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Eclecticism

A systemless confusion of different, very often diametrically opposed points of view, philosophical views, theoretical premises, political assessments, etc. It is exemplified by various attempts to marry materialism to idealism, to combine Marxism and empirio-criticism, dialectical materialism and Kantianism, and so on. Eclecticism is also typical of modern revisionism.

The chief methodological mistake of eclecticism is its inability to single out the principal connections of an object, or of a phenomenon, with its environment at a given moment, the mechanical combination of different qualities and aspects of objects or phenomena out of the sum total of connections and relations of the objective world. In practice and politics eclecticism leads to errors and miscalculations, because it hinders the search for the main link in the chain of events and the adoption of appropriate measures in deciding the most urgent problems of a concrete historical period.

Economism

An opportunist trend in Russian Social-Democracy at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. The Economists endeavoured to limit the tasks of the working-class movement to economic struggle (improving conditions of labour, raising wages, etc.). They believed that political struggle should be conducted by the liberal bourgeoisie. They denied the role of the Party of the working class and its revolutionary theory. They preached spontaneity in the labour movement.

Being a variety of revisionism, Economism served as a vehicle of bourgeois influence upon the proletariat. The dissemination of Economism hampered the creation of a centralized proletarian party.

Lenin's newspaper, Iskra, was greatly responsible for exposing the unsoundness of Economism, and Lenin's What Is to Be Done? (1902) routed it ideologically.

Economics and Politics (their interaction)

Politics is the most important component part of the superstructure, the reflection of the economic system dominant in a given society. The interests of this or that class find their concentrated expression in politics. Politics, being a reflection of economics, in its turn exerts great influence upon the latter. Politics has precedence over economics, because the given class can neither establish nor maintain its economic rule without political power.

In the building of socialism a correct policy of the Marxist-Leninist Party is an indispensable condition for success. Given this condition, i.e., the correct policy having been worked out and being implemented, the centre of gravity in the building of the new society is shifted to the organisation of economy, and the problems of account and control and production management come into the foreground. In the rough copy of his article "The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Power", Lenin wrote: "The task of administering the state which has come to the forefront in the activity of the Soviet power is yet another feature which means that at present and perhaps for the first time in recent history we have such administration in which economics, and not politics, acquires priority."

The development of economy in socialist society does not proceed spontaneously as in capitalist society, but in a planned way, based on the conscious application of economic laws. This gives the socialist state new functions, those of economic organisation and cultural development and education. The importance of these functions steadily grows in the course of communist construction.

Economy of Thought, Principle of

A subjective-idealist proposition, according to which the criterion of the truth of any knowledge consists in achieving the maximum knowledge with the minimum means of cognition. The term was introduced by E. Mach (Das Prinzip der Erhaltung der Arbeit, 1872) and by R. Avenarius (Philosophie als Denken der Welt gemäss dem Prinzip des kleinsten Kraftmasses, 1876). It spread among modern philosophers under the names of "principle of simplicity", "principle of economy", and others.

Lenin in his Materialism and Empirio-Criticism severely criticised the Principle of Economy of Thought as idealistic, because the truth of scientific propositions is not determined by the economy of thought but by the correspondence of concepts with the objective world.

Eddington, Arthur Stanley (1882–1944)

British physicist and astrophysicist; science populariser; in philosophy he was a prominent representative of modern "physical" idealism. His main interest was the problem of the structure and movement of stars, the theory of relativity and cosmology.

Eddington called his philosophical views, which developed under the influence of Kant, Russell and logical positivism, "selective subjectivism" or "structuralism". He held that the laws and constants of physics could be deduced from a priori epistemological ideas without recourse to experiment. This led him to Pythagorean numeral mystics.

Effect

See Causality.

Effectivism (or semi-intuitionism)

One of the trends in mathematical philosophy that tries to limit modern mathematics to what has received effective mathematical proof. All that which can be understood without any ambiguity by all mathematicians is considered by the effectivists as belonging to mathematics. All the rest they regard as being, for the present, outside mathematics (as distinguished from intuitionism, whose exponents completely discard all this material as extraneous to mathematics).

The effectivists hold subjective-idealistic views on the subject of mathematics and on the criterion of the truth-value of its concepts, arguments, and theories. The noted French mathematicians E. Borel, H. Lebesgue, and others, shared their views.

Ego (in philosophy)

The central notion of idealistic systems declaring the subject to be the primary active and regulating factor. In such systems Ego is understood to be an absolutely independent bearer of spiritual abilities.

Beginning with Descartes, the notion of Ego was associated with the problem of the "origin" in the construction of philosophical systems. According to Descartes, Ego, the intuitive principle of rational thought, belongs to the thinking substance. Hume, rejecting any substance, reduced it to a bundle of perceptions. Kant counterposed the pure Ego to the individual empirical Ego, considering it as the transcendental unity of apperception and the vehicle of the categorical imperative. Fichte considered Ego to be the absolutely creative principle which posits itself and all existence as its "non-Ego". Hegel, as an objective idealist, refuted all these attempts at taking Ego as the beginning and tried to explain Ego as a pure unity of objective self-consciousness.

The absolutisation of Ego finds its expression in the latest subjective-idealist trends (e.g., empirio-criticism, neo-positivism, existentialism). The extreme form of the subjective-idealistic view of Ego is solipsism. Freud (see Freudism) biologises man and divides him into "Ego" and "super-Ego".

Marxism opposes the materialistic notion of man to the irrationalist explanation of Ego. Marxism sees the essence of the human Ego exclusively in social relations and proves that man (the individual) crowns the development of nature as a whole, precisely because he is the only creator of his social relations, of the entire material and spiritual culture.

Egoism

A mode of behaviour, centring on personal interest, but not on that of others, or of society. Egoism is intimately connected with individualism. The German philosopher Stirner, among others, attempted to justify egoism scientifically. In socialist society egoism is a vice and a survival of capitalism.

Einstein, Albert (1879–1955)

German physicist, founder of the theory of relativity and a number of other physical theories, which led to new notions of space, time, motion, substance, light, gravity. In 1905, he formulated the theory of Brownian motion, i.e., the movement of small bodies floating in liquid under the influence of bombardment by molecules. This theory was a convincing proof of the reality of molecules and their movement. In the same year Einstein arrived at the notion of particles of light, quanta of light or photons. Einstein's first work on the special theory of relativity was also published in 1905. In 1916, Einstein formulated the idea of the general theory of relativity.

The fascist terror forced him to quit Germany. He settled in Princeton (USA). In the 30s and 40s, Einstein tried to create a unified theory of field, explaining the nature of not only gravitational but also of other fields.

Einstein's philosophical views were very close to those of Spinoza's. Absolute denial of the existence of God, denial of any non-material substance, conviction of the objectivity and knowability of the world and the causal interdependence of all processes of nature—these were the main principles of his world outlook. Einstein opposed Kant's apriorism and the views of Poincaré and others concerning the "conditionality" of scientific truth. Initially Einstein sympathised with Mach, but later completely rejected Machism, and in 1920, he called Mach a "poor philosopher". Although Einstein made idealistic mistakes in some problems of cognition, he nevertheless definitely rejected logical positivism and the attempts at a positivist treatment of quantum mechanics.

In his sociopolitical views Einstein opposed social oppression, militarism, and reaction and resolutely denounced the use of atomic energy for war purposes.

Eleatics

Exponents of an ancient Greek philosophical school which shaped in the town of Elea (Southern Italy), 6th and 5th centuries B.C. The idealistic trend inherent in the philosophy of Eleatics developed with the school. Its main representatives were Xenophanes, Parmenides, Zeno of Elea, and Melissus of Samos (5th century B.C.).

The Eleatic school put forward the teaching on the immutable essence of true being and the illusoriness of all visible changes and differences to counter the spontaneous dialectical views of the Milesian school and Heraclitus, on the changeable primary basis of things. This position involved a certain belittling of sensual experience as a basis of knowledge and served later as one of the sources of Plato's idealism.

The arguments of the Eleatics against dialectics (particularly the aporia of Zeno), notwithstanding their metaphysical conclusions, played a positive role in the subsequent development of dialectics. They posed the problem of expressing in logical concepts the contradictoriness of motion.

Element

A concept denoting primary particles of matter, combinations of which form the diversity of objects of the material world. The concept Element inevitably arises in the process of historical cognition of nature, and it reflects the level of human knowledge on the structure of matter. With the development of science this concept changes and enriches its content.

The ancient Greek materialists considered that the single cosmic element was either water (Thales) or air (Anaximenes), or fire (Heraclitus). Democritus and later Epicurus put forward the teaching on atoms as the tiniest indivisible particles of matter.

In the development of the science of matter there has always been a contradiction between the desire of natural scientists to find the simplest elements of matter and the absence of such particles in nature because of the infiniteness and inexhaustibility of matter. The great natural science discoveries at the end of the 19th century undermined the prevalent idea on the existence of primary and structureless particles of matter. Modern physics has shown the intricacy of the structure of electrons, neutrons, and other elementary particles, and thus confirmed the dialectical-materialistic view, according to which there are no absolutely simple and indivisible elements in nature (matter). "The electron is as inexhaustible as the atom, nature is infinite." (Lenin, Vol. 14, p. 262.)

Elementary Particles

The simplest microobjects known at present, which interact as an integral entity in all known processes. The stable Elementary Particles include gravitons (hypothetical quanta of the gravitational field), photons, neutrinos, anti-neutrinos, electrons, positrons, protons, and anti-protons. The mesons of different masses, the neutrons, anti-neutrons, hyperons, antihyperons disintegrate into stable particles when they are in a free state. At present over 30 Elementary Particles are known.

Almost every particle has its corresponding anti-particle, possessing the same mass, spin and lifetime, but it has an opposite electric charge, magnetic momentum, strangeness, and other qualities. Elementary Particles are not the ultimate "bricks" of the Universe; matter is inexhaustible, all levels of its organisation possess a complicated structure and none of them can be considered as the simplest, indivisible elements of the world.

Inexhaustible varieties of qualities and interactions are inherent in Elementary Particles. They are inseparable from various material fields which are part and parcel of their structure. Owing to their inseparable connection with the fields Elementary Particles possess at the same time corpuscular and wave properties.

The most important characteristics of Elementary Particles are their interconvertibility; the decay of unstable particles, the transformation of particles and anti-particles into photons and other elementary particles. All these prove their extraordinarily complicated structure. The processes of the decay of particles must not be considered as a disintegration of a mechanical system into its component elements, as if they were included in the system ready-made. They are qualitative transformations of Elementary Particles from one form into another, giving rise to new particles possessing the same degree of complication.

Owing to their interactions among themselves and with different fields, Elementary Particles undergo uninterrupted inner transformations and their properties are statistically average in time. Contemporary theoretical and experimental studies in the physics of Elementary Particles have as their object to elucidate their specific structure, to reveal the laws by which the values of their properties, their interactions and types of transformation are explained.

Elida-Eretrean School

One of the Socratic schools which existed during the 4th and 3rd centuries B.C., founded, according to Plato, by Phaedo of Elida, Socrates' favourite. Later the school was transferred by Menedemus (disciple of Stilpo) to Eretrea. No original works of this school are extant. We know about it mostly from the works of Cicero and Diogenes Laertius.

The Elida-Eretrean School was very close to the Megarian school. Followers of the Elida-Eretrean School studied mainly ethical problems. Menedemus declared that all the different virtues are one in their foundation and, therefore, can all be reduced to one single good, which is truth, comprehended by reason. Menedemus is also credited with the view that the general properties of things do not exist independently, but only appear in individual concrete things. Other exponents of this school were Anchipil and Asclepiades.

Elimination (Ger. Aufhebung)

A term widely used in Hegel's philosophy, denoting the simultaneous destruction and preservation of something. Hegel uses the term Elimination to characterise the movement of the abstract categories in logic. According to the triad, the highest category, synthesis, eliminates, i.e., destroys the antithesis in the movement of thought. However, the higher category preserves all the positive content of the preceding categories, but in a transformed state.

With Hegel Elimination is abstract and logical and serves as a means for building a system of categories. It acts as a formal means of resolving contradictions and in fact reconciling them.

In dialectical materialism the term Elimination is used in describing successive continuity in development and in characterising the relation of a lower phenomenon to a higher one. For instance, mechanical movement is said to be included in the biological form of the motion of matter in an "eliminated" form.

Emergent Evolution

An idealistic theory of development; it spread in modern Anglo-American philosophy, particularly among the representatives of neo-realism. Chief exponents of Emergent Evolution are: S. Alexander, S. Lloyd Morgan, C.D. Broad. Emergent Evolution appeared in the 1920s to counter materialistic dialectics. It aims to "explain" development by leaps and bounds, the emergence of the new, etc.

The theoreticians of Emergent Evolution interpret the processes of change as irrational acts, logically incomprehensible, and finally admit the existence of a deity. This theory leads to a denial of natural and historical laws. For Lloyd Morgan all nature is sublimated: there is no physical without psychical. Samuel Alexander declares that immaterial "space-time" is the prime foundation of nature and that matter is its product. According to him, immaterial "point-moments" serve as the primary elements of nature. Broad openly defends vitalism and transmigration of souls.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803–1882)

American philosopher, journalist and poet, leader of the transcendentalists. Born into a family of a Unitarian minister; in 1821, he graduated from Harvard College, prepared to take holy orders, but broke with the church. From 1835, he lived in Concord.

His views were contradictory. He was greatly influenced by Plato, Carlyle and the English Romantic poet W. Wordsworth. According to Emerson, the "eternal problem" of philosophy consists in the relation of spirit and matter. He decides this problem as an objective idealist: "Nature is the symbol of the soul." (Works, Vol. I, 1901, p. 27.) The highest synthetical principle of being is the oversoul. In epistemology, Emerson is close to intuitionism; contemplation, intuition and ecstasy are the best means to penetrate to the essence of things.

Beauty is everywhere in the world; its fundamental features are harmony, perfection, and spirituality. "The creation of beauty is an art." (Ibid., p. 26.) Great men play the decisive role in history; they promote social progress, which consists in the moral perfection of the individual.

Emerson remarked that the struggle and antagonism of interests between the rich and the poor on Earth is eternal. His sympathies were for the poor. He severely criticised the bourgeois regime and opposed slavery in the USA and predatory wars. Towards the end of his life Emerson turned to mysticism.

Main works: Nature (1835), Essays (1841, 1844), Representative Men (1850).

Emotions

Man's feelings, expressing his attitude towards the surrounding world (towards people, their actions, phenomena) and towards himself. Brief feelings (joy, sorrow, etc.) are at times called Emotions in the narrow sense of the word as distinct from stable and lasting feelings of love, hatred, etc.

Emotions are a specific form of reflection of reality; they mirror the relations of people to one another and also to the objective world. Man's Emotions are shaped by society and play a tremendous part in his behaviour and his practical and cognitive activity. Without human emotions, Lenin said, there has never been, cannot be, and will not be any human search for truth.

Emotions are indications of the success or failure of man's activity, the conformity or non-conformity of objects or phenomena to his needs and interests. Hence Emotions have an essential role in regulating the activity of people. Emotions can be active (sthenic), with a positive emotional tone—satisfaction (joy, etc.) or passive (asthenic), with a negative emotional tone—dissatisfaction (sorrow, etc.). Sthenic Emotions stimulate man's vital activity, asthenic Emotions reduce it.

Emotions are divided into specific types: mood, affection, and passion. A mood is an emotional state (joyous, depressive, etc.) which lasts longer than an affect and imparts a definite emotional tone and colouring to all feelings and also to man's thoughts and actions. Passion is a strong and long-lasting Emotion.

A special group of Emotions consists of elevated feelings: moral (feeling of collectivism, sense of duty, sense of honour), aesthetic (feeling for the beautiful), and intellectual (Emotions associated with the satisfaction of cognitive interests or with the solution of intellectual problems).

Emotivism

A subjective theory of morality, in which the influence of logical positivism in ethics is most pronounced. The main exponents of Emotivism are Ayer, Carnap, Reichenbach, and Charles Stevenson.

Studying moral judgements containing mere appreciations and demands, the emotivists conclude that these judgements "describe" nothing in reality, that they are but an expression of the speaker's moral emotions, of his approval or disapproval of a given act. The emotivists hold that moral judgements can neither be substantiated nor proved, that they are "arbitrary". They consider everybody to be free to choose any point of view in morals. Moreover, they declare that contradictory moral estimates do not logically contradict each other, because it is impossible to refute estimates which seem to be incorrect.

Emotivism is an extreme nihilistic and sceptical theory of morality. It justifies arbitrariness in behaviour and in moral convictions.

Empedocles of Agrigentum (c. 483–423 B.C.)

Greek materialist philosopher from Sicily, ideologist of slave-holding democracy. In his philosophical poem On Nature he reduced the whole diversity of things to four elements: earth, water, air, and fire. This doctrine of the four elements of nature was retained for many years in ancient and medieval philosophy.

The union and division of the elements were explained by the action of two opposing forces: attraction and repulsion ("amity and enmity"). Empedocles explains the different stages of the development of the Universe by the prevalence of one or the other of these forces. Empedocles' assumption that the law-governed evolution of living beings is brought about by natural selection of the more viable combinations had great historic significance.

Empiricism

A teaching on the theory of knowledge which holds that sensory experience is the only source of knowledge and affirms that all knowledge is founded on experience and is obtained through experience.

Idealistic Empiricism (Berkeley, Hume, Mach, Avenarius, Bogdanov, modern logical empiricism, etc.), limits experience to the sum total of sensations or notions, denying that experience is based on the objective world. Materialistic Empiricism (Francis Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, the 18th century French materialists) holds that the objectively existing outer world is the origin of sensory experience.

However, the basic antithesis between Empiricism and rationalism does not follow from the origin or source of knowledge: some rationalists agree that nothing exists in reason which has been lacking previously in the senses. The main point of disagreement is that Empiricism deduces the general and necessary character of knowledge not from reason, but from experience. Under the influence of rationalism, some empiricists (like Hobbes and Hume) arrived at the conclusion that experience cannot impart to knowledge any necessary and general meaning.

Empiricism's shortcomings are: metaphysical exaggeration of the role of experience, underestimation of the role of scientific abstractions and theories in knowledge, and denial of the active role and relative independence of thought. Marxist philosophy overcame these shortcomings by studying all problems of the theory of knowledge from the standpoint of the dialectics of practice (see Knowledge; Theory and Practice; Contemplation).

Empirio-Criticism ("criticism of experience"), or Machism

A subjective-idealistic trend, founded by Avenarius and Mach. Considering "economy of thought" (see Economy of Thought, Principle of) as the basic law of knowledge, Empirio-Criticism "purifies" the understanding of experience from the concepts of matter (substance), necessity, causality, etc., as "a priori apperceptions" (rational concepts) which, according to Empirio-Criticism are wrongly introduced into experience.

As a result, Empirio-Criticism advances the concept of the world as the sum total of "neutral elements", or sensations. By introducing the doctrine of the "principal co-ordination", i.e., the inseverable connection between subject and object, Empirio-Criticism was transformed into a system of subjective idealism.

Empirio-Criticism is a revival of the doctrines of Berkeley and Hume, disguised by the demand for neutrality in philosophy. Empirio-Criticism was also connected with the crisis in physics, with the school of "physical" idealism. Criticising Empirio-Criticism in his Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, Lenin showed the connection of this philosophical trend with fideism.

Empirio-Criticism appears as a variety of positivism ("second positivism"). Proponents of Empirio-Criticism, besides Avenarius and Mach, were V. Petzoldt, F. Carstanjen, R. Willy, F. Adler, A. Bogdanov, V. Bazarov, etc. The "anti-metaphysical" doctrine of Empirio-Criticism was continued by neopositivism.

Empirio-Monism

The name given by Bogdanov to his philosophy, which was a variety of empirio-criticism, or Machism. Empirio-Monism is built upon Mach's subjective-idealistic views on the neutrality of the elements of experience (i.e., sensations) in regard to the physical and the psychical.

In Bogdanov's view, the philosophy of Avenarius and Mach is dualistic (see Dualism), because it admits that the psychical and physical elements of experience are independent of each other, and experience must be interpreted monistically. This explains the name of his theory, "empirio-monism".

To Empirio-Monism everything is organised experience (understood as "neutral" sensory data, i.e., idealistically). The physical world is experience organised socially and collectively, and the psychical world is experience organised individually. From these definitions follows the solution of other problems: objectivity, according to Empirio-Monism, is identified with general meaning; causality, space and time express the social organisation of experience; truth (in the understanding of which Bogdanov leaned to relativism) is the "living, organising form of experience"; man is a complex of direct experiences, etc.

Analysing psyche from the standpoint of energism, Empirio-Monism attributed essential significance to psychic selection (biological adaptation of the organism to its surroundings) and the method of substitution. The latter means that it is always possible to substitute a psychical fact for an unknown physical or physiological one, or vice versa, i.e., to reduce the material to the ideal. Empirio-Monism puts the sign of equality between social being and social consciousness and defends idealism in history.

Empirio-Monism was criticised by Lenin in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, and by Plekhanov.

Empirio-Symbolism

A term used by the idealist Yushkevich to denote his variety of empirio-criticism. The main idea in Empirio-Symbolism is that concepts (truth, being, essence, etc.) are only symbols, they do not reflect anything real. This idea was taken from Poincaré and Mach, who considered, for example, that matter is only a logical symbol.

In his article, "Contemporary Energism", published in the Machist collection Ocherki po filosofii marksisma (Essays on the Philosophy of Marxism), 1908, and in the book Materialism i kritichesky realism (Materialism and Critical Realism), 1908, Yushkevich tried to prove that the world is but an aggregate of empirio-symbols (i.e., symbols of experience), the purpose of which is to systematise the data of collective human consciousness.

In Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, Lenin showed that Empirio-Symbolism is subjective idealism, in which the outside world and its laws are regarded only as symbols of man's capacity for knowledge.

Encyclopaedists

Compilers and authors of the Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire Raisonné des Sciences, des Arts et des Métiers (1751-80). This work played a great role in the ideological preparation of the French bourgeois revolution. It gave a systematic summary of the scientific knowledge of the time. Up to 1772, Diderot, assisted by d'Alembert, was at the head of the Encyclopédie. Other Encyclopaedists were Montesquieu, Rousseau, Voltaire, Helvétius, Holbach. The materialists of the Encyclopédie were the most consistent fighters against feudal ideology; the moderate members came out against interference of the Church in science, declaring themselves to be the defenders of social progress, criticised despotism and advocated emancipation of man from class oppression.

Energism

A philosophical conception which appeared at the end of the 19th century among some natural scientists. The followers of Energism explain all phenomena of nature by changes in energy which is devoid of materiality. Wilhelm Ostwald, Mach, and other followers developed the energetical interpretation of natural science, denied the scientific value of the atomistic theory. Later, influenced by the success of the atomistic theory of the 20th century, they had to recognise the existence of the atoms. The ideas of atomism penetrated even the physical doctrine of energy. It was discovered that energy could be converted into small portions—quanta.

The ideas of Energism, however, reappeared but in a less systematic form in connection with the new data provided by nuclear physics and the physics of elementary particles. In particular, the discoveries of the mass defect, and of the possibility of transforming pairs of particles into a field, and vice versa, were interpreted as mere transformations of matter into energy and vice versa. These "energetical" arguments were supported by references to the law of the interconnection of mass and energy (E=mc²), which was explained as a theoretical foundation of this possibility.

The epistemological roots of Energism are found, on the one hand, in the successes achieved by the energetical method in natural science and, on the other, in the difficulties facing the contemporary theory on the structure of matter. Energism, as a philosophical trend, revives whenever science is confronted with the task of penetrating deeper into the structural level of matter. Ostwald's Energism reflected the vacillations of scientific thought in the search for the then unknown ways of cognising the atomic structure of matter. Contemporary Energism is beset by the difficulties which physics encounters in cognising the structure of the elementary particles.

Energy

The common measure of the various forms of the motion of matter. Qualitatively different forms of the physical motion of matter have the property of being convertible into each other, this process of conversion being controlled by strictly defined quantitative equivalents. This makes it possible to establish the common measure of motion—Energy as such. In the system of physical theory Energy is expressed in various forms: mechanical, thermal, electromagnetic, nuclear, gravitational, etc. Each form of Energy determines the essential characteristics of a given physical form of motion in terms of its convertibility into any other form of motion, the quantity of motion remaining invariable.

Engels, Frederick (1820–1895)

Leader of the proletariat, who, together with Marx, created the Marxist doctrine, the theory of scientific communism, the theory of dialectical and historical materialism. He was born in the town of Barmen (Germany). From his youth Engels strove to take part in the struggle for transforming the existing social relations. From the autumn of 1841, Engels did his military service in Berlin, attending the lectures at the university in his free time. Then he joined the Left wing of the Young Hegelians. It was at this time that Engels wrote his brilliant and profound criticism of Schelling's reactionary-mystical views (Schelling und die Offenbarung, 1842, and others). At the same time he criticised Hegel for his conservative conclusions and the contradictions in his idealistic dialectics.

In England, where he went in deference to his father's wish to study commerce, Engels' views took a radical turn. There, in the then most developed capitalist country, he came in contact with the life of the working class. This made him think deeply on the causes of the unbearable economic conditions of the proletarians, and their deprivation of political rights. He began to study the shortcomings which the Chartist movement revealed in its ideology and its utopian ideas about the capitalists voluntarily abdicating their power. The result of this study were his works: A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1844), which Marx called a brilliant contribution to the critique of economic categories and The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845). In these works Engels demonstrated the great future of the proletariat and the historic mission it would fulfil. He was the first to show that the proletariat was not only a suffering class but also a class struggling for its emancipation. In England he became a socialist.

Soon he left England, and in 1844, he met Marx in Paris. This meeting marked the beginning of their deep friendship, which was based on their common ideas and joint struggle for the emancipation of the proletariat from capitalist enslavement. During the years 1844-46 they jointly wrote The Holy Family and The German Ideology. The aim of these works was a new critical approach to the then dominant philosophical views of Hegel, Feuerbach, and their followers. Marx and Engels elaborated the foundations of dialectical and historical materialism. At the same time they worked intensely for the practical organisation of the Communist League which later developed into a revolutionary party of the proletariat. In 1847, Engels wrote the draft programme of this League—Principles of Communism. On the basis of this they wrote the Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848), proclaiming the birth of the integral teaching of Marxism, the scientific ideology of the working class.

The journalistic activity of Engels played an important role in disseminating the theory of the proletarian struggle and consolidating the democratic forces. Engels got his baptism of fire fighting on the side of the revolutionary forces in Germany during the events of 1848-49. After the defeat of the revolution he left Germany. The following years, living in emigration, he generalised the experiences of the German revolution in the works Peasant War in Germany and Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany. These works disclosed the role of the peasantry as the proletariat's ally and exposed the treachery of the bourgeoisie.

Having moved to England, where Marx had also settled, Engels actively joined the workers' movement in the creation of the First International and the struggle against petty-bourgeois opportunistic and anarchistic views. For the next forty years Engels helped Marx in every way with the latter's work on Capital. Engels himself edited the second and the third volumes, after the death of his friend. For this editing work he did a great deal of research.

While Marx was completely occupied with his work on Capital Engels continued to work hard on the development of dialectical and historical materialism. Such works of Engels as Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, Anti-Dühring, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, etc., are a classical presentation of the essence and significance of Marxist philosophy. Engels rendered particularly great service in applying the ideas of dialectical materialism to natural science (see Dialectics of Nature, Ludwig Feuerbach, Anti-Dühring).

Engels foresaw many scientific discoveries of the 20th century (for instance, the notion of the indivisibility of matter and motion, and the consequent teaching on the unity of time and space; the inexhaustibility of the forms of matter and the complex structure of atoms; criticism of the theory of "thermal death" of the Universe; of life as a form of the motion of matter arising at a given stage of development of inorganic nature; etc.). Engels' versatility enabled him to work out a harmonious system for classifying the sciences, basing the distinctions between disciplines on the objective forms of motion of matter. Proceeding from this, Engels categorically refused to impose upon philosophy the inappropriate role of science of sciences and emphasised its methodological value.

Engels provided philosophy with a means of orientation among the innumerable schools and systems of the past, formulated the fundamental problem of philosophy, and disclosed its class character. His contribution to the development of the theory of knowledge and his criticism of agnosticism are of great importance. He raised and elaborated a number of problems of dialectical logic. In substantiating the fundamental problems of historical materialism he devoted much attention to the criticism of vulgar conceptions of the materialistic understanding of history. Engels proved that the decisive role of the economic conditions in which people live does not in any way detract from the role of ideas or the role of the individual in history. He fought against the mechanistic views of the connections and interrelation between the basis and the ideological superstructure, etc.

Engels took a great interest in the revolutionary movement in Russia, foretelling the imminent Russian revolution and placing great hopes in it. To the very end of his life he participated in the political life of Europe and, together with Marx, was a recognised leader of the working-class movement.

Enlightenment

A socio-political trend, the representatives of which tried to correct the shortcomings of the existing society, to change its morals and manners, politics and mode of life by spreading the ideas of goodness, justice, and scientific knowledge. At the base of Enlightenment lay the idealistic assumption that consciousness plays the decisive role in the development of society, the desire to account for social vices by men's ignorance and lack of understanding of their own nature. The Enlighteners did not take into account the decisive significance of the economic conditions of development and hence could not reveal the objective laws of society. The Enlighteners addressed their preachings to all classes and strata of society, but mainly to those in power.

Enlightenment was widespread in the period of the preparation of bourgeois revolutions. Among the Enlighteners were Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Herder, Lessing, Schiller, Goethe, Desnitsky, Kozelsky, and many others. Their activities considerably helped to undermine the influence of the clerical and feudal ideology. The Enlighteners struggled resolutely not only against the church, but also against religious dogmatics, against the scholastic methods of thinking. Enlightenment exerted considerable influence upon the formation of the sociological outlook of the 18th century. The ideas of Enlightenment influenced the utopian socialists, Russian Narodniks. At the present time Enlightenment is not an influential trend of social thought; its ideas, however, are still current among the non-Marxist intelligentsia.

Entelechy

In Aristotle's philosophy and scholasticism a realised aim (see Teleology) or the active principle of converting possibility into actuality. The idealistic explanation of biological phenomena rests on the notion of Entelechy (see Driesch; Vitalism).

Enthymeme

In traditional formal logic, a deductive conclusion (syllogisms, conditional and disjunctive conclusions), in which one of the parts, either a premiss or the conclusion, is not explicitly stated. For example, in the Enthymeme "all Marxists are materialists, therefore this man is also a materialist", the minor premiss of the syllogism ("this man is a Marxist") is left out.

Entropy

One of the main notions of classical physics, introduced into science by R. Clausius. According to the macroscopic point of view, Entropy expresses the convertibility of energy: the greater the Entropy of a system the less its energy is able to convert. It is the notion of Entropy that allows us to formulate one of the fundamental laws of physics, the law of the increase of Entropy, or the second principle of thermodynamics, which determines the direction of the conversion of energy. Entropy cannot decrease in a closed system. The achievement of maximum Entropy is marked by a state of balance, in which no further conversion of energy is possible—all the energy has been transformed into heat and a state of thermal balance has set in.

The authors of the second principle, R. Clausius and W. Thomson, applied it to the Universe as a whole and arrived at the erroneous conclusion that "thermal death" of the Universe is inevitable. Subsequent development in physics deepened the content of Entropy and disclosed its statistical nature. In terms of statistical physics, Entropy expresses the probability of a state of a system and the growth of Entropy implies the transition of a system from less probable states to more probable ones. The growth of Entropy is not absolute, it only expresses the most probable development of processes.

For macroscopic systems consisting of a great number of particles, the growth of Entropy is indispensable; but for microscopic processes (e.g., for the Brownian movement), the second principle is no longer valid. The statistical explanation of Entropy limits the sphere of the second principle to macroscopic processes, showing that it is inapplicable not only to systems with a small number of particles (microsystems), but also to systems with an infinitely large number of particles (the Universe as a whole). For such systems the concept of the most probable state loses its meaning (in infinitely large systems all states are equally probable), and therefore the law of the transition of a system from a less probable state to a more probable one loses its meaning. Modern science shows the complete groundlessness of the conclusions on the allegedly inevitable thermal balance and "thermal death" of the Universe.

Epicheirema

A syllogistic conclusion whose premisses are enthymemes. Epicheirema is a variety of the complex abbreviated syllogism. Epicheirema may be exemplified by the following reasoning: P is inherent in all M, because N is inherent in all M (it is implied that P is inherent in all N). M is inherent in some S, because R is inherent in some S (it is implied that M is inherent in all R). Consequently, P is inherent in some S.

Epictetus (c. 50-138 A.D.)

An exponent of Roman stoicism. His teaching was written down by Arrian Flavius, his learned disciple. The Discourses of Epictetus and other works have come down to us. Epictetus' teaching is divided into physics, logic, and ethics. The whole pathos of his teaching lies in his ethics, particularly his preaching of inner freedom. He argues that the master can be a slave to his passion, and the slave is free in his inner spiritual independence; this freedom, however, cannot be obtained by changing the world. Not things themselves but the notions a man has of them make him happy; the good and the bad are not inherent in things, but lie in our attitudes toward them. That is why to be happy is a matter of will.

The philosophy of Epictetus expressed the passive protest of the oppressed against the system of slavery. This philosophy influenced Christianity. In Russia it was preached by the Tolstoians.

Epicurus (341–270 B.C.)

Greek materialist philosopher and atheist of the Hellenic period. Epicurus denied the interference of the gods in the affairs of the world and proceeded from recognition of the eternity of matter, which possesses an inner source of motion. Epicurus revived the atomism of Leucippus and Democritus, adding his own changes. He introduced the idea of spontaneous (internally conditioned) "deviation" of atoms from their course to explain the possibility of collisions between atoms moving in empty space with equal speed. This is the basis of a deeper view of the interrelation of necessity and chance, a step forward, compared with Democritus' mechanistic determinism.

In the theory of knowledge Epicurus is a sensualist. Sensations are true by themselves, because they proceed from objective reality; mistakes arise from the interpretation of sensations. The origin of sensations is explained by Epicurus in a naively materialistic manner: a continuous flow of minute particles is emitted from the surface of bodies to penetrate the sense-organs and produce images of things. The object of knowledge is to free man from ignorance and superstitions, from the fear of gods and death, without which happiness is impossible.

In ethics Epicurus justifies joys of the mind based on the individualistic ideal of evading suffering and attaining a quiet and joyful state of the soul. The most rational state for man is not activity but complete peace, ataraxia. The materialistic doctrine of Epicurus was distorted in idealistic philosophy (e.g., by Hegel).

Epigenesis

A conception of embryonic development of organisms. In contradistinction to preformation, Epigenesis considers the development of the organism to be only a new formation, absolutely excluding any kind of preformation, i.e., the possibility of a mature organism's development being predetermined in the embryo.

Epiphenomenon

A term used to describe consciousness as a passive reflection of the material (or ideal) contents of the world. It is used by the exponents of natural-scientific materialism (A. Huxley, F. Le Dantec) and by some idealist philosophers (E. Hartmann, F. Nietzsche, G. Santayana).

Epistemological and Class Roots of Idealism

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

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

Epistemology

A term used in English, American and, more rarely, in French and in some trends of German bourgeois philosophy. The introduction of this term is attributed to the Scottish philosopher J. F. Ferrier (Institutes of Metaphysics, 1854), who divided philosophy into ontology and epistemology.

Epistemology is the theory of knowledge, an important province of philosophical theory, the doctrine on man's ability to cognise reality, on the sources, forms and methods of cognition, the truth and the ways of attaining it. The approach to the fundamental question of philosophy is the point of departure in epistemology.

Materialist epistemology recognises that the world is objective and cognisable. However, pre-Marxist materialism was contemplative; it did not grasp the decisive role played by the socio-productive activities of people in the development of cognition and regarded cognition from a metaphysical standpoint.

Idealist epistemology asserts that cognition is a reflection of a mystical idea (see Idealism, Objective) or that the world is created in the process of perception, because things are "complexes of sensations" (see Idealism, Subjective), or else it denies altogether that the world is cognisable (see Agnosticism).

Marxist philosophy has produced a genuinely scientific epistemology. Materialist dialectics, which goes to the root of the most general laws governing the development of nature, society and thought, offers the only scientific theory of knowledge. It "includes what is now called the theory of knowledge, or epistemology, which, too, must regard its subject-matter historically, studying and generalising the origin and development of knowledge, the transition from non-knowledge to knowledge". (Lenin, Vol. 21, p. 54.)

Also see Cognition; Theory and Practice; Reflection, Theory of.

Episyllogism

See Polysyllogism.

Equality

1. A concept denoting the identical condition of people in society, but having different contents in different historical epochs and among different classes. In bourgeois understanding equality means the equality of the citizens before the law, while the exploitation and political inequality of the working people remain intact. Petty-bourgeois theories of equality proceed from the right of every man to own private property, though on more or less equalitarian principles. In either case, the main thing—relation to the means of production—is not taken into account.

Marxism proceeds from the fact that economic (in the sphere of production, distribution, and consumption of material wealth), political (in the sphere of class, national and interstate relations) and cultural (in the sphere of production and distribution of spiritual values) equality is impossible without abolition of private ownership of the means of production and liquidation of exploiting classes. Hence, real equality appears only as a result of the victory of socialism.

In view of the fact that the socialist system retains some elements of social inequality owing to the surviving distinctions between mental and physical labour, the principle of distribution according to the quantity and quality of the work done, etc., complete equality, complete social homogeneity is created only under communism. The Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union points out the concrete ways of achieving such equality.

However communism does not signify any equalisation of all men, but, on the contrary, opens up unlimited possibilities for every man freely to develop his capabilities and needs, according to his individual qualities and tastes.

1. In logic equality coincides with identity. Any equality possesses the properties of symmetrical, transitive, and reflective relation. From these properties of equality follows, in particular, the well-known axiom: two quantities, each equal to a third quantity, are equal to each other.

Equilibrium, Theory of

A vulgar mechanistic and anti-dialectical theory which holds that equilibrium is a natural and "normal" condition, while movement, development is a temporary, transient condition. This theory sees the source of movement in external contradictions, denying the existence of inner contradictions in general and in particular their being the source of development.

Theory of equilibrium proceeds from the fact that the development of society depends chiefly on its relation with the surroundings, with nature; that society's external contradictions with nature, not the class struggle, are the motive force of development of an antagonistic society.

Theory of equilibrium was propounded by Comte, Kautsky, Bogdanov, Bukharin, and others. Now it is shared by many idealists, Right-wing Socialists, and revisionists. On the strength of theory of equilibrium the ideologists of opportunism build their anti-Marxist dogmas concerning the "peaceful growth" of capitalism into socialism, the "harmony" of class interests, ultra-imperialism, etc.

The CPSU severely criticised this theory in the period of building socialism in the Soviet Union, when it was used as a philosophical justification of the practice of Right opportunism. Defenders of capitalism make use of the false assertions of theory of equilibrium that opposites (for instance, classes) must mutually neutralise and balance each other, that this is the only way of making society stable. In reality, however, the opposites are in a state of conflict, and this conflict inevitably leads to the removal of the antithesis, to the resolution of concrete contradictions in society and to the transformation of society (see Revolution, Socialist).

Equivalence

Identical value, in logic, a relation between two propositions wherein these propositions are either both true or both false. The symbolic notation is shown by the signs ≡ or \~. For example, the propositions "the number is divisible by 6" (A) and "the number is divisible by 2 and by 3" (B) are equivalent (A≡B). This can also be expressed by "a number is divisible by 6 if and only if it is divisible by 2 and by 3". The negation of equivalence is synonymous of exclusive disjunction.

Erigena, Johannes Scotus (815–877)

Philosopher of Irish birth and of early education; lived in France. On the basis of Neo-Platonism, Erigena created his mystic doctrine, the essence of which is expounded in his work De Divisione naturae.

Erigena divides being into four natures: (1) a non-created but creating, God being the source of all things; it is shapeless and inexpressible and can be known only through the existence of things; (2) created and creating—divine ideas, existing as the primary cause; the ideal world was created by God, out of himself, and exists eternally; (3) created but not creating—the world perceptible by the senses, manifesting a single ideal world in the multiplicity of different things; (4) uncreated and uncreating—God, perceived as the ultimate end of all things.

Erigena associated the creation of things with original sin, when man fell away from God. After a while, however, came the redemption and all things returned to God. In its essence Erigena's system was pantheistic and was condemned by the Catholic Church.

Eschatology

A religious doctrine on the ultimate fate of the world, mankind, the end of the world, and doomsday. It is based on the ancient notions of occult, active powers in nature, of the struggle between good and evil, of the punishment of sinners and the reward of the righteous after death.

The eschatology ideas are found in their developed form in Christianity (Apocalypse) and in Judaism. Since class conflicts gave rise to eschatologic moods, the latter spread widely during social and political crises, as in Judea in the 1st century A.D., in Germany in the 15th and 16th centuries, in England in the 16th and 17th centuries, in Russia at the end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th centuries.

Even at present churchmen make use of eschatology. Contemporary theologians avail themselves of the data of the natural sciences interpreted idealistically to strengthen the position of eschatology.

Esoteric and Exoteric

Greek: inner and external. The term "esoteric" is used to qualify an idea or a theory meant only for the initiates, comprehensible only by experts. The term "exoteric" is used in the meaning of "popular", "understandable even to non-experts". These terms are used also to designate inner essential (esoteric) and outward (exoteric) connections of phenomena.

Essence

The meaning of a given thing, that which is in itself, in contradistinction from all other things and in contrast to the mutable states of a thing under the influence of various circumstances. The concept of essence is of great importance for any philosophical system, and for drawing a distinction between systems from the standpoint of how they view the essence and being relationship and the connection between essence and consciousness and thought.

Objective idealism takes being, reality, and existence as dependent on the essence of things, which is regarded as something independent, immutable, and absolute. In that case, the essence of things constitutes a specific ideal reality which produces all things and guides them (Plato, Hegel).

Subjective idealists take essence to be the product of the subject, who projects essence beyond himself and conceives it in the form of things.

The only correct view is in recognising the reality of the objective essence of things and its reflection in the mind. Essence does not exist outside of things, but in and through them, as their common chief property, as their law. Human knowledge gradually delves deeper and deeper into the essence of the objective world. This knowledge is used for reciprocal action on the objective world for the purpose of its practical transformation (see Reality, Actuality, Essence and Appearance).

Essence and Appearance

Philosophical categories reflecting aspects necessarily inherent in each object of reality. Essence is the aggregate of the deepest, most stable properties and relationships of an object which determine its origin, character and trends in development. Appearance is the aggregate of the diverse external, mobile properties and relationships of an object which are immediately revealed to the senses. Appearance is the mode in which the essence reveals itself.

The idealists take a distorted view of these categories, taking either essence to be ideal (the "ideas" of Plato, Hegel's "absolute idea") or appearance to be subjective and essence, objective and uncognisable (Kant, agnosticism); or declaring as subjective the very act of distinguishing essence and appearance in an object (Dewey, Lewis); or, finally, denying essence altogether and identifying appearance with sensation (Mach, phenomenalism).

Essence and appearance are a unity: just as there can be no "pure" unmanifested essence, so there can be no appearance divested of essence; "the essence appears. The appearance is essential". (Lenin, Vol. 38, p. 253.)

The unity of essence and appearance is also evident in the fact that they pass into each other. That which at one time (or in one respect) is essence, may at another time (or in another respect) become appearance, and vice versa. But the unity of essence and appearance is internally contradictory, and the two are sides of the contradiction. Essence is the determining element, and appearance the determinant; appearance is given immediately, whereas essence is concealed, appearance has more aspects than essence, but essence is deeper than appearance.

The essence of an object is always one, but is manifested in a variety of appearances; appearance is more mobile than essence, so that one and the same appearance may be a manifestation of different and even opposite essences; appearance may express essence in a distorted and inadequate manner (see Semblance). But there is a contradiction not only between essence and appearance but in the essence itself, and these contradictions are the principal ones in the object and determine its development as a whole.

In contrast to metaphysics, dialectical materialism recognises that essence is mutable. The essence-appearance contradiction determines the complex, contradictory nature of the process of cognition, for "all science would be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly coincided". (Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. III, p. 797.)

The aim of cognition is infinite penetration from appearance to essence, discovery of the essence of things beneath their appearance and proof of why essence is manifested in one way and not in another. Immediate contemplation gives man a knowledge of what lies on the surface, appearance. A knowledge of essence is attained by means of abstract thought. In science, the transition from the cognition of appearance to that of essence assumes the specific form of transition from experiment (observation) through description to explanation.

Essential and Inessential Properties

The properties of things or phenomena distinguished according to the part they play in these things and phenomena. No thing can exist without its essential properties, but it can exist without some inessential properties. The essential properties are determined by the essence of the object.

In philosophy, essential properties were known as attributes, and inessential properties, as accidents. Drawing a distinction between properties is important for a characteristic of the knowledge of things as a definite evaluation flowing from the objective existence of objects.

By contrast, subjective idealism explains the distinction between the essential properties and the inessential properties from the standpoint of the subject, and fails to find any such distinction in nature itself. The difficulty of making a distinction between the two lies in the fact that in the initial stages of cognition both are brought out by means of the same logical method, namely, comparison. The actual distinction is arrived at later by tracing the properties to the essence, and when the essential reveals itself as the universal.

Human practice, in which a thing appears in its essential properties, is a decisive condition for drawing the distinction.

Eternal Truth

A term denoting the irrefutability of certain truths throughout the development of knowledge. It may be regarded as analogous to absolute truth. In the process of cognition, however, man is mainly concerned with relative truths, which contain only a grain of absolute truth. Metaphysics and dogmatism, which consider truth without relation to conditions, place a vastly exaggerated importance on the absolute factor in truth, thus providing an epistemological justification for elevating all truths to the rank of the eternal and irrefutable. Such was the view held by Dühring and it was effectively criticised by Engels in his Anti-Dühring. Religion, as a form of extreme dogmatism, regards all its postulates as irrefutable and eternal truths.

Eternity

Infinite duration of the existence of the world resulting from the uncreatability and indestructibility of matter. Eternity is inherent only in nature as a whole. Every specific form of matter is transient in time. Eternity should not be taken to imply the unchanging infinite existence of matter in one and the same state but presupposes incessant qualitative transformations.

Ether

A hypothetical material medium filling up space. The concept of Ether already existed with the ancients who considered it as some "prime matter" and identified it with space. In classical physics Ether was understood to be a homogeneous, mechanical elastic medium which fills Newton's absolute space. This metaphysical concept did not stand experimental verification and was discarded in the theory of relativity. The concept of Ether has been replaced in modern physics by the concept of a material field, irreducible to a mechanical medium. The field theory has retained the rational kernel of the hypothesis of Ether, i.e., the idea that an absolute vacuum is impossible and that space and matter are inseparable.

Ethical Relativism

The view that the standards of morality are mere conventions, that it is not obligatory to conform to the general principles of behaviour, that it is impossible to provide a correct moral explanation of an action. Ethical Relativism is a product of the metaphysical over-estimation of the relativity of moral standards, which are supposed to lack any element of absoluteness. Relativism leads to the negation of the possibility of creating scientific ethics.

Among the ancients, Ethical Relativism was prominent in the doctrine of the sceptics (Pyrrho and others). It is also inherent in certain modern trends in philosophy: neo-positivism, existentialism, and pragmatism. Ayer and Carnap considered it impossible even to raise the question of the correctness or incorrectness of a moral judgement. Ethical Relativism logically results in justifying amorality.

Ethical Socialism

A Neo-Kantian interpretation of socialism on the basis of Kant's ethics. The theorists of Ethical Socialism (Cohen, P. Natorp, R. Stammler, K. Vorländer, and others) rejected the philosophy of Marxism—dialectical materialism and tried to combine scientific socialism with the Kantian moral philosophy. They regarded ethics as a science whose object is to remove contradictions in social relations. For them, it was Kant who founded this science. They claimed that he was the first to formulate, in the categorical imperative (act so that mankind, either in your place or in the place of anybody else, be always regarded as a goal and never as one of the means only), the basic idea of socialism, the idea of solidarity.

The substantiation of the doctrine of socialist transformation of society through the "extra-class" Kantian theory of morality meant that this doctrine was a purely moral concept. The cardinal problems of Marxism (classes and class struggle, social revolution, the dictatorship of the proletariat, etc.) were discarded, and moral relations and the idea of man's gradual moral perfection were given first consideration. In practice, the propositions of Ethical Socialism were given a concrete form in Bernstein's formula: "movement is everything; the final goal—nothing", which meant renunciation of the fight for socialism. Ethical Socialism was propagated by M. Adler (Austria), by M. Tugan-Baranovsky (Russia), and others. A detailed exposition of Ethical Socialism is given in Vorländer's books, Kant und der Sozialismus (1900) and Kant und Marx (1911).

Ethics

The science of morals. Ethics includes normative Ethics and the theory of morals. The first studies the questions of benefit, good, evil, etc., elaborating a moral code of behaviour, showing what is worth striving for, what behaviour is good, what gives meaning to life. The theory of morals deals with the essence of morality, its origin and development, the laws which determine moral standards and their historical character. Normative Ethics and the theory of morals are inseparable.

Recent times have seen the development of metaethics, which deals with ethical statements, their relation to truth, the structure and origin of ethical theories. Metaethics is a product of the modern epoch, when the sciences have turned to a logical analysis in their methods. Ethics is not to be identified with the current "practical" morality, moral behaviour. Ethics is a science, the doctrine of morality and moral behaviour.

Morals arose before Ethics. The former already existed at the time of the primitive-communal system, whereas Ethics appeared only in the period of the slaveowning society. Ethics was an element of philosophical teachings, it was a philosophical theory. As soon as it appeared the struggle ensued between the materialistic and the idealistic understanding of morality. The materialists fought against the theological views in Ethics. They criticised the theological and idealistic interpretation of the meaning of life, upholding the idea of "earthly" origin and source of moral standards. A contribution to the ethical explanation of reality in ancient times was made by the Charvakas (India), Yang Chu and Lao-tsu (China), Democritus, Epicurus, Aristotle (Greece), etc.

A considerable contribution to the development of ethical ideas was made in the period when the capitalist system was taking roots. The ideologists of the then revolutionary bourgeoisie—Spinoza, Rousseau, Helvétius, Holbach, Diderot, and Feuerbach—considered the solution of ethical problems most important. Although such philosophers as Kant and Hegel were the adherents of the idealistic understanding of morality, they enunciated a number of valuable ethical views. The Russian revolutionary democrats, particularly Belinsky, Herzen, Dobrolyubov, and Chernyshevsky, made important contributions to Ethics. Together with the Western utopian socialists (Fourier, Saint-Simon, Owen, and others) they dreamt of a just society and tried to foresee and portray new moral relations among people.

Marxist Ethics imbibed all that was valuable in the ethical theories of the past, and became a new stage in the development of Ethics. The pre-Marxian ethical doctrines were idealistic. The old philosophers thought that it was enough to raise the level of man's consciousness, enlighten him or to change a form of government to have the morality they preached to be disseminated. Marx and Engels have shown that morality is determined by a nation's economic and social system, that it is a historical product. In their teaching of communism Marx and Engels charted the true path to happiness, justice, and freedom. The next stage in the development of Ethics is associated with the name of Lenin. G. Plekhanov, P. Lafargue, A. Bebel, N. Krupskaya, A. Makarenko, and others also helped to enrich Marxist Ethics.

The building of communism has placed new problems before Ethics, which is being more and more transformed into an independent science. The moral code of the builders of communism formulated in the CPSU Programme is very important for the further development of Marxist Ethics (see Morality, Communist).

As distinct from Marxist Ethics, bourgeois Ethics is based on metaphysical and idealistic theories. The Neo-Thomists and existentialists write much about ethical problems. The neo-positivists depart from the ethical problems proper and go back to logical semantics. In capitalist countries, the main trend of Ethics is to raise problems of humanism, justice, and good in an abstract and metaphysical way, looking for "absolute" ethical values without considering real life. The preaching of individualism, the struggle against collectivism are peculiar to this Ethics. Moral relativism, which tries to prove the impossibility of scientific Ethics, develops alongside the spread of Neo-Thomistic moral dogmatism.

Ethics, Autonomous and Heteronomous

Autonomous Ethics proceeds from the proposition that moral law has its foundation in the morally acting subject. Man creates his own moral law and is completely free of all outside influence. Autonomous Ethics derives morality from the idealist conception that moral duty is a priori, is internally inherent. The claim that morality is absolutely independent, autonomous, is unscientific, since it involves the denial of a link between morality and a definite historical system of social relations. Kant opposed the ethics of the French 18th century materialists and developed the idea of Autonomous Ethics in his Critique of Practical Reason, where he propounded the principle that moral behaviour is autonomous.

Heteronomous Ethics, as opposed to Autonomous Ethics, derives ethics from causes independent of the will of the subject involved. These external causes are the laws of the state, religious precepts, and such motives as personal interest, or wishing other people well. Variants of Heteronomous Ethics, therefore, are hedonism which bases its moral principles on the urge to enjoy life, utilitarianism based on the idea that worth is determined by utility, and a number of other systems. The differentiation of Autonomous Ethics from Heteronomous Ethics is unscientific and is based on the denial of the fact that morality is determined by objective social laws, on the idealist principle of the autonomy of the will and on ignoring the active role of the subject in society.

Ethics, Evolutionary

A vulgar, mechanistic trend in ethics founded by Spencer. In the 20th century, Evolutionary Ethics was upheld by J. Huxley, Waddington (England), Edwin Holt, Ralph Gerard (USA), Teilhard de Chardin (France), etc. The main principles of Evolutionary Ethics are as follows: the moral behaviour of man should be a function of natural surroundings and be adapted to them; the biological process (evolution) is the criterion of morality; everything that promotes it is good, everything that opposes it is evil. Moral notions and ideas are worked out by man for his orientation among the facts of nature. Society itself is but the highest form of the natural association of the organisms of the same species.

Holt even calls for the animal and the biological in man to be released from social limitations. The other evolutionists (Huxley and Chardin) do not preach such openly anti-social and amoral ideas; they are more circumspect in their biological interpretation of society. Evolutionary Ethics limits society and morality to biology, which makes its trend anti-social and, therefore, reactionary and unscientific.

Ethics, Theological

Ethics founded on some theological system. The most influential trends of Theological Ethics were and still are the ethical doctrines of the three main religions: Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism. The source of morals in Theological Ethics is God. God is the embodiment of moral good and virtue, while the evil and the amorality in society are due to the "original sin". Moreover, God is the only criterion of what is moral. An action is either good or bad depending on whether it conforms or does not conform to the "essence" or will of God. And, finally, God gives a moral sanction, i.e., is the only authority in evaluating the morality of an action.

Thus Theological Ethics is anti-social in its aim, since it negates the right of society to produce moral evaluations. A great place in it belongs to the doctrine of the reward of the righteous and the punishment of sinners, which theologians associate with the end of the world (see Eschatology). The complete triumph of the good and the just is ascribed either to life-after-death or to the advent of the "kingdom of God". In other words, submission, humility, non-resistance to evil are elevated to the rank of virtues. Theological Ethics becomes a moral apology for the society of exploitation.

Euclid (4th–3rd century B.C.)

Greek mathematician, author of the famous Elements, in which ancient geometry and the theory of numbers are given systematically, according to the axiomatic method. The famous (fifth) postulate of Euclid is logically equivalent to the statement: through a given point P not on a given line L there passes at most one line, in the plane of P and L, which does not intersect L. Geometry, based on this postulate, is called Euclidean geometry. Attempts to prove the parallel postulate led in the 19th century to the discovery of non-Euclidean geometries (see Lobachevsky).

Euclid was strongly influenced by Plato's and Aristotle's philosophy. His Elements were a pattern for deductive science (see Axiomatic Method, Spinoza). Euclidean geometry was the basis of the philosophical conclusions on the nature of space and our notions of real space. For instance, Kant declared the apriority (see A priori) of space, referring to Euclidean geometry. The discovery of non-Euclidean geometries showed that the a priori concept of space was groundless.

Eudemonism

A trend in ethics created and fully developed in antiquity (Democritus, Socrates, Aristotle). The desire for happiness, either personal (individual Eudemonism) or public (social Eudemonism), is considered as the chief motive of human behaviour. The French materialists of the 18th century (Helvétius, Diderot), exponents of utilitarianism, were also followers of Eudemonism.

By virtue of its activity and humaneness and insofar as it calls for happiness on Earth and not in the hereafter eudemonistic ethics stands incomparably higher than Christian ethics. Eudemonism, however, preaches its standards as common to all mankind, extra-historical in a society of antagonistic classes, where there is not and cannot be any single morality.

Eugenics

A false doctrine concerning the improvement of the human race, from Greek "well-born". The term was first used by the British biologist Francis Galton (1869). It is based on the idea that social inequality is due to the psychological and physiological disparities among human beings. In The Facts of Life (1953), Cyril Darlington maintains that classes differ from one another not economically but genetically.

Distorting Darwin's teaching, the eugenists assert that human progress ceased with the disappearance of natural selection, and advocate the introduction of artificial selection by means of sterilisation, prohibiting marriage between people with physical or psychological disabilities, etc. A man's "inferiority" may be measured by such factors as social position, financial ability, etc. Eugenics is associated with racialism and Malthusianism. It was widespread in nazi Germany and has a considerable following in the United States today.

Event

The basic concept in the theory of probability and statistics, denoting the realisation of some potentiality in a certain set of conditions. If, given the set of conditions in question, the event happens of necessity, it is called authentic. If it is known that, given the same conditions, the event cannot happen, it is called impossible. An event which may or may not happen is called chance.

Single chance events can be characterised only qualitatively. Mass chance events may be characterised qualitatively and also quantitatively by calculating the probability of a given event in a definite set of conditions. Thus the probability P of an event A is equal to the ratio of the number of tests favourable to the event A (m), to the total number of tests n: P(A) \= m/n.

Evolution and Revolution

Inseparably connected aspects of development. Evolution represents quantitative changes accumulated in the development of a phenomenon; revolution represents a more or less quick qualitative change. The dialectical-materialistic understanding of evolution and revolution overcame the metaphysical one-sidedness of plain evolutionism (see Spencer), which limited development to gradual quantitative changes, did not help in understanding self-motion and "catastrophism", denied that quantitative changes prepare revolution and put faith in the will of a great personality (see Voluntarism), in chance or in the creator of nature (see Cuvier).

Motion includes both quantitative gradualness (evolution) and its interruption (revolution). Revolution is not produced by anything arbitrary but is an objective process, in which the old contradictions, having come to the boil, are overcome, and a new phenomenon, arising on this basis, develops by virtue of new contradictions. Hence the theory of emergent evolution is untenable. It recognises in words the emergence of the qualitatively new in the process of development, but in the last analysis it denies dialectical self-development. This theory does not take into account the premises of revolution in the preceding evolution.

The representatives of other trends in modern philosophy, as well as the revisionists, distort the essence of evolution and revolution, because they fear the inevitability of social revolution. The concept of evolution is also used to qualify development in the broad sense of the word (for instance, the evolution of the organic world). In this case evolution is understood to mean movement, including both quantitative and qualitative changes.

Evolution Theory

The doctrine of living nature, elaborated mainly by Darwin. Darwin summed up the results of many centuries of selective practice, the achievements of biology, geology, and paleontology, and his own observations in a round-the-world trip. According to Darwin, the main factors in the evolution of living beings are mutation, heredity, and selection (artificial in domestic conditions, natural in nature). In the struggle for existence, under the impact of the outer environment, only the fittest of living beings survive and procreate. Natural selection is continuously improving the structure and functions of organisms, evolving their adaptability to the outside surroundings.

Evolution Theory first provided a scientific explanation of the multiplicity of biological species, their development, and was made the basis of modern biology. Evolution Theory, together with the natural-scientific theories of Kant, Lamarck, and Lyell, proved the insolvency of the metaphysical way of thinking. It also dealt a blow to the idealistic views of living nature, and became the natural-scientific basis of the dialectical-materialist world outlook. Among the adherents and continuers of Evolution Theory were Huxley, Haeckel, Timiryazev, Michurin.

Excluded Middle, Law of

A law of logic, according to which of the two propositions, one of which denies what the other affirms, one is necessarily true. It was first formulated by Aristotle. In symbolic notation A∨¬A (where A is any proposition, ∨ a sign of disjunction, and the line over the symbol a sign of negation). Thus, of the two sentences: "The sun is a star" (A is B) and "The sun is not a star" (A is not B) one is necessarily true.

Having in view such statements, traditional formal logic formulated the Law of Excluded Middle as follows: either A is B or it is not B. No third is possible (tertium non datur). The formulation given earlier applies to propositions of any form. The Law of Excluded Middle is often used in the process of proof, for example, by rule of contraries. In modern constructive logic the proposition A∨¬A is not regarded as a law of logic or a constructively universal statement.

Existence

1. The whole diversity of mutable things in their concatenation and interaction. The existence of things cannot be reduced either to their inner essence or to their being. Philosophical theories are wrong to rate the essence, foundation of things above their existence, regarding the latter as something base, accidental, and short-lived. But it is just as wrong to rate the existence of things above their essence, regarding the latter either as non-existent, or as something unfathomable and beyond human cognition and practice.

The correct view is that just as essence is inconceivable without existence (in which case there is a realm of immobility, which has nothing in common with real life in nature and society), so existence is inconceivable without essence (in which case, only the external, the restless, and the accidental are registered). An understanding of all existing phenomena can be gained only from a unity of existence and essence, being and becoming.

2. The main category of existentialism introduced into philosophy by Kierkegaard. Existence is understood to be the unrealised inner "being" of man as distinguished from his empirical existence, which is not the real existence. Existence as the potential of being is determined by man himself, by his will, but it has its roots (for example, according to Jaspers) in a mysterious "transcendence", i.e., in God. Existence cannot be cognised; it can only be "illuminated" at "critical moments" (ataraxia, heroic deed, death, etc.). The existentialists use this category to justify irrationalism and moral relativism.

Existential Aesthetics

A subjective idealist theory of art and art creation. It is expounded in the views of German, French, and other existentialists (K. Jaspers, Strindberg und van Gogh, 1922; G. Marcel, Existence and Human Freedom by J. P. Sartre, 1946; A. Camus, Speech in Sweden, 1957). The Austrian poet Rilke (1875-1926) was the first to express existentialist views in his sonnets and elegies; later these views penetrated the arts and literature of many capitalist countries. They appear most clearly of all in Camus' works (L'Etranger, La Peste), in S. de Beauvoir's Tous les Hommes sont mortels, Le Sang des Autres, in J.P. Sartre's Les Chemins de la Liberté, Le Diable et le Bon Dieu, La Nausée, etc.

According to Existential Aesthetics, the object of artistic portrayal should be the "existential illumination" (i.e., irrational individual experience) and the phenomena leading to this "illumination". The "aesthetics" of atheistic existentialists merges with naturalism when it requires artists to picture man's vile motives and the dark sides of human existence. The "religious" existentialists maintain that art is a "cipher", a sign of supernatural powers, the "intermediate kingdom" between the world and "divine unity", the coincidence of "religious and aesthetic experience".

The existentialists measure the talent of the artist according to "how he expresses in ciphers the existence, the originality of the individual, and his border-line situations". To them, the main purpose of art is to awaken the unconscious emotions of the individual. The aesthetics of existentialism reflects the spiritual degeneration of contemporary capitalist society.

Existentialism

The philosophy of existence, an irrationalistic trend in modern philosophy which attempted to create a new world outlook corresponding to the frame of mind of some strata of the intellectuals. It appeared after the 1st World War in Germany and later in France; after the 2nd World War in other countries, including the USA. The term "Existentialism" was introduced by the Neo-Kantian F. Heinemann in 1929. Existentialism has its sources in the philosophy of life, Husserl's phenomenology, the mystico-religious teachings of Kierkegaard.

There are two forms of existentialism, the religious one (Marcel, Jaspers, Berdyayev, M. Buber of Israel) and the atheistic one (Heidegger, Sartre, Camus). Existentialism reflects the crisis of liberalism, which is not in a position to answer the questions posed by contemporary socio-historical practice, or to explain the ups and downs of life in capitalist society, the feelings of fear, desperation, and hopelessness inherent in the members of that society. Existentialism is an irrational reaction to the rationalism of Enlightenment and German classical philosophy.

The existentialists maintain that the essential defect of rational thought is that it proceeded from the principle of antithesis of subject and object, i.e., it divided the world into two spheres: the objective and the subjective. Rational thought considers all reality, including man, only as an object, as a "substance", something alien to man. Genuine philosophy, Existentialism maintains, must proceed from the unity of subject and object. This unity is incarnated in existence, i.e., in a certain irrational reality.

According to Existentialism, in order to be aware of himself as "existence", man must find himself in a "border-line situation", for example, in face of death. As a result the world becomes "intimately near" to man. The true means of knowledge, or, according to Existentialism, of penetration of the world of "existence", is declared to be intuition ("existential experience" in the case of Marcel; "understanding" in the case of Heidegger; "elucidation of existence" in the case of Jaspers). This intuition is the phenomenological method of Husserl, irrationally interpreted.

Existentialism devotes much attention to the question of freedom, which is defined as the "choice" by the individual of one possibility among an infinite number of possibilities. The voluntarism of the explanation of freedom by Existentialism has its source in the divorce of "choice" from circumstances, i.e., in the isolation of the individual from objective necessity, from laws. In the final analysis, the existentialists convert the problem of freedom into a purely ethical problem, and they regard freedom as extreme individualism, as the individual's freedom from society. Existentialism has greatly influenced the modern art and literature of capitalist society, and thereby the frame of mind of a large section of the intellectuals.

Experience

In the traditional philosophical sense, sensuous empirical reflection of the external world. According to empiricism and sensationalism, experience is the source of all knowledge. Materialism recognises the external, objective source of experience, independent of consciousness. Pre-Marxist materialism regarded experience merely as a result of passive perception of the external world. But sensuous experience does not by itself give universal and necessary knowledge; it merely grasps the outward, superficial side of phenomena of the objective world.

As a reaction to the shortcomings of contemplative materialism in interpreting the concept of experience there arose rationalism, on the one hand, and the subjective idealist and agnostic understanding of experience, on the other. The latter reduces experience to various states of the subject's consciousness (emotions, sensations, perceptions, verbal statements, theoretical constructions of thinking), while its source is either ignored or declared to be unknowable in principle.

Kant held a special position on this question, considering that the chaotic influence of the object (thing-in-itself) on consciousness becomes experience only when systematised by a priori forms of reason. But in Kant's presentation of the question, notwithstanding its idealism, there is rational meaning, namely, the idea of active thinking by the subject engaged in cognition. Contemporary positivism, reducing experience to sensations, to sensory emotions of man, etc., in effect denies the possibility and necessity for raising and solving the question of what stands behind this experience, i.e., the existence of a real world, independent of consciousness, considering this to be a "pseudoquestion".

Utilising the achievements of preceding philosophy and continuing the traditions of materialism, Marxism overcame contemplativeness in interpreting experience. Acknowledging experience to be secondary, derivative, in relation to objective reality, Marxism defines it not as the passive content of consciousness but as man's practical action on the external world. In the process of this action the necessary connections, properties and laws of phenomena are discovered, rational methods and means of activity are explored and tested, etc.

Experience is thus understood both as an interaction of the social subject with the external world and as the result of such interaction. In such an understanding experience merges with the sum total of society's practical activity. Experience is a primary means of enriching science and developing theory and practice.

Experiment

An investigation of phenomena by actively influencing them, by creating new conditions meeting the aims pursued, or by altering the process in the required direction. Experiment is an aspect of human socio-historical practice and is, therefore, a source of knowledge and a criterion of the truth of hypotheses and theories. A distinction must be made between simple observation and real experiment. Simple observation does not imply active influence upon the object.

Real experiment must also be distinguished from what is called "mental experiment", which is a logical argument on the course this or that phenomenon would take if it were possible to create certain conditions, which cannot be created at the given moment owing to technical or other reasons. Experiment includes the creation of necessary conditions, the removal of interfering influences and factors, the fixation of the object by different means. It also includes artificially giving rise to a phenomenon, observing and measuring it with technical instruments. Any experiment is based upon the analogue simulation of the phenomena under study.

As science and technology develop, the sphere of experiment widens, embracing increasingly complicated phenomena of the material world. Dialectical materialism, in contradistinction to apriorism, sees in experiment and in observation the source of theoretical concepts. Their connection with experiment can be direct, if they are deduced immediately from experiment, or indirect, if these theoretical concepts are deduced on the basis of analysing the effect of laws and propositions previously deduced by direct experiment.

But a theory is not only the sum of the data of experiment; it is a qualitatively new step of knowledge, movement from the phenomena reflected in experiment to the essence, to the knowledge of more deep-reaching laws.

Explanation

A stage or form of scientific study which consists in revealing the essence of the object studied. According to its epistemological significance, explanation is divided into a number of types: explanation through the general (analogy, model), causal explanation, explanation through law, etc. Explanation is directly connected with description and is based on it. Scientific prevision of events is possible only on the basis of explanation. The prediction of communism and the process of its practical building are founded on a deep scientific explanation of the laws of social development given by Marxism-Leninism.

Explication

1. Explanation.

2. Unfolding, a process as a result of which the contents of a certain unity are discovered, and its components become independent and may be differentiated from one another. The term explication in this meaning is widely employed in idealist philosophy. For example, Neo-Platonism regarded the world and individual things as explication, "self-unfolding" of God, in whom originally they exist in unity. Hegel held reality to be the self-unfolding of a concept into the plurality of its definitions.

3. Logico-methodological method consisting in substituting an exact scientific notion for a well-known but inexact notion or idea. Explication is usually employed in working out concepts essential to the development of scientific theory, as distinct from pre-scientific or not yet definitely scientific knowledge of the subject. It is widely used in logical semantics where the term "explication" assumes the latter meaning.

Expressionism

A trend in the arts and literature. It appeared at the beginning of the 20th century (a group of German artists united in 1905 around the journal Die Brücke) and spread after the 1st World War. Exponents of Expressionism are M. Pechstein, F. Marc, E. Kirchner, P. Klee (Germany), O. Kokoschka (Austria), M. Chagall (Russia), and others. Expressionism was influenced by P. Cézanne, V. Van Gogh, E. Munch, F. Hodler, J. Ensor.

As an aesthetic concept Expressionism is extreme subjectivism. "We must forget all laws...only our soul is the true reflection of the world" (Kokoschka); "The expressionist believes only the reality created by himself, disregarding any other reality of life" (K. Edschmid). The primacy of form over content, of the personal over the social, of the irrational over the logical characterises Expressionism as a decadent formalistic trend.

In their works the expressionists completely distort the real world, regarding it only as an occasion for the embodiment and objectivisation of their unbalanced emotions. This is the basis for their inclination towards excessive grotesque, displacement of planes in images, distortion of objects, etc. Expressionism also made its appearance in literature (W. Hasenclever, K. Edschmid, to some extent L. Andreyev, A. Strindberg, and others), in sculpture (A. Arkhipenko, W. Lehmbruck), in the theatre (L. Jessner), in the cinema (R. Wiene), in music (A. Schönberg).

Expressionism was not homogeneous. The left representatives of Expressionism (G. Kaiser, G. Grosz, and others) criticised capitalism and came out against war. J. Becher, B. Brecht, O. Nagel joined Expressionism at the beginning of their artistic work. Today the term "abstract Expressionism" is used to denote abstract art.

Extent

One of the main characteristics of space, expressing its dimensions. In the concept "extent" is reflected the relative stability and constancy of a definite type of relations between objects and phenomena. It is precisely this stability that makes it possible to compare the dimensions of bodies.

Metaphysical materialism, divorcing space from matter in motion, regarded it as pure extent. Thus, the ancient atomists, assuming the existence of void as a necessary condition of the movement of atoms, attributed to space the only property—that of extent. In the philosophy of modern times the view of space as pure extent was more prominently expressed by Descartes. Leibniz, criticising the Cartesian conception of space, correctly showed that from extent one may conclude only the geometrical properties of space. To explain extent we need a body, without it extent would be vain abstraction.

Further step in the critique of the metaphysical identity of space with extent was made by Toland, who stressed that the idea of space being a void and pure extent proceeds from the definition of matter only in terms of extent, from the mistaken conception that it has no inherent activity. By defining space as a form of the existence of matter, dialectical materialism at the same time affirms that the spatial properties of bodies, in particular their extent, depend upon the properties of matter in motion.

External and Internal

1. Aspects of an object or process distinguished by their place and role in the structure of the whole. The category of the external reflects the superficial aspect of any object immediately perceived by the senses, or the existing reality outside an object. The category of the internal expresses the essential aspect of an object. This internal aspect cannot be immediately perceived and is known through the external, through its manifestations.

The external aspects of an object are determined by its internal aspects, by law, by the essence, through which they are revealed and known. Investigation of the internal nature of an object leads to an understanding of its contradictions, the source of its development, and the external forms in which it manifests itself.

2. Aspects of reality, which are defined as the external and internal worlds. In this sense, the internal is the spiritual world, while the external is the world of nature. The actual connection between the external and the internal, the objective and the subjective was gradually elucidated in the history of science and philosophy through the struggle of materialism against idealism and agnosticism.

External World

The totality of the material objects, phenomena and their relations and interrelations existing outside and independently of man and his consciousness. The external world is the source of knowledge. Man gets to know the external world—nature and society—in the process of social life and production. From the standpoint of idealism the external world is either created by a non-temporal spiritual being (objective idealism) or else is a product of the individual consciousness (subjective idealism).