D

Dadaism

A trend initiated in 1915-16 in bourgeois art and literature by poets and artists who emigrated to Switzerland to escape the horrors of the First World War, specifically the poets Tristan Tzara, Richard Huelsenbeck and Jean Cocteau, and the artists Hans Arp, Marcel Duchamp, Joan Miró, Paul Klee, Max Ernst, Francis Picabia, and others. The anarchistic rebellion of the Dadaists against the inhumanity of war betokened the social helplessness of petty-bourgeois intellectuals, who attempted to explain class conflicts and people's suffering by the alleged animal nature of man. The aesthetic principles of the Dadaists were pathos, more precisely psychosis, of destruction, an absurd fortuity of images and plots, and cynicism. Hence such unartistic Dadaist devices as words printed upside down, senseless combinations of sounds, and shreds of paper and crushed glass pasted on canvas.

In due course, most of the Dadaists became exponents of abstract art and surrealism, of which they were the immediate forerunners.

Dalton, John (1766–1844)

English chemist and physicist, largely instrumental in establishing a concrete relationship between the philosophical notion of atoms and rudimentary elements, on the one hand, and experimentally obtained facts, on the other. Dalton considered chemical elements to be varieties of atoms with a strictly defined quantitative characteristic, atomic weight, and determined the atomic weights of many chemical elements. Dalton assumed that atoms were chemically indivisible and that they combined as complete units only. He discovered the law of simple multiple relations, which is one of the main laws in chemistry.

His discoveries helped to convert atomistic notions from a philosophical conjecture into a scientific theory and promoted the materialistic approach in natural science. Engels described Dalton as the father of modern chemistry.

Darwin, Charles Robert (1809–1882)

English natural scientist, educated at Cambridge University, founded the theory of the historical development of the organic world. He generalized contemporary biological knowledge and farming practices, augmented them with copious factual material obtained on his round-the-world voyage (1831-36), and deduced the evolution of living nature. In his The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1859) he set forth the basic propositions of the theory of evolution. In 1868 Darwin explained the origin of domestic animals and plants by artificial selection in The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication. In The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871) he offered a scientific exposition of the origination of man from animal ancestors.

However, it was Engels who subsequently revealed the social causes which set man apart from the animal world, these being labour, coherent speech and the primitive herd. Darwin's world outlook was materialistic; he was a spontaneous dialectician and atheist, but his way of thought had distinct bourgeois limitations. His works contributed greatly to the emergence of scientific biology, the struggle against idealism, theology and metaphysics, and helped to base natural science on dialectical materialism.

Davydov, Ivan Ivanovich (1794–1863)

Russian idealist philosopher and linguist, finished Moscow University in 1812 and was professor there from 1822 to 1847. At first he eclectically combined different philosophical ideas, such as sensationalism and Schellingian idealism, as set out in his Nachalniye osnovaniya logiki (Rudimentary Basis of Logic), 1819-20. His Vstupitelnaya rech o vozmozhnosti filosofii kak nauki (Introductory Speech on the Possibilities of Philosophy as a Science), 1826, also espoused Schellingian idealism.

Subsequently, Davydov devoted his attention to literary criticism, linguistics and aesthetics. In his article "Could Russia Accept German Philosophy?", 1841, Davydov attacked Hegel from a Rightist's position and expounded the Slavophil notion of the national distinctiveness of Russian philosophy.

Decembrists

Russian revolutionaries, mostly aristocrats, who organized an uprising against tsarist autocracy and serfdom in December 1825. Lenin described the Decembrists and Herzen as the most outstanding leaders of Russia's liberation movement in its aristocratic stage. The Decembrists formed secret societies (the Northern Society in 1821, the Southern Society in 1821 and the Society of United Slavs in 1823). But the influence of the Decembrists extended beyond these organizations and spread to the progressive sections of Russian society.

The armed uprising of the Decembrists was crushed. Its most prominent leaders and ideologists (P. Pestel, K. Ryleyev, S. Muravyov-Apostol, P. Kakhovsky and M. Bestuzhev-Ryumin) were executed, and more than 100 others were sentenced to hard labour. The movement of the Decembrists was prompted by the discontent of the people, who languished under serfdom. The Decembrists intended to destroy tsarist autocracy, abolish oppression and serfdom, and establish democratic freedoms. But owing to their aristocratic limitations they feared a popular revolution. Their tactics were hesitant. Decembrists stood aloof from the people.

Their plans for reorganizing the Russian state were outlined chiefly in Pestel's Russian Truth, N. Muravyov's Draft Constitution, Rules of the United Slavs, and other documents. Lenin noted the republican tradition which the Decembrists introduced in progressive Russian social thought. The projects and ideas of the Decembrists testified to the bourgeois orientation of their movement. They defined the purpose of philosophy as "finding the truth", enlightening the mind, purifying it of prejudice, and animating love of country and humanity.

The Decembrists were influenced by the materialism of Lomonosov and Radishchev, and the ideas of the French materialist philosophers. The Decembrists opposed the ideology of serfdom, religion, mysticism, and idealism. The materialists among the Decembrists were I. Yakushkin, N. Kryukov, P. Borisov, I. Gorbachevsky, V. Rayevsky, etc. Their materialism was based on natural science. According to the Decembrists the material world is governed by "immutable" laws, the chief being the law of causality. The Decembrists held that thought is the special property of a material substance, the brain. However, they did not reduce the concept of thought to mere matter, but stressed its specific quality, failing, however, to grasp its social nature.

The Decembrists recognized that the world is cognizable and postulated two modes of cognition—experience (or the senses) and intelligence. Under the influence of objects the senses yield ideas and sensations, while intelligence reveals the common features, the connection between phenomena, the laws of the world. Validity of knowledge is verified by comparing new concepts with old and by removing the contradictions between the two. The materialists among the Decembrists attacked Descartes' dualism and the idealist German philosophers, and opposed the idealists in their own ranks (Y. Obolensky, V. Kyukhelbeker, M. Lunin, and others). The materialist outlook and knowledge of natural science prompted some Decembrists towards atheism.

The Decembrists considered religion to be rooted in the yearning of the oppressed to mitigate their misery and their hope of a better life in the next world. Although the philosophy of the Decembrists was progressive for its time, it was contemplative and tainted with metaphysics. Decembrists approached social matters from an idealistic standpoint and attributed prime importance in the life of society to education. Many Decembrists sided with the theories of natural law and social contract. Their movement strongly influenced the succeeding generation of Russian revolutionaries, the revolutionary democrats.

Decidability (in logical semantics)

The relation between propositional functions and the material objects substituted for variables. Decidability is closely associated with the concept of truth-value. Assuming that the latter is the undefinable (primary) concept, decidability may be defined by it, provided its substitution for the variable in the given propositional function yields a true statement. The object decides the propositional function only. Thus, the object "sugar" decides the propositional function "x is sweet", while "salt" does not.

On the other hand, decidability may be assumed as an undefinable concept whereby we determine the concept of truth in formalized languages, as first done by Alfred Tarski. In that case, the primary (i.e., the simplest and undefinable) propositional functions and the objects deciding them must be given. Decidability of any propositional function composed of premisses by means of logical propositional operations and by quantifiers depends on the decidability of the premisses. Thus, the compound propositional function "(x is white) and (x is sweet)" is decided for the object "sugar", inasmuch as this object decides each of the component propositional functions.

Decision Problem

One of the basic problems which arise in logic in connection with the construction of formal logical systems. A positive or negative decision for each concrete formal logical system is due to the existence or non-existence of some general method (or algorithm), which makes it possible to establish by a finite number of operations whether a formula of the system in question is capable of proof or not in a given system.

Decision Problem has a positive solution, e.g., in the propositional calculus and in formalized Aristotelian syllogistic. However in the functional calculus no general solution of this problem is possible. The impossibility of finding a general method of decision for a formal system does not exclude the search for solutions for separate classes of formulas in that system.

Deduction

The act of proving or inferring a conclusion (effect) with certainty and necessity from one or more premisses by the laws of logic. A deduced conclusion is a chain of propositions, each of which is either a premiss or proposition proceeding immediately by the laws of logic from earlier propositions in the chain. In a deduced conclusion the effects are concealed in the premisses and have to be inferred by methods of logical analysis.

Examinations of the problems of mathematical logic in the 19th and 20th centuries have added precision to notions connected with deduction and shown that the concept of deduction as a deduction from the general to the particular is incomplete. The modern concept of deduction is a far-reaching generalization of the Aristotelian interpretation of a syllogistic deduction (from the general to the particular). Broadly, deduction denotes any deduction or inference.

Deduction Theorem

A key theorem in metalogic saying that if proposition B is inferred from many premisses on the assumption that premiss A is also true, it is deducible without the assumption (A is valid) from the given number of premisses that if A exists, so does B. Deduction Theorem is applied to many important logical systems, such as classical and constructive calculi of propositions and predicates, formal arithmetic, etc. It is not valid for some systems, e.g. certain systems of modal logic.

Deduction Theorem is used extensively in non-formalized reasoning. Deduction Theorem simplifies the process of proof. It was first defined (1928) and proved (1930) for a particular system by Jacques Herbrand, and formulated as a general methodological principle by Tarski in 1930.

Deductive Method

A method of scientific inference based exclusively on deductive techniques. Attempts have been made in philosophy to draw a line of distinction between the Deductive Method and other methods (such as the inductive) and to define deductive reasoning as excluding experience and laying excessive stress on deduction in science. However, deduction and induction are interconnected, and deductive reasoning is based on many centuries of man's practical and cognitive effort.

Deductive Method is one of the valid methods of scientific inference, used, as a rule, to systematize empirical data after they have been accumulated and theoretically interpreted, in order to infer all pertinent effects more strictly and consistently. This yields new knowledge, among other things, an aggregate of possible interpretations of a deductively formulated theory. The general scheme of the deductive systems (theories) includes: (1) basic premisses, that is, the aggregate of basic terms and propositions; (2) the devices of logic (rules of deduction and definition) used; (3) the theory obtained from (1) by applying (2).

Examination of such theories involves analysis of the interrelation of their specific components abstracted from the genesis and development of knowledge. It is, therefore, desirable to consider them as formalized languages, which can analyse either syntactically or semantically—syntactically when examining the relation between symbols and expressions entering the language in isolation from their extra-lingual meaning, and semantically when the relations between symbols and expressions of the system are examined from the standpoint of their meaning and validity.

Deductive systems are divided into axiomatic and constructive. When applied to knowledge based on experience and experiment, Deductive Method is more precisely termed as hypothetico-deductive. Analysis of the Deductive Method of inferring scientific knowledge began in antique philosophy, and was dealt with at length in more recent times by Descartes, Pascal, Spinoza, Leibniz, and others. However, the principles of the deductive organization of knowledge were not formulated conclusively and definitely until the turn of the century (with extensive use of mathematical logic).

Up to the end of the 19th century Deductive Method was applied almost exclusively in mathematics. It was not until the 20th century that attempts were made to apply Deductive Method (including the axiomatic method) to non-mathematical knowledge—physics, biology, linguistics, sociology, etc.

Definition

A logical method making it possible to distinguish, find or build some kind of object, formulate the significance of a newly introduced term or specify the significance of a term existing in science. The diversity of kinds of definition is determined by what is defined, the tasks, the logical structure of definition, etc.

With the help of real definitions objects are singled out by their specific characteristics (properties and relations). Often they assume the form of definition through a genus and specific distinction. For example, "oxygen is an element (genus), whose atomic weight is equal to 16 (specific distinction)". With the help of nominal definitions new terms are introduced in science, both for reducing the more complex expressions and explaining the importance of new terms, etc.

In semantic definitions the defined is some kind of expression in a language and the defining is some kind of object (for example, the word "pentagon" means a polygon with five sides). In syntactic definitions the defined object differs from other objects by the rules for operating with it, the methods and purposes of its use (for example, pieces in chess are defined by indicating their initial positions on the chess board and rules for manipulating them in the course of the game). In genetic definition the defined object is singled out by indicating the mode of its formation, origin, or construction (e.g., "a circle is a closed curve formed by rotating in a plane a segment AB of a straight line around the fixed point A").

Definitions play a big role in science, being an essential part of any scientific theory. By means of them new concepts are introduced into science, the results of research are recorded, intricate descriptions occurring in science are simplified, and so on. At the same time individual definitions are limited because they cannot encompass the all-round connections of phenomena in their full development.

Deism

Belief in the existence of God as an impersonal prime cause of the world. From the deistic point of view, the world, having been created, was abandoned to the operation of its own laws. Deism first appeared in England. Herbert of Cherbury (1583-1648) was "the Father of Deism". Where feudal religious concepts dominated, deism was often a surreptitious form of atheism and a convenient device of the materialists for eradicating religion.

Exponents of deism in France were Voltaire and Rousseau, in England Locke, Newton, Toland and Anthony Ashley Cooper Shaftesbury, and in Russia Radishchev, I. Pnin, I. Yertov, and others. Idealists, such as Leibniz and Hume, and dualists also donned the garb of deism. At present, deism represents efforts to justify religion.

Dembowski, Edward (1822–1846)

Polish philosopher, a leader of the revolutionary democratic group in the Cracow revolution of 1846. In the Manifesto of the Communist Party Marx and Engels described Dembowski's group as a party which considered agrarian revolution as a condition for Poland's national liberation and, therefore, deserved communist support. In a speech on the Polish question (1848) Engels noted the "near proletarian courage" of Dembowski's group.

In his philosophical discourses, Dembowski continued the finest traditions of the late 18th century Polish materialists, Hugo Kołłątaj and Stanisław Staszic. He wrestled with Hegelian idealism and opposed the metaphysical materialism of the French enlighteners, calling for a "philosophy of creation" or "philosophy of the future" based on the needs of the people, on the facts of practice. He believed that dialectics should justify the overthrow by the peasants of landowner oppression and the necessity for establishing a communist order.

Dembowski attacked Hegel for "reconciling himself to the existing evil", for trying to press the new into the service of the old. Dembowski was an atheist and denounced religion and the Catholic Church as an instrument of feudal reaction. However, his view of society was distinctly idealistic. He rejected Feuerbach's naturalism and considered human reason the motive power of history.

Dembowski was a founder of the aesthetics of revolutionary democracy in Poland and a vigorous opponent of the theory of "art for art's sake". Dembowski's main philosophical works are A Few Ideas About Eclecticism (1843), Creation as a Principle of Polish Philosophy (1843) and Ruminations on the Future of Philosophy (1845).

Demiurge

From Greek demiourgos, literally maker, artisan, specifically, maker of the world, creator. With Plato and the Neo-Platonic mystics, the creator of the Universe, or deity. Hegel uses the term to denote the process of thought, which he deifies and describes as an independent power.

Democracy

From Greek democratia, the people and power, rule. A form of power officially proclaiming subjection of the minority to the will of the majority and recognizing the freedom and equality of citizens. Bourgeois science usually confines itself in its definition of democracy to these merely formal attributes and considers them in isolation from the socio-economic conditions prevailing in society and from the actual state of affairs. As a result, there emerges the conception of so-called pure democracy, also propounded by opportunists and reformists.

As a form of political organization of society every democracy "ultimately serves production and is ultimately determined by the relations of production in a given society" (Lenin, Vol. 32, p. 81). It is, therefore, essential to weigh the historical development of democracy and its immediate dependence on the change of socio-economic formations and on the character and acuteness of the class struggle. In the class formations, democracy is a form of dictatorship exercised by the dominant class and is, therefore, of a class nature, existing in fact solely for members of the dominant class.

In bourgeois society, for example, democracy is a form of class domination by the bourgeoisie. Up to a point, the bourgeoisie wants democracy as an instrument of its political rule. It frames a constitution, forms a parliament and other representative bodies, and introduces (under pressure from the people) universal suffrage and formal political liberties. But the popular masses' possibilities for utilizing all these democratic rights and institutions are curtailed in every way. The democratic machinery of a bourgeois republic is so patterned as to paralyze the political activity of the working people and keep them out of political affairs. The formally proclaimed political rights are not guaranteed. The parliamentary system, i.e., the separation of legislative and executive power, coupled with a distinct relative growth of the latter, is typical of bourgeois democracy.

Socialist democracy is the highest form of democracy, genuine democracy for the majority of the people, for the working people. Economically, it is based on social ownership of the means of production. Truly universal, direct and equal suffrage by secret ballot was introduced for the first time in history in the Soviet Union without any of the restrictions stipulated in the constitutions of even the most "democratic" of bourgeois states. All citizens of the USSR irrespective of sex, nationality and race, enjoy equal rights in political, economic and cultural affairs, and participate equally in the government of the state.

Socialist democracy secures the rights of citizens legislatively with material guarantees. For example, in socialist society the right to labour is not simply proclaimed, but legislatively sanctioned and effectively secured by the abolition of exploitation, eradication of unemployment, absence of crises in production, etc. Therein lies the basic difference between socialist democracy and bourgeois democracy. The further development of socialist democracy entails the emergence in the USSR of the state of the whole people. The Programme of the CPSU says that in the period of the gradual development of socialist society into communist society there will be further all-round development of socialist democracy, leading in due course to the replacement of the state by communist public self-administration.

Democratic Socialism

Official ideology of modern reformism set out in the declaration of the Frankfurt Congress of the Socialist International, "Goals and Tasks of Democratic Socialism" (1951), in opposition to the ideology of Marxism-Leninism. The theoretical roots of Democratic Socialism go back to Neo-Kantianism and its notions of ethical socialism. Socialism, it says, is not a natural product of historical development, but a moral ideal equally acceptable to all sections of society. Democratic Socialism infers that the socialist reconstruction of society is basically a moral problem, a problem of the re-education and education of people in the socialist spirit. It rejects class struggle, socialist revolution, and dictatorship of the proletariat. Socialism, it contends, emerges "democratically", i.e., from an aggregate of social and, in particular, cultural and educational measures effected within the framework of the bourgeois state by bourgeois governments, and exists as a "democracy", i.e., as a harmonious unity of all social strata and groups, the capitalists included. Objectively, Democratic Socialism is designed to perpetuate the foundations of bourgeois society.

Democritus of Abdera (c. 460–370 B.C.)

Ancient Greek materialist philosopher, disciple of Leucippus, "first encyclopaedian mind among the Greeks" (Marx). Lenin described Democritus as the brightest exponent of materialism in antiquity. A founder of atomistics, he believed in two prime beginnings: atoms and vacuum. The atoms, he contended, being indivisible particles of matter, were immutable, eternal and in continuous motion, differing only in shape, size, position, and order. They did not have other properties, such as sound, colour, taste, etc., and existed conditionally, "not by the nature of the things themselves". This point of view contains the embryo of the teaching on the primary and secondary properties of things. Combination of atoms produced bodies, while their dissolution brought about the end of bodies. An infinite multitude of atoms was eternally in motion in infinite vacuum. When moving in different directions the atoms sometimes collided, producing vortices of atoms. There was an infinite multitude of worlds "born and dying", created not by God, but arising and being destroyed of necessity, in a natural way.

Democritus identified causality and necessity and denied accident, which he considered the outcome of ignorance. In his theory of knowledge he assumed that bodies emit thin shells (ideas, or images) of things which react on the senses. Sensory perception is the main source of cognition, but yields no more than a "dim" knowledge of things. It is transcended by another, "bright", more subtle knowledge, knowledge by reason, which leads to the cognition of the essence of the world—atoms and vacuum. Thereby Democritus raised the problem of the relation of the senses to reason in cognition. His political views gravitated towards antique democracy. He opposed the slave-owning aristocracy. Democritus's materialism was continued by Epicurus and Lucretius.

Demonstration

See Proof.

De Morgan, Augustus (1806–1871)

English mathematician and logician; professor of mathematics, University College, London (1828–1866); first president of the London Mathematical Society. Algebra was his main sphere of interest. He wrote several essays on logic, advocating mathematical methods and presenting the first results of their use. His name has been given in mathematical logic to the following fundamental laws of the algebra of logic: denial of conjunction is equivalent to disjunction from the negations (A B is equivalent to Ā ∨ B̄); negation of disjunction is equivalent to conjunction from the negations (A ∨ B is equivalent to Ā B̄). His main work is Formal Logic, or the Calculus of Inference, Necessary and Probable (1847).

Denotation and Designation

See Name.

Denotation and Sense

The meaning of a thing is its significance for society; it depends on the function that thing performs in the activity of people. It is determined by the real objective essence of the thing, which performs only the functions that are determined by its own nature. People convey to one another the significance of a thing by means of various language signs. In language, the practical significance of things is recorded, consolidated and preserved in the Denotation of words. Sense is a specification of Denotation in relation to other words or an objective situation. The relationship and interconnection of Denotations, which gives rise to their Sense, is determined either by objective factors of reality and the objective logic of reasoning or by subjective factors: the wishes, aspirations, social (also class) and personal aims and intentions of man, etc. Only social practice brings this or that Sense of objective meanings into conformity with the essence of real things and phenomena. It casts aside subjective distortions and fixes the diversity of senses which reproduces the real diversity of concrete things or phenomena.

In linguistics, Denotation (lexical meaning) is understood as the sense of the word. Words as a rule have different denotations and also various senses. Hence, the Denotation of words greatly depends on the context and situation in which words are used.

The concepts of Denotation and Sense in linguistic expressions which denote objects are elaborated in logical semantics. The Denotation of a linguistic expression is usually understood as the object or class of objects which denotes (names), the given expression (nominatum), and the sense of the expression is understood as its connotation, i.e., the information contained in it which makes it possible to assign the given expression to one object or another. Thus, "the Evening Star" and "the Morning Star" have as their meaning (nominatum) one and the same object, the planet Venus, but their connotation, their sense, differs. In contemporary logic, the differentiation between Denotation and Sense dates to Frege. Questions related to criteria of equality of sense (synonymies) of linguistic expressions are studied by logical semantics (see Name).

Descartes, René (latinised as Renatus Cartesius) (1596–1650)

French philosopher, mathematician, physicist, and physiologist. Educated at the Jesuit College at La Flèche. After army service he settled in Holland, the foremost capitalist country of his time, where for twenty years he devoted himself to secluded scientific and philosophical research. Persecuted by Dutch theologians, he moved to Sweden (1649), where he died.

Descartes's philosophy is linked up with his mathematics, cosmogony, and physics. He is one of the founders of analytical geometry. In mechanics he noted the relativity of motion and rest, formulated the general law of action and counteraction and the law that the quantity of motion of two non-resilient bodies is the same during impact as before it. In cosmogony he postulated the novel idea of the natural development of the solar system. He contended that vortices of particles were the main form of motion of cosmic matter, and that they determined the structure of the world and the origin of the heavenly bodies. His hypothesis gave impetus to the advancement of dialectics, although with him development was still a mechanistic concept.

Descartes's teaching on matter, or the corporeal substance, was based on his mathematical and physical investigations. Descartes identified matter with extension, or space. Extension, he conjectured, alone did not depend on any subjective element and was conditioned by the necessary properties of the corporeal substance. However, dualism invaded Descartes's materialistic physics. The common cause of motion, he averred, is God. God created matter together with motion and rest, and maintained the same quantity of motion and rest in matter.

Descartes's doctrine on man was equally dualistic. He contended that a soulless and lifeless bodily mechanism combined in man with a volitional and rational soul. Body and soul, which are heterogeneous, interact by means of a special organ, the so-called pineal gland. In physiology Descartes established a scheme of motor reactions, this being one of the earliest descriptions of reflex actions. However, Descartes's materialistic physiology conflicted with his ideas of the immaterial soul. In contrast to the body, whose essence lies in extension, the essence of the soul lies in thought. Descartes considered animals to be no more than elaborate automata devoid of soul and mental capacity.

Like Bacon, Descartes defined the ultimate end of knowledge as man's mastery of the forces of nature, discovery and invention of technical devices, perception of causes and effects and improvement of the essence of man. To attain this end, one must refuse to believe anything until it is proved completely. This disbelief does not imply that all existence is not cognisable; it is a method of finding the unconditionally authentic beginning in knowledge, which Descartes defines as "cogito ergo sum". Descartes employed this formula to deduce the existence of God and then the reality of the outer world.

In epistemology, Descartes was the founder of rationalism, which sprang from his one-sided understanding of the logical nature of mathematics. Descartes believed that the universal and necessary character of mathematical knowledge derived from the nature of the brain. He, therefore, attributed exclusive power in the act of cognition to deduction based on valid intuitively comprehended axioms. Descartes's doctrine of the immediate validity of self-consciousness, of innate ideas (among which he included the idea of God, and of the spiritual and corporeal substances), influenced subsequent idealistic schools and was strongly attacked by materialist philosophers. On the other hand, Descartes's basically materialistic teaching on nature, his theory of the development of nature, his materialist physiology and his mechanistic method, which was inimical to theology, influenced the materialist world outlook. His main works are Le Discours de la méthode (1637) and Principia philosophiae (1644).

Deschamps, Léger-Marie (1716–1774)

French materialist philosopher, Benedictine monk. His main work, La Vérité ou le vrai système, first appeared in Russian (1930). In his philosophical views Deschamps combined a rationalistic tendency gravitating towards Spinozism with peculiar dialectical ideas. The pivotal concept of his system, the "universal whole", postulates unity of all physical bodies. He describes the "universal whole" as a hypersensual essence perceptible to reason, but not to the senses. Deschamps contended that the concept of God is man-made and believed atheism to be the privilege of a limited circle of enlighteners.

Description

A stage of scientific study which consists in recording the data of an experiment or observation with the help of a definite system of designations accepted in science. Description is made both by means of the usual language and figures and by special means comprising the language of science (symbols, matrices, diagrams, etc.). Description is a preparatory stage of transition to a theoretical study of an object (see Explanation) in science. Description and explanation are closely connected and dialectically pass one into the other. Without a Description of facts it is impossible to explain them; on the other hand, Description without an explanation is not enough for science.

Interpreting the nature of scientific study from positions of extreme phenomenalism, the positivists (see Comte, Mach, Pearson, and others) declared the only task of science to be "pure description of facts". In contemporary positivism this theory has assumed quite a veiled form.

Desnitsky, Semyon Yefimovich (d. 1789)

Russian enlightener, law expert, sociologist; educated at Moscow and Petersburg universities, later at Glasgow University, where he took his master's degree (1767). On returning to Russia he was professor of law at Moscow University. His works, Slovo o pryamom i blizhaishem sposobe k naucheniyu yurisprudentsii (About the Direct and Closest Method of Teaching Jurisprudence), 1768, Yuridicheskoye rassuzhdeniye o nachale i proiskhozhdenii supruzhestva (Legal Discourse on the Beginning and Origin of Marriage), 1775, Yuridicheskoye rassuzhdeniye o raznykh ponyatiyakh, kakiye imeyut narody o sobstvennosti (Legal Discourse of the Different Concepts of Nations on Property), 1781, Yuridicheskoye rassuzhdeniye o veshchakh svyashchennykh, svyatykh i prinyatykh v blagochestiye (Legal Discourse of Things Sacred, Saintly and Pious), 1772, etc., were prominent in the development of Russian sociological thinking.

Desnitsky referred to four stages (hunting, animal husbandry, land cultivation, and the "commercial state") in the development of mankind. He was one of the first men in Russia to speak of the historical origin and development of property and the family. He shared the views of Anichkov on the origin of religious beliefs, opposed serfdom and worked out a draft of a new Russian "legislative, juridical, and punitive authority", which was rejected by the tsarist government.

Determinism and Indeterminism

Opposite philosophical concepts of the place and role of causality. Determinism is a doctrine on the universal causative origin of all phenomena. Consistent Determinism postulates the objective character of causality. This distinguishes it from various pseudo-deterministic trends, which, though they profess to recognise universal causality, really curtail it by denying its objective nature (see Kant). Indeterminism denies the universal nature of causality, while its extreme variety goes to the length of denying causality as such.

Deterministic notions first appeared in ancient philosophy and were most clearly postulated by the antique atomists. The concept of Determinism was substantiated and developed by natural science and materialist philosophy, by Bacon, Galileo, Descartes, Newton, Lomonosov, Laplace, Spinoza and the French 18th century materialists. Their Determinism was necessarily mechanistic and abstract in conformity with the level of contemporary natural science. They believed the forms of causality to be absolute and governed by the strictly dynamic laws of mechanics, identified causality and necessity, and denied the objective character of chance. Pierre Simon de Laplace defined this point of view more conclusively than other philosophers (hence Laplacian Determinism, the other name of mechanistic Determinism). Laplace held that the co-ordinates and impulses of all particles in the Universe at a given instant determine its state at any past or future instant. This brand of Determinism leads to fatalism, possesses a mystical complexion and, in effect, merges with belief in divine predestination.

Scientific developments refuted Laplacian Determinism not only with reference to organic nature and social life, but also to physics. The discovery of the correlation of uncertainties in quantum mechanics proved Laplacian Determinism puerile, but it was at once interpreted by idealist philosophers in the spirit of Indeterminism (conclusions about the "free will" of the electron, absence of causality in micro-processes, etc.).

Dialectical materialism removed the limitations of mechanistic Determinism. It recognises the objective and universal character of causality and does not identify it with necessity. Neither does it reduce its operation to the purely dynamic type of laws (see Statistical and Dynamic Laws). The continuous controversy between Determinism and Indeterminism has now become more acute in natural science and particularly in social science. In sociology, Indeterminism is presented as voluntarism. Also, it wears the cloak of empirical sociology and opposes social science, which, it says, merely describes individual phenomena (ideographic sciences), to natural science, which establishes laws (nomothetic sciences). Though not rejecting Determinism as such, some sociologists view it in a crudely vulgar light (biological theories of social development, vulgar technicism, etc.). It was historical materialism which first introduced genuine Determinism in social research.

Development

The process of self-motion from the lower (simple) to the higher (complex), revealing the internal tendencies and the essence of phenomena, and leading to the appearance of the new (see the New and the Old). The Development of inorganic systems, the living world, human society, cognition is governed by the general laws of dialectics. Development proceeds in the form of a spiral. Each single process of Development has a beginning and an end, the end being already contained in a tendency at the beginning, and the completion of one cycle marking the beginning of a new one, in which some features of the first may be repeated.

Development is an immanent process: the transition from the lower to the higher takes place because the tendency to the higher is contained in the lower in a concealed form, and the higher is but the developed lower. However, it is only at a sufficiently high stage of Development that the signs of the higher contained in the lower are fully revealed. For instance, consciousness is the result of the Development of the objective world as a whole, and only from this point of view is it possible to discover the property of reflection underlying matter. The reproduction of Development in a theoretical form becomes possible once the methods and means of dialectical logic are used (see the Historical and the Logical).

"The Development of the Monist View of History"

The work written by Plekhanov who published it in 1895 under the pseudonym of N. Beltov. Lenin described it as "a book which has helped to rear a whole generation of Russian Marxists" (Lenin, Vol. 16, p. 269). It thoroughly analyses pre-Marxist philosophy and sociology, critically examines the views of the French 18th century materialists, French bourgeois historians of the Restoration period, utopian socialists, and idealist German philosophers. Plekhanov reveals the class limitations of these theories and demonstrates that it was Marx and Engels who created a scientific materialist philosophy, that only Marxism furnished a genuine science of society and discovered the material basis of social development. Besides an exposition of Marxist philosophy the book gives a profound critique of Narodism. This criticism was especially important in Russia at that time. Today, too, it is one of the best works for studying the philosophy of Marxism.

Dewey, John (1859–1952)

American idealist philosopher, who had a great influence on philosophy, sociology, aesthetics, and pedagogics in the United States; founder of the Chicago school of pragmatism. His new version of pragmatism is known as instrumentalism, or "humanist naturalism". Dewey is at pains to conceal the subjective-idealist and agnostic essence of his philosophy, which is aimed against the materialist theory of reflection. In his sociological works he is an advocate of bourgeois liberalism ("regulated freedom", "equal opportunity") and of individualism. To the class struggle and socialist revolution he counterposes class co-operation and improvement of society through educational reform. His "experimental method" of education stresses the inculcation of individual skill, initiative, and enterprise at the expense of scientific knowledge.

Main works: School and Society (1899), Experience and Nature (1925), Art as Experience (1934), Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (1938), etc.

Dezami, Theodore (1803–1850)

French utopian socialist, member of secret revolutionary societies (Société des Saisons, Société Républicaine Centrale, and others). In the 1848 revolution he championed the demands of the workers. Dezami's utopian theory drew on the ideas of Morelly, Babeuf and Fourier. He opposed the "peaceful" brand of Étienne Cabet's communism and the Christian Socialism of Hugues Félicité Lamennais. Philosophically, Dezami was a materialist and atheist, and a follower of Helvétius. Marx acclaimed Dezami's theory as "realistic humanism" and a "logical basis of communism".

Main work: Code de la Communauté (1842).

Dialectical Theology

A trend in contemporary protestant theology which has spread chiefly in West Germany. Its ideological roots go back to the mystical religious teaching of Kierkegaard and to German existentialism. Its founder, the West German theologian Karl Barth (b. 1886, now resident in Switzerland) called for a revival of the original reformation theology in the spirit of Calvinism, and opposed all rational demonstration of religious faith, whether philosophical proof of the existence of God in Catholic philosophy or the inference of faith from the "emotions of the pious soul". Barth and other exponents of Dialectical Theology make free use of Hegelian terminology in their writings.

Dialectical Theology appeared in Germany after the First World War (the 1920s) as an attempt to explain the crisis of bourgeois society by the "spiritual crisis of man". Politically, the exponents of Dialectical Theology merge with the liberal groups among the West German bourgeoisie.

Dialectics

Science of the most general laws governing the development of nature, society, and thought. The scientific conception of dialectics was preceded by a long history of development and the very concept of dialectics emerged through revision, even defeat, of the original meaning of the term. In antiquity philosophers strongly stressed the mutability of all existence and considered the world as a process, postulating change of every property into its opposite. Take Heraclitus, some of the Miletus philosophers, and the Pythagoreans. But the term dialectics was not as yet used.

Originally, the term (dialektike techne—art of dialectic) denoted the art of dispute and debate, i.e., a) the art of debate by means of questions and answers, and b) the art of classifying concepts, dividing things into genera and species. Aristotle, who did not understand the dialectics of Heraclitus, believed that it had been invented by Zeno of Elea, who analysed the conflicting aspects in the concepts of motion and plurality. Aristotle differentiated dialectics, the science of probable opinions, from analytics, the science of proofs.

On the heels of the Eleatics, Plato defined true being as identical and immutable, yet gave credence in his dialogues Sophist and Parmenides to the dialectical conclusion that the higher genera of existence can each be conceived only as being and not being, as equal to themselves and not equal to themselves, as identical to themselves and as passing into "something else". Therefore, being contains contradictions: it is single and plural, eternal and transient, immutable and mutable, at rest and in motion. Contradiction is the necessary condition and prompts the soul to reflection. This art, according to Plato, is the art of dialectics. The development of dialectics was continued by the Neo-Platonists. In scholasticism, the philosophy of feudal society, the term dialectics was used to denote formal logic as opposed to rhetoric.

In the early stage of capitalist development, dialectical ideas on the "coincidence of opposites" were enunciated by Nicholas of Cusa and Bruno. Later, despite the prevalence of metaphysics, Descartes and Spinoza produced specimens of dialectical thought, the former in his cosmogony and the latter in his teaching on substance as the self-cause. A wealth of dialectical ideas was produced by Rousseau and Diderot. Rousseau examines contradiction as a condition of historical development. Diderot goes a step further and investigates contradictions in the contemporary social consciousness in Le Neveu de Rameau.

The most important pre-Marxian stage in the development of dialectics was German classical idealism which, in contrast to metaphysical materialism, considered reality not merely as an object of cognition, but also as an object of activity. However, ignorance of the true, material basis of cognition and activity of the subject, limited and distorted the dialectical notions of the German idealists. The first to make a breach in metaphysics was Kant. He noted the purport of opposite forces in the physical and cosmogonic processes and followed Descartes in introducing the idea of development into cognition of nature. In his epistemology, Kant developed dialectical ideas in his teaching of antinomies. Yet he described dialectics of reason as an illusion which evaporates as soon as thought recedes within itself, bounded by the cognition of phenomena proper.

Later, Fichte developed his so-called antithetical method of inferring categories in his Wissenschaftslehre, and this method contained important dialectical ideas. After Kant, Schelling, too, developed a dialectical appreciation of the phenomena of nature. The idealistic dialectics of Hegel was the summit in the development of pre-Marxian dialectics. Notwithstanding Hegel's false concept, "for the first time the whole world, natural, historical, intellectual, is represented as a process, i.e., as in constant motion, change, transformation, development; and the attempt is made to trace out the internal connection that makes a continuous whole of all this movement and development" (Engels, Anti-Dühring, pp. 37-38). Hegel contended that dialectics, in contrast to the various abstract definitions of reason, is the transition of one definition into another, revealing that these definitions are one-sided and limited, i.e., that they contain negation of themselves. For this reason, Hegel said, dialectics is "the life and soul of scientific progress, the dynamic which alone gives immanent connection and necessity to the body of science".

The result of Hegel's dialectics transcended by far the significance which the author himself ascribed to it. Hegel's teaching on the necessity with which all things arrive at their own negation, contained an element which revolutionised life and thought, for which reason the foremost thinkers of the time regarded his dialectics as the "algebra of revolution" (Herzen).

A truly scientific appreciation of dialectics was given by Marx and Engels. They discarded the idealistic content of Hegel's philosophy and based dialectics on their materialistic understanding of the historical process and the development of knowledge, on their generalisation of the real processes taking place in nature, society and thought. Scientific dialectics organically combines the laws governing the development of being and the laws of cognition, these two being identical and differing in form only. For this reason, materialist dialectics is not only an "ontological", but also an epistemological teaching, a logic which regards thought and cognition equally as being in a state of coming into being and development, inasmuch as things and phenomena are what they are becoming in the process of development and contain as a tendency their own future, or what they will become.

In this sense the theory of knowledge, too, is considered by materialist dialectics as a generalised history of cognition; and every concept, every category is, therefore, historical in nature, despite its extremely general character. Contradiction is the chief category of materialist dialectics. In the teaching on contradiction it reveals the motive force and source of all development. It contains the key to all the other categories and principles of dialectical development—development by passage of quantitative changes into qualitative ones, interruption of gradualness, leaps, negation of the initial moment of development and negation of this very negation, and repetition at a higher level of some of the features and aspects of the original state.

Materialist dialectics is a philosophical method of investigating nature and society. None but the correct dialectical approach will yield an understanding of the complex and contradictory emergence of objective truth, the connection, at every point in the development of science, between elements of the absolute and the relative, the stable and the changeable, and the transition from one set of forms of generalisation to other, deeper forms. The revolutionary substance of materialist dialectics, which does not suffer the slightest stagnation or immobility, makes it an instrument for the practical reconstruction of society and helps to assess the objective historical requirements of social development, the discrepancy between old forms and new content, the necessity of transition to higher forms stimulating the progress of mankind. The strategy and tactics of the struggle for communism are framed to conform fully to the dialectico-materialistic world outlook.

"Dialectics of Nature"

A book by Frederick Engels first published in the USSR (1925), consists of notes (1873-86) treating the key problems of the dialectics of nature. Engels held that the philosophy of dialectical materialism should be based on exhaustive knowledge of the natural sciences and that the natural sciences, in turn, could not develop fruitfully, unless based on dialectical materialism.

Dialectics of Nature contains a profound philosophical investigation of history and the most important questions in natural science, and criticises mechanistic materialism, the metaphysical method, and idealistic concepts in natural science. Deeply versed in contemporary science, Engels demonstrated how the metaphysical conception of nature is exploded from within by scientific progress and compelled to give place to the dialectical method. He showed, too, that natural scientists are forced to abandon the metaphysical approach and adopt the dialectical, with consequent beneficial effects on natural science.

Engels produced an exhaustive substantiation of the dialectico-materialistic teaching on the forms of motion of matter. In keeping with this teaching, he worked out the principles for classifying the natural sciences, suggesting a concrete classification, on which he based his work. Engels made a detailed philosophical study of the basic laws of natural science and revealed their dialectical nature. He showed the true purport of the law of the preservation and conversion of energy, which he described as the absolute law of nature. He also dealt with the so-called second principle of thermodynamics and demonstrated the fallacy of the conclusion that the Universe was steadily approaching thermal death.

Engels made a thorough analysis of Darwin's teaching on the origin of species and showed that its main point, the theory of development, agreed in full with materialistic dialectics. At the same time, he revealed the flaws and gaps in Darwin's teaching. Engels delved into the role of labour in the emergence and development of man. He also showed how mathematical concepts and operations reflect the relation of things and processes in nature, where they have their real prototypes, and noted that the introduction of variables in higher mathematics signified the spread of dialectics.

Engels investigated the relation between chance and necessity, and revealed with sparkling dialectical skill that the mechanistic and idealistic approaches to this complex problem were both erroneous. He offered a Marxist solution and used Darwin's teaching to show how natural science confirmed and specified the propositions of dialectics. To be sure, some particulars related to special problems in natural science treated by Engels in his book, have grown obsolete as a result of the immense scientific progress since achieved, but his dialectico-materialistic approach to analysis of natural science and its philosophical generalisation is entirely valid to this day. Many propositions laid down in Dialectics of Nature anticipated scientific developments by decades.

The book is a model of dialectical thinking on complex problems of natural science. It was not prepared for print by Engels himself, and consists of separate articles, notes, and fragments. This should be borne in mind when studying it.

Dichotomy

See Division of the Volume of Concepts.

Dictatorship of the Proletariat

State power of the proletariat, established after abolition of the capitalist system and destruction of the bourgeois machinery of state. The Dictatorship of the Proletariat is the main content of socialist revolution and a necessary condition and the chief result of its victory. For this reason, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat is the key section of Marxist-Leninist theory.

The proletariat uses its political power to suppress the resistance of the exploiters, to consolidate the victory of the revolution, to frustrate any attempts at restoring bourgeois rule, and to combat aggressive actions of international reaction. However, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat is not only violence, and not chiefly violence. Its main function is creative and constructive. Dictatorship serves the proletariat to win over the mass of working people and to draw them into socialist construction for revolutionary reconstruction in all spheres of social life—the economy, culture, daily life, the communist education of working people, and the building of new, classless society. The Dictatorship of the Proletariat is the chief instrument in the building of socialism and the necessary condition for its victory.

The basis and supreme principle of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat is the alliance of the working class and the peasants under the leadership of the former. In the course of socialist construction the social basis of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat expands and gains endurance, producing the socio-political and ideological unity of a nation. The Communist Party, the vanguard of the working class, is the main leader and guiding force in the system of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. The system of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat comprises various mass organisations: representative bodies of the people, trade unions, cooperatives, youth and other associations, which serve as the link between the socialist state and the masses.

The Paris Commune (1871) was the first Dictatorship of the Proletariat in history. It contributed most valuable experience to Marxism and enabled Marx to surmise the shape of the state in a future socialist society. The Soviets are a new form of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, which Lenin discovered by studying the experience of the two bourgeois-democratic revolutions in Russia—that of 1905-07 and the February revolution of 1917. Lastly, the latest revolutionary experience gave rise to one more form of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat—People's Democracy.

The Dictatorship of the Proletariat is not a goal in itself. It is the only possible and historically necessary mode of transition to a society without dictatorship and without classes. "Having brought about the complete and final victory of socialism—the first phase of communism—and the transition of society to full-scale construction of communism," says the Programme of the CPSU, "the dictatorship of the proletariat has fulfilled its historic mission and has ceased to be indispensable in the USSR as far as the tasks of internal development are concerned." The conclusion that the dictatorship of the proletariat develops into a state of the whole people constitutes an important contribution to the creative development of Marxism-Leninism, the teaching on the laws of society's development from capitalism to communism.

Diderot, Denis (1713–1784)

French philosopher and Enlightener, editor and publisher of the Encyclopaedia, man of letters, art critic and theorist. Voltaire and Diderot exercised an enormous influence on contemporary social thinking. In philosophy, Diderot quickly passed from deism and ethical idealism to materialism (in the teaching on nature, psychology, and the theory of knowledge) and atheism. To his mechanistic materialist outlook on nature, which he shared with La Mettrie and Holbach, Diderot imparted some elements of dialectics, such as ideas on the connection of matter and motion, connection of processes proceeding in nature, and the eternal change of forms in nature. Diderot dealt with the concept of the universal sensibility of matter to explain how mechanistic motion of material particles may give birth to the specific content of sensations. In developing this view, Diderot outlined a materialistic theory of the psychic functions, thus anticipating the later teaching on reflexes. According to his theory, men and animals are instruments endowed with an ability to feel and with memory.

In epistemology, Diderot rejected the idealist notion of spontaneity of thought. All reasoning is rooted in nature, and all we do is register phenomena known to us from experience, between which there is either a necessary or conventional connection. It does not follow with Diderot that our sensations are mirror-perfect copies of things; the resemblance between most of the sensations and their external causes is never greater than between concepts and their denotations in language. Diderot accepted Locke's view of the primary and secondary qualities, but stressed that the secondary qualities are also objective. He developed F. Bacon's belief that knowledge, which originates from experience, is not prompted by the sole urge of perceiving the truth, but by the aim of perfecting and increasing man's might. In so doing, Diderot noted the role of technology and industry in developing thought and cognition. According to him, experiment and observation were the methods and guides of cognition. It is through them that thought is able to acquire knowledge which, though not entirely authentic, is highly probable.

Compilation of the Encyclopaedia (see Encyclopaedists), designed to combat feudal religious ideology, became Diderot's life-work. Progressive in content, the Encyclopaedia was militant in tone. Dissemination of new ideas went hand in hand in it with criticism of inert views, prejudices, and beliefs. Despite persecution, Diderot succeeded in completing the publication of the Encyclopaedia. He was the author of many works on art and art criticism, developed a new aesthetics of realism, defending the unity of the good and beauty. He attempted to embody the principles of his aesthetics in his novels and dramas.

Marxists acclaimed the works and teachings of Diderot. Engels noted "masterpieces of dialectics" in Diderot's writing, referring specifically to Le Neveu de Rameau (1762-79). Lenin pointed out that Diderot "came very close to the standpoint of contemporary materialism" and that he "distinctly opposed the main philosophical trends" (Vol. 14, p. 35). But for all this, Diderot was an idealist in his views of social phenomena. In combating feudal despotism, he advocated the political system of enlightened monarchy. His main works are Pensées sur l'interprétation de la nature (1754), Entretien entre d'Alembert et Diderot (1769), Principes philosophiques sur la matière et le mouvement (1770) and Éléments de physiologie (1774-80).

Dietzgen, Joseph (1828–1888)

Worker, tanner, "one of the most eminent German Social-Democratic philosophical writers" (Lenin, Vol. 19, p. 79). A self-educated philosopher, Dietzgen was strongly influenced by Feuerbach's materialism and independently discovered materialist dialectics. He lived and worked in Germany, Russia, and the United States. His main works are Das Wesen der menschlichen Kopfarbeit (1869) and Das Akquisit der Philosophie (1887), which are devoted mainly to epistemology.

According to Dietzgen, consciousness is an ideal product of eternally existing and moving matter, the "universum". The brain, which is part of the "world whole" is the bearer of consciousness. Natural and social being is the content of consciousness. Cognition proceeds in sensory and abstract forms. It is a process of motion from relative to absolute truth. Dietzgen rejected Kant's agnosticism and taught that in both sensory and abstract forms man's cognition is an image of the outer world verified by experience. He considered the "universum" in motion, and saw the source of development in contradiction.

However, Dietzgen failed to mould dialectics into a scientific system; he did not succeed in making an exhaustive exposition of dialectics as a theory of knowledge. This led him to make concessions to relativism and vulgar materialism, and to confuse the material and the ideal. The followers of Mach took advantage of Dietzgen's erroneous propositions in their fight against dialectical materialism. Lenin noted Dietzgen's inconsistencies, but stressed that on the whole his teaching developed within the Marxist framework. Dietzgen was a militant atheist, an ardent propagandist of the teaching of Marx and Engels, and championed the proletarian complexion of the Marxist philosophy.

Dilthey, Wilhelm (1833–1911)

German idealist philosopher, professor at Berlin University, exponent of the so-called philosophy of life. Dilthey's ideas pivoted on the notion of a living spirit, which develops in historical forms. Dilthey rejected the knowability of the laws of the historical process, claiming that philosophy could not be cognition of super-sensory essences and could only be a "science of sciences", that is, a "teaching on science". Dilthey divides the world of science into sciences of nature and sciences of the spirit, the subject of the latter being social reality.

Philosophy should set out to analyse consciousness, because consciousness alone offers the means by which we can proceed from the immediate experiences of the "ego" and arrive at the substance of natural and spiritual life. Psychology, Dilthey averred, is the most fundamental of all the sciences of the spirit; he meant descriptive, not explanatory psychology, which is based on causality. In his study of the imaginative arts, Dilthey stressed the role of fantasy, with whose assistance the poet elevates the accidental to the level of the substantial and by which he depicts the typical as the basis of the individual. According to Dilthey, the "science of interpretation", or "hermeneutics", comprises the link between philosophy and the science of history.

Diogenes Laertius

Ancient Greek writer of the 3rd century. His voluminous work, Lives and Opinions of Famous Philosophers in ten books, is the only existing summary compilation of the antique epoch in the history of philosophy. It contains biographical information and the teachings of the Greek philosophers up to Sextus Empiricus. Diogenes Laertius is noteworthy only as a compiler of various statements and information, often of a whimsical nature. The most interesting of his writings are devoted to the Stoics in Book VII and Epicurus in Book X. The last book contains the only extant works of Epicurus, three of his letters and a compendium of his doctrines.

Diogenes the Cynic (404–323 B.C.)

Philosopher of Sinope in Pontus, disciple of Antisthenes, founder of the Cynic school of philosophy (see Cynics); carried the notions of his teacher to their extreme. Like Antisthenes he rejected everything but the particular and criticised the teaching of Plato that ideas are general substances. He rejected all the accomplishments of civilisation and called on men to limit themselves to the necessary animal requirements. He also disavowed polytheism and all religious cults, which he described as superfluous, purely human contrivances. Diogenes the Cynic attacked class differences and advocated asceticism.

He is said to have been bold and independent in confronting rulers and potentates and to have scorned the accepted standards of social behaviour, and is reputed to have lived in a barrel. However, this excessively colourful description of the outspoken cynic is doubtful, all available information being highly conflicting.

Dirac, Paul (1902–1984)

English physicist, professor at Cambridge (1932), a foreign Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, one of the founders of quantum mechanics and proponent of the relativist quantum theory which adduced the law of the intermutation of "elementary" particles and anticipated the existence of anti-particles (positron, antiproton, anti-neutron). Dirac's philosophical utterances, in which he professes adherence to the Copenhagen school and, particularly, the "principle of observance" (see Idealism, Physical), come into sharp conflict with his works in physics, in which he acquits himself as a brilliant master of mathematical hypothesis and introduces the most unusual "unobservable" entities, such as "negative energy", etc.

Discontinuity and Continuity

Essential characteristics which reflect the antithetical but interconnected properties of material objects. Discontinuity is an attribute of the discrete conditions of matter (planets, bodies, crystals, molecules, atoms, nuclei, etc.), the degree of its differentiation in the form of separate, stable elements of different systems, qualitatively defined structures. It also expresses the leap-like nature of the process of development, of changes. Continuity, on the other hand, is revealed in the entirety of the systems consisting of separate discrete elements, in the infinity of their relations, the gradualness of change of conditions, the smooth transition from one state to another.

Isolated investigation of Discontinuity and Continuity is typical of metaphysical materialism. It is based partly on the postulates of classical mechanics, which considers Discontinuity inherent only in certain types of material elements (from planets to atoms), and Continuity only in the wave processes. Dialectical materialism stresses not only the antithesis, but also the connection, the unity of these signs, confirmed by contemporary physics, which has proved, for example, that light possesses both wave and corpuscular properties. Alongside with this it was experimentally discovered in quantum mechanics that elementary particles possess not only corpuscular but also wave properties. The dialectics of Discontinuity and Continuity affords the possibility of comprehending scientifically the specific features of material objects, their properties and relations (space and time, motion, interconnection of field and matter, etc.).

Discreteness

See Discontinuity and Continuity.

Discursiveness

A property of reasoning, of mediate logical thought, cognition, as distinct from sensory, immediate, and intuitive. The differentiation between the immediate (intuitive) and mediate (based on proof) is made in Plato and Aristotle, and the term Discursiveness occurs in Thomas Aquinas. Marxist philosophy recognises the importance of Discursiveness in cognition, for its analysis of forms and methods, provided chiefly by logic, gains in significance in this age of mathematical, technological, and scientific progress.

Disjunction

A logical operation forming a compound sentence by combining two sentences by means of the logical sentential connective "or". Symbolically, it is A∨B (read A or B). Classical mathematical logic differentiates between two types of Disjunction: the inclusive (conjunctive) and exclusive (disjunctive). An inclusive Disjunction forms a complex sentence, judgement or proposition which is true if at least one of its predicates is true, and false if all its component predicates are false. In common speech it coincides with the non-disjunctive meaning of the connective "or". Exclusive Disjunction forms a compound statement, judgement or proposition which is true only if one of its members is true. In common speech it coincides with the disjunctive meaning of the connective "or" (in the sense of "either... or").

Disparate

Unequal, dissimilar, separate, distinct. In 19th and 20th century logic the term Disparate is relatively seldom used, and only in relation to concepts. Concepts whose objects lack general properties, for which reason they cannot be further generalised, are termed distinct and incomparable (e.g., metal and lustre, square and ideology). Statements of difference, as in Leibniz ("heat is not the same as colour", "man and animal are not identical, although every man is an animal"), are sometimes described as Disparate. Some psychologists, such as Herbart, use the term Disparate to describe the sensations of different sense-organs, e.g., green and loud, sweet and warm.

Distinction

1. A necessary feature of every unity, the peculiarity of every thing, phenomenon, process, characterising the inherent contradictoriness of things, their development. Distinction necessarily follows from the self-movement of matter, the dialectical splitting of the single, the appearance of contradictions. The immanent origin of Distinctions and their interaction are features of the internal objective logic of evolution.

Internal Distinctions should be differentiated from the external ones, not connected directly with the development of a given concrete thing. External Distinction simply means that the given thing is distinguished from all others and appears as something independent and relatively stable. Internal Distinctions signify that in the process of its development the thing is, as it were, transformed into another, at the same time remaining itself: in this the unity of identity and Distinction is clearly revealed.

Distinction is a feature of the initial stage of contradiction, it is a "contradiction in itself", a non-unfolding, undeveloped contradiction. At the same time it is impossible to isolate the external and internal Distinctions from each other. In the process of development and isolation of the different aspects of a developing phenomenon, internal Distinctions may be transformed into external ones. On the other hand, external Distinctions serve as a necessary supplement to internal ones; they may serve as a kind of stimulus for the appearance of internal Distinctions. The insolvency of the metaphysical alienation and opposition of external and internal Distinctions; Distinction and identity are proved by the whole development of contemporary science.

2. Act of the consciousness reflecting the objective difference between things or the elements of consciousness itself (sensations, concepts, etc.). In logic, Distinction implies a method which replaces the definition of concepts (e.g., hydrogen differs from oxygen in that it burns but does not sustain combustion). The term Distinction was introduced in the Middle Ages. The scholastics used it to denote an objective difference or disparity (real Distinction, essential Distinction, causative Distinction, etc.) and differences in thought (Distinction of reason, subjective, formal, etc.). The term Distinction is also used in our time.

Division of Labour

The process of disjunction and interdependent existence of different kinds of labour activities in a single system of social production. The character and forms of the Division of Labour are determined by the development of the productive forces. And the Division of Labour itself, characterising the degree of this development, calls forth the further growth of the productivity of labour, thereby promoting improvement and replacement of the types of relations of production.

In primitive-communal society the Division of Labour appeared in the simplest form of division by sex and age; in slave-owning society cattle-breeding was singled out, handicrafts were separated from agriculture, trade became a separate branch; territorial, professional, and international Division of Labour appeared and was developed, a division was made between mental and physical labour. In the period of capitalist manufacture Division of Labour took place inside enterprises, taking the form of division according to parts or details. The latter was consolidated and deepened with the appearance of machines. In exploiter social formations the process of the Division of Labour bears a contradictory character, is interwoven with class antagonisms as is particularly evident in the example of capitalist Division of Labour, which transforms the producer into a partial worker, riveted to one labour operation for life.

Socialism utilises the inherited forms of Division of Labour purposefully and according to a plan, but begins at once to create the prerequisites for the subsequent liquidation of the old and the creation of the new, communist Division of Labour. The liquidation of the old Division of Labour becomes a necessary condition for the further growth of social production and the all-round, harmonious development of the individual, for the victory of communism. The creation of the communist Division of Labour is based upon the rapid development of the productive forces, on the achievement by society of an abundance of goods, freeing people from private interest in any single kind of occupation; it is inseparably linked up with the dying out of classes and all social inequalities. Combination of a high degree of specialisation with a broad outlook, versatile knowledge and capabilities with free choice and periodic change of activities—such is the essence of the communist Division of Labour. (See also Antithesis of Town and Country; Antithesis of Mental and Physical Labour.)

Division of the Volume of Concepts

A logical operation which reveals the volume of concepts; the separation and enumeration of species forming the volume of a concept. The practical purpose of Division of the Volume of Concepts is a systematic survey of the objects brought together in a concept. Division of the Volume of Concepts is based on a specific feature (or aggregate of features) known as the basis of Division of the Volume of Concepts. Choice of the basis depends on the purpose for which Division of the Volume of Concepts is made. For example, the concept "triangle" may be divided according to the nature of the angles into right-angled, acute-angled and obtuse-angled.

There are two basic types of Division of the Volume of Concepts: (1) division according to change of feature, wherein all species that differ with respect to the feature taken as the basis for division are listed (as in the above example) and (2) dichotomous division, wherein the volume of the concept is divided into two parts—the class of objects possessing the feature taken as the basis, and the class of objects not possessing that feature (e.g., juridical and non-juridical relations). This method of Division of the Volume of Concepts is used whenever objects possessing a common feature need to be singled out among objects not possessing that feature.

The main rules of Division of the Volume of Concepts are: complete enumeration of species and separation of species in division according to one basis (the latter preventing intersection of species). Classification is a particular case of Division of the Volume of Concepts.

Dobrolyubov, Nikolai Aleksandrovich (1836–1861)

Russian revolutionary thinker, materialist, critic, and publicist, associate of Chernyshevsky. The son of a clergyman, he finished a religious seminary in Nizhny Novgorod (1853) and the Principal Pedagogical Institute in St. Petersburg (1857). Joining the Sovremennik in 1856, he ran the department of criticism and bibliography from 1857 to 1861. His numerous articles over this period dealt with pedagogics, aesthetics, philosophy, and art, the most important being: "The Importance of Authority in Education" (1857), "The Organic Development of Man in Connection with His Mental and Moral Activities" (1858); "Russian Civilisation as Conceived by Mr. Zherebtsov" (1858); "Literary Trivia of the Past Year" (1859); "Robert Owen and His Attempts at Social Reform" (1859); "What Is Oblomovshchina?" (1859); "Realm of Darkness" (1859); "When Will the Day Come?" (1860); "Features for Characterisation of the Russian Common People" (1860); "A Ray of Light in the Realm of Darkness" (1860).

In his treatment of various philosophical problems Dobrolyubov made use of the scientific knowledge available in his time, defended the principle of the genetic universality of nature and man, and the materialist idea of the unity of mental and physiological processes in the human organism, challenged the philosophy of dualism, and opposed agnosticism and scepticism in epistemology. In this sphere he conducted a polemic against separation of "soul" from body, a dogma of the Christian religion, which the revolutionary Russian thinkers of the mid-19th century made one of their chief targets of criticism. Dobrolyubov considered Feuerbach to have originated the study of man as a whole and integral being. By referring to social problems and showing the social limitations of human actions, Dobrolyubov was in fact exposing the inadequacy of the anthropological principle. He strove to achieve historicity and defended the principle of development in nature and society.

Though by comparison with Chernyshevsky he paid less attention to the elaboration of socialist theory, he adopted basically the same positions as his teacher and worked for the development of Russia along socialist lines. Dobrolyubov made an important contribution to aesthetics. Following Belinsky he insisted that it was the social duty of literature and art to portray the "unnaturalness of social relations" in life as it was then, to define the "natural aspirations" of the people and to seek for an ideal in life. The writer's greatest virtue, according to Dobrolyubov, is the truth with which he portrays life.

While Dobrolyubov developed the proposition of "realist criticism" as a means of studying life and regarded it as his main purpose to awaken and develop Russian social awareness, he also assumed that only revolution, only revolutionary action by the common people themselves could radically change the existing system, break the autocratic machine, which was "rotten to the core", and put an end to the "dark reign" of serfdom. Dobrolyubov exposed the pseudo-radical character of liberal literary criticism. His ideal was a society in which "a man's worth would be judged by his personal qualities" and in which "each man would receive his share of material wealth in strict proportion to the amount and value of his labour".

Dogmatism

In philosophy and science, a term indicating a way of thinking based on unalterable concepts and formulae regardless of the specific conditions of space and time, i.e., ignoring the principle that truth must be concrete. The source of dogmatism is to be found in the development of religious conceptions, the demand for faith in church dogmas, which are asserted as indisputable truths, above criticism and sacred to all believers.

The supporters of classical scepticism classed all positive doctrine concerning the world as dogmatism. Kant treated all rationalist philosophy from Descartes to Wolff as "dogmatic" and offered his criticism as the alternative. In contemporary philosophy dogmatism is connected with anti-dialectical conceptions which deny the mutability and development of the world, and also with bourgeois sociology, which opposes the Marxist teaching on the development of society and the revolutionary transformation of reality.

In the working-class movement dogmatism leads to sectarianism, the rejection of creative Marxism, to subjectivism, and to loss of contact with practical life. Under present-day conditions dogmatism, along with revisionism, is a great danger to the international working-class movement. Instead of analysing the actual processes taking place in the socialist countries and in international life, the dogmatists use as arguments quotations from Marx, Engels, and Lenin, which they take out of context and misinterpret. They regard Marxism-Leninism not as a living, creative theory but as a compilation of immutable rules and principles laid down for all time.

From this standpoint they attack Marxists who have enriched theory with new propositions, conclusions and generalisations that accord with the tasks advanced by the new age, such as the propositions on "peaceful coexistence", "peaceful competition", "peaceful transition", "dictatorship of the proletariat", "state of the whole people", etc., which define the foreign policy of the socialist countries and the nature of the state in the period of the transition from socialism to communism, and also the paths of social revolution. The dogmatic rejection of these new conclusions indicates not only theoretical stagnation but also a refusal to adopt new forms of struggle against imperialism, new ways of achieving the revolutionary transformation of the world.

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor Mikhailovich (1821–1881)

Russian writer, one of the most outstanding representatives of critical realism. Of middle-class intellectual origin, he became associated with Belinsky in the forties and was influenced by utopian socialism. For taking part in the Petrashevsky circle he was sentenced to death, the sentence afterwards being commuted to penal servitude with subsequent service as a private in the army (1849–59).

From the outset Dostoyevsky was a humanist, a defender of the "humiliated and insulted". Love for the common people and hatred of social inequality and amorality were the distinctive features of his art. His world outlook contained contradictions. The defeat of the revolution of 1848 in Europe and his own personal sufferings evoked a psychological crisis, and in the theory which he developed in the sixties and seventies he asserted (in the spirit of the Neo-Slavophiles) the idea that it was the Russian people's messianic destiny to be saviours of humanity and point the way to the realisation of the "kingdom of heaven" on earth.

In this period Dostoyevsky criticised materialism and atheism and attacked the revolutionary democrats and socialism (which he envisaged in the form of egalitarian petty-bourgeois socialism). Ethical problems became his main concern. Having restricted his humanism to the spiritual liberation of the personality, Dostoyevsky was unable to achieve any higher conception than that of moral perfection of the self.

His enormous talent and sense of artistic truth enabled him to give a merciless critical analysis of Russian life and show the tragedy of the lower classes under the dual oppression of the autocracy and capitalist exploitation (Poor People, The Insulted and Humiliated, The Karamazov Brothers, etc.). As Marxist critics (Gorky, Lunacharsky, and others) have shown, this is where the objective significance of his work as a writer lies. The attempts of bourgeois philosophers (Berdyayev, Lossky, A. Maceina, J. Bohatec, etc.) to present Dostoyevsky purely as a religious mystic, personalist, existentialist, and so on, amount to little more than a crude distortion of the great legacy which he left.

Driesch, Hans Adolf Eduard (1867–1941)

German biologist, philosopher, founder of neo-vitalism (see Vitalism). In opposition to the mechanistic explanation of life Driesch put forward the thesis that the phenomena of life are based on a special immaterial "vital force", or entelechy. According to Driesch, entelechy determines the whole course of the vital processes and accounts for purpose in the Universe. Since the activity of entelechy is subject to no material laws, it cannot be explained by science. This teaching reflected Driesch's idealism and agnosticism.

Dualism

A philosophical doctrine which, in contrast to monism, regards material and spiritual substances as equal principles. Dualism is often invoked in the attempt to reconcile materialism and idealism, and the dualistic separation of consciousness from matter leads ultimately to idealism. Dualism is a prominent feature of the philosophies of Descartes and Kant. It forms the philosophical basis of the theory of psycho-physical parallelism.

Duhem, Pierre-Maurice-Marie (1861–1916)

French physicist, professor at Bordeaux University, also studied history and the philosophy of science. In his physics he embraced energism and mathematical formalism. In his philosophical works he supported the Poincaré conventionalism and the principle of economy of thought advanced by Mach, and claimed that the history of science consisted only of different, mutually exclusive theories possessing no inner continuity. His one-sided, metaphysical explanation of relativism, the relativity of knowledge, led him into idealism and agnosticism (see Idealism, Physical).

Main work: Le système du monde, published in 10 vols., 1913–59, many of them posthumously.

Dühring, Eugen Karl (1833–1921)

German philosopher and economist, professor of mechanics; son of a government official; Doctor of Berlin University (1863–74). In philosophy he was an eclectic, who tried to combine positivism, metaphysical materialism, and outspoken idealism; in political economy and sociology he expressed the ideology of the petty bourgeoisie. He opposed Marx and Engels during the period when the German Social-Democratic Party, which had been formed out of two previously independent parties (Lassalleans and Eisenachers), was rallying its ranks, and when theoretical issues had acquired special importance. Dühring's muddled and harmful views on philosophy, political economy, and socialism found support among some of the Social-Democrats.

Realising the danger Dühring's writings represented for the as yet immature German working-class movement, Engels attacked them in his well-known book Anti-Dühring. Dühring subsequently descended to anti-semitism and racism.

Main works: Kursus der Philosophie (1875), Kursus der National- und Sozial-Ökonomie (1876), Kritische Geschichte der National-Ökonomie und des Sozialismus (1875).

Duns Scotus, John (c. 1265–1308)

Franciscan monk, prominent representative of medieval scholasticism. Born in Scotland; taught at Oxford and Paris universities. In the words of Marx, Duns Scotus "forced theology itself to preach materialism". (Marx and Engels, Selected Works, Vol. 2, p. 172.)

An opponent of Thomas Aquinas, he strove to separate philosophy and theology, arguing that it is impossible to find rational grounds for the idea of creation from nothing and admitting that reason is dependent on the will. In his view God is absolute freedom. In the medieval controversy over the universals he advocated nominalism. To stress the primacy of singulars he invented the term "haecceitas" ("thisness"), that which constitutes individual difference.

He introduced the concept of "intention" and "species intelligibiles" and was the first to contrast concrete meaning (the term is his) with abstract meaning. He also established the well-known postulate of modern mathematics "From falsehood anything may follow". In logic, he defined two universal quantifiers: (1) "omnis" in the sense of "each", all taken one after the other and (2) "unusquisque" in the sense of "any", whichever one takes (a higher form of abstraction).

Durkheim, Émile (1858–1917)

French sociologist and positivist philosopher, disciple of Comte, professor at the Sorbonne. Durkheim maintained that sociology should study society as a particular kind of spiritual reality whose laws differed from those of the individual psychology. Every society, according to Durkheim, is based on commonly understood collective ideas; the scientist is concerned with social facts, collective ideas (law, morality, religion, sentiment, habit, etc.), which are forced upon the human consciousness by the social environment.

Durkheim attributed social development to three factors: density of population, development of means of communication, and collective consciousness. Every society is characterised by social solidarity. In primitive society, solidarity was "mechanical", since it was based on ties of blood. In the modern world, solidarity is "organic", since it is based on the division of labour, i.e., on class co-operation for acquisition of the necessities of life. Durkheim considered religion to be an important factor in the life of society. Changing its forms according to the stage of development reached by society, religion would exist as long as man exists, because in religion society deified itself.

Main works: De la division du travail social (1893), Les règles de la méthode sociologique (1895), Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse (1912).

Duty

An ethical category denoting the moral necessity to perform certain obligations. Unlike idealism, which seeks the source of duty in the "absolute idea" (Hegel), in autonomous "practical reason" (Kant), and so on, Marxist ethics considers that obligations have an objective character. They are determined by man's place in the system of social relations, and proceed from the course of history and the demands of social progress. This accounts for various forms of duty: duty to humanity as a whole, to the Party, military duty, civic and family duty, etc.

By entering into certain relations a person assumes obligations. His awareness of them is his understanding and sense of duty. In a society divided into antagonistic classes duty is closely connected with class interests. In socialist society civic duty is based on the interests of the struggle for communism. The moral code of the builder of communism (see Moral Code) includes a high awareness of social duty and refusal to tolerate any breach of this duty. The performance of duty gives meaning to the life and work of the individual, and provides the highest satisfaction of conscience.

Individualist and philistine aspirations impoverish the personality. The spiritual richness of the personality depends on the richness of its actual relations, thus it depends on obligations. The fulfilment of real (not imaginary) duty is good (see Good and Evil). A characteristic feature of many modern ethical systems is that they are divorced from the needs of social development, from the interests, the good of society.

Dynamic Stereotype

A concept in the teaching of Pavlov on higher nervous activity, denoting the mobile, recurrent, complex system of conditioned reflexes developed by the body in the process of life. Dynamic stereotype takes shape under the influence of enduring conditions of life which succeed each other in a definite order (wakefulness succeeds sleep, one action succeeds another, etc.). As a result, a balanced system of interconnected conditioned reflexes is formed.

The stereotyped succession of conditioned reflexes systematises and thus eases the work of the cerebral cortex, ensuring economy in the expenditure of nervous energy and facilitating the formation of new conditioned reflexes on the basis of the already developed dynamic stereotype. Any sharp change in the way of life and in activities disarranges the established dynamic stereotype and adversely affects higher nervous activity, leading frequently to the development of neuroses.

Balanced operation of the dynamic stereotype is accompanied by positive emotions, such as a sense of satisfaction, joy, vigour, while violation of the dynamic stereotype causes reverse emotions of distress, anxiety, despair, etc. From this point of view, success in an undertaking depends to a considerable extent on the organisation, regularity and rhythm of the work.