Subject and Object

The remote plausibility of this explanation is typical of the proposals of the more straightforward scientists. Their education, based on bourgeois traditions, is responsible for the uneasiness which assails them when they examine the world they serve. The price paid them in money, position, and influence attests to their contribution to the social whole; yet they see this society as “in many respects comfortless.”² They dare not call its present form into question; therefore, they seek refuge in metaphysical beliefs like the idealistic view of conscience and freedom. Philosophy patches the objective rigor of science and such beliefs into a world-view so as “to assure in our conduct of life perfect harmony with our own selves, internal peace.”³ And with this peace in their hearts, the savants placidly witness the destruction of the human race.

The various attempts at harmonization fall into two extremes. One is the statement that science is the only possible form of knowledge and that the last traces of metaphysical thought must give way before it. The other is the deprecation of science as a mere intellectual technique answering to subordinate considerations of human existence. True knowledge, it is urged, must emancipate itself from science. During and after the war the typical directions taken by this antiscientific view were romantic spiritualism, Lebensphilosophie, and material and existential phenomenology. The new metaphysics, an outgrowth of religion, preserved the belief that man could expect more through and from himself alone than from the existing order. It was a manifestation of man’s dissatisfaction with the valuation attached to him and with what he experiences. It does not take long to see what this valuation for which metaphysics attempts to compensate really is. A man discovers what he is actually worth in this world when he faces society merely as a man, without money, name, or powerful connections, stripped of all but his native potentialities. He soon finds that nothing has less weight than his human qualities. They are prized so low that the market does not even list them. Strict science, which acknowledges man only as a biological concept, reflects man’s lot in the actual world; in himself, man is nothing more than a member of a species.

This document further assets that the idea of God was looked upon in a similar way. It was a phantasm that hindered the development of man.

Russell’s statement certainly exhibits great self-assurance. The movement of which he speaks has styled itself logical empiricism. It presents the sharp outlines of a school within which, as within the phenomenological school of Husserl, there already exist several distinct subgroups. Several noted scientists, working in various fields, have shown sympathy to this movement. Since it is not our intention to describe its history, but to point out the defects in its mode of thinking and its connection with this history of the bourgeoisie, we shall not dwell on the shades of difference among its adherents.

Modern empiricism disregards this relation altogether, even in its theory of the origin of concepts and judgments. Physics, as a definitely circumscribed intellectual technique, always deals with the formulated judgments of observers and not directly with observations. It follows that the criterion of experience is not the sense impression, as with Locke and Hume, but the judgment formulated about the impression. The exclusive task of science is to establish a system from which such propositions can be deduced as can be confirmed by the judgments of observers, by “protocol sentences.” A descriptive symbol is regarded as acceptable if by means of definitions or newly established principles it is reducible to symbols which occur in protocol sentences.⁹ Science and consequently scientific philosophy have therefore to deal with the given world only in the form of sentences about it. The scientist is concerned with the world only insofar as it is framed in language. He reckons solely with what has been duly recorded in a protocol. The analysis of the process whereby experience is translated into a protocol belongs to the domain of empirical psychology, which may record the behavior of a subject in the same way that physics records the behavior of bodies. Psychology, too, does not deal directly with perceptions. The material manipulated is not the observation of the psychologist himself, but the facts certified by a great number of observers, that is, facts formulated in judgments. Neither the inexpressible nor the unexpressed may play a role in thinking; they may not even be inferred.

The way in which the various stages of empiricism conceive the objects of knowledge may indeed be evidence of an increasing shallowness of bourgeois thought, a growing aversion to seeing the human bottom of nonhuman things. In any event, the principle that our knowledge of the world is derived from our senses has persisted throughout all its stages. Inasmuch as the meaning of this principle is limited to the statement that every assertion about anything in nature or in history must refer to a corresponding experience, its oppositional force is directed solely against belief in the hereafter. Rationalism did not contradict the principle; it simply did not isolate it as the fundamental law of philosophy. The rationalist systems of the seventeenth century employed the empiricist principle in connection with their doctrine that it is less important to devote attention to any single existent as it is, than to be able to mold and construct what exists in thought and in reality. Its belief in the possibility of completely dominating nature and society determined rationalism to concentrate on the problem of intellectual penetration of the world, on the modus operandi of reason. Mathematics is a means of producing objects from principles which the subject could develop in himself. The highest insights coincide with the foundations of being; they are not derived from single experiences, nor are they fixed arbitrarily. They make up the proper nature of rational thought and every secret must yield to its constructive power. Every existent must legitimate itself in perception. If a thing is known to us only through perception, however, it remains a mere thing-in-itself. It becomes a thing for us only when we are able to make it ourselves. Such was the view of rationalism.

The idea of radically eliminating the subject not only from physics, but also from the process of cognition generally by declaring individual differences themselves to be mere series of facts is itself a principle of research that stands in need of crateful restriction. The belief that this principle is essentially applicable at every moment of history leads, of necessity, to an unhistorical and uncritical conception of knowledge and to the hypostatis of the particular methods of procedure employed by natural science. It results in the view that all theoretical differences which rest on historically conditioned antagonisms of interest are to be settled by a “crucial experiment” rather than by struggle and counter-struggle. The harmonious relation of individuals to one another becomes a fact, therefore, that has even more general character than a law of nature. It becomes, in some degree, an eternal fact, and thus falls directly in line with the principles of rationalism and transcendentalism.

The same holds true for all other languages used in science—biology, psychology, and the social sciences—all “can be reduced to the physical language.”²⁰ Thus, “the whole of Science becomes Physics.”²¹

Logical empiricism holds the view, notwithstanding some of its assertions, that the forms of knowledge and consequently the relations of man to nature and to other men never change. According to rationalism, too, all subjective and objective potentialities are rooted in insights which the individual already possesses, but rationalism uses existing objects as well as the active inner strivings and ideas of man to construct standards for the future. In this regard, it is not so closely associated with the present order as is empiricism with its confusion of the concept of novelty with inadequate predictability. Leibniz’s theory on the subject as substantia ideans²² in the sense of a causative agent of decisions and acts stands much closer to a materialist interpretation of history than does a philosophy which reduces the thinking subject to the role of subsuming protocol sentences under general propositions and deducing other sentences from them.

The endeavor of scientific research to see events in their more general connections in order to determine their laws, is a legitimate and useful occupation. Any protest against such efforts, in the name of freedom from restrictive conditions, would be fruitless if science did not naïvely identify the abstractions called rules and laws with the actually efficacious forces, and confuse the probability that B will follow A with the actual effort to make B follow A. Such confusion also occurs if effort or action is reified as merely a state or event and is never grasped as the specific structure of the subject-object relation.

In reply, empiricism might raise the question: Would the intellect be confident that it knows the underlying truth if it did not have observations of its own to set against the countless observations of the day? In countering experience, the intellect must itself appeal to experience, for its concepts are not inborn or inspired. The answer is that it is precisely because facts are referred to when other facts are being exposed or abolished, and because facts, as it were, are involved in everything on every hand, that constructive thought which evaluates facts and discriminates between surface and pith is of such supreme importance in every decision. The term empiricism is either entirely meaningless today or it constitutes the abandonment of reason in the proper sense of the word.

The role of empiricism throughout the world may be illustrated by many examples. The following incident, dealing with the son of Carl Vogt, the critic of Marx, is taken from an article by F. de Spengler:

The pleasure which the younger Vogt derived from the gullibility of those good people is a perfect example of the pleasure to be derived from naïve empiricism in a world in which everything is attuned to deception.

Just as it is possible to foretell the actions of individuals, by methods of procedure identical with the prediction of physical processes, it is also possible to make predictions concerning social groups. The empiricist theory of society is “social behaviorism.”

States, nations, age groups, and religious communities are all complexes composed of single elements, the individuals. Such composite groups exhibit certain relationships conforming to specific laws; they have a definite physiognomy . . .

Scientific study has shown . . . that division into “social classes” which plays an increasing role in political life, can be represented sociologically. An “anthropology of the unpropertied classes” produces biologically noteworthy material.²⁶

To be sure, the theory of society is not so amenable to experimentation as physics. At bottom, however, the “aggregates” cited are composed of “single living beings, man and other animals. Behaviorism studies their behavior under the influence of stimuli as a department of biology (see Pavlov and others).”²⁷ Sociology, we are told, is comparable to a biology that has only a single animal at its disposal for study and therefore

Whoever needs logs must either wait for the wood chopper or do the chopping himself. Besides, sociological insight into present relationships is, as a rule, gained most easily by those who are closest to the social structures of our day. In physics, too, familiarity with technical practice stimulates research. This is even more true of sociology. The scientist is an element like any other element.³⁰

Thus, individual and social tendencies are not exceptions to the empiricist’s apparatus of concepts. They, too, are formulations of observations. Familiarity with social practice is a stimulant to the sociologist. Yet, the subject himself is not involved. It makes no difference whether the “significant changes” are awaited actively or passively; even when they are active, science treats human beings as mere facts and objects. The scientist is objective to the point of concerning himself as a mere element. This objectivity has its theoretical consequences. Since society is itself regarded as nothing more than the aggregate of all individuals, the difference between subject and object, knowledge and the content of knowledge, theory and practice, even on the social plane, is not treated as something that is incessantly shifting, constantly being rearranged in the course of history, but as non-existent, as an empty phrase. The problem of this shifting critical relationship between consciousness and being has always stood in the center of both idealist and materialist philosophies. In empiricism it has resolved itself as it were, of its own accord. There are nothing but facts, and the entire conceptual apparatus of science serves to determine and predict them. When the relation of consciousness to the objective world does come under consideration it is in turn treated as a collection of facts, such as habits conditioned physiologically or in a similar way. Any other mode of consideration is meaningless.

He felt that the elimination of constructive thinking, the obliteration of the opposition between subject and object, theory and practice, thinking and willing, to which his philosophy, the philosophy of the rising bourgeoisie, led, had a disturbing, negative aspect. This feeling is no longer shared by his followers; one would look in vain for any sign of sorrow on their part over the impotence of reason. Modern empiricism is silent on this point, that is, unless it unsuspectingly adopts a Hegelian term and declares that “the mystical” enters with the problems of life.

One may separate science from all other spheres of social life; one may regard science as comprising the determination and prediction of facts. It should be known, however, at least since Hegel’s Phenomenology of Mind, that the most immediate experiences, sensations, and perceptions, as given to us, appear to be ultimate only to the most limited understanding and that actually they are derivative and dependent. Hegel wrote in his criticism of the philosophy of E. Schulze, a criticism which anticipates the whole of logical empiricism:

The development of idealistic philosophy in Germany, from its beginning with Leibniz to the present, has been able to confirm the insight that the world of perception is not merely a copy nor something fixed and substantial, but, to an equal measure a product of human activity. Kant proved that the world of our individual and scientific consciousness is not given to us by God and unquestioningly accepted by us, but is partially the result of the workings of our understanding. He further showed, in the chapter on the schematism of the pure concepts of the understanding, that empirical perceptions which enter the consciousness have already been shaped and sifted by productive human faculties. The Neo-Kantians have preserved this legacy by differentiating and broadening it. In this manner, thanks mainly to the advances made in ethnology and psychology, it became possible to demonstrate the constitutive importance of language in the formulation of sensuous data.

Signification does not arise after the object is completed; it is the progress of the sign and the increasingly sharp “distinction” of the contents of consciousness resulting therefrom that produces the more clearly defined outlines of the world as a totality of “objects” and “qualities” of “changes” and “activities,” of “persons” and “things,” of spatial and temporal relations.³³

The given is not only expressed by speech but fashioned by it; it is mediated in many ways. In accordance with its philosophical presuppositions, Neo-Kantianism has understood the activity which produces and organizes the facts to be an intellectual process. Although Cassirer recognizes that the world of perception is conditioned by man, he nevertheless declares that language, the conditioning factor, is “a vehicle in that vast process of ‘struggle’ between the self and the world in which the boundaries of the two are first definitely demarcated.”³⁴

But even this view is too narrow. In order to place man’s present consciousness of facts in the right context, it is not sufficient to trace the abstract principle of the ego in its historical interconnections. The opposition of the ego and the world, in its definite form, belongs to a transitory historical epoch, The conception of the ego as a monadically isolated substance is an abstraction, in idea as well as in fact. The disciples of classical idealism conceived the conditionality of perception idealistically, and made use chiefly of transcendental, that is, intellectual factors, in order to balance the one-sided doctrine that knowledge consists in accumulating facts. In so doing they showed better judgment than those who would equate knowledge of facts with knowledge of reality. The name empiricism itself betrays the lack of any such judgment. The facts of science and science itself are but segments of the life process of society, and in order to understand the significance of facts or of science generally one must possess the key to the historical situation, the right social theory.

Empiricism, especially in its latest form which has gone so far as to abandon the criterion of personal observation and which intends, in all strictness, to rely exclusively on the logical perfection of the system and on protocol sentences, can easily come to disaster. We can illustrate this point readily. Let us suppose that in a definite country at a definite time the science of man, economics, history, psychology, and sociology are completely attuned to the principles of empiricism. Its people make careful observations; they possess a highly perfected logistic system of symbols, and in a number of cases they arrive at very acute predictions. The daily occurrences in economic and political life are faithfully recorded and even market fluctuations are accurately calculated in advance, although only at short range. The reflexes and reactions of the human being, from infancy to old age, have been carefully observed and all emotions have been related to measurable physiological processes. It is possible to make correct predictions regarding the conduct of the majority of the inhabitants of that country; for instance, as to their observance of stringent regulations, their frugality during a wartime food shortage, their passivity in the face of the persecution and extermination of their best friends, their manifestations of joy at public festivals and at the favorable outcome of the election of a brutal and deceitful bureaucracy, and so forth.

In the dialectical theory, the fact that subjective interest in the unfolding of society as a whole changes continuously in history is not regarded as a sign of error, but as an inherent factor of knowledge. All basic conceptions of the dialectical theory of society, such as society, class, economy, value, knowledge, and culture are part and parcel of a theoretical context dominated throughout by subjective interests. The tendencies and counter-tendencies out of which the historical world is constituted represent developments which can not be grasped without the will for a more human existence, a will which the subject must experience, or rather produce, within himself. The empiricist would not even admit those tendencies and counter-tendencies as Ballungen,³⁶ through which he usually connects the concepts of “vulgar” language with his formulas. The organization and constitution of man, which after the sweeping transformation in our imaginary country, even the empiricists recognized to be man’s true form of organization (although he must scorn this mode of expression), determined the consciousness of the participating groups even during the struggle leading to that transformation. These groups did not have to assert a single fact which was not empirically provable, provided that they were guided by the right interest. Rational knowledge does not controvert the tested findings of science; unlike empiricist philosophy, however, it refuses to terminate with them.

It has been mentioned more than once in the preceding pages that modern and traditional empiricism are distinct. The new school of empiricism has frequently insisted that it goes beyond the traditional type.

The propositions of formal logic and mathematics cannot, then, be derived from empirical data. Since logical empiricism acknowledges that these formal sciences constitute its particular field of interest, without insisting, as did John Stuart Mill, on reducing them to the data of experience, it regards itself as a school of its own. This new kind of thought, which is distinguished from the mere establishment of facts, is quite discreet in face of the existing order of things. True to its origin, traditional logic has always attempted to comprise the most universal qualities of being within fundamental principles; modern logic, on the other hand, declares that it comprises nothing, that it is wholly devoid of content. Its sentences are not supposed to reveal anything at all about reality. Rather, the entire system of logic as well as of mathematics (which is a part of logic according to Whitehead and Russell) is merely an extensively differentiated system of sentences about concepts, judgments, and syllogisms of the kind used in science and everyday life. According to Russell, the function of logic is to investigate these logical elements and, further, to lay down a foundational system for the various forms of judgment. This logic is called formal because symbolic elements are manipulated without regard to their relation to reality, that is to say, without regard to the question of truth or falsity.

Through its analysis of the formal elements of science, then, logic affords the possibility of discovering conceptual obscurities and apparent contradictions, of bringing to light alternatives that went unnoticed before, and of replacing complex theoretical constructions by simpler ones, of setting diverse forms of expression in harmony with one another in different branches of science, or in the same branch, and of creating greater uniformity. Like mathematics, it uses symbols for all formal elements and even attempts to use them for all operations. Logic deals algebraically with statements expressed symbolically, particularly in the syllogism, thus preventing many misunderstandings and promoting clarity. With great pride logic says of itself that it nowhere increases the store of material of knowledge in the sense in which the special sciences in their present form do. Its aim is to assist the sciences in formulating their results and in reaching mutual agreement. Its program, so to speak, consists in “rationalizing” scientific research. According to Carnap, “There is no philosophy as a theory or a system of special propositions alongside of those of science.”⁴¹ It would, therefore, be a mistake to assume that the addition of logic in any way changes the general character of empiricism.

The interpretation of logic as a system of linguistic forms devoid of content soon proves to be questionable, however, and it is quickly abandoned in the struggle with metaphysics. The separation of form and content cannot be carried out. The idea that it is possible to do so without resort to extralogical considerations turns out to be an illusion. It seems plausible in theoretical physics, in which the separation originates, because the “immediately given,” understood as an isolated perception, plays a minor role in comparison with the complicated process of formulating and reformulating laws. In the social world, however, it is no accident that this bifurcation can only be supported by the most inane examples. For, in social sciences, the connection with material judgments and decisions is demonstrated from the very beginning. Every expression of the language has a definite meaning. A judgment is a compound symbol and every individual symbol in it is correlated either with a definite or indefinite entity. Judgments may, therefore, be dealt with in the same manner as any other definite thing; one may take out and replace elements, substitute Coleridge for Socrates, and so on.⁴² In order not to destroy the character of the judgment and replace it with meaningless constructions, it is necessary to observe certain rules in substituting symbols. The elaboration of such a system of rules was prompted primarily by logical difficulties encountered within mathematics and now forms a specially cultivated department of modern logic. The process of determining, however, whether or not a combination of symbols is to be called intersignificant, that is to say, the process of distinguishing between a meaningless statement and a combination of meaningless sounds, cannot be separated from a concrete decision on a material problem. The notion prevails that the logician need merely go to his colleagues in other departments of science or, perhaps, to journalists and business men to collect established facts from which he can then abstract the concept of form in the quiet of his study. This fallacious idea reduces logic to a type of thought that is strictly confined to the accredited classificatory systems of science and only explores relations between fixed conceptions.

As has been shown, this philosophical position by virtue of its very nature can not possess a single legitimate weapon to combat any form of mass delusion once the latter has attracted sufficient followers. Belief in witchcraft was combated in its day by means of a strictly rationalist philosophy. In the presence of a large number of protocol sentences bearing on the existence of witches, the empiricists would not even have been able to fall back on improbability. Empiricists regard Aristotle, Kant, and Hegel as the champion crackbrains of the world, and their philosophies as a scientific vacuum for no weightier reasons than that their ideas do not fit into the system of logistics and that their relation to the “root concepts” and “primitive experiences” of empiricism is problematical. The superficiality and presumption with which the new empiricists pass judgment on the products of intellectual activity parallel an attitude to culture which now and then finds practical expression in nationalistic uprisings and the bonfires associated with them, though such demonstrations may in fact offend the empiricists personally. Russell came across Hegel’s Logic and discovered that logic and metaphysics are identified in this system. His explanation follows:

Russell has a very acute insight into the mental caste of the typical philosopher:

And he continues in this vein. He cannot forgive these philosophers because “they remained—to borrow a useful word from Mr. Santayana—‘malicious’ in regard to the world of science and common sense.”⁴⁶

The book from which these passages are quoted and the more recent writings of Russell strike a popular note. The writings of the Vienna circle, on the other hand, make the same judgments in a strict and uncompromising manner. Carnap remarks:

Among the conceptions which empiricism does not comprehend but attacks nonetheless, is the thesis that truth is not an isolated judgment, but in every case a whole of knowledge. As a rule, the mathematical logicians do not attack Hegel on this point but direct their attention to his English disciple, Bradley. The following passage is a good example of the grounds on which they criticize him:

This logic is not a “physics of language” but material knowledge itself, considered under the aspect of its presentation. Schlick and Russell accomplish little when they marshal such sentences as “It is rather cold,” and “Tommy has a cold in the head,”⁵⁰ against Bradley’s philosophy. Their oft-repeated demand that philosophers should overcome their “instinctive aversion”⁵¹ and study logistics must be countered with the reminder that before refuting dialectics one ought at least to know its rudiments. The standpoint, “which is to shake previous philosophy to its foundations,”⁵² cannot be found in the primitive misconceptions exhibited by the modern empiricists. This is all the more true because not only logistic but every other theory lacks the ability to overthrow the old philosophy, no matter how thorough its acquaintance with the traditions combated. Idealistic philosophy or metaphysics cannot be “shaken to its foundation” by mere theoretical rejection. Nor can it be negated simply by “turning one’s back on philosophy and, with head averted, mumbling a few angry and banal phrases about it.”⁵³

Logical empiricism was designated at the outset of this study as an attempt to bring unity and harmony into the inconsistencies of the modern consciousness. While neoromantic philosophers strove to attain this end by disparaging science, the latest branch of positivism seeks to carry it out by hypostatizing the special sciences. The two philosophical movements have a common future. Neither apprehends reality in conscious connection with a definite historical activity, as a body of tendencies, but takes it in the immediate form in which it presents itself. The prometaphysical view absolves the given world by referring it to a significant being that exists independent of historical change. Scientivism rejects all metaphysical categories. It feels “sufficient vitality in itself to affirm the world in its present form . . .” This means that it sees physics as “a science full of vital problems, full of inner movement, and tremendous effort to find the answer to the questions posed by the mind in its quest for knowledge.”⁵⁵ Scientivism romanticizes the special sciences when it declares that physical theories furnish proof “that man grows with knowledge and carries in himself possibilities of thought forms which he could not even imagine on a previous level.”⁵⁶

While it is true that metaphysics is wrong to feed mankind on hopes by offering it a being that cannot be verified with the means of science, it is also true that science becomes naively metaphysical when it takes itself to be the knowledge and the theory and even goes so far as to disparage philosophy, that is, every critical attitude toward science. It is true that any position which is manifestly irreconcilable with definite scientific views must be considered false. Even constructive thought must get much of its material from the special sciences, from physics, geography, psychology, etc. When it considers a certain problem, constructive thought brings together conceptions of various disciplines regardless of conventional borderlines. Unlike absolute metaphysical intuition, however, it does not thereby disregard or set aside their contents, but weaves them into the right pattern for the given situation. This positive connection with science does not mean that the language of science is the true and proper form of knowledge. The portions of reality covered by the special sciences are restricted both as to range and treatment in comparison to the level of knowledge attainable today. Just as it is inadmissible to run counter to the tested results of science, it is naive and bigoted to think and speak only in the language of science.

Under present circumstances a language that is panic-stricken enough to say that nothing is disclosed to it and even to declare that “the nothing nothings” (Nichts selbst nichtet) does not, despite its kinship with the unleashed brute forces of the present day, appear more senseless than the self-assured precisionism which discovers a prediction even in the judgment that a man died under horrible torture. This precisionism, like recent metaphysical language, does not take account of the qualitative leap in history and, like the forlorn pessimism of pre-authoritarian metaphysics, fails to call the existing order into question because it maintains its faith in linear progress. The sectarian spirit of such a harmonistic belief in progress is present, too, among those schools that continue to employ living language with the superior reservation that what they “really” intend is physics although they work with “crude” implements for the sake of convenience. Science and its interpretation are two different things. One of Mach’s disciples declares, “Subjects and objects are clusters or bundles of elements; they are composed of consecutively appearing groups of simultaneously appearing elements.”⁵⁷ This statement has not been proved by physics, of course, but it is, nevertheless, part of a unified general outlook to which its disciples adhere as strictly as the modern European and American followers of Buddhism or Christian Science observe their specific cant and ritual. The compilation of an Index Verborum Prohibitorum containing all words which some noted specialist has pronounced useless, and the formulation of a unitary language and a unitary science, even if their specific usefulness were conceded, do not in any case belong to a science that desires the respect of philosophical thought.

The process of embracing some doctrine or other for the purpose of restoring one’s inner peace as though the events of objective history had nothing to do with the degree of a man’s inner calm, always comes down to a retreat into illusory harmony, a processes of insulation from the world; the result is the same whether the contents of the soothing doctrine are scientific or metaphysical.

¹ Max Planck, Vom Wesen der Willensfreiheit (Leipzig, 1936), pp. 20f.

² Planck, op. cit., p. 24.

³ Ibid.

⁴ M. Fréret, Lettre de Thrasibule à Leucippe (London, n.d.), p. 23.

⁵ Bertrand Russell, “The Congress of Scientific Philosophy,” Actes du Congrès International de Philosophie Scientifique (Paris, 1936), No. 1, p. 11.

⁶ Rudolf Carnap, “Die alte und die neue Logik,” Erkenntnis, I (Leipzig, 1930/31), 24.

⁷ John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. by A. C. Fraser (Oxford, 1894), Introduction, Sec. 2, p. 27.

⁸ David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. by L. A. Selby-Bigge (Oxford, 1928), p. xx.

⁹ Cf. Rudolf Carnap, Logical Syntax of Language, tr. Amethe Smeaton (New York and London, 1937), p. 319.

¹⁰ Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (London, 1922), p. 21.

¹¹ Carnap, Logical Syntax of Language, p. 318.

¹² Logical empiricism is at one with the currently dominant theory of knowledge in maintaining that the resolution of the conflict between fact and theory cannot itself be theoretically formulated. “Here is where genius comes into its own,” is the explanation offered by Hermann Weyl, Philosophie der Naturwissenschaft, in Handbuch der Philosophie, II (Munich–Berlin, 1927), p. 113.

¹³ Cf. especially: “Soziologie im Physikalismus,” Erkenntnis, II (1931), pp. 423–28; and Empirische Soziologie (Vienna, 1931), pp. 128–147.

¹⁴ Otto Neurath, “L’Encyclopédie comme ‘modèle,’” Revue de synthese, XII (1936), p. 188.

¹⁵ The philosophical consequences of regarding corporeal things in their pure state (that is, completely abstracted from subjectivity and from human praxis) as concrete realities have been discussed by Edmund Husserl in his recent The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (1936; tr. by David Carr; Evanston: North-western University Press, 1970). The book came to my attention only after the present essay had been completed. Even though this most recent publication of the last genuine theoretician of knowledge is not concerned specifically with the “physicalist movement” (“Vienna Circle,” “logical empiricism”) but with physicalism generally, the hypostatizations to which it calls attention are what has led to this newest form of physicalism. All the factors we have been discussing—uncritical objectivism, the absolutizing of special science, the many affinities (at least from our contemporary viewpoint) between empiricism and rationalism, the neutralization of Hume’s skepticism in his followers—are all noted in Husserl’s analysis and an attempt is made to explain them. Despite the great difference between Husserl’s outlook and the theory we are proposing here, his book with its extremely abstract discussion of problems has more to contribute to contemporary historical tasks than does pragmatism for all its vaunted relevance or the writing and thinking, supposedly addressed to the “man in the street,” of many young intellectuals who are in fact ashamed of their role.

¹⁶ Rudolf Carnap, The Unity of Science (London, 1934), p. 65.

¹⁷ Ernst Mach, The Analysis of Sensations, tr. from the first German edition by C. M. Williams (Chicago and London, 1914), p. 36.

¹⁸ Mach, op. cit., p. 344.

¹⁹ Carnap, The Unity of Science, p. 64f.

²⁰ Carnap, op. cit., p. 66.

²¹ Carnap, op. cit., p. 97.

²² Leibniz, Hauptschriften zur Grundlegung der Philosophie, ed. by Ernst Cassirer (Leipzig, 1904–1906), II p. 299.

²³ Bertrand Russell, Philosophy (New York, 1927), p. 223f.

²⁴ Hans Hahn, “Logik, Mathematik und Naturerkennen,” Einheitswissenschaft, ed. by Otto Neurath et al., Heft 2 (Vienna, 1933), p. 9.

²⁵ Le Gutenberg, Organe de la Federation Suisse des Typographes, August 28, 1936.

²⁶ Otto Neurath, Empirische Soziologie, p. 105.

²⁷ Neurath, op. cit., p. 67.

²⁸ Neurath, op. cit., p. 68.

²⁹ Neurath, op. cit., p. 106.

³⁰ Neurath, op. cit., p. 131.

³¹ Hume, op. cit., p. 268f.

³² Hegel, “Verhältnis des Skeptizismus zur Philosophie,’ Sämtliche Werke, I (Jubiläumsausgabe; Stuttgart, 1927), p. 253.

³³ Ernst Cassirer, Philosophie der symbolischen Formen (Berlin, 1923), I, 233.

³⁴ Cassirer, op. cit., I, p. 232.

³⁵ Russell, Philosophy, p. 119.

³⁶ Empirical matter-of-factness has penetrated even into the French language. In order to do justice to Ballungen, the translator had to enrich his mother tongue with the word “grégats.” Cf. Neurath, “L’Encyclopédie,” p. 190.

³⁷ Relativism, in the sense of an indifference on the part of science towards values and ends, is nowadays represented as the general characteristic of a liberal outlook. This is a misconception. The “tolerance” of the Enlightenment was certainly not neutral. It meant siding with the bourgeoisie against feudalism, with deism against the Church, with the demand that convicts be given useful work as against the practice of torturing them, etc. Modern relativism is actually the ideological capitulation of liberalism to the new autocratic systems. It is the admission of its own impotence, the transition to an authoritarian philosophy, which here as well as in other directions constitutes the natural consequence of relativism: “Super-Relativism.” “We recognize the demands of relativism,” declares Neurath (“L’Encyclopédie,” p. 189). With disarming simplicity, the positivists blend relativism with democracy and pacifism, asserting that these have “a natural affinity with the basic assumptions of relativism” (H. Kelsen, “Wissenschaft und Demokratie,” a feuilleton in The Neue Züricher Zeitung, No. 321, February 23, 1937). Mussolini has grasped the situation with more acumen. He has always prided himself on having maintained a relativistic attitude in contrast to socialism and all other political doctrines. His movement never had a straightforward program. As the situation demanded, it called itself aristocratic or democratic, revolutionary or reactionary, proletarian or antiproletarian, pacifistic or antipacifistic. This, according to Mussolini, bears out its claim “to stem directly from the most up-to-date trend of the European mind,” namely from the relativistic trend of philosophy. “From the circumstance that one ideology is as good as the next, that is, that all are mere fictions, the modern relativist infers that everybody has the right to create his own ideology and to get the most out of it with all the energy at his disposal.” (Mussolini, “Relativismo e fascismo,” Diuturna, Milan, 1924, pp. 374–377). Relativism, which is without philosophical justification, is an element of a social dynamic which moves toward authoritarian forms, Indifference to the idea in theory is the precursor of cynicism in practical life.

³⁸ Cf. Friedrich Engels, “Dialektik und Natur,” Marx-Engels Archiv, II (1927), 207–216; Horkheimer, “Materialism and Metaphysics,” pp. 10–46 of this volume.

³⁹ Bertrand Russell, Our Knowledge of the External World (Chicago and London, 1929), p. 40.

⁴⁰ Russell, op. cit., p. 45f.

⁴¹ Carnap, “Die alte und die neue Logik,” p. 26.

⁴² Cf. Rudolf Carnap, Abriss der Logistik (Vienna, 1929), p. 3ff.

⁴³ Cf. Max Horkheimer, “Zum Problem der Wahrheit,” Kritische Theorie, I (Frankfurt, 1968), p. 265ff.

⁴⁴ Hahn, “Logik, Mathematik und Naturerkennen,” p. 9.

⁴⁵ Russell, Our Knowledge of the External World, pp. 40–41.

⁴⁶ Russell, op. cit., pp. 48–49.

⁴⁷ Carnap, “Die alte und die neue Logik,” p. 13.

⁴⁸ Heinrich Scholz, “Die klassische deutsche Philosophie und die neue Logik,” Actes du Congrès International de Philosophie Scientifique, Part VIII (Paris, 1936), 2.

⁴⁹ Moritz Schlick, “Philosophie und Naturwissenschaft,” Erkenntnis, IV (1938), 381.

⁵⁰ Cf. Bertrand Russell, Philosophy, pp. 250–3.

⁵¹ Carnap, op. cit., p. 13.

⁵² Ibid.

⁵³ Karl Marx, “Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie,” Aus dem literarischen Nachlass von Karl Marx und Friedrick Engels, ed. by F. Mehring (Stuttgart, 1920), I, 390.

⁵⁴ The solipsistic character of modern empiricism has not been treated in this study. It has, however, been the subject of repeated attack since the early years of this century. Since the publication of the early polemics against empirio-criticism, nothing has changed in the positivist doctrine and method except that it exercises greater caution in its formulations. It now claims not to deny consciousness and physical states, but merely to maintain that all psychological concepts may be traced back to physical ones, which, of course, leads to the same thing. Logical empiricists are apparently unable to see that at times it is the inner states which are significant rather than outer effects. They affirm that it makes no difference in knowledge whether or not consciousness is attributed to man. Carnap ridicules as metaphysical flummery the sate of Empedocles that the attraction and repulsion of matter are to be understood as love and hate (“Logic,” Factors Determining Human Behavior, Harvard Tercentenary Publications [Cambridge, Mass.], 1937, p. 110). It is his opinion that this statement means nothing at all. What holds for matter holds equally for man. In the case of the body, too, it is declared to be nonsense to conceive that it is moved by love, and hate, pleasure and pain. According to the terminology proper to the school, such a logical verdict does not arise from solipsism or nihilism, but from a methodological prescript: the claim that man has a consciousness is not false, but meaningless. Nihilism is, however, present in its assertion that not only are you nothing, but I am nothing. This philosophy corresponds fairly accurately to the feeling characteristic of the followers of an authoritarian leader.

⁵⁵ Hans Reichenbach, “Die philosophische Bedeutung der modernen Physik,” Erkenntnis, I (1930/31), 70–71.

⁵⁶ Reichenbach, op. cit., p. 71.

⁵⁷ Friedrich Adler, Ernst Machs überwindung des mechanischen Materialismus (Vienna, 1918), p. 88.

⁵⁸ Cf. Hegel, Phenomenology of Mind, tr. by J. B. Baillai (London, 1910), I.

CHAPTER TEN