Soviet Studies in Philosophy

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Philosophy and Antiphilosophy

Nikolai Iribadjakov

To cite this article: Nikolai Iribadjakov (1974) Philosophy and Antiphilosophy, Soviet Studies in
Philosophy, 13:1, 37-48

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.2753/RSP1061-1967130137

Published online: 19 Dec 2014.

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 Nikolai Iribadjakov

PHILOSOPHY AND ANTIPHILOSOPHY

In a certain sense the fate of philosophy has been tragic.

In antiquity the term "philosophy" meant true scientific knowl-
edge, and we retained this sense of philosophy, on the whole,
until the eighteenth century. But beginning then the special
sciences, differentiating as independent disciplines, gradually
took over areas of problems that had at one time been within
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the purview of their mother, philosophy, and with which the

past glory and significance of dialectics was largely connected.
In the course of the nineteenth and particularly the twentieth
century, the special sciences attained vast successes in their
development, a fact that has found concentrated expression in
the current revolution in science and technology.
Two notions have arisen with regard to the destiny of philos-
ophy under today's conditions of the development of science.
One, elaborated primarily by Marxists, regards philosophy as
a science, a mighty implement for the acquisition of knowledge
and the revolutionary transformation of the world. The other
concept denies that philosophy is scientific in character, con-
trasts it to the sciences, and sees the enlargement and deep-

The author is chairman and professor, Department of the

History of Philosophy, Sofia University; executive editor,
New Times.

37
 38 SOVIET STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY

ening of scientific knowledge as a factor that promotes elimina-

tion of philosophy as a form of cognition. This notion is sup-
ported by idealist philosophers and some representatives of
the special sciences. In the 1920s it became widely known in
Western countries as the concept of antiphilosophy. The pro-
ponents of this viewpoint not only denied the scientific character
of philosophy and counterposed philosophy t o science but de-
clared that philosophy as a whole had no purpose and was
senseless, lacking in any real and meaningful problems.
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It seems to u s that such views are associated with the meta-

physical and idealist approach to philosophy, to the process of
its actual historical development, to its connection and inter-
actions with the special sciences and with the material and
intellectual life of society.
The metaphysical approach to philosophy is manifested above
all and principally in the absence of a genuinely historical
approach to it, in failure to understand the real dialectic of
the historical process of differentiation and integration, sep-
aration and cleavage, interpenetration and interaction that
takes place both within philosophy and between philosophy and
the special sciences.
The historical development of philosophy is an exceptionally
complicated and contradictory process. On the one hand,
there has been a constant change in the subject matter of
philosophy, in its problems and questions, and in the character
of the answers to them. On the other hand, the history of phi-
losophy is a history of unending struggle among diverse philo-
sophical schools and currents, expressed above all in the strug-
gle between the two principal and contradictory philosophical
-
trends the materialist and idealist. This struggle also in-
evitably finds expression within the very definitions of philoso-
PhY
But independent of the disputes and changes in the subject
matter of philosophy and the presence of numerous mutually
exclusive philosophical theories, schools, and currents, phi-
losophy has faced from remote antiquity t o our times, and
continues to face, one major and distinct group of fundamental
 SUMMER 1974 39

questions. These are questions pertaining to the relationship

between matter and mind, the essence of the world and its
knowability, the unity and diversity of the world, the regularities
of its development, the nature of space, time, and motion,
causality, accident and law, and certain other problems which
the special sciences do not consider or resolve.
These problems are certainly not false issues born of im-
proper use of language, as Wittgenstein and his followers
assert, but the real problems of a real world, of human activity
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and human cognition. All philosophical theories, schools, and

trends concern themselves with these problems, regardless
of the interpretation placed on them.
No one can refute the indisputable historical fact that phi-
losophy arose as the science of the world, of man and of h i s
knowledge, and that for the greater part of its history it in-
cluded all science, The first philosophers were at the same
time astronomers, mathematicians, physicists, biologists,
psychologists, sociologists, ethicists, aestheticians, and s o
forth, They made a number of scientific discoveries that com-
prise the basis of scientific knowledge, formulated ideas of
genius, and made guesses that, guiding and stimulating various
fields of research activity, led to a number of the fundamental
discoveries of modern science.
This is true to an even greater degree of that powerful up-
surge experienced by philosophy after the gloomy medieval
period, from the beginning of the Renaissance to the end of
the eighteenth century, Leading philosophers of that period,
like Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Descartes, Leibniz, and others,
were at the same time leading scientists. In examining the
connection between philosophy and science during this period,
Marx writes that natural science in the strict meaning of the
word (1)merges directly with Cartesian materialism, and even
with the nonmaterialist metaphysics of such philosophers as
Descartes and Leibniz, which still included a "positive, ter-
restrial content'' and contributed a very great deal to the de-
velopment of positive scientific knowledge. "It made, in math-
ematics, physics, and other exact sciences, discoveries that
 40 SOVIET STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY

appeared to be indissolubly connected with itself." (2)

It is noteworthy that the first philosophers, who w e r e at the
s a m e time the first scientists, from Thales t o Democritus,
were materialists and, in the majority of cases, "born" natural
dialecticians. It is also remarkable that "the real founder of
English materialism," Bacon, was also the true founder of "all
modern experimental science (3)."
In uncovering the relationship of dialectical materialism to
the prior history of philosophy, Engels wrote that "modern
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materialism," i.e., dialectical materialism, "comprises no

m e r e restoration of the old materialism, for to the permanent
principles of the latter it attaches the entire ideational content
of the two thousand years of development in philosophy and
natural science, the very history of those two thousands
years. '' (4)
Marxist philosophy is the genuine heir of the most ancient
but the true and permanent vocation of philosophy - the voca-
tion of being a science and, at the s a m e time, a world-view.
Marxism defines philosophy as the science of the most gen-
eral laws of development of the external world and human
know ledge.
As the science of the external world it has as its field all
of natural and social reality. Its task consists of understanding
the world as an entity, its nature, its most important and
fundamental properties, all knowledge taken in its relation-
ship t o objective reality and to the practical activity of man
and of social classes and systems. Its task is t o establish
the most general laws and categories of human thought and
knowledge, the laws of their development, their interconnections
and relations to the outside world and human practice.
The goal and tasks of philosophy inevitably determine its
character as world-view and, at the s a m e time, its specific
features that differentiate it from all the other sciences, Any
special science, studying any field of natural o r social reality,
human knowledge and activity, has some degree of signifi-
cance from the standpoint of world-view. But for the very
reason that it studies some single segment of reality, of human
 SUMMER 1974 41

knowledge and activity, no single special science is, nor can

it be, a science of world-view.
In Western philosophy the view predominates that philosophy,
as distinct from what are termed the positive sciences, cannot
prove its assertions, inasmuch as these assertions are not
based on experiment and observations but on experience in
general. And precisely for this reason, proof and refutation
are dead words for philosophy. (5) And, of course, a philosophy
that is not scientific by nature cannot operate with arguments
-
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that have content "proofs" and "refutations." However, this

assertion is untenable when applied to scientific philosophy,
dialectical materialism.
The fact is that a philosopher does not have to conduct ex-
periments in order to prove his assertions. But for two rea-
sons this is not and cannot be an argument against the sci-
entific and, in a certain sense, experimental character of the
dialectical materialist philosophy. In the first place, this is
because a large number of sciences also do not and cannot
employ the experimental method, while in some this method
has very limited application. Nevertheless, they are sciences.
In the second place, the philosophy of dialectical materialism,
although it does not make direct use of the experimental
method, rests on all social-historical practice, the experience
of humanity, and above all, the achievements and discoveries
of the special sciences.
Thus the philosophy of dialectical materialism is "concerned"
with the sciences, with assimilating the achievements of sci-
entific and social activity and practice.
But this interest is bilateral, and it would be difficult to
prove which of these two aspects displays a greater interest
in the other: philosophy in the special sciences o r the special
sciences in philosophy. It is irrefutable, however, that all the
-
special sciences, as well as all forms of intellectual activity
-
religion, art, morality, law, etc. in the final analysis have
recourse to philosophy, to its problems, categories, and con-
cepts.
How is this to be explained? By the fact that philosophy is
 42 SOVIET STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY

the most profound methodological basis of all the special sci-

ences, all the intellectual and practical activity of society and
man.
This role of philosophy is determined by the very structure
of human knowledge which, for its part, is determined by the
structure and objective dialectics of the world as it exists in
reality.
The interactions between philosophy and the special sciences
a r e nothing but the reflection and manifestation of interactions
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between the part and the whole, between the general, the spe-
cial, and the unique that exist in actual objective reality. Re-
ality is such that a whole is comprised of parts and represents
a system of components; and j u s t as a whole does not exist
outside its parts, o r a system outside its components, s o parts
a r e parts when they are parts of some whole, and components
when they a r e components of some system.
In this dialectic of reality and knowledge are rooted the dif-
ference and unity of the special sciences as sciences of distinct
realms and aspects of reality and of philosophy as the science
of the most general properties, relations, and laws of reality,
of human knowledge and practice.
Only in this way can one explain the fact that after the special
sciences differentiated out and broke from philosophy, the con-
nection between them and philosophy proved not to have been
interrupted, Therefore, no matter what integration and dif-
ferentiation may have occurred among the special sciences,
neither philosophy nor its methodological role disappears. On
the contrary, the greater the expansion and deepening of re-
searches into the special sciences, of processes of differentia-
tion and integration among the special sciences, the greater
will be the role and significance of philosophical problems and
categories, the role and significance of methodological prob-
lems of science, and at the same time, the role of philosophy,
The question is: which philosophy ?
The development of interactions between philosophy and
science demonstrates unambiguously that only materialist,
and specifically dialectical materialist, philosophy corresponds
 SUMMER 1974 43

to the nature, spirit, and tasks of science. It alone presents

science with the required epistemological, logical, and other
methodological foundations, This has been recognized more
than once even by idealist philosophers and also by many out-
standing scientists who, while not being conscious materialists
in philosophy, in many cases consciously adopted philosophical
ideas, although often idealistic ones.
As far back as the beginning of our century, Husserl himself
recognized that natural science is by its essence materialist
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and cannot be otherwise, that the principal premise from which

natural science starts is materialist conviction, that nature
is material, that it and its laws exist objectively, i.e., outside
of and independent of all consciousness and knowledge. This
conviction, Husserl recognized, is "immortal" in natural sci-
ence "and is constantly being reiterated" in it. (6) Lacking
this conviction, natural science would be impossible.
We find the same kind of recognition among representatives
of other idealist philosophical trends. Thus, for example, a
one-time member of the Vienna Circle, V. Kraft, writes: "Both
in science and in practical life, the assumption of an objective
tangible world and that others have emotional experiences is
a basis that cannot be gotten around, as is the assumption of a
reality that is transcendent with respect to experience. The
sciences dealing with reality - whether the natural sciences
or those about science - presume that objective things a r e
indisputable and that they exist constantly, even when they are
not perceived. For astronomy, biology, the historical sciences
about the earth and about organisms, about man and his culture,
this requires no proofs." (1)
Precisely for this reason it is entirely natural that attempts
to provide an idealist interpretation for natural objects en-
counter forthright resistance on the part of numerous repre-
sentatives of the natural sciences. Rather noteworthy in this
regard is the decisive rebuff given by physicists like Einstein,
von Laue, Shroedinger, Langevin, de Broglie, Bohm, and
others to subjective idealist interpretations of physical entities,
All these physicists, Heisenberg notes, were united on the point
 44 SOVIET STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY

that modern physics has to adhere "to the notions of classical

physics about reality or, general speaking, to the ontology of
materialism, i.e., concepts holding that there is one single ob-
jective, real world, the tiniest particles of which have an ex-
istence j u s t as objective as that of rocks and trees, whether
we observe them o r not" (8),that "a physicist must, in his
science, assume that he studies a world he himself did not
create and that existed without him.'' (2)
The materialist view of the world is accepted by the over-
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whelming majority of representatives of another fundamental

science of nature: biology. Thus, for example, the prominent
English biologist Waddington, along with many others in his
discipline today, proceeds from the conviction that the world
is material, that it exists objectively, outside and independent
of our consciousness, and that life is simply ''a special state
of matter." (10) But this is not all. Waddington holds i n high
esteem the dclectical materialist philosophy, and particularly
Lenin's notion of matter as objective reality. Marxism, he
emphasizes, is in complete agreement with science, because
"it is a materialist philosophy." (11) The view of natural sci-
ence and philosophy held by von Bztalanfi, and even such
biologists as J. Huxley, is of particularly great interest from
the standpoint of the dialectical materialist philosophy.
All this demonstrates that the development of the special
sciences and the development of the scientific dialectical
materialist philosophy a r e interrelated and stimulate each
other.
The rising role of scientific philosophy is associated not
only with its tremendous significance for the development of
the special sciences. It has a broader foundation.
The culture of modern society is something complex and
diverse. It includes various and constantly multiplying special
sciences concerned with nature and society, art, law, morality,
and others, It includes philosophy as well.
However, in the system of spiritual culture, philosophy is
not merely one of its numerous component parts. Philosophy
is the most general integrative connecting link between the special
 SUMMER 1974 45

sciences and all the other forms of intellectual activity; it is

the intellectual foundation of culture that binds its individual
component parts into an integrated system. Philosophy is the
soul of every culture and, in Marx's words, the quintessence
of all culture. Therefore, the level of its development was,
is, and will be one of the most important indicators of the
level of development of the culture of every society.
This fundamental role of philosophy in the system of the
intellectual culture of society is manifested in its two funda-
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mental and interrelated functions in the history of human cul-

-
ture that of methodology and world-view.
Man's need for a world-view is ineradicable, as is his striv-
ing to conceive of the world as a whole, as a unity, because he
is a part of the world that embodies in itself the very unity of
the world; he lives in the world taken as infinite in its diversity
and at the s a m e time as a fundamentally single whole. And as
long as man seeks to understand himself, he will strive to
understand his world and will work to develop a view of it.
And the more the differentiation of knowledge in the special
sciences broadens and deepens, the more sharply the need for
integration of the various branches of specialized scientific
knowledge will be felt, finding its highest expression in the
scientific philosophy of dialectical materialism.
Philosophical world-views are different, however, and here
we encounter the other basic fault of idealist and antiphilosoph-
ical definitions and viewpoints of philosophy, with their idealist
approach to the question of the connection between philosophy
and the conditions of the life of society and with the question
of the role and significance of philosophy in it.
The notion of the purely contemplative character of philosoph-
ical knowledge, according to which the task of philosophy is
merely explanation of the world and in no way solution of the
question of how to change it, has been widely prevalent in
idealist philosophy for a long time. One of the most vivid
voices on behalf of this view in recent decades was Bertrand
Russell. "There are prominent philosophers," he wrote, "who
exist in order to support the status quo. There are others who
 46 SOVIET STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY

exist in order to turn everything upside down. Marx, of course,

was among the latter. For my part, I reject both, as this is
not the true purpose of philosophy. I would say that the pur-
pose of philosophy is not to change the world but to understand
it, and that exactly contradicts what Marx said." (12)
But while philosophers of Russell's type deprivephilosophy
of the function of changing the world and confine its tasks
merely to explaining it, logical positivists and representatives
of linguistic analysis seek to deprive philosophy even of that
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task.
A s we know, they a s s e r t that the task of philosophy is neither
to explain the world nor to change it. Thus philosophy loses
every role and all significance both for the acquisition of
knowledge and for the practical activity of human beings,
A s a rule, the sociopolitical position of such philosophers
is marked by a fear and pronounced hostility to revolutionary
changes in the world. And i f social changes of any kind do
occur, let them take place without the participation of the
masses, let them flow within the bounds of bourgeois reform-
ism and not touch the foundations of the capitalist system. It
seems to u s that in his book Metaphysics and Common Sense,
A. J. Ayer expressed quite clearly the fundamental ideological
motivation of this philosophy. "On this question,'' he writes,
"I am unable to propose anything new" other than "old, well-
known liberal principles.. .. Representative government,
universal suffrage, freedom of speech, freedom of the p r e s s . , .
equality before the law and everything associated with what
is called the welfare state." (13) Truly, Ayer continues, "it
would be considerably more romantic to march shoulder to
shoulder under some new vivid banner to a bright new world.
But I know no such banner: probably that is due to my age.
I feel no need for anything whatever to replace this fundamen-
tally utilitarian, tolerant, undramatic type of radicalism. For
me the problem lies not in inventing a new system of political
principles but rather in finding more effective means for
bringing into operation the principles that most of u s already
- In the light of such facts, it becomes clear that
possess." (14)
 SUMMER 1974 47

antiphilosophy has its own deep social roots.

Marxism regards philosophy as a social phenomenon born
of the intellectual and practical needs of society and of the
individuals and classes comprising it, and therefore it has
always fulfilled and will fulfill definite social functions.
Without philosophy it is impossible to c a r r y out any serious
ideological struggle, and the laws of ideological struggle are
implacable. They leave no room for the existence of a philos-
ophy that stands outside the ideological struggle of social
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classes and systems. In the final analysis, any philosophical

system takes its place on one side of the ideological front o r
the other and turns out t o be incorporated into some determi-
nate section of the social structure, even when this conflicts
with the subjective intentions of its creators, Many Western
philosophers believe that i f only they preach a contemplative
attitude toward reality o r a flight from practical problems,
this itself already guarantees the social disinterest of their
philosophy. However, such disinterest is purely illusory. In
reality no neutral philosophy exists, nor can it. The question
is merely what is the social concern of a given philosophy.
And this depends on the philosophy itself.
The history of philosophical thought demonstrates that, as
a rule, social classes and movements that fight for revolution-
a r y change of the world, for real social progress, are material-
ist. And it is no accident that at their very origins, in their
early and utopian forms, socialism and communism were
directly associated with materialist philosophy, (15)
Utopian forms of socialism and communism we< associated
with less developed forms of materialist philosophy. Unlike
utopian socialism and communism, modern scientific com-
munism has as its philosophical foundation a qualitatively new
form of materialist philosophy known as dialectical and histori-
cal materialism.
The dialectical materialist philosophy differs fundamentally
from all idealist, metaphysical philosophy. Therefore, the
attitude of these two philosophies to the contemporary social and
scientific -technological revolution are fundamentally different.
 48 SOVIET STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY

While the idealist philosophy sees in these two interrelated

revolutions a threat to its existence - not without reason - the
philosophy of dialectical and historical materialism finds in
them their most mighty and indestructible support. It finds in
them new, brilliant confirmations of its ideas, new problems,
vast new material for new philosophical solutions, opportunities
previously unheard of for its further development and the ele-
vation of its role and significance in developing the cognitive
and practical activity of human beings.
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Footnotes

See K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch., Vol. 2, p. 193.

Ibid., p. 141.
Ibid., p. 142.
Op. cit., Vol. 20, p. 142.
F. Weismann, "HOW I See Philosophy," in Logical Pos-
itivism, A. J. Ayer, ed., Glencoe, Ill., The F r e e Press, 1960,
p. 345. [ A l l non-Russian quotations are retranslated from the
Russian. ]
6) E. Husserl, Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft,
Frankfurt am Main, 1965, p. 19.
7) V. Kraft, Erkenntnislehre, Vienna, 1960, p. 269.
8) W. Heisenberg, Physik und Philosophie, Stuttgart, 1959,
p. 120.
9) bid., p. 134.
10) C. H. Waddington, The Scientific Attitude, 2nd ed.,
Harmondsworth, Pelican Books, 1948, pp. 98-99.
11) See the collection Na puti k teoreticheskoi biologii.
Prolegomeny, Moscow, "Mir" Publishing House, 1970, p. 8.
12) Bertrand Russell Speaks His Mind, London, 1960,
pp. 14-15.
13) A. J. Ayer, Metaphysics and Common Sense, London,
1969, p. 259.
14) Ibid., p. 260.
15) K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch., Vol. 2, pp. 145-46.