II.

Like my sermons, which were preached with the intention of desecrating the pulpit, my exposition of Philosophy has the intention of degrading that high mistress which, as Ludwig Feuerbach stated, is the devotee and sister of Theology. Social-democracy will get those old spinsters out of the way. As far back as 1844 Frederick Engels spoke in the preface to his Condition of the Working Class in England of the end Feuerbach put to all philosophy. But Feuerbach was so intensely occupied with the theological devotee that he had very little time and mental energy left to join issue with the other sister, the philosophical one. His final solution of philosophy is more implicit than explicit. Yet this disciple of Hegel proves indirectly the truth of Marx’s word: “The true laws of Dialectics are to be found in Hegel, though only in a mystical form.” Feuerbach and Marx, both Hegelians, arrived at the same result by the same method which Feuerbach made use of in his analysis of religion, and Marx in his analysis of social economy.

This historic course proves that our social-democratic anti-philosophy is the legitimate descendant of Philosophy. Owing to this descent we may place it right next to that of our academicians and overtopping them by one length, we may ask them: What do you still want? And when it comes to the subject-matter itself and its proofs, we are so sure of our case that we safely may look from up high down on these learned gentlemen. For us there is no need to appeal to Aristotle or Kant, because we deal with a living thing which is patent to all unprejudiced and unbiased minds. Just as the proof of scientific laws is to be found in the experiment, so are our arguments in conformity with fact which is the basis of our anti-philosophic philosophy. Therefore, it is superfluous to corroborate our arguments by extracts from Greek, Latin or other learned authors.

It may be somewhat puzzling to the uninitiated to find that, while professing the intention of disparaging philosophy, we are proud of our philosophic descent. Yet the contradiction is easily explained: As the alchemistic errors generated modern chemistry, so have the errors of Philosophy generated a Universal Doctrine of Knowledge and Science. An old man who desires to be able to start his life again, does not mean to repeat it, but to improve it. He recognizes the ways he has walked as wrong ones, yet he cannot withhold the seemingly contradictory acknowledgment that they brought him wisdom. The critical attitude taken up by the old man towards his past is just the attitude of social-democracy towards philosophy. It was necessary to struggle through the wrong path in order to attain to the knowledge of the right one. Now, in order to be able to follow up the right way without being misled by any religious or philosophical maze, it is necessary to study the most mistaken of all mistaken ways, namely Philosophy.

Those who take this advice literally will surely think it absurd. For, how could the wrong path lead to truth? But the reader would do well not to stick to the letter but to seek the sense of it. The famous dictum: “My religion is no-religion” illustrates for instance that not always is a a, but that a turns into b. It is the peculiar character of the things of this world that they are not crystallized or fossilized, but they are in an eternal flux, ever changing, ever in a process of transformation, of rising and decaying. All reality undergoes constant changes, and so limitless is the movement of the world that every thing at every moment is not the same thing that it was. The language therefore is not able to do otherwise than to give one name to various forms or things. Also philosophy could not escape the universal law of movement and mutability, and it has undergone such changes that it is a great question whether, like modern Christianity, the new thing should retain its old name for reasons of expediency, or should get a new name to match. Social-democracy has decided against “religion,” and I am now pleading that we decide against philosophy too. Only for the period of transition do we use the expression “Social-democratic philosophy.” In the future we shall probably speak of dialectics or of the general doctrine of knowledge.

Who are we, where do we come from, and where do we go to? Are men the lords and masters, the “crown of creation,” or are they helpless creatures, subjected to wind and weather, and to trouble and toil? What is, what should be, our relation to the things and men about us? That is the great question of philosophy and religion. In the language of the former, the younger sister, that question is expressed in a more rational way. She does not expect the reply from supernatural, divine spirits, nor from ecstasy, but puts it before the sober intellect which exists empirically in the brain. It is the characteristic of philosophy that it snatched away this “great question” from religious sentiment and placed it before the organ of science, the faculty of knowledge, to find the solution.

Less than of our intestines can we know, without special study, of that mysterious thing which as force of thinking dwells in our head. Primitive wisdom used it as people use their stomach, without scientifically inquiring into its construction. Having, however, reached the point when men consciously set before the intellect the great question about existence, they gradually began to inquire into the intellect itself, and the critique of reason or the theory of cognition became the great question.

It is well known that the object of the medieval school men was to support the religious dogmas by rational arguments. They did something that they didn’t intend to do: they put reason above religion; they practically made reason the supreme being. Something like it occurred to Philosophy. She proposed to solve the great question of general existence scientifically, but not knowing how to take it in hand, she turned it upside down, and the scientific solution of the process of thinking, the theory of cognition, became to her the real and fundamental question. The most remarkable philosophical works, especially the most recent, prove, though unconscious to their authors, that change of procedure. Even the title of the principal works, from Bacon’s Organon to Hegel’s Logic and Schopenhauer’s Quadruple Root of the Proposition of the Adequate Reason indicate at once the situation.

The past great philosophers, as well as their present small successors, could not help but acquire more or less of a presentiment of the fact that all the so-called mother of sciences brings home from her excursions really consists in no more than the special theory of cognition. Quotations by the yard could be brought together to prove that statement, but also to prove that that presentiment did not arrive at clear nor consistent consciousness, and that the professors and lecturers of philosophy are quite confused with regard to the problem, the object and the significance of philosophy. None of them has been able to clear his mind of the remnants of superstitions, of phantastic mysticism which dims their vision. Irrefutable evidence for this was given lately by Herr von Kirchmann, who in a Philosophical lecture in popular language said, according to the Volkszeitung of January 13, 1876, that philosophy was neither more nor less than the science of the highest conception of being and knowing ... With the special sciences she has in common the subject of their inquiry and contemplation, the Universe with all that is in it, and she uses the same means ... those of the speculative thought which is striving for a higher unity. The main difference between the special sciences and Philosophy consists particularly in the method, for the latter proceeds from no given premises whatsoever, but from a purely spirit-born principle as a starting point. Of her usefulness Kirchmann didn’t wish to speak, but of her significance for the great spiritual domains of life, of humanity in particular, for religion, state, family, ethics; for neither the courts of justice nor the police, but Philosophy alone was able to protect those great institutions which were attacked with as much boldness as cynicism.

There you have the old devotee made young.

Her name is “Science of all the highest conceptions of Being and Knowing.” That is her name in common parlance. But I should like to see that common sense that could make sense out of that common parlance. “The highest conception of Being” deals perhaps with the conception of the highest fixed stars, or is there still anywhere a higher “Being” left? But I take things too materially; we must remember we are not talking astronomy, but Philosophy, or “Science of the highest conceptions of Knowing.” How can that be materialized; what positive sense can we derive from that phrase?

Philosophy “has in common with the special sciences the object of their inquiry: the Universe with all that is in it, and uses the same means to her work, namely the thought.” But in what does the difference, the distinction of Philosophy, consist? Kirchmann says in the method. Granted that Philosophy and natural science have the same object of inquiry and the same instrument, but a different way of handling. Now, what is the result of that difference? The results of natural science are known. But what has Philosophy to show? Kirchmann tells us the secret: She protects religion, state, family and morality. Philosophy is not a science, but a safe guard against Social-democracy. Then there is no wonder that Social-democrats have got their own Philosophy.

One must not think that Kirchmann was an exception, and was no real philosopher. On the contrary, he is a man of great reputation and speaks quite in harmony with the Faculty. Especially the dictum about “proceeding from no given premises whatsoever,” bears the hallmark of the official Philosophy. The “special sciences,” as well as common sense, get their knowledge through the intellect, from the material world. They make their researches with open eyes and ears, and what can be seen and heard the Philosophy calls “given premises.” In her extravagant conceit which seeks the “eternal treasure,” she looks upon the “appearances” of the world as upon rust-corrupted and moth-eaten things. It is true that it is generally asserted that she is based on all accessible results of the different sciences, but this is only a concession which she is compelled to make – an inconsistency quite in keeping with the general philosophic confusion. She speaks thus with the left corner of the mouth, while with the right one she speaks of “the purely spirit-born or deductive principle to start from,” of no materially preconceived notion whatsoever, which she is running after without ever catching up with it. The whole clap-trap comes really to this: Philosophy is no science but the radically false way used by the mind. Its result is to be found in our inference that by mind alone no truth and no principle can be attained, and no life problem can be solved, but that the human faculty of cognition is an inductive or matter of fact dependent instrument which always and everywhere presupposes experimental material.

This is the lesson that classical Philosophy teaches us. Its successors and epigoni are, for reasons easily under stood, not able to grasp it. They are called upon to defend religion, state, family and morality. As soon as they renounce such calling they cease to be philosophers and become Social-democrats. All those who call them selves philosophers, professors, university lecturers, have, despite their free-thought pretensions, not yet freed themselves from superstition and mysticism; they are all of the same kidney and must be regarded, in the main, from the above social-democratic point of view, as a compact mass of uneducated reactionaries.