come out of one man's brain. It is the culmination, the continuation of ancient materialism, which was already very advanced in Diderot. Marxism is the flowering of materialism developed by the Encyclopedists of the 18th century, enriched by the great discoveries of the 19th century. Marxism is a living theory, and to show right away how it sees problems, we will take an example that everyone knows: the problem of class struggle.

What do people think about this issue? Some think that the defense of bread dispenses with political struggle. Others think that it is enough to punch in the street, denying the need for organization. Still others claim that only political struggle will bring a solution to this issue.

For the marxist, class struggle includes:

1. An economic struggle.
2. A political struggle.
3. An ideological struggle.

The problem must therefore be posed simultaneously on these three terrains.

1. One cannot fight for bread without fighting for peace, without defending freedom and without defending all the ideas that serve the struggle for these objectives.
2. The same is true in the political struggle, which since Marx has become a true science: one is obliged to take into account both the economic situation and ideological currents in order to wage such a struggle.
3. As for the ideological struggle, which manifests itself through propaganda, in order for it to be effective, one must take into account the economic and political situation.

We see, therefore, that all these problems are intimately linked and, therefore, that no decision can be taken in front of any aspect of this great problem of class struggle - in a strike, for example. - without taking into consideration every aspect of the problem and the whole problem itself.

It is therefore the one who is capable of fighting on all terrains that will give the movement the best direction.

This is how a marxist understands this problem of class struggle. Now, in the ideological struggle that we have to wage every day, we are faced with problems that are difficult to solve: immortality of the soul, existence of God, origins of the world, etc. It is the dialectical materialism that will give us a method of reasoning, that will allow us to solve all these problems and, as well, to unveil all the campaigns of falsification of marxism, which pretend to complete and renew it.

Bourgeois campaigns against marxism

These attempts at falsification are based on a wide variety of bases. One seeks to set against marxism the socialist authors of the pre-marxist period (before Marx). This is how we very often see the "utopians" used against Marx. Others use Proudhon; others draw on the revisionists of before 1914 (though masterfully refuted by Lenin). But what must be emphasized above all is the campaign of silence that the bourgeoisie is waging against marxism. It has done everything in particular to prevent materialist philosophy from being known in its marxist form. Particularly striking in this respect is the whole of philosophical teaching as it is given in France.

Philosophy is taught in secondary schools. But one can follow all this teaching without ever learning that there is a materialist philosophy elaborated by Marx and Engels. When, in philosophy textbooks, we talk about materialism (because we have to talk about it), we always talk about marxism and materialism separately. Marxism, in general, is presented only as a political doctrine, and when we speak of historical materialism, we don't speak of the philosophy of materialism; finally, we don't know anything about dialectical materialism.

This situation does not only exist in schools and high schools: it is exactly the same in Universities. The most characteristic fact is that one can be a "specialist" in philosophy in France, with the highest diplomas awarded by French universities, without knowing that marxism has a philosophy, which is materialism, and without knowing that traditional materialism has a modern form, which is marxism, or dialectical materialism.

We want to demonstrate that marxism has a general conception not only of society, but also of the universe itself. It is therefore useless, contrary to what some people claim, to regret that the great defect of marxism is its lack of philosophy, and to want, like some theorists of the workers' movement, to go in search of this philosophy that marxism lacks. For marxism has a philosophy, which is dialectical materialism.

The fact remains, moreover, that despite this campaign of silence, despite all the falsifications and precautions taken by the ruling classes, marxism and its philosophy are beginning to become more and more known.

II. The fundamental problem of philosophy

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How should we begin the study of philosophy?

In our introduction, we said several times that the philosophy of dialectical materialism was the basis of Marxism.

Our goal is the study of this philosophy; but to reach this goal we must advance in stages.

When we speak of dialectical materialism, we have before us two words: materialism and dialectical, which means that materialism is dialectical. We know that before Marx and Engels materialism already existed, but that it was they, with the help of the discoveries of the nineteenth century, who transformed this materialism and created "dialectical" materialism.

Later we will examine the meaning of the word "dialectical," which refers to the modern form of materialism.

But since, before Marx and Engels, there were materialist philosophers (for example, Diderot in the 18th century), and since there are points in common to all materialists, we need to study the history of materialism before discussing dialectical materialism. We also need to know the conceptions that are opposed to materialism.

Two ways of explaining the world

We have seen that philosophy is the "study of the most general problems" and that it has to to explain the world, nature, man.

If we open a textbook of bourgeois philosophy, we are astonished by the multitude of different philosophies that can be found in it. They are designated by multiple more or less complicated words ending in "ism": criticalism, evolutionism, intellectualism, etc., and this multitude creates confusion. The bourgeoisie, moreover, has done nothing to clarify the situation, quite the contrary. But we can already sort out all these systems and distinguish two great currents, two clearly opposed conceptions:

1. The scientific conception.
2. The non-scientific conception of the world.

Matter and spirit

When philosophers set out to explain the world, nature, mankind, everything that we Finally, they were called upon to make distinctions. We see for ourselves that there are things, objects that are material, that we see and touch. Then, other realities that we do not see and that we cannot touch or measure, like our ideas.

So we classify things in this way: on the one hand, those that are material; on the other hand, those that are not material. are not material and are in the realm of mind, thought, ideas.

This is how philosophers found themselves in the presence of matter and spirit.

What is matter? What is the spirit?

We have just seen in a general way how we have been led to classify things according to whether they are matter or spirit.

But we must specify that this distinction is made in different forms and with different words.

Thus, instead of talking about spirit we talk about thought, our ideas, our consciousness, the soul, just as when we talk about nature, the world, the earth, being, it is matter that we are talking about.

So again, when Engels, in his book Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, talks about being and thinking, being is matter; thinking is spirit.

To define what is thought or spirit, and what is being or matter, we will say:

Thought is the idea that we have of things; some of these ideas usually come to us from our sensations and correspond to material objects; other ideas, such as those of God, philosophy, infinity, thought itself, do not correspond to material objects. The essential thing we must remember here is that we have ideas, thoughts, feelings, because we see and feel.

Matter or being is what our sensations and perceptions show and present to us, it is, in a general way, everything that surrounds us, what we call the "external world". Example: My sheet of paper is white. Knowing that it is white is an idea, and it is my senses that give me this idea. But the matter is the sheet itself.

That is why, when philosophers talk about the relationship between being and thinking, or between mind and matter, or between consciousness and the brain, etc., it all concerns the same question and means: what is, of matter or mind, of being or thinking, the most important term? Which is the one that precedes the other? This is the fundamental question of philosophy.

The fundamental question or problem of philosophy

Each of us has asked ourselves what we become after death, where the world came from, how the earth was formed. And it is difficult for us to admit that there has always been something. We tend to think that at some point there was nothing. That's why it's easier to believe what religion teaches: "The spirit hovered above the darkness... then came the matter. "In the same way, we wonder where our thoughts are, and so the problem arises for us of the relationship between mind and matter, between brain and thought. There are many other ways of asking the question. For example, what is the relationship between will and power? Will is, here, mind, thought; and power is what is possible, it is being, matter. We also often encounter the question of the relationship between "social consciousness" and "social existence".

The fundamental question of philosophy thus presents itself under different aspects and we can see how important it is to always recognize the way in which this problem of the relationship between matter and spirit arises, because we know that there can only be two answers to this question:

1. a scientific answer.
2. a non-scientific answer.

Idealism and materialism

This is how philosophers have been led to take a stand on this important issue. The first men, completely ignorant, having no knowledge of the world and of themselves, and having only weak technical means to act on the world, attributed to supernatural beings the responsibility for everything that astonished them. In their imaginations, excited by the dreams in which they saw themselves and their fellow creatures living, they came to this conception that each of us had a double existence. Troubled by the idea of this "double", they came to believe that their thoughts and feelings were produced not by their

own bodies, but by a particular soul living in that body and leaving it at the moment of death

This idea of the immortality of the soul and of a possible life of the spirit outside of matter was born later on.

Likewise their weakness, their anxiety before the forces of nature, before all those phenomena which they did not understand and which the state of the art did not allow them to control (germination, storms, floods, etc.) led them to suppose that, behind these forces, there were all-powerful beings, "spirits" or "gods", beneficent or evil, but, in any case, capricious.

In the same way, they believed in gods, in beings more powerful than men, but they imagined them in the form of men or animals, as material bodies. It was only later that souls and gods (and then the One God who replaced the gods) were conceived as pure spirits.

This led to the idea that in reality there are spirits that have a very specific life, completely independent of that of bodies, and that do not need bodies to exist.

Subsequently, this question was posed in a more precise way according to religion, in this form:

Was the world created by God or does it exist from all eternity?

Depending on how they answered this question, philosophers were divided into two main camps

Those who, adopting the non-scientific explanation, admitted the creation of the world by God, i.e. affirmed that spirit had created matter, these were the camp of idealism.

The others, those who tried to give a scientific explanation of the world and thought that nature, matter was the main element, belonged to the different schools of materialism.

Originally, these two expressions, idealism and materialism, did not mean anything other than that.

Idealism and materialism are therefore two opposite and contradictory answers to the fundamental problem of philosophy.

Idealism is the non-scientific conception. Materialism is the scientific conception of the world.

We will see later the proof of this affirmation, but we can say, from now on, that if we observe well in experience that there are bodies without thought, like stones, metals, earth, we never observe, on the other hand, the existence of mind without body.

To end this chapter with an unequivocal conclusion, we see that to answer this question: how is it that man thinks? There can only be two completely different and totally opposite answers:

1. Man thinks because he has a soul.
2. Man thinks because he has a brain.

Depending on which answer we give, we will be trained to give different solutions to the problems that arise from this question.

Depending on our answer, we will be either idealistic or materialistic.

III. Idealism

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Moral idealism and philosophical idealism

We denounced the confusion created by everyday language with regard to materialism. The same confusion is found with regard to idealism.

We must not in fact confuse moral idealism with philosophical idealism.

Moral idealism consists in devoting oneself to a cause, to an ideal. The history of the international labor movement teaches us that an incalculable number of revolutionaries, of Marxists, devoted themselves even to the sacrifice of their lives for a moral ideal, and yet they were the adversaries of this other idealism which one calls idealism. philosophical.

Philosophical idealism is a doctrine based on the explanation of the world by the mind.

It is the doctrine which answers the fundamental question of philosophy by saying: "it is the thought which is the principal element, the most important, the first". And idealism, by affirming the primary importance of thought, affirms that it is this which produces being or, in other words, that "it is the spirit which produces matter".

This is the first form of idealism; it found its full development in religions by affirming that God, "pure spirit", was the creator of matter.

The religion which has claimed and still claims to be outside philosophical discussions is, in reality, on the contrary, the direct and logical representation of idealistic philosophy.

However, science intervening over the centuries, it soon became necessary to explain matter, the world, things other than by God alone. For, from the 16th century, science began to explain the phenomena of nature without taking God into account and by dispensing with the creation hypothesis.

To better combat these scientific, materialist and atheistic explanations, it was therefore necessary to push idealism further and deny the very existence of matter.

This is what an English bishop, Berkeley, who has been called the father of idealism at the beginning of the 18th century.

Why should we study Berkeley's idealism?

The goal of his philosophical system will therefore be to destroy materialism, to try to show us that material substance does not exist. He writes in the preface of his book Dialogues of Hylas and Philonoüs:

If these principles are accepted and regarded as true, it follows that atheism and skepticism are, by the same token, completely shot down, obscure questions cleared up, almost insoluble difficulties solved, and men who enjoyed paradoxes brought back to common sense. [P. 13. Collection "Les classiques pour tous", Librairie Hatier, Pans.]

Thus, for Berkeley, what is true is that matter does not exist and that it is paradoxical to claim the contrary.

We will see how he goes about demonstrating this to us. But I think it's not useless to insist that those who want to study philosophy should take Berkeley's theory very seriously.

I know that Berkeley's theses will make some people smile, but we must not forget that we live in the 20th century and that we benefit from all the studies of the past. And we will see, moreover, when we study materialism and its history, that the materialist philosophers of the past also sometimes make people smile.

It should be known, however, that Diderot, who was, before Marx and Engels, the greatest of materialist thinkers, attached some importance to the Berkeley system, since he described it as a

system which, to the shame of the human spirit and philosophy, is the most difficult to fight, albeit the most absurd of all! (Diderot: " Lettre sur les aveugles ", Textes choisis, t. I, Editions sociales " Classiques du peuple ", p. 87)

Lenin himself devoted many pages to the philosophy of Berkeley and wrote:

The most modern idealistic philosophers have not produced against the materialists any ... argument that one cannot find in Bishop Berkeley. (Lenin: Materialism and Empiriocriticism, p. 18, Social Editions, 1946).

Finally, here is the assessment of Berkeley's immaterialism given in a textbook on the history of philosophy, used in high schools:

A theory which is still imperfect, no doubt, but admirable, and which must destroy forever, in philosophical minds, the belief in the existence of a material substance. (A. Penjon: Précis d'histoire de la philosophie, p. 320-321. Paul Delaplace bookstore).

That is to say the importance for everyone - although for different reasons, as these quotations have shown you - of this philosophical reasoning.

Berkeley's idealism

The purpose of this system is therefore to demonstrate that matter does not exist.

Berkeley said:

Matter is not what we think it is by thinking that it exists outside our mind. We think that things exist because we see them, because we touch them; it is because they give us these sensations that we believe they exist. But our sensations are only ideas that we have in our mind. So the objects that we perceive through our senses are nothing but ideas, and ideas cannot exist outside our mind.

For Berkeley, things exist; he does not deny their nature and existence, but he asserts that they exist only in the form of the sensations that make them known to us, and concludes that our sensations and objects are one and the same thing.

Things exist, that's for sure, but in us, he says, in our mind, and they have no reality outside the mind.

We conceive things with the help of sight; we perceive them with the help of touch; smell tells us about smell; taste tells us about taste; hearing tells us about sound. These different sensations give us ideas, which, combined with each other, make us give them a common name and consider them as objects.

We observe, for example, a certain color, taste, smell, shape, consistency... We recognize this set as an object that we designate from the word apple.

Other combinations of sensations give us

other collections of ideas [that] constitute what is called stone, tree, book and other sensitive objects. (Lenin: quoted work, p. 5.)

So we are victims of illusions when we think, when we know the world and things as external, since all that exists only in our mind. In his book Dialogues of Hylas and Philoüs, Berkeley demonstrates this thesis in the following way:

Isn't it absurd to believe that the same thing at the same time can be different? For example, hot and cold at the same moment? So imagine that one of your hands is hot and the other is cold, and that both of them are immersed at the same time in a vase full of water at an intermediate temperature: won't the water appear hot to one hand and cold to the other? (Idem, p. 21.)

Since it is absurd to believe that a thing at the same time can be, in itself, different, we must conclude that this thing exists only in our mind.

So what does Berkeley do in its method of reasoning and discussion? He strips objects, things, of all their properties.

"You say that objects exist because they have a color, a smell, a flavor, because they are big or small, light or heavy? I will show you that this does not exist in objects, but in our minds.

"Here's a coupon of cloth: you tell me it's red. Is that right? You think the red is in the fabric itself. Is that certain? You know that there are animals with eyes different from ours that will not see this red cloth; likewise a man with jaundice will see it yellow! Then what color is it? It depends, you say? So the red is not in the cloth, but in the eye, in us.

"You say that this cloth is light? If you drop it on an ant, she will certainly find it heavy. Who is right? Do you think it's warm? If you had a fever, you'd think it was cold! So is it hot or cold?

"In a word, if the same things can be red, heavy, hot at the same time for some, and for others exactly the opposite, it is because we are victims of illusions and things only exist in our minds. »

By removing all their properties from objects, we come to say that they only exist in our thinking, that is to say that matter is an idea.

Already, before Berkeley, the Greek philosophers said, and this was right, that certain qualities such as flavor, sound were not in the things themselves, but in us.

But what is new in Berkeley's theory is precisely that he extends this remark to all the qualities of objects.

The Greek philosophers had, in fact, established the following distinction between the qualities of things: On the one hand, the primary qualities, i.e., those that are in objects, such as weight, size, resistance, etc., are the qualities that are in objects.

On the other hand, the second qualities, that is, those that are in us, such as smell, taste, warmth, etc., and that are in objects, such as weight, size, resistance, etc.

Berkeley applies to first qualities the same thesis as to second qualities, namely that all qualities, all properties are not in objects, but in us.

If we look at the sun, we see it round, flat, red. Science teaches us that we are wrong, that the sun is not flat, is not red. We will therefore abstract, with the help of science, certain false properties that we give to the sun, but without concluding that it does not exist! It is however to such a conclusion that Berkeley reaches.

Berkeley was certainly not wrong in showing that the distinction of the ancients did not stand up to scientific analysis, but he commits a fault of reasoning, a sophism, in drawing from these remarks consequences that they do not entail. He shows, in fact, that the qualities of things are not such as our senses show us, that is to say that our senses deceive us and distort material reality, and he concludes immediately that material reality does not exist.

Consequences of "idealistic" reasoning

The thesis being: "Everything exists only in our mind", we must conclude that the outside world does not exist.

Pushing this reasoning to its logical conclusion, we would come to say: "I am the only one who exists, since I only know other men through my ideas, that other men are for me, like material objects, only collections of ideas". This is what in philosophy is called solipsism (which means alone me).

Berkeley, Lenin tells us in his already quoted book, instinctively defends himself against the accusation of supporting such a theory. We even note that solipsism, an extreme form of idealism, has not been supported by any philosopher.

This is why we must try, when discussing with idealists, to emphasize that the reasonings that effectively deny the matter, in order to be logical and consequent, must come to this absurd extremity that is solipsism.

The idealist arguments

We have endeavored to summarize Berkeley's theory as simply as possible, because it was he who, most frankly, set out what philosophical idealism is.

But it is certain that, in order to fully understand this reasoning, which is new to us, it is now indispensable to take it very seriously and to make an intellectual effort. Why? Because we will see later on that, if idealism presents itself in a more hidden way and under the cover of new words and expressions, all idealistic philosophies only take up the arguments of "old Berkeley". (Lenin).

Because we will also see how much, the idealistic philosophy that has dominated and still dominates the official history of philosophy, bringing with it a method of thought that we are impregnated with, has been able to penetrate in us despite an entirely secular education.

The basis of the arguments of all idealistic philosophies being found in the reasoning of Bishop Berkeley, we will therefore, to summarize this chapter, try to identify what are these main arguments and what they try to demonstrate to us.

The spirit creates matter

This, as we know, is the idealistic answer to the fundamental question of philosophy; it is the first form of idealism that is reflected in the different religions, where it is asserted that the spirit created the world.

This assertion can have two meanings:

Either God created the world, and the world really exists outside of us. This is the ordinary idealism of theologies. (Theology is the "science" (!). that deals with God and divine things.)

Or God created the illusion of the world by giving us ideas that do not correspond to any material reality. This is Berkeley's "immaterialist idealism" which wants to prove to us that spirit is the only reality, matter being a product made by our spirit.

This is why the idealists assert that:

The world does not exist outside of our thinking

This is what Berkeley wants to demonstrate to us by saying that we are making a mistake by attributing to things properties and qualities that would be their own, whereas these only exist in our mind.

For the idealists, benches and tables do exist, but only in our thinking, and not outside of us, because

It's our ideas that create things

In other words, things are a reflection of our thinking. Indeed, since it is the mind that creates the illusion of matter, since it is the mind that gives our thought the idea of matter, since the sensations we feel in front of things do not come from things themselves, but only from our thought, the source of the reality of the world and of things is our thought and, therefore, everything that surrounds us does not exist outside our mind and can only be the reflection of our thought.

But since, in the case of Berkeley, our mind would be incapable of creating these ideas by itself, and since, moreover, it does not do what it wants with them (as would happen if it created them on its own), we must admit that it is another, more powerful mind that is the creator. It is therefore God who creates our spirit and imposes on us all the ideas of the world we encounter in it.

These are the main theses on which the idealistic doctrines rest and the answers they bring to the fundamental question of philosophy. It is now time to see what is the response of materialist philosophy to this question and to the problems raised by these theses.

IV. Materialism

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Why should we study materialism?

We have only seen this problem: "What is the relationship between being and thinking? "there can only be two opposite and contradictory answers.

We have studied in the previous chapter the idealistic answer and the arguments presented to defend the idealistic philosophy.

We now have to examine the second answer to this fundamental problem (a problem, let us repeat, which is at the basis of all philosophy) and see what arguments materialism brings to the defense. All the more so because materialism is for us a very important philosophy, since it is that of Marxism.

It is, therefore, indispensable to know materialism well. Indispensable especially because the conceptions of this philosophy are very badly known and have been falsified. Indispensable also because, by our education, by the instruction we have received - whether primary or more developed, - by our habits of living and reasoning, we are all, more or less, without realizing it, impregnated with idealistic conceptions. (We will see, moreover, in other chapters, several examples of this affirmation and why it is so).

It is therefore an absolute necessity for those who want to study marxism to know its basis: materialism.

Where does materialism come from?

We have broadly defined philosophy as an effort to explain the world, the universe. But we know that, according to the state of human knowledge, its explanations have changed and that two attitudes have been adopted throughout the history of humanity to explain the world: one, anti-scientific, calling upon one or more superior minds, upon supernatural forces; the other, scientific, based on facts and experiences.

One of these conceptions is defended by idealistic philosophers; the other by materialists.

This is why, from the very beginning of this book, we have said that the first idea we should have of materialism is that this philosophy represents the "scientific explanation of the universe".

If idealism was born out of human ignorance - and we will see how ignorance was maintained, nurtured in the history of societies by cultural and political forces that shared idealistic conceptions - materialism was born out of the struggle of science against ignorance or obscurantism.

This is why this philosophy was so much fought against and why, in its modern form (dialectical materialism), it is little known, if not ignored or misunderstood by the official academic world.

How and why materialism has evolved

Contrary to the claims of those who fight this philosophy and who say that this doctrine has not evolved for twenty centuries, the history of materialism shows us in this philosophy something alive and always in motion.

Over the centuries, man's scientific knowledge has progressed. At the beginning of the history of thought, in Greek antiquity, scientific knowledge was almost nil, and the first scholars were, at the same time, philosophers, because, at that time, philosophy and the nascent sciences formed a whole, one being the extension of the others.

Later on, as the sciences brought precisions in the explanation of the phenomena of the world, precisions that hindered and even contradicted the dogmas of idealistic philosophies, a conflict was born between philosophy and the sciences.

The sciences being in contradiction with the official philosophy of that time, it had become necessary for them to separate from it. Also

they were in no more hurry than to free themselves from the philosophical hodgepodge and leave the philosophers the vast hypotheses to make contact with restricted problems, those which are ripe for a solution in the near future. So this distinction is made between science... and philosophy. (René Maublanc: la Vie ouvrière, November 25, 1935).

But materialism, born with the sciences, linked to them and dependent on them, has progressed, evolved with them, to arrive, with modern materialism, that of Marx and Engels, at reuniting, once again, science and philosophy in dialectical materialism.

We will study this history and this evolution, which are linked to the progress of civilization, but we already see, and this is what is very important to remember, that materialism and science are linked to each other and that materialism is absolutely dependent on science.

It remains for us to establish and define the bases of materialism, bases that are common to all philosophies which, under different aspects, claim to be materialistic.

What are the arguments and principles of materialism?

To answer, we must return to the fundamental question of philosophy, that of the relationship between being and thinking: which of one or the other is the main one?

The materialists affirm first of all that there is a determined relationship between being and thinking, between matter and spirit. For them, it is the being, the matter, which is the first reality, the first thing, and the spirit which is the second, posterior reality, dependent on the matter.

Therefore, for materialists, it is not spirit or God who created the world and matter, but it is the world, matter, nature that created spirit:

Spirit is itself only the superior product of matter. (Friedrich Engels: Ludwig Feuerbach, p. 18.)

This is why, if we take up the question we asked in the second chapter: "Where does man think? "the materialists answer that man thinks because he has a brain and that thought is the product of the brain. For them, there can be no thought without matter, without a body.

Our consciousness and our thought, however transcendent they may seem to us, are only products of a material, bodily organ, the brain. (Idem, p. 18.)

Therefore, for materialists, matter, being are something real, existing outside of our thought, and do not need thought or mind to exist. Likewise, since spirit cannot exist without matter, there is no immortal soul independent of the body.

Contrary to what the idealists say, the things around us exist independently of us: they are what give us our thoughts; and our ideas are only the reflection of things in our brain.

This is why, in front of the second aspect of the question of the relationship between being and thinking: -

What relationship is there between our ideas about the surrounding world and this world itself? Is our thought in a state to know the real world? Can we, in our conceptions of the real world, reproduce a faithful image of reality? This question is called in philosophical language the question of the identity of thought and being. (Friedrich Engels: Ludwig Feuerbach, p. 15.)

- Materialists affirm: Yes! we can know the world, and the ideas we have of it are more and more correct, since we can study it with the help of science, that science proves us continuously by experience that the things around us have a reality of their own, independent of us, and that these things, men can already partly reproduce them, create them artificially.

To sum up, we will say that the materialists, faced with the fundamental problem of philosophy, assert:

It is matter that creates the spirit

It is matter that produces spirit and, scientifically, we have never seen spirit without matter.

Matter exists outside any spirit

Matter exists outside of all mind and it does not need mind to exist, having an existence that is particular to it, and, therefore, contrary to what idealists say, it is not our ideas that create things, but, on the contrary, it is things that give us our ideas.

Science and experience allow us to know things

We are capable of knowing the world, the ideas we have of matter and of the world are becoming more and more accurate, since, with the help of science, we can clarify what we already know and discover what we do not know.

See:

V. Which is right, idealism or materialism?

How we should pose the problem

Now that we know the theses of the idealists and the materialists, we will try to find out who is right.

Let us recall that we must first of all note, on the one hand, that these theses are absolutely opposed and contradictory; on the other hand, that as soon as one defends one or the other theory, it leads us to conclusions which, by their consequences, are very important.

To know who is right, we must refer to the three points by which we have summarized each argument.

The idealists say:

1. 1. That it is spirit that creates matter;
2. That matter does not exist outside our thinking, that it is therefore for us only an illusion;
3. That it is our ideas that create things. Materialists, on the other hand, affirm exactly the opposite.

To facilitate our work, we must first study what is common sense and what surprises us most.

1. Is it true that the world exists only in our thinking?
2. Is it true that it is our ideas that create things?

These are two arguments defended by Berkeley's "immaterialist" idealism, whose conclusions lead, as in all theologies, to our third question:

3. Is it true that spirit creates matter?

These are very important questions since they relate to the fundamental problem of philosophy. It is, therefore, by discussing them that we will know who is right, and they are particularly interesting for materialists, in that materialist answers to these questions are common to all materialist philosophies - and, therefore, to dialectical materialism.

Is it true that the world only exists in our thinking?

Before studying this question, we need to situate two philosophical terms that we are called upon to use and that we will often encounter in our readings.

Subjective reality (which means: reality that exists only in our thinking).

Objective reality (reality that exists outside of our thinking).

Idealists say that the world is not an objective reality, but a subjective one.

Materialists say that the world is an objective reality.

To show us that the world and things exist only in our thinking, Bishop Berkeley breaks them down into their properties (color, size, density, etc.). He shows us that these properties, which vary according to individuals, are not in the things themselves, but in the minds of each of us. He deduces that matter is a set of non-objective, but subjective properties and that, consequently, it does not exist.

If we take again the example of the sun, Berkeley asks us if we believe in the objective reality of the red disc, and he shows us with his method of discussing properties, that the sun is not red and is not a disc. Therefore, the sun is not an objective reality, because it does not exist by itself, but it is a simple subjective reality, since it exists only in our thinking.

Materialists say that the sun exists anyway, not because we see it as a flat, red disc, because that is naive realism, that of the children and the first men who had only their senses to control reality, but they say that the sun exists by invoking science. Science allows us, in fact, to rectify the errors that our senses make us commit.

But we must, in this example of the sun, clearly pose the problem.

With Berkeley, we will say that the sun is not a disk and that it is not red, but we do not accept its conclusions: the negation of the sun as an objective reality.

We are not discussing the properties of things, but their existence.

We do not discuss whether our senses deceive us and distort material reality, but whether this reality exists outside our senses.

Well! The materialists assert the existence of this reality outside us and they provide arguments that are science itself.

What do idealists do to show us that they are right? They argue about words, make great speeches, write many pages.

Let us suppose for a moment that they are right. If the world exists only in our thinking, then the world did not exist before mankind? We know that this is true, since science shows us that man appeared very late on earth. Some idealists will then tell us that before man there were animals and that thought could inhabit them. But we know that before the animals there was an uninhabitable earth on which no organic life was possible. Still others will tell us that even if only the solar system existed and man did not exist, thought and spirit existed in God. This is how we arrive at the supreme form of idealism. We have to choose between God and science. Idealism cannot sustain itself without God, and God cannot exist without idealism.

So this is exactly how the problem of idealism and materialism arises: Who is right? God or science?

God is a pure spirit creator of matter, an affirmation without proof.

Science is going to show us by practice and experience that the world is an objective reality and will allow us to answer the question:

Is it true that it is our ideas that create things?

Take, for example, a bus that passes as we cross the street in the company of an idealist with whom we discuss whether things have an objective or subjective reality and whether it is true that it is our ideas that create things. Of course, if we don't want to be crushed, we will be very careful. Therefore, in practice, the idealist is obliged to recognize the existence of the bus. For him, practically speaking, there is no difference between an objective bus and a subjective bus, and this is so right that practice provides the proof that idealists, in life, are materialists.

We can, on this subject, cite many examples where we would see that the idealistic philosophers and those who support this philosophy do not disdain certain 'objective' baseness to obtain what, for them, is only subjective reality!

This is why we no longer see anyone asserting, like Berkeley, that the world does not exist. The arguments are much more subtle and hidden.

It is therefore, according to Lenin's words, "the criterion of practice" that will allow us to confuse the idealists.

The latter, moreover, will not fail to say that theory and practice are not the same, and that they are two quite different things. This is not true. If a conception is right or wrong, it is practice alone which, through experience, will demonstrate it to us.

The example of the bus shows that the world therefore has an objective reality and is not an illusion created by our mind.

It remains to be seen now, since Berkeley's theory of immaterialism cannot stand up to the sciences nor can it withstand the criterion of practice, if, as all the conclusions of idealistic philosophies, religions and theologies affirm, the mind creates matter.

Is it true that spirit creates matter?

As we have seen above, the spirit, for idealists, has its supreme form in God. It is the final answer, the conclusion of their theory, and that is why the mind-matter problem arises in the last analysis, of who, the idealist or the materialist, is right, in the form of the problem: 'God or science'.

Idealists assert that God has existed from all eternity, and that, having undergone no change, he is always the same. He is the pure spirit, for whom time and space do not exist. He is the creator of matter.

To support their affirmation of God, here again the idealists do not present any arguments.

To defend the creator of matter, they resort to a lot of mysteries, which a scientific mind cannot accept.

When we go back to the origins of science and we see that it was in the heart and because of their great ignorance that primitive men forged in their minds the idea of God, we see that the idealists of the 20th century continue, like the first men, to ignore everything that patient and persevering work has made it possible to know. For, in the end, God, for the idealists, cannot be explained, and there remains for them a belief without any proof. When the idealists want to "prove" to us the necessity of the creation of the world by saying that matter could not always have existed, that it had to have a birth, they resort to a God who never had a beginning. In what way is this explanation clearer?

To support their arguments, the materialists, on the contrary, will use the science that men have developed as they pushed back the "limits of their ignorance".

But does science allow us to think that the spirit created matter? No.

The idea of creation by a pure spirit is incomprehensible because we know nothing of the sort in experience. For this to be possible, it would have been necessary, as idealists say, that spirit existed alone before matter, whereas science shows us that this is not possible and that there is no spirit without matter. On the contrary, mind is always linked to matter, and we see in particular that the mind of man is linked to the brain, which is the source of our ideas and thought. Science does not allow us to conceive that ideas exist in a vacuum...

It would therefore be necessary for the mind of God, in order for it to exist, to have a brain. This is why we can say that it is not God who created matter, therefore man, but that it is matter, in the form of the human brain, that created the God-mind.

We will see further on whether science gives us the possibility to believe in a God, or in something over which time would have no effect and for which space, movement and change would not exist.

Already now we can conclude. In their answer to the fundamental problem of philosophy:

The materialists are right and science proves their assertions

Materialists are right to assert:

1. Against Berkeley's idealism and against the philosophers who hide behind his immaterialism: that the world and things, on the one hand, exist well outside our thought and that they do not need our thought to exist; on the other hand, that it is not our ideas that create things, but that, on the contrary, it is the things that give us our ideas.
2. Against all idealistic philosophies, because their conclusions end in affirming the creation of matter by spirit, that is to say, in the last instance, in affirming the existence of God and in supporting theologies, materialists, relying on science, assert and prove that it is matter which creates spirit and that they do not need the “God hypothesis” to explain the creation of matter.

Note — We have to be careful how idealists pose problems. They claim that God created man when we saw that it was man who created God. They also assert, on the other hand, that it is spirit that created matter when we see that it is, in truth, exactly the opposite. This is a way of reversing the perspectives that we had to point out.

Further reading

Lenin: Materialism and empiriocriticism

Engels: Ludwig Feuerbach

VI. Is there a third philosophy? Agnosticism

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Why a third philosophy?

It may seem to us, after these first chapters, that, after all, it must be quite easy to recognize ourselves in the midst of all philosophical reasoning, since only two great currents share all the theories: idealism and materialism. And that, moreover, the arguments that militate in favor of materialism carry the conviction in a definitive way.

It thus appears that, after some examination, we have found our way back to the philosophy of reason: materialism.

But things are not so simple. As we have already pointed out, modern idealists do not have Bishop Berkeley's frankness. They present their ideas

with much more artifice, in a form obscured by the use of "new" terminology intended to make naive people take them for the "most modern" philosophy. (Lenin: Materialism and empiriocriticism, p. 9).

We have seen that to the fundamental question of philosophy two answers can be given, which are totally opposed, contradictory and irreconcilable. These two answers are very clear and do not allow for any confusion.

And, in fact, until about 1710, the problem was posed as follows: on the one hand, those who asserted the existence of matter outside our thinking - these were the materialists; - on the other hand, those who, with Berkeley, denied the existence of matter and claimed that it exists only in us, in our minds - these were the idealists.

But, at that time, as the sciences progressed, other philosophers intervened, who tried to separate the idealists from the materialists, creating a philosophical current that created confusion between these two theories, and this confusion has its source in the search for a third philosophy.

Argumentation of this third philosophy

The basis of this philosophy, which was developed after Berkeley, is that it is useless to try to know the real nature of things and that we will only ever know appearances.

This is why this philosophy is called agnosticism (from the Greek a, negation, and gnosticos, capable of knowing; therefore "incapable of knowing").

According to the agnostics, one cannot know whether the world is, at its core, spirit or nature. It is possible for us to know the appearance of things, but we cannot know their reality.

Let us take the example of the sun. We have seen that it is not, as the first men thought, a flat, red disc. This disc was therefore only an illusion, an appearance (appearance is the superficial idea that we have of things; it is not their reality).

This is why, considering that idealists and materialists argue about whether things are matter or spirit, whether or not these things exist outside our thinking, whether or not it is possible for us to know them, agnostics say that we can know appearance well, but never reality.

Our senses, they say, allow us to see and feel things, to know their external aspects, their appearances; these appearances therefore exist for us; they constitute what is called, in philosophical language, the "thing for us". But we cannot know the thing independent of us, with its own reality, what is called the "thing in itself".

Idealists and materialists, who continually discuss these subjects, are comparable to two men who would have one of the blue glasses, the other of the pink glasses, walking in the snow and arguing over what is the true color of the snow. Suppose they would never be able to take off - their glasses. Will they ever be able to know the true color of the snow?.... No. Well! idealists and materialists arguing over who is right and who is wrong wear blue and pink glasses. They will never know reality. They will have a knowledge of snow "for them"; everyone will see it in their own way, but they will never know snow "in itself". This is the reasoning of agnostics.

Where does this philosophy come from?

The founders of this philosophy were Hume (1711-1776), who was Scottish, and Kant (1724-1804), a German. Both tried to reconcile idealism and materialism.

Here is a passage from Hume's reasoning quoted by Lenin in his book Materialism and empiriocriticism:

It may be taken for granted that men are inclined by their natural instinct ... to trust their senses, and that, without the slightest reasoning, we always assume the existence of an external universe, which does not depend on our perception and which would exist if even we were annihilated with all sentient beings ...

But this primordial and universal opinion is promptly shaken by the most superficial philosophy, which teaches us that nothing but images or perception will ever be accessible to our mind and that sensations are only channels followed by these images and are not in a position to establish themselves a direct relationship, whatever it may be, between the mind and the object. The table we see seems smaller when we move away from it, but the real table, which exists independently of us, does not change; our mind has therefore perceived nothing but the image of the table. These are the obvious indications of reason. (Lenin: Book quoted, p. 14.)

We see that Hume first of all admits what falls under the common sense: Pc existence of an external universe "which does not depend on us. But he immediately refuses to admit this existence as an objective reality. For him, this existence is nothing more than an image, and our senses which observe this existence, this image, are incapable of establishing any relation whatsoever between spirit and object.

In a word, we live in the midst of things as in the cinema, where we observe on the screen the image of objects, their existence, but where, behind the images themselves, that is, behind the screen, there is nothing.

Now, if we want to know how our mind knows about objects, it may be due to the energy of our intelligence itself or to the action of some invisible and unknown mind, or to some even less known cause. (Idem.)

Its consequences

Here is an attractive theory which, moreover, is very widespread. We find it in different aspects, throughout history, among philosophical theories and, nowadays, among all those who claim to "remain neutral and maintain themselves in a scientific reserve".

We therefore need to examine whether this reasoning is correct and what consequences flow from it.

If it is really impossible for us, as agnostics assert, to know the true nature of things and if our knowledge is limited to their appearances, then we cannot affirm the existence of objective reality, and we cannot know whether things exist by themselves. For us, for example, the bus is an objective reality; the agnostic tells us that it is not certain, that we cannot know if the bus is a thought or a reality. He therefore forbids us to maintain that our thinking is a reflection of things. We see that we are there in the middle of idealistic reasoning, because, between affirming that things do not exist or simply that we cannot know if they exist, the difference is not great!

We have seen that the agnostic distinguishes between "things for us" and "things in themselves". The study of things for us is therefore possible: this is science: but the study of things in themselves is impossible, because we cannot know what exists outside of us.

The result of this reasoning is the following: the agnostic accepts science; and, since science can only be made on the condition of expelling all supernatural forces from nature, before science it is materialistic.

But he hastens to add that, since science only gives us appearances, nothing proves, moreover, that there is not in reality anything other than matter, or even that there is matter or that God does not exist. Human reason cannot know anything about it and therefore has no business interfering in it. If there are other ways of knowing "things in themselves," such as religious faith, the agnostic does not want to know it either and does not recognize the right to discuss it.

The agnostic is, therefore, as regards the conduct of life and the construction of science, a materialist, but he is a materialist who does not dare to assert his materialism and who seeks above all not to attract difficulties with idealists, not to enter into conflict with religions. He is "a shameful materialist. (Engels: Utopian Socialism and Scientific Socialism, Introduction, p. 23, Editions sociales, 1959).

The consequence is that by doubting the profound value of science, by seeing in it only appearances, this third philosophy proposes that we attribute no truth to science and consider it perfectly useless to seek to know something, to try to contribute to progress.

Agnostics say: In the past, men saw the sun as a flat disk and believed that this was the reality; they were wrong. Today, science tells us that the sun is not as we see it, and claims to explain everything. We know, however, that it is often wrong, one day destroying what it built the day before. Error yesterday, truth today, but error tomorrow. Thus, argue the agnostics, we cannot know; reason brings us no certainty. And if means other than reason, such as religious faith, claim to give us absolute certainties, it is not even science that can prevent us from believing it. By diminishing confidence in science, agnosticism thus prepares the way for the return of religions.

How can we refute this "third" philosophy?

We have seen that, to prove their claims, materialists use not only science, but also experience, which allows them to control science. Thanks to the "criterium of practice" one can know, one can know things.

Agnostics tell us that it is impossible to assert that the outside world exists or does not exist.

However, through practice, we know that the world and things exist. We know that the ideas we have about things are well-founded, that the relationships we have established between things and ourselves are real.

As long as we use these objects for our own purposes based on the qualities we perceive in them, we put the accuracy or inaccuracy of our sensory perceptions to an infallible test. If these perceptions are false, then the use of the object suggested by them is false; therefore our attempt must fail. But if we succeed in reaching our goal, if we find that the object corresponds to the representation we have of it, that it gives what we expected from its use, it is the positive proof that, within these limits, our perceptions of the object and its qualities correspond to the reality outside of us. And if, on the other hand, we fail, we usually do not take long to discover the cause of our failure; we find that the perception that served as a basis for our attempt was either incomplete or superficial in itself, or had been linked in a way that reality did not justify to the data of other perceptions. This is what we call flawed reasoning. As often as we take care to educate and use our senses correctly and to confine our action within the limits prescribed by our correctly obtained and correctly used perceptions, as often we will find that the result of our action demonstrates the conformity of our perceptions with the objective nature of the objects perceived. So far there is not a single example that the scientifically controlled perceptions of our senses have generated in our brain representations of the external world that are, by their very nature, at odds with reality, or that there is an immanent incompatibility between the external world and the sensitive perceptions we have of it (Engels: Utopian Socialism and Scientific Socialism, Introduction, p. 24).

Taking up Engels' phrase, we will say "the proof of the pudding is that you eat it" (English proverb). If it did not exist, or if it was only an idea, after eating it, our hunger would not be alleviated at all. Thus it is perfectly possible for us to know things, to see if our ideas correspond to reality. It is possible for us to control the data of science through experience and industry that translate the theoretical results of science into practical applications. The reason we can make synthetic rubber is that science knows the "thing itself" that is rubber.

So we see that it is not useless to try to find out who is right, because through the theoretical errors that science can make, experience always gives us proof that science is right.

Conclusion

Since the 18th century, among the various thinkers who have borrowed to a greater or lesser extent from agnosticism, we see that this philosophy is sometimes torn by idealism and sometimes by materialism. Under cover of new words, as Lenin says, even pretending to use science to support their reasoning, they only create confusion between the two theories, allowing some to have a convenient philosophy, which gives them the possibility to declare that they are not idealists because they use science, but that they are not materialists either, because they don't dare to go to the end of their arguments, because they are not consequent.

What then is agnosticism, says Engels, if not shameful materialism? The agnostic's conception of nature is entirely materialistic. The entire natural world is governed by laws and does not admit the intervention of external action; but he adds, as a precaution: "We do not possess the means to affirm or deny the existence of any supreme being beyond the known universe. "(Engels: Utopian Socialism and Scientific Socialism, Introduction, p. 23).

This philosophy thus plays into the hands of idealism and, in the end, because they are inconsistent in their reasoning, agnostics end up with idealism. Scratch off the agnostic," says Lenin, "and you will find the idealist. »

We have seen that one can know who is right about materialism or idealism.

We now see that the theories that claim to reconcile these two philosophies can, in fact, only support idealism, that they do not provide a third answer to the fundamental question of philosophy and that, consequently, there is no third philosophy.

Further reading

Lenin: Materialism and empiriocriticism

Engels: Ludwig Feuerbach

Engels: Socialism: utopian and scientific

See: Control questions

The philosophical materialism

I. The material and the materialists

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After defining:

First, the ideas common to all materialists, second, the arguments of all materialists against idealistic philosophies, and finally, demonstrating the error of agnosticism, we will draw conclusions from this teaching and strengthen our materialist arguments by providing our answers to the following two questions:

1. What is matter?
2. What does it mean to be materialistic?

What is matter?

Importance of the issue. Whenever we have a problem to solve, we need to ask the questions clearly. In fact, here it is not so easy to give a satisfactory answer. To do so, we must make a theory of matter.

In general, people think that matter is what can be touched, what is strong and hard. In ancient Greece, this is how matter was defined.

We know today, thanks to science, that this is not true.

Successive theories of matter

(Our goal is to review the various theories relating to matter as simply as possible, without going into scientific explanations.)

In Greece, it was believed that matter was a full and impenetrable reality that could not be divided into infinity. A moment arrives, it was said, when the pieces are no longer divisible; and we called these particles atoms (atom = indivisible). A table is then an agglomerate of atoms. It was also believed that these atoms were different from each other: there were smooth and round atoms like those of oil, others rough and hooked, like those of vinegar.

It was Democritus, a materialist of antiquity, who established this theory; he was the first to try to give a materialistic explanation of the world. He thought, for example, that the human body was made up of coarse atoms, that the soul was an agglomeration of finer atoms and, as he admitted the existence of gods and yet wanted to explain everything as a materialist , he claimed that the gods themselves were made up of super-fine atoms.

In the 19th century this theory changed profoundly.

It was always thought that matter divided into atoms, that the latter were very hard particles attracting each other. The theory of the Greeks had been abandoned, and these atoms were no longer hooked or smooth, but it was still argued that they were impenetrable, indivisible and undergoing a movement of attraction towards each other.

Today, it is demonstrated that the atom is not an impenetrable and indivisible grain of matter (that is to say indivisible), but that it is itself composed of particles called electrons rotating at very high speed. around a nucleus where almost all of the atom's mass is condensed. If the atom is neutral, electrons and nucleus have an electric charge, but the positive charge of the nucleus is equal to the sum of the negative charges carried by the electrons. Matter is an agglomeration of these atoms, and if it opposes a resistance to penetration, it is because of the very movement of the particles that compose it.

The discovery of these electrical properties of matter, and in particular the discovery of electrons, provoked at the beginning of the twentieth century an assault by idealists against the very existence of matter. “The electron has nothing material, they claimed. It is nothing more than an electric charge in motion. If there is no matter in the negative charge, why would there be any in the positive nucleus? So matter has vanished. There is only energy! "

Lenin, in Materialism and empiriocriticism (chapter V), put things right by showing that energy and matter are inseparable. Energy is material, and movement is only the mode of existence of matter. In short, the idealists interpreted the discoveries of science backwards. At the time when this one highlighted aspects of the matter ignored until then, they concluded that the matter does not exist, under the pretext that it does not conform to the idea that one had of it. long ago, when we believed that matter and motion were two distinct realities. (Part II of this chapter has been revised with the help of Luce Langevin and Jean Orcel. On the progress made since the beginning of the century in the study of the structure of matter, see F. Joliot-Curie: Selected texts , Social editions, p. 85-89.)

What is matter for materialists

On this subject, it is essential to make a distinction: it is a question of seeing first :

1. What is matter?

then

2. What is matter like?

The materialists' answer to the first question is that matter is an external reality, independent of spirit, and does not need spirit to exist. Lenin says on this subject:

The notion of matter expresses only the objective reality that is given to us in sensation. (Lenin: Materialism and empiriocriticism, p. 250).

Now, to the second question: "What is matter like? "the materialists say: "It is not for us to answer, it is for science. »

The first answer is invariable from antiquity to the present day.

The second answer has varied and must vary because it depends on the sciences, on the state of human knowledge. It is not a definitive answer.

We see that it is absolutely indispensable to pose the problem well and not to let the idealists mix up the two questions. It is necessary to separate them well, to show that it is the first which is the main one, and that our answer to it has always been invariable.

For the only "property" of matter whose admission defines philosophical materialism is to be an objective reality, to exist outside our consciousness. (Lenin: Idem, p. 22)

Space, time, movement and matter

If we affirm, because we see it, that matter exists outside of us, we also specify:

1. That matter exists in time and space.
2. That matter is in motion.

Idealists, on the other hand, think that space and time are ideas of our mind (Kant was the first to support this). For them, space is a form that we give to things, space is born from the mind of man. The same goes for time.

The materialists affirm, on the contrary, that space is not in us, but that it is we who are in space. They also affirm that time is an indispensable condition for the unfolding of our life; and that, consequently, time and space are inseparable from what exists outside of us, that is, from matter.

... The fundamental forms of any being are space and time, and a being outside of time is as great an absurdity as a being outside of space. (Friedrich Engels: Anti-Dühring, Editions sociales, 1956, P. 84).

We therefore believe that there is a reality independent of consciousness. We all believe that the world has existed before us and will continue to exist after us. We believe that the world, in order to exist, does not need us. We believe that Paris existed before we were born and that unless it is definitively razed it will exist after our death. We are certain that Paris exists, even when we don't think about it, just as there are tens of thousands of cities that we have never visited, whose names we don't even know, and which nevertheless exist. This is the general conviction of humanity. Science has given this argument a precision and solidity that nullifies all idealistic finery.

The natural sciences affirm positively that the earth existed in such states that neither man nor any living being inhabited it and could not inhabit it. Organic matter is a late phenomenon, the product of a very long evolution. (Lenin: cited work, p. 52.)

If the sciences thus provide us with proof that matter exists in time and space, they teach us, at the same time, that matter is in motion. This last precision, which is provided to us by modern science, is very important because it destroys the old theory that matter is incapable of motion, inert.

Motion is the mode of existence of matter... Matter without motion is as inconceivable as motion without matter. (Friedrich Engels: Anti-Dühring, p. 92).

We know that the world in its present state is the result, in all fields, of a long evolution and, consequently, the result of a slow but continuous movement. We thus specify, after having demonstrated the existence of matter, that

the universe is only moving matter, and this moving matter can only move in space and time. (Lenin: quoted work, p. 14.)

Conclusion

It follows from these observations that the idea of God, the idea of a "pure spirit" creator of the universe, is meaningless, because a God outside of space and time is something that cannot exist.

It is necessary to share the idealistic mysticism, consequently not to admit any scientific control, to believe in a God existing outside time, that is to say not existing at any time, and existing outside space, that is to say not existing anywhere.

Materialists, strengthened by the conclusions of science, affirm that matter exists in space and at a certain moment (in time). Therefore, the universe could not have been created, because it would have taken God to create the world at a moment that was at no time (since time for God does not exist) and it would also have taken the world out of nothing.

In order to admit creation, one must therefore first admit that there was a moment when the universe did not exist, and then that out of nothing something came out, which science cannot admit.

We see that the idealistic arguments, confronted with science, cannot be supported, while those of the materialist philosophers cannot be separated from the sciences themselves. We thus underline, once again, the intimate relationship between materialism and science.

Further reading

Lenin: Materialism and empiriocriticism,

Engels: Anti-Dühring

II. What does it mean to be a materialist?

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Union of theory and practice

The purpose of our study is to make known what Marxism is, to see how the philosophy of materialism, by becoming dialectical, identifies itself with Marxism. We already know that one of the foundations of this philosophy is the close connection between theory and practice.

This is why, after having seen what matter is for materialists, and then how matter is, it is indispensable to say, after these two theoretical questions, what it means to be materialist, that is to say how the materialist acts. This is the practical side of these problems.

The basis of materialism is the recognition of being as the source of thought. But is it enough to keep repeating this? To be a true partisan of consequent materialism, one must be: 1. in the field of thought; 2. in the field of action.

What does it mean to be a supporter of materialism in the field of thought?

To be a partisan of materialism in the field of thought is, knowing the fundamental formula of materialism: being produces thought, knowing how this formula can be applied.

When we say: being produces thought, we have here an abstract formula, because the words: being and thought are abstract words. Being" is being in general; "thought" is thought in general that we want to talk about. Being, as well as thought in general, is a subjective reality (see part one, chapter IV, the explanation of "subjective reality" and "objective reality"); it does not exist: it is what is called an abstraction. To say: "being produces thought" is thus an abstract formula, because it is composed of abstractions.

So, for example: we know a lot about horses, but if we talk about the horse, it is the horse in general that we want to talk about; well! the horse in general is an abstraction.

If we put in the place of the horse, man or being in general, they are still abstractions.

But if the horse in general doesn't exist, what does exist? It's the horses in particular. The veterinarian who would say: "I treat the horse in general, but not the horse in particular" would be laughed at, as would the doctor who would say the same thing about men.

So there is no such thing as being in general, but there are special beings with special qualities. It is the same with thinking.

We will therefore say that being in general is something abstract, and that particular being is something concrete; thus of thought in general and of particular thought.

The materialist is the one who knows how to recognize in all situations, who knows how to concretize where is the being and where is the thought.

Example: The brain and our ideas.

We must know how to transform the abstract general formula into a concrete formula. The materialist will thus identify the brain as being and our ideas as being the thought. He will reason while saying: it is the brain (the being) which produces our ideas (the thought). This is a simple example, but let's take the more complex example of human society and see how a materialist will reason.

The life of society is composed (roughly) of an economic life and a political life. What is the relationship between economic life and political life?... What is the primary factor in this abstract formula that we want to make a concrete formula?

For the materialist, the first factor, that is to say, the being, the one that gives life to society, is economic life. The second factor, the thought that is created by the being, which can only live through it, is political life.

The materialist will therefore say that economic life explains political life, since political life is a product of economic life.

This statement, made here summarily, is at the root of what is called historical materialism and was first made by Marx and Engels.

Here is another more delicate example: the poet. Certainly, there are many elements involved in explaining "the poet," but here we want to show one aspect of this question.

We will generally say that the poet writes because he is driven by inspiration. Is that enough to explain that the poet writes this rather than that? No. The poet may have thoughts in his head, but he is also a being who lives in society. We will see that the first factor, the one that gives the poet his own life, is society, since the second factor is the ideas that the poet has in his brain. Therefore, one of the elements, the fundamental element, that "explains" the poet will be society, that is, the environment in which he lives in that society. (We will find the "poet" again when we study the dialectic, because then we will have all the elements to study this problem properly).

We can see from these examples that the materialist is the one who knows how to apply the formula of materialism everywhere and always, at every moment, and in every case.

How is materialism in practice?

First aspect of the question

We have seen that there is no third philosophy and that if one is not consistent in the application of materialism, one is either idealistic or one obtains a mixture of idealism and materialism.

The bourgeois scholar, in his studies and in his experiences, is always materialist. This is normal, because, in order to advance science, it is necessary to work on matter, and if the scientist really believed that matter exists only in his mind, he would find it useless to make experiments.

So there are several varieties of scientists:

1. Scientists who are conscious and consequent materialists. (See P. Langevin: La Pensée et l'action, Editeurs français réunis, Paris).

1. Scientists who are materialists without knowing it: i.e. almost all of them, because it is impossible to do science without positing the existence of matter. But, among the latter, one must distinguish:

1. 1. Those who begin to follow materialism, but who stop, because they don't dare to call themselves such: these are the agnostics, those whom Engels calls the "shameful materialists".

1. 1. Then there are the scholars, unknowingly materialistic and inconsequential. They are materialists in the laboratory, then, when they come out of their work, they are idealists, believers, religious.

In fact, the latter did not know or did not want to put their ideas in order. They are in perpetual contradiction with themselves. They separate their work, necessarily materialistic, from their philosophical conceptions. They are "scientists", and yet, if they do not expressly deny the existence of matter, they think, which is unscientific, that it is useless to know the real nature of things. They are "scientists" and yet they believe without any proof in impossible things. (See the case of Pasteur, Branly and others who were believers, whereas the scientist, if he is consistent, must abandon his religious belief). Science and belief are absolutely opposed.

Second aspect of the question

Materialism and action: If it is true that the true materialist is the one who applies the formula that is at the basis of this philosophy everywhere and in all cases, he must be careful to apply it well.

As we have just seen, one must be consequent, and to be a consequent materialist, one must transpose materialism into action.

To be a materialist in practice is to act in accordance with philosophy, taking reality as the first and most important factor, and thought as the second factor.

We are going to see what attitudes are taken by those who, without realizing it, take thought as the first factor and are therefore at this moment idealistic without knowing it.

1. What do we call the one who lives as if he were alone in the world? The individualist. He lives closed in on himself; the outside world exists only for him alone. For him, the important thing is him, it is his thought. He is a pure idealist, or what is called a solipsist. (See explanation of this word, Part I, Chapter II.)

The individualist is selfish, and being selfish is not a materialistic attitude. The egoist limits the universe to his own person.

2. He who learns for the sake of learning, as a dilettante, for himself, assimilates well, has no difficulties, but keeps it to himself. He attaches primary importance to himself, to his thought.

The idealist is closed to the outside world, to reality. The materialist is always open to reality; that is why those who take Marxist courses and who learn easily must try to transmit what they have learned.

3. He who reasons about all things in relation to himself undergoes an idealistic deformation.

He will say, for example, of a meeting where things were said that were unpleasant to him: "This is a bad meeting. This is not the way to analyze things; one must judge the meeting in relation to the organization, to its purpose, and not in relation to oneself.

4. Sectarianism is not a materialistic attitude either. Because the sectarian has understood the problems, because he agrees with himself, he claims that others should be like him. It is still giving primary importance to oneself or to a sect.
5. The doctrinaire who has studied the texts, has drawn definitions from them, is still an idealist when he is content to quote materialist texts, when he lives only with his texts, because then the real world disappears. He repeats these formulas without applying them in reality. He gives primary importance to the texts, to the ideas. Life unfolds in his consciousness in the form of texts, and, in general, we see that the doctrinaire is also sectarian.

To believe that the revolution is a question of education, to say that in explaining "once and for all" to the workers the necessity of the revolution they must understand and that if they do not want to understand, it is not worth trying to make the revolution, that is sectarianism and not a materialist attitude.

We have to note the cases where people do not understand; we have to look for reasons why this is so, note the repression, the propaganda of the bourgeois newspapers, radio, cinema, etc., and look for all possible means to make people understand what we want, through leaflets, brochures, newspapers, schools, etc.

To have no sense of reality, to live in the moon and, practically, to make projects without taking into account the situations, the realities, is an idealistic attitude that gives primary importance to beautiful projects without seeing if they are feasible or not. Those who continually criticize, but do nothing to make things better, proposing no remedies, those who lack critical sense themselves, all of them are inconsistent materialists.

III. History of materialism

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The defects of pre-marxist materialism

See: Control questions

Study of metaphysics

What is the "metaphysical method"?

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The explanation of the word: "metaphysics"

See: Control questions

Study of dialectics

Introduction to the study of dialectics

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The laws of dialectics

I. The dialectical change

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II. Reciprocal action

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III. Contradiction

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IV. Transformation of quantity into quality or the law of progress by leaps

Historical materialism

History is the work of people

See: Control questions

The historical materialism

The driving forces of history

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Where do classes and economic conditions come from?

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Remarks

See: Control questions

Dialectical materialism and ideologies

Application of the dialectical method to ideologies

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Conclusion

See: Control questions