ГНОСЕОЛОГИЧЕСКИЕ И КЛАССОВЫЕ КОРНИ ИДЕАЛИЗМА

Epistemological and Class Roots of Idealism

The causes and conditions explaining the origin and existence of idealist philosophy. Metaphysical one-sidedness and subjective bias in explaining human cognition are the epistemological (theoretico-cognitive) roots of idealism. Idealism derives from living human knowledge owing to the complex and controversial nature of the latter. In the process of cognition there is always the possibility that man's sensations and concepts may become dissociated from real things and that fantasy may transcend objective reality. This possibility becomes reality whenever one of the minor features, aspects or facets of cognition is deified or inflated to the proportions of an absolute divorced from matter and from nature. "Rectilinearity and one-sidedness, woodenness and petrification, subjectivism and subjective blindness—voilà the epistemological roots of idealism." (Lenin, Vol. 38, p. 363.)

Objective idealism exaggerates, and makes an absolute of, the role of concepts and abstract reasoning, while subjective idealism exaggerates the role of perceptions and sensations, counterposing them to the objective world. The class roots of idealism lie in the division of society into antagonistic classes, the domination of the exploiting classes and the isolation and counterposition of mental and physical labour. This gives rise to the rift between knowledge and the practical activity of the working people, and to monopolisation of ideological activity by the ruling classes, leading to the appearance and spread of illusions about the absolute independence and special creative role of the intellectual, ideal side of human activity. All this lies behind the incorrect notion that ideas and concepts are primary, and also behind the idealist approach to matter, nature and being. The theoretico-cognitive roots of idealism are closely associated with its class roots, which not only give birth to the idealist world outlook, but also assert it in the interests of the exploiting classes.