Introduction to Dialectical Materialism: The Marxist World-View by August Thalheimer

Author:August Thalheimer [Thalheimer, August]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Politics, Philosophy, Marxism, Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Socialism, Communism, Materialism, Dialectics, Dialectical Materialism
ISBN: 9789944122900
Google: NjoZAAAAMAAJ
Goodreads: 3655493
Publisher: Covici, Friede
Published: 1936-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

9. The Materialistic Theory of Knowledge

In the last chapter we discussed whether the world has a material or spiritual nature. We came to the conclusion that all phenomena in the world are phenomena of moving matter or material movement. We further said that even thought is a material quality, a quality which is bound up with a special organ, the brain. It can be said of this matter that it is as infinitely manifold as it is absolutely unitary. Chemists and physicists are approaching ever nearer to the unity of matter through the separation of matter into atoms and of atoms into smaller, homogeneous particles. On the other hand we see how this unitary matter is infinitely varied to form various substances. And nature is not the only source of an unlimited number of different substances; there is also man, who has added still more substances to those of nature. This happens, as you know, in the chemistry laboratory, where matter is created which is not present in nature. What is true of matter is also true of motion, which is inseparably linked with matter. Motion too is absolutely unitary as well as absolutely manifold, infinitely multiform. From the simplest locomotion up to thought runs an infinitely manifold chain of material forms of activity.

We come now to the next fundamental problem, to the problem of the relation of thought to reality. These are the questions: are things knowable as they are in themselves? Is the essence of things knowable or are only phenomena knowable? Otherwise expressed: is truth knowable? Further: is this truth knowable as a whole or only in part? Can thought know things without limit, or are there bounds, limits of knowledge which are resident in the nature of thought itself?

And the next question, which is connected with the above: has truth certain distinguishing marks and what are they?

I will first give the objections which the idealistic world-view makes against our being able to know things as they are in reality, or our being able to know the essence of things. The idealistic world-view says: it is not possible to know the essence of things in themselves because all knowledge comes about only through the medium of thought. Through thought, however, things are not absorbed as they are in themselves, but they become changed. Thought is a tool, and like every tool thought alters the matter to which it is applied. Just as the potter changes the clay which he works by giving it a certain form, so thought recasts the things which it wants to know. To this one might reply: we will know things as they are in themselves if we remove the form which thought gives to them. But if we remove this form, then they remain outside of thought. Hence, the dilemma, the contradiction, appears thus: either things remain outside of thought, in which case they are not accessible to knowledge, or they enter into thought, in which case they become transformed by thought so that we can in no instance know how they exist in reality.

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