1. Vulgar(from French - simple, primitive, ordinary) materialism- a direction in philosophy that became widespread in the 19th century.

Supporters of vulgar materialism:

They completely denied the spirit (idea) as a reality;

Matter was considered the only reality;

They denied the quality of ideality behind consciousness, tried to explain consciousness as a chemical process;

Were atheists;

In their research they relied on the achievements of natural sciences (the law of conservation of energy, the law of conservation of matter, social Darwinism, etc.);

They adhered to the idea of ​​geographical determinism (the influence of geography, climate on humans and other processes of existence);

They rejected dialectics;

They tried to give an unambiguous explanation for everything, excluding duality and contradictions (according to the “black - white” principle);

Significantly simplified the provisions of traditional materialism.

2. Representatives of vulgar materialism were Buchner, Focht, Moleschott.

Ludwig Büchner(1824 - 1899) - philosopher, vulgar materialist, doctor-naturalist by main profession. Wrote books: “Nature and Science”, “The Mental Life of Animals”, “Darwinism and Socialism”.

In his philosophy Buchner:

He substantiated the inconsistency of idealistic philosophical concepts;

He considered the philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach to be the best and most true philosophical teaching;

He was a follower of “social Darwinism” - he mechanically transferred the laws of life and relationships of animals to the lives of people and society.

Yakov Moleschott(1822 - 1893) put forward a theory according to which thinking is a physiological process.

Karl Focht(1817 - 1895) - philosopher, vulgar materialist, doctor-naturalist by profession:

Criticized the biblical teaching about the origin of man;

He considered man to be a close relative of the monkey;

He was hostile to the idea of ​​socialism because, in his opinion, it did not correspond to the natural nature of man;

He considered thinking and consciousness to be a physiological-chemical process - “the brain secretes thoughts like the liver secretes bile.”

35. Philosophy of Marxism (K. Marx, F. Engels).

1. Marxist philosophy was created jointly by two German scientists Karl Marx(1818 - 1883) and Friedrich Engels(1820 - 1895) in the second half of the 19th century. And is an integral part of a broader teaching -Marxism, which, along with philosophy, includes economics (political economy) and socio-political issues (scientific communism).

The philosophy of Marxism provided answers to many burning questions of its time. It became widespread (went beyond Germany and became international) in the world and gained great popularity in late XIX- first half of the twentieth century.

In a number of countries (USSR, socialist countries of Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa), Marxist philosophy was elevated to the rank of official state ideology and was turned into dogma.

The urgent task for today's Marxism is liberation from dogma and adaptation to the modern era, taking into account the results of the scientific and technological revolution and the reality of post-industrial society.

2. The emergence of Marxism and Marxist philosophy contributed to:

Previous materialist philosophy (Democritus, Epicurus, English materialists of the 17th century - Bacon, Hobbes and Locke, French enlighteners of the 18th century, and especially the atheistic-materialist philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach of the mid-19th century);

The rapid growth of discoveries in science and technology (the discovery of the laws of conservation of matter and energy, the evolutionary theory of Charles Darwin, the discovery of the cellular structure of living organisms, the invention of the wire telegraph, steam locomotive, steamship, automobile, photography, numerous discoveries in the field of production, mechanization of labor);

The collapse of the ideals of the Great French Revolution (freedom, equality, fraternity, the ideas of the French Enlightenment), their impossibility of implementation in real life;

The growth of social-class contradictions and conflicts (revolution of 1848 - 1849, reaction, wars, Paris Commune of 1871);

Crisis of traditional bourgeois values ​​(transformation of the bourgeoisie from a revolutionary into a conservative force, crisis of bourgeois marriage and morality).

3. The main works of the founders of Marxism are:

"Theses on Feuerbach" by K. Marx;

"Capital" by K. Marx;

"Economic and philosophical manuscripts of 1844." K. Marx;

"Manifesto of the Communist Party" by K. Marx and F. Engels;

"The Holy Family" and "German Ideology" by K. Marx and F. Engels;

"Dialectics of Nature" by F. Engels;

"Anti-Dühring" by F. Engels;

“The Role of Labor in the Process of Transformation of Ape into Man” by F. Engels;

"The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State" by F. Engels.

4. Marxist philosophy materialistic in nature and consists of two large sections - dialectical materialism And historical materialism(historical materialism is often considered as part of dialectical materialism).

5. The philosophical innovation of K. Marx and F. Engels was materialistic understanding of history (historical materialism).The essence of historical materialism in the following:

At each stage of social development, people, in order to ensure their life activity, enter into special, objective, independent of their will industrial relations(sale of own labor, material production, distribution);

Production relations and the level of productive forces form economic system, which is basis for institutions of state and society, public relations;

These state and public institutions, social relations act as add-ons towards economic basis;

The base and superstructure mutually influence each other;

Depending on the level of development of the productive forces and production relations, a certain type of base and superstructure, socio-economic formations-primitive communal system(low level of production forces and production relations, the beginnings of society); slave society(the economy is based on slavery); Asiatic

mode of production- a special socio-economic formation, the economy of which is based on the mass, collective, strictly state-controlled labor of free people - farmers in the valleys of large rivers ( Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, China); feudalism(the economy is based on a large land ownership and the labor of dependent peasants); capitalism(industrial production based on the labor of hired workers who are free but not the owners of the means of production); socialist (communist) society- a society of the future, based on the free labor of equal people with state (public) ownership of the means of production;

An increase in the level of production forces leads to a change in production relations and a change in socio-economic formations and socio-political system;

The level of the economy, material production, and production relations determine the fate of the state and society and the course of history.

6. Also Marx and Engels are allocated and developed

following concepts:

Means of production;

Alienation;

Surplus value;

Exploitation of man by man.

Means of production- a unique product, a function of labor top level allowing the production of new goods. To produce a new product, in addition to the means of production, a force is needed to serve them - the so-called "work force".

During the evolution of capitalism, there is alienation process main working mass from means of production and therefore from the results of labor. The main commodity - the means of production - are concentrated in the hands of a few owners, and the bulk of workers, who do not have means of production and independent sources of income, in order to ensure their basic needs are forced to turn to the owners of the means of production as hired labor for wages.

The cost of the product produced by hired labor is higher than the cost of their labor (in the form of wages), the difference between them, according to Marx, is surplus value, part of which goes into the pocket of the capitalist, and part of which is invested in new means of production to obtain even greater surplus value in the future.

The founders of Marxist philosophy saw a way out of this situation in the establishment of new, socialist (communist) socio-economic relations, in which:

Private ownership of the means of production will be eliminated;

The exploitation of man by man and the appropriation of the results of other people's labor (surplus product) by a narrow group of people will be eliminated;

Private ownership of the means of production will be replaced by public (state) ownership;

The product produced, the results of labor, will be shared among all members of society through fair distribution.

7. The basis dialectical materialism Marx and Engels laid down the Hegelian dialectic, but on completely different, materialist (and not idealist) principles. As Engels put it, Hegel’s dialectic was put “on its head” by Marxists. The following main provisions of dialectical materialism can be distinguished:

fundamental question of philosophy is decided in favor of being (being determines consciousness);

Consciousness is understood not as an independent entity, but as the property of matter to reflect itself;

Matter is in constant motion and development;

There is no God, He is an ideal image, a fruit of human imagination to explain phenomena incomprehensible to humanity, and gives humanity (especially its ignorant part) consolation and hope; God has no influence on the surrounding reality;

Matter is eternal and infinite, periodically taking on new forms of its existence;

An important factor in development is practice - a person’s transformation of the surrounding reality and a person’s transformation of the person himself;

Development occurs according to the laws of dialectics - the unity and struggle of opposites, the transition of quantity into quality, the negation of negation.

Material from Wikipedia - the free encyclopedia

Vulgar materialism (German: Vulgärmaterialismus) is the name by which the philosophical movement within the framework of materialism of the mid-19th century is known. The name belongs to Friedrich Engels.

It arose during the period of great discoveries of natural science in the 19th century. The theoretical predecessor of vulgar materialism was the French materialist P. Cabanis, the main representatives were the German scientists K. Focht and L. Buchner, and the Dutchman J. Moleschott. The named authors were primarily concerned with medicine, anatomy and physiology; philosophical studies stemmed from their scientific and biological activities. The emergence of vulgar materialism was influenced by Darwin's theory of evolution and the discovery of organic matter. In many ways, the movement was a reaction against German idealism.

F. Engels called them vulgar materialists, since they simplified, from his point of view, the materialistic worldview, denied the specificity of consciousness, identifying it with matter (“the brain secretes thought, like the liver secretes bile”; “there is no thought without phosphorus”), rejected the need to develop philosophy as a science. They also explained human personality physiologically (“A person is what he eats” - Moleschott). The social thought of these authors (especially Buchner) is characterized by social Darwinism. Vulgar materialism popularized the achievements of natural science and atheism.

In Russia, vulgar materialism was quite popular in the 1860s (“physiological pictures” of Vocht, Buchner and Moleschott were translated and reviewed by D. I. Pisarev), although some revolutionary democrats criticized it. In Dostoevsky’s novel “Demons,” nihilists chop down icons and set fire to church candles before the works of these three authors:

The second lieutenant was still a young man, recently from St. Petersburg, always silent and gloomy, important in appearance, although at the same time small, fat and red-cheeked. He could not bear the reprimand and suddenly rushed at the commander with some kind of unexpected squeal, surprising the entire company, somehow bowing his head wildly; hit him and bit him on the shoulder with all his might; They could have been dragged away by force. There was no doubt that he had gone crazy, at least it turned out that recently he had been noticed in the most impossible oddities. For example, he threw two of his master’s images out of his apartment and chopped one of them with an ax; in his own room he laid out on stands, in the form of three layers, the works of Vocht, Moleschott and Buchner, and lit wax church candles in front of each layer.

- F. M. Dostoevsky, “Demons”

Tendencies of vulgar materialism were characteristic of “mechanists” in the USSR.

The thinking characteristic of vulgar materialism was reflected in the literature of the 19th century (this is essentially “ scientific approach"to the heroes in Zola's naturalism).

Materialism in the teachings of ancient Greek atomists

Introduction.

Little is known about the lives and writings of Leucippus and Democritus. Ancient atomistic materialism is often associated with the problems of the Eleatics. The difficulty lies in the separation of the teachings of Leucippus and Democritus. Not much has been preserved from the works of both philosophers, but in doxography they are talked about entirely. However, Leucippus focused on the universe, and Democritus on man. If Leucippus has a relatively small range of questions - the doctrine of atoms, cosmology and cosmogony, then Democritus' range of questions expands. Democritus' philosophical interests were related to issues of epistemology, logic, ethics, politics, pedagogy, mathematics, physics, biology, anthropology, medicine, psychology, history human culture, philology, studies of language, etc.

There are several versions of the date of birth of Democritus. Officially, he is believed to have lived from 460 to 370 BC. Democritus's father left his sons a significant inheritance, from which he chose a smaller share of money, which allowed him to go on a journey. Democritus returned home a poor man and was deprived of the right to burial in his homeland. However, he regained the respect of his fellow citizens by reading one of his works to them.

Essays.

Democritus wrote about seventy works on various topics. None of them reached us. It is unknown when most of his works died. Perhaps the idealists are to blame for the death of the works of the ancient materialist.

The task of the atomists.

The atomists set themselves the task of creating a teaching that corresponds to the picture of the world that is revealed to human senses, but at the same time preserving the rational in the Eleatic teaching about being in order to achieve a deeper understanding of the world, based not only on the testimony of the senses.

First things first.

The principles of atomists are atoms (being) and emptiness (non-being). The atomists, subjecting the Eleatic concept of nothingness to a physical interpretation, were the first to teach about emptiness as such.

Atomists were forced to admit the existence of non-existence by observations of ordinary phenomena and reflection on them: condensation and rarefaction, permeability, difference in weight of bodies of equal volume, movement, etc. Emptiness - the condition of all these processes - is motionless and limitless. Existence is the antipode of emptiness. It is absolutely dense and multiple. Each member of the existential set is determined by its external form. The atom itself is very small. Being is a collection of an infinitely large number of small atoms.

It is an indivisible, completely dense, impenetrable, not containing any emptiness, and due to its small size not perceived by the senses, an independent particle of the substance. The atom has the saints that the Eleatics attributed to their existence. It is indivisible, eternal, unchanging, identical to itself, no movements occur within it, it has no parts. An atom also has a certain shape (spherical, angular, hook-shaped, concave, convex, etc.). Atomists explained the infinite variety of phenomena and their opposition to each other by the multiplicity of atom shapes. Atoms differ from each other in shape, order and position.

Movement.

Atomists introduced emptiness, believing that movement is impossible without emptiness. The atom has mobility in the void. The movement of atoms occurs as a result of their collision and is inherent in them by nature. It is eternal.

Characteristics of atoms.

Atoms are completely qualityless, i.e. deprived of sensory properties - color, smell, sound, etc. All these qualities arise in the subject due to the interaction of atoms and sense organs. That. atomists began to teach about the subjectivity of sensory qualities.

The world of things and phenomena for atomists is real and consists of atoms. They explained the emergence and destruction of things by the division and addition of atoms, change - change. their order and position.

Cosmogony.

The atomists spoke not so much of one world as of many worlds. The void is filled unevenly with atoms. The density of atoms in emptiness is different, and when many atoms converge in one or another part of space, they collide with each other and form a vortex, in which larger and heavier ones accumulate in the center, and smaller and lighter, round and slippery atoms are forced out to the periphery. This is how earth and sky come into being. The sky is formed by fire, air, and luminaries driven by an air whirlwind. Heavy matter accumulates in the center of space. By contracting, it squeezes out water, which fills the lower places.

Atomists are geocentrists. The earth is equally distant from all points in the region of space, and therefore motionless. The stars are moving around her. Stars are not other worlds, but the heritage of our world. Each world is closed, it is spherical and covered with a chiton, a skin woven from hook-shaped atoms. However, the number of worlds is infinite. Worlds are transitory. Atoms form compactions in certain places of the great emptiness by chance - as a result of random movement, but in the future everything happens according to a natural pattern.

Atomists rejected the world mind - Nus

Anaxagora. They explained consciousness itself by the existence of special fire-like atoms.

Small world building.

The subject of the “Great World-Building” is atoms and emptiness as principles and the worlds consisting of them. Subject of “Small world building” – Live nature at all, human nature in particular.

Origin of life

Living things arose from non-living things according to the laws of nature without any creator or rational purpose. “After the division of the dark chaos took place, after the air appeared, and under it the earth, mud-like and completely soft, films swelled on it, looking like dirty boils or water bubbles. During the day they were heated by the sun, at night they were nourished by lunar moisture. After they expanded and burst, people and all kinds of animals were formed from them, according to the predominance of one or another element - namely, moisture-like, fire-like, earth-like and airy. When the earth dried up under the rays of the sun and could no longer give birth, as they claim, animals began to be born by giving birth to one another.” The bisexuality of animals was explained by the fact that the fruits of future males were “finished,” but females were not. “The mixture of elements in these animals was not the same: those in which there was the most earth-like matter became grasses and trees, having their heads turned down and rooted in the earth

(from lat. vulgaris - rude, common) - philosopher. the course of the 19th century, which developed against the backdrop of the successes of classical natural sciences and, especially, physiology. Its representatives (L. Büchner, J. Moleshott, K. Vocht), relying on the ideas of the epigones of the French. materialism of the 18th century. (P. Cabanis, P. S. Laplace, etc.) and anthropologist. materialism of L. Feuerbach, reduced all manifestations of consciousness (both individual and social) to natural-physiological. reasons. Yes, according to Buchner, thought is a purely material product of the activity of the brain and nervous system, and the concept of “consciousness” is a synonym for this activity. Soc.-histor. the nature of consciousness is thus denied. Similar ideas are presented in physiologically oriented psychol. theories (S.M. Sechenov, I.P. Pavlov, etc.). Soc.-philosophy. ideas V.m. are developed on the basis of social Darwinism and the principle of austerity economics. determination of social phenomena. and cult. life. An example of this approach to social ethics. problems can be addressed by the multi-volume “History of Morals” by E. Fuchs. By analogy with the term “V.m.” in scientific and philosophical The vocabulary uses the terms “vulgar economism”, “vulgar sociologism”, etc. E.V. Gutov

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VULGAR MATERIALISM

from lat. vulgaris - ordinary, simple) - flow into the bourgeoisie. philosophy ser. 19th century It arose on the basis of capitalism. development in the conditions of a positivist denial of philosophy and the development of natural science, which more and more clearly revealed the inconsistency of idealism. Theoretical V. m.'s predecessor was the French. materialist Cabanis, ch. representatives - German philosophers Focht, Moleschott, Buchner. F. Engels called them vulgar materialists (see Anti-Dühring, 1957, p. 313), because they simplified the provisions of old materialism without overcoming its metaphysics. and mechanistic limitations, turned away from dialectics. Representatives of V. m. popularized the achievements of natural science (the law of conservation of matter, the law of energy transformation, Darwinism, data from physiology), pointed to atheism. conclusions arising from them. The essence of V. m. manifested itself most clearly in the denial of the specificity of consciousness, which was directly reduced to matter (see Buchner, Force and Matter, 1855, Russian translation, 1907) and the activity of which was associated with nutrition, the composition of the food consumed. Not understanding that people's consciousness reflects their societies. being, supporters of V. m. argued, for example, that the main reason for colonial slavery were natural. the conditions in which colonial peoples live, the food they eat, etc. Buchner tried to explain the difference between classes by the “nature” of heredity, thereby joining the reactionary movement. sociologist the concept of "social Darwinism". V. m. in a number of respects approached positivism and open idealism; Buchner, for example, argued that matter, force and spirit are “different manifestations of the same primary or fundamental principle” (“Force and Matter”, St. Petersburg, 1907, p. 41). Opposing idealistic natural philosophy, opposed to the sciences of nature, disparaging the classics. German philosophy as charlatanism, V. m., like positivism, did not understand the need to develop philosophy as a science that has its own subject of knowledge. Epistemological ones were especially simplified. V. m.’s ideas, which did not go beyond the limits of the extremely limited. empiricism, completely alien to dialectics. In some countries, thanks to atheism. The orientation of V. m., intertwined with positivism, played a progressive role, contributing to the exposure of religion and idealism, helping to become familiar with the outstanding achievements of natural science. In Russia 19th century. V. m., who played a well-known role in the fight against the official. ideology, was criticized by the revolutionaries. democrats (see N. A. Dobrolyubov, Complete collection. soch., vol. 3, 1936, p. 92; M. A. Antonovich, "Contemporary", 1863, t. 95, p. 50). Vulgar materialistic. tendencies in the USSR were characteristic of mechanists (see also Vulgar sociologism). Lit.: Marx K., Mr. Vogt, in the book: Marx K. and Engels F., Works, vol. 12, part 1, M., 1935; Engels F., Anti-Dühring, M., 1957; by him, Dialectics of Nature, M., 1955, p. 25–26, 161, 163; Lenin V.I., Materialism and empirio-criticism, Works, 4th ed., vol. 14, ch. IV, § 7, ch. VI, §4; Tagansky T., Vulgar materialism of the third quarter of the 19th century. and modern mechanists, in the book: From history XIX philosophy century. Sat. articles, [M.], 1933, p. 79–123; History of Philosophy, vol. 3, M., 1959, p. 333–37. T. Oizerman. Moscow.

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Friedrich Karl Christian Ludwig Büchner (1824-1899) was the brightest representative of that younger part of the philosophical community, which in the 19th century began to change course. In this matter, he was on a par with Comte and Marx-Engels. True, Marx and Engels did not like him very much and, one might say, constantly threw mud and contempt at him. More and more through the mouth of Engels, because Marx, as you remember, had no time at that time - he was working on “Capital”.

Main - Sea of ​​Consciousness - Layers of Philosophy - Layer 5

Engels, who was born four years earlier than Buchner and died four years before him, behaves towards him as Vladimir Ilyich later treated his political enemies, calling him the last words and not stooping to explanations. In any case, in “The Dialectic of Nature” Buchner is called a “cartoon character” who “has no thought” and “a wandering preacher of vulgar materialism.”

But what was bad about Buchner, one can only guess. However, some guesses can be made. The first clue is given by Engels's attitude towards Comte. Whether Marxists want it or not, Marxism and Positivism are twins. And Comte anticipated Marxism in many ways, stealing from Marx and Engels the glory of being the pioneers of a new method of conquering the world. Moreover, in his youth, Comte was the personal secretary of the French utopian socialist Saint-Simon, who was declared one of his sources by Marxism. Saint-Simon, in addition to his utopian writings, planned to create a new, so to speak, scientific classification of sciences. And he didn’t create it. Comte brought the teacher’s idea to life, taking this classification of his as a basis and expanding it into the “Course of Positive Philosophy.” By the way, if I understand correctly, then the very idea of ​​positive science was also invented by Saint-Simon.

Engels mentions Comte only three times and casually, but extremely contemptuously and in the sense that Comte stole - “copied” - his hierarchy of Sciences from his great and beloved teacher.

Why, strictly speaking, do we not doubt that Saint-Simon was great? Focus. No one would really know or remember him if Marxism had not decided to give him a name. And even now, although this name is widely known, no one reads or knows Saint-Simon himself. Except for those who choose to be specialists, of course. Nobody reads Comte now either, but in the middle of the 19th century he captured people’s minds so much that everyone knew him. And those who did not read still applied his concept of “positive science” as a matter of course. And Comte made his way on his own, without any reliance on other people’s authorities, although at the same time clearly paying tribute to his teacher. But that's not all.

The most important thing in this success of his was that educated people did not just know about Positivism, as, for example, about the idealism of Hegel, which they did not understand. No, Positivism sold out like those cheap little books in popular prints that filled all Russian fairs. The Russian peasant dragged them into his house instead of “high literature,” which Nekrasov complains about. Positivism became one of the most important components into that new youth jargon, which in the mid-19th century began to be called the language of natural science.

Buchner and the rest of the company of preachers of materialism, about whom Engels contemptuously says: “materialism of various Vogts and Büchners”, created the second part of this jargon - natural science Materialism. It is also vulgar materialism.

The last century meant “to distribute among the people, to make available to the people”(Efremov, Dictionary of Foreign Words, 1912).

In other words, vulgar in the mid-19th century is the same as popular in our time. And the vulgarizers of that time were popularizers who made some concept accessible to the public.

Vogt, Moleshot, Büchner were very popular petrels and heralds new era- eras of scientific philosophy, eras Natural scientific materialism. This expression is more or less familiar to all educated people. It is familiar and recognizable. And this may give the impression that such a philosophy is natural scientific materialism - really exists. However, it is unlikely that everyone who accepts the expression “natural-scientific materialism” knows that such a philosophy or philosophical school in the proper sense of the word has never existed. This is just a designation of the everyday worldview of the scientific crowd.

The very name for this phenomenon was used by Lenin, who called it that “the spontaneous, philosophically unconscious conviction of the overwhelming majority of natural scientists in the objective reality of the external world... Widespread dissemination of natural scientific materialism among natural scientists- evidence that recognition of the materiality of the world follows from knowledge of nature itself"(Philosophical Dictionary, 1986, p. 143).

This means that no one has ever created such philosophical teaching, as natural-scientific materialism. Everything worked out on its own: as soon as scientists tried to adopt the scientific method, they realized that it was effective, but it allowed them to explore the world only materialistically. Most of these simpletons just wanted to know reality by making the assumption that nature could be explained from itself. They did not choose Materialism as a creed and did not understand that the Sciences, turning from branches of knowledge into communities, become political parties, where dissent is treason. Only especially gifted people, like Engels or Marx, were able to immediately understand the partisanship of Science. And they put a lot of effort into cutting out the wavering minds of the eggheads, as the scientists were called, and making them work for a common goal. And this persecution began with such opinions of the same Engels, which were introduced into everyday consciousness, instilling in scientists a consistent natural-scientific worldview:

“How difficult it is, those numerous natural scientists prove to us who, within the limits of their science, are adamant materialists, and outside of it not only idealists, but even pious, orthodox Christians.”(Engels, p. 170).

Engels and Marx, like Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin later, are people of a systematic mind who did anything to take over the world. Therefore, they created a special party philosophy from materialism - Dialectical Materialism. And so she was thrown out of our minds as soon as their game was lost. If the party ceases to be a necessary part of our life, then its philosophy becomes unnecessary.

Basics- Sea of ​​Consciousness- Layers of Philosophy- Layer 5

Buchner was simpler, more enthusiastic and closer to the people. Nobody remembers him, but he lives and will live forever, dissolved in scientific slang, which is materialistic simply due to the fact that the task of Science is to immerse the human spirit in the depths of matter. For what? Then, to make our world one of the densest, infernal worlds? Or to make the next breakthrough into the spiritualization of matter? Unanswered questions. Therefore, I’d better return to the question of why Engels did not like Buchner so much.

Young Ludwig Büchner, having barely received his matriculation certificate, entered the Higher Technical School, “to devote himself to the study of natural sciences, and a year later (in the spring of 1843) to the University of Giessen, where he first took up general philosophical sciences, and then, at the request of his father, although without feeling the inclination,- specifically medicine<...>and returned to his hometown, having previously written a dissertation for an academic degree, “On Gall’s doctrine of excitomotor nervous system" and publicly defended a number of academic theses, among other things the thesis that "the personal soul is unthinkable without its material substrate."

Here he continued the radical political activity he had begun in Hesse, until the pacification of the uprising in Baden stopped the revolutionary movement.”(Polilov, p. VII).

Engels talks about this time, that is, the revolution of 1848, as follows:

“The year 1848, which in general did not bring anything to an end in Germany, produced a complete revolution there only in the field of philosophy. Having rushed into the field of practice and laid the foundation, on the one hand, for large-scale industry and speculation, and on the other hand, for that powerful upsurge that natural science has since experienced in Germany, and the first wandering preachers of which were the caricatured characters Vogt, Buchner, and so on,- the nation has decisively turned away from classical German philosophy, lost in the sands of Berlin’s Old Hegelianism.”(Engels, p. 28).

This is exactly what I was talking about - the youth began the battle for the redistribution of property in the philosophical community, which was traditionally aimed at the aristocratic market, and began it precisely as scientific populism - popularization, flirting with simplified philosophical concepts with the revolutionary crowd. And it worked:

“In 1852, Büchner took the position of assistant in a medical clinic and privatdozent in Tübingen. In addition to forensic medicine, he also taught some departments of practical medicine and published, in addition to a number of special works published in medical periodicals, also various popular articles on natural science in magazines for general education.”(Polilov, p. VIII).

The success of your own articles and books Moleshot "Circle of Life" inspire Buchner so much that he writes his main work - "Force and Matter" published in 1855. Everyone wanted to know what was going on there

Chapter 5. Vulgar materialism of the mid-19th century

In science, which is captivating the world, who will rule us and how, so popular publications were in great demand. The success of "Force and Matter" was so great that within a few weeks a reissue was required, and then another and another.

Soon Buchner quits practice and switches entirely to writing, and also travels around the world giving lectures. In 1881, he founded the “German Union of Freethinkers” and became its head. And what is surprising is that the union is growing and prospering, and even the International, led by Marx and Engels, is forced to host this Union at its congresses.

And at the same time, Buchner, publishing “Force and Matter” in 1855, managed to make an almost personal attack against Marxism, which had already taken place at that time, encroaching on its second source - Ludwig Feuerbach, and almost appropriated it for himself:

“We will not lack opponents, even the most bitter ones. We will take into account only those who enter into polemics with us on the basis of facts, on the basis of experience; Let us leave the gentlemen speculative philosophers to continue to fight among themselves, standing on the points of view they themselves created; but let them not fall into the delusion that they alone possess philosophical truths.

"Speculation," says Ludwig Feuerbach,- it is intoxicated philosophy; philosophy will sober up again. Then it will be to the soul what it is to the body. pure water source""(Buchner, p. xv).

Of course, Buchner here is at war with the previous Metaphysics, but it so surprisingly happened that these words of his about enemies and attacks completely disarmed Engels, and he could only hiss and spit poisonous saliva, because he was never able to enter into polemics with Buchner on the basis of facts . In fact, Buchner was absolutely right from the point of view of Materialism. And Engels could not dispute anything he said. Buchner was guilty only of benefiting himself personally by simplifying the understanding of Science so much that the crowds of possible cannon fodder after him found it difficult to understand the abstruse theory of Dialectical Materialism.

Buchner, like Comte, stole fame and the opportunity to have a monopoly on ideas that captured the imagination of European humanity. The Buchners and Comtes managed to get ahead of the Marxists everywhere, and for this they could be hated, but could not be refuted. Worse, hating Buchner with all the strength of his soul, Engels will be forced to follow in his footsteps in Dialectics of Nature. Maybe not in the presentation of the material itself, but definitely in the way it is presented, or more precisely, in the way it processes the minds of readers. The method of processing consciousness, invented by Comte, is simple and effective.

To do this, as you remember, you first need to destroy the support of the worldview that fills the consciousness. For common people it is Religion, for people more or less educated it is Metaphysics, which Buchner here calls “speculative philosophy.” After this, you need to hit the imagination

Basics- Sea of ​​Consciousness- Layers of Philosophy- Layer 5

Show people some stunning picture, best of all a new and impossible image of the Universal dispensation, and then introduce parts of a new worldview into the affected consciousness, preferably without frightening or alarming, so as not to cause resistance.

This part of Comte's teaching used the ability of consciousness to purify. As you can see, Buchner, following Feuerbach, definitely understands this and calls for purification: metaphysics- it is intoxicated philosophy; philosophy will sober up again, if he accepts a materialistic worldview. Then it will be for the soul what pure water is for the body... In other words, the materialistic worldview, if accepted, will wash away all previous concepts to the point of a blank slate.

This is the initial condition with which the preface ends. And after all, readers understood that in order to perceive this completely new philosophy, you need to internally cleanse and empty yourself; without this, resistance will not allow you to understand it, and you will remain on the sidelines big movement, which captured all advanced humanity.

And then came the reasoning, designed to lull the consciousness. If you look closely at it, you will remember La Mettrie’s statement, calling to be impartial and simply look at things as they are, without any fiction. In Buchner it is already used as an open weapon for opening consciousness.

“We will learn to understand and dominate the world and nature the better the more we try, through observation, research and experience, to become acquainted with matter in its infinite power, in its infinite variety. And historical experience itself gives us very clear lessons in this regard. Thanks to the work of those natural scientists who are completely wrongly labeled as “materialism,” our spirit has been able to look into the depths of the universe and give itself scientific answers to a number of questions that previously seemed insoluble.

But these naturalists did even more. They are the real culprits that the human race rises higher and higher in its development with the help of powerful matter, the laws of which we know, and which, thanks to this, we can subjugate to ourselves: after all, we force matter to perform such works that previously seemed only within the power of giants and wizards.

In the face of such successes, ill will must cease. And it seems that the times have already passed when the deceptive world of fantasy was more dear to people than the actual real world.

No matter how much holiness the bigots of our time pretend to be, we still know very well that their talk about afterlife don't take it seriously"(Buchner, Force and Matter // Deborin, p. 511).

This amazing piece contains everything, from the temptation with which the Devil seduces Christ, and ending with the dialectic that the Marxists tried to monopolize. Just look at the movement and see everything

Chapter 6. Natural scientific understanding of consciousness according to Buchner

Higher and higher down into the depths of matter. I don’t even want to analyze it in more detail, just re-read it yourself with attention.

The main thing in zombifying consciousness is to enter gently. And then you can and even need to throw mud at and trample all possible enemies without a twinge of conscience. If the entrance is successful, then the rougher the trampling of another, the more surely it allows the traitors to justify themselves by the fact that the betrayed themselves are to blame - that’s what they are like! And now on the next pages insults appear, like:

“These fools also forget that spirit can exist only on the basis of organized matter, and that there is not a single fact that could serve as even a shadow of proof of the possibility of the independent existence of spirit outside of matter. These fools do not seem to know that all the forces acting on earth (as well as spiritual forces arising on the basis of a certain organic composition of matter) ultimately originate from the vibrations of the atoms of the world ether reaching us in the form of light and heat.”(Ibid., p. 512).

What rudeness, just now all this was La Mettrie’s modest assumption, and now: fools! What, they don’t know that there is no spirit, but only vibrations of the world ether! Engels, at least, will clearly state 30 years later: we do not yet know the laws of nature. Buchner - a knight of science without fear and reproach, or rather, doubt - does not know caution and does not yet allow the thought that his great scientific revelations, like the world ether, will soon be ridiculed as unscientific.

This means that even if Science, or more precisely, scientists, manage to get closer to understanding reality with the help of a materialistic hypothesis, attempts to agitate for Materialism are always based on fairy tales and fantasies. And therefore, crap on other storytellers who came before you is not giving a damn about the future. It is rare to spit so far that you never catch up with your own spit. However, Materialism was still so young and short-sighted at that time. By the time of Engels and Lenin, he had already matured significantly and wiser.

But before concluding the story of the war with Metaphysics, a few words about how Buchner and vulgar Materialism understood consciousness.

vulgar materialism

current in philosophy ser. 19th century, whose representatives (Focht, Buchner, Moleschott) extremely simplified the materialistic worldview, denied the specificity of consciousness, identifying it with matter (“the brain secretes thought in the same way as the liver secretes bile”).

Vulgar materialism

movement in bourgeois philosophy of the mid-19th century. It arose during the period of great discoveries of natural science of the 19th century. The theoretical predecessor of V. m. was the French materialist P. Cabanis, and the main representatives were the German philosophers K. Focht, L. Büchner, and J. Moleschott. F. Engels called them vulgar materialists (see Anti-Dühring, 1966, p. 339), since they simplified the materialist worldview, denied the specificity of consciousness, identifying it with matter, and rejected the need to develop philosophy as a science. At the same time, by popularizing the achievements of natural science and atheism, V. m. had a certain progressive significance, especially where, as in Russia, the position of clericalism was strong. However, even in Russia, V. m. was criticized by revolutionary democrats. The tendencies of mechanical engineering were characteristic of “mechanists” in the USSR.

Lit.: Tagansky T., Vulgar materialism, in collection: From the history of philosophy of the 19th century, [M.], 1933; History of Philosophy, vol. 3, M., 1959, p. 333≈37.

In Russia, vulgar materialism was quite popular in the 1860s (“physiological pictures” of Vocht, Buchner and Moleschott were translated and reviewed by D. I. Pisarev), although some revolutionary democrats criticized it. In Dostoevsky’s novel “Demons,” nihilists chop down icons and light church candles in front of the works of these three authors: The second lieutenant was still a young man, recently from St. Petersburg, always silent and gloomy, important in appearance, although at the same time small, fat and red-cheeked. He could not bear the reprimand and suddenly rushed at the commander with some kind of unexpected squeal, surprising the entire company, somehow bowing his head wildly; hit him and bit him on the shoulder with all his might; They could have been dragged away by force. There was no doubt that he had gone crazy, at least it turned out that recently he had been noticed in the most impossible oddities. For example, he threw two of his master’s images out of his apartment and chopped one of them with an ax; in his own room he laid out on stands, in the form of three layers, the works of Vocht, Moleschott and Buchner, and lit wax church candles in front of each layer.

Tendencies of vulgar materialism were characteristic of “mechanists” in the USSR.

The thinking characteristic of vulgar materialism was reflected in the literature of the 19th century (this is essentially the “scientific approach” to heroes in Zola’s naturalism).