30
of his life, Marx was subjected to different influences than Engels, while the Marx
family was under the sway of the French materialists, Engels was brought up in a
religious, almost sanctimonious, atmosphere. This was reflected in their later
development. Questions pertaining to religion never touched Marx so painfully and
so profoundly as they did Engels. Finally, both, though by different paths, one by an
easier one the other by a more tortuous one, arrived at the same conclusions.
We have now reached the point in the careers of these two men when they
become the exponents of the most radical political and philosophical thought of the
period. It was in the Deutsch-Französischen Jahrbücher that Marx formulated his
new point of view. That we may grasp what was really new in the conception of the
twenty-five-year-old Marx. let us first hastily survey what Marx had found
In a preface (Sept. 21,1882) to his Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, Engels
wrote: "We German socialists are proud that we trace our descent not only from
Saint Simon, Fourier and Owen, but also from Kant, Fichte and Hegel." Engels does
not mention Ludwig Feuerbach, though he later devoted a special work to this
philosopher. We shall now proceed to study the philosophic origin of scientific
socialism.
One of the fundamental problems of metaphysics is the question of a first
cause, a First Principle, a something antecedent to mundane existence -- that which
we are in the habit of calling God. This Creator, this Omnipotent and Omnipresent
One, may assume different forms in different religions. He may manifest Himself in
the image of an almighty heavenly monarch, with countless angels as His messenger
boys. He may relegate His power to popes, bishops and priests. Or, as an enlightened
and good monarch, He may grant once for all a constitution, establish fundamental
laws whereby everything human and natural shall be ruled and, without interfering
in the affairs of government, or ever getting mixed up in any other business, be
satisfied with the love and reverence of His children. He may. in short. reveal
Himself in the greatest variety of forms. But once we recognise the existence of this
God and these little gods, we thereby admit the existence of some divine being who,
on waking one beautiful morning. uttered.
"Let there be a world!" and a world sprung into being. Thus the thought, the
will, the intention to create our world existed somewhere outside of it. We cannot be
any more specific as to its whereabouts, for the secret has not yet been revealed to us
by any philosopher.
31
This primary entity creates all being. The idea creates matter; consciousness
determines all being. In its essence, despite its philosophic wrappings, this new form
of the manifestation of the First Principle is a recrudescence of the old theology. It is
the same Lord of Sabaoth, or Father or Son or Holy Ghost. Some even call it Reason,
or the Word, or Logos. "At the beginning was the Word." The Word created Being.
The Word created the world.
The conception that "At the beginning was the Word," aroused the opposition
of the eighteenth-century materialists. Insofar as they attacked the old social order --
the feudal system -- these represented a new view, a new class -- the revolutionary
bourgeoisie. The old philosophy did not provide an answer to the question as to how
the new, which undoubtedly distinguished their time from the old time -- the new
ages from the preceding ones -- originated.
Mind, idea, reason -- these had one serious flaw, they were static, permanent,
unalterable. But experience showed the mutability of everything earthly. Being was
embodied in the most variegated forms. History as well as contemporary life, travel
and discoveries, revealed a world so rich, so multiform and so fluid that in the face of
all this a static philosophy could not survive.
The crucial question therefore was: Wherefrom all this multifariousness?
Where did this complexity arise? How did these subtle differentiations in time and
space originate? How could one primary cause -- God the eternal and unalterable --
be the cause of these numberless changes? The naive supposition that all these were
mere whims of God could satisfy no one any more.
Beginning with the eighteenth century, though it was already strongly
perceptible in the seventeenth, human relations were going through precipitous
chances, and as these changes were themselves the result of human activity, Deity as
the ultimate source of everything began to inspire ever graver doubts. For that which
explains everything, in all its multifariousness, both in time and in space, does not
really explain anything. It is not what is common to all things, but the differences
between things that can be explained only by the presumption that things are
different because they were created under different circumstances, under the
influence of different causes. Every such difference must be explained by particular,
specific causes, by particular influences which produced it.
The English philosophers, having been exposed to the effects of a rapidly
expanding capitalism and the experiences of two revolutions. boldly questioned the
32
actual existence of a superhuman force responsible for all these events. Also the
conception of man's innate ideas emanating from one First Principle appeared
extremely dubious in view of the diversity of new and conflicting ideas which were
crystallised during the period of revolution.
The French materialists propounded the same question, but even more
boldly. They denied the existence of an extra-mundane divine power which was
constantly preoccupied with the affairs of the New Europe, and which was busy
shaping the destinies of everything and everybody. To them everything observable in
man's existence, in man's history, was the result of man's own activity.
The French materialists could not point out or explain what determined
human action. But they were firm in their knowledge that neither God nor any other
external power made history. Herein lay a contradiction which they could not
reconcile. They knew that men act differently because of different interests and
different opinions. The cause of these differences in interests and opinions they could
not discern. Of course, they ascribed these to differences in education and bring in a
up; which was true. But what determined the type of education and bringing up?
Here the French materialists failed. The nature of society, of education, etc., was in
their opinion, determined by laws made by men, by legislators, by lawgivers. Thus
the lawmaker is elevated into the position of an arbiter and director of human action.
In his powers he is almost a God. And what determines the action of the lawgiver?
This they did not know.
One more question was being thrashed out at this time. Some of the
philosophers of the early French Enlightenment were Deists. "Of course," they
maintained, "our Deity does not in any way resemble the cruel Hebrew God, nor the
Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost of the Christian creed. Yet we feel that there is a
spiritual principle, which impregnated matter with the very ability to think, a
supreme power which antedated nature." The materialists' answer to this was that
there was no need for postulating an external power, and that sensation is the natural
attribute of matter.
Science in general, and the natural sciences in particular, were not yet
sufficiently advanced when the French materialists tried to work out their views.
Without having positive proof they nevertheless arrived at the fundamental
proposition mentioned above.
Dostları ilə paylaş: |