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The Question of the Identityof Thought and Being in Pre-Marxist PhilosophyE. V. Il'enkovPublished online: 09 Dec 2014.

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Russian Studies in Philosophy, vol. 36, no. I , Summer 1997, pp. 5-33. 0 1997 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. All rights reserved. ISSN 1067-1 967 / 1997 $9.50 + 0.00

E.V. ILENKOV

The Question of the Identity of Thought and Being in Pre-Marxist Philosophy

The question of the identity of thought and being occupies an important place in the history of philosophy. Engels, addressing this question, wrote: Is our thought capable of knowing the real world, can we in our ideas and concepts of the real world form a true reflection of reality? In philosophical language this question is called the question of the identity of thought and being. The vast majority of philosophers answer this question affirmatively.

However, sometimes one also hears statements of the following kind: Our thought is capable of knowing the real world, and our ideas and concepts can be true reflections of the world, but why call this the identity of thought and being, why resort to a special philosophical language here? Such statements arise from a misunderstanding. Philosophical language is not simply a stock of terms, the meaning of whxh is a matter of agreement; they are not the result of convention. They are the product of a struggle that is still going on today. Not only Aristotle, Spinoza, and Hegel preferred to speak and write about philosophical problems in philosophical language. Without knowing the language of philosophy, one cannot correctly understand either Karl Marxs Capital or V.I. Lenins Philosophical Notebooks [Filosofskie tetradi].

In particular, the false notion that the identity of thought and being is a Hegelian principle, a notion established in our philosophical literature during the years of the cult of Stalins personality, considerably impeded the correct understanding of Lenins thesis on the coincidence of dialectics, logic, and the

Translation 0 1997 M.E. Sharpe, Inc., from the Russian text 0 1964 by Nauka Publishers. Vopros o tozhdestve myshleniia i bytiia v domarksistskoi filosofii, Istoriko-

jlosofskie ocherki, ed. B.M. Kedrov (Moscow: Nauka, 1964), chap. 1, pp. 21 -54. Evald Vasilevich Ilenkov (19241979) was a brilliant and influential Soviet thinker.

His chief works, which came out in the 1960s, are devoted to the dialectical method in philosophy and the criticism of nondialectical forms of materialism.

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theory of knowledge. The argument based on this notion went roughly as follows. Dialectics and logic are not one and the same: dialectics, after all, is the theory of being, while logic is the theory of thought, and, since thought and being are different, one cannot say they are identical. What is at work here is precisely the fear that the principle of the identity of thought and being betokens some sort of Gegelianshchina [derogatory term for Hegelianism-Trans.]. But this fear is a product of simple ignorance. It must be dispelled, and to do this it is useful to turn, in particular, to the history of pre-Marxist philosophy.

1. The idealist and materialist conceptions of the identity of thought and bein-pinozas views

First, we must establish some incontestable facts. The first fact is that there is not, nor has there ever been, anything specifically Hegelian in the thesis of the identity of thought and being. Besides Hegel, both Spinoza and Feuerbach accepted this thesis. And the second fact is that for dialectics in general (including Hegelian dialectics) identity is definitely not some metaphysical one and the same. It is always an identity in difference, an identity of opposites.

In general, dialectics sees real identity in the act of transition, in the transfor- mation of opposites into one another-in this particular instance, in the act of transition or transformation of reality (being) into thought and thought into reality. And this identity is a fact realized every day by every human being. Anyone who comes to know a thing transforms it into a concept; and anyone who realizes his project in an action, in an act that changes a thing, turns his concept into a thing. There is, of course, no Gegelianshchina in any of this.

The specific mysticism of Gegelianshchina does not lie in the assertion of this transition but in its objectivc idealist interpretation. But there is also a materialist interpretation of that same fact. The fundamental difference between the two appears insubstantial and inconsequential to representatives of agnosticism, for whom materialism and idealism are merely empty words. For agnostics both the objective idealist and the materialist interpretations are equally Gegelianshchina. The Kantians and positivists hence love to frighten the gullible reader with the bugbear of Gegelianshchina. For example: Pure or absolute materialism is just as spiritualist as pure or absolute idealism. Both simply assume, if from different points of view, that thought and being are identical. . . . In contrast, the new materialists adopt just as decisively a fundamentally Kantian viewpoint, as most of the leading contemporary natural scientists have done.*

This new materialist was Eduard Bernstein. He did not like the materialism of Marx and Engels because it was too contaminated with mysticism (Bernstein was referring to dialectics, the doctrines of the identity of opposites in general and of the identity of thought and being in particular). This turn of thought is not accidental but quite typical, and it would be interesting to explore what this is all about, why thinkers of this kind are bothered by precisely the

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principle of the identity of thought and reality. The problem, of course, is not in the names but in the specific approach to the solution of a substantive philosophical problem, a real difficulty. And this difficulty, which every theoretician invariably faces, lies in the relationship between knowledge (the set of concepts, theoretical constructs, and ideas) and the object of this knowledge. How can one test whether they agree with each other or not? And can one do this at all? And what does this mean?

The principal idea of Kant and Kantianism is that man can never verify whether anything real, anything that exists outside of his consciousness, corre- sponds to the concepts with which he operates. The argument goes as follows: since the object (the thing in itself) is refracted through the prism of the specific nature of the organs of perception and judgment in the process of becoming an object of consciousness, we know the object only in the form that it acquires as a result of this refraction. Kant did not reject the being of things outside of consciousness. He rejected merely one thing--the possibility of testing whether or not things are in fact as we know them and as we are aware of them. We cannot compare a thing as it is given to consciousness with the thing as it is outside consciousness. It is impossible to compare what is in conscious- ness to what is not in consciousness; I cannot compare what I know with what I do not know, do not see, do not perceive, and am not conscious of. Before I am able to compare my idea of a thing with the thing, I must also become aware of that thing, that is, I must transform it into an idea. As a result, I always compare and contrast an idea with an idea, although I think that I am comparing an idea with a thing. I always compare an idea of a thing with the thing as an object of consciousness, that is, not with the thing but with another idea of it.

Of course, one can compare and contrast only things of the same kind. It is meaningless to compare pounds with miles or the taste of a steak with the diagonal of a square. These are different things. But if we nonetheless want to compare a steak with a square, we will be comparing not a steak and a square but two objects, both of which have a geometric, spatial form. The specific properties of either cannot figure in this comparison.

What is the distance between the letter A and the table? The question is meaningless. When we speak about the distance between two things, we are speaking about their distinctness in space. . . . We make them identical with one another as parts of space, and only after we have made them identical, sub speciae spatii [from the standpoint of space-Kedrov], we distinguish them as distinct points of space. Their unity consists in their belonging to s p a ~ e . ~

In other words, when one wants to establish any kind of relationship between two objects, one never compares those specific properties that make one object the letter A and another object a table, a steak, or a square but only those properties that express some third term distinct from their being as enumerated things. The things compared are thus regarded as different modifications of this third property common to both of them, whether this is their belonging to space

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or to value. A sack cloth is compared with a frock coat only insofar as both are commodities, that is, concentrates of a specific type of labor, expressions of a substance common to both. A pound can be compared with a mile but only insofar as a pound and a mile express different ways of measuring one and the same thing, let us say, a certain quantity of water or wheat. If there is no such one and the same thing, there is no possibility of comparison. Then these are different things and that is that. If in the nature of two things there is no third thing common to them both, then the differences between them become quite meaningless from a logical standpoint.

When bourgeois political economy in its notorious formula distinguished the three sources of income, this formula was absolutely vacuous in spite of the fact that it was empirically obvious. Capital really does produce profit, land produces rent, and labor produces wages. But theoretically this formula is as meaningless as a judgment that establishes a distinction between snow and New York on the grounds that snow is white and New York is huge.

The differences among profit, rent, and wages become really clear only when all are understood as different modifications of one and the same thing-the labor that creates value. In Marx it is clear within what these differences exist. The three-term formula reveals nothing of the sort, hence it is meaningless.

But within what are objects such as a concept (thought) and a thing related to one another? In what special space can they be contrasted, compared, and distinguished? Do we really have here that third term in which they are one and the same despite all of their immediately obvious differences?

If there is no such common substance expressed in different ways in both thought and things, then no intrinsically necessary correlation can be established between them. At best one can establish only an external relation like the one established in former times between the distribution of the heavenly bodies in the sky and the events in ones personal life, that is, a relation between two series of completely disparate events, each of which unfolds in accordance with its own, strictly specific laws. Then Wittgensteins claim that logical forms are mystical and inexpressible is correct.

But an additional difficulty arises in regard to the relationship between thought and reality. We already know where attempts to establish some special essence that would be neither thought nor material reality, yet at the same time would constitute their common subs t ancHhe third thing that would manifest itself as thought at one time and as being at another tim-an and do lead.

After all, in philosophy, thought and being are mutually exclusive concepts. That which is thought is not being and vice versa. In that ease, how can they be compared with one another at all? What can be the foundation of their inter- action, within what are they one and the same?

This difficulty was expressed clearly by Descartes in a purely logical form. If the being of things is determined by their extension and their spatial-geometrical form is the only objective form of their existence outside the subject, then thought

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in no way discloses itself through its description in the forms of space. The spatial characteristic of thought in general bears no relation to its specific nature. The nature of thought is revealed through concepts that have nothing in common with the expression of any spatial-geometric images. In Descartes this view is expressed thus: thought and extension are two different substances, and a substance is what exists and is defined only through itself and not through another thing. There is nothing common to thought and extension that could be expressed in a special definition. In other words, there is not a single attribute among the definitions of thought that would be included in the definition of extension and vice versa. But if there is no common attribute, then it is impossible to draw rationally any inference from thought to being and vice versa, since inference requires a middle term, that is, a term that would be included in both the series of definitions of thought and the series of definitions of' the being of things outside of consciousness or thought.

Thought and being cannot come into contact with one another at all, for in that case the boundary between them would be precisely that which divides and links them together at one and the same time.

In the absence of such a boundary, thought cannot limit an extended thing and a thing cannot limit an idea, a mental expression. They, as it were, freely penetrate and pervade one another without encountering a limit anywhere. Thought as such is unable to interact with an extended thing, and a thing is unable to interact with thought; each turns within itself.

A problem immediately arises: In what way are thought and bodily functions interrelated in the human individual? That they are connected is simply an obvious fact. A person can mentally control his spatially defined body among other similar bodies; his mental impulses are converted into spatial movements, while the movements of bodies that cause changes in the human organism (sensations) are transformed into mental images.

Does this mean that thought and an extended body nonetheless interact in some way? But how? What is the nature of this interaction? How do they determine, that is, delimit, one another?

But according to Descartes a transition of this kind does not and cannot exist, for logically this would mean to admit precisely some identical attribute common to both thought and extended bodies that could serve as a middle term. Hence it remains a riddle how an extended thing can exist and be defined through the forms of thought and, conversely, how thought, devoid of any spatial attribute whatsoever, can suddenly appear as spatially defined change, as motion.

Spinoza overcame this difficulty by defining thought and extension not as two substances but as two attributes expressing one and the same substance. The meaning of this scholastically sounding definition was quite profound. If we translate this expression, which is specific to the philosophy of Spinoza's time, into modern philosophical language, it reads as follows: Neither extension nor thought is an independently existing object. They are only aspects, forms of

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manifestation, modes of existence of some third thing. But what is this third thing?

Spinozas answer was that it is real infinite nature. The entire difficulty of Cartesian metaphysics arises from the fact that the specific difference between the real world and the imagined world is seen to lie in extension, in spatial- geometric determination. But in fact extension as such exists only in the imagination. Indeed, extension as such can be thought only in the form of an absolute void, that is, purely negatively, as the absence of any definite geometric shape. The same argument applies to thought. Thought as such would not be able to determine or delimit bodies, but only because it could not determine anything at all, including itself.

In other words, one can say very little about thought in general or about thought as such, and the same applies to extension in general: this is not an independently existing reality but a form of existence of some other thing. What exists really is neither thought nor extension but only nature, which possesses both.

With this simple turn of thought, Spinoza cuts the Gordian knot of the famous psychophysical problem and shows that the answer to this problem cannot be found only because the problem itself is the offspring of imagination.

When one asks how thought, which is incorporeal and in no way partakes of space, is transformed into a spatially expressed change (the movement of the human body) or, vice versa, how the movement of the human body caused by another body is transformed into ideas, one is already proceeding from absolutely false presuppositions. One also tacitly assumes that really existing nature (in Spinozas philosophy this is substance or God) is something that is organically incapable of thought.

Thus one conceives this nature in an extremely imperfect way, denying it from the start one of its perfections.

Yet nature in fact accomplishes in and through man the very action that is called thought. In man it is nature itself that thinks not some special being opposed to nature, a being of unknown origin, which establishes itself in nature in some unknown way. Therein lies the essence of Spinozism.

But if thought is an action accomplished by a natural, that is, spatially organized, body, it itself is a completely spatially expressed action of this body.

It is precisely because of this that there is not, nor can there be, a causal relation, a cause-and-effect relation, between thought and body. It cannot be because these are not two different, independently existing things but one and the same thing, only manifested in two ways or regarded under two different aspects. The relation that exists between a thinking body and thought is not a cause-and-effect relation but the relation of an organ to its function, to its mode of action.

A thinking body cannot cause changcs in thought simply because its very existence as a thinking, that is, acting, body is thought pure and simple.

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If a thinking body is inactive, then it is not a thinking body but simply a body. If it acts, then it does not act upon thought for its very action is itself thought,

Thought cannot be separated as a special substance from a thinking body as bile is separated from the liver or sweat from the sweat glands. It is not a product of action but action itself, as, for example, walking is the mode of action of the legs. Once again, the product of thought can only be a spatially expressed change in the geometric shape or position of a body relative to other bodies.

Hence changes in the mode of action of a thinking body are quite adequately expressed in changes of the spatial-geometric organization, structure, and position of a body.

One cannot say that one causes the other. Thought does not cause the movement of a spatial structure but exists through that movement, just as the most subtle change in the structure of a thinking body is adequately expressed in the form of a change in thought.

Herein lies an extremely important aspect of Spinozas position: it is not at all thought or thinking that is expressed in structural-spatial changes within a thinking body, just as, conversely, it is not the immanent motions of a thinking organ that are expressed in changes of thought. Hence thought cannot be under- stood through the most meticulous scrutiny of the changes that occur within a thinking body nor, conversely, can the latter be understood through an investiga- tion of an act of pure thought.

They cannot be understood precisely because they are one and the same thing only expressed in two different ways, as Spinoza continually reiterates.

To attempt to explain one through the other is simply to duplicate the descrip- tion of an unintelligible fact. This is as if, upon seeing a moving carriage, we said, It is moving because its wheels are turning, or, conversely, The wheels are turning because it is moving. One explanation would be as good as the other. This childish way of explaining things does not disclose the real cause of the carriages motion, the fact that the carriage is drawn by a horse.

It is difficult to overestimate the ingenious simplicity of this solution. From the very outset such a solution fundamentally rules out any attempt to explain the nature of thought in terms of idealist and dualist conceptions. This is exactly the viewpoint of the identity of thought and being that other thinkers even today attempt to discredit by labeling it Gegelianshchina. In fact, this is simply a position that enables us to find an effective way out of the blind alley of both dualism and a specific Gegelianshchina. It is no accident that only Marx and Engels were able to recognize the true merits of this profound idea of Spinozism. Even Hegel could not accept it. On this question he harks back to Descartess idea that pure unextended thought is an active cause of changes occurring in the body of thought-in the brain and in the sense organs of man, in language, in deeds, in products of labor, and so forth. In other words, the only alternative to Spinozas understanding of the identity of thought and corporeal being is the notion that thought can somehow exist somewhere without any kind of body

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of thought and then express itself in a body suitable for the purpose, whether it be the brain, language, or something similar.

According to Spinozas view, thought is not a special spatial structure; nor is it an unextended structure. It is a mode of action, a mode of functioning of a spatially organized structure. Simple? Yes, simple. But if that is so, then it is foolish to think that one can understand the nature of thought by examining the spatial structure of a thinking body.

I t is self-evident that any organ is structurally adapted to the performance of a certain function and, furthermore, that it is structurally organized in accordance with this function. Nonetheless, the mode of action and the function of an organ are defined not by its immanent structure but by the nature of the organism of which it is an organ.

No matter how much we probe into the physiology or physical-chemical structure of the liver, we will never understand its role in an animals body if we do not discover the meaning of its secretions for the body as a whole. We will not find this meaning within the liver because that is not where it is, although it is expressed there.

To attempt to understand the nature of thought through the structural analysis of the thinking body is absolutely futile. This is as absurd as to try to infer from a particular term, stripped of all context, the ideas that are expressed with its help in the text of the Iliad or even in Rudolf Carnaps The Logical Structure ofthe World.

To understand thought, one must understand the thinking bodys mode of being, not its structure in its inactive state. Therein lies the whole meaning of Spinozas position.

What does it mean to understand the mode of being of a thinking body? It means to reveal the way it interacts with other bodies, both thinking and unthinking. To understand the function of the liver or heart it is sufficient to uncover their role in the system of organs of the human or animal body. To understand thought as a function of the thinking body means to go beyond the bounds of this body into the bounds of the thinking body-nature system. It is within this broader system that one can understand the bodys specific mode of action.

One must bear in mind that it is nature as a whole that is meant here, not some limited sphere of nature, however broad it may be. The point is that a thinking body is not tied by its structural-anatomical organization to any particular mode of action or through it to any particular form of natural body. The mode of action of a thinking body has a clearly expressed universal character, that is, it can vary to fit any of the particular forms assumed by external bodies.

Thus the human hand can trace the contours of a circle, rectangle, triangle, or any other intricate figure. This means that the hands proper form is not at all reflected in the hands mode of action among bodies or, better still, that it is reflected precisely in the fact that it does not comprise a pattern of movement

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that is given once and for all and, hence, it easily adapts to any pattern of action.

This is the property of a thinking body that Aristotle aptly called the form of forms, the universal form. He attributed this property to the divine nature of the soul as a particle of divine reason, as the enteleche.

An unthinking body that is structurally determined to move, say, in a circle will express its egocentric nature in action under any circumstances, even when this motion among other bodies is impossible. As a result, it will meet with irresistible opposition from the other bodies. This will either put an end to its mode of action or change it.

In other words, an unthinking body performs a movement (action) conforming to the form of another body in an unfree manner, not according to some inner necessity but only through external coercion, passively.

A thinking body does this freely, moving in harmony with the total necessity of nature taking this necessity into consideration actively and ahead of time. It acts in accordance with the form of the external body, consciously organizing its mode of action among other bodies without waiting for direct resistance from reality to compel it to alter its pattern of action.

This means that a thinking body holds, as it were, before its eyes a kind of geographic map depicting the total distribution of all other bodies, including those with which it has not yet come directly into spatial contact. The universal plasticity and flexibility of the actions of a thinking body are by no means like the passive formlessness of clay or water; quite the contrary, they manifest the free-form molding activity, the active movement of a thinking body conforming to the total necessity.

The entire edifice of Spinozas theory of affects, his strikingly apt critique of the theological explanation of nature, and-what is especially important for our topic-his profound theory of truth and error, which is developed with care in the Ethics, the Treatise on the Improvement of the Understanding, the Theological-Political Treatise, and his numerous letters, rest on this ingeniously simple idea.

If the mode of action of a thinking body is wholly determined by the form of things and not by the immanent structure of the body, the question arises: What about error? This question becomes all the more crucial in that it arose in ethics and theology as the problem of sin and evil. The theologians critique of Spinozism invariably targeted this point: Spinozas theory makes any distinction between good and evil, sin and righteousness, truth and error meaningless. Indeed, what is the distinction between them?

Spinozas answer is again astonishingly simple, as is any answer that is fundamentally valid.

Error (and, accordingly, evil and sin) is not a characteristic of an idea and an action according to their proper content; it is not their positive property. An erring person also acts in strict accordance with the form of a thing, but the

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question is what kind of thing is this? If it is in itself negligible, imperfect, that is, contingent, then the mode of action adapted to it is also imperfect. And, if a person transfers this mode of action to another thing, he makes a fool of himself.

Consequently, error arises only where universal significance is ascribed to a mode of action that has limited validity, where the relative is taken as absolute. On this basis, Spinoza gives quite a low value to an action that conforms to an abstract formal analogy or to a formal inference based on an abstract universal.

An abstract idea registers what most often catches the eye. But this may be a completely contingent property or form of a thing.

Hence, the narrower the sphere of a natural whole with which a person deals, the greater the measure of error and the smaller the measure of truth. For the same reason, the activeness of a thinking body is directly proportional to the adequacy of its ideas.

The more passive a thinking body, the greater is the power of the most proximate, purely external circumstances over it and the more is its mode of action determined by the contingent forms of things. And, conversely, the more actively a thinking body expands the sphere of nature determining its actions, the more adequate are its ideas.

Hence, the self-satisfied passivity of the Philistine is the worst sin . . . The ideal case, the limit of the perfection of a thinking body, is a mode of

action that is determined by the total necessity of the natural whole. Earthly man has obviously a long way to go to reach this point. However, the idea of substance with its all-embracing necessity serves as the principle for the continuous improvement of the intellect. As a principle of perfection, the idea of substance has an enormous significance. Every finite thing is correctly understood only as a disappearing moment in the bosom of the infinite substance, and hence no particular form, regardless of how frequently it is encountered, can be ascribed universal significance. To reveal the genuinely general, truly universal forms of things, to which the actions of a perfect thinking body should conform, a criterion and method of knowledge other than formal abstraction are required.

The idea of substance is formed not by abstracting an identical attribute that belongs to both thought and extension. What is abstractly general between the one and the other is only the fact that they exist, existence in general, that is, an absolutely vacuous determination that does not at all reveal the nature of either.

It is possible to understand the truly general (infinite, universal) relation between thought and spatial-geometric reality, that is, to arrive at the idea of substance, only through a real understanding of the mode of their inter- relationship within nature. Spinozas whole theory deals in fact with this infinite relationship.

Substance turns out to be an absolutely necessary condition, without which it is fimdamentally impossible to understand how a thinking body and the world

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within which it acts as a thinking body interact. This is a profoundly dialectical aspect.

Hence, only by starting with the idea of substance can a thinking body under- stand itself as well as the reality within which and with which it acts, about which it thinks. Without this idea, a thinking body cannot understand itself, or the world, or the mode of its relation to the world and, hence, is compelled to resort to the idea of an outside force, to a theologically construed god, to a miracle. But this only shows that the thinking body is unable to say anything reasonable and rational on the subject and that it does not understand itself or the mode of its own action with external bodies, that is, it does not understand thought.

By understanding the mode of its own action (Le., thought), a thinking body indeed comprehends substance as the absolutely necessary condition for its own interaction with the external world.

This is in fact the mode of cognition that Spinoza calls intuitive. By creating an adequate idea about itself, that is, about the form of its own movement along the contours of external objects, a thinking body thereby creates an adequate idea about the forms and contours of these objects, for this is one and the same form and one and the same contour. In creating an adequate idea of the mode of its own interaction with the external world in general, it also creates an adequate idea of the external world in general. There is absolutely nothing similar to subjective introspection in this understanding of intuition. Quite the contrary, in Spinoza this is simply a synonym for a thinking bodys rational understanding of the general laws of its own behavior within the natural whole, its understanding of the mode of its action within nature and its understanding of natures bodies. In giving itself a rational account of what it does and how it really does it, a thinking body at the same time forms a true idea of the object of its activity.

We shall not dwell here on the historically conditioned and hence unavoidable weaknesses of Spinozas position. In general and on the whole, these are the weaknesses of all pre-Marxist materialism, including Feuerbachs materialism. This is above all a lack of understanding of the role of an active practical activity as an activity that changes nature. Spinoza has in mind only the move- ment of a thinking body along the ready-made contours of natural bodies. Thus, one loses sight of the point that Fichte raised against Spinoza (and thereby against the form of materialism he represents), namely, that man (the thinking body) does not move along ready-made forms and contours given externally by nature but actively creates new forms that are not proper to nature and moves along them, overcoming the resistance of the external world and rejecting ready-made, imposed forms.

The significance of this aspect will be touched upon later in connection with Marxs critique of the philosophy of Feuerbach, a thinker who is very close to Spinoza. In Feuerbach, both the strength and the weakness of Spinozism emerge much more clearly than in Spinoza.

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2. The idealistic and materialistic understanding of the identity of thought and being-Feuerbachs views

Like Spinoza, Feuerbach struggled against the dualistic opposition of thought and being as the basic principle of philosophy. Hence in the course of his reflec- tions he naturally reproduced Spinozas decisive arguments against Cartesian dualism. True, this direction of the polemic has to be isolated by means of analysis, since Feuerbach had to keep constantly in mind not only dualism in the pure form represented by Kant but also the philosophy of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, that is, the systematic attempt to overcome this dualism from the right, in the form of idealistic monism. However, Feuerbach tries to show that this way of overcoming dualism has to be fictitious, formal, and verbal, and that idealism does not and cannot encroach upon the fundamental premises of the Kantian system; hence, he sees in Schelling and Hegel primarily a failed attempt to go beyond Kant.

The philosophy of Hegel is the elimination of the contradiction between thought and being as stated, in particular, by Kant, but--llote well!--this is only the elimination of a given contradiction within fhe bounds of the contradiction itself; within the bounds of one element, within the bounds of thought.4

The so-called philosophy of absolute identity is actually a philosophy of the identity of thought with itself; between this thought and being outside thought there is still a gaping abyss filled with nothing. An apparent solution to the problem is reached here by merely replacing everywhere real being with thoughr being, that is, being in the form in which it has already been expressed in thought. Hence, the grandiose, profound edifice of Hegelian philosophy conceals in fact an empty tautology: we think the surrounding world in the way and in the form in which we think it.

Thus the philosophy of Schelling and Hegel failed to establish not only the absolute identity but any identity at all between thought and being, for being as such, free, independent, and self-sufficient being, existing outside and indepen- dently of thought, is simply not taken into account here and remains something that is completely otherworldly and indeterminate.

The fundamental principle of Kantian dualism is left untouched here as well. The thinking spirit from the very outset is regarded as something absolutely opposed to the sensuous, corporeal, and material; as a special immaterial being organized in itself and shaped according to immanent logical laws and schemes; as something independent and self-sufficient. Hegels Logic in fact portrays thought as the activity of this kind of supernatural and extranatural subject that is forced from without to enter subsequently into special relations of mediation with nature and with man to form them in its own image and likeness.

But such a notion of the thinking spirit necessarily presupposes that nature and man, as the opposite of this spirit, as the object and material of its forma- tive activity, are depicted as something that is formless and passive in itself, like

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clay. Only as a result of the formative activity of the thinking spirit do nature and man become what they are and acquire the concrete forms familiar to all.

What is here portrayed as a product of the activity of the thinking spirit is nothing other than the empirically obvious state of affairs in the real world, while the entire complex magic of mediation serves only to restore to nature and man, under the guise of a divine gift, the same determinations that were taken from them previously by the act of abstraction.

Without this antecedent plundering of nature and man, spiritualistic philosophy could not ascribe to the thinking spirit a single determination, be it ever so meager.

For Feuerbach such an interpretation of the question of the relationship between thought and being is a scholastically disguised, rationalized theology. The absolute thinking spirit of spiritualism, like the biblical God, is a fantastical being constructed from determinations alienated from man by the act of abstrac- tion. Thought, which is the subject of Hegels Logic, is in fact human thought, but it is abstracted from man and opposed to him as the activity of a special being existing outside of man.

Proceeding from this generally and on the whole quite correct understanding of the fundamental flaws of Hegelian idealism (and thus of idealism in general, since Hegels system is the most consistent expression of the idealist viewpoint), Feuerbach reconsiders the way the question of the relation between thought and being is posed.

Feuerbach shows that even the traditional way of formulating this question is invalid. It is impossible to ask how thought in general relates to being in general, for this presupposes already that thought is regarded in a form alienated from man as something independent and externally opposed to being. But after all, being, understood not in the Hegelian way, that is, not as an abstract-logical category, not as being in thought, but as the real, sensuous-object-filled Ipredmetnyi] world of nature and man, already includes thought. Not only stones, trees, and stars but also mans thinking body belong to being.

Thus, to conceive being as something devoid of thought means to conceive it incorrectly, to exclude from being, at the very outset, man with his capacity to think. This means to deprive being of one of its most important predicates, to think of it in an imperfect manner.

This argument repeats word for word Spinozas train of thought. He is an expanded deciphering, a translation of Spinoza into a more contemporary philosophical language.

Accordingly, the whole question amounts to whether thought can be separated at all from man as a material, sensuou+object-like [predmetnyi] being in order to fixate it and examine it from the very outset as something independent in opposition to everything that is corporeal, sensuous, and physical, or whether thought should be understood as a property (predicate) inseparable from man.

For Feuerbach, the decisive argument in favor of materialism lies in the

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proofs of natural science, medicine, and physiology, in mans medical aspect. A materialism based on medicine serves as

the Archimedean point in the dispute between materialism and spiritualism for, in the final analysis, here is where the question of the divisibility or indivisibility not of matter but of man, the question of the being or nonbeing not of God but of man, the question of the eternity or temporality not of matter but of man, and the question of matter that is not dispersed outside of man in the heavens and on Earth but is concentrated in the human skull are solved. Put briefly, this dispute, unless it is conducted brainlessly, is only about mans head. He alone is both the source and the final end of this d i~pu te .~

Feuerbach believes that only in this way is the principal question of philosophy grounded solidly in facts and solved, of course, in favor of materialism.

Thought is an active function of a living brain, inseparable from the brains matter. And, if one is considering brain matter, then it is utterly foolish to ask how thought is connected with it, how the one unites and mediates itself with the other, for there is simply no one and other, but only one and the same: the real being of a living brain is thought itself and real thought is the being of a living brain.

This fact, expressed in philosophical categories, is revealed as the unrnedi- ated unity of soul and body, which admits of no intermediate link between a material and immaterial essence, no distinction or opposition between the two. This is the point where matter thinks and the body is spirit and where, conversely, the spirit is body and thought is matter.16

Understood in this way, the identity of thought and being must, according to Feuerbach, be the axiom of true philosophy, that is, the fact requiring no scholastic demonstrations and mediations.

Feuerbach reproaches Schelling and Hegel not because they accept the unity of thought and being in thinking man but because they attempt to portray this fact, this direct unity, as the result of the magic of the mediation of opposites, as the ultimate unity of opposites, as the product of the unification of noncorporeal thinking spirit with senseless and unthinking flesh.

He reproaches them, therefore, for trying to put together a picture of a real fact from two equally false abstractions, for moving from illusions to fact, from abstractions to reality.

A materialist, on the other hand, Feuerbach reiterates, must move in exactly the opposite direction, taking as his point of departure the directly given fact so as to explain on its basis the origin of the false abstractions that idealists uncritically accept as facts.

Schelling and Hegel proceed from the thesis that there is at the outset an opposition between noncorporeal thought and senseless flesh, so as to arrive ultimately at the unity of opposites. This is the false path of spiritualism.

But a materialist must move from the factual, immediate unity (indivisibility)

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of the human individual to understand and demonstrate how and why the illusion of the imaginary opposition between thought and corporeal being arises in the head of this individual.

The illusion of the opposition between thinking spirit and flesh is in general a purely subjective fact, that is, a fact that exists only in the head of the human individual, a purely psychological fact. This illusion arises for a perfectly natural reason: because the thinking brain is just as physical and sensuous an organ as any other human organ.

This is the same situation as with the eye, the organ of sight. If I see stars with the eyes help, then, obviously, I cannot at the same time see the eye; conversely, if I want to examine the eye, if only in a mirror, I will have to divert my gaze from the stars. Sight would be utterly impossible if all the details of the eyes structure, all those internal physical conditions by means of which this sight takes place, were visible to me at the same time as the object. Similarly, the brain would not be able to think if in the process of thinking the foundation and conditions of thought became the objects of its consciousness, if the physical structures and processes by means of which this thought takes place in the body of the brain were themselves objects of thought. They are objects only for physiology and anatomy. The brain as an organ of thought is in fact structurally and functionally adapted to carry out an activity directed toward external objects, to think not about itself but about the other, about something object-like. And it is quite natural that in the heat of its activity, directed toward its object, the organ loses itself, forgets about itself, and renounces i t~elf .~ This gives rise to the well-known psychological illusion that thought is totally independent of all that is corporeal, physical, and sensuous, including the brain. I can think about things outside myself without knowing anything about what takes place in my head at the time.

But it is obvious that this illusion is not at all an argument in favor of idealism. In itself, regardless of unavoidable illusions, thought always remains a physical activity of a physical organ, a physical process.

What fur me, or subjectively, is a purely spiritual, nonphysical, nonsensuous act is in itself; or objectively, a physical, sensuous act.

In a brain act, as the supreme act, arbitrary, subjective, spiritual activity and nonarbitrary, objective, physical activity are identical and inseparable.8

Thus the logic of the struggle against dualism and spiritualism simply forces Feuerbach to state an essentially dialectical thesis, to admit that the living thinking brain is the kind of fact in which opposites such as thought and sensuous-object-like being, the ideal and the real, the spiritual and the physical, the subjective and the objective are immediately identical. The thinking brain is a unique object that can be correctly expressed in philosophical categories only through the immediate identification of mutually exclusive determinations via a thesis that includes in its content immediate unity, that is, the identity of opposed categories.

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Admittedly, having misconstructed dialectics in its general form, Feuerbach often vacillates and sometimes accepts definitions that he immediately has to correct, supplant, and qualify. As a result, his exposition on this point is far inferior to Spinozas iron logic and becomes somewhat foggy and ambiguous. However, the gist of the matter remains the same.

Precisely because thought is a physical process, a physical activity of a physical organ directed toward physical objects, the products of this activity (thoughts) may be correlated, compared, and matched with things in themselves, with things outside of thought, as things of the same kind. In fact this is what every person does at every step without the aid of the mediating activity of God or the absolute spirit. Concepts and images exist in the same space and in the same time as real things. And one and the same subject, namely, the human individual-the same individual who in a real way lives and exists in this world as a sensuousobject-like being-thinks and sensuously perceives the surrounding world. The unity (indivisibility) of this subject is matched by the unity (indi- visibility) of the object, of the surrounding sensuous-object-like world. Just as a thinking and sensuous-contemplative man is one and the same man, not two different beings coordinating their interrelations with the aid of God or the absolute spirit, so the thought world on the one hand and the sensuous-contemplated world on the other are also one and the same (namely, real) world, not two different worlds, between which some special transition, bridge, or mediation by a divine principle must be sought.

It is for this reason that the determinations of the world in thought (logical determinations) are directly and immediately determinations of the sensuous- contemplated world. Hence it is absurd to ask what special relation the system of logical determinations bears to the sensuous-given world, to the world in contemplation and the imagination. This logical system is nothing but the expression of the determinateness of the sensuous-contemplated world. Hence the question of the relation of logic to metaphysics is also an imaginary, fictitious question. There is no such relation, for logic and metaphysics are immediately and directly one and the same. The universal determinations of the world in thought (logical determination, categories) are nothing but the expres- sion of the abstract-universal determinateness of things given in contemplation. And this is the case precisely because both thought and contemplation have to do with one and the same real world.

If by logic we mean not a set of rules for expressing thought in speech but the science of the laws of the development of real thought, then logical forms must be understood to mean not the abstract forms of propositions and utterances but the abstract-universal forms of the real content of thought, that is, of the real world sensuously given to man.

The so-called logical forms of judgments and conclusions are, thcrcfore, not the acfive, ut ita dicam, causal thought forms, the conditions of reason.

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They presuppose the metaphysical concepts of universality, singularity, and particularity, the whole and the part, as Regula de omni; they presuppose the concepts of necessity, ground, and consequence; they are thinkable only through these concepts. Consequently, they are derivative, inferred, and not original thought forms. Only metaphysical relations are logical relations, and only metaphysics as the science of categories is a true esoteric logic. This was Hegels profound idea. The so-called logical forms are only the abstract most elementary forms of speech; but speech is not thought, otherwise the greatest chatterers would have to have been the greatest thinker^.^

Thus Feuerbach agrees completely with Hegel that the logical forms and laws are absolutely identical with the metaphysical ones, that they are one and the same, although he understands the reason for and the basis of this circumstance in a completely different way than the idealist Hegel.

What we are dealing with here is a precisely expressed materialistic interpre- tation of the principle of the identity of the laws and forms of thought and being. From the materialistic standpoint, this principle states that logical forms and laws are nothing but the universal forms and laws of being, of the real world sensuously given to man, that are present to consciousness.

That is why neo-Kantians such as Bernstein said that a consistent materialism was spiritualism turned inside out.

But this Feuerbachian interpretation of the identity of thought and being remains valid and incontestable for any materialist, including the Marxist.

Of course all these things are true only in the most general form, as long as we are speaking of the foundations of logic and the theory of knowledge and not of the details of the edifice raised on these foundations.

Since Feuerbach goes on to present a specifically anthropological concretiza- tion of these general materialistic truths, arguments that are clearly weak in comparison not only to the Marxist-Leninist solution of the question but also to Spinozas conception appear in his account.

It was these arguments that later gave vulgar materialists, positivists, and even neo-Kantians cause to see Feuerbach as their forerunner and kindred thinker, although one that was not thoroughly consistent.

A somewhat more detailed analysis of the uniqueness of Feuerbachs inter- pretation of the identity of thought and being will be of some interest for two reasons.

First, because it is materialism and, second, because it is materialism without dialectics.

In this instance, materialism consists in a categorical admission of the fact that fhought is the mode of active existence of a physical body, the activity of a thinking body in real space and time, within a real, physical (sensuous-perceived) world. Materialism is the recognition of the fact that the intelligible world and the sensuous-perceived world are one and the same world and not two different wor\ds, between which one would have to seek a bridge, transition, or interaction.

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Finally, Feuerbachs materialism is expressed in the fact that the subject of thought is taken to be the same person who lives in the real world and not a special being hovering outside the world contemplating and interpreting this world from the side.

All these are axiomatic propositions of materialism in general, and conse- quently also of dialectical materialism.

What are the weaknesses of Feuerbachs position? The chief defect of all previous materialism, including Feuerbachs, is that

things, reality, and sensuousness are taken only in the form of an object or in the form of contemplation and not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjec- tively. . . . Feuerbach wants to deal with sensuous objects, really distinct from intelligible objects, but he does not take human activity itself as object-related [predmetnaia] activity.I0

The result is that man (the subject of cognition) is regarded as a passive pole of the objectsubject relation, as the defined term of this interrelation.

This weakness is further expressed in the fact that by man he has in mind a discrete human individual tom from the nexus of social relations. Hence the man-surrounding world relation is interpreted as the relation of the individual to everything else, that is, everything that is outside the individual brain and exists independently of it. Therein lies the stumbling block of Feuerbachs position. Not only nature but the sociohistorical environment, the world of things created by human labor and the system of human relations formed in the process of labor exist outside the individual and independently of his will and consciousness. In other words, not only nature per se (in itself) but also humanized nature, nature remade by human labor, lies outside the individual. From the standpoint of the individual, nature and humanized nature fuse immediately into the surrounding world.

The following consideration has to be added to this as well: nature in itself is given to the individual only insofar as it has already been transformed into an object, material, a means of production of material life. Even the starry sky, in which human labor alters nothing directly, becomes an object of mans attention (and contemplation) only where and when it is transformed into a natural clock, calendar, and compass, that is, a means and instrument of orientation in time and space.

But for Feuerbach the starting point is the surrounding world given in contemplation as an object of individual contemplation. Feuerbach does not examine the presuppositions of this fact.

Marx found that only what has been transformed previously into an object of activily, only what has already been drawn into the process of social mans life activity, into the process of social labor, immersed in the retort of production, becomes an object of contemplation. Since the activity discussed here is the activity of social man and not of an individual, all products of this activity appear to the individual as objects of the same kind as stars, stones, trees, and mountains.

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In other words, in individual contemplation there is no difference between the forms of natural material that are proper to it by nature and the forms that are imposed on it, like a stamp, by human activity. Both merge in the concept of the surrounding world (encompassing the individual).

Hence, when Feuerbach is confronted with the question of where and how man (the thinking body) finds himself in immediate unity (contact) with the surrounding world, he answers: in contemplation, in individual contemplation, since by man he means the individual.

Here is the root of all the weaknesses, for what is given in contemplation to the individual is always the product of the activity of all other individuals inter- acting among themselves in the process of producing material life. In other words, in contemplation he is given only those properties and forms of nature that have previously been turned into the properties and forms of human activity, of its object and product.

Nature as such, which Feuerbach wants to contemplate, actually lies outside his field of vision, for the nature that precedes human history is not the nature in which Feuerbach is living; it is not the nature that, aside from some isolated Australian coral islands of recent origin, no longer exists anywhere and, consequently, does not exist for Feuerbach either. I

Feuerbach abstracts from the real complexities of the social relations between theory and practice, from the division of labor, which alienates thought (in the form of science) from the majority of individuals and transforms it into a force independent of them and existing outside them.

It is in his Theses on Feuerbach that Marx establishes that in direct contem- plation the individual deals directly not with nature but with humanized nature, that is, with nature as it exists in and through human activity. One still has some way to go to get to nature in itself. It is not given in contemplation.

This means that man is in direct contact with nature, in immediate unity or identity with it, not in contemplation but in objective-practical activity. In contemplation the individual is in a mediated unity with nature, and the mediating link is practice.

The entire difference between Feuerbachs understanding of the immediate unity of subject and object and Mams and Engelss conception of it lies in the treatment of this question.

Feuerbach sees this immediate unity (identity) of subject and object, thought and being, concept and object in contemplation.

Marx and Engels see this immediate unity (i.e., identity) of subject and object, thought and being, concept and object in practice, in object-related practical activity.

The difference lies precisely here and only here, and not at all in the accep- tance of this identity in the one case and its rejection in the other.

Hence there are also two fundamentally divergent ways of dealing with the problem, two paths of investigation.

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Inasmuch as Feuerbach sees mans direct contact with nature in the act of contemplation, he naturally expects science, which studies the mechanisms underlying the act of contemplation-the physiology of sense and thought organs-to find the final solution to the question. The key to the solution of the cardinal problem of philosophy is to be found, according to Feuerbach, in the anatomy and physiology of the individual brain, which reveal the physical conditions of the act of contemplation.

But this is a path that leads into a blind alley, particularly into the blind alley of vulgar materialism and positivism, for the task that devolves upon the particular s c i ences the anatomy and physiology of the organs of perception and thought-is beyond their power, since the material conditions of the act of contemplation and thought are not only and indeed not mainly under the cranium of the individual but primarily outside of it.

It is precisely this point--the weakest point in Feuerbachs position+hat provided vulgar materialists such as Biichner and Moleschott (as well as certain neo-Kantians) with both a motive and a justification to consider Feuerbach their forerunner and a kindred thinker who was not fully consistent.

This weak point is the anthropological interpretation of the identity of thought and being, of thought and the matter of the individuals brain. It is the thesis that thought is a physical process taking place in the cerebral cortex, that is, an anatomical-physiological reality.

In itself, outside the context of philosophical theory, there is nothing wrong with this thesis. From the medical point of view it is absolutely right: under the individuals cranium there really is nothing except a set of neurophysiological structures and processes. And as long as human thought is regarded from a medical point of view, one cannot refute this thesis without ceasing to be a materialist.

But as soon as this anthropological-medical interpretation of the identity of thought and matter is taken as a philosophical understanding and solution of the problem of the identity of thought and being, materialism forthwith comes to an end.

The insidiousness of this turn of thought lies in the fact that this viewpoint continues to seem materialist. Actually, human thought, in contrast to Hegels fantasies about it, is a completely physical process that takes place in the cerebral cortex; there is nothing under the cranium except a set of completely physical phenomena; as such, these phenomena are perfectly knowable; everything that is known can be reproduced in practice in the form of a physical model. Such a physical model of the brain is capable of performing all the acts of thought and of presenting to us visually a full, unqualified, and absolute identity of thought and matter, that is, it can give a practical solution to the problem that various idealist philosophers tried previously to solve in a speculative way. But why is this not materialism? Some devotees of cybernetics reason in just this way today.

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At first glance this is externally similar to materialism, and, indeed, to Feuerbachs authentic position as well. But actually, it is similar only to the weak aspects of his philosophical system.

However, these and Feuerbachs other arguments are only pieces of his actual conception of the identity of thought and being, just as Feuerbachs entire philosophy is only a piece of the materialist interpretation of the identity of thought and objectness [predmetnost 2.

The real Feuerbach was smarter than some of his successors who went beyond him on the path of vulgar materialism.

According to Feuerbach, it is not I or Reason that thinks. This is his antithesis to spiritualism and subjective idealism. But Feuerbach understood perfectly well that the truth is not in the vulgar materialist conception of thought either. The propositions that constitute this antithesis are no less important in his conception.

It is not I or Reason that thinks. But it is also not the brain that thinks but only man with the aid of the brain. The brain as such, as an organ removed from a man (whether with the surgeons scalpel or the scalpel of abstraction makes no difference), does not think and cannot think. It thinks only in immediate unity with the rest of the human body: the sense organs, heart, lungs, and hands.

But even this is not enough. It is not the brain itself that thinks, or the man himself who thinks. Taken out of the surrounding world and placed in the vacuum of abstraction a man is just as incapable of thinking as a brain excised from the human body and placed in a solution of formalin.

In other words, Feuerbach understood quite well that it is not the brain as such or man as such that is the subject of thought but only man in direct unity and contact with all the rest of the world surrounding him.

And if the discussion turns to the system of physical phenomena that is necessary for thought to take place, then this system, according tcr Feuerbach, includes both man and his object, that is, nature (and directly, the part of nature in which he lives).

That is why Feuerbach is a materialist and not a vulgar materialist. Hence his theory of knowledge leads directly to Marx. A vulgar interpretation of Feuerbach does not.

The transition to the Marxist solution of the question of the identity of thought and being

The path that led from Feuerbach to Marx looked like a direct continuation of Feuerbachs arguments.

And if one were to express this continuation in terms of Feuerbachs philosophy, it would be roughly as follows.

Neither I nor Reason thinks. But neither does the brain think. Man thinks with the aid of the brain and at the same time in unity and contact with

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nature. Taken out of this unity, he no longer thinks. This is where Feuerbach stops.

But man in direct unity with nature does not think either, continues Marx. That, too, is not enough. Only man who is in unity with society, with the sociohistorical collective that socially produces its material and spiritual life, thinks. Here lies the fundamental difference between M a n and Feuerbach.

Taken out of the nexus of social relaiions, within and through which he implements his human contact with nature (i.e., finds himself in a human unity with it), man is as incapable of thinking as a brain removed from the human body.

In developing the strong sides of Feuerbachs conception, its truly materialistic aspects, Marx eliminated all those weaknesses that led to a vulgar-materialist view of thought. First of all, he rejected the thesis that contemplation is a direct contact of the thinking person with nature, with the thing in itself.

Between man in general (as contemplating and thinking) and nature in itself, nature in general, there is one more important mediating link, which Feuerbach omitted.

This mediating link, through which nature becomes thought and thought becomes the body of nature, is practice, labor, and production.

It is production (in the broadest sense of the word) that transforms an object of nature into an object of contemplation and thought.

Even objects of the simplest sensuous validity are given to him thanks only to social development, thanks to industry and trade relations.*

For this reason, says Marx, Feuerbach remains with the viewpoint of the contemplation of nature; what he takes as nature in itself is really nature drawn into the process of mans historical development. In other words, Feuerbach never attains an understanding of the sensuous world as a collective, living, sensuous activity of the individuals constituting it,I3 and he does not see that the object of his contemplation is a product of collective human labor.

To define the image of nature in itself, somewhat more toil and effort is required than to contemplate nature in a disinterested, esthetic manner.

In direct contemplation, which constitutes the starting point of Feuerbachs materialism (and of all preceding materialism), the objective features of nature in itself are intermeshed with the features and forms that are imposed upon nature by mans transformative activity. Moreover, all purely objective characteristics (forms and laws) of the natural material are given to contemplation through the image that the natural material acquired in the course of and as a result of the subjective activity of social man.

Contemplation deals directly not with an object but with mans object-related activity, which transforms the object, and with the results of this subjective (practical) activity.

Hence a purely objective picture of nature as such is revealed to man not in contemplation but only through activity and in the activity of man, who socially

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produces his own life, and of society. Hence thought that aims to trace a picture of nature in itself, that is, to reveal the purely objective forms and laws of nature, must take this fact fully into account,

For it is only the activity that transforms (changes, distorts) the true image of nature that can show what this image was like before and without the subjective distortions. Consequently, practice and only practice-and on no account passive theoretical contemplation-can solve the question which features of an object given in contemplation belong to the natural object itself and which are introduced by mans transformative activity, that is, by the subject.

Hence the question of whether human thought attains object-related truth is by no means a theoretical question but a practicaZ question. Man must demonstrate the truth, that is, the reality and power, the this-worldliness of his thought in practice, wrote Marx in the second thesis on Feuerbach. The dispute over the reality or nonreality of thought that is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic q~estion.~

Here lies the key to the solution of the difficulties pointed out at the beginning of this article, the same difficulties that for lack of a solution gave rise to the Kantian, Hegelian, and neo-Hegelian conceptions.

How can one in general contrast and compare an idea with a thing, a concept with an object?

In what special space can they be identified in order to justify our regarding them as similar, comparable, contrasting things?

Kant answered: in the space of representation. A thing must be transformed into a representation. Then it can be compared with another representation. Not before and in no other way. But the thing in itself (i.e., the thing outside of the representation) cannot be compared or contrasted with the thing in the represen- tation. This is impossible--this is like comparing pounds with miles. One cannot compare a thing in the representation (a thing for us, a thing in appearance) with a thing that is not in the representation, with a thing that is outside of conscious- ness, that is, with a thing that is not brought to consciousness.

Fichte answered: the representation of a thing in itself, a thing outside of consciousness, is a fiction. We always compare one product of our consciousness with another product of our consciousnessand nothing more. All of neopositivism, including Russell and Carnap and Wittgenstein, has been bogged down in this viewpoint to this day.

Hegel answered: a thing for us can be compared and contrasted with a thing in itself, with a thing outside of individual consciousness, precisely because any thing in itself, which we think is alien to our thought, is in fact a product of the same thought that acts within us as well. A thing for us and a thing in itself are only two products of one and the same kind, two hypostases of one and the same substance-the subject, absolute thought, the idea.

Hence, in comparing a concept (existing in our head) with an object (existing outside our head), we in reality compare a concept with a concept: a concept as it

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exists under our skull (in the form of a visually or verbally registered image of a thing) with a concept as it is realized outside of our skull (in the guise of the spatial form of a thing). In other words, we are comparing only two forms of manifestation of one and the same concept; we are comparing a concept with itself; we make a comparison within the concept of the substance-subject and the thing and the representation. A logical category (the pure form of a concept) was defined by Hegel in this connection precisely as the essence of a thing and speech .

Feuerbach, who follows Spinoza in attempting to refute all these attempts to solve the dificulty at the price of the independent being of things outside the idea, by turning thought into an independent substance, developed the following thesis.

When we compare a representation with a thing, we are comparing objects of the same kind, for a representation is also a thing, only one that exists within our cerebral cortex as a state of the brain, a fully physical, corporeal-natural organ. Man with his brain and with all the states of this brain (i.e., representations) is a particle, a mode of the same nature that includes things outside of man. Hence nature is a substance, and the real living man is a substance-subject. This comparison of a representation with a thing takes place directly in the act of contemplation. Contemplation is an act of identifying the image of a representa- tion with a thing. Thus, a comparison of a representation with a thing takes place in the space of contemplation. There is nothing wrong with this, for the space of contemplation is nothing but a real contemplated space and not an a priori form of sensuous contemplation, as Kant claimed.

Finally, here is Marxs solution to the problem. One can compare a concept with an object, since a concept (thought) is not an

independent phantom hovering outside the world but a form of activity of a real man in real space.

A concept is not a state of the cerebral cortex but a form of activity of social man who transforms nature. Hence the comparison of a concept with its object is not a comparison of a thing with a thing (as was the case in Feuerbach) but a comparison of the form of mans activity with the product and result of this activity. Prior to contemplation, man acts practically with real things, and in the process of this activity all his representations are formed.

The real object-related activity of man who transforms nature is in fact an act of identification or coordination of the form of mans activity with the form of the thing.

Between a thing (object) and a representation (concept, theory, etc.) there is a real bridge, an actual transition-the sensuous object-related activity of the social-historical man. It is through this transition that a thing becomes a repre- sentation and a representation becomes a thing. Moreover-and this is the most important point- representation arises only in the process of mans activity with a thing created by man for man, that is, on the basis of an object created by

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labor or at least involved in this labor as a means, an object, or raw material. Later, on the basis of things created by man, he acquires the capacity to form a representation about things that have not yet been mediated by labor, about purely natural things. But the converse is never the case. The capacity to form representations does not arise in man on the basis of things that belong to unme- diated nature. This is verified by the experimental data of modem psychology.

A child acquires the ability to relate in a human way to things of the world around him only through actively operating with objects created by man for man. In learning how to use a simple instrument such as a spoon, a child automatically learns to operate-also in a human fashion-with a stone, a stick, and any other object of unmediated nature, but not vice versa. By employing a stone or stick, it is impossible to teach a child to operate in a human way with a stone or stick or especially a spoon. But reverse the order and everything proceeds smoothly and naturally.

Man acquires the capacity to think in concepts by acting with things whose forms are in themselves intelligible, reasonable, rational, that is, with forms of nature transformed by man. Man becomes rational by acting within this rational world.

Here lies the secret of the rational germ of Hegels conception, for the form of a thing created by labor (i.e., mans purposeful activity) can always be construed as an objectified concept, and the act of producing human representations and concepts may be interpreted as a return of this objective concept to the subject.

The materialist interpretation of the fact abstractly reflected in Hegels The Phenomenology ofthe Spirit indeed reveals the secret of the relation between a representation and a thing. The possibility of comparing (contrasting) a represen- tation with a thing, a concept with an object, and thought with reality becomes intelligible on the basis of this materialist interpretation.

If I transform my representation of a thing, that is, a verbally or visually recorded image of the thing, into a real opera, into an action with this thing outside me, and through this opera into the form of an external thing, that is, into a result of the action fixed in an object, then in the end I have before me (outside me) two things that are fully comparable with one another in real space.

But one of these two things is simply a thing, while the other is a thing created in accordance with the plan of a representation, or a materialized (through action) representation. When 1 compare these two things, I am comparing them with each other as two external objects, a representation and a thing, thereby testing the validity (correctness) of the representation.

The same holds for the truth-value of a concept (theory). If on the basis of a concept 1 create outside myself a thing that corresponds to the concept, this means that my concept is true, that is, that it corresponds to the essence of the thing, coincides and agrees with it. Engelss textbook example with alizarin illustrates this. When a person used his theoretical knowledge of the composition of natural alizarin to prepare the very same alizarin synthetically, he demonstrated

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that the concept is identical to the thing of nature since this objectified [opred- mechennoe] concept (synthetically manufactured alizarin) was fully identical with the object (natural alizarin).

Moreover, this comparison of a synthesized (according to a mental plan) thing with a natural thing is accomplished in real space and not at all in the transcen- dental space of perception and imagination.

It is on this basis that the capacity to compare a representation (concept) with a thing (with an object) in the realm of representation, in imagined (conceived, logical) space arises and develops.

When I compare my representation of a thing with another representation that has been tested and verified in practice as the correct and true image of a real object, I thereby-but now mediated through this correct imag-ompare my representation with the thing itself and not simply with just another subjec- tive representation, as the subjective idealist and agnostic would say.

Marxism also takes into account the fact that, under conditions of the division of labor and the alienation of thought, the transformation of being into thought and thought into being takes place via an extremely complex prism of mediations that is of a purely social nature. But this is a topic in itself.

The identification (i.e., identity as an act, action, process, not as an inert state) of thought and reality that is accomplished in practice and through practice is the very essence, the substance of the Marxist-Leninist theory of reflection.

This theory certainly does not say, as metaphysically minded neo-Kantians and neopositivists try to show, that thought and being are one and the same, an indistinguishable blind identity.

Not only Marx, Feuerbach, and Spinoza but even the absolute idealist Hegel never claimed anything so absurd.

For even in Hegel the identity of thought and being is an identity of opposites, since thought and being (the concept and its object) are the most typical dialectical opposites. In Hegel (and all the more so in Marx), this identity not only does not abolish the real, immediately obvious difference between them but even presup- poses this difference as its own opposite, for identity without difference is pure foolishness, metaphysical chatter, a mere phrase.

Practice is an act of identification of object with concept and concept with object and serves, therefore, as a criterion of the truth-value, the reality of thought, the objectivity of a concept.

This is really the target of the agnostic attacks against the Hegelian identity of thought and reality, against Hegelian mysticism, which, allegedly, has not been overcome by Marxist-Leninist philosophy. And anyone who has not undcr- stood this yet has indeed understood nothing in the Marxist-Leninist theory of reflection or in the Marxist-Leninist attitude to the Hegelian dialectic or in the Hegelian dialectic itself; he simply cannot distinguish the mysticism in the Hegelian dialectic from its rational kernel and takes the rational kernel for mysticism and mysticism for the rational kernel.

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In that case, not only the identity of thought and being but any identity of opposites (dialectics) begins to look like Hegelian mysticism. The same practice demonstrates also the identity of logic with dialectics, that is, the identity of the forms and laws of our thought with the forms and laws of the development of nature and society. Logical laws are nothing but the universal forms and laws of the development of objective reality brought to consciousness and transformed into the active forms and principles of our subjective activity.

The only difference between the logical laws and the objective universal laws of the development of the universe through contradictions is, as Engels stated so well, that the human head can apply them consciously, whereas in natur-nd so far in human history for the most partdhey make their way unconsciously, in the form of external necessity, among an infinite series of apparent chance contingencie~.~

The fact that the universal dialectical laws are realized in the head-and nowhere elssintentionally, consciously, and purposely marks the only difference between the logical laws and the laws of the external world.

Hence logic is nothing but dialectics that is brought to consciousness and applied consciously in science and life. This is absolutely one and the same thing. This is precisely Lenins position, according to which dialectics, logic, and the theory of knowledge of Marxism are one and the same science, not three different, if interrelated, sciences.

According to Lenin, there is no need for even three different words, not to mention three different sciences, different in subject matter, method, and theoretical content.

On the contrary, according to the Humean-Kantian thesis, thought and being have nothing in common between them, and thus any attempt to show identity in them is Hegelian mysticism. In reality, the struggle against the mysticism of Gegelianshchina has served always, beginning with Bernstein, as a cover for the struggle against dialectics in favor of agnosticism.

Having ascribed to Marx and Hegel the silly thesis that thought and being are directly, literally, and absolutely one and the same thing, these theorizing Kantians oppose to i t -now as their own position-the opposite thesis: Thought and being are not one and the same thing. True, thought and being are not one and the same thing. Only this is not the whole tru