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Cabanis, Pierre Jean Georges (1757–1808)

French materialist philosopher, enlightener, and physician; contemporary of the bourgeois revolution of 1789-94, a Girondist, condemned the Jacobins' terror. Belonged to the school of materialists who subscribed to the physics of Descartes, but was opposed to his metaphysics. Physiology was the main subject of his philosophical studies. He held that consciousness depends primarily on the physiological functions of man and the activity of his internal organs. Claimed that the brain organically "secretes" thought, just as the liver secretes bile.

Inclined towards vulgar materialism, considered that the natural sciences furnish the basis for the social sciences; that medicine and physiology are destined to change the morals of society, and that knowledge of the structure and activity of the human organism provides the key to understanding social phenomena and their changes. Towards the end of his life became a vitalist, recognising the independent existence of the soul (see Vitalism). His main work is Traits du physique et du moral de l'homme (1802).

Cabet, Étienne (1788–1856)

French utopian socialist, member of the secret Carbonari society, took part in the French Revolution of 1830. In his novel Voyage en Icarie (1840) he demonstrated the superiority of socialist society over capitalism. But was against the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat and advocated peaceful propaganda of socialism and gradual reforms. He left room for religion in the society of the future.

On philosophical questions, especially in his views of history, adhered to idealism, combining the rationalism of the 17th century with Platonism and Neo-Platonism. Marx wrote that he was a popular, although most superficial, proponent of communism.

Calculus

Potentially Problematic Article

Treats cybernetics as science validating formalization methods.

The system of rules for manipulating symbols, which extends the possibilities of thought in solving problems and proving propositions expressed by means (in the "language") of the given calculus. A characteristic feature of calculus is that the material objects (figures, letters, and symbols) dealt with in it do not practically change when the rules of the calculus are applied to them. What makes any calculus important is that it can manipulate objects only in accordance with pre-set rules and places them in correspondence with the elements of the content studied. In this sense calculus serves as the material shell of the content which is reflected in the process of reasoning.

Historically, calculus arose and developed in mathematics (for example, differential calculus, integral calculus, and others). Later, this method was extended to logic; logical and logico-mathematical calculus appeared, as a result of which the science of mathematical, or symbolic logic, came into being. The presentation of certain spheres of knowledge, especially in the deductive sciences, in the form of calculus, based on methods devised in contemporary logic, is the most consistent method of formalisation of the given sphere of knowledge; the efficiency of such formalisation is confirmed by the practical application of modern computers and the entire development of cybernetics (see Logistic Method).

Calvin, Jean (1509–1564)

One of the leaders of the Reformation. Was born in France, settled in Geneva in 1536 and became the actual dictator of the city (1541), subordinating the secular authorities to the church. Calvinism, the system of Protestantism founded by Calvin, expressed the demands of the "boldest part of the bourgeoisie at that time" (Engels).

The basis of Calvinism is the doctrine of the divinely preordained "salvation" of some and "damnation" of others. This divine preordination, however, did not preclude man's activity, for although man does not know his fate, he can prove by his personal life that he is one of "God's elect". Calvinism justified bourgeois enterprise in the epoch of primitive accumulation. This was expressed in declaring modesty and frugality the greatest virtues and in advocating asceticism in life. Calvin was intolerant of all other religious beliefs. By his order, the scientist Michel Servet was burned at the stake (1553). His main work is Institution chrétienne (1536).

Cambridge School

1. A trend in British 17th century philosophy which revived the philosophy of Plato. To the empirical materialism of Bacon and Hobbes it counterposed the idealistic teaching of innate ideas interpreted in a spirit of the Platonic doctrine of knowledge and medieval "realism". R. Cudworth (1617-88) held the eternal ideas of truth and good in the divine reason as criteria of man's judgements and his actions. Outside objects are only an occasion for cognition but not its source. Nature is a harmonious system implementing divine aims. An extremely mystic wing of the Cambridge School was represented by Henry More (1614-87) who went over from Cartesian metaphysics to mysticism. Members of the Cambridge School fought against atheism and materialism and defended religion.

2. A school of philosophical analysis, a variety of British neo-positivism which considers philosophy as logical analysis (as distinct from logical positivism as a whole) of the living conversational language and not artificial "languages". An "analysis", according to the proponents of the Cambridge School, should consist in expressing the analysed concept by means of a different concept which has the same content but is expressed in a different form and does not imply the first concept. George Moore was the founder of the Cambridge School, and its main representatives are Gilbert Ryle, Arthur John Wisdom, Max Black, and others. In philosophy they did not go beyond the bounds of neo-positivism.

3. In a broader sense, the name of Cambridge School denotes a group of philosophers belonging to different trends but grouped around Cambridge University ("Cambridge Philosophy")—C. Broad, K. Popper, A. Ayer, G. Ryle, R. Braithwaite, H. Bondi, etc.

Campanella, Tommaso (1568–1639)

Italian philosopher and utopian communist. Joined the Dominican Order at the age of 15. Shared the views of the natural philosopher Telesio and opposed scholasticism, combined the ideas of sensationalism and deism, progressive for those days, with religious mystical views and enthusiasm for magic and astrology. Was persecuted by the Inquisition for his free-thinking. Dreamed of the unity and welfare of mankind, hoping that this could be achieved with the help of the papacy.

In 1599, tried to raise a rebellion to liberate Italy from Spanish rule. The plot was uncovered and after brutal tortures was kept in prison for 27 years. There he wrote in 1602 Civitas Solis about ideal communist society (it was published in 1623). Influenced by church ideology, depicted his utopia as a theocratic society ruled by wise men and priests. Based his communist ideal on the dictates of reason and the laws of nature. Civitas Solis played a significant part in the development of progressive social ideas and social progress.

Camus, Albert (1913–1960)

French philosopher and writer, representative of "atheistic" existentialism; editor of the newspaper Combat; Nobel Prize winner (1957). His main works are Le Mythe de Sisyphe (1942), La Peste (1947), and L'Homme Révolté (1951). His views were shaped under the influence of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and the German existentialists.

According to Camus, the outside world, the Universe, is the state of the subject; the only philosophical problem is the "problem of suicide". His ethical views are pervaded with extreme pessimism: man is always in an "absurd state", encounters "absurd situations" (jealousy, ambition, selfishness) and is doomed for meaningless and aimless activity. Extreme individualism and irrationalism are clearly expressed in his works.

"Capital"

Chief work of Marx, revealing the laws of the capitalist mode of production and laying the scientific basis of socialism. Marx called Capital his lifework. He started work on Capital in the mid-1840s and continued it up to his death. The first volume was published in 1867 and the others after his death, having been prepared for printing by Engels: the second volume, in 1885, and the third, in 1894. The first translation of Capital into a foreign language was the Russian one (1872).

The first volume analyses the process by which capital is produced; the second volume studies the process of circulation, and the third volume analyses capitalist production as a whole. The fourth volume (Theories of Surplus Value) presents a history and critique of economic doctrines. Marx gave an exhaustive analysis of capitalism as a socio-economic formation, disclosed the laws of its origin, development, and doom.

The greatest economic study, Capital is at the same time of tremendous philosophical significance. It represents "a model of scientific, materialist analysis of one—the most complex—formation of society, a model recognised by all and surpassed by none" (Lenin, Vol. 1, p. 143). In Capital materialist dialectics has been splendidly applied and, moreover, elaborated in all main directions: as a method of studying objective reality and a system of logic and a theory of knowledge.

Marx showed that capitalism is a developing phenomenon, a historically transient mode of production, whose quantitative changes are preparing the prerequisites for its radical, qualitative change, for a leap to the new, socialist mode of production. Marx's analysis of capitalism is characterised throughout by its exposition of the contradictions in capitalism's movement and development from beginning to end, from the first signs of commodity production to the culminating point when the moment of "expropriating the expropriators" inevitably arises.

Marx traces thoroughly and in detail the stages in the growth of these contradictions, the change in their content and the methods of resolving them, and formulates one of the most important and general laws of development of socio-economic formations: "...The historical development of the antagonisms, immanent in a given form of production, is the only way in which that form of production can be dissolved and a new form established" (Capital, Vol. I, p. 488).

Capital is also a concrete embodiment of the dialectical materialist analysis of concepts and other forms of thought, with the help of which objective reality is reproduced in all its complexity and multiformity. The economic concepts used by Marx are flexible, mobile, dialectically contradictory and they reflect the changeability and contradictoriness of real social relations.

The method of ascending from the abstract to the concrete (see Abstract and Concrete) elaborated and applied by Marx in Capital is particularly important. The evolution of concepts, the logic of their development and transitions reflect the history of commodity production, the historical development of the mode of production. Marx, however, showed that the connection between the historical and logical is not simple and is not rectilinear.

Since the capitalist mode of production subordinates and modifies economic categories which existed in the past (for example, commercial and money capital, rent, etc.), the logic of analysis requires that we proceed from the main and decisive category, which is industrial capital. This, to use Marx's expression, is the light which illumines everything else, and it is only thanks to it that the existing relations can be understood. That is why Marx in a number of cases deliberately takes as initial the categories which historically arose later and examines the preceding categories only after them. (For example, commercial and banking capital and rent are studied after industrial capital.)

Strictly scientific methodology enabled him to show how surplus value—the doctrine of surplus value is the keystone of Marx's political economy—is concretely embodied in all the phenomena and processes of capitalist production. Capital is a classical example of the historical materialist approach to society and social development. Lenin noted that thanks to Capital historical materialism ceased to be a hypothesis and became a scientific theory.

All the main propositions and concepts of historical materialism are elaborated in Capital. Marx studied the evolution of capitalism as a natural historical process on the basis of the development of the productive forces, which ultimately are the source of all social changes. Marx demonstrated the dialectics of the forces and relations of production, their unity and contradictions, the gradual but inevitable conversion of the production relations of bourgeois society into a factor fettering the free development of production and dictating the replacement of bourgeois production relations by socialist.

Present-day ideologists of capitalism are trying to prove that Capital is already obsolete and its main ideas are inapplicable to 20th century bourgeois society. In reality this work of Marx, which was further developed in Lenin's theory of imperialism, remains to this day a powerful weapon of the working class in its struggle for liberation from the oppression of capital and a monument to the inexhaustible scientific and revolutionary power of Marxism.

Capitalism

The socio-economic formation which replaced feudalism. Capitalism is based on private ownership of the means of production and the exploitation of wage labour. The extraction of surplus value is the basic law of capitalist production. Anarchy of production, periodic crises, chronic unemployment, poverty of the masses, and competition and wars are characteristic features of capitalism.

The basic contradiction of capitalism—between the social nature of labour and the private capitalist form of appropriation—is expressed in the antagonism between the main classes of capitalist society, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. The class struggle of the proletariat, which pervades the entire history of capitalism, ends in the socialist revolution. Political and legal institutions and the system of bourgeois ideology are the main elements of the superstructure rising on the capitalist basis (see Basis and Superstructure).

Formal political equality proclaimed by the ideologists of capitalism is reduced to naught by economic inequality, while the entire state machine is adapted to barring the working people from politics. Capitalism arose in the 16th century and played a progressive role in the development of society, ensuring a much higher labour productivity as compared with feudalism.

On the threshold of the 20th century capitalism entered its highest, last stage—imperialism, marked by the domination of the monopolies and the financial oligarchy. At this stage state-monopoly capitalism becomes widespread. The latter combines the strength of the monopolies with the power of the state and increases militarism on an unprecedented scale.

The 1st World War and the October Revolution gave rise to the general crisis of capitalism. The 2nd World War and socialist revolutions in a number of European and Asian countries ushered in the second stage of this crisis. A new third stage, which is not connected with world war, has now set in in the development of the general crisis of capitalism. The decay of capitalism is manifested with the greatest force in the United States, the principal country of contemporary imperialism, the country with the most monstrous militarised economy and chronic unemployment. "Contemporary capitalism is inimical to the vital interests and progressive aspirations of all mankind" (Programme of the CPSU).

Carlyle, Thomas (1795–1881)

British philosopher and historian, pantheist (see Pantheism) and agnostic. Advocated German idealist philosophy and reactionary romanticism. Applied to society Fichte's doctrine of man's activity as the creative element of the world. Hence the history of society is reduced to the biographies of great personalities and "hero worship". Subscribed to the theory of the historical cycle (see Historical Cycle, Theory of). His criticism of capitalism was close to "feudal socialism".

After the defeat of the 1848 revolution in Europe and the Chartist movement in Britain sided with the big bourgeoisie, supported its dictatorship, and justified repressions against the working class and Britain's colonial policy. Main works: Sartor Resartus (1834), Heroes and Hero Worship, and the Heroic in History (1840), Past and Present (1843), History of the French Revolution (3 vols., 1837), and Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850).

Carnap, Rudolf (1891–1970)

Philosopher and logician, a leader of neo-positivism, active member of the Vienna circle, taught philosophy at Vienna and Prague universities. Since 1936 has lived in the United States, professor of philosophy at the University of California. Denies the role of philosophy as a universal science and reduces it to a "logical analysis of the language" of science based on mathematical logic.

In his understanding, the theoretical cognitive principles underlying this analysis represent a combination of idealist empiricism and conventionalism in the interpretation of logic and mathematics. In Carnap's works the philosophical conception of neo-positivism is intertwined with studies of the theory of logic and the logico-methodological analysis of science.

Carnap's views of the nature of the logical has undergone an evolution in which two stages can be singled out: (1) syntactic, when the logic of science was regarded as the logical syntax of the language of science, and (2) semantic, when not only the formal but also the sense-aspect of the "language" of science becomes the subject-matter of study. In the second stage tries, on the basis of the initial concepts of logical semantics, to build up a single system of formal logic. His main works are Logische Syntax der Sprache (1934), Introduction to Semantics (1942-47), Meaning and Necessity (1947), and Einführung in die symbolische Logik (1954).

Carneades of Cyrene (214–129 B.C.)

Greek philosopher, head of the so-called New Academy (see Academy of Plato), a sceptic who deepened the sceptic philosophy of his predecessor in the Academy, Arcesilaus. Himself wrote nothing and his lectures have not come down to us. Some meagre sources credit him with advocating sceptical views, typical of the Academy, that true knowledge is impossible and that all knowledge is at most probable assertion.

Different degrees of this probability were analysed, but none was regarded as equal to truth. Also criticised teleological proof of divine being in connection with the doctrine of the imperfection of what exists. In ethics advocated the usual sceptic doctrine of nature's blessings and of life conforming to nature without any active influence on it.

Cartesianism

From Cartesius, the Latin transcription of Descartes' name, the doctrine of Descartes and especially of his followers. The Cartesian school became especially widespread among philosophers of France and the Netherlands in the 17th and 18th centuries. It divided into two trends: the progressive, which subscribed to Descartes' mechanistic materialist understanding of nature (Leroy, La Mettrie, and Cabanis) and the reactionary, which supported his idealistic metaphysics (Delaforge, occasionalism, Malebranche).

Cassirer, Ernst (1874–1945)

German idealist philosopher, member of the Marburg school of Neo-Kantianism. Professor of philosophy at Berlin and Hamburg; after the establishment of the fascist dictatorship lived in Sweden and the United States (professor at Yale University). Applied the ideas of the Marburg school to the history of epistemology and the history of philosophy.

In his Substanzbegriff und Funktionsbegriff (1910), denied the view that scientific abstractions are a reflection of reality, dissolved the material world in categories of pure thought and substituted for its laws an idealistically interpreted functional dependence; subsequently sought to depict scientific cognition as a form of "symbolic" thinking. Wrote a number of works on the history of philosophy (antiquity, Renaissance, the epoch of Enlightenment) and monographs about Leibniz and Kant.

Main works: Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie und Wissenschaft der neueren Zeit (4 vols., 1906-57), and Philosophie der symbolischen Formen (3 vols., 1923-29).

Categorical Imperative

The philosophical term denoting a law in the ethics of Kant. He called an "imperative" a maxim having the form of a dictum. According to Kant, an imperative can be either hypothetical or categorical. The former expresses a dictum determined (as a means) by the desired aim; the latter expresses an absolute dictum. Kant drew this distinction between the two types of imperatives in his Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (1785).

Categorical imperative orders everyone to act according to the rule which they would wish to become a universal law of nature. The concept of categorical imperative is metaphysical because in Kant's doctrine it expresses the absolute juxtaposition of what should be to what exists. This juxtaposition reflects the practical weakness of the German burgherdom of Kant's time which divorced the theoretical principles of ethics from the practical class interests underlying them and regarded these principles as "purely ideological definitions of concepts and moral postulates" (Marx and Engels).

Catharsis

A concept of ancient Greek aesthetics describing the influence of art on man. According to Aristotle (Poetics), catharsis is the purging of the emotions of pity and fear effected by a tragedy. In Politics he states that music, too, by influencing man, performs a kind of purification, i.e., "all are in a manner purged and their souls lightened and delighted".

The word catharsis was used by Greeks in many senses: religious, ethical, physiological, and medical. In the extensive literature on catharsis there is no single view concerning its essence. Catharsis evidently included physiological (relief after a big emotional strain) and ethical (ennobling of man's feelings) elements, synthesised in aesthetical emotions.

Catholicism

A denomination of Christianity widespread chiefly in Western Europe and Latin America, exists since 1054. The dogmatic distinctions of Catholicism are: recognition of the procession of the Holy Spirit not from God the Father alone, but from God the Father and God the Son, the dogma of purgatory, the supremacy of the Pope as the vicar of Jesus Christ on earth, the infallibility of the Pope, etc. Cult and canonical distinctions of Catholicism are celibacy of the clergy, service in Latin, and a developed cult of the Holy Virgin, etc.

The Vatican is the world centre of Catholicism. Catholicism extends its power to the Catholic parties, trade unions, youth and women's organisations, educational establishments, the press, publishing houses, etc. Neo-Thomism is the official philosophy of Catholicism proclaimed in the encyclical of Pope Leo XIII in 1891.

Causality

A philosophical category denoting the necessary connections between phenomena, one of which (called cause) determines the other (called the effect, or consequence). There is a difference between the complete cause and the specific cause. The complete cause is the sum total of all the circumstances, the presence of which necessarily gives rise to the effect. The specific cause is the sum total of circumstances, the presence of which (with the presence of many other circumstances already present in the given situation even before the appearance of the effect and providing the conditions for the action of the cause) leads to the appearance of the effect.

The establishment of a complete cause is possible only in comparatively simple cases, and usually scientific investigation is directed towards the disclosure of the specific causes of the phenomenon. Another reason for this is that the most essential components of the complete cause in a given situation are united into the specific cause, and the other components are only the conditions for the action of this specific cause.

The problem of causality is the field of a fierce struggle between materialism and idealism. Materialism maintains the objectivity and universality of causality, regarding causal relations as relations between objects themselves, existing outside and independent of consciousness. Subjective idealism either denies causality altogether, seeing in it only the ordinary sequence of human sensations (see Hume), or, recognising causality as a necessary relation, considers that it is introduced into the world of phenomena by the cognising subject (the a priori character of causality—see Kant).

Objective idealism may recognise the existence of causality, independent from the cognising subject, but it sees its roots in the spirit, in the idea, in the concept, which it regards as independent of the subject. Dialectical materialism not only recognises the objectivity and universality of causality, it also rejects a simplified view of it, particularly the opposition between cause and effect which is characteristic of metaphysics, and regards them as the aspects of interaction by which the effect, determined by the cause, in turn influences the cause.

Causal relations are multiform, and it is impossible to reduce them, as metaphysical materialism did (for example, Laplacian determinism, which absolutised mechanical causality), to any single form. The development of contemporary science, rejecting the absolutisation of the early known forms of cause-effect relations, confirms, discloses their variety, deepens and enriches the dialectical and materialist understanding of causality.

The category of causality is one of the main categories of scientific investigation, which in the last analysis always leads to the discovery of the basic causal dependence. Where cognition achieves the level at which a strict quantitative analysis of the phenomena under study is possible, the causal relation is expressed in the form of functional dependence, which, however, does not make redundant the category of causality (see Determinism and Indeterminism).

Cell

Structural element from which the organs and tissues of living organisms are built. Cells also exist in the form of independent organisms (some of the tiniest animals and plants). The discovery of the cellular structure of organisms by Schwann and Schleiden, together with Darwin's evolutionary theory signified the victory of materialism in biology and provided confirmation of the material unity of living nature.

Chaadayev, Pyotr Yakovlevich (1794–1856)

Russian thinker and public leader. Came from a noble family; took part in the 1812-14 war against Napoleon. On returning to Russia he joined Welfare Union (1819) and then the Northern Society (1821). In 1823, after resigning from the army, went abroad, where he studied and met Lamennais and Schelling. On returning to Russia in 1826, he was arrested for his ties with the Decembrists. Owing to insufficient evidence, he was released but remained under police surveillance.

In 1829-31 wrote a series of famous Filosoficheskiye pisma (Philosophical Letters), the first of which was published in the journal Teleskop in 1836. According to Herzen, it staggered intellectual Russia and aroused the indignation of monarchic circles. Teleskop was closed, its editor Nadezhdin was exiled, and Chaadayev was declared insane. In 1837, wrote Apologiya sumasshedshego (Apology of a Madman) and in the 1840s, together with Herzen and Granovsky, participated in the struggle of the Westerners against the Slavophils. A number of articles written by Chaadayev were circulated in manuscript form.

Prior to 1823, Chaadayev's world outlook was typical of the progressive-minded Russian noblemen of those days, brought up on the ideas of the French encyclopaedists and the Russian 18th century Enlighteners opposed to serfdom. Alexander Pushkin, with whom Chaadayev was bound by personal friendship, stressed the radicalism of his views in those days, calling him Brutus and Pericles.

Was not satisfied with the theoretical positions of the Decembrists, he sought in history the laws governing its development to justify the social ideals proclaimed by the Decembrists. These explorations ended in the switch to the positions of Catholicism and renunciation of revolutionary methods of transforming society. True, Chaadayev's Catholicism was in effect a form of social utopia.

An analysis of the Philosophical Letters shows that even in that period remained an enemy of the autocracy, the Russian Orthodox Church, and serfdom. His criticism of the system which existed in Russia was acclaimed by Russian progressives. The publication of the first Philosophical Letter was of great importance for the country weighed down by oppression as the first open protest against the autocracy and serfdom after December 25, 1825.

Chaadayev's philosophy claimed that divine law was supreme in nature and society. On the whole adhered to objective idealism capable to some extent of assimilating ideas of the natural sciences. Man, according to Chaadayev, is incapable of conceiving the most general laws of the world without revelation from above. Applying this principle to the philosophy of history, arrived at the conclusion that divine revelation plays the decisive part in social development. In this connection he regarded the religious education of mankind as the main means for achieving the "kingdom of God" on earth.

Understood the future "kingdom of God" as a civilian society in which equality, freedom, and democracy prevail. In this connection he, like Lamennais and St. Simon, advocated the need for modernising Catholicism. The religious form of his views held him aloof from the general advance of the Russian revolutionary democratic movement, and his ideology was inclined towards historical pessimism. The contradictory nature of Chaadayev's world outlook gave the Vekhists (see Vekhism) and other falsifiers of Russian social thought a pretext for placing him in the camp of mystics, alien to social interests and aspirations.

Chang Tsai (1020–1077)

One of the founders of Neo-Confucianism. According to Chang Tsai, everything existing in the world is formed from primary matter, ch'i, which possesses the property of motion and rest. Nature is the "root", and reason is its product. Called the primary state of ch'i the Ultimate Vacuity (Tai Hsu). Primary matter is scattered in the Ultimate Vacuity and its accumulation is like the conversion of water into ice. The concentration or dispersal of ch'i determines the birth or death of all phenomena and things.

Chang Tsai's philosophy attached great importance to the concept tao (the way) which designated the process of change and conversion of ch'i (see Tao). The motion and change of primary matter are based on the interaction of two extreme opposites: the positive yang and negative yin. Their unity is tao, which Chang Tsai also defined as Great Harmony. Motion in nature is not chaotic, it is determined by law, li inherent in ch'i itself. Law does not depend on the will of men.

His theory of knowledge was not consistent. Sensations, he maintained, are the source of knowledge, through them man establishes contact with the external world. But knowledge of tao is not based on sensory perception. His teaching became widespread among subsequent followers of the Neo-Confucian school.

Change

The most general form of being of all objects and phenomena. Change embraces every motion and interaction, the passage from one state to another, etc. In philosophy, change has always been contrasted to relative stability of properties, the structure or the laws of the existence of bodies. But the structure, properties and laws themselves are a result of interaction, they are determined by the various relations between bodies and are, therefore, produced by change of matter.

Character

The sum total of stable mental traits of man which depend on his activity and living conditions and are displayed in his actions. Knowing a man's character it is possible to predict how he will behave in given circumstances and consequently to direct his behaviour, developing in the individual traits which are useful to society. Character is manifested in the way a man regards himself, other people, the job entrusted to him, etc. Character is most fully displayed in socially useful labour, in man's actions, and lays its imprint on his entire behaviour.

Character is socio-psychological, i.e., it depends on a man's world outlook, the knowledge and experience he has accumulated, the moral principles he has assimilated, on how he is influenced by other people, and on his relations with them. Character is not inborn, it is shaped by the surroundings and depends on education.

Character in Art

An artistic embodiment of the social, mental, and other specific traits which make up a human type and are manifested in individual behaviour. True portrayal of "typical characters in typical circumstances" which surround people and make them act in a certain way is especially important for realistic art. Typical characters in art are concrete people in their multiformity, intricate and contradictory development. Art demands aesthetic precision of each character created by the artist.

Charron, Pierre (1541–1603)

French philosopher. He started as a lawyer, later became a priest. He was known for his sceptical views, close to those of Montaigne, which were chiefly set forth in De la sagesse (1601). He believed that it is impossible to guarantee the truth of any form of religion, because religion is not inherent in man, but is formed under the influence of education and the surrounding conditions. Morality alone is primary in man. Hence, religion depends upon morality. Consequently, one must live according to primary moral laws but profess the religion which is upheld by the authorities. Charron hid his sceptical, anti-religious views behind a formal recognition of Orthodox religion. Theologians found in the treatise De la sagesse reason to accuse Charron of disbelief.

Charvaka

See Lokayata.

Chelpanov, Georgi Ivanovich (1862–1936)

Russian psychologist and idealist philosopher, logician; professor of psychology and philosophy at Kiev University (1892–1906) and Moscow University (1907–23). He founded the Moscow Psychological Institute in 1912.

In philosophy Chelpanov was close to Neo-Kantianism and positivism. His Mozg i dusha (Brain and Soul), published in 1900, and other works contained a criticism of materialism. In psychology Chelpanov developed the theory of "empirical parallelism" of the soul and body which goes back to the psycho-physical parallelism of Wundt. Engaging chiefly in experimental psychology, Chelpanov studied it from erroneous methodological positions (recognition of self-observation as the sole source of knowledge of mental phenomena, assignment of an auxiliary role to experiments, etc.).

After the October Revolution, Chelpanov opposed the application of Marxism in Soviet psychology. The reactionary nature of Chelpanov's positions was exposed by Marxist critics in 1923–25. Chelpanov was the author of textbooks on psychology and logic. His works: Problema vospriyatiya prostranstva v svyazi s ucheniyem ob apriornosti i vrozhdyonnosti (Problem of Perception of Space in Connection with the Doctrine of Apriority and Innateness), published in two volumes in 1896 and 1904, and Vvedeniye v eksperimentalnuyu psikhologiyu (Introduction to Experimental Psychology), 1915, etc.

Chernyshevsky, Nikolai Gavrilovich (1828–1889)

Russian revolutionary democrat, materialist philosopher, critic, and utopian socialist. He was born into a priest's family in Saratov, graduated from St. Petersburg University in 1850 and taught in a Saratov school. From 1853 to 1862, Chernyshevsky was contributor to and chief editor of the Sovremennik. In 1862, Chernyshevsky was arrested, imprisoned in the St. Peter and Paul Fortress, and then sentenced to hard labour and exiled to Siberia for life. In 1883, he was allowed to settle in Astrakhan and later to return to Saratov, where he died.

Chernyshevsky was the leader of the revolutionary democratic movement in Russia in the 1860s, one of the outstanding predecessors of the Russian Social-Democrats who persistently pursued "the idea of the peasant revolution, the idea of the struggle of the masses for the overthrow of all the old authorities" (Lenin, Vol. 17, p. 123). A generation of Russian revolutionaries was brought up on his writings which, as Lenin put it, exhale the spirit of the class struggle.

Chernyshevsky's world outlook was moulded under the influence of the ideas of Herzen and Belinsky and also German classical philosophy, especially Feuerbach. But Chernyshevsky went farther than Feuerbach in understanding the social role of philosophy in general and the importance of Hegel's dialectics in particular. He fully subordinated his theoretical views to the struggle for the emancipation of "ordinary people" from serfdom and bourgeois slavery.

In epistemology, Chernyshevsky adhered to strictly materialist positions and sharply criticised the agnosticism of Kant and others. Chernyshevsky saw the source of knowledge in the objective world, which acts on man's sense-organs. He attached great importance to practice, which he called the touchstone of any theory. Unlike Feuerbach, Chernyshevsky sought to reshape Hegel's dialectics in the materialist spirit. In a number of spheres (political economy, history, aesthetics, and art criticism) he furnished splendid examples of a dialectical approach to theoretical and practical problems.

Chernyshevsky lived and worked under feudalism and because of this could not advance to the materialism of Marx. Chernyshevsky's materialism is not free of substantial shortcomings (anthropologism, limited understanding of practice and the process of knowledge, etc.) but revolutionary democracy helped him to overcome many weaknesses of anthropologism. On a number of questions he drew close to a materialist explanation of social life. This was true above all of his understanding of the class nature of contemporary society, recognition of the class struggle as a driving force of development, etc. Chernyshevsky also saw the connection of ideology and consciousness of people with the economic conditions of their life; he emphasised that in the history of society the interests of the working people are of primary importance and regarded the masses as the chief maker of history.

He rendered a great service by exposing the counter-revolutionary essence of Russian and West European liberalism. During the peasant reform Chernyshevsky fought against the servility of the liberals towards the feudal lords. Lenin spoke of Chernyshevsky as a man "who saw how limited, how poverty-stricken was the overadvertised 'Peasant Reform', and he recognised its true feudal nature" (Vol. 17, p. 122).

Chernyshevsky dreamed of advancing to socialism via the old peasant commune; he, like Herzen, was a founder of Narodism. Chernyshevsky did not know and could not know that only the proletariat is the force capable of building socialism. But of all the Utopians Chernyshevsky drew closest of all in theory to scientific socialism, for he placed his hopes in revolution. Chernyshevsky's utopian socialism was closely linked with his revolutionary democratic views. He understood that socialism could be created only on the basis of developed technology and that only the people themselves could build it.

Chernyshevsky also worked fruitfully in the sphere of political economy. Marx said that as an economist Chernyshevsky splendidly disclosed the bankruptcy of bourgeois economics. The main idea of his "political economy of the working people" was the idea of "fully combining the owner and worker in one and the same person". Labour, he said, must cease to be a "commodity for sale".

In his Esteticheskiye otnosheniya iskusstva k deistvitelnosti (Aesthetic Relations of Art to Reality), 1855, Chernyshevsky profoundly criticised idealist aesthetics and formulated the basic principles of realistic art. Chernyshevsky's literary criticism, like the works of Belinsky and Dobrolyubov, exerted great influence on the development of progressive Russian literature, painting, and music; they have preserved their significance to this day.

Main works: Ocherki gogolevskogo perioda russkoi literatury (Essays on the Gogol Period in Russian Literature), 1855–56; Kritika Filosofskikh predubezhdeny protiv obshchinnogo vladeniya (Critique of Philosophical Prejudices Against Communal Ownership), 1858; Antropologichesky printsip v filisofii (The Anthropological Principle in Philosophy), 1860; Kharakter chelovecheskogo znaniya (Nature of Human Knowledge), 1885. Chernyshevsky is also known for his What Is To Be Done?, 1863; Prologue, 1867–69, and other works of fiction.

Ch'i

Or Yuan Chi, a basic concept of Chinese natural philosophy. Originally, it meant "air", "vapour", "breath". It acquired a very broad meaning—primary matter, basic matter of nature, the vital force, and so on.

According to the oldest natural philosophical concepts, the world is formed of Ch'i, prime matter, the pure and light portion of which rose upward, creating the heavens, and the impure and heavy settled down, creating the earth. The first is called yang ch'i and the second yin ch'i. In addition there are also five ch'i, five prime "elements" of nature: water, fire, wood, metal, and earth. The flowering and death of yin-yang and the five "elements" occur through the succession of the year's four seasons.

This natural philosophical scheme in which yin-yang and the five "elements" appear simultaneously as semi-physical and semi-metaphysical concepts has exerted an exceptional influence on the development of Chinese philosophical thought. It has been widely utilised in Taoism, Confucianism, and to a certain extent in Buddhism.

Chicherin, Boris Nikolayevich (1828–1904)

Russian expert in the theory of law, historian, and idealist philosopher; professor of Moscow University (1861–68) and a leader of the liberal movement.

Chicherin was a Hegelian who borrowed from Hegel chiefly his criticism of empiricism and his doctrine of the absolute idea. Chicherin admitted dialectics but distorted its meaning and adapted it to his sociology designed to justify private property. True knowledge, according to Chicherin, is possible only by applying speculative principles to the objects studied. The source of social relations is the individual as a kind of "metaphysical being". The main part in society is played by law, i.e., the "free will" of the individual determined by legal rules. The legal and ethical elements merge in the state, which Chicherin considered to be an "ideal" force uniting people into a single whole. He tried to picture the bourgeois-landowner state as an organisation standing above classes.

Chicherin founded the so-called legal school (in Russian historiography), which examined the historical process above all as a succession of legal relations. Chicherin was an advocate of constitutional monarchy and was opposed to the revolutionary movement and scientific socialism.

Main works: Nauka i religiya (Science and Religion), 1879; Mistitsism v nauke (Mysticism in Science), 1880; Sobstvennost i gosudarstvo (Property and the State), two volumes, 1882–83; Polozhitelnaya filosofiya i yedinstvo nauki (Positive Philosophy and the Unity of Science), 1892; Osnovaniya logiki i metafiziki (Foundations of Logic and Metaphysics), 1894; Filosofiya prava (Philosophy of Law), 1900.

Chiliasm

A religious doctrine of "the kingdom of God" on Earth which will last a thousand years prior to the end of the world. Chiliasm was inherent in Judaism and early Christianity in which it was associated with the advent of the Messiah, the Redeemer. The ideas of Chiliasm attracted the slaves and the poor.

On becoming the official religion of the Roman Empire, Christianity renounced any change of the order of things on Earth, laid stress on the idea of reward in the other world, and rejected Chiliasm as a false teaching. In the Middle Ages, Chiliasm was revived in a number of heretical teachings which represented the religious shell of social protest by the peasantry and urban poor against feudal exploitation. Today Chiliasm is a component of the reactionary ideology of some religious sects.

Chinese Philosophy

Anti-Marxist Distortions

Final paragraph attacks Chinese Marxism from Khrushchevite revisionist positions, not from classical Marxism-Leninism.

Chinese Philosophy has a long history. Its sources date from the beginning of the first millennium B.C. As early as the 8th–5th centuries B.C., Chinese Philosophy had a widespread doctrine of the "primary sources", the Five Elements of nature: water, fire, wood, metal, and earth. The ancient Chinese thinkers taught that combinations of the Five Elements create the entire diversity of phenomena and things.

There was also another system for revealing the primary sources of the real world. The Yi King (Books of Changes) named eight such primary sources, whose interaction formed different situations of reality. Basically Yi King was merely a collection of surmises and only somewhat later it was given a philosophical interpretation. The images and symbolics of Yi King exerted exceptional influence on the subsequent development of Chinese Philosophy.

At the same time, the main principles of the doctrine of the opposite and interconnected yin (passive) and yang (active) forces were shaped. The action of these forces was regarded as the cause of motion and change in nature. They were symbols of light and darkness, positive and negative, male and female elements in nature.

Ancient Chinese Philosophy was further developed from the 5th to the 3rd century B.C. It was in this period that the main Chinese philosophical schools emerged. Proponents of Taoism, above all Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu, took a great interest in philosophical problems. Mo Ti (see Mo Tzu) and his followers studied questions of epistemology. Many ancient Chinese thinkers sought to solve the logical problem of the relationship between concepts "name" and reality. Hsün Tzu and others held that concepts are reflections of objective phenomena and things. Kungsun Luna gave an idealist explanation of the problem. He was known for his statements resembling Zeno's aporias and for absolute abstraction of concepts and their divorce from reality. His doctrine of "names" has much in common with Plato's theory of "ideas".

During this period Tsou Yan elaborated the concept of yin and yang and the Five Elements of nature. The ethical and political constructions of Confucius and Meng Tzu, the statements of Han Fei Tzu and other members of the Legalist school (see Fa Chia) about the state and law became widespread. That was the Golden Age of Chinese Philosophy.

On questions of the philosophy of nature the struggle centred round the concept of tien (sky) regarded by some as nature (Hsun Chi), while others considered it the supreme, purposeful force (Confucius, Meng Tzu); the concepts tao, the way (natural law and absolute); te, virtue, power, character; ch'i, the primary matter; the "elements" of nature, etc. In the sphere of ethics, attention was devoted to the teaching on the essence of man. The views of Confucius led to the concept of Meng Tzu about the innate goodness of human nature and of Hsun Chi about the innate evil of human nature. Yang Chu's theory of individualism and Mo Tzu's theory of altruism were widely known.

The ancient Chinese concepts in the philosophy of nature lacked empirical material. The doctrine of the Five Elements, of the polar yin and yang remained the basis of numerous natural philosophical and cosmological constructions between the 3rd century B.C. and the 3rd century A.D. The concept of ch'i received a materialist interpretation in the deeply argumented system of Wang Chung. At the same time various mystic teachings were developed, and religious trends appeared in Taoism and Confucianism.

The relationship of "being" to "non-being" became the central issue of struggle between materialism and idealism in the first centuries of our era. The concepts of the Beginning (yuan), the Prime Matter (ch'i), tao, and other prime sources of being were developed during this period as a result of the mutual influence and synthesis of Taoist and Confucianist ideas.

Buddhism began to spread in China from the 1st century. Together with Confucianism and Taoism it became a leading trend in Chinese thought. The 5th and 6th centuries were stamped by Buddhist mysticism. Struggle around the Buddhist teaching of the unreality of the world developed during that period. Many philosophers took a great interest in problems of the relationship between essence and phenomenon, being and non-being, body and soul. The materialists Ho Chentien and Fan Chen subjected the belief in the immortality of the soul to withering criticism. Buddhism remained the most widespread teaching in the 7th–10th centuries. Attacks on Buddhist idealism were waged mainly from the positions of Confucianism and Taoism.

Philosophy flourished in China in the 10th–13th centuries as a result of the deep socio-economic changes. The further development of Confucianism, known as Neo-Confucianism, came as a reaction to Buddhism and Taoism. Neo-Confucianism was not limited to the elaboration of ethical and political ideas. Questions of ontology, philosophy of nature and cosmogony were represented more widely in it. The central issue was the relation between the ideal element li (law, principle) and the material element ch'i (prime matter). Early Neo-Confucians approached some questions from the standpoint of materialism (Chou Tun-i and Chang Tsai). Chu Hsi holds an important place in the development and generalisation of Neo-Confucian constructions. Examining the interconnection of li and ch'i, Chu Hsi ultimately came to regard li as primary and ch'i as secondary.

Lu Chiu-yuan (Lu Hsiang-shan) and especially Wang Shou-jen (Wang Yang-ming) developed subjective idealism in Neo-Confucianism. The former said: "The world is my reason (heart) and my reason is the world." Neo-Confucian idealism was opposed by the materialist doctrines of Ch'ien Lung, Yeh Shih, Lo Chin-shun, and Wang Ting-hsiang. The doctrine of the progressive thinker Li Chih played a big part in the struggle against the Orthodox school of Neo-Confucianism. The questions of the relationship between li and ch'i was further developed in the 17th and 18th centuries; its materialist solution was offered by Wang Fu-chih (Wang Ch'uan-shan) and Tai Chen.

The Opium War in 1840 marked the beginning of foreign penetration of China. The Chinese people replied to the oppression of the feudal lords and foreign aggression by a powerful peasant rebellion, the Taiping movement. Utopian ideas on the social reconstruction of society played no small part in it. Subsequently, China was turned into a semi-colony. The best traditions and materialist ideas of Chinese Philosophy were taken over and continued by progressive thinkers (see T'an Ssu-t'ung and Sun Yat-sen).

The anti-imperialist and anti-feudal movement of May 4, 1919, began under the influence of the Great October Socialist Revolution. Since then Marxism has acquired ever greater importance as the ideological weapon in the struggle for national independence and the revolutionary transformation of China. But petty-bourgeois ideology has continued to play an important part in the spiritual life of China, and it has inevitably exerted an influence on the Chinese Marxists. That is why various deviations have repeatedly arisen in their ranks. This has also been the reason why vulgar materialism and elements of voluntarism and subjectivism have recently assumed a leading place in philosophy of China.

Christianity

One of the world religions, alongside Islam and Buddhism. Christianity arose in the second half of the first century in the Eastern provinces of the Roman Empire as a religion of the slaves and oppressed toilers. In the course of time Christianity underwent many changes and became the religion of the ruling classes and the state religion of many countries.

Christianity triumphed because: (1) it gave the disinherited classes hope for happiness and justice in a future life; (2) the Roman Empire needed a single religion which would appeal to all men irrespective of their class and national distinctions; (3) the ruling classes were interested in Christianity because it did not affect the class foundations of society and gave divine sanction to the existing oppression.

The Council of Nicaea (325) played an important part in the development of Christianity and the creation of a church organisation and rites. A symbol of faith, a brief exposition of the basic Christian dogmas, was formulated at that Council. At present there is no single Christianity with the same dogmas and rites. There are three main trends—Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and Protestantism and very many different sects (Baptists, Adventists, Witnesses of Jehovah, etc.).

The ideas of Eastern religions (see Polytheism and Monotheism) on the redemption and the divine saviour formed the basis of Christianity; it was also influenced by the doctrines of the stoics, particularly Seneca, and of Philo. The main thing in Christianity is the teaching of the mythical man-God Jesus Christ, the son of God, who descended from heaven on earth, underwent suffering and death, and then rose from the dead to redeem people from original sin. Earthly life, Christianity teaches, is a temporary abode for man in preparation for eternal life in the other world.

Abolition of the exploiting system undermines the social roots of Christianity, which exists only as a survival of the past and will disappear in the process of building communist society.

Chrysippus (281/78–208/05 B.C.)

The most outstanding exponent of the Stoic school. In antiquity he was regarded as the second leader of that school and it was said that "had there been no Chrysippus there would have been no stoics". Diogenes Laertius wrote that "had the gods engaged in dialectics, they would have used the dialectics of Chrysippus". The stoics divided logic into rhetoric and dialectics. Chrysippus provided logic with an exact definition of the sentence and the rules of systematic division of all sentences into simple and complex.

Chu Hsi (1130–1200)

Chinese philosopher and outstanding exponent of Neo-Confucianism of the Sung epoch (960–1279). Under the influence of Buddhism and Taoism Neo-Confucianism turned to the elaboration of metaphysical problems.

Chu Hsi's doctrine is frankly idealistic. It systematised the ideas of Confucianism. The ideal substance, li is devoid of form and properties and is inaccessible to sensory perception. The Great Ultimate gives rise to the force of motion, yang and the force of rest, yin. There is constant alternation of motion and rest, and in this process the five material prime elements of the world arise—water, fire, wood, metal, and earth. Chu Hsi considered the ideal element, li, as primary and the material element, ch'i, as secondary.

Chu Hsi resolutely upheld the ethical and political doctrine of Confucianism. He deduced man's innate nature from the ideal element, li. Chu Hsi saw the foundation of social life in the strictest observance of Confucian ethical and political principles. Subsequently, the doctrine of Chu Hsi was officially recognised and became the basis of the traditional educational system.

Circular Evidence

(Lat. circulus in demonstrando), or vicious circle (Lat. circulus vitiosus), a logical error arising out of the adduction of proof or evidence involving premisses which assume the conclusion which is to be established.

This error is occasionally encountered in scientific works. Thus, for example, over the past 2,000 years many mathematicians attempted to prove Euclid's fifth ("parallel") postulate by building their proof indirectly, on the very postulate to be proved. Marx demonstrated that A. Smith and other bourgeois economists reasoned in a "vicious circle": the value of commodities represents the sum of the wages, profit, and rent, while the value of the wages, profit, and rent is in turn determined by the value of commodities, etc.

Civic Society

The term first used in the 18th century by pre-Marxian philosophers for social and, more narrowly, for property relations. A substantial shortcoming of the theory of Civic Society propounded by the French and English materialists was that it failed to understand the dependence of Civic Society on the mode of production. It inferred the origin of Civic Society from the natural properties of man, from political tasks, forms of government and legislation, morality, etc.

Hegel used the term to imply a "system of requirements" based on private property, on property relations and relations of social estates, on the system of judiciary relations, etc. Although Hegel's views on Civic Society contain a few conjectures about the real laws of social development, they are generally wrong. Hegel's idealism comes to the surface in that he regards Civic Society as dependent on the state, which he holds to be the true form of the objective spirit, with Civic Society being only the "ultimate" form of the spirit.

Marx uses the term and concept of Civic Society in his early works; in particular, he uses it in 1843 in his critique of Hegel. By Civic Society Marx understands the family, estate and class organisation, property relations, forms and methods of distribution, and, in general, all the conditions which ensure the existence and functioning of society, the conditions of the actual life and activity of man. He stresses their objective nature and economic basis. Subsequently, Marx replaces this insufficiently clear term with strictly scientific concepts (economic structure of society, economic basis, mode of production, etc.).

Clan

A group of men connected by ties of consanguinity, the main production cell of the primitive-communal system. The clan numbered up to hundreds of members. Clans were united into fraternities (brotherhoods), while the union of fraternities made up a tribe.

In the period of the appearance and efflorescence of the clan system the most important position in the clan was held by the woman (see Matriarchy), but with the decay of the clan it came to be held by the man (see Patriarchy). The structure of the clan was founded upon social ownership of the means of production, upon collective labour. The head of the clan was the elder who was elected. All affairs were settled by the council of the clan, i.e., a meeting of all the adult men and women. The absence of private ownership and classes led to the absence of class violence in the clan; there was no place for domination or oppression.

With the growth of the social division of labour, exchange and private ownership, the disintegration of the primitive-communal system, and, consequently, that of the clan, began. The appearance of a new mode of production, based on the class division of society, put an end to the clan system.

Class (in logic)

Finite or infinite totality of objects singled out according to some property which is taken in its entirety. Objects forming a Class are called its elements. Not only individuals can be elements of a Class but also Classes themselves. Hence there are also different types of Classes.

Usually a Class is determined by the properties common to all its elements. This makes it possible to treat the concept of Class as the concept of a propositional function, since for an element to belong to a given Class it is necessary and sufficient that it possess the property forming this Class. The theory of classes (see Classes, Theory of) provides a complete and systematic examination of Class, their common properties and manipulations with them in logic.

Class Struggle

Anti-Marxist Distortions

Rejects Stalin's class struggle thesis using revisionist "cult of personality" formula.

Struggle between classes whose interests are incompatible or contradictory. The history of all societies, beginning with the slave society, was the history of the struggle of classes. Marxism-Leninism gave a scientific explanation of the Class Struggle as the driving force of the development of society divided into antagonistic classes and showed that in bourgeois society the Class Struggle inevitably leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat, the purpose of which is to abolish all classes and create a classless communist society.

The main forms of the Class Struggle of the proletariat are economic, political, and ideological. Political struggle, which in bourgeois society leads to the socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat, is the decisive condition for the emancipation of the working class and the whole of society from exploitation. The economic and ideological forms of struggle are subordinated to the tasks of the political struggle. In contemporary capitalist society the Class Struggle of the proletariat is spearheaded against the omnipotence of the monopolies. In the course of the struggle against the capitalist monopolies all the main sections of the nation interested in preserving peace and in implementing broad democratic reforms unite around the proletariat.

With the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat the Class Struggle assumes new forms. Proceeding from the experience of the young Soviet Republic, Lenin named five such new forms: (1) suppression of the resistance of the exploiters, (2) civil war as the extreme form of the Class Struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, (3) struggle for leadership of the peasantry and other non-proletarian working masses, (4) struggle for the utilisation of bourgeois specialists, (5) struggle to educate people in a new, socialist labour discipline.

Depending on the concrete historical conditions the Class Struggle can assume more or less acute forms. "The general trend of class struggle within the socialist countries in conditions of successful socialist construction leads to the consolidation of the position of the socialist forces and weakens the resistance of the remnants of the hostile classes. But this development does not follow a straight line. Changes in the domestic or external situation may cause the class struggle to intensify in specific periods" (Programme of the CPSU). The complete and final victory of socialism eliminates the grounds for the Class Struggle, and promotes the socio-political and ideological unity of society.

The CPSU criticised Stalin's erroneous thesis on the sharpening of the Class Struggle after the victory of socialism, a thesis which served as a pretext for gross violations of socialist democracy and legality in conditions of the cult of the individual. Transition from socialism to communism is effected in conditions when all social groups—workers, peasants, and the intelligentsia—are interested in the victory of communism and are purposefully working for it. Hence there are no grounds for Class Struggle within the country. But Class Struggle remains in relations with the capitalist world. Peaceful coexistence is a specific form of the Class Struggle between socialism and capitalism.

"Classes are large groups of people differing from each other by the place they occupy in a historically determined system of social production, by their relation (in most cases fixed and formulated in law) to the means of production, by their role in the social organisation of labour, and, consequently, by the mode and dimensions of acquiring the share of social wealth of which they dispose. Classes are groups of people one of which can appropriate the labour of another owing to the different places they occupy in a definite system of social economy" (Lenin, Selected Works, Vol. 3, p. 248).

The existence of Classes is associated only with definite periods in the development of social production. The emergence of Classes is determined by the development of the social division of labour and the appearance of private ownership of the means of production. In every class society, besides the basic Classes—slave-owners and slaves in slave society, landowners and serfs under feudalism, capitalists and proletarians in bourgeois society—there also exist nonbasic Classes; the latter are associated either with remnants of the old mode of production (in bourgeois society, the peasantry) or with the emergence of a new mode (the bourgeoisie which arose in feudal society).

Abolition of society's division into Classes becomes possible only as a result of the socialist revolution, the overthrow of the rule of the exploiting Classes, abolition of their private ownership of the means of production, and its replacement by public ownership. The victory of socialism radically changes the character of the working class and draws the workers and peasants nearer to each other.

Under socialism the working class can no longer be called the proletariat; it is free of exploitation and, together with the entire people, owns the means of production and does not sell its labour power. From a class deprived of all means of production and oppressed as it was under capitalism, the proletariat is transformed into the working class, the full master of the country, which works for itself, for the whole of society. As the most advanced and most organised class connected with public property, it leads the other sections of the population.

Under socialism the peasantry does away for ever with farming based on private property, with disunity inherited from capitalism and renounces backward and primitive implements and farming methods. It farms on the basis of collective socialist ownership (see State and Collective-Farm and Co-operative Forms of Property).

The intelligentsia, the social stratum of intellectual workers, has also radically changed. The intelligentsia has never been, nor could it be, a separate class, since it does not hold an independent position in the system of social production. As a social stratum it is incapable of pursuing an independent policy, its activity is determined by the interests of the classes it serves. After the victory of the socialist revolution, the working class is confronted with the problem of utilising the old and developing a new intelligentsia. Together with the workers and peasants, the intelligentsia actively participates in the building of communist society.

The distinctions between the workers, peasants, and intelligentsia are effaced in the course of building communism. This process is based on the gradual obliteration of the essential distinctions between town and country, between physical and mental labour. The socio-political and ideological unity of the people achieved under socialism is consolidated and the social homogeneity of society is extended. The further strengthening of the alliance of the working class and the collective-farm peasantry, the leading role of the working class, are of decisive political and socio-economic significance for the building of communism in the USSR. The division of society into Classes and social strata will vanish completely with the victory of communism.

Classes, Theory of

A logical theory. Main concepts: class, an element of class. Main propositions: an element of class (x) is a member of the class (A) (in symbols: x ∈ A); the universal class (1) complements the null (or empty) class; relations between classes are of four types: of two arbitrary classes A and B, either A is included in B (as its subclass) or vice versa, for instance A⊂B and B⊂A; or A and B coincide partially or have no common elements at all.

Theory of Classes determines the following operations involving classes: (1) intersection A∩B, i.e., the formation of a new class out of the elements common both to A and B; (2) union A∪B, i.e., the formation of a class, whose elements belong either to A or to B, or to both; (3) complementation of A, i.e., the formation of a class out of all the elements of the universal class which are not included in A.

The laws governing the relations between classes and the operations involving them are treated in the so-called calculus of classes, which is one of the interpretations (see Interpretation and Model) of algebra of logic. At the same time the calculus of classes is treated as the calculus of singular predicates, since the expression x∈A corresponds to a propositional function.

Classification

A particular case of applying the division of concepts, representing a certain sum-total of divisions (division of concepts into species, division of these species, etc.). Classification is designated for constant use in science or practical activity (for example, classification of animals and plants, socioeconomic formations or classification of books in a library).

Usually features essential to the given objects are taken as a basis for classification. In this case, classification (called natural) brings out essential similarities and differences between objects and is of cognitive significance. In other cases, when the purpose of classification is merely to systematise objects, features convenient for this purpose but not essential to the objects themselves (for example in alphabetical catalogues) are taken as a basis. Such classification is called artificial.

The most valuable are classifications based on knowledge of the laws of connection between types and the transition from one type to another in the process of development. Such, for example, is the classification of chemical elements created by Mendeleyev. Every classification is the result of a certain rough demarcation of the real boundaries between types, for they are always conventional and relative. With the development of knowledge classifications are altered and made more precise.

Classification of Sciences

Anti-Marxist Distortions

Grants cybernetics special place among legitimate sciences.

The interconnection of the sciences, their place in the system of knowledge determined by definite principles which reflect the properties of and the connection between the objects studied by different sciences. Epistemologically, the principles of classification of sciences can be objective, conforming to the nature of the subject-matter of the sciences, or subjective, depending on man's requirements.

In his Dialectics of Nature Engels elaborated the dialectical materialist principles of a classification of sciences. He developed a classification which removes the one-sidedness of earlier attempts at classifying the sciences (Saint-Simon and Comte, on the one hand, and Hegel, on the other). Engels understood the interconnection and transitions of the sciences as a reflection of the interconnections and transitions of the forms of motion of matter studied by the particular sciences. For the natural sciences Engels suggested the following series: mechanics—physics—chemistry—biology.

Further, the labour theory of anthropogenesis, elaborated by Engels, opens the transition from nature to man and, correspondingly, from the natural to the social sciences (history) and sciences of thought. Engels devoted his attention chiefly to transitions between the separate sciences (corresponding to the forms of motion), acting on the principle that the essence of a higher form of motion is revealed through cognition of its connection with the lower forms from which it historically arose and which it contains as subordinated ones.

The further development of the sciences proceeded so that their differentiation made for their increasing integration, their combination into a single whole through the appearance of intermediate sciences between the formerly disunited sciences and sciences of a more general nature. The technical sciences (including agricultural and medical) stand between the natural and social sciences; mathematics stands between the natural sciences and philosophy, with mathematical logic on the boundary between them. Psychology is linked with all the three spheres of knowledge (with nature, through zoopsychology and the theory of higher nervous activity; with society, through linguistics, pedagogy, social psychology, etc.; with thinking, through logic and the theory of knowledge).

Cybernetics holds a special place. First of all, it is part of the technical and mathematical sciences, and at the same time deeply penetrates other sciences as well; the natural sciences (biology and physiology) and the social sciences (linguistics, law, and economics) and logic, especially mathematical.

The contemporary development of science has introduced radical changes in Engels' original scheme of classification of sciences: an entirely new science of the microworld has emerged (subatomic physics—nuclear, quantum mechanics, etc.); intermediary sciences (biochemistry, biophysics, geochemistry, and others) have been formed; old sciences have divided (for example, into sciences which study the macro- and microworld). As a result the classification of sciences can no longer be uniserial but must be extremely detailed and ramified. The need has arisen for dividing the sciences into the more general, abstract, and the more particular which study the forms of motion having a specific material substratum (carrier).

Clausius, Rudolf Julius Emanuel (1822–1888)

German physicist, one of the founders of thermodynamics and the kinetic theory of gases. Known for attempts to interpret electromagnetic phenomena from the standpoint of Newton's mechanics. Clausius gave his formulation of the second law of thermodynamics and introduced the concept of entropy.

The unjustified extension of the second law of thermodynamics to the world as a whole offered Clausius grounds for the conclusion about the inevitable "heat death" of the Universe. This conclusion (according to Engels) brought Clausius into conflict with the law of conservation of energy.

Clericalism

A socio-political trend in capitalist countries seeking to strengthen the position of religion and the church in different spheres of social life. According to its objective class role clericalism serves to reinforce the domination of the bourgeoisie, to prevent the working people from grasping the communist world outlook and the ideas of communism. Clericalism enjoys the greatest influence in France, Italy, West Germany, Austria, Spain, and a number of Latin American countries.

The growth of clericalism in present-day conditions is caused by the aggravation of the general crisis of capitalism. The greater activity of clericalism is expressed in that the top hierarchy of the church, with the utmost support of the monopolies, uses its ramified apparatus to spread refined social demagogy and foster illusions about the possibility of "Christianising" capitalism. These illusions are entertained by backward sections of the people, who frequently see in religious organisations the defenders of their wrongly understood interests.

Clericalism creates its parties, trade unions, peasant, youth, women's, and other mass organisations to reinforce the influence of the church on the masses and thereby undermine the revolutionary action of the working class, disunite and demoralise the working people and prevent them from uniting in class organisations. Making use of these organisations, church leaders try ideologically to justify capitalist exploitation and advocate reactionary ideas of "social peace". Struggle for peace, democracy, social progress, and a scientific world outlook presupposes the utmost exposure of the reactionary role of clericalist theory and practice.

Cognition

The process of reflection and reproduction of reality in human thought, conditioned by the laws of social development and inseparably linked up with practice. The aim of cognition is the achievement of objective truth. In the process of cognition man acquires knowledge and concepts of the phenomena of reality, realises the surrounding world. This knowledge is used in practical activity for the purpose of transforming the world, subordinating nature to human requirements.

Cognition and the practical transformation of nature and society are two mutually conditioned and interdependent aspects of a single historical process. Cognition itself is a necessary factor in the practical activity of society, because this activity is carried out by people on the basis of cognition of the properties and functions of things and objects. On the other hand, in the productive activity of society, practice acts as a necessary factor of the process of cognition itself. Only the inclusion of practice in the theory of knowledge transformed it into a real science, disclosing the objective laws of the origin and formation of the knowledge about the material world.

At the source of cognition there is active practical influence upon nature, practical processing of natural substance, the utilisation of this or that property of things for production purposes. Not the outward appearance of the object, but its functions and its objective essence are assimilated in practice and become the domain of human knowledge, concepts, and theories.

Cognition is a complicated dialectical process, taking place in different forms, having its own stages and degrees of development, and involving the participation of man's various powers and abilities. Based on experience, practice, cognition begins with sense-perceptions of things surrounding man. Great therefore is the role of "living perception", of man's direct sensual connection with the objective world, in the process of cognition. Man can know nothing about reality without sensations.

"Living perception" takes place in such forms as sensation, perception, notion, investigation of facts, observation of phenomena, etc. Sensations bring man in touch with the external qualities of objects. By distinguishing heat, cold, colours, smells, hardness, softness, etc., man finds his bearings in the objective world, differentiates things from one another, and receives various information on the changes in surrounding reality. The perception of the images of objects and their storing in the imagination allow man to operate freely with those objects, to apprehend the relationship between the external appearance of the object and its functions.

But however important is the sensual form of cognition, it does not in itself give the possibility of penetrating into the essence of objects, of discovering the laws of reality. Yet precisely this is the main task of cognition. The data of "living perception", experience, are processed and generalised by man's higher cognitive ability—abstract-logical thought, which is effected in the forms of concepts, judgements, conclusions. Concepts arise in man also as a result of his socio-productive activities. The properties and functions of objects, their objective practical value fixed in man's signal-speech activity, become the meaning and the sense of the words with whose help human thought creates definite notions of the objects, their properties and manifestations.

The logical activity of thought is effected in various forms: induction and deduction, analysis and synthesis, the construction of hypotheses and theories, etc. Imagination, creative fantasy, intuition, which make it possible to form broad generalised ideas on the nature of things from certain data of experience, also play a great role in cognition. Thought, however, creates only subjective ideas; there still remains the question: do such ideas correspond to reality itself? This problem may be solved not by theoretical discussions and proofs alone, but first and foremost by socio-historical practice.

The subjective idea becomes the objective truth, completing a separate cycle of cognition, only if practical social activity is based directly or indirectly upon this idea, and allows men to master the natural or social forces (see Criterion of Truth). And only when social productive practice confirms the coincidence of ideas, knowledge, theories with reality, can it be said that those ideas, that knowledge, those theories are true.

Lenin wrote: "From living perception to abstract thought, and from this to practice,—such is the dialectical path of the cognition of truth, of the cognition of objective reality." (Vol. 38, p. 171.)

Scientific truth is finally proved in social practice, not in one isolated, specially carried out experiment. Social productive activity as a whole, the whole social being in the course of its history defines, deepens, and verifies knowledge. Truth is a process. Inasmuch as it is definite enough to distinguish objective truth from error, to confirm the truth of our knowledge, practice itself is at the same time a developing process, which is limited at every given stage by the potentialities of production, its technical level, etc. This means that it is also relative, as a result of which its development does not allow truth to be transformed into a dogma, into an immutable absolute (see Truth, Absolute and Relative).

Cognition, Object of

Aspects, properties, and relations of objects, fixed in experience and included into the process of practical human activity, and investigated with a definite purpose in the given circumstances. Depending on the level of the development of cognition, it is also possible to investigate phenomena whose essence is known in some degree. In this case knowledge is obtained of the fundamental and more general regularities of an object, its essence is more profoundly revealed, and cognition goes from the essence of the first order to the essence of the second order, etc.

Besides, as the knowledge of the object develops, its new aspects are disclosed, and they also become object of cognition. For one and the same object different sciences have different objects of cognition (for example, anatomy investigates the structure of the organism; physiology the functions of its organs; medicine its diseases, etc.).

The object of cognition is objective in the sense that it belongs to the object of cognition, its contents being independent of man and mankind. In each individual case the choice of the object of cognition seems to be arbitrary and subjective, but in the last analysis it is determined by the requirements and the level of development of social practice. The object of cognition may or may not be given directly in sensations. In the latter case it is investigated by means of its manifestations. In its entirety and self-development the object is cognised by the thought passing from the abstract to the concrete. The process of cognition itself can be the object of cognition.

Cohen, Hermann (1842–1918)

German philosopher, founder of the Marburg school. Beginning with the 1870s he undertook to reconstruct Kant's theory of experience, his ethics and aesthetics in a spirit of idealism with greater consistence than Kant himself: he rejected the "thing-in-itself" as the real cause of sensations and considered it only as the limited concept of experience.

Proceeding from Kant, he constructed a system of philosophy embracing logic, ethics, aesthetics, and the philosophy of religion. Philosophy, according to Cohen, for the first time matures to be a science only when it takes as its subject-matter not things and processes, but the facts of science. The soul of philosophy is the idealist method modelled on the mathematical infinitesimal calculus. Cognising thought is creative; its subject is not "given" but "set" before it like a problem. Satisfying the requirements of knowledge, concepts give rise to new requirements, to which neither philosophy nor science give final answers. Philosophical consciousness is cognising consciousness; even religious belief rests on the clarity of systematic knowledge.

His main works are Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, 1871, and System der Philosophie, three volumes, 1902-12.

Coherence, Theory of

A neo-positivist theory of truth, founded and developed by O. Neurath and R. Carnap in the course of their polemic in the Vienna circle against Schlick. While Schlick imparted "realistic" tinge to his idealist understanding of truth, his opponents, by introducing the theory of coherence, actually went over to positions of open subjectivism.

According to this theory, truth is based on internal harmony of propositions in a definite system. Any new proposition is true if it can be introduced into the system without upsetting its internal non-contradictoriness. To be true means to be an element of a noncontradictory system. Moreover, a system is understood to mean a language structure deductively developed from the sum total of arbitrary initial axioms.

Originally, the theory of coherence was based on recognition of "protocol propositions", a special type of propositions fixing empirical facts, and thus to some extent admitted a connection between the system and reality. Subsequently, with the adoption of the postulate that any proposition can be considered a "protocol" one (K. Popper), the theory of coherence assumed a purely conventionalist subjective idealist character (see Conventionalism).

Collectivism

A principle of joint social life and activity; diametrically opposed to individualism. Arose in the period of the formation of human society and has a number of historical forms. In primitive society it was embodied in the joint struggle for existence. Communal ownership formed its basis. In slave and feudal societies collectivism was ousted by individualism bred by the domination of private ownership of the means of production. Collectivism is preserved only in some residual forms (for example, joint communal ownership of land); under capitalism it is fully overpowered by the bourgeois individualism.

At the same time a new form of collectivism is born, of which the proletariat becomes the vehicle. The social nature of production and work at factories and in large groups determine the formation of proletarian collectives and the moulding of collectivist views, in the ranks of the workers. In socialist society collectivism becomes a principle inherent in all sections of the population. The principle of collectivism is part of the moral code of the builder of communism (see Moral Code).

Expressing socialist relations of production, collectivism has its social basis in social ownership of the means of production and absence of exploitation of man by man, and its political basis in the equality of all citizens. Collectivism is founded on the harmonious relationship between society and the individual, the mutual rights and duties of the collective and the individual.

The main demands on the individual as a result of the principles of collectivism are as follows: comradely mutual assistance, social awareness and fulfilment of duty to society, conscious voluntary subordination of personal interests to social, equality in the collective, respect for the collective and its decisions, awareness of responsibility to the collective for one's actions and for the behaviour of one's comrades.

The collective cares for man, cares for the satisfaction of his requirements and the full development of the gifts and capabilities of the individual. The principle of collectivism does not involve the abolition of the personality of man. On the contrary, it is only in a collective that man develops and displays his gifts and abilities to the full. Communism signifies the highest form of collectivism.

Comic, The

An aesthetic concept expressing the historically conditioned (complete or incomplete) irrelevance of a social phenomenon, human action or behaviour, moral standards or customs to the objective development of a situation and the aesthetic ideal of the progressive forces of society. The aspects of the comic are varied: they may reflect incompatibility between the new and the old, between form and content, or the end and the means, the action and the circumstances, a man's real nature and his opinion of himself. Comic incidents and characters provoke laughter, disapprobation, etc.

Its origin, nature and aesthetic function confer a social character upon the comic. Its source lies in the objective contradictions of social life. The comic may depict the ugly, historically doomed and inhuman in a hypocritical effort to pass for the beautiful, progressive and humane. In such a case the comic arouses either angry laughter or a satirically negative reaction. The absurd urge to hoard for the sake of hoarding is comic inasmuch as it contradicts the ideal of a harmoniously developed individual.

Marx saw in laughter a powerful tool of revolutionary criticism in the fight against all that is withering away. As communist society is being built, the ideal of a perfect individual developing in complete freedom is being realised more and more fully. Yet the process of moulding the man of the future is attended by no few elements of the comic either in the form of survivals of the past (e.g., parasitism, careerism, bureaucratism, adulation, servility, etc.) which are the objects of angry and critical satire, or in the form of circumstances arising even in commendable situations, in public and private life, which need to be ridiculed. The various aspects of the comic are satire, humour, etc.

Common Sense

Sum total of views, habits and forms of thought developed by man in his everyday activity. This term is used in philosophical literature primarily in contrast to abstract speculative constructions of idealism. In this respect, common sense coincides with the position of materialism, so it is not without reason that materialists in the past frequently cited common sense arguments.

But common sense in this interpretation had substantial shortcomings. It did not delve into the essence of objects and processes, thus reflecting only the limited nature of daily practice. For this reason common sense was often counterposed to scientific thinking. The broader ties of science with production and the spread of scientific views are changing the nature of everyday experience, bringing common sense to a certain extent closer to scientific knowledge. That is why the counterposing of the two is becoming quite relative.

Communication

A category of idealistic philosophy denoting intercourse in which the self is revealed in another. Communication finds its fullest expression in the existentialism of Jaspers and in modern French personalism. Historically, the doctrine of communication originated as a refutation of the teaching of the social contract, which has its origins in the age of enlightenment.

The adherents of the communication theory (K. Jaspers, O. Bollnow, E. Mounier) emphasise that a social contract is essentially a contract or transaction, the parties to which are bound by mutual obligations; mutual perception and cognition is achieved solely in the light of such obligations, i.e., in an abstract or impersonal manner. The contract is a bond based on the practical dissociation of individuals.

Communication is considered to be an arbitrarily established interdependence as opposed to the contract. "Contact rather than contract" (F. Kaufmann). Communication is stated to be established by discussion in the course of which individuals become convinced that their dissociation is caused by the accepted patterns of thought, whereas they are brought closer together by that wherein they differ and by that which constitutes their unique individuality.

The "individually unique" are the carefully concealed subjective fears, concerns and worries in which people, in the final resort, experience (each in his particular way) merely their own actual membership of some group of modern bourgeois society. Seen in this light, discussion is merely a means of clarifying this membership, and the doctrine of communication as a whole is a refined form of protection of caste and corporate bonds. Objectively, the doctrine of communication is counterposed to the Marxist conception of the collective.

Communism

See Socialism and Communism.

Communism, Scientific

A doctrine on communism which, in contrast to utopian socialism (see Socialism, Utopian), is based on science, on knowledge of the laws of historical development. It was founded by Marx and Engels. Scientific communism is a component of Marxism, which also includes the philosophy of Marxism and its economic doctrine, both inseparably interconnected.

The subject-matter of scientific communism is the laws governing the birth and development of the communist socio-economic formation. The historical necessity of communism is demonstrated by the Marxist teaching on the law-governed succession of modes of production as a result of the conflict between the growing productive forces and the obsolete relations of production, which retard their development. Marx's doctrine of the inevitable downfall of capitalism was further developed by Lenin in his doctrine of imperialism as the last stage of capitalism and the eve of socialism. The historic necessity of the communist reconstruction of society is the basic idea of scientific communism.

It is specified and developed in the doctrine of the two phases of communism: the first phase (socialism) and the second, higher phase (communism) (see Socialism and Communism). The doctrine of the two stages of communism holds good for all countries. No country can arrive at full communism, skipping the first phase, socialism. Transition from socialism to communism is also a law-governed process. The founders of scientific communism outlined its general features. A concrete, more precise description of this process can be given in the course of building communism by summing up the practical experience of this construction.

The laws governing the development of socialism into communism are revealed in the new Programme of the CPSU, which demonstrates the objective necessity of building the material and technical basis of communism (see Material and Technical Basis of Communism). It outlines the entire chain of consequences which follow from the creation of new productive forces for the shaping of communist social relations, for the advance of the material and cultural standards of people and their all-round development.

The Programme reveals the importance of the material and technical basis of communism, above all automation of production, for the development of socialist labour into communist labour. It shows the concrete ways for the formation of single ownership by the whole people; the complete obliteration of class distinctions between the collective-farm peasantry and the working class; the obliteration of distinctions between the town and country in culture and the way of life; obliteration of distinctions between the peasantry and the working class and the intelligentsia; greater drawing together of nations and national cultures, and advance towards social homogeneity.

The CPSU Programme sets the task of educating the new man, the all-round development of the personality (see All-Round Development of the Individual) as an important component of communist construction. It charts concrete ways for accomplishing this task: moulding a scientific communist world outlook, labour education, and the establishment of the principles of communist morality.

In the course of building communism the dictatorship of the proletariat, completing its tasks, develops into a state of the whole people—this proposition, formulated and grounded in the Programme, is an important contribution to the theory of scientific communism. The Programme outlines the concrete ways for the development of socialist statehood into communist public self-administration. The theory of scientific communism, enriched by the Programme of the CPSU, illumines with the light of scientific knowledge the true road leading mankind to communism.

Communist Education

Anti-Marxist Distortions

Systematically erases Stalin from communist education theory.

The moulding of conscientious, full man of socialist and communist society, free of any survivals of the past. Communist education is one of the most important aspects of the transformation of society during its transition from capitalism to communism. Socialism and communism cannot be built without a transformation of men's consciousness, mental attitudes and morals. A new way of life and participation in socialist and communist construction are essential elements of communist education.

The actual practice of communist construction provides the best schooling for communist education, while the process of moulding the new man exercises a great influence on the practical transformation of society. Communist education is not a spontaneous process subject to objective factors alone: it requires systematic, purposeful training, the results of which depend on its being connected with everyday life, with work for the good of society.

The main aspect of communist education is the development of a communist attitude towards work, including an appreciation of its high social significance and a realisation of one's duty towards society. For a man trained in the spirit of communism work becomes a prime necessity of life, and high moral virtues become permanent features of his character and conduct.

One of the important aims of communist education is to shape a scientific world outlook, an essential pre-condition of which is to master the progressive cultural legacy of the past and all the wealth of knowledge accumulated by mankind. A study of Marxist-Leninist theory helps people understand the laws of social development and the significance of their own activity.

Communist education implies a systematic struggle against the survivals of capitalism in man's consciousness, including religious superstitions and the influence of bourgeois ideology. An important aspect of communist education is the development of a sound sense of beauty. During the period of all-out communist construction in the USSR the main accent in communist education is on the affirmation of the principles of communist morality as embodied in the moral code of the builder of communism (see Moral Code) contained in the Programme of the CPSU (see Morality, Communist; All-Round Development of the Individual).

Communist Labour

With the establishment of communism all labour for the good of society becomes not only a duty but also a prime necessity of life, a recognised necessity for everyone. According to Lenin, "Communist labour in the narrower and stricter sense of the term is labour performed gratis for the benefit of society ... voluntary labour, irrespective of rates, labour performed ... without the condition of reward, labour performed out of a habit of working for the common good, and out of a conscious realisation (become a habit) of the necessity of working for the common good—labour as the requirement of a healthy organism." (Vol. 30, p. 517.)

Communist Public Self-Administration

Anti-Marxist Distortions

Ignores necessity of strengthening proletarian dictatorship under socialism.

A form of society's organisation under communism which will replace the state of the whole people once a developed communist society has been established within a country and once socialism is victorious and firmly established on the international scene. A distinguishing feature of communist public self-administration is that its organs and functions will be no longer political, and public administration will be no longer carried on as a special profession.

Pre-conditions of the establishment of communist public self-administration are: creation of the material and technical basis of communism; development of communist social relations and formation of the new man, i.e., attainment of so high a level of consciousness among all members of society that the principles of law and morality merge into a single code of conduct for all members of the communist society.

The main trend in the emergence of communist public self-administration is the further development of socialist democracy and the participation of all citizens in social management. This requires continuous improvement of the material and cultural standards of living; perfection of the forms of popular representation and the democratic principles of the electoral system; extension of the practice of nationwide referendums on important problems of communist construction and draft legislation; the widest possible extension of public control over the activities of administrative bodies; and gradual extension of the electivity and accountability principles to cover all high officials of state and mass organisations.

Involving as it does the transformation of organs of state power into public self-administration bodies, the development of communist public self-administration also implies an expansion of the activities of all existing mass organisations. "As socialist statehood develops, it will gradually become communist public self-administration of the people which will comprise the Soviets, trade unions, co-operatives, and other mass organisations of the people." (Programme of the CPSU.)

Comparative Method

A method of investigating and explaining cultural phenomena; infers genetic kinship, that is, common origin, by ascertaining similarity in form. The comparative method reproduces and compares the oldest elements common to various spheres of material culture and knowledge. Wilhelm von Humboldt and, particularly, Auguste Comte were chiefly responsible for the development of the comparative method.

The comparative method was developed further by the 19th century protagonists of comparative philology, Jacob Grimm, August Friedrich Pott, August Schleicher (Germany), Ferdinand de Saussure (Switzerland) and the Russian linguists I. A. Boduin de Courteney, A. N. Veselovsky, A. K. Vostokov, F. F. Fortunatov, etc. The comparative method advanced linguistics and ethnography and prompted deep-going studies of myths and legends.

However, the comparative method concentrated on the outward resemblances of cultural and ideological forms, while neglecting the material social relations that caused their appearance. This is one of the limitations of the comparative method. In modern historical research, the comparative method is employed as an auxiliary to various methods of substantive interpretation of the history of culture.

Comparison

A way of determining resemblances and differences between objects. It is the key premiss of generalisation. Comparison is prominent in judgements by analogy. Judgements expressing the result of comparison serve the purpose of determining the content of concepts of the objects compared. In this sense, comparison is a method supplementing, and sometimes replacing, definition.

Complementarity, Principle of

A methodological principle suggested by Bohr to interpret quantum mechanics. It may be formulated as follows: to show the wholeness of a phenomenon, cognition must make use of mutually exclusive "complementary" classes of concepts.

In the works of several representatives of the group known as the Copenhagen school (Jordan, Frank, and other advocates of extreme positivist views) the principle of complementarity was used to defend idealist and metaphysical views of space, time, and causality. Attaching absolute importance to the increased role played by instruments in the microcosm and incorrectly interpreting this as "uncontrolled perturbation", they regarded space and time, on the one hand, and causality, on the other, as mutually exclusive "complementary" characteristics of microprocesses.

The necessity of using "complementary" concepts was inferred not from the objective nature of microobjects but from the peculiarities of the cognitional process, and was associated with the arbitrary intervention of the observer. The positivist form of principle of complementarity was critically analysed by Vavilov, Blokhintsev, Fok, de Broglie, Langevin, Janossy, and others.

Comte, Auguste (1798–1857)

French philosopher, founder of positivism. Secretary and associate of Saint-Simon (1818-24). The basic thesis of Comte's "positive philosophy" was his demand that science limit itself to a description of the outward appearance of phenomena. On the strength of this thesis Comte asserted that "metaphysics", i.e., the teaching of the essence of phenomena, should be abolished.

Comte attempted to synthesise the vast body of data provided by natural science, but owing to his philosophical outlook (subjective idealism and agnosticism) his attempt led to a falsification of science. Comte described the knowledge of nature in terms of three stages, each of which corresponded to a definite type of world outlook: the theological, the metaphysical, and the positive.

In the first, theological, stage man attempted to attribute the various phenomena to supernatural powers or God. The metaphysical world outlook, according to Comte, is a modification of the theological; according to the metaphysical conception, the basis of all phenomena is to be found in abstract metaphysical essences. The theological and metaphysical world outlooks were followed, according to Comte, by the "positive method" which rejected "absolute knowledge" (i.e., materialism first of all, and also objective idealism).

The three-stage formula distorted the history of science and philosophy. For instance, the classification proposed by Comte failed to take into account an entire period in the development of human thought—the epoch of antiquity. On balance, Comte's formula was an uncouth imitation of the dialectical triad borrowed from Saint-Simon.

Comte applied his three-stage formula to a classification of sciences and a systematisation of civil history. In his sociology (a term proposed by Comte) he used an unscientific biological approach in an attempt to explain society. The principal reactionary idea of his sociological doctrine was the assertion that it is useless to seek to change the bourgeois system by revolutionary means. Capitalism, according to Comte, crowns the history of man's evolution; and social harmony could be achieved by propaganda of the "new" religion which substituted belief in an abstract supreme being (humanity in general) for faith in a personal God.

Comte's most important work is the Cours de philosophie positive (1830-42).

Concept

One of the forms of reflection of the world in the mind, with the help of which it is possible to cognise the essence of phenomena and processes, to generalise their essential aspects and attributes. The concept is a product of historically developing cognition, which arises from a lower to a higher stage; it summarises, on the basis of practice, the results obtained in the concepts of increasing depth, improves and defines old concepts more precisely and formulates new ones. That is why concepts are not static, not final, not absolute, but are in the process of development, change, progressing to the adequate reflection of reality.

Concepts impart the sense (see Denotation and Sense) to the words of a language. The main logical function of concept is to single out in thought by definite attributes the objects which interest us from the point of view of practice and of cognition. Thanks to this function concepts link up words with definite objects, which makes it possible to determine the exact meanings of words and to operate with them in the process of thought. The differentiation of the classes of objects and their generalisation in concept is an indispensable condition for the cognition of the laws of nature. Every science operates with definite concepts, in which the knowledge accumulated by science is concentrated.

The concept, as Lenin characterised it, is the highest product of the brain, which is itself the highest product of matter (see Vol. 38, p. 167). The formation of concept, the transition to it from sensory forms of reflection, is a complicated process including the application of such methods of cognition as comparison, analysis and synthesis, abstraction, idealisation, generalisation, and more or less complex forms of deduction. At the same time, scientific concepts are often created initially solely on the basis of hypothetical assumptions concerning the existence of objects and their nature (that is how, for example, the concept of atoms emerged). On the basis of knowing laws and trends of development, the concept of some objects may be formed before the emergence of objects themselves (concept of communism). Thus, the formation of concepts is a manifestation of an active and creative character of thought, although the successful use of the concepts created depends entirely on the precision with which objective reality is reflected in them.

Every concept is an abstraction, which makes it appear to be a deviation from reality. As a matter of fact, with the help of a concept a more profound knowledge of reality is obtained by the singling out and investigation of its essential aspects. Moreover, the concrete which is incompletely reflected in particular concepts may be reproduced to a certain degree of completeness by an aggregate of concepts reflecting its various aspects. Any scientific concept, being a reflection of reality, is just as mobile and flexible as the objects and processes of which it is a generalisation.

To quote Lenin, a concept "must be hewn, treated, flexible, mobile, relative, mutually connected, united in opposites, in order to embrace the world". (Vol. 38, p. 146.) The tenet on the flexibility, mobility, mutual connection, and transformations of concept is one of the most essential aspects of the teaching of dialectical logic on concept. Although only the general is singled out in concept, this does not mean that it is in opposition to the individual and the particular. What is more, a scientific concept contains the richness of the special, the individual. Only on the basis of the general is it possible to single out and cognise the particular groups (kinds) of objects, as well as the individual objects of a class. The dialectical-materialist approach to the concept is corroborated by the development of the whole of modern science and serves as a method of scientific cognition.

Concept, Volume and Content of

Two interconnected sides of a concept. Volume is a class of objects generalised in a concept; content is the sum total (usually of essential) properties, according to which objects are generalised and singled out in the given concept.

By formulating the content of a concept we single out the identical (general) in objects of the given class; a characteristic of volume, i.e., differentiation of elements (objects which are carriers of the properties comprising the content) and parts (species, subclasses of the given class) brings out the difference between objects of the given class. There is a connection between content and volume expressed in formal logic by the law of inverse relation (see Inverse Relation, Law of).

Conceptualism

A theory of scholastic philosophy, mainly connected with the names of Abelard and Occam. In the debate over universals the conceptualists denied their real existence apart from particular objects, as did the nominalists (see Nominalism), but unlike the latter they admitted the existence of general a priori concepts, or mental images abstracted from actions or things, as a special form of knowledge of reality. Locke held views close to Conceptualism.

Concrete Sociological Investigations

Studies of various aspects and elements of society (economy, everyday life, family and matrimonial relations, public opinion, cultural level and technical education of workers and peasants, etc.).

Concrete Sociological Investigations effected by the various social sciences (i.e., theory of scientific communism, economics, statistics, jurisprudence, etc.) employ the methodology of historical materialism which offers a truly scientific analysis of concrete facts. The purposes of Concrete Sociological Investigations are: ascertainment and generalisation of new phenomena in social life; investigation of the practical activities of state and mass organisations; generalisation of the experience of socialist and communist construction; and the discovery of new laws governing the economic, political and cultural development of socialism and its growth into communism.

An example of Concrete Sociological Investigations is to be found in Lenin's A Great Beginning with its profound factual analysis of the early communist "subbotniks" (voluntary labour performed after working hours on weekends) and evaluation of their tremendous impact on the pace of communist construction in Russia. Concrete Sociological Investigations employ such methods and techniques as the statistical approach, questionnaires, interviews or polls, etc.

Concrete Sociological Investigations differ fundamentally from empirical sociology, which rejects the study of the objective laws of social development (thus inevitably leading to the misrepresentation of concrete facts) and gets lost in a trivial description and enumeration of facts.

Concreteness of Truth

An attribute of truth, deriving from the consideration and generalisation of specific conditions of the existence of some fact; the dependence of truth upon definite conditions of time and space, systems of calculation and units of measurement, etc.

Thus, the truth or falsity of a proposition cannot be established unless the relevant conditions are specified. Truth is never abstract, it is always concrete. A concrete historical approach and consideration of circumstances of time and space are particularly important in analysing social development, which is characterised by the continuous emergence of new phenomena which lacks uniformity, differs from country to country.

Condillac, Étienne Bonnot de (1715–1780)

French encyclopaedist (see Enlightenment). Born at Grenoble, he became a Catholic priest, but through his works tried to undermine the ideology of the church. He was a follower of Locke in respect of the theory of knowledge, but, unlike the latter, denied the existence of "reflection" as a source of knowledge second to sensation.

His failure to understand the nature of the relationship between sensations and external objects, and his exaggeration of their subjectivity led Condillac to subjective idealism. Sensations, according to Condillac, are produced by external objects, with which, however, they have nothing in common. Inasmuch as sensation is the sole link between the world and the intellect, the latter has for its object the sum total of sensations, rather than the objective world.

Nevertheless Condillac's sensationalism was opposed to the idealism of Leibniz and to any speculative philosophy. His influence on the French materialism of the 18th century was considerable. His principal works are: Le Traité des systèmes, où l'on en démêle les inconvénients et les avantages (1749), Le Traité des sensations (1754), and others.

Condition

A philosophical category expressing the relationship of an object to phenomena around it, and without which it cannot exist. The object itself is something determined, while Condition represents the diversity of the objective world external to the object.

As distinct from the cause, which directly engenders phenomena or processes, Condition is the environment, the atmosphere in which they emerge, exist, and develop. By learning the laws of nature, men are able to create Conditions favourable to their activity and eliminate unfavourable Conditions. While influencing phenomena and processes, Conditions themselves are also subject to their influence. Thus, the socialist revolution, arising in definite Conditions subsequently changes the Conditions of society's material and spiritual life.

Conditionalism

A philosophical teaching which substitutes the concept of a concourse of conditions for the concept of cause. It was founded by M. Verworn (1863-1921), a German physiologist, adherent of idealism in philosophy. The concepts of Conditionalism have supporters among theoreticians in the field of medicine.

Condorcet, Jean Antoine (1743–1794)

French philosopher and encyclopaedist, Girondist sympathiser, member of the Academy of Sciences in Paris. In economic matters he was a follower of physiocracy (see Turgot). His criticism of religion was based on deism and enlightenment. He called for the abandonment of superstitions and for a development of scientific knowledge.

In his most important work, Esquisse d'un tableau historique des progrès de l'esprit humain (1794), Condorcet viewed history as a product of the human mind, and declared the bourgeois system to be the apex of reasonableness and "naturalness". He divided history into 10 periods on the basis of random attributes, and undertook to prove that capitalism implied endless progress.

Condorcet opposed the system of social estates, fought for political equality, and called for the abolition of despotic rule and for the free development of the individual. At the same time, he considered inequality in regard to ownership beneficial for society. His views and illusions were typical of ideologists of the nascent bourgeoisie.

Conflict, Dramatic

A specifically aesthetic form of expressing the contradictions occurring in men's lives, a form of reproducing through art the sharp clash of conflicting human acts, ideas, strivings, and passions. Conflict has its origin and finds its solution against the background of struggle between definite social forces and trends of social development.

Realistic art reproduces social contradictions in the particular form of collision between typical characters in typical settings, i.e., in the form of dramatic Conflicts. The specific content of a dramatic Conflict is the struggle between the beautiful and the ugly, the outcome of that struggle, and its evaluation in the light of a definite aesthetic ideal.

In the Conflict reproduced in works of art created by the school of socialist realism the exponents of the new and the beautiful are eventually victorious, although the road to victory may lie through setbacks, temporary defeats, and tragic situations. The role and form of the Conflict largely depend on the characteristics and means of typification peculiar to the various genres of art. Thus, open struggle between opposites is depicted in drama and the novel; collision of various ideas and feelings—in painting, lyric poetry, and music.

In true art, the dramatic conflict is marked by the depth and importance of its ideological and social content, by its poignancy and tensity, and perfection of artistic form, all of which endows the given work with a powerful aesthetic effect.

Confucianism

One of the leading philosophic schools in ancient China, founded by Confucius (551-479 B.C.), whose views were expounded by his followers in the Lun Yu (Analects). According to Confucius, the fate of man is ordained by "Heaven"; all men are unalterably either "noble" or "base". The younger must humbly submit to their seniors, subordinates to their superiors.

A prominent follower of Confucius was Meng Tzu, or Mencius, who attributed social inequality to the "will of Heaven". Another Confucianist of note was Hsün Tzu, who propounded a materialist doctrine according to which Heaven formed part of nature and lacked consciousness. According to Hsün Tzu, a man who has attained knowledge of the laws (tao) of things should use those laws to advance his own interests.

The central teaching of Confucianism, however, was a justification of the supremacy of the privileged classes and glorification of the "will of Heaven", which formed the basis of the orthodox Confucian school founded by Tung Chung-shu (177-104 B.C.). In the 11th and 12th centuries, Chu Hsi and others introduced Neo-Confucianism, which implied the existence of two fundamentals in the Universe—Li, or the rational creative principle, and ch'i, or passive matter. Li generates virtue in men, whereas ch'i produces vice, surrender to sensual temptation.

Wang Yang-ming (1472-1528) developed Confucianism on the basis of subjective idealism. Together with Buddhism and the Taoist religion, Confucianism was for many centuries the leading ideology in feudal China.

Conscience

A complex of emotional experiences based on man's understanding of his moral responsibility for his conduct in society, an individual's own appraisal of his actions and behaviour. Conscience is not an inborn quality, it is determined by man's position in society, his living conditions, education, and so on.

Conscience is closely related to duty. Consciousness of having fulfilled one's duty is felt as a clear Conscience, violation of duty is accompanied by pangs of remorse. Actively responding to the requirements of society, Conscience is a powerful driving force for the individual's moral improvement.

Consciousness

The highest form of reflection of objective reality inherent only in man. Consciousness is the sum total of mental processes which actively participate in man's understanding of the objective world and of his personal being. It takes its origin in the labour, socio-productive activity of people and is closely connected with the appearance of language, which is as old as Consciousness.

Language has exerted a tremendous influence on the development of Consciousness, on the formation of abstract logical thinking. Only in the process of labour, in social relations with one another, do people become aware and disclose the properties of objects, realise their own relation to the environment, single themselves out from it, and exert a purposeful action on nature with the object of subordinating its forces to their needs. Consciousness is, therefore, a product of social development and does not exist outside society.

Thinking, in terms of language, in abstract logical terms, makes it possible not only to reflect the external, sensory appearance of objects and phenomena, but also to understand their significance, their functions, and their essence. Without understanding, without knowledge, which is a result of man's socio-historical activity and human speech, there is no Consciousness either. Any sensory image of an object, any sensation or concept, is part of Consciousness inasmuch as it possesses definite meaning in the system of knowledge acquired through social activity.

Knowledge, denotation, and sense, preserved in language, direct and differentiate man's sentiments, will, attention, and other mental acts, combining them into a single Consciousness. Knowledge accumulated by history, political and legal ideas, the achievements of art, morality, religion, and social psychology constitute the Consciousness of society as a whole (see Social Being and Social Consciousness).

But Consciousness must not be identified solely with abstract logical thinking. In general, there is no thinking outside man's vital, mental activity, sentiments and will. Were man to make only one logical operation after another, were he not to feel, sense, and experience the constant relationship between his concepts and his activity and perceptions of reality, he would not understand and would not be aware either of reality or of himself, i.e., would possess neither Consciousness nor self-consciousness.

On the other hand, the concept of Consciousness and psyche must not be regarded as identical, i.e., we must not consider that all mental processes in each given moment are included in Consciousness. A number of mental emotions can be for a definite time "beyond the threshold" of Consciousness (see Subconscious).

Absorbing historical experience, knowledge, and methods of thinking elaborated by preceding history, Consciousness perceives reality in an ideal way, setting itself new aims and tasks, directing all practical activity of man. Consciousness is shaped by activity and, in its turn, influences this activity, determining and regulating it. Realising their creative plans, people transform nature and society and thereby transform themselves. In this sense Lenin proved that "man's consciousness not only reflects the objective world, but creates it". (Vol. 38, p. 212.)

The problem of Consciousness and its relation to matter (see Philosophy, Fundamental Question of) has been the keenest and basic issue throughout the ideological struggle of philosophies in science. A materialist understanding of history enabled Marx for the first time to solve this problem scientifically and thereby create a truly scientific philosophy.

Consequence, Logical

Assertion B inferred (see Inference) according to certain rules of logic from statements A₁, A₂ ... Aₙ (regarded as premisses in relation to B). A Logical Consequence must be true if its premisses are true. The relation between the premisses and the Logical Consequence inferred from them is expressed symbolically as follows: A₁, A₂ ... Aₙ ⊢ B, where ⊢ is the sign of inference B from the given premisses.

Conservation Laws

A special class of physical laws reflecting the constancy of the fundamental properties and relations in natural processes. The Conservation Laws are the essential indispensable element of the structure of any physical theory. Currently, we know the following Conservation Laws: the law of conservation of mass, the law of conservation of energy, the law of momentum, the law of conservation of moment of momentum, the laws of conservation of spin, electrical charge, baryon charge, isotopic spin, parity, strangeness, etc.

The Conservation Laws may be divided into general and particular, according to their degree of common operation. Discovery of a limit to the operation of a general law involves the discovery of a new law of conservation. For instance, violation of the law of conservation of parity in the sphere of weak interactions led to the discovery of the law of conservation of combination parity.

The Conservation Laws are associated with the properties of space and time symmetry, e.g., the law of the conservation of energy is associated with uniformity of time and that of momentum conservation with uniformity of space. The Conservation Laws reflect the indestructibility of the fundamental properties of material objects and confirm in their entirety the principle of the uncreatability and indestructibility of moving matter.

The processes of mutual transmutation of material objects are controlled by the Conservation Laws. For this reason the Conservation Laws provide a basis for the essential law-governed causal relations in nature. Being the most general laws in any physical theory, they have a great heuristic value. The Conservation Laws reflect one of the aspects of the dialectical contradiction inherent in nature, viz., the contradiction of conservation and change.

Conservation of Energy, Law of

One of the most important conservation laws according to which the total amount of energy neither disappears, nor is created anew, when changing from one kind into another. When a material system passes from one state into another, the amount of its energy changes in strict proportion to the increase or decrease in the energy of the bodies interacting with the system. The processes of conversion from one form of energy into another are regulated by numerical equivalents.

Law of Conservation of Energy was proved by Mayer, Joule, Helmholtz and others in the mid-19th century, its discovery being preceded by conjectures propounded by Descartes, Leibniz, and Lomonosov on the conservation of matter and motion.

The Law of Conservation of Energy has far-reaching philosophical implications. It serves as a scientific proof of the materialist notion of the indestructibility of motion. Engels regarded the discovery of Law of Conservation of Energy as one of the three great discoveries comprising the scientific foundation of the dialectico-materialist understanding of nature. The Law of Conservation of Energy reflects the unity of the material world. With its discovery, Engels said, "the unity of all motion in nature is no longer a simple philosophical statement, but a scientific fact".

Constructive (Genetic) Method

One of the methods of deductive construction of scientific theories (see Deductive Method). The idea of Constructive Method was conceived and developed (in the works of D. Hilbert, L. Brouwer, A. Heyting, A.N. Kolmogorov, A.A. Markov, P. Lorentsen, and others) in an attempt to deal with the difficulties of an axiomatic rationalisation of mathematics and logic (for example, to solve the paradoxes of the theory of numbers, etc.).

Unlike the axiomatic method, the constructive method of developing a theory strives to reduce to a minimum the primary, non-demonstrable within the framework of the theory statements and undefinable terms. The basic purpose which the Constructive Method is to achieve lies in the consecutive construction (actually effected or possible with the available means) of the objects taken as a system and the statements concerning these objects. The task facing the primary objects of a theory and the construction of new ones are effected by means of a body of special rules and definitions.

All the other statements of the system are drawn from the primary basis by means of an inference technique characteristic of constructive theories and based on the principle of mathematical induction. At present the Constructive Method is applied solely to the formal sciences, to the building of constructive mathematics and constructive logic. There is no apparent reason, however, for denying the possibility of using this method in building up knowledge in the field of the natural sciences as well.

Constructivism

A school of art, whose exponents attach special importance to the constructive aspects in artistic expression and the materials employed. Constructivism originated after the 1st World War as a result of developing industrial techniques and the appearance of new building materials (e.g., reinforced concrete and glass), and found particularly wide acceptance in architecture.

Several trends are distinguished in Constructivism, such as functionalism, rationalism, the "modernism" in architecture, etc. Exponents of Constructivism are Le Corbusier (France), W. Gropius, E. Mendelsohn, B. Taut (Germany), F. Wright (USA), and others. Constructivism stresses the functional element in architectural forms, as well as conveniences and economy.

At the same time, it has serious shortcomings: oversimplification; insufficient attention to national tradition; tendency to overaestheticise modern materials and various architectural techniques. Constructivism is also reflected in literature and music.

Conta, Vasile (1845–1882)

Romanian materialist philosopher. He drew his conclusions from data furnished by the natural sciences, largely basing them on the theories of C. Lyell, J. Lamarck, Ch. Darwin and E. Haeckel. According to Conta, nature precedes consciousness. Although he refuted the vulgar materialism of Vogt, Conta failed to reach a scientific interpretation of thought.

Conta considered infinite matter as endlessly developing in time and space. He classified all laws according to different forms of matter, while refusing to accept the conception of chance and asserting that all laws operate fatally. He considered the cognitive capacity of the human mind to be unlimited, just as reality itself. Knowledge is verified by practice, by which Conta meant laboratory experiment and personal experience.

Being an atheist, Conta attributed the origins of religion to the ignorance and fears of primitive man. In the field of sociology, Conta adhered to idealism. His materialistic teachings had a marked effect on the development of sociological and political thought in Romania in the latter half of the 19th century. Conta's most important works are The Theory of Fatalism (1875-76) and Essays on Materialistic Metaphysics (1879).

Contemplation

The main shortcoming of pre-Marxist materialism in the theory of knowledge. Proceeding from the objectivity of the external world, the old materialists described consciousness as a passive process of perception, Contemplation, when the external world acts on man's sense-organs, while man himself is regarded only as the perceiving subject. Moreover, the objective world and human activity were regarded as opposites.

Reality was taken only as an object and not considered subjectively, i.e., depending on the activity of the subject, transformed and changed by man's practical activity. Social production, moreover, was understood by the old materialists solely as individual activity of people aimed at satisfying their narrow personal and selfish requirements. They regarded practical activity merely as the "dirty mercantile form of its manifestation" (Marx). That practice is activity which creates both man and the world he lives in could not be grasped by the old materialists.

This was determined by their idealistic understanding of history and by their ignoring of the role of production in society's life. As a result, only theoretical activity was regarded as truly human, while knowledge was divorced from practice and considered to be its opposite. Actually, in the process of cognition man deals not so much with nature as such as with a "humanised" world, i.e., a world drawn into the process of production in one way or another. For this reason the practical transformation of the world reveals to man its laws and essence.

Characteristic of Contemplation is also understanding of the subject of knowledge as an abstract individual, isolated from society and often regarded only as a natural being. Contemplation is inherent both in empiricism and rationalism because outside practice it is even impossible correctly to raise the question of their relationship. In the theory of knowledge Contemplation inevitably leads to metaphysics and makes it impossible fully to refute idealism. Marxism overcame Contemplation and thereby made a revolution in epistemology.

Contemporary Marxist Philosophical Thought Outside the USSR

Anti-Marxist Distortions

Praises 20th Congress attacks on Stalin and peaceful transition revisionism.

The victory of the 1917 Great October Socialist Revolution and the successful building of socialism in the former backward tsarist Russia aroused interest in Marxism-Leninism and its philosophy in many capitalist countries. The Communist Parties which emerged and united in the Third International (1919) considered dialectical and historical materialism as their philosophical banner. As early as the twenties, Lenin's works were translated into the main European languages.

The revolutionary upsurge in a number of European countries (1918-23) led in several Communist Parties to the strengthening of a Left trend, whose features were subjectivism, underestimation of the role of the masses in history, and reduction of the social revolution to political conspiracy (the Bordiga group in the Italian Communist Party). Lenin's work "Left-Wing" Communism—an Infantile Disorder (1920) was of decisive importance in exposing the Left-wing deviation views.

The partial stabilisation of capitalism (1924-29) and the intensification of bourgeois and Right-wing socialist ideology which it led to, caused the infiltration into the Communist Parties of the USA, Germany, Italy, and other countries of Right-wing opportunism and its ideological basis mechanistic philosophy. The Marxists of the Third International joined the struggle against the Left and Right deviations on philosophical problems as well.

In the twenties, philosophical problems were elaborated by G. Dimitrov, A. Gramsci, P. Togliatti, M. Thorez, E. Thälmann, W. Foster, and others. They proved the theoretical insolvency and practical harmfulness of subjectivist ideology and mechanistic philosophy, upheld the teaching of the unity between Marxist theory and the revolutionary practice of the proletariat.

The deepening of the general crisis of capitalism caused by the successful building of socialism in the Soviet Union, on the one hand, and the general economic crisis (1929-33), on the other, was marked by the establishment of fascism in some capitalist countries. In the field of ideology these events were reflected in intensified propaganda of irrationalism, mysticism, and the like. The Communist Parties' tactics of a united people's front in the fight against fascism contributed to rallying the progressive intelligentsia around the Marxists and accelerated the transition of a number of its representatives to the positions of dialectical-materialist philosophy.

The Marxist philosophers' work against intuitionism (G. Politzer, France), Neo-Hegelianism (Gramsci, Italy), Neo-Platonism (H. Selsam, USA), pragmatism (W. Foster, USA), Rehmkeanism (T. Pavlov, Bulgaria), and other idealist trends in the philosophy of the thirties enhanced the prestige of dialectical materialism, demonstrated its role as the methodological foundation of the sciences and an effective weapon against fascist ideology.

A new stage in Marxist-Leninist philosophy has begun after the 2nd World War as a result of the profound changes which have taken place in all spheres of modern society, economic, social and socio-political. Following the defeat of German fascism and Japanese militarism, a number of socialist nations appeared in Europe and Asia. The Communist and Workers' Parties in the European People's Democracies have worked out such a vastly important theoretical and practical question as the dialectics of the general laws of socialist construction and the national peculiarities in which they are manifested.

During the socialist construction in those countries, a cultural revolution is being carried out and Marxist-Leninist philosophy has a great part to play in it. In this connection there has arisen the task of philosophical educating the working people, freeing their consciousness from survivals of capitalist ideology, religious superstition and the like. In the People's Democracies, new Marxist philosophers work alongside the older ones. All of them are spreading scientific philosophy among the people, and are also successfully elaborating problems of dialectics in social development and socialist construction (T. Pavlov in Bulgaria, H. Scheier in the German Democratic Republic, A. Schaff in Poland, and others), philosophical questions in the natural sciences (L. Jánossy in Hungary, Polikarov in Bulgaria and others), problems in ethics (C. Gulian in Romania, Beck in the GDR, L. Svoboda in Czechoslovakia, and others), in aesthetics (S. Żółkiewski in Poland, A. Abusch in the GDR, and others), the history of philosophy (H. Ley and R. Gropp in the GDR), criticism of contemporary idealism (G. Mende in the GDR, J. Bodnar in Czechoslovakia, Iribajakov in Bulgaria, and others), logic (B. Fogarasi in Hungary, G. Klaus in the GDR, and others).

In the capitalist countries, Marxist philosophical thought since the 2nd World War has been aimed at working out ways and means of fighting for democracy and socialism in the conditions of the new crisis of capitalism. The speeches and writings of the leading figures in the Communist and Workers' Parties stress that the new historical conditions demand an analysis of the national specifics of each country, the search for concrete ways of fighting for peace, democracy and socialism.

The Marxist philosophers in the capitalist countries are actively defending progressive philosophical traditions, exposing anti-communist propaganda and the most recent methods of refined idealism. In their works R. Garaudy and J. Kanapa (France), A. Cornu (GDR), E. Sereni and L. Longo (Italy), H. Selsam (USA), and others, show that communism brings with it a new culture and a new humanism based on the best philosophical traditions. The works of M. Cornforth (Britain), Harry Wells (USA), G. Besse, Garaudy, H. Denis (France), and others uncover the essence of the latest idealist trends (neo-positivism, existentialism, Neo-Thomism), and show that they are hostile to progressive culture and humanism.

Foremost intellectuals in the capitalist countries support the Marxists and go over to the positions of dialectical materialism (J. Bernal in Britain, P. Langevin and J. P. Vigier in France, J. B. Furst and B. Dunham in the USA, and others).

A strong impulse to constructive development of Marxist philosophy was given by the 20th Congress of the CPSU (1956), which laid the basis for a new stage in the development of the communist movement. This Congress made a profound and all-round criticism of the cult of Stalin's personality and thereby cleared the way for creative development of Marxism-Leninism. It also drew exceedingly important conclusions on the possibility of preventing world wars in the contemporary epoch, on the possibility of a peaceful as well as a non-peaceful way of the socialist revolution, and on the variety of forms the dictatorship of the proletariat may take.

The Declaration of the Moscow Meeting of Representatives of the Communist and Workers' Parties (1957) formulated the general laws for the transition from capitalism to socialism and emphasised the significance of dialectical materialism as the science of the most general laws of development of nature, society, and thought. The Statement of the 1960 Moscow Meeting of Representatives of the Communist and Workers' Parties gave a Marxist definition of the present epoch, charted the ways and means for the struggle for peace, democracy and socialism in contemporary conditions.

The new Programme adopted by the 22nd Congress of the CPSU is of enormous importance for the creative development of Marxism-Leninism. This development is inseparably associated with the fight against revisionism and dogmatism. Prominent Marxists-Leninists in many countries have criticised revisionism and dogmatism and revealed the danger they present for the communist movement.

Contradiction

A category in dialectics expressing the inner source of all motion, the root of vitality, the principle of development. It is the recognition of Contradiction in the objects and phenomena of the objective world that distinguishes dialectics from metaphysics. "Dialectics in the proper sense is the study of contradiction in the very essence of objects...." (Lenin, Vol. 38, pp. 253-54.)

Dialectical Contradictions, reflected in thought, concepts, theories, must be distinguished from so-called logical Contradictions, which are manifestations of confusion and inconsistency in thinking.

Contradiction, Law of

A law of logic, according to which two propositions A and Ā negating (see Negation) each other cannot be simultaneously true. The first formulation of the Law of Contradiction was given by Aristotle. This law may be formulated as follows: proposition A cannot be simultaneously false and true. In symbolic writing A·Ā, where · is the sign of conjunction and the line above the symbols is the sign of negation.

The Law of Contradiction plays an important role in thinking and cognition. Judgements or scientific theories become inconsistent when they contain formal contradictions. The Law of Contradiction is the reflection in the mind of the qualitative definiteness of objects, of the simple fact that, if abstraction is made of a change in the object itself, it cannot simultaneously possess properties which exclude each other.

Contraposition

A logical operation in which the propositions of an implication, that is, its antecedent and consequent, are replaced by their negations (obversion) and change places (conversion). Thus, contraposition of the proposition "If x is divisible by 4, then x is divisible by 2" would yield the proposition "If x is not divisible by 2, then x is not divisible by 4". Contraposition retains the value of truth or falsity of the primary proposition.

Conventionalism

The philosophical concept according to which scientific theories and concepts are a product of arbitrary convention among scientists, rather than a reflection of objective reality, such convention being determined by considerations of utility and simplicity. The conventionalist point of view is typical of subjective idealism inasmuch as it denies the presence of objective content in the subject's knowledge. The founder of conventionalism was Poincaré. Elements of conventionalism are found in positivism, and especially in pragmatism and operationism.

The epistemological basis of conventionalism is the real possibility of varied interpretations of our theoretical propositions (especially in the field of mathematics), producing the temptation to regard a scientific theory as a purely logical construction in respect of which the concepts of truth or falsity lose validity. The viewpoint of conventionalism is refuted by a historical analysis of the process of cognition. Our concepts and theories are formed in the process of man's activities and reflect particular aspects of the world. Once formed, however, they may be abstracted from their real base to become a tool or instrument for the description of totally different phenomena. Thus, geometrical propositions may be used to solve technical problems, construct diagrams, etc. However, the "artificial nature" of such use, based as it is on the analogy of non-identical objects, by no means proves the arbitrary nature of the theoretical constructions as such.

Co-ordination and Subordination of Categories

Two distinct systems of concepts, categories, characterised by structurally different relationship of their elements. The elements of a co-ordinate system possess independent meaning and external interdependence. The elements of a subordinate system are not independent units, their meaning being determined by the meaning of the other elements and implying an interrelationship among them, transitions, and mutual transformations.

Seen as specific systems of knowledge, co-ordination and subordination of categories are the results of different processes of cognition. Co-ordination is secured by breaking down the object into its components on the basis of the characteristic accepted for the purpose. This type of knowledge is essential for a survey of the functionally interdependent parts of a single whole, but is abstract and limited. It is mainly used by the metaphysical, non-dialectical schools.

Subordination of categories is based on the movement of thought from the abstract to the concrete, from the simple to the complex, in the dialectical reproduction of developing objects and phenomena. Unlike idealistic subordination (see Hegel), according to which one thought conceives another and the transition from one to the other is determined only by thought, dialectical materialism provides a method of achieving subordination based on the investigation of the objective thing and a theoretical development of the knowledge thereof, of which Marx's Capital is a classic example. The result of the development of knowledge is given in it in the form of subordination of categories. The dialectics of the object is reflected in the dialectics of concepts. An important criterion in the subordination of dialectical logic is the unity of the historical and the logical, the interpretation of the system of logical categories as a generalised history of knowledge.

Copenhagen School

Potentially Problematic Article

Softens Bohr's idealism by claiming he approached materialist positions.

The name given to a group of physicists (Bohr, Heisenberg, Weizsäcker, Jordan, and others), exponents of a positivist approach to the philosophical problems of quantum mechanics. This group formed in the late 1920s at the Copenhagen Institute of Theoretical Physics headed by N. Bohr.

Bohr and Heisenberg, together with several other physicists, exponents of the Copenhagen school, were largely responsible for creating and developing quantum mechanics and interpreting its mathematical structure and experimental data. The philosophic views of this school, however, and its subjectivist opinions, especially those of its early period, fell under strong neo-positivist influence. Erroneously attributing to instruments the role of "uncontrolled disturbance" in the micro-universe, some of its exponents proclaimed "disappearance of causality" and "freedom of will" of the electron, etc.

These views were criticised by some physicists (S. I. Vavilov, A. Einstein, P. Langevin, V. A. Fok, D. I. Blokhintsev, and others). The adherents of the Copenhagen School are no longer in complete accord. Jordan and Weizsäcker continue to support the old positivist views, whereas Heisenberg leans towards objective idealism. As for Bohr, he drew closer to the materialistic understanding of philosophical problems of quantum mechanics.

Copernicus, Nicolaus (1473–1543)

Polish astronomer, founder of the heliocentric theory of the Universe. His theory of the Earth's revolution round the Sun and its diurnal rotation upon its own axis signalled the beginning of a break with the geocentric theory originated by Ptolemy and the religious views founded thereon of the special favour bestowed upon the Earth by God and man's privileged position in the Universe.

In the history of science Copernicus's theory was a revolutionary act signifying that research in the realm of nature would hence be independent. It meant that the natural sciences were throwing off the yoke of theology. His theory further discarded the contraposition of the movement of heavenly bodies to earthly movements expounded by Aristotle and adopted by scholasticism; undermined the church's story of the creation of the world by God; and prepared the ground for the later appearance of theories concerning the natural origin and development of the solar system.

Copernicus's discoveries became the object of a violent struggle. Although they were condemned and combated by the church, the leading thinkers of his age and later times proclaimed their truth and developed them further. Copernicus's principal work is De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium, 1543.

Corporate State

The most reactionary fascist type of bourgeois dictatorship developed after the 1st World War amid the general crisis of capitalism and characterised by: dissolution of workers' organisations and enforced grouping of the population into corporations (e.g., capitalists', workers', and office employees' corporations); dissolution of the elective body, that is, parliament, and substitution therefore of "corporate representation". This results in the workers' deprivation of all civil rights and in their exploitation by the monopolies with the aid of the corporations. Italy and Portugal were declared Corporate States.

The principal purpose of the Corporate State is to disguise the dictatorship of monopoly capital and to create the impression of "class partnership" and "harmony of interests" within the corporate framework in the fascist states.

Correctness and Truth

Categories of logic and the theory of knowledge: Correctness (Logical) is a quality of logical operations and means their correspondence to the laws and rules of logic. As the forms of logical operations are common to processes and thoughts with different concrete content, the logical correctness or non-correctness of operations are not determined by the peculiarities of the concrete content of thought, but by the forms of thought.

Truth is a quality of thought and means its conformity to objective reality. In the final analysis, the concepts of correctness and truth characterise the relation of thought to the objective world, for the logical correctness is conformity of the operations of thought to certain relations of reality, of which the laws of logic are the reflection. These concepts are closely interrelated in the process of cognition. Logical correctness is a necessary (although not the only) condition of truth.

Idealistic logic and philosophy (particularly Kantianism, modern logical positivism, etc.), denying the objective origin of the laws of logic, also incorrectly interpret the logical correctness of thought, considering its basis to be laid a priori in the mind itself, in the consensus of people, etc.

Correspondence of Production Relations to Character of Productive Forces, Law of

An objective economic law discovered by Marx. This law determines the interaction of the productive forces and relations of production in all socio-economic formations. The productive forces are the determining, the most revolutionary and mobile element of production. They are constantly developing, while relations of production are a more stable element. That is why at a certain stage in society's development a contradiction arises between the new productive forces and the obsolete relations of production. However much the relations of production lag behind the development of the productive forces, sooner or later they must come into correspondence with the level of development and the character of the productive forces, and they do, as is demonstrated by the history of society.

In a society divided into antagonistic classes, the contradiction between the developed productive forces and the old relations of production always culminates in a conflict which is resolved through a social revolution. Under socialism, the relations of production, owing to the social character of ownership, correspond to the state of the productive forces and afford them full scope for accelerated and crisis-free development. But in socialist society too, contradictions arise between the productive forces and the various aspects of the relations of production. Here, however, the contradiction does not reach the point of conflict, since social ownership prevails and there are no classes interested in preserving the obsolete production relations. The Communist Party and the socialist government notice in time the growing contradictions and take steps to eliminate them by improving the production relations.

The law of correspondence of the relations of production to the character of the productive forces furnishes the key to understanding the laws governing the replacement of some socio-economic formations by others.

Correspondence Principle

One of the basic methodological principles governing the development of science. Philosophically, it expresses the movement of knowledge from relative to absolute truth, ever more complete truth. This principle was formulated by Bohr in 1913, at a time when concepts of classical physics were breaking down.

According to the Correspondence Principle, whenever scientific conceptions are broken down, the basic laws of a new theory, created as a result of this break-down, are such that in the extreme instance, given the appropriate value of some characteristic parameter of the new theory, they pass into the laws of the old theory. For example, the laws of quantum mechanics pass into the laws of classical mechanics provided it is possible to disregard the magnitude of a quantum of action.

The operation of the Correspondence Principle may be traced in the history of mathematics, physics and other sciences. It reflects the law-governed concatenation of old and new theories, following from the inner unity of qualitatively different levels of matter. This unity determines not only the integrity of science and its history, but also the vast heuristic role of the Correspondence Principle in the penetration of a qualitatively new realm of phenomena. A scientific understanding of the Correspondence Principle makes it possible to grasp the dialectics of the process of cognition, to demonstrate the insolvency of relativism.

Cosmogony

A branch of astronomy, treating of the origin and development of heavenly bodies and their systems. Theoretically, one may speak of astral cosmogony and planetary cosmogony, though in practice they are mutually interrelated. The principles of cosmogony are based on data furnished by other branches of astronomy, by physics, geology and other branches of science dealing with the Earth. Like cosmology, cosmogony is closely related to philosophy and has been the venue of a violent struggle between materialism and idealism, between science and religion.

The difficulties of cosmogonic problems stem from the fact that the process of development of the heavenly bodies has been going on for thousand millions of years, by comparison with which astronomical observations and even the entire history of astronomy embrace infinitesimal periods of time. The difficulties of planetary cosmogony are further enhanced by the fact that we have thus far been able to observe but one planetary system.

Scientific cosmogony dates back some 200 years, when Kant advanced the hypothesis of the development of the stars from nebulae which at one time surrounded the Sun. The hypotheses of Kant (1755) and Laplace (1796) (see Nebular Hypothesis) failed to explain certain significant structural peculiarities of the solar system and were therefore abandoned. Several other hypotheses were advanced, that of Jeans', 1916, gaining the greatest popularity. Yet even Jeans' hypothesis met with insurmountable obstacles and was, essentially, a step backward in comparison with the traditional cosmogonic hypotheses.

Factual data are being consistently accumulated and studied, but no solution of the problem has as yet been found. A very substantial contribution to planetary cosmogony has been made by Soviet scientists (O. Schmidt, V. G. Fesenkov, and others). The nature and interior structure of stars were established only in the 20th century. The nature of stellar evolution is now known in its essentials, but the origin of stars can still only be surmised. The theory was for a long time current that they emerged simultaneously several milliard years ago. At present, thanks mainly to the research of Soviet scientists (V. A. Ambartsumyan et al.), there is no longer any doubt that the process of stellar formation in the solar system and other galaxies is still continuing. Recent research has yielded information on the development of star clusters and galaxies.

The achievements of the Soviet cosmogonists are largely due to the fact that their research work is based on dialectical materialism, whereas idealism in philosophy frequently results in arbitrary cosmogonic notions, such as the birth of atoms, stars, and even the metagalaxy out of nothing, which signifies a return to the fideistic ideas which have been refuted by natural science.

Cosmological Paradoxes

Difficulties (contradictions) arising out of attempts to extend to the Universe as a whole the physical laws established for finite parts thereof. Within the framework of Newtonian physics (see Newton) the most important cosmological paradoxes are the Neumann-Seeliger gravitational paradox and the Cheseaux-Olbers photometrical paradox.

The first refers to the insurmountable difficulties of applying Newton's law of universal gravitation to the infinite static system of masses with non-zero mean density. The second refers to the fact that the same system of radiating masses (stars, galaxies) would produce a glaring luminance in the nocturnal sky, comparable with the surface luminance of the Sun, which, however, is not the case.

Both these paradoxes are removed within the framework of traditional (pre-relativist) physics, if it is assumed that the distribution of matter in the Universe is strictly governed by laws in accordance with the so-called hierarchical pattern. In relativist cosmology these paradoxes are removed practically automatically, but other difficulties arise. The existing cosmological paradoxes may be seen as a warning against any attempt at a simplified approach to the problems of the structure of the Universe.

Cosmology

A branch of astronomy, a science which views the Universe as an integrated whole, and the part of the Universe which is under astronomical observation as a part of that whole. Modern cosmology has actually come to cover the area where astronomy merges with physics and philosophy.

The first naive cosmological ideas appeared in antiquity as a result of man's efforts to discover his place in the Universe. Accumulated observation data and the certainty, suggested by ancient philosophy, that behind the apparently confused movement of the planets there must be a real law-governed pattern of movements, led to the geocentric conception of the Universe, which was superseded, as a result of a violent struggle against the church and scholasticism, by the conception of a heliocentric system.

Following the discovery of the law of universal gravitation by Newton, the cosmological problem could be treated as the physical problem of an infinite system of gravitating masses. This, it was discovered, gave rise to serious difficulties known as cosmological paradoxes. These difficulties are resolved by modern relativist cosmology, that is, by cosmological theories based on the theory of relativity. This has bred new difficulties, however, which have been widely used by both the idealists and fideists to "rationalise" their theses concerning the "expansion" of the Universe and even its "creation", etc.

The real value of modern cosmological models lies in the fact that they give an idea of the general laws that govern the structure and development of the metagalaxy and thus constitute a necessary link in the endless process of knowing the spatio-temporally infinite Universe.

Cosmopolitanism

A reactionary theory calling for a repudiation of patriotic sentiments and national culture and tradition in the name of the "unity of mankind". As an ideology cosmopolitanism reflects the ambition of imperialists to achieve world supremacy. The propaganda of cosmopolitanism (the idea of a world government, etc.) impedes the peoples' struggle for national independence and national sovereignty. Cosmopolitanism is incompatible with proletarian internationalism, which contains no contradiction between the common basic interests of the peoples, on the one hand, and love of country and national patriotism, on the other.

Cosmos

The Universe as a whole, the spatio-temporally infinite matter in motion in its entirety, including the Earth, the solar system, our galaxy, and all other galaxies. In practice, however, cosmos is frequently understood to mean the part of the Universe adjacent to but not comprising the Earth (in this context the term "cosmic" refers to what is beyond the confines of the Earth), in which case the dividing line between the Earth and the cosmos as well as that between the cosmos as part of the Universe and the rest of the Universe is generally indefinite.

Cousin, Victor (1792–1867)

French idealist philosopher, eclectic. Cousin maintained that any school of philosophy could be formed on the basis of the "truths" contained in various doctrines. Cousin's philosophy is an eclectic combination of such "truths", drawn from the idealistic system of Hegel, Schelling's "philosophy of revelation", the monadology of Leibniz, and other idealistic doctrines.

Being an opponent of materialism, Cousin shared the view that God was the creator of the Universe, believed in the existence of after-life, and urged a reconciliation of philosophy and religion. Cousin's theories influenced the subsequent development of idealistic philosophy in France. His most important work is the Cours d'histoire de la philosophie (1815-29) in eight volumes.

Couturat, Louis (1868–1914)

French philosopher and logician, exponent and populariser of Russell's and Whitehead's logical rationalisation of the principles of mathematics; did research work on the preconditions of logical calculus contained in the logic of Leibniz; published Leibniz's minor works and fragments dealing with the problems of logic.

In his Algebra of Logic (1905) he was one of the first writers on logic to appreciate and use the results obtained in the algebra of logic by the Russian scholar Poretsky. In an appendix to his Principles of Mathematics (1905) Couturat developed further, from the standpoint of Russell's logical and mathematical formalism, the criticism of Kant's theory of mathematics and its logical and epistemological principles. In a series of articles Couturat challenged Poincaré's "semi-Kantian" theory of mathematics.

Creationism

A religious doctrine holding that the world and all nature, animate and inanimate, were brought into being by a single act of creation. The biblical story of the creation of every existing thing in the space of six days by God is an example of creationism.

The view of Linnaeus, Cuvier and Agassiz (1807-73) concerning the supernatural origin of all species of animal and plant life is a modified version of creationism in the field of biology. Modern science furnishes proof of the complete fallacy of creationism.

Creative Work

The process of human activity in which new material and spiritual values are created. Creative Work is a human ability, which appeared in the process of labour, to create (from the material supplied by nature and on the strength of the knowledge of the laws of the objective world) new reality that satisfies the multiform requirements of society. Any kind of labour may become Creative Work. All types of Creative Work are determined by the nature of creative activity: the Creative Work of an inventor, organiser, scientist or artist, etc.

Idealists regard artistic Creative Work as divine obsession (Plato), as movement from the conscious to the subconscious (Schelling), as the life-giving breath of the unconscious (E. Hartmann), as a mystic intuition (Bergson), and as a manifestation of instincts (Freud). According to the Marxist-Leninist theory, Creative Work is a process in which all the spiritual powers of man take part, including imagination, and also the skill which is required to realise a creative design and is acquired by training and practice.

Criterion of Truth

Any means of judging any assertion, hypothesis, theoretical proposition, etc., as to its truth or falsity. The Criterion of Truth is social experience (see Theory and Practice). Definitive verification of scientific theories is furnished by practice, i.e., in the field of industrial and agricultural production, in the revolutionary activities of the masses aimed at reorganising society. Successful application of a given theory in practice is proof of its correctness.

Methods of verifying ideas by practice may vary. Thus, in the field of natural science a proposition may be verified by experiment involving observation, measurement, and mathematical treatment of the results obtained. Practical verification frequently implies an indirect approach. Thus, the establishment of the truth of an assertion by logical proof depends basically on the practical verification of certain fundamental principles of some theory, which are not specifically proved within its framework.

Verification in practice of scientific theories does not, nevertheless, transform them into absolute truths: they continue developing and become enriched, gaining in scope and exactitude, some of their propositions are dropped in favour of new ones (see Truth, Absolute and Relative). This is due to the fact that social practice is undergoing a process of continuous development, and therefore the methods of comparing scientific theories with reality through practice are being constantly perfected. Only the developing daily practice, or experience, of society is capable of fully confirming or completely refuting the ideas engendered by man.

Both the Criterion of Truth and practice, or experience, were first included in the theory of knowledge by Marxism. Modern idealist philosophy either denies practice, or experience, as a Criterion of Truth, or else puts a distorted construction on it (see Pragmatism).

Critical Realism (in art)

A school and method which, since the middle of the 19th century, have attracted many progressive artists and writers of the capitalist epoch. Its main drive, directed towards revealing the viles of bourgeois society and overcoming its contradictions, played an important part in developing the idea of man's social and spiritual emancipation and in asserting democratic social ideals in the minds of men.

Stendhal, Balzac, Dickens, Hogarth, Daumier, Courbet, Meunier, Gogol, Turgenev, Goncharov, Saltykov-Shchedrin, Nekrasov, Lev Tolstoi, Repin, and others scourged the harsh rule of the landowners, the predatory instincts of the bourgeoisie, the bigotry of the clergy, the depravity of the bureaucratic officialdom, and portrayed, directly or indirectly, the protest and struggle of the people, some in search of their heroes from among the working people, the revolutionary intelligentsia and those generally who voiced the interests of the people, others holding up these heroes as an example to be followed.

In the present era the tradition of Critical Realism has been carried on by Charles Chaplin, Hemingway, G. Greene, Remarque, Feuchtwanger, Renato Guttuso, Eduardo de Filippo, Giuseppe de Santis, and others. The masterpieces of Critical Realism have been of great value to the school of socialist realism.

Critical Realism (in philosophy)

One of the schools of modern idealist philosophy which gained acceptance in the 1920s and 30s in some of the capitalist countries. Critical Realism combines elements of subjective and objective idealism.

In the USA, Critical Realism (Santayana, Lovejoy, Pratt, and others) originated by way of a reaction to neo-realism. The neo-realist thesis of the "immanence" of the object in consciousness, of the direct "interjection" of the object in consciousness is countered by the critical realists with the theory of the structure of the act of cognition, which comprises the three elements of subject, object and "datum" or "essence". It is this "essence" that is alleged to be the content of our consciousness.

The "essences", according to Critical Realism, unlike the object, are conveyed to us with direct certitude and unite within themselves all the products of our consciousness. Critical Realism attempts to present these essences as something objectively existing, like the universals of medieval realism. The "essence" possesses a reality of its own, different from physical reality; it is not to be measured by a spatio-temporal criterion. "Essences", according to Critical Realism, are by no means images or copies of things. Like neorealism, Critical Realism opposes the materialist theory of reflection.

Critical Realism recognises the existence of reality, this recognition being founded on instinct and "animal faith" (Santayana) in reality. The epistemological source of this alleged "realism" lies in its false interpretation of the difference between the material and ideal, the objective and subjective, and in regarding consciousness metaphysically as opposed to the objective world.

The name "Critical Realism" is also given to a school which formed towards the end of the 19th century in Germany (Driesch, E. Becher, A. Wenzl, and others). This school specialises in a theological interpretation of modern natural science, striving to reconcile knowledge with faith and to prove the "unsoundness" and "limitations" of science.

Criticism

The term used by Kant to designate his idealist philosophy, whose main purpose he saw in the criticism of man's cognitive abilities. As a result of his criticism Kant denied man's ability to get to know the essence of things. The term Criticism is applicable to other subjective-idealist doctrines which hold that man's knowledge is limited and that experience in the idealistic meaning of the word is the only source of knowledge. Seen objectively, Criticism was an attempt to overcome the limited nature of empiricism and rationalism through an idealistic approach.

Criticism and Self-Criticism

A method of discovering and correcting errors and removing shortcomings in the activities of the Marxist parties and other workers' organisations. It was Marx who pointed out that the proletarian revolution engages in self-criticism in the interests of its own development, this being its peculiar characteristic. Lenin spoke of Criticism and Self-Criticism as of a most important principle in the work of the Communist Party.

With the victory of the socialist revolution Criticism and Self-Criticism become one of the mainsprings of social development. Criticism and Self-Criticism are a special method of revealing and solving the non-antagonistic contradictions of socialism. The creative role of Criticism and Self-Criticism is seen with particular clarity in socialist emulation, which is a form of the people's active participation in building communism.

In the period of full-scale communist construction Criticism and Self-Criticism afford the people full scope for initiative in building the material and technical basis of communism, serve to draw the masses into the work of government, and aid in developing men and women of communist society.

"Critique of the Gotha Programme"

Written by Marx in 1875, published in 1891, is a critical analysis of the programme of the German Social-Democratic Party. Marx called this programme the capitulation of the German Social-Democrats before the school of Lassalle. Marx vigorously criticised the Lassallean assertion that in respect of the working class all the other classes are but "one reactionary mass", and demonstrated that such an assertion ignores the alliance of the proletariat and the peasantry. Marx further revealed the reactionary nature of the Lassallean "iron law of wages" according to which the proletariat was destined to perpetual poverty.

The Critique of the Gotha Programme developed the main problems of scientific communism. Marx developed the tenet of the inevitability of the socialist revolution and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and presented a scientific analysis of the communist society of the future. The Critique of the Gotha Programme was the first to advance the tenet of the necessity of a transition period in the process of capitalism's development into communism and of a revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat that was to be the state during that transition period.

No less substantial a contribution to scientific communism was Marx's definition of socialism and communism as two phases of the communist formation, or two stages in the "economic maturity of communism" (Lenin). Marx stated that only at the higher phase of communism society would be free from the "birthmarks" of capitalism; an end would be put to man's subjection to the enslaving system of division of labour; the antithesis between intellectual work and manual labour would disappear; work would be transformed from a means of livelihood into a prime necessity of life; productive forces would reach so high a level of development that there would be an abundance of products and society would be able to proclaim the principle "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs".

Croce, Benedetto (1866–1952)

Italian philosopher of the Neo-Hegelian school (see Neo-Hegelianism), professor at Naples (1902-20). Towards the end of the 19th century Croce came out with a criticism of the philosophic and economic theories of Marxism. Croce's philosophy is that of absolute idealism.

His philosophic system establishes four steps in the "ascendance of the world spirit", i.e., aesthetic (incarnation of the spirit in the individual); logical (sphere of the general); economic (sphere of particular interest); and moral (sphere of universal interest). Croce's aesthetic theory has exercised a strong influence over bourgeois art criticism. He contrasted art as intuitive cognition of the singular embodied in sensory images with logical reasoning as a rational process of knowing the general.

Croce's ethical doctrine strove to cover up the social basis and class character of morality. Croce's ethics propounded the principle of subordinating the individual to the "universal", that is, to the dominant exploiter system. Croce was a prominent ideologist and a political leader of the Italian liberal bourgeoisie, and an opponent of fascism. His most important work is the Philosophy of the Spirit (1902-17).

Cubism

A school of art which had its origin in France. Its founders were G. Braque (1881- ) and P. Picasso (1881- ), who treated as absolute the formalistic theory that "everything in nature is modelled on the sphere, the cone, and the cylinder", formulated by P. Cézanne (1839-1906) towards the close of the 19th century. A. Derain (1880-1954), who developed Cézanne's theory of the priority of the inner structure and construction of objects in art, served as a link between them.

The cubists' attempt to treat in a pseudo-scientific manner a purely subjectivist cognition of objects or the human body, which is also considered to be an object. During the first, "stereometric" period (1908-12), the cubist school was joined by such painters as J. Metzinger (author of the first cubist portrait), A. Gleizes, R. Delaunay, Le Fauconnier, F. Léger, J. Lipschitz, and others. Characteristic of this period, as well as of the following (so-called "scientific") period of Cubism, is distortion of nature, reduction of objects to elementary geometric bodies, and schematisation of things. Refusal to recognise social ideas and to reproduce the beauty of the real world have brought the cubists to complete negation of reproduction of the objects visualised.

Cult of the Individual

Anti-Marxist Distortions

Pure Khrushchevite slander promoting false "cult of personality" narrative to discredit Stalin and socialist construction.

Unquestioning deference to the authority of a statesman or public figure, an exaggerated evaluation of his actual merits, fetishistic worship of the name of a historic personage. Cult of the Individual is theoretically based on an idealistic interpretation of history, according to which the course of history is determined by the desires, the will of great men (soldiers, heroes, outstanding ideologists, etc.), rather than by objective laws or the activity of the masses. The role of outstanding personalities in history is transformed into an absolute by the various schools of idealistic philosophy (see Voluntarism, Carlyle, Young Hegelians, Narodism).

Marxism views the role of the individual, the leader, as closely linked with the objective course of class struggle, the history-making activity of the masses. The experience of no matter how great a leader cannot be substituted for the collective experience of millions. Cult of the Individual is completely alien to Marxism-Leninism, which is by its very nature the ideology of the millions and millions of working people who are transforming capitalist society into a communist society.

It is for this reason that the CPSU continues so relentlessly to expose the Cult of the Individual which reigned during Stalin's life and did so much harm to the theory and practice of socialism. The cult of Stalin could not change the nature of socialism, but, nevertheless, it most seriously retarded the development of Soviet society. The struggle of the CPSU against the cult of Stalin and its consequences facilitated the restoration and further development of the Leninist principles and norms of the activities of the Party and Soviet government as well as the further development of socialist democracy.

The Communist Party considers that the theory and practice of Cult of the Individual obstructs the proper education of the masses, acts as a brake on their initiative, weakens men's sense of responsibility for the common cause (socialist revolution, building of communism), and is detrimental to the development of communist ideology. In the practical field, the Cult of the Individual undermines the democratic principles of the Communist Parties and socialist society. Success in the struggle against the Cult of the Individual within both socialist society and the Communist Parties requires the fullest possible development of democracy and the Leninist principles of government and Party activities.

Cultural Cycles, Theory of

A doctrine holding recurrence to be inevitable in the process of historic and cultural development, evolved out of the crisis of the comparative method. At the turn of the century the problem of establishing criteria for comparative analysis required urgent solution. It was becoming increasingly clear that historical comparisons and analogies were generally concerned merely with the pattern of historical processes rather than their content. The Theory of Cultural Cycles offered an artificial way of overcoming these difficulties.

The exponents of this theory (Spengler, Toynbee) maintained that the inner relationships of history were reflected precisely in the form of historic processes and in their "common cultural pattern". They held that historical analogies do not require rationalisation, being self-evident. Recourse to historical analogies was considered to be an intuitive insight into the fundamental ontological structure of history, rather than an auxiliary method. Recurrence, synchronism, and the cyclic nature of historico-cultural processes are regarded as the sole evidence of the existence of universal historical laws.

The social bias of this theory is revealed in the doctrine of Spengler, who urges that historic action be based on conscientious imitation of the past. What this philosophy means in practice was seen in the ideology of fascism, which adopted the basic principles of Spengler's "historism".

Cultural-Historical Approach

A form of idealistic rationalisation of the internal indivisibility and unity of the historical process. It was suggested towards the close of the 19th century by K. Lamprecht (1856-1915), a German historian of liberal views. Lamprecht challenged the individualisation method prevalent in bourgeois historicity, i.e., the reduction of historiography to a description of the lives of outstanding personalities (Ranke and his school).

According to Lamprecht, the concept of culture facilitates a synthesis of the various aspects of social life. Culture is seen as a spontaneous consciousness woven directly into material relationships and reflected in the folk ways of a community. Cultural-Historical Approach is a half-hearted attempt at an idealistic solution of the crisis of bourgeois historicity—by a purely eclectic association of individual aspects of social life in the conception of culture and by recognition of material and economic relationships as merely one of the factors of spiritual evolution.

Nevertheless, its insistence on regarding history as a study of the laws of social development was a distinct merit of the Cultural-Historical Approach as compared with the other methods of bourgeois historiography. In contemporaneous Western literature on the philosophy of history the Cultural-Historical Approach has been ousted by outright subjectivist theories.

Cultural Revolution

An essential element of the socialist revolution, implying the necessity of reconstructing the entire system of education within a reasonably short time and making the highest achievements of culture available to the masses, thereby assuring direct participation of the masses in managing economic, social, and political life, creating a socialist intelligentsia, and forming a new, socialist culture. These main objectives hold good for any Cultural Revolution, whatever may be the specific features of socialist construction in any given country.

The Cultural Revolution in the USSR ended the spiritual slavery and ignorance of the Russian people: the land where most of the population were illiterate achieved a tremendous leap towards the summits of culture. The Soviet Union is now a land of complete literacy, with a high level of education, science, technique, and culture.

During the period of gradual transition from socialism to communism, cultural development, according to the Programme of the CPSU, will constitute the closing stage of the cultural revolution. At this stage the highest priority is given to the communist education of the people in the spirit of high moral integrity and devotion to communism, a communist attitude towards work and public property; total elimination of the survivals of capitalism in people's consciousness; a universal, harmonious development of the individual; creation of a truly rich spiritual culture. Upon the solution of these problems largely depends the growth of the productive forces; the development of the technique and organisation of production; the increased public activity of the masses; the development of the democratic principles of public self-administration; and the reorganisation of daily life along communist lines.

Culture

All the material and spiritual values and the means of creating, utilising and passing them on, created by society in the course of history. More specifically, it is customary to distinguish material Culture (i.e., machinery, experience in the field of production, and other material wealth), and spiritual Culture (i.e., achievements in the realm of science, art, literature, philosophy, ethics, education, etc.).

Culture is a historic phenomenon, and its development is determined by the succession of socio-economic formations. Unlike idealistic theories, which deny the material basis of Culture and consider it to be the spiritual product of the "elite", Marxism-Leninism sees production of material goods as the basis and source of spiritual Culture. Hence, Culture is the product of the activities of the masses. Although basically determined by material circumstances, spiritual Culture does not automatically follow changes in material Culture, being characterised by relative independence and continuity of development and subject to the influence of the cultures of other peoples, etc.

In any class society Culture assumes a class character both as to its ideological content and its practical aims. Under capitalism every national Culture is split into two cultures, comprising the dominant Culture of the bourgeoisie and the more or less developed elements of democratic and socialist Culture of the subjugated masses. This implies the necessity of distinguishing the two concepts—"Culture of bourgeois society" and "bourgeois Culture" (i.e., the Culture of the dominant class).

Socialist Culture, assimilating as it does all the progressive achievements of the past, is radically different from the modern bourgeois Culture from the standpoint of both ideology and social function. Socialist Culture cannot be created without a socialist revolution, an essential element of which is a cultural revolution. Characteristic of socialist Culture are: its kinship with the people, communist ideology, scientific world outlook, socialist humanism, collectivism, socialist patriotism, and internationalism. The leading role in the creation and development of socialist Culture belongs to the Communist Party, which influences the entire cultural and educational function of the socialist state.

Socialism implies: the fullest development of Cultures which are national in form and socialist in content; an increasingly intensive interchange of material and spiritual values among nations; increasing enrichment of the cultural treasure-house of each nation with values of an international character; and the development of common communist cultural characteristics, which promotes the shaping of the common Culture of the communist society of the future.

"Absorbing and developing all the best that has been created by world culture,"—says the Programme of the CPSU,—"communist culture will be a new, higher stage in the cultural progress of mankind. It will embody the versatility and richness of the spiritual life of society, and the lofty ideals and humanism of the new world. It will be the culture of a classless society, a culture of the entire people, of all mankind."

Cusa, Nicholas of (1401–1464)

His real name was Nicholas Crebs or Chrypffs; he is named after his birthplace. German philosopher, scientist, and theologian of the transitional period between scholasticism and humanism and the new science of early capitalist society.

Under the influence of Neo-Platonism he re-elaborated the concepts of Christian philosophy and the teaching of God as the maximum being, standing above the opposites in which man's limited reason thinks of the objects of nature. All opposites coincide in God: finite and infinite, smallest and greatest, single and multiple, etc.

Despite its mystic idealist content, the teaching of Nicholas of Cusa with its basic thesis of the concordance of contraries in God (coincidentia oppositorum) contains a number of fruitful ideas. These are criticism of the limitations of speculative opposites; the methodological importance of mathematical concepts for the cognition of nature; anticipation of the subsequent concept of infinitesimals; formulation of the question concerning limits of applying the law of contradiction in mathematics, etc.

Main works: De Docta Ignorantia, 1440; De Genesi, 1447.

Custom

Stable rules of behaviour established over a long time which regulate the people's way of life in one sphere or another (for example, entertainment of a guest, marriage, festivities, and so on). The development of Customs is influenced by the history of a people, economic activity, natural climatic conditions, social position, religious views, etc.

Socialist society forms its own Customs and preserves some old ones. Not all Customs of the past are progressive. Socialist society, for example, has to combat Customs degrading woman, which arose in the period of feudalism. Custom has the force of a social habit and influences the behaviour of people. Inasmuch as Customs are of a social character, they are subject to moral evaluation.

Cuvier, Georges (1769–1832)

French naturalist, member of the Academy of Sciences in Paris. Cuvier made a substantial contribution to the development of comparative anatomy and palaeontology. Supported a metaphysical approach to natural phenomena; his catastrophe "theory" ruled out the concept of the evolution of animals and plants (see Lamarck, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire).

According to Engels, "Cuvier's theory of the revolutions of the earth was revolutionary in phrase and reactionary in substance. In place of a single divine creation he put a whole series of repeated acts of creation, making the miracle an essential natural agent." (Dialectics of Nature, p. 240.)

Cybernetics

Anti-Marxist Distortions

Treats cybernetics as science rather than bourgeois pseudoscience.

The science of the common features of processes and control systems in technological devices, living organisms and human organisations. The principles of Cybernetics were first set forth by Wiener. The emergence of Cybernetics as a science was prepared by a number of technological and scientific achievements in the theory of automatic control; electronics, which made possible the construction of fast-action scanning and programme-controlled computing devices; the theory of probability, notably its applications in investigating problems of transmission and processing of information; mathematical logic and the theory of algorithms (see Algorism); the physiology of nervous activity and homeostasis.

As distinct from devices that transform energy or substance, cybernetic systems engage in processing information. In the study of control systems Cybernetics combines the macroscopic with the microscopic approach. The macroscopic approach is employed when the internal structure of the system is not known and the only observable is the movement of information at its inputs and outputs (the information entering the system and the reaction of the system). In this way the main flows of information and the ultimate functions of the control system are established. This type of problem is known as the "black box" problem.

The microscopic approach assumes a certain knowledge of the internal structure of the control system and involves the determination of its basic elements in their interrelationship, their algorithms of work and the possibility of synthetising a control system out of these elements. One of the central problems of Cybernetics is that of the structure of self-organising (self-adjusting) systems. These are complex control systems usually comprising hierarchies of interacting subsystems capable of maintaining or attaining certain states (or characteristics of their states) against external factors tending to disturb or hinder those states.

The most perfect self-organising systems have developed as a result of evolutionary processes in animate nature. That is why Cybernetics makes use of analogies between control functions in living organisms and technological devices. The importance of Cybernetics is seen primarily in the light of the opportunities it opens up for the automation of production and all types of formalised human mental activity, the investigation of biological control and regulation systems (hormonal, neural, hereditary mechanisms) by the method of analogue simulation, and the development of new types of medical apparatus. Another promising domain is the application of cybernetic methods to economic studies and other spheres of organised human activity.

This great diversity of applications of cybernetic methods is not due to any subjective whims and wills; its objective foundation is the existence of certain common features in the functions and structures of living organisms and man-made devices capable of mathematical description and investigation. Being in this respect a synthetic discipline, Cybernetics offers a striking example of a new type of interaction of sciences and provides abundant material for the philosophical investigation of the forms of motion of matter and the classification of sciences.

The development of Cybernetics sparked debates on a number of methodological problems, viz., the analogies between human thinking and the workings of cybernetic mechanisms, the nature of information and its connection with the physical concept of entropy, the essence of what is called organised, purposeful, and living, and other problems of an indubitably philosophical nature around which a struggle between dialectical materialism and idealism has developed.

Thus, idealist philosophy, which rejects the possibility of objective investigation of mental activity, comes out against the findings of Cybernetics which contribute to an understanding of certain important aspects and mechanisms of such activity. While recognising the objective soundness of cybernetic analogies, dialectical materialism at the same time emphasises the erroneousness of completely identifying man with a machine and human intelligence with the functioning of cybernetic systems.

Cynicism

A trait of character marked by open scorn of moral rules. The school of cynics which existed in ancient Greece (4th century B.C.) held customs and culture in contempt. Their scorn for the rules of conduct led them to violations of decency. Subsequently, people who shamelessly ignored rules of morality and decency came to be called cynics. Cynicism is associated with insufficient cultural development, selfishness, and other negative traits.

Cynics

A school of Greek philosophy (4th century B.C.), followers of Antisthenes. Diogenes of Sinope was the most prominent Cynic. The Cynics voiced the views of the democratic sections of slave society. They considered contempt for social standards, renunciation of wealth, glory, and all sensuous pleasures as the foundation of happiness and virtue.

Cyrenaics

A school of Greek philosophy (North Africa, 5th century B.C.) founded by Aristippus of Cyrene. Cyrenaics expounded the ideology of the slave-owning aristocracy.

C

Cabanis, Pierre Jean Georges (1757–1808)

Cabet, Étienne (1788–1856)

Calculus

Calvin, Jean (1509–1564)

Cambridge School

Campanella, Tommaso (1568–1639)

Camus, Albert (1913–1960)

"Capital"

Capitalism

Carlyle, Thomas (1795–1881)

Carnap, Rudolf (1891–1970)

Carneades of Cyrene (214–129 B.C.)

Cartesianism

Cassirer, Ernst (1874–1945)

Categorical Imperative

Categories

Catharsis

Catholicism

Causality

Cell

Chaadayev, Pyotr Yakovlevich (1794–1856)

Chang Tsai (1020–1077)

Change

Character

Character in Art

Charron, Pierre (1541–1603)

Charvaka

Chelpanov, Georgi Ivanovich (1862–1936)

Chernyshevsky, Nikolai Gavrilovich (1828–1889)

Ch'i

Chicherin, Boris Nikolayevich (1828–1904)

Chiliasm

Chinese Philosophy

Christianity

Chrysippus (281/78–208/05 B.C.)

Chu Hsi (1130–1200)

Circular Evidence

Civic Society

Clan

Class (in logic)

Class Struggle

Classes (social)

Classes, Theory of

Classification

Classification of Sciences

Clausius, Rudolf Julius Emanuel (1822–1888)

Clericalism

Cognition

Cognition, Object of

Cohen, Hermann (1842–1918)

Coherence, Theory of

Collectivism

Comic, The

Common Sense

Communication

Communism

Communism, Scientific

Communist Education

Communist Labour

Communist Public Self-Administration

Comparative Method

Comparison

Complementarity, Principle of

Comte, Auguste (1798–1857)

Concept

Concept, Volume and Content of

Conceptualism

Concrete Sociological Investigations

Concreteness of Truth

Condillac, Étienne Bonnot de (1715–1780)

Condition

Conditionalism

Condorcet, Jean Antoine (1743–1794)

Conflict, Dramatic

Confucianism

Conscience

Consciousness

Consequence, Logical

Conservation Laws