Закон причинности и свобода человеческих действий 23

(Regarding the article by Ts. B. Struve: “Freedom and historical necessity.” Questions of philosophy and psychology, January-February 1897. Also reprinted in the collection “on various topics”) The human mind cognizes everything that exists under the formal condition of the law of causality. The same form of knowledge is applicable to the events of human life, thoughts, desires and actions of people. Knowledge of the causal relationship that governs human life makes it possible to predict its future events, as accurately as this is possible with respect to the phenomenon of the external world. “We can imagine,” says Kant, “that if it were possible for us to penetrate into the way of thinking of a person, as far as it manifests itself both in the inner life and in external actions, to such an extent that every, even the slightest impulse of it, as well as all the external causes acting on it, was known, then it would be possible to calculate the behavior of this person in the future with the same accuracy as a lunar and solar eclipse” (Kritik der praktischen Uernunft. Ed. Rosencrantz. Leipzig 1838. P. 230). Although the individual life of each person cannot be studied with such exhaustive completeness (just as the entire individual situation and every physical fact cannot be studied), 24 nevertheless, even in the present, far from brilliant, state of social science, some general predictions of people’s future actions are already possible. An example is the forecast of the creator of the materialist philosophy of history regarding the future development of the capitalist system. A more modest, but daily example, is the patterns of social life observed by statistics. The general and summary nature of our knowledge about the laws of human life does not, however, shake our conviction in the natural causal connection of all individual events; Thus, looking at the surf of the sea waves, we have no doubt that each individual wave hits the shore according to the laws of mechanics, although we cannot determine the pattern of each blow. The idea of ​​a strict lawfulness of human actions, most forcefully proclaimed in modern times by Spinoza 25 and critically established by Kant, comes into conflict with the immediate sense of freedom that lives in the human soul. This contradiction, from my point of view, apparent and fictitious, serves as a psychological source of corresponding theoretical constructions, the common and unifying feature of which is the desire to somehow and at all costs defend this freedom of human action and thereby escape from the inexorable law of causality. A grand example of this - so to speak - escape from the law of causality is presented to us by the philosophical system of Kant, who, having established, like no one else, the dominance of the law of causality in the Critique of Pure Reason, he himself destroys (or tries to destroy) this dominance in the Metaphysics of Morals and the Critique of Practical Reason, ultimately declaring the primacy of practical reason over theoretical reason. Schopenhauer follows the same path, placing freedom from causality in the area of ​​“will” and intelligible character, a concept that he borrows from Kant, declaring the opposition of empirical and intelligible character in Kant to be the greatest triumph of human reason. 26 An analogy with the Kantian system is represented by Stammler’s newest attempt to defend, albeit inferior, freedom along with the law of causality. Next to these attempts, conducted on a critical basis, there is a whole series of uncritical attempts: I mean the so-called subjective sociology of different nationalities - Russian, French, American. The common feature of all these constructions is the recognition of the individual and his ideals as an independent and primitive factor, producing history from itself, and not being its inevitable result. (In essence, not a single subjective sociology has yet spoken definitely on the issue of the relationship between necessity and freedom, although they all associate themselves with Kant, therefore, they postulate the laws of human actions. This point of view nevertheless constitutes the spiritual essence of these teachings, consciously or unconsciously accepted by them). The materialist understanding of history most severely opposed this cult of personality, this recognition of freedom in the realm of necessity. Justly proud of its inexorable objectivity, it put forward a formula for the natural development of human society, according to which this development occurs, if not in spite of, then in addition to subjective ideals; the aspirations and actions of people, according to this teaching, under certain conditions give something either directly opposite, or in any case different from what people expected, just as in the historical philosophy of Leo Tolstoy (in Warrior and Peace), the calculations of each individual person do not at all lead to his intended goal. Even the very origin of well-known ideals, emotions, ideas, the materialist understanding of history placed patterns within the boundaries, predicting, for example, the emergence of certain ideal aspirations and corresponding emotions among representatives of the working class (at least some bearers of these ideals postulated their “lawless freedom”). The universal application of the idea of ​​regularity in the area that has struggled the longest with this greatest idea of ​​our century (and is still struggling) 27 is the spiritual essence of social materialism. That is why I was quite surprised to encounter a new attempt to defend freedom precisely from a supporter of the materialist understanding of history, Struve. Sharing with me the point of view of critical philosophy, Struve conducts his argument critically, trying to prove that the materialist understanding of history goes too far in spreading the concept of regularity, and that I, too, have missed the proper limit. I consider it necessary to note in advance that Struve’s witty criticism and his own, undoubtedly original, construction, but forced me to change my point of view, expressed in the article “On the regularity of social phenomena” (Questions of Philosophy and Psychology, November - December 1890) (since, however, our dispute is not based on a misunderstanding: there are quite significant points in which Struve and I actually disagree, and I am very sorry if the reason misunderstanding was due to the lack of clarity and excessive conciseness of my presentation). The main antithesis from which Struve sets out is this: “The materialistic... understanding of history is a grandiose attempt to introduce the history of mankind into the system of scientific experience, the main formal concept of which is necessity or regularity in the sense of strict causality. But at the same time, history is made by people striving to achieve their goals, acting in the name of their ideals. You can set goals and strive for their implementation only if you are aware of your freedom. On the other hand, scientific knowledge and understanding of phenomena is conceivable only under the guidance of the idea of ​​necessity, which directly contradicts the idea of ​​freedom” (120). We leave aside for now the concept of freedom, which can have many meanings and is still awaiting clarification. Let us dwell on the first half of the antithesis, on the opposition of goals and ideals on the one hand, and necessity on the other. It is not difficult to see that there is no direct logical opposite here. Goals and ideals, which are simply motives in human consciousness, provide as such only a special type of causality - psychological. The species concept is not the opposite of the generic concept; there is a difference between them, but not an opposition. Thus, this formulation of the question is incorrect. But this is only one side of the matter. The other one was already noted by me when analyzing Stammler’s teleological teaching. Both Stammler and Struve mistakenly imagine history as if it were exhausted by one present moment, that is, just such a moment that belongs not only to science, but also to life. Goal setting is accompanied by a feeling of freedom only for the present moment. Meanwhile, the materialist understanding of history is, as Struve rightly notes, an attempt to introduce the history of mankind into the system of scientific experience. The application of the category of causality to the history of mankind does not at all encounter those - real or imaginary - difficulties that accompany it when applied to real life. Consequently, here too the antithesis of causality and ideals and goals, freedom and necessity, made by Struve for history, is not suitable. It should be done only for the present moment. So, more precisely formulating the possible content of the thought of Stammler and Struve, the following question is subject to discussion: how is the consciousness of necessity and the sense of freedom reconciled in the present life of the subject and in his plans for the future, in setting goals and ideals? Struve sees in this a contradiction not logical, but epistemological, which cannot be eliminated “if the reasoning is conducted in a strictly critical way, that is, if the meaning of concepts does not change during the course of the reasoning” (121). Let us see how Struve uses this unique scientific technique, the right of citizenship, which he vindicates for epistemology, but which, unfortunately, I cannot recognize for any science. But first, a few words about Struve’s own criticism of Stammler’s teaching. He recommends to me a swift judgment, but not just or merciful, namely, to deal with social idealism with almost two quotes from the “Introduction to the Metaphysics of Morals” if Stammler’s teaching is built in the “spirit of Kant.” That Stammler's teaching is built in the spirit of Kant is absolutely indisputable. But it is also indisputable that Stammler’s concept of freedom differs significantly from Kant’s concept of freedom: Kantian freedom refers to the super-experiential, intelligible world, Stammler is trying - successfully or unsuccessfully - to introduce freedom into the world of experience. Therefore, Kant’s words about the freedom of direct destruction have no meaning for Stammler’s system. And Struve himself does not stop there, subjecting objective ought to a special analysis. Although I stand on the same point of view of epistemological monism as Struve, however, I do not consider it possible to put forward a formal criterion of objectivity other than universal obligatory (“bedeutet die objectiveGültigkeit des Erfahrungsurtheils nichts anderes als die nothwendige Allgemeingültigkeit desselben.” Kant. Prolegomena, ed. Schulz, p. 77 – 8). Those considerations regarding the strength of ideas that Struve gives regarding the psychological genesis of the concept of reality cannot provide a formal criterion of objectivity, because this concept is established not by individual, but by social consciousness. 28 The characterization of ought that Simmel gives does not say anything against the objectivity of ought, because even from Stammler’s point of view, ought is not recognized as having the same objectivity as being. Stammler raises telos to the level of a condition of cognition, a way of coordinating ideas, similar to the law of causality, but not identical with it. However, many roads lead to Rome, and along different paths Struve and I come to the same conclusion, to the denial of the law of telos, the objective ought. But we disagree on the point that I consider the only decisive one regarding the possibility of the second condition of knowledge, along with the law of causality, regarding the lawfulness of the will. This point is the question of the unity of transcendental consciousness. Struve recognizes the unity of experience, denying the unity of pure or transcendental consciousness, on which the unity of experience, according to Kant’s teaching, is based. But, if you eliminate this unity of pure self. On what then is the unity of experience based and how can one prove the impossibility of the two types of experimental knowledge (or, to use Stammler’s imprecise and non-philosophical term, “understanding” - Einsicht), the possibility of which Stammler proves? “No knowledge can find a place for itself in us,” says Kant, “no connection (Verknupfung) and unity between its individual parts (unter einander) without that unity of consciousness that precedes any given view and only in relation to which any idea of ​​objects is possible (“Kritik der reinen Vernunft,” ed. Kerbach, p. 121). “The same unity of apperception creates, from all possible phenomena that can only be encountered side by side in experience, the connection of all these representations on the basis of laws... Thus, the original and necessary consciousness of the identity of one’s self (seiner Selbst) is at the same time the consciousness of the equally necessary unity of the synthesis of all phenomena through concepts (nach Begriffen); (etc. see generally pp. 118 – 123). 29 In the quoted words, Kant quite clearly eliminates the possibility of asserting that “the unity of experience is not identical with the unity of transcendental consciousness.” On the contrary, this last unity is the basic and necessary condition for the unity of experience. This teaching contains the center of Kant’s entire theory of knowledge, its irreducible, integral part. And I don’t understand how Struve, following this theory, considers it possible to perform such an operation on her. But Struve points me to the “antithetics of pure reason,” its antinomies, not as proof of the possibility of contradictions in pure reason, which would be completely useless to deny after Kant’s criticism, but as proof of the possibility of two irreconcilable points of view or two directions of consciousness. That the antinomies of pure reason far from presuppose two directions of consciousness (or, better, according to the number of antinomies, three, or - postulating for each thesis and antithesis in the direction of consciousness - even six), but certainly require unity of consciousness, thanks to which these contradictions, as such, are recognized, it seems to me that it was proved by Kant. Reason, according to Kant, is the highest judge, listening to the disputing parties, examining their interests and making the final verdict (which, as is known, recognizes in antinomies - by not substituting concepts, but by logical clarification of them - a logical error, quaternio terminorum). Not only did I not lose sight of the fact of the existence of antinomies, on the contrary, I saw in it additional proof of the correctness of my point of view, and now I am not a little surprised when I encounter a reference to this fact as proof of its incorrectness. I was not talking about the absence of contradiction in pure reason, but about the impossibility in a single consciousness of two contradictory directions, two mutually exclusive points of view. In this I completely follow Kant. Struve is wrong when he says that Stammler’s theory of two directions of consciousness (in the world of experience - this is Stammler’s point of view) is undoubtedly found in Kant in its basic thought. It would be strange to assume such a contradiction in Kant, and in fact there is none in Kant. When “it is impossible to find anything else in the field of theory,” as Schiller wrote in his famous epigram, Kant retreats into the realm of the thing in itself and postulates the possibility of super-experiential knowledge, without the help of those cognitive categories, the main unifying principle of which is the unity of pure consciousness. One may or may not follow Bant in this transcensus, but it must be recognized that Kant does not establish two directions of consciousness in the world of experience. I had all this in mind when my main epistemological reproach to Stammler was the attempt to introduce two directions of consciousness into the realm of experience. In this Stammler does not follow Kant at all. 30 Struve establishes: “in transcendental consciousness there are always two irreconcilable ideas: freedom and necessity, corresponding to two directions of consciousness: knowledge and will.” In asserting this, Struve takes the point of view not of Kant, but of Stammler, and goes quite far behind the latter, although he does not reach all of his conclusions, denying the objective lawfulness of the will. In fact, we were talking only about knowledge or, less precisely, about understanding. Transcendental consciousness is Erkenntnissubjekt, so to speak, only one side (not a direction!) of the entire psychological consciousness or human life. Living life is not limited to this side: it contains both feeling and will (of course, these expressions only roughly outline the area of ​​desires and emotions). Therefore, it is a mistake to imagine that all mental life can be reduced to knowledge and expressed in the categories of knowledge. Meanwhile, this is exactly what Struve wants to do when he talks about the “ideas” of necessity and freedom, corresponding to knowledge and will. Freedom, in the sense that Struve takes it here, is a cognitive, epistemological category. A free cause in the epistemological sense is a cause that has no antecedent, an uncaused cause. In this sense, for Kant, the free cause of the world is that cause that begins the causal series from itself and is itself not conditioned by any other cause. 31 Such a cause is unknowable; it stands outside of experience. The concept of free cause, in this sense, is a negative concept. However, if most of our negative concepts, in their content, are extremely vague, and in scope are extremely extensive: not black, not white, not Ivan, not - I, etc., then the concept of free cause is completely meaningless. If we apply it to the human will, as is usually and, in my opinion, completely erroneously applied, then here too this concept will turn out to be no less meaningless. "Unding" or "nichtiger Begriff", as Kant calls it. 32 The only way to fill this concept with content is to attribute a law to freedom, which is what Kant does. But this operation is completely arbitrary, which logic does not authorize. Struve also has a negative attitude towards it, following Schelling in proclaiming the “lawlessness” of freedom. 33 But Struve points out that this idea of ​​freedom is a fact of immediate self-awareness, a fact of inner experience. I dare to assert that such a consciousness of the idea of ​​freedom in the sense of absolute randomness or causelessness does not and cannot exist in our consciousness. As Schopenhauer perfectly showed, 34 mental life is subject to the law of motivation, i.e. the law of causality (Causalität von innen gesehen). Struve also recognizes this for the “mechanism of expediency,” considering it free, i.e. only the last goal is causeless. This last goal, in his opinion, is unfree only from the point of view of the first, i.e. cognizing consciousness, and is free from the point of view of the consciousness of the one who wants. I assert that this last goal appears to us only under the form of the law of causality. Let's take the simplest case: I'm hungry. The “mechanism of expediency” adapts to this latter and, from Struve’s point of view, free goal. But it is precisely this free cause, this motive reduced to its simplest and naked physiological essence, that seems to me to be exactly the same cause, independent of my will, as any cause in the external world. I have to reckon with this reason and in a certain way adapt my actions to it. Let’s take a more complex and higher mental function, let’s say the thirst for knowledge, for the sake of which all the exploits of the “martyrs of science” are performed. It is not difficult to see that at the basis of these feats lies a certain need (Socrates’ “demon”), which forcibly acts on our will; the same can be said about the highest manifestation of human life and activity - the struggle for social ideals, for a better future: and this activity is forcibly evoked by the voice of moral feeling, offended by existing evil, and this voice is recognized by us not as a free goal, but as something, if not externally, then internally forced. Contrary to Struve, I would say that it is precisely in relation to the last goals, the last motives of his activity, rooted in the deepest and most fundamental properties of the soul, that a person feels the least free. The most precious feelings and the most cherished goals, on the one hand, and the strongest and deepest passions, on the other, are recognized by man as forces, sometimes alien and even hostile to his consciousness, but invincible and inevitable. This thought constitutes, it seems to me, the deepest essence of Spinoza’s teaching on the affects and dramas of Shakespeare, whom Kuno Fischer rightly considers the Spinoza of poetry. But since this last goal grows before a person from his inner feeling, he has relative freedom to choose different ways to achieve it (in the sense in which Schopenhauer understands this freedom, i.e. in the sense of deliberation or freedom from direct coercion by objects acting on his will, like motives). Formulating what has been said so far, I put forward the following position: Struve’s mistake, in my eyes, lies in the fact that he imposes on the will, a mental ability different from knowledge, the category of knowledge, namely the epistemological concept of freedom. If freedom of will in the epistemological sense cannot be defended either from the point of view of knowledge and experience, which excludes absolute chance, to which the concept of liberum arbitrium indiffrentiae is reduced, or from the point of view of will, which is not knowledge and therefore cannot operate with epistemological categories, then, obviously, the concept of human freedom, or, what is the same, freedom of the human will, is an exclusively psychological concept. What does psychological freedom mean? I have already said in the article “On the regularity of social phenomena” that knowledge of the regularity of human actions - the real life of the subject - is possible only in abstraction from the living and feeling person himself. The difference between the regularity of our own life and the regularity of the external world 35 is that we only cognize the latter, relating to it, so to speak, only epistemologically; We experience the first one and, since we live, i.e. we are excited by different feelings, we set known goals for ourselves, we do not recognize the objective pattern of external events; To do this, you need to renounce the inevitable anthropocentrism that is characteristic of a living person, and mentally place your self in the causal chain of world mechanics. The example of a lunar eclipse, in the use that Stammler makes of it, that is, in application to human psychology, is completely unsuccessful, since it equates this pattern of human actions, experienced and cognized by us, with the pattern of the external world, only cognizable by us. (But the same example is undoubtedly excellent for the epistemological characterization of regularity, and in this sense Kant takes it. Stammler’s use, or, better to say, misuse of it, is based on his identification of knowledge and life, as Struve rightly notes). Experiencing certain states, the necessity of which a person understands perfectly, a person does not cease to consider these states as manifestations of his self, which is made up of the sum of such experiences, and does not cease in this sense to contrast his self. as an autonomous cause of the causality of the external world, the dead regularity of the external world of that “geprägter Form die lebend sich entwickelt”. The incorrectness of Stammler and Struve’s formulation of the question, as well as that of other theorists of free will, lies in the fact that they elevate this regularity of our actions, which consists simply in their sequence, the sequential emergence of one from the other, into an iron law, forcing us to act one way and not another, and against this compulsion they construct epistemological and teleological freedom. If we understand regularity as a necessary sequence of mental states we experience, then the “truism” receives full force: the law of human actions says not what will happen without our actions, but from our actions. In other words, the objective regularity of our actions has nothing to do with how we imagine our actions: free or unfree. From the point of view of world necessity, both heroic inspiration in the name of an ideal and passive admiration for the theories of determinism of some Paul Astier (in “Dissiple” by P. Bourget) are equally natural. Mental life is determined by all the mental powers of a given person, among which cognitive ability is only one of many. It provides one of the motives for actions, but other motives are suggested by other aspects of mental life. Consequently, we will not get out of the vicious circle if we begin to apply the concept of regularity to mental life in this way. As far as it is known, there is no place for any freedom: everything is necessary. As far as it is experienced, there is no place for any epistemological categories, neither necessity nor freedom. 36 37 The concept of psychological freedom is a completely conditional and relative concept. “Freedom must always be freedom from something; if I call myself free, then I always mean the coercion to which I was either subjected or could be subjected. If freedom is not thought of in opposition to possible unfreedom (Gebundenheit), it has no meaning at all (Simmel. Einkeitung inde die Moralwissenschait. B. I, 288. Simmel devotes Chapter 6 of Volume II to the study of various concepts of freedom). I do not mean here to touch on all types and shades of psychological freedom, resp. lack of freedom. But I can’t help but touch on one species. I mean that type of unfreedom when external necessity, understood or even experienced by a person, develops in a way that this person would not like and how it contradicts his feelings, thoughts, desires. The result is either that suppressed, passive state of spirit, which is characteristic of fatalism, or a raging state of spirit, unwillingness to come to terms with this necessity. And it is remarkable that such a person’s attitude to external necessity is possible not only when setting goals and ideals, not only when looking at the future, but sometimes also when looking at the past. This trait received a brilliant expression in the famous chapter “Revolt” of the novel “The Brothers Karamazov”, where Ivan Karamazov does not want to come to terms with the atrocities committed in the darkness of centuries, even if the result was a better future: “I don’t accept God, but I don’t accept the world.” This is truly a rebellion, a rebellion of the individual against the world order, the objective law of things, in the name of the fact that this order does not meet the ideals of a given individual. And this dramatic situation cannot be resolved or eliminated by any epistemological considerations: it can only be experienced, that is, resolved psychologically through one or another adaptation of the mental personality to the world order. And Dostoevsky leaves open the question: did this adaptation take place with Ivan, “did he accept the world,” or “respectfully returned the ticket”... 38 We have now come to the most central question: how to reconcile the setting of goals and ideals with the consciousness of the necessity of all things. To resolve this issue and to reconcile two contradictory directions of consciousness in a single subject, Struve turns to the field of psychology and uses his technique of substitution of concepts. Namely, until now the area of ​​freedom for Struve was limited only to the free setting of the final goal, therefore, to the purely objective sphere. But then he expands this area to the outside world, postulating a white spot in the black circle of necessity, which the will and free activity can paint over at their discretion. Thus, the external world is already known under the categories of freedom and necessity. None of his previous reasoning gives Struve the right to such a transcensus. Previously, we were talking only about freedom in setting the final goal, but here we are talking about freedom competing with necessity in the world of experimental knowledge. Meanwhile, the category of freedom, as Kant showed, is inapplicable in the world of experience, under the conditions of knowledge under the form of space and time. Strupe thus combines experimental and super-experiential knowledge, believing that the merging of these epistemological contradictions takes place in the field of psychology. This reference says nothing, because the contradiction - epistemological (experience and inexperience), and not psychological - stands, despite this, in its cutting edge. Nevertheless, the transfer of contradictions into psychology can justify the “substitution” of the concept of freedom, that is, its extension to the outside world from the subjective sphere. Even if we recognize “freedom” of the will as a direction of consciousness, this will not in the least affect the necessity that reigns in the external world. Therefore, Struve’s “circle” appears quite unexpectedly. The idea underlying this comparison, that we do not know and will never know the future with certainty, is completely insufficient to give room to the category of freedom. We also know little about many phenomena of the physical world and yet we do not postulate freedom or causelessness for them, although, of course, fantasy can paint over these white spaces in the black circle of physical phenomena at will. If our insufficient knowledge of future phenomena is unable to justify the use of the category of freedom here, then why is this latter applicable to insufficiently known future human actions? Even Stammler declares that “there is no such thing as freedom of execution” and limits its application to the area of ​​subjective goal setting. Struve follows Stammler in this in the first half of his article, but makes an unmotivated transcensus into the realm of the external world in the second. It is also not true that, based on the insufficiency of our knowledge, the “circle” can be divided into parts, one of which is blackened and the other is not blackened. According to the basic property of our thinking, which occurs only through concepts, i.e., through abstraction, detailed knowledge of the necessity of future phenomena is impossible for us at all (as surely as it is unattainable with respect to past phenomena), therefore the entire circle would have to be painted over, for example, in gray. But even if we accept Struve’s opinion that our knowledge is distributed unevenly across different parts of the future and that therefore the circle should be painted partly black and partly white, then this would not free us from the inexorable dominance of the law of causality. In fact, our activity in the present, insofar as it wants to reckon with reality, is inevitably determined by necessity. The implementation of the last goal, i.e., the ideal guiding activity (I mean a very definite ideal), is also scientifically provided for. This means that we would be dealing with necessity at both the beginning and the end of the circle. The unmarked part of it would not be the segment lying closer to us, but its middle, separated from us by a black segment; on the opposite side, this white stripe would also be delimited by a black segment, corresponding to the need for the onset of this ideal. The average white stripe, corresponding to freedom, would be practically useless for us. 39 From my point of view, this entire obscure construction, as well as those epistemological clutter that Mr. Struve is building for this construction, are completely unnecessary. The ideal in question will undoubtedly not be given by science, although it appears in a certain scientific garb. On its, so to speak, emotional side, it is, as I have already said, a feeling of indignation against existing evil or, more broadly, a feeling of dissatisfaction with reality. It seems that this last feeling is the main and irreducible feature of human psychology, constituting the guarantee of the endless progress of mankind. The content of the ideal, the order of ideas that corresponds to this feeling, is entirely borrowed from the surrounding environment and is either an expansion of its positive aspects or a negation of undesirable aspects; both are more or less modified and put together into a certain whole in accordance with the individuality of each subject, thus this modification is an individual matter, and I think it is hardly possible to find even two persons, even belonging to the same party, whose ideals would completely coincide with each other, although, undoubtedly, they are similar in their main features. This emotional and intellectual side of our best aspirations for the future is quite understandable in its causal origin to everyone, and the more understandable the more oppressive the surrounding social situation. The following fact is no less clear. Man has always had and will have dreams of a better future, localized either in heaven or on earth. But people did not always have the need to scientifically prove their feasibility or even the necessity of implementation. This is a phenomenon of modern times, and it is also understandable in its causal occurrence. Feeling the need to prove the feasibility of my aspirations, I turn to science; I turn to her, feeling the need to regulate my activities, to bring them into harmony with the patterns of the outside world. Scientific instructions for activity enter, as one of the motives (in no case constituting the only one), into psychological consciousness and are combined here with other motives, collectively determining the activity of this person. The products of the cognitive function of the human spirit thus enter into connection with the products of other, non-cognitive functions and are intricately intertwined with each other, creating as a whole what is called life and activity. This bizarre weave of epistemology and not epistemology, which takes place in the psychology of every person, is what Struve constructed as a relationship of freedom and necessity. It is this combination that serves as an expression of the basic fact that human life is not exhausted by knowledge, and only forgetting this fact could lead to an attempt to exhaust life by the categories of knowledge. And in what logical relation to the ideal does the materialist understanding of history stand? In no way! The materialist understanding of history is a scientific doctrine, which, therefore, deals exclusively with the cognition or understanding of certain life relations. If practical conclusions are drawn from it in favor of well-known ideals, then one can easily imagine that it can be exploited in favor of completely non-ideal interests and goals. But the materialist understanding of history, as a scientific teaching, must explain to us ourselves, explain the necessity of those interests and feelings that prompt us to set certain ideals. And it does this: it explains the emergence of opposing interests and ideals in human society, and predicts their increase in the future. The materialist philosophy of history also explains the reasons for the emergence of itself, as a known way of understanding social life, strives to explain the entire course of our life, the change of worldviews, feelings, interests, in a word, it sets itself tasks of such an exciting breadth that in this sense it is a universal teaching. But interests or feelings explained or understood in their causal origin are experienced by a person as such, completely independent of this explanation, just as the feeling of physical pain, even if its causes were clear and even foreseen in advance, is nevertheless experienced as living pain, which is not weakened or destroyed by this understanding. Therefore, the irony over a party that dreams of consciously achieving a lunar eclipse is funny, and there is nothing to fear that understanding the necessity of all things will kill the thirst for activity, or that science will absorb the life that gave birth to it. So, science and life are neither identical nor opposite: they are different. But precisely because they are different, and not opposite and not identical, their fruitful combination is possible. Let science give as much as possible to life, and let life be guided by the instructions of scientific experience. The thorny path that humanity takes towards a better future will be shortened and made easier by this! Published in Novy Slovo, 1897, April. Such individualization of study is prevented by the very structure of our cognitive apparatus: knowledge is accomplished through concepts, that is, by simplifying the subject, discarding its individual, random properties. Only through this does knowledge in general become possible. “Die Weltdadurch zu erkennen, dass man allee Einzelgestaltungen, so wie sie sind, einzeln vorstellt, ist eine für den endlichen Menschengeist prinzipiell unlösbare Aufgabe. Jeder Versuch in dieser Richtung ware geradezu widersinnig, denn wie gross wir auch die Anzabl der Einzelgestaltungen annehmen mögen, die mit unseren Vorstellungen abzubilden uns gelingen könnte es stände immer eine prinzipiell unübersehbare, also unendliche Mannigfaltigkeit von unerkannte Dingen und Vorgängen gegenüber, und es dürtte unter dieser Voraussetzung niemals von einem Fortschritt in der Erkenntniss der Welt ein wirkliches Abbild der Welt versteht, der muss auf eine Wissenschaft, die sich der Erkenntniss des Weltganzen auch nur annähert, von vorneherein verzichten" (Rickert. Die Grenzen der naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffsbildung. Eine logische Einleiung in die historischen Wissenschaften. Erste Hälfte. 1896. Page 34). “I will consider,” says Spinoza, “human actions and desires, as if it were a matter of lines, planes and bodies” (quoted from Stern’s German translation: Die Ethik, p. 151). In this, Spinoza's objectivism, recognition of the strict laws of human actions, reveals the internal spiritual affinity (congeniality) of Spinozism with Marxism. The above words of Spinoza could serve as the motto of Marxian objectivism. Kant's thought about the primacy of practical reason over theoretical reason, although incorrect in a philosophical sense, nevertheless has deep psychological significance. From the point of view of psychological genesis, the assimilation of one or another, even a purely theoretical, doctrine depends much more on the psychology of a person and less on his logic than is usually thought. For the preference of this particular doctrine over all other existing teachings, a certain mental predisposition plays a huge role - the character of a person, social status, his likes and dislikes. In this sense, the materialist understanding of history teaches about itself that it can only be perceived by the working class, due to the peculiarities of its cash psychology (which, of course, does not in any way exclude the discussion of this teaching in a purely logical way; we make this remark for those who see in our point of view the skepticism of the ancient sophists). The same explains the fact noted by Marx (in “Achtzehnte Brumaire”) and Beltov that when class antagonism exists, certain theories are adopted by one class because the hostile class holds opposing opinions. – The doctrine (in its psychological sense) has the same significance; it very conveniently resolves the most difficult question of the materialist understanding of history: how the highest products of mental activity - science and art - can depend on relations of production. There is no place here for a detailed development and justification of this view. Quetelet and his school, having felt, so to speak, quite tangibly the regularity of human actions, nevertheless sought to evade the full recognition of this idea, postulating free will in a series of random causes, their perturbative influence on statistical series. This construction, despite its obvious inconsistency, shows how tightly this favorite idea of ​​​​free will holds on. I consider it possible to avoid here, as Struve did, from substantiating my views on the relationship between epistemology and psychology. I will only note that, from my point of view, epistemology has an indisputable logical priority over psychology and other sciences. Therefore, I consider any transcensus for the resolution of epistemological issues into the field of psychology to be illegal. Struve is surprised that Simmel for some reason does not use his own epistemological characteristic of ought to refute Stammler. Yes, because for Simmel (and this passage is quoted by Struve) “in theory, only that knowledge is considered objective by us, which is recognized as true by the entire totality of subjects, or such recognition, which is at least expected or required as true - and from an epistemological point of view there is no other criterion for truth.” The same idea is expressed even more energetically on page 151: “dasjenige objective Wahrheit ist, wasWahreheit für die Gattung ist, in Gegensatz zu derVorstellung des einzelnen Subjects” (Einleitung iu d. Could.. 151. also p. 3). Wed. excellent formulation by Natorp (“Einleitung in die Psychologic, 107 – 8): nicht das Bewusstsein so schlechthin. sondern die Einheit des Bewusstseins ist es, welche in der Einheit des Gesetzes die Einheit des Gegenstandes constituirt.” In “Grundlinien zur Tbeorie der Willensbildung” Nathorn unfortunately deviates towards the “Critique of Practical Reason” and, postulating two directions of consciousness, establishes the primacy of the second direction - will over reason. It is impossible to talk about two equal directions of consciousness in Kant because, as I have already noted, they are not at all equal in rights: Kant postulates the primacy of practical reason over theoretical reason. And this reflected the genius instinct of a thinker, great even in error. Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 428–9 (after Kerbach). Cm. Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, pp. 78 ff. (Published by Rosencrantz. Leipzig, 1838). AlsoKritik der praktisсрen Vernunft, p. 224 – 5). (Schultz). I do not consider it possible, like Struve, to evaluate the teachings of Schelling and Hegel on freedom and necessity without connection with their general metaphysical system. See "On Free Will." There is also a Russian, although not entirely satisfactory, translation of Chernigovets. Also “On the Fourth Root of the Law of Sufficient Reason.” Struve, of course, is right in pointing out that the concept of law in the natural sense arose initially from the concept of law in the legal sense. But I did not mean to talk about the original genesis of this concept, but only meant to note the peculiarities of understanding patterns in modern times and their reasons. Therefore, it is completely in vain for Struve to try to bring down criticism regarding Kant’s freedom on my head. I don’t have freedom in the epistemological sense, I have only one necessity. Mental freedom is not freedom in the Kantian sense, it is only a certain mental state. In this sense, psychological freedom is not freedom in the epistemological sense, but pure necessity. Struve mistakenly believes that I am repeating Engels, whom in this case I would quote and whose metaphysical point of view is completely alien to me. By saying that you can act with success when you are confident in it, I meant to cancel precisely the psychological fact - if you like, to say a psychological truism, but not to resurrect the metaphysical position that freedom is a recognized necessity. Wed. a similar passage from Georg Büchner's letter to his bride, quoted by Mr. Belgov on pp. 161–162. If we take Struve’s point of view, then the place that she assigns to freedom is both too much and too little in fulfillment of Fiche’s behest: “man muss nicht nur kämpfen, sondern aueh siegen wollenn.” For, on the one hand, there is nothing to “want” for victory: it is ensured, since its necessity has been scientifically calculated. On the other hand, if the white spot of the circle remains unblackened by human activity, and from the point of view of “freedom,” who can guarantee that it will be blackened? - then achieving the ideal becomes impossible, since it is not in the will of each individual person to direct the activities of others in a certain direction. On both sides, freedom turns out to be unnecessary and redundant.