Friedrich Engels - Landmarks of Scientific Socialism - Anti-Duehring

When one is in possession of final truths of the last instance and the only absolutely scientific knowledge one must have a certain contempt for the rest of erring and unscientific humanity. We cannot therefore be surprised that Herr Duehring employs very abusive terms with regard to his predecessors, and that only a few exceptional people, recognised by him as great men, find favor in face of his comprehension of fundamental truths.

(Then follows a list of the epithets applied by Duehring to philosophers, naturalists, Darwin, in particular, and to the socialist writers. This list has been omitted as it contributes nothing of value to the general discussion and is only useful for the particular controversial matter in hand. Ed.)

And so on – and this is only a hastily gathered bouquet of flowers from Herr Duehring's rose garden. It will be understood that if these amiable insults which should be forbidden Herr Duehring on any grounds of politeness, are found somewhat disreputable and unpleasant, they are, still, final truths of the last instance. Even now we shall guard against any doubt of his profundity because we might otherwise be forbidden to discover the particular category of idiots to which we belong. We have but considered it our duty on the one hand to give what Herr Duehring calls "The quintessence of a modest mode of expression," and on the other hand, to show that in Herr Duehring's eyes the objectionableness of his predecessors is no less firmly established than his own infallibility. Accordingly if all this is actually true we bow in reverence humbly before the mighty genius of modern times.

Philosophy is, according to Herr Duehring, the development of the highest forms of consciousness of the world and life, and embraces, in a wider sense, the principles of all knowledge and volition. Wherever a series of perceptions, or motives or a group of forms of life becomes a matter of consideration in the human mind the principles which underly these forms, of necessity, become an object of philosophy. These principles are single, or, up to the present, have been considered as single ingredients out of which are composed the complexities of knowledge and volition. Like the chemical composition of material bodies, the entire universe may be also resolved into fundamental forms and elements. These elementary constituents and principles serve, when once discovered, not only for the known tangible world but for that also, which is unknown and inaccessible. Philosophical principles therefore constitute the last complement required by the sciences in order that they may become a uniform system by means of which nature and human life are explained. In addition to the examination of the fundamental forms of all existence, philosophy has only two particular objects of investigation, Nature and Humanity. Hence our material may be classified into three main groups, – a general scheme of the universe, the teaching of the principles of nature and finally the principles which regulate Humanity. This arrangement at the same time comprises an inner logical order, for the formal principles which are true for all existence take precedence, and the concrete realms in which these principles display themselves follow in the gradation of their successive arrangements. So far, this is Herr Duehring's conception of things given almost in his very words.

He is therefore engaged with principles, formal conceptions, which are subjective and not derived from the knowledge of external phenomena, but which are applied to Nature and Humanity, as the principles according to which Nature and Humanity must regulate themselves. But how are these subjective principles derived? From thought itself? No, for Herr Duehring himself says: the purely ideal realm is limited to logical arrangements and mathematical conceptions (which latter as we shall later see is false). Logical arrangements can only be referred to forms of thought, but we are engaged here only with forms of existence, the external world, and these forms can never be created by thought nor derived from it but only from the external world. Hereupon the entire matter undergoes a change. We see that principles are not the starting point of investigation but the conclusion of it, they are not to be applied to nature and history but are derived from them. Nature and Humanity are not steered by principles, but principles are, on the other hand, only correct so far as they correspond with nature and history. That is just the materialistic conception of the matter, and the opposite, that of Herr Duehring is the idealistic conception, it turns things upside down and constructs a real world out of the world of thought, arrangements, plans and categories existing from everlasting before the world, just like Hegelianism.

As a matter of fact, we prefer Hegel's "Encyclopedia," with all its fever phantoms, to the "final truths of the last instance" of Herr Duehring. In the first place, according to Herr Duehring we have the general scheme of the universe which by Hegel is called "logic." Then according to both of them we have the application of this scheme to nature by means of the logical categories, the philosophy of nature, and finally their application to Humanity, by what Hegel calls "the Philosophy of the Spirit." "The inner logical arrangement" of Duehring's scheme brings us therefore logically back to Hegel's "Encyclopedia" from which it is taken with a fidelity which would move that Wandering Jew of the Hegelian school, Professor Michelet of Berlin, to tears.

Such a result follows if one takes it for granted that "consciousness," "thought," is something which has existed from the beginning in contradistinction to nature. It would then be of the greatest importance to bring consciousness and Nature, thought and existence, into harmony, to harmonise the laws of thought and the laws of Nature. But one enquires further what are thought and consciousness and whence do they originate. It is consequently discovered that they are products of the brain of man, and that Humanity is itself a product of nature which has developed in and along with its environment; wherefore it becomes self-apparent that the products of the brain of man being themselves, in the last instance, natural products, do not contradict all the rest of Nature but correspond with it.

But Herr Duehring cannot allow so simple a treatment of the subject. He thinks not only in the name of Humanity which would be quite a large affair, but in the name of the conscious and thinking beings of the whole universe. Indeed, it would be "a degradation of the foundation concepts of knowledge and consciousness if one should wish to exclude or even to throw suspicion upon their sovereign value and undoubted claims to truth by means of the epithet 'human.'" In order that there may be no suspicion that upon some heavenly body or other twice two may make five, Herr Duehring does not venture to call thought a human attribute, and therefore he is obliged to separate it from the only true foundation on which it rests, as far as we are concerned, namely, from man and nature, and thereby falls, without any possibility of getting out, into an "ideology" which causes him to play baby to Hegel. It is self-evident that one cannot build materialistic doctrines on foundations so ideological. We shall see later that Herr Duehring is compelled to push nature to the front as a conscious agent and, therefore, as that, which people in plain English call God.

Indeed, our philosopher had other motives in shifting the foundation of reality from the material world to that of thought. The knowledge of this general scheme of the universe, of these formal principles of being is just the foundation of Herr Duehring's philosophy. If we derive the scheme of the universe not from our own brain, but merely by means of our own brain, from the material world, we need no philosophy, but simply knowledge of the world and what occurs in it, and the results of this knowledge likewise do not constitute a philosophy, but positive science. In such a case, however, Herr Duehring's entire book would have been love's labor lost.