Reading Anti-Dühring [II]: Natural Philosophy, Social Philosophy, and Logic

Posted by Bruce Yu

foreword

This article interprets Engels' criticism of Dühring's natural philosophy, social philosophy (morality and law), and logic (dialectics) in the first volume of Philosophy. However, Engels's own ideas were not reflected in his critique of Dühring. I personally think that people who want to understand dialectics and Engels' thinking can just skip this article. Of course, if readers are interested in the research of social sciences and natural sciences at that time, they can read this article, or read the original text directly. It is worth noting that the natural science research at that time was very different from the current natural science research. At that time, there was no concept of the internal structure of atoms, no concept of quantum mechanics, and no concept of mass and energy. Therefore, Engels himself had great historical limitations while criticizing Dühring.

(The part of [ ] in the quoted words was added by myself.)

An explanation of physics

Before starting to appreciate Engels' refutation of Dühring's natural philosophy, one must first understand the concept of natural philosophy. Philosophy of nature, as the name suggests, is the philosophy of studying the natural world. During the Renaissance, natural philosophy generally referred to the nascent modern sciences at that time. A classic example of natural philosophy and science at the time is Sir Isaac Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. After philosophers such as Kant and natural scientists such as Darwin, natural philosophy is considered to be a type of philosophy that uses knowledge from science to try to describe a certain metaphysical philosophical concept. Of course, the "metaphysical" here is not a derogatory meaning, but a neutral or even a positive description. A typical example is the Hegelian dialectic concept that Marx used the chemical properties of natural objects such as methanol and ethanol in "Das Kapital" to explain the qualitative change resulting from quantitative change. At that time, it was quite popular to illustrate and describe a philosophical concept with the help of natural laws in nature and logical concepts of mathematics. The resulting doctrines, such as Social Darwinism, sociological studies, anthropological studies, psychology, etc., have had a great influence on thinking in the world today.

Mr. Dühring, perhaps feeling jealous of his predecessors' research in natural philosophy, brazenly copied Kant's ideas. He first praised his research on natural philosophy, and then began to copy Kant's research almost verbatim. Due to the cumbersomeness of Dühring's original words, I will summarize his words here. Dohring's words are as follows: the moving distance of an object in the universe can only be positive, but not negative; the time of the universe can only be forward, not backward. Therefore, Dühring believes that infinite space and time are finite and extend from a fixed beginning. Then, as if schizophrenic, Dühring recklessly began to criticize the notions of the infinity of time and space.

Engels found something wrong in Dühring's argument at this time. He points out that Dühring's arguments and views are a complete copy of Kant's antinomy; and as he copied Hegel, his copying is inferior. Kant's original point of view is: space and time are both finite and infinite; and to prove the finiteness of space and time must prove its infinity, and to prove its infinity, one must prove finiteness. For the specific proof process, please refer to Zeno's paradox of flying arrows not moving. Other antinomies include the divisibility and indivisibility of the world, etc. The specifics only need to be searched on the Internet for "Kant's antinomy". Of course, those who read my last article, and who are familiar with Hegel's dialectics, will soon see the similarity between Kant's antinomy and Hegel's law of the unity of opposites. Historically, Kant's antinomy has indeed had a great influence on Hegel's dialectics.

Then, after criticizing Dühring's plagiarism of Kant and other predecessors, Engels continued to criticize Dühring's shallow knowledge of physics. Dühring said: "Where quantity is an invariant element of existence, this quantity remains unchanged in its prescriptiveness. This ... applies to both matter and mechanical force." In his remarks, Dühring used his botched physics to try to corroborate his natural philosophy theories. However, anyone who has studied high school physics knows: energy is conserved, but mechanical force is not. Here, Dohring's description is clearly wrong. Of course, Dühring's invariance theory, that is to say, the invariance of "mass of general matter" and "quantity of simple elements" is still correct within the scope of elementary physics. There seems to be nothing wrong with Dohring's original unchanging state of the universe, if the intimidation and self-contradiction that follow him are excluded: Dohring says that anyone who rejects the original unchanging state of the universe is "Anyone who thinks self-destructive fertility is the most intelligent thing," and then contradicts himself:

"The absolute identity of that original marginal state does not in itself provide any principle of transformation. But we remember that in essence the same is true of any smallest new link in the chain of existence with which we are familiar [in reality matter is in change, not change]. So whoever tries to cite difficulties in the prevailing circumstances may be careful not to allow himself to ignore them in less conspicuous cases. Furthermore, it is possible to insert progressive intermediate states, thereby inserting bridges of continuity in order to work backwards until the process of change disappears."

So, what kind of bridge is this "continuity bridge"? Because modern mechanics cannot account for the transition between motion and immobility, Dühring said, the bridge is a bridge "a little bit into the dark." To put it bluntly, after complacently proving the finiteness of his time and space with the immutability of matter, Dohring suddenly found something wrong, and then hesitantly inserted the concept of a "continuity bridge" to try to explain The opposition between movement and stillness completely ignores what the bridge looks like in reality. We only know the bridge, but we don't know what the bridge looks like. Instead, Engels gave an explanation, explaining that Dühring's "bridge of continuity" refers to the transition from the microscopic motion in thermodynamics to the macroscopic motion in modern mechanics. Of course, Engels also admitted that the process of transition from absolute immobility to motion had not yet been discovered in the physics of their time. In fact, this "bridge of continuity" is known as one of the two dark clouds of twentieth-century physics. The study of it was not "a little bit into the dark", but led directly to the emergence of quantum mechanics. If Herr Dühring here stubbornly believes that there is no "continuity bridge" in reality, or points out that things are generally in motion, I would give him a high opinion. It is clear, however, that Herr Dühring has fallen into a cliché here. As Engels put it, Herr Dühring "draws a gap between motion and balance that doesn't actually exist, and then wonders why he can't find a bridge over the gap he made."

Also falling into the cliché is Dühring's description of mechanical energy:

"At the same time as the state of motion of matter, there is also the state of stillness, which cannot be measured by mechanical work [actually, mechanical energy]... If we used to call nature a great performer of work, but now strictly adopt the This term, then, we should also add that the self-identical state and the state of rest do not represent mechanical work. In this way, we lose the bridge from rest to motion again; if the so-called latent heat [probably refers to the thermodynamic The concept of entropy] has until now been a hindrance to the theory, and we should here also admit this defect, at least as applied to the universe, without denying it.”

Here, Mr. Du Lin used the wrong word. The mechanical work here obviously means mechanical energy, that is, the combination of kinetic energy and potential energy. Therefore, what Dühring said about the transformation of stillness and motion is actually a matter of transformation between potential energy and kinetic energy. As for how kinetic energy and potential energy are transformed, I think Sir Newton has a great say. Please let Sir Newton and Mr. Dohring in the underworld debate each other. As for the latent heat and theoretical flaws that follow, let's take it as the "hot nonsense" of a man named Dohring.

A note on organic science

It is worth mentioning that, in Dühring's time, Darwin's theory of evolution had a great influence on European countries. So, according to Dühring's usual urination, he fired at Darwin's theory:

"The semi-poetry and perversion of Darwinism, with the sensual narrowness of their views and the dullness of their discernment . A beast that fights against humanity."

Dühring believed that Darwin's theory brought the idea of the struggle for existence into nature, "bringing the disorder of seance into the concept". He said: It is not the animalistic will of the animals and plants themselves, as Darwin said, that promotes the evolution of things, but the "true adaptation to the conditions of life" endowed by the wonderful will of nature and her "delicacy", by " the combination of physical forces and chemical factors" rather than the animal will in Darwin's Deism. The confusion of Dühring's logic can be clearly seen in Engels' selection of Dühring's remarks. He not only misunderstood Darwin's theory, confused Darwin's theory with Lamarck's theory, but also created the concept of the so-called wonderful will and "delicacy" of nature, and finally criticized Darwin's concept of competition , called it "deism". I think it's anyone who can see who the real "deist" is.

Of course, as a philosopher, Dühring has a deep understanding of the origin of the soul and perception. "From the mechanics of pressure and collision to the connection of feeling and thinking, there is a unified and unique ladder of intermediate stages," he said. Then, just as we were eagerly anticipating his next words, he froze. Not to mention, began to study the definition of organic life, the classification of animals and plants. He declared: "The inorganic world is also a system of self-fulfilling activities; but only at the onset of true differentiation, only when the circulation of matter from an inner point, according to an embryonic form which can be transformed into a smaller form, through special Only when the channel is realized can we talk about real life in a narrower and stricter sense." This sentence seems to be acceptable at first glance, but Engels immediately found something wrong. He found that Mr. Dühring killed in one sentence "all organisms including single-celled organisms", "all higher coelenterates" including "all polyps and other plant insects" plus "all worms, starfish and rotifers" ”, some crustaceans and vertebrates, and all plants. Later, when Engels read Dühring's definition of animals, plants and souls, he found that Mr. Dühring believed that animals and plants were classified according to whether they had senses or not. Therefore, according to Herr Dühring's definition, everything that can perceive the outside world, such as mimosas, sunflowers, etc., has become an animal; or all plants with a nervous system have lost their nervous system instantly and Lost awareness of the outside world. What a joy, a joy. It is great to have such a great talent as Herr Dühring in the natural sciences.

Explanation of Social Philosophy

Engels, in Dühring's full fifty pages of tedious social philosophy, helps us to summarize Dühring's central point: "Whoever thinks only in language will never know what is abstract and pure. Thinking." Dühring affirmed that human morality and human law must obey a model that is applicable in any celestial body and in any age. This pattern is the "true", "set in stone" "truth". And any doubt about it is "an expression of extreme disorder", "a corrosive suspicion of moral capacity itself." Engels exclaims here that Dühring has brought in transcendentalism again, and then Engels repeats his critique of Dühring's transcendentalism and the theory of general world patterns.

It is worth noting that, after repeating his critique of transcendentalism, Engels used the concept of class unique to scientific socialists to illustrate materialistic morality: "The three classes of modern society are the feudal aristocracy, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat each have their own particular morality, from which we can only draw the conclusion that people, consciously or not, always in the final analysis from the actual relations on which their class position rests—from their In the economic relations of production and exchange, they absorb their own moral concepts.” And the moral concepts of these three classes have in common because they are in “three different stages of the same historical development.” For example, stealing is immoral in all three classes, because all three classes are in a society where private property exists. Because the behavior of "stealing" exists in different stages of the three historical development and will harm the interests of a certain class, there is a moral view that "stealing" is shameful. In a society where the labor force required for "stealing" is greater than the labor force required for production, or even in a society of public ownership where "stealing" is not necessary, the thief will only be regarded as a naive child or a poor lunatic, and the The laws of "stealing" or those who propose the shameful morality of "stealing" are ridiculed.

Shelin's genius doesn't stop there. He also pioneered a system of logic of his own. He said: Since one is equal to one, man is perfectly equal; and therefore, "for the elucidation of fundamental legal concepts we need only have a very simple and basic relation of two persons". What a ridiculous statement. Mr. Dühring ignores the differences between people in reality. Indeed, in any idealized and humanized society, absolute equality between people is indeed a goal worth pursuing; but the person who understands it as an axiom must be "Shi Lezhi". Is it true that in a real patriarchal family and society, parents and children are equal, husbands and wives are equal, boys and girls are equal, and healthy and disabled are equal? Even if they are legally and morally equal, are they really equal physically? In other words, in the social division of labor, are a bricklayer, a carpenter, a fisherman, and a farmer really equal? Does a law and morality set for a fisherman apply to a bricklayer? In the words of Engels, Dühring's concept of the absolute equality of two people is "free from all reality, from all national, economic, political and religious relations that take place on earth, free from any gender and individual. peculiarities, so that nothing remains in these two men but the bare concept of man." What absurd absolute equality.

After Doolin, the concept of injustice derived from absolute equality made people laugh out loud. Dühring believes that because people are completely equal, moral justice and legal justice is not to use violence to order the other side. Engels directly used Rousseau's argument and Robinson's example to argue that slavery and exploitation are mostly not carried out by violence; and whether slavery and exploitation are carried out by violence does not prevent their injustice sex. And Dühring seems to have found a problem with his own theory and started trying to patch it. He first explained that there can be a just and violent affiliation in society, and the reason for the existence of this affiliation is not determined by the absolute equality of wills between the two, but by a third party. For example, children must be suppressed because of "insufficient self-regulation." In the same way, ignorant "irrational" people who are full of "bestiality" can justly be enslaved by violence by people who are rational with human nature and respect science:

"If one acts according to truth and science, and the other acts according to some superstition or prejudice, then ... as a rule there must be quarrels ... a certain degree of incompetence, rudeness, or vice, which in any case always arouses Conflict... Violence is not only the last resort against children and madmen. The character of the whole natural group and civilized class of man makes it possible to subdue their desire to be hostile because of its absurdity, to promote this The desire to return to the common connection becomes an unavoidable necessity. The alien will is here also considered to have equal rights; but because of the absurdity of its harmful and hostile activities, it brings about equalization, if it is To violence, it is only reacted by its own injustice."

Dühring may have thought that his own patch could explain inequalities in the family and inequalities in society. However, the patch that Dohring put on is better than not putting a patch on it. Before his patch, Dühring could still be called a utopian socialist; but his patch is simply a defense of imperialism, of social Darwinism, of all injustice in the world , to defend all absurd theories is simply unforgivable.

Is there, then, an absolute equality that can replace Dühring's perfect equality? Engels replied: No. Engels first put forward a very simple concept of equality: "All people, as human beings, have certain points in common, and within the scope of these common points, they are equal". This concept was believed and practiced at a very early age. With the formation of the state and the change of the state system, this concept has also developed into the equal political rights and social status of citizens and the equality of human rights. From the equality of slavery in early Greece and Rome, to the equality of feudalism in the Middle Ages, to the equality of capitalism in the Renaissance. The legal and moral definitions of equality are constantly changing. Engels pointed out: No matter what period of equality it is, it does not realize the real equality of human rights, but the equality of some groups of people. Equality in Rome was equality among nobles, at most among poor people and among freedmen, not equality between slaves and barbarians. Equality in the Middle Ages was equality between lords, at best equality of the bourgeoisie, not equality of serfs. Equality in the U.S. Constitution is equality among white male farmers in the United States, at best, among poor white men, or among white women, not any race of color. These equals are different equality between classes, equality between inequalities. Engels finally mentioned the concept of class here, explaining that the equality of the proletariat is not just the above-mentioned equality, but the equality of society and the equality of the elimination of classes.

What Engels finally criticized was Dühring's study of jurisprudence. The critique in this passage is relatively straightforward and has little to do with today's era. Engels' criticism of Dühring mainly focused on Dühring's ignorance of jurisprudence in other countries, even in modern Germany. Engels explained: Dühring's jurisprudence is only the study of Prussian state law and his own ideal way of life. I personally don't think this passage needs to be read.

defense of dialectics

This passage of Engels' defense of dialectics is very straightforward and interesting. Since my own writing skills and knowledge reserves cannot well summarize and illustrate Engels' logic and examples, I will not make a fool of myself. For those who want to learn more about Engels' defense of Hegel's dialectics, please read Engels' original text. I only write here a paragraph of my own understanding of dialectics and my feelings about the defense of this paragraph.

Hegel's dialectics has three main laws, namely, the law of unity of opposites, the law of quantitative change and qualitative change, and the law of negation of negation. These three laws are essentially interrelated. The law of the unity of opposites states that all things are opposite to each other, that is, there are contradictions and are unified with each other. And this characteristic of mutual opposition and mutual unity is because all objects are in motion and transformation. And only relative contradictions can reflect the characteristics of a thing, for example, the contradiction between light and darkness reflects the characteristics of light and darkness. Without the mutual transformation of light and darkness, without the mutual opposition of light and darkness, light and darkness would not exist. This is the law of the unity of opposites, that is, all things that exist are opposite and unified with each other. The law of quantitative change and qualitative change describes the law that quantity changes into quality. For example, the temperature of water will boil only when it reaches a certain critical value, and the energy of electrons will only transition energy level when it reaches a certain critical value. The quantity of an object is transformed into the quality of an object. So how did this transformation come about? Is it Herr Dühring's "Bridge of Continuity"? The law of negation of negation describes the formation of this transformation. The negation of an object is antithetical to itself. For example, existence and non-existence are opposites, and light and darkness are opposites. The negation of this negation makes the two things that were originally opposed to form a unity. After light is transformed into darkness and then into light, light and darkness form patterns, forming a unified, contained, higher being of light and darkness. The formation of this existence is the process of transforming quantity into quality. A bright spot cannot form a pattern, only the movement of continuous bright spots, or the opposition of multiple bright spots and darkness, can form a pattern, that is, the transformation from quantity to quality. The process of this transformation is not Dühring's "bridge of continuity" of "going slightly into the dark", but an abstract law that prevails in things.

Mr. Dühring, who has always been stubborn, ignored the relationship between such objectively existing things, refuted Hegel's dialectics and criticized Marx's "Das Kapital". Dühring believes that: Hegel's dialectics is advocating the emergence of contradictions and fallacies, because according to Dühring's understanding, Hegel's three laws refer to the fact that only more contradictions can show the existence of quality. And according to Dühring's theory, contradictions and absurdities do not exist in reality; no amount of quantity can lead to qualitative change; only Dühring's "in his own powerful movement of transformation, reveals the external and internal nature. The philosophy of "all earth and heaven" is the true and absolute truth, a truth that does not require any transformation, and does not have any contradictions and opposites. At this point, Dühring had completely forgotten his hesitant "bridge of continuity". He himself could not find a bridge from stillness to movement, saying that the transition between stillness and movement involves a process of "slightly entering the darkness". Obviously, stillness and movement are in themselves an opposite contradiction. And moving from stillness to movement is nothing more than a denial of stillness. Movement and transformation are a negation of the negation of movement and stillness, a higher-level, unified concept that includes the opposites of movement and stillness. The "bridge of continuity" that Dühring himself did not find is the three laws of Hegel's dialectics. Dühring has no doubt that his actions and speeches admit the universality of contradiction, not to mention that countless things in reality all prove the correctness of dialectics.

references:

F. Engels, Anti-Dühring, https://www.marxists.org/chinese/marx-engels/20/003.htm