Library:Elementary principles of philosophy/Control questions
The philosophical problems
1. How important is the study of philosophy for the militant worker?
2. What more particular importance does the study of dialectical materialism have for them?
II. The fundamental problem of philosophy
1. What is the fundamental problem of philosophy?
2. Explain and correct the common confusion to which the words idealism and materialism give rise.
What are the main idealistic arguments?
What are the points of opposition between idealism and materialism?
V. Which is right, idealism or materialism?
What should we say to those who claim that the world only exists in our minds?
VI. Is there a third philosophy? Agnosticism
Between materialism and idealism, is there room for a third philosophy?
The philosophical materialism
I. The material and the materialists
How could Pasteur be both a scholar and a believer?
II. What does it mean to be a materialist?
Show how study in books is both necessary and insufficient.
1. Why did dialectical materialism not come into being in antiquity?
2. Indicate the main materialist currents from Greek antiquity to the 18th century.
3. What are the errors and merits of eighteenth-century materialism?
Written assignment
Imagine a dialogue about God between an idealist and a materialist.
Study of metaphysics
What is the "metaphysical method"?
1. Show, with the help of examples, that we are used to seeing things in their immobility.
2. Provide examples of metaphysical worldview.
3. What is mechanism and why is it metaphysical?
4. What is logic?
5. What are the characteristics of metaphysical design and metaphysical method?
Written assignment
Can one be a metaphysician and a revolutionary?
Study of dialectics
Introduction to the study of dialectics
1. Where does the metaphysical method come from?
2. Where does the dialectical method come from?
3. Why and how has metaphysical materialism been transformed into dialectical materialism?
4. What are the philosophical relations between Hegel and Marx?
1. What is a mechanical change?
2. How does dialectics conceive of change?
1. How does dialectics conceive of change? (compare the answer from the previous course with that of this one).
2. What is a historical development?
3. Why and how do things change?
How can we not understand dialectics?
IV. Transformation of quantity into quality or the law of progress by leaps
1. What is dialectics?
2. What are its laws?
The historical materialism
1. What explanation do idealists give us for history?
2. What is historical materialism?
3. What was the position of the materialists of the 18th century in the explanation of history? Show their insufficiency.
Where do classes and economic conditions come from?
1. Where do the classes come from?
2. What are the driving forces of the story?
Written assignment
How does Marxism (historical materialism) apply dialectics to history?
Dialectical materialism and ideologies
Application of the dialectical method to ideologies
1. Is it true that Marxism denies the role of ideas?
2. What are the different factors that condition and constitute the structure of society?
3. Analyze with the method of dialectical materialism a tale published in a newspaper.
General summary duty
How did you benefit from the thought and action of dialectical materialism?