Part 6 (1/2)
It is worth noting that in this department of knowledge pretended final truths of last instance are met with most frequently. Only the person who wishes to show that there are eternal truth, eternal morality, and eternal justice in human history, and that these are similar in scope and application to those of mathematics, will proclaim that twice two is four and that birds have beaks and the like to be eternal truths. We can also certainly rely upon the same friend of humanity taking the opportunity to explain that all former inventors of eternal truths have been more or less a.s.ses or charlatans, that they have been circ.u.mscribed by error and have made mistakes. The fact of their error, however, is natural and proves the existence of the truth, and that it can be reached, and the newly arisen prophet has a ready-to-hand stock of final truths of last instance, eternal law and eternal justice. This has happened hundreds, nay, thousands of times, so that it is a wonder that men are still sufficiently credulous to believe it not only of others, but even of themselves. Here we find a prophet clad in the armour of righteousness who proclaims in the old-fas.h.i.+oned way that whoever else may deny there is still one left to declare final truths of last instance.
Denial, nay, doubt even, is a weakness, barren confusion, mole-like scepticism, worse than blank nihilism, confusion worse confounded and other little amiabilities of this sort. As with all prophets, there is no scientific investigation, but merely off-hand condemnation.
We might have made mention of the sciences which investigate the laws of human thought, logic and dialectics. Here we are, however, no better off as regards eternal truths. Herr Duehring explains that the dialectic proper is pure nonsense, and the many books which have been and are still being written on logic prove clearly that final truths of last instance are more spa.r.s.ely distributed than many believe.
Moreover, we are not at all alarmed because the step of science upon which we to-day stand is not a bit more final than any of the preceding steps. Already it includes an immense amount of material for investigation and offers a great chance for specialisation and study to anyone who desires to become expert in any particular branch.
Whoever expects to find final and immutable truths in observations which in the very nature of things must remain relative for successive generations, and can only be completed piecemeal, as in cosmogony, geology and human history, which must always be incomplete owing to the complexity of the historical material, shows perverse ignorance even where he does not, as in the present case, set up claims of personal infallibility.
Truth and error, like all such mutually antagonistic concepts, have only an absolute reality under very limited conditions, as we have seen, and as even Herr Duehring should know by a slight acquaintance with the first elements of dialectics, which show the insufficiency of all polar antagonisms. As soon as we bring the antagonism of truth and error out of this limited field it becomes relative and is not serviceable for new scientific statements. If we should seek to establish its reality beyond those limits we are at once confronted by a dilemma, both poles of the antagonism come into conflict with their opposite; truth becomes error and error becomes truth. Let us take, for example, the well-known Boyle's law, according to which, the temperature remaining the same, the volume of the gas varies as the pressure to which it is subjected. Regnault discovered that this law does not apply in certain cases. If he had been a realist-philosopher he would have been obliged to say, ”Boyle's law is mutable, therefore it does not possess absolute truth, therefore it is untrue, therefore it is false.” He would thus have made a greater error than that which was latent in Boyle's law, his little particle of truth would have been drowned in a flood of error; he would in this way have elaborated his correct result into an error compared with which Boyle's law with its particle of error fastened to it would have appeared as the truth.
Regnault, scientist as he was, did not trouble himself with such childish performances. He investigated further and found that Boyle's law is only approximately correct, having no validity in the case of gases which can be made liquid by pressure when the pressure approaches the point where liquefaction sets in. Boyle's law therefore is shown only to be true within specific bounds. But is it absolute, a final truth of last instance within specific bounds? No physicist would say so. He would say that it is correct for certain gases and within certain limits of pressure and temperature, and even then within these somewhat narrow limits he would not exclude the possibility of a still narrower limitation or change in application as the result of further investigation. This is how final truths of last instance stand in physics, for example. Really scientific works as a rule avoid such dogmatic expressions as truth and error, but they are constantly cropping up in works like the Philosophy of Reality, where mere loose talking vaunts itself the supreme result of sovereign thought.
But a nave reader may say, ”Where has Herr Duehring expressly stated that the content of his philosophy of reality is final truth of the last instance?” Well, for example, in his dithyramb on his system which we quoted above, and again where he says ”Moral truths as far as they are known are as sound as those of mathematics.” Does not Herr Duehring explain that by reason of his powers of criticism and searching investigations, the fundamental philosophy has been brought to light and that he has thus bestowed upon us final truths of last instance? But if Herr Duehring does not set up such a claim either on his own behalf or that of his time, if he says that some time in the misty future final truths of last instance will be established, and that therefore his own statements are merely accidental and confused, a kind of ”mole-like scepticism” and ”barren confusion,” what is all the fuss about, and what useful purpose is served by Herr Duehring?
If we gain no ground in the matter of truth and error we gain less in respect of good and evil. Here we have an antagonism of ethical significance, and ethics is a department of human history in which final truths are but slight and few. From people to people, from age to age, there have been such changes in the ideas of good and evil that these concepts are contradictory in different periods and among different peoples. But some one may remark, ”Good is still not evil and evil is not good; if good and evil are confused all morality is abolished, and each may do what he will.” When the rhetoric is stripped away this is the opinion of Herr Duehring. But the matter is not to be disposed of so easily. If things were as easy as that there would be no dispute about good and evil. Everybody would know what was good and what was evil. How is it to-day, however? What system of ethics is preached to us to-day? There is first the Christian-feudal, a survival of the early days of faith, which is as a matter of fact subdivided into Catholic and Protestant, of which there are still further subdivisions, from the Jesuit-Catholic and orthodox Protestant to loosely drawn ethical systems. There figure also the modern or bourgeois, and still further the proletarian future system of morality, so that the progressive European countries alone present three contemporaneous and coexistent actual theories of ethics. Which is the true one? No single one of them, regarded as a finality, but that system a.s.suredly possesses the most elements of truth which promises the longest duration, which existent in the present is also involved in the revolution of the future, the proletarian.
But if we now see that the three cla.s.ses of modern society, the feudal aristocracy, the bourgeoisie and the proletarian, have their distinctive ethical systems, we can only conclude therefrom that mankind consciously or unconsciously shapes its moral views in accordance with the material facts upon which in the last instance the cla.s.s existence is based--upon the economic conditions under which production and exchange are carried on.
But in the three above mentioned systems of ethics there is much which is common to all three of them, and might not this at least const.i.tute a portion of an eternally stable system of ethics? These ethical theories pa.s.s through three distinct steps in their historical development, they have therefore a common historical basis and hence necessarily much in common. Further, for approximately similar economic stages there must, necessarily be a coincidence of similar stages of economic development, and ethical theories must of necessity coincide with a greater or less degree of closeness. From the very moment when private property in movables developed there had to be ethical sanctions of general effect in all communities in which private property prevailed, thus: Thou shalt not steal. Is this commandment, then, an eternal commandment? By no means. In a society in which the motive for theft did not exist stealing would only be the practice of the weak-minded, and the preacher of morals who proclaimed ”Thou shalt not steal” as an eternal commandment would only be laughed at for his pains.
We here call attention to the attempt to force a sort of moral dogmatism upon us as eternal, final, immutable moral law, upon the pretext that the moral law is possessed of fixed principles which transcend history and the variations of individual peoples. We state, on the contrary, that up to the present time all ethical theory is in the last instance a testimony to the existence of certain economic conditions prevailing in any community at any particular time. And in proportion as society developed cla.s.s-antagonisms, morality became a cla.s.s morality and either justified the interests and domination of the ruling cla.s.s, or as soon as a subject cla.s.s became strong enough justified revolt against the domination of the ruling cla.s.s and the interests of the subject cla.s.s. That, by this means, there is an advance made in morals as a whole, just as there is in all other branches of human knowledge, there can be no doubt. But we have not yet advanced beyond cla.s.s morals. Real human morality superior to cla.s.s morality and its traditions will not be possible until a stage in human history has been reached in which cla.s.s antagonisms have not only been overcome but have been forgotten as regards the conduct of life. Now the colossal egotism of Herr Duehring may be understood when it is seen that, on the eve of a revolution which will bring about a state of society devoid of cla.s.ses, he claims from the midst of an old and cla.s.s divided society to proclaim an eternal system of morals independent of time and material change. He himself declares what up to the present has been hid from the rest of us that he understands the structure of this future society at least as regards its salient features.
In conclusion he makes a revelation which is essentially original but none the less ”fundamental respecting the origin of evil.” We have the fact that the type of the cat with its inherent treachery is pictured as the representative animal type, and this also displays a form of character to be found also in man. There is no mystery then about evil if one can detect a mysticism in the cat or any other beast of prey.
Evil is--the cat. Goethe was evidently wrong when he introduced Mephistopheles as a black dog instead of a cat similarly colored. This is ethics suited not only to all worlds but to cats also.
_Equality._
By dint of experience we have come to learn Herr Duehring's ”method.”
It consists in separating each department of knowledge into what are a.s.sumed to be its most simple elements, then of making so called self evident axioms with regard to these simple elements, and thereupon operating with the results obtained in this way. Thus a sociological question is to be ”decided on simple axiomatic principles just as if it were a matter of elementary mathematics.” Thus the application of the mathematical method to history, ethics and law gives mathematical certainty to the final results which appear as pure and immutable truths.
This is only another form of the old ideological, _a priori_ method so called, which learned the properties of an object not from the object itself but derived them by proof from the concept of the object. First you derive a concept of the object from the actual object, then you turn the spit and measure the object in terms of its derivative the concept. The concept is not shaped after the pattern of the object but the object after the pattern of the concept. In Herr Duehring's method, the simplest elements, the last abstractions to which he can attain do duty for the concept which is unchangeable, the simplest elements are under the best conditions purely imaginary in their nature. The philosophy of realism hence appears to be mere ideology, and has no derivation from real life but is absolutely dependent upon the imagination. When such an ideologist proceeds to construct a system of morals and law from his concept of the so-called simplest elements of society instead of from the real social conditions of the men about him, where does he get his material for construction? The material evidently consists of two kinds--firstly, the slim vestiges of reality which are still present in every fundamental abstraction, and secondly in the actual content which our ideologist evolves from his own consciousness. And what does he discover in his consciousness?
For the most part moral and ethical philosophic ideas and these const.i.tute an expression corresponding more or less closely, whether positive or negative, harmonious or hostile, with the social and political conditions which environ him. Besides he probably has notions derived from literature pertaining to these conditions, and finally he has possibly personal idiosyncrasies. Let our ideologist dodge all that he can, the historical reality which he has thrown out of doors comes in again at the window and although he may fancy that he is employed in the manufacture of moral and legal doctrines good for all worlds and all ages he is actually making a distorted, counterfeit of the conservation or revolutionary tendencies of his time, because torn from its real place, as things seen in a concave mirror are upside down.
Herr Duehring therefore resolves society into its simplest elements and discovers accordingly that the most elementary society consists of at least two human beings. He thereupon operates with these two human beings to produce his axiom. Then he delivers himself of the fundamental maxim of morals, ”Two human wills, as such, are entirely identical, and the one can in consequence make no positive demands upon the other.” Here the ”foundation of moral law” is apparent, so ”in order to develop the princ.i.p.al concepts of justice we require two human beings under absolutely simple and elementary conditions.”
That two human wills or two human beings are just alike is not only no axiom, it is a glaring exaggeration. In the first place two human beings may differ as regards s.e.x, and this simple fact shows us, if we look at childhood for a moment, that the elements of society are not two men, but a little man and a little woman, which const.i.tute a family, the simplest and earliest form of a.s.sociation for productive purposes. But Herr Duehring cannot by any means agree to this. On the one hand the two const.i.tuents of society might very possibly be made alike and on the other Herr Duehring would not be able to construct the moral and legal equality of man and woman from the original family. Therefore one of two things must take place. Either the molecules of Herr Duehring's society from the multiplication of which all society is built up is merely _a priori_ and destined to fail, since two men cannot produce a child, or we must consider them as two heads of families. In this case the entire foundation is made its very opposite. Instead of the equality of man we have at the most the equality of two heads of families, and since women are not comprehended we have the consequent subjection of women.
We are sorry to warn the reader that these two notorious men cannot be got rid of, for a long time. They take up in the realm of social conditions the role heretofore played by the dwellers in the other world with whom it is to be hoped we have now finished. Should any question of political economy, of politics or any other such matter require solution, out come the two men and make the thing axiomatic forthwith. This is a remarkable, clever, and system-shaping discovery of our system-shaping philosopher. But to give the truth its due we are regretfully bound to say that he did not discover the two men.
They are common to the whole of the eighteenth century. They appear in Rousseau's Treatise on Equality, 1754, where, by the way, they serve to prove axiomatically the direct opposite of Herr Duehring's contentions. They play an important part in political economy from Adam Smith to Ricardo, but here they are so far unequal that they follow different trades, princ.i.p.ally hunting and fis.h.i.+ng, and they exchange their mutual products. They serve through the entire eighteenth century princ.i.p.ally as mere ill.u.s.trative examples, and the originality of Herr Duehring consists in the fact that he elevates this method of ill.u.s.tration to a fundamental method for all social science and to a measure of all historical instruction. There is no easier way to arrive at ”a really scientific philosophy of things and men.”
In order to create the fundamental axiom the two men and their wills are mutually equal and neither has any right to lord it over the other. We cannot find two suitable men. They must be two men who are so free from all national, economic, political and religious conditions, from s.e.x and personal peculiarities that nothing remains of either of them but the mere concept ”man” and then they are entirely equal. They are therefore two fully-equipped ghosts conjured up by that very Herr Duehring who particularly ridicules and denounces ”spiritistic” movements. These two phantoms must of course do all that their wizard wants of them and so their united productions are a matter of complete indifference to the rest of the world.
Now let us follow Herr Duehring's axiomatic utterances a little further. These two men cannot make positive demands upon each other.
The one who does so and enforces his demand thereupon performs an unjust act, and with this idea as a foundation Herr Duehring explains the injustice, the tyranny, the servitude, in short all the evil happenings of history up to the present time. Now Rousseau has in the work above mentioned proved the contrary just as axiomatically, by means of two men. A. cannot forcibly enslave B. except by putting B.
in a place where he cannot do without A. This is far too materialistic an idea for Herr Duehring. He has accordingly put the same matter somewhat differently. Two s.h.i.+pwrecked men being by themselves on an island form a society. Their wills are, theoretically speaking, entirely equal and this is acknowledged by both. But in reality the inequality is tremendous. A. is resolute and energetic, B. inert, irresolute and slack. A. is sharp, B. is stupid. How long will it be before A. imposes his will upon B., first by taking the upper hand, and keeping it habitually, under the pretence that B.'s submission is voluntary. Whether the form of voluntariness continues or force is resorted to slavery still is slavery. Voluntary entering into a state of slavery lasted all through the Middle Ages in Germany up to the Thirty Years War. When serfdom was abolished in Prussia after the defeats of 1806 and 1807 and with it the duty of the n.o.bility to take care of their subjects in need, sickness and old age the peasants thereupon pet.i.tioned to be allowed to remain in slavery--for who would care for them when they were in trouble? The concept of the two men is just as applicable to inequality and slavery as it is to equality and mutual aid, and since, under the penalty of extinction, men must a.s.sume the heads.h.i.+p of a family, hereditary slavery may be foreseen in it.
Let us put this view of the case on one side for a moment. We a.s.sume that we are convinced by Herr Duehring's maxim and that we are zealous for the full equalisation of the two wills, for the ”universal sovereignty of man” for the ”sovereignty of the individual,”
magnificent expressions, in comparison with which Stirner's ”individual” with his private property is a mere bungler though he might claim his modest part therein. Then we are all free and independent. All? No, not even now. There are still ”occasional dependent relations” but these are to be explained ”on grounds which must be sought not in the action of two wills as such but in a third consideration, in the case of children, for example, in the inadequateness of their self-a.s.sertion.”
Indeed, the foundations of independence are not to be sought in the realisation of the two wills as such. Naturally not, since the realisation of one of the wills is thus interfered with. But they must be sought in a third direction. And what is the third direction? The actual fixing of a subjected will as an inadequate one. So far has our realistic philosopher departed from reality that will, the real content, the characteristic determination of this will serves him as a third ground, for abstract and indefinite speech. However this may be we must agree that equality has its exceptions. It does not apply to a will which is infected with inadequateness of self expression.