Plekhanov, Georgi. "Bernstein and Materialism <http://www.marxists.org/archive/plekhanov/1898/07/bernsteinmat.html>" (July 1898), in /Selected Philosophical Works/, Vol. II (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976), pp. 325-339.
I am not versed in the relations among Spinoza, LaMettrie, the Encyclopedists, the 19th century German materialists, and Feuerbach. This part of the essay at least is not identical with the subsequent "Cant Against Kant". It's quite interesting, but a few off-the-cuff remarks: (1) This has nothing to do with political debates except insofar as Plekhanov's antagonists themselves inject this silly stuff into them. (2) Plekhanov's exposition breaks off at the very point where it starts to get interesting. (3) Neither Plekhanov nor any of the people he discusses have any sense of the difference between empirical knowledge and philosophy's attempts to fill in the gaps, or how advances in the former alter what should be /provisional/ categorial structures of the latter. And, noting the footnotes, where Plekhanov describes a meeting with Engels and Engels' confirmation of Plekhanov's view of Spinoza--Plekhanov is content with finality rather than further exploration. He merely engages a contest of doctrines, but not thinking any new thoughts. (4) I know little about F.A. Lange, but one thing I know is that he wrestled with the mind-body problem and found materialism unsatisfactory. This was when biology had barely advanced to the point of addressing the question of sensation and apperception. The problem remains a problem 150 years later but in a drastically altered condition. Philosophy at best is a guidepost to how to interpret, or better, to avoid misinterpreting, our knowledge in our general categorial framework of world-meaning. (This should be opposed to Wittgenstein's retrograde cure, but that's another harangue.) (5) A key correlative logical fudge of Engels is the ambiguous, and implicitly self-contradictory, statement, that he believes only in empirical knowledge and disavows metaphysics, only to remain content with a formulation of dialectical laws and their universal application retrospective to the attainment of adequate empirical knowledge. But in actuality, this dominant strain of Marxist orthodoxy remained stagnant at the level of formulaic indoctrination, and once institutionalized, proceeded rapidly downhill. OK, I'll look at the other 4 Plekhanov essays another time. Must get on with other things. _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
