Comrade:Cassette/notes/Elementry principles of philosophy (Georges Politzer)

Part 1: The Philosophical Problem

1. Introduction

Summary: The worker needs to practice dialectical materialism in order to connect theory to practice to carry out a just revolution. This method of analysis and reasoning can solve all problems and is the basis of Marxist philosophy. It wholly stems from and evolves with science.

Dialectical Materialism

• Connects theory to practice

What is the method of analysis and reasoning that the worker activist needs?

• a method that never separates theory from practice, that takes into account facts and circumstances that are never the same.

What should we avoid

• Ready made solutions (dogma)

Why should we study philosophy

• We the worker activist need a method of analysis and reasoning that is just in order to carry out a just revolution

What is Philosophy

• Study of the most general problems

How does science differ

• The study of more specific problems

Philosophies connection to science

• Extension of sciences; It’s based and depends on science

Materialism

• Is nothing other then the scientific explanation of the universe

What is the common confusion to which the word materialism gives rise?

• Thought to be one who only thinks of enjoying material pleasures. This is wrong. It does not prevent us from having an ideal and fighting to make it triumph

What is the relationship between materialism and Marxism?

• Marxism based on materialism; consequently stems from science, rests on them and evolves with them

What was the impact of Marx and Engels on materialism?

• updated ancient materialism and brought it into the age of modern science

What marxists take into account when looking at class struggle?

• Economic, political and ideological struggle.

Who will give the movement the best direction?

• The one who is able to fight on all these terrains

How important is the study of philosophy for the militant worker?

• In order to carry out a just revolution it is necessary

What more particular importance does the study of dialectical materialism have for them?

• It will allow them to solve all the problems and to unveil all the campaigns of falsification of marxism, which pretend to complete and renew it.

- my note: Like the new left/dem socialists. All Marx but no bite

Bourgeoisie campaign of silence

• Separating Marxism from materialism. Marxism taught only as political doctrine and historical materialism spoken of without mentioning philosophy of materialism

2. The Fundamental Problem of Philosophy

Summary: The fundamental question of philosophy is which one came first, being or thought (aka: spirit or matter) and there are only two answers to this question, the materialist and idealist ones. Materialism is based in science and says that ideas come from matter and idealism is non-scientific and says that spirit created matter.

Two ways of explaining the world?

• 1)the scientific conception 2) the non scientific conception

What two distinctions did philosophers make when explaining the world?

• Matter and spirit: objects that are material and those that are not material like ideas, mind and thought

All the ways these distinctions are named

• being and thinking/mind and matter/brain and consciousness/social experience and social consciousness/power and will

What is the fundamental question of philosophy

• Which one precedes the other? Which is the most important?

There can only be two answers to this question...

• 1)a scientific answer 2) a non-scientific answer

What do we struggle with believing?

• That there has always been something and we tend toward there having been nothing.

What have we found is easier to believe?

• What religion teaches, “The spirit hovered above the darkness... then came the matter” Spirit preceding matter

During early humans what were dreams and imagination attributed to?

• a double existence leading early philosophers to attribute these thoughts and feelings double to the soul that left the body after death

God’s and spirits

• Attributed to external phenomenon they couldn’t understand or control like storms, germination and floods

What question split philosophers into two great camps?

• Did God create the world or has the world been in existence eternally?

Idealism answer

• non-scientific explanation - God created the world - spirit created matter

Materialism answer

• scientific explaination - nature, matter was the main element

Support for materialism

• there are bodies without thought, like stones, metals, earth, we never observe, on the other hand, the existence of mind without body.

Can only be two answers to question How is it that man thinks?

• idealist 1)humans’ think because we have a soul / materialist 2)humans’ think because we have a brain

3. Idealism

Summary: Philosophical Idealism is the belief that thought precedes matter. As science dispensed with creationism, idealism changed through Berkeley to matter doesn’t exist. Berkeley argued that our minds are incapable of creating things on their own so they need a higher power which creates and imposes on us all the ideas of the world. This school of thought is taught today having undergone various disguises

What is the common confusion to which the words idealism give rise?

• confusing moral idealism with philosophical idealism