I have to admit that I speak about 1/5 tongue in cheek on the end of philo, but I do think that Engels is correct in the long run, and that much of those doing philo now are going over old issues that were settled a while ago.
They may be somehow equivalent , but Engels statement is not that philosophy is replaced by revolutionary practice, but "Modern materialism," wrote Engels in Anti‑Dühring (1878), "no longer needs any philosophy standing above the other sciences. As soon as each separate science is required to get clarity as to its position in the great totality of things and of our knowledge of things, a special science dealing with this totality is superfluous. What still independently survives of all former philosophy is the science of thought and its laws—formal logic and dialectics. Everything else is merged in the positive science of nature and history." [4] I had said _Ludwig Feuerbach_, which does have some overlap with _Anti-Duhring_. Of course, "the end" or "the outcome" is in the title of _Feuerbach_. Classical German philosophy was the pinnacle of all philo for Marx and Engels ( German philo, French politics and British politcal economy) ,so the end of Classical German philo is the end of philo. " What still independently survives of _all_ former philosophy (emphasis added - CB)" No doubt people are still asking metaphysical questions, especially people new to such questions, but is anybody building metaphysical systems like Duhring or whomever ? Afterall, Marxism has not come to predominate in thinking , and so the old bourgeois and class divided society thinking is reproduced constantly today; so pre-Marxist philosophical issues resurface. Metaphysics and philosophy are the expression of the ancient antagonism between predominantly mental and predominantly physical labor. With the end of this antagonism and the advent of communism, Old philo/metaphysics will fade but not thinking; that's the Marxist idea I'm pretty sure. In other words, Engels idea sort of goes that philo will end with the success of revolutionary practice, which may be what you mean by replaced by revolutionary practice. Good for Kant. The main point is that the Lpers and others who accuse Marxism of system building don't seem to realize that Marxism has an explicit anti-metaphysical tenet ,and Marxist dialectics is not metaphysics as they claim. It is not system building. The reason Marxism isn't metaphysics is that it declares explicitly as a first principle that nothing is eternal, that everything changes, that there is no God, no eternal Rock of Ages. The only constant is change. Of course there have been ancients who thought that, too. I summarized one of the Roman philosopher's essay's that way when I was a sophmore, before I knew of Hegel, Engels or Marx. andie nachgeborenen ________________________________ Marx rejected philosophy as ideology; I don't think he paid special attention to metaphysics. Engels' piece of Feuerbach is really limited to Marxism as the end of German idealism. (As such he's probably right about that, even if his idea that revolutionary practice will replace philosophical anlysiswas over optimistic.) Many people think that Marx didn't escape philosophy, including metaphysics. In this connection I'd recommend Dan Brudny's Marx's Attempt To Escape Philosophy, a very thoughtful study witha really brilliant chapter on Feuerbach. People have been announcing the end of metaphysics since at least Kant, who is the first thinker I know to make a really substantial case that there's no such thing as metaphysical knowledge. That is half the argument of the Critique of Pure reason, against the "dogmatists" (Descartes and especially Leibniz and his acolytes), the orther half is the argument against the skeptics (Hume) and subjective idealists (Berkeley) that knowledge of the empirical world is possible. So marxsim doesn't have priority on this. The LP's attempt to squelch metaphysics failed. It just won't go away. People won't stop asking in the abstract way philosophersa sk these questions, things like, whether the mind is distinct from the body in some way, whether thereal world is really real, what is the nature of causation, whether there is any such thing as free will, whether determinism is true, that is the relations of parts to wholes, whether people and other things are in some sense the same thing over time, and the like. Wittengstein's attempt to show somehow that even asking such questions is a symptom of some sort of error has not caiught on, nor has Rorty's dumbed down version of the same idae, atht only people who brainwashed into asking such questions by taking philosophy courses would ask such questions. (Untrue, as anyone who has taught phil 101 can testify.) Nor is the Marxist claim very plausible that revolutionary practice somehow dosplaces philosophy very plausible -- it may do so in the of not leaving much time for philosophy, but even (for example) Lenin found that doing philosophy, indeed metaphysics sometimes (Materialism and Empiriocriticism is a defense of realism) was part of his revolutionary practice. So, yes, there's philosophy. It's likely here to stay. It changes over time, different questions interest people depending on the problems that confront them, but despite the pronouncements of the End Of Philosophy, philosophy is not over. jks _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [email protected] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
