Materialism and Empirio-Criticism
Materialism and Empirio-Criticism is a philosophical treatise by VI Lenin , which he denotes in the subtitle as Critical Remarks on a reactionary philosophy .
In the preface to the first edition, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov wrote under his pseudonym "Lenin" in September 1908 that in the course of the year a number of authors who call themselves "Marxists" waged a veritable campaign against Marxism. He names contributions to the philosophy of Marxism (St. Petersburg 1908, Russian) with essays by W. Basarow , A. Bogdanow , A. Lunatscharski , J. Berman, O. Helfond, P. Juschkewitsch , S. Suworow; also materialism and critical realism by Yuschkewitsch (Petersburg 1908, Russian), the dialectics in the light of modern epistemology by Berman (Petersburg 1908, Russian) and the philosophical constructions of Marxism by N. Valentinov (1908, Russian). Lenin accuses these authors of throwing the dialectical materialism of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels overboard under the guise of introducing the latest "philosophy of natural sciences" . It would go so far that the position of fideism would even be openly adopted.
In the preface to the second edition of September 2, 1920, Lenin calls his philosophical opponents “Machists” (according to the philosophical teachings of Ernst Mach ).
"Instead of an introduction", Lenin added a retrospective of the history of philosophy: "How some 'Marxists' refuted materialism in 1908 and some idealists in 1710". Lenin's account of the philosophical controversy between materialism and idealism goes back to George Berkeley , David Hume , Denis Diderot and d'Alembert .
Lenin formulates the basic philosophical contradiction between idealism and materialism as follows:
“Materialism is the recognition of 'objects-in-themselves' or objects outside of the mind; the ideas and sensations are copies or images of these objects. The opposite doctrine (idealism) says: the objects do not exist 'outside the mind'; they are 'connections of sensations'. "
Friedrich Engels ' manuscript , known as the " Dialectic of Nature ", was stored in the archives of the German Social Democrats for thirty years and was not published in the Soviet Union until 1925 . In contrast to Anti-Dühring and other works by Engels, Lenin did not know it and could therefore not refer to it when writing his philosophical treatise.
The individual chapters
In Chapter I: The Epistemology of Empirio-Criticism and Dialectical Materialism I , Lenin then deals with the “ solipsism ” of Mach and Avenarius .
In Chapter II: The Epistemology of Empirio-Criticism and Dialectical Materialism II , Lenin confronts Tschernow and Basarow with the views of Ludwig Feuerbach , Joseph Dietzgen and Friedrich Engels and expresses himself on the criterion of practice in epistemology .
In Chapter III: The Epistemology of Empirio-Criticism and Dialectical Materialism III , Lenin seeks to define “ matter ” and “ experience ” and treats the questions of causality and necessity in nature as well as “freedom and necessity” and the “principle of the economy of thought ”.
In Chapter IV: The philosophical idealists as comrades-in-arms and successors of empiricism , Lenin deals with the left and right criticism of Kant, the philosophy of immanence , Bogdanov's empiricism and Hermann von Helmholtz's criticism of the “theory of symbols”.
In Chapter V: The Latest Revolution in Science and Philosophical Idealism , Lenin deals with the thesis that "matter has disappeared" through the "crisis of physics". In this context he speaks of a “physical idealism” and states (on p. 260): “Because the only“ property ”of matter to whose recognition philosophical materialism is bound is the property of being objective reality outside of our consciousness to exist. "
In Chapter VI: Empirio-Criticism and Historical Materialism , Lenin deals with authors such as Bogdanow, Suvorov, Ernst Haeckel and Ernst Mach.
In an addendum to Chapter IV Lenin goes into the question: "From whatever side criticized NG Chernyshevsky the Kantianism ?"
output
- VI Lenin: Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. Critical remarks on a reactionary philosophy. Verlag für foreign-language literature, Moscow 1947. (This is a German translation by Frida Rubiner , which corresponds to the new Russian edition published by the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute in Moscow.)
- VI Lenin: Works Volume 14 . Dietz-Verlag, Berlin 1956–1972 ( PDF version ).
literature
- Alfred Schmidt : preliminary editorial note on Max Horkheimer, On Lenin's Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. In the S. u. Gunzelin Schmid Noerr (Ed.): Max Horkheimer. Collected Writings. 18 volumes. Frankfurt am Main 1985ff. Volume 11, pp. 171-174.
- Alfred Schmidt : The aspects under which Horkheimer judged Lenin's polemic against “macho” revisionism. In: Horkheimer. Volume 11, pp. 418-425.
- Louis Althusser : Lenin and Philosophy. In: Lenin and Philosophy. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1974. (French edition as Lenin et la Philosophie. François Maspero, Paris 1968.)
- Ewald Wassiljewitsch Iljenkow : Leninist Dialectics and the Metaphysics of Positivism. Reflections on Lenin's book: "Materialism and Empirio-Criticism". Written in 1979. Russian edition 1980. English edition: New Park Publications, 1982, ISBN 0-86151-026-7 .
Web links
- WI Lenin: Materialism and Empirio-Criticism.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Maja Soboleva: Aleksandr Bogdanov and the philosophical discourse in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. On the history of Russian positivism. Georg Olms Verlag 2007. ISBN 978-3-487-13373-7 . [1] ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Denis Diderot: Entretien entre d'Alembert et Diderot , in: Œuvres complètes , ed. by J. Assézat, Paris 1875, Bd. II. (German: The dream of Alembert , translated by CS Gutkind, Stuttgart 1923).
- ^ WI Lenin: Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. Critical remarks on a reactionary philosophy . Publishing house for foreign language literature, Moscow 1947. p. 14.
- ^ Foreword by the editor to: Marx / Engels, Werke, (MEW) Vol. 20, pp. XXIIf.
