H

Habits

Actions which as a result of prolonged repetition become automatic. The physiological mechanism of habits is represented by the dynamic stereotype. The habits of animals are unconscious. A similar psychological mechanism of habits is formed in man too in the course of adaptation to the environment. These are automated actions timed for concrete specific situations. Some habits are of practical value, but as long as they are not conscious they cannot be transmitted to another person.

The higher form of habits is the habit of man whose components are apprehended in advance, consciously divided, and united into systems which meet the general specific features of the objective situation for which the habits are formed. In such a case man in the process of automating habits and their functioning preserves the possibility of consciously controlling his actions and he can alter them, with relative ease should the need arise. Habits are included in all kinds of activities both external (e.g., motor habits) and internal (e.g., automated mental actions). Habits are not only a result but also a requisite for man's creative activity.

Haeckel, Ernst (1834–1919)

German biologist, professor at Jena University; known for his defence of Darwin's theory of evolution and natural historical materialism. Haeckel took Darwinism a step farther in a number of his theoretical propositions, such as the biogenetic law and the theory of phylogenesis which inferred natural inception of life from inorganic matter. He developed Darwin's conception of natural selection as a factor of organic evolution by stressing the adaptation of mutation of organisms under the influence of the environment.

Haeckel won popularity with his book Die Welträtsel (1899) in which he attacked the idealist religious outlook and advocated the materialist outlook in natural science. The book became "a weapon in the struggle of the classes" and roused opposition from idealist philosophers, the church, and such idealist naturalists as Oliver Lodge and Chwolson. Progressive scientists ranged themselves behind Haeckel. Lenin highly commended the book (see Vol. 14, p. 334).

Haeckel publicly renounced religion and the church, but was not always consistent in his views. He departed in some matters from his materialism and atheism, and, among other things, suggested replacing official religion with belief in the divine powers of nature, in the spirit of Spinoza's pantheism.

Hamann, Johann Georg (1730–1788)

German idealist philosopher; exponent of the teaching on immediate knowledge; influenced the bourgeois-democratic Sturm und Drang literary school. Hamann opposed enlightenment and rationalism; believed in the creative powers of mystic intuition. Yet he expressed the notion of the unity of opposites as a general law of being and thereby influenced the idealistic dialectics of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. The most notable of his writings is Kreuzzüge des Philologen (1762).

Hamilton, William (1788–1856)

Scottish idealist philosopher and logician; held that cognition was determination of the conditions of existence of the object investigated; denied objective truth and gravitated towards agnosticism. Hamilton held that "absolute", i.e., material reality, is cognisable through supernatural revelation only. He ranged himself beside Kant in accepting apriorism and moral postulates as the foundation of religious faith.

He introduced into logic the doctrine of the quantification of the predicate, thus attempting to reduce inference to equation and logic to calculation. Hamilton was a forerunner of the exponents of modern mathematical logic. Among his best-known works is Metaphysics and Logic (lectures edited and published posthumously in four volumes, 1859–60).

Hartley, David (1705–1757)

English physician and materialist philosopher; known for his theory of association of ideas being the direct result of molecular nervous vibrations. His doctrine is set out in his work Observations on Man, His Frame, His Duty, and His Expectations. According to Hartley, external objects act on the senses by inducing in the brain vibrations of infinitely small particles of matter. These vibrations, he held, are transmitted from one particle to the next through ether and constitute the direct cause of sensations. The sequence and order of the sensations reflect the sequence and order of the external impulses inducing the vibrations.

While stressing the material origin of ideas, Hartley does not identify mechanical vibrations with the ideas themselves because, he avers, the vibrations are corporeal, while ideas are spiritual. Hartley's materialism is mechanistic; what is more, it has a deistic complexion. Hartley's doctrine strongly influenced Priestley and James Mill, and served as one of the prime movers of associationist psychology.

Hartmann, Eduard von (1842–1906)

German idealist philosopher; forerunner of the contemporary schools of irrationalism and voluntarism. Of his works, Philosophie des Unbewussten (1869) has had the greatest influence. Like Schopenhauer, Hartmann believed the unconscious spirit was the foundation of being. The idea of the unconscious also pervades Hartmann's ethics.

The desire of happiness, Hartmann holds, is the source of unhappiness, and the rejection of all desires the way to painlessness, this being the only happiness, or the only substitute for happiness. To achieve painlessness, he avers, man has to abandon his three dominant illusions—earthly happiness, happiness in the hereafter and happiness attainable by reorganising and improving society. Hartmann's doctrine denies happiness attainable through social progress and is, therefore, reactionary not only in the philosophical, but also in the socio-political sense.

Hartmann, Nikolai (1882–1950)

German idealist philosopher, professor at Marburg, Berlin and other universities; belonged to the Marburg Neo-Kantian school until he repudiated its subjective idealistic rationalism. Developed an objectively idealist doctrine of being, categories of being and categories of cognition. Hartmann's so-called critical ontology pivots on a teaching of the strata of being: inorganic, organic, soul and spirit. His philosophy contains traces of irrationalism and agnosticism, proclaiming as mysterious and uncognisable all the fundamental forms of being which are said to invade all strata of being.

On the basis of his ontology, Hartmann built up a philosophy of nature, a philosophy of the objective spirit, a system of ethics and a theory of "values", aesthetics and a theory of knowledge. His best-known works are Ethik (1925), Zur Grundlegung der Ontologie (1935), Philosophie der Natur (1950), and Ästhetik (1953).

Hedonism

In ethics, a theory which defines good as that which yields pleasure or relief from suffering and evil as that which causes suffering. Hedonistic theories have been held from the earliest times; they reached their peak in the ethics of Epicurus, and are the pivot in the utilitarianism of Mill and Bentham. The idea that pleasure is the ultimate good is, however, a crude and vulgar approach to the problems of morality.

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1770–1831)

One of the German classical philosophers; an objective idealist. The young Hegel was a radical, welcomed the 18th century French Revolution and rebelled against the feudal order of the Prussian monarchy, but the reaction that set in all over Europe after the downfall of the Napoleonic empire affected Hegel's way of thinking. In 1818, he took a professorial chair at Berlin University and became an exponent, the founder even, of the official philosophy of monarchist Prussia.

Hegel's philosophy reflected the contradictory development of Germany on the eve of the bourgeois revolution; it was moved by the dualism of the rising German bourgeoisie, of which Hegel was an ideologist. Hence, the progressive, even revolutionary tendency of his philosophy, reflecting the revolutionary climate of contemporary Europe, on the one hand, and his conservative reactionary ideas, reflecting the inconsistency and cowardice of the German bourgeoisie and its gravitation towards compromise with Junkerdom, on the other.

Hegel's dualism is evident in all his writings, including Die Phänomenologie des Geistes (1807), which Marx described as the "true source and secret of Hegelian philosophy". In it Hegel examines the evolution of human consciousness from the first signs of it to the conscious development of science and scientific methodology (phenomenology—doctrine of the phenomena of consciousness from the point of view of their development). Engels described Die Phänomenologie des Geistes as the embryology and paleontology of the human spirit and the origin of the historicity that underlies all Hegel's thinking.

The volume contains an analysis of the category of alienation, in which Hegel "grasps the essence of labour", albeit in an idealistic way, and conceives man and his history as "the result of his own work" (Marx). It also contains the basic principles of Hegel's dialectics, a reasoned exposition of the identity of thought and being, which is the point of departure in Hegel's system, and of the self-developing Absolute Idea as the basis and essence of the whole world.

In its elaborate form, the system of Hegel's absolute (objective) idealism (outlined in Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse, 1817) purports that all natural and social phenomena are based on the absolute—the spirit and reason, the "absolute idea", "world reason", or "world spirit". This absolute is active, its activity consisting of thought or, more precisely, of self-cognition.

The absolute idea develops in three stages: (1) development of the idea in its own bosom, in the "element of pure thinking", i.e., Logic, wherein the idea reveals its content in a system of associated and contiguous logical categories; (2) development of the idea in the form of the "other-being", in the form of nature, i.e., Philosophy of Nature. Nature, Hegel avers, does not develop: it is merely the external manifestation of the self-development of the logical categories that constitute its spiritual essence; (3) development of the idea in thought and history (in the "spirit"), i.e., Philosophy of the Spirit. At this stage the absolute idea withdraws within itself and conceives its content in the different forms of human reasoning and activity. Hegel held that his system completed the self-development of the absolute idea and, at the same time, its self-cognition.

Hegel's dialectics, set out exhaustively in Wissenschaft der Logik (1812–16), has been a most valuable contribution to philosophy. In Wissenschaft der Logik Hegel formulated the law of quantitative changes turning into qualitative ones, produced a deep-going exposition of contradiction being the motive principle of all development, defined the law of "the negation of the negation", the dialectics of form and content, of the whole and the part, elucidated the categories of reality, necessity and chance, and many others, examined and criticised the Kantian dualism of "things-in-themselves", etc.

However, Hegel's dialectics is distinctly at odds with his idealist philosophy. The idealism of his philosophy and his bourgeois limitations prompted Hegel to betray his own dialectical ideas (claiming that the development of the world and of cognition had run its course to completion, injecting mysticism into dialectics, applying the principle of development solely to phenomena in the realm of the idea, and making the categories of logic stereotyped and artificial). He was unable and reluctant to draw any consistent social conclusions from dialectics and reconciled himself to the status quo, going to the length of proclaiming the Prussian monarchy the crowning of social development, tolerating nationalist prejudice, etc.

Hegel's philosophy had a bearing on the development of Marxism, which salvaged its most valuable element, dialectics, moulding it into a scientifically reasoned teaching on the development of nature, society and thought. Marxism acclaims Hegel's opposition to agnosticism, his historicity, his faith in the powers of human reason, and his science of logic, in which he traced the connections of the real world and the most important objective laws governing cognition.

His works include Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts (1821), Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie (1833–36), Lectures on Aesthetics (1835–38), Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte (1837).

Hegelianism

See Young Hegelians and Old Hegelians.

Heidegger, Martin (1889–1976)

One of the founders and main exponents of German existentialism. He wrote his thesis under the guidance of Rickert, was Husserl's assistant, and taught in Marburg and Freiburg. His main works are: Sein und Zeit (1927); Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik (1929); Einführung in die Metaphysik (1953). He accepted the ideology of National-Socialism in his speech when he became rector of Freiburg University in 1933.

The main category of Heidegger's idealist philosophy is "temporality", understood by him as the internal emotions of men. Heidegger regards as primary the "mood", i.e., a form of spontaneous, undeveloped consciousness. Concern, dread, etc., are a priori forms of the human personality. These forms constitute the subjective being of man, which Heidegger calls "being in the world". That is why the doctrine of a priori forms becomes a doctrine of being (as fundamental ontology).

To divine "the meaning of being" man must get rid of all practical aims and be conscious of his "mortality", "frailty". Only by feeling that he constantly stands "face to face with death" is man, according to Heidegger, capable of perceiving the importance and fulness of each moment in life and getting rid of the "idols of social being"—aims, "ideals", "scientific abstractions". The philosophy of Heidegger combines the irrationalist tendencies of Kierkegaard, the philosophy of life, and Husserl's phenomenology. Profound pessimism and hostility for science are intrinsic in Heidegger's existentialism.

Heine, Heinrich (1797–1856)

German poet, revolutionary democrat, a friend of Marx; he was the first publicly to reveal the underlying revolutionary complexion of German classical philosophy and, in particular, the dialectics of Hegel which, he said, paved the way to political revolution. Heine maintained that the history of philosophy was a history of the struggle between spiritualism and sensationalism, and declared himself a champion of the latter trend (Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland, 1834).

The poet associated his criticism of religion and idealism with the fight against feudalism, monarchy and philistinism. He advocated democratic revolution and socialism, which he conceived in the spirit of Saint-Simon. His sanguine hope was that the varied requirements of mankind, the birthright of the people, would be satisfied in the future. He identified the term "materialism" with the mechanistic materialism of the 18th century, and opposed it to the pantheism of Spinoza.

Heisenberg, Werner (1901–1976)

German physicist, resides in the Federal Republic of Germany; he is one of the founders of quantum mechanics. In 1927, Heisenberg defined the correlation of uncertainties. In the 30s and 40s, he devoted himself to various problems related to quantum mechanics and nuclear physics, and since the early 50s he has been working on a comprehensive theory of elementary particles which infers the origin of particles from the interaction with itself ("self-action") of a single material substance.

In his numerous utterances on the philosophical issues of contemporary theoretical physics, Heisenberg has generally maintained positivistic views, denied the independence of physical reality from observation, and referred to the "indeterminism" of microprocesses. However, as a researcher he has in one way or another acknowledged the objective existence of matter. Lately, he has been departing from his earlier positivistic views and expressing himself in the spirit of objective idealism.

Heliocentricism and Geocentricism

Two theories, the first of which maintains that the Earth, while revolving round its axis, is one of many planets revolving round the Sun. Declarations in favour of this theory were made by Aristarchus of Samos, Nicholas of Cusa and others, but Copernicus is rightly considered its true father, for he produced an exhaustive exposition of Heliocentricism and substantiated it mathematically. Subsequently, the Copernican system was elaborated upon. The Sun, it was shown, was the centre not of all the Universe, but only of the solar system. Much was done by Galileo, Kepler and Newton to substantiate Heliocentricism.

Progressive scientists, who championed the heliocentric system, defeated the church-sponsored geocentric theory that the Earth was immobile and constituted the centre of the Universe. The latter theory contended that the Sun, Moon, planets and stars revolved round the Earth; based on religious concepts and the writings of Plato and Aristotle, it was expounded in its most complete form by Ptolemy, a 2nd century Greek scholar.

Helmholtz, Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von (1821–1894)

German naturalist; professor at Königsberg, Bonn, Heidelberg and Berlin universities. His physico-chemical methods of examining living bodies refuted the doctrine of vitalism and stimulated the development of materialist views in biology. Helmholtz made notable physiological discoveries (measurement of the speed of excitation in nerve fibres, physiological studies of the sense organs and the laws governing the perception of space, etc.).

In his works on the theory of physics and other natural sciences Helmholtz expounded spontaneously materialist views, but gravitated at times towards Kantianism. He inferred erroneously from the theory of the "specific energy of sense-organs" that sensations were not images or copies of real things, but mere symbols, conventional signs or "hieroglyphs" bearing no resemblance to objectively existing things (see Hieroglyphs, Theory of). In his Materialism and Empirio-Criticism Lenin criticised Helmholtz for his departures from materialism.

Helvétius, Claude Adrien (1715–1771)

An exponent of French 18th century materialism; his basic works are De l'Esprit (1758) and De l'homme (1773). Helvétius's philosophy is based on Locke's sensationalism, which he purged of its idealistic element. According to Helvétius objectively existing matter is cognised through sensations. Helvétius described the memory as "a lasting but weakened sensation" and classed it as another instrument of cognition. He produced a simplified notion of thought, which he conceived as a combination of sensations.

He stressed the part played by the social environment in developing the human character and thereby inferred the necessity of substituting capitalist for feudal relations, but held that human consciousness and passion were the motives of social development. Marx and Engels gave a deep-going description of Helvétius's philosophy. "Sensuous qualities and self-love, enjoyment and correctly understood personal interests are the bases of morals," they wrote. "The natural equality of human intelligence, the unity of progress of reason and progress of industry, the natural goodness of man and the omnipotence of education are the main points in his system." (Marx, Engels, The Holy Family, p. 175.)

Helvétius's acknowledgement that environment is a decisive factor in moulding the human character, his idea of the harmonious combination of personal and social interests and his conception of the original mental equality of individuals cleared the way for utopian socialism.

Heracleides Ponticus (400 B.C.)

Greek philosopher, disciple of Plato, member of Plato's Academy, belonged to the atomistic school. Heracleides assumed that atoms were formed by a world reason, nous. His conception of the soul was atomistic and clearly influenced by Pythagoreanism. Heracleides's astronomical views inclined towards heliocentricism, while his musical theories were Aristotelian. None of his many works have survived.

Heraclitus of Ephesus (c. 544–483 B.C.)

Greek materialist philosopher and dialectician, an aristocrat. His philosophical work On Nature, of which only fragments survive, was extolled in the antique world for its profundity. The mysterious presentation of his views earned him the name of "The Obscure".

Fire, Heraclitus held, was the prime material in nature, for it was the most capable of change and motion. The world as a whole, separate things and even souls, originated from fire. "This one order of all things," Heraclitus maintained, "was created by none of the gods, nor yet by any of mankind, but it ever was, and is, and shall be—eternal fire—ignited by measure and extinguished by measure." Lenin described this aphorism as "a very good exposition of the principles of dialectical materialism". (Vol. 38, p. 349.)

All things derive from fire in accordance with necessity, which Heraclitus names "logos". The world process is cyclical: when the "great year" expires all things again turn into "fire". Everything in nature is in continuous flux. All things and all properties change into their opposites: cold becomes hot, hot becomes cold, etc. Since everything is constantly changing and is renewed, one cannot step into the same river twice because the second time one steps into new water.

In human affairs this conversion of everything into its opposite is not a simple change, but a struggle. Struggle is universal, it is "the father of everything, the sovereign of everything". But the struggle of opposites reveals their identity: the road up and the road down, life and death, etc., are all one and the same. The universality of change and the conversion of every property into its opposite make all qualities relative. Sensations are the basis of knowledge. If something were concealed from the light which is sensory, it would not, all the same, succeed in concealing itself from the light of reason.

Heraclitus opposed his outlook to that of most of his contemporaries and compatriots. His aristocratic conceptions of society blended with a few progressive views: he opposed the traditional unwritten law championed by the aristocrats, and advocated law established by the state, which, he held, men should guard as closely as the walls of their native city.

Herbart, Johann Friedrich (1776–1841)

German idealist philosopher, psychologist and educator. Herbart believed all existence to be based on reals, which are essences eternal, immutable, spiritual (like Leibniz's monad) and uncognisable (like Kant's "things-in-themselves"). The "soul" is the most perfect of the reals, giving birth to all psychic phenomena. Herbart's logic much resembled Kant's.

In education, he departed from the democratic principles of his teacher, Pestalozzi. Some of his ideas (active and passive attention, experimental psychology, etc.) are valuable. He based religion on teleology. Herbart's socio-political views were reactionary. He rejected constitutionalism and considered subordination to the dominant classes the greatest virtue of the people.

Herder, Johann Gottfried (1744–1803)

German philosopher, enlightener, man of letters and critic; studied at University of Königsberg (1762-64), where he heard the lectures of Kant. He denounced Kant's "critique" of reason and opposed to it the "physiology" of cognitive faculties and the teaching on the primacy of language over reason. Herder deduced his concepts of time and space from experience and championed the unity of matter and the forms of cognition.

Proceeding from the concept of progress in nature he developed the notion of progress in history (Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, 1784-91) and society's advancement towards humanism. Herder stressed the originality of the spiritual cultures of the various peoples, in particular the Southern Slavs, whose poetry he held in high esteem. He voiced a number of conjectures on the role of production (the crafts) and science in the development of society and anticipated the teachings of Schelling and Hegel on the disparity between the subjective purposes of individual human acts and their objective historical results.

Heredity

The ability of living organisms to transmit characteristics and properties to their offspring. This ability arose and developed in the process of biological evolution. In the case of higher animals the transmission of hereditary characteristics depends only on the sex cells. Changes in Heredity of organisms are caused by the influence of the environment. Such changes are called mutations. Harmful mutations lead to the death of the organism, useful mutations are consolidated by natural selection. Mutation and natural selection are the basic factors of biological evolution which produced the contemporary species of organisms.

Modern biology has discovered that substances, the molecules of which are sufficiently stable, reproduce themselves and regulate protein synthesis, can be the material carriers of Heredity. Molecules of nuclear nucleic acids possess this range of properties. Discovery of the material carriers of Heredity refutes the idealist ideas of supernatural causes producing this ability of living organisms. Modern genetics has drawn near to discovering concrete ways for the purposive change of Heredity. This will be an important stage in the cognition and transformation of living nature.

Heresy

(Gk. sect, choice), a departure from orthodox religious doctrine. Heresies were the religious form in which the common people protested against the ruling classes in feudal society, which were supported by the Catholic Church. The first Christian Heresies—montanism, Judeo-Christianity, gnosticism—arose in the 2nd and 3rd centuries and opposed the established Christian dogmas. Arianism, Nestorianism, and Monophysitism date from the 4th and 5th centuries, when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire.

Heresy reached its peak in the Middle Ages, when the Catholic Church was most closely connected with the exploiting classes of feudal society and was at the height of its power (Bogomils, Waldenses, Albigenses, Lollards, Taborites, etc.). The Heresy movement was of great importance because it heralded the collapse of the feudal system in Western Europe. The peasant-plebeian Heresies, which provided the slogans of peasant rebellions and inspired the common people, played a particularly prominent role in this respect. With the rise of capitalism Heresies lost their militancy and declined into religious sectarianism.

Herzen, Alexander Ivanovich (1812–1870)

Russian revolutionary democrat, materialist thinker, man of letters; founder of Narodism; son of a nobleman; completed his studies at Moscow University in 1833. Was twice exiled by the tsarist authorities, first from 1835 to 1840 and then from 1841 to 1842. In 1847 he emigrated from Russia. Witnessed the 1848-49 revolution in France and Italy. After 1852 resided mostly in England, where he founded the Free Russian Printing Press (1853). Published Kolokol (The Bell), a revolutionary Russian language newspaper, from 1857 to 1867. Died in Paris.

His chief works include: Dilettantism in Science, 1842-43; Letters on the Study of Nature, 1845-46; From the Other Shore, 1847-50; To an Old Comrade, 1869. Herzen's development was complex and contradictory, but a basic goal was always evident in his theoretical search: proceeding from the highest accomplishments of social and philosophical thought, he wanted to create a new, "realistic", scientific theory to serve as the groundwork for the coming social revolution.

Herzen elaborated on the ideas of the French utopian socialists, the romantic historiography of the Renaissance and the 19th century German classical philosophy, and in the early 1840s produced an original atheistic and materialistic ontology whose main value lay in its materialistic interpretation of Hegel's dialectics. Later, he called it "the algebra of revolution". Herzen "came right up to dialectical materialism". (Lenin, Vol. 18, p. 26.) The main accent in his philosophical searchings lay on proving the identity of being and thinking, practice and theory, society and the individual. Herzen wanted to find a method of cognition adequate to reality and representing unity of experience and speculation.

In the philosophy of history, Herzen engaged in the study of the law of society, which he ultimately conceived as a combination of the spontaneous process of history (the unconscious life of the nations) and the conscious activities of individuals (the development of science). In social affairs the notion of the unity of theory and practice prompted Herzen to work for the revolutionary enlightenment of the masses, to prepare them for socialist revolution. He approached this complex but intrinsically connected range of problems from different angles at different stages of his ideological development.

The revolution of 1848-49, whose defeat was a personal tragedy to Herzen, did much to correct his socio-philosophical views. Not finding in West European reality any coincidence of the historical process with the development of human thought, which had advanced and elaborated the socialist ideal, Herzen became pessimistic and sceptical of the prospects of a social revolution in the West. He attempted to overcome his pessimism by preaching a "Russian" peasant socialism, considering the Russian peasant community as the real embryo of the socialist future. Herzen pictured the further progress of Russian history as liberation of peasants from all feudal and autocratic trammels and fusion of the peasants' patriarchally collective way of life with socialist theory. He not only called for a radical solution of the peasant question in Russia, but postulated the possibility of by-passing the capitalist stage of development.

But events in the mid-1860s convinced him that the "bourgeois plague" was spreading in Russia. He did not succeed in overcoming his pessimism until shortly before his death, when he broke relations with the anarchist Bakunin and acclaimed the reviving working-class movement in Western Europe led by the First International as an earnest of the victory of socialism.

Heuristic

The art of discourse which flourished among the ancient Greek sophists. It sprang up as a means of discovering truth; it split into dialectics and sophistry. It was Socrates who developed dialectics. Sophistry, which did not aim at discovering truth but only at winning an argument, reduced heuristic to a number of ways of proving and disproving any statement with equal success. For this reason, Aristotle saw no distinction between heuristic and sophistry.

Hieroglyphs (or Symbols), Theory of

An epistemological concept which claims that sensations create in the human mind not images reflecting the features of objects and phenomena, but symbols, signs, hieroglyphs which have nothing in common with things and their properties. The Theory of Hieroglyphs was first propounded by Hermann von Helmholtz on the basis of the so-called law of specific energy of the sense-organs formulated by Johannes Müller (according to this law, the specific nature of sensations depends not on outside influences, but on the properties of the sense-organs. For example, any influence on the organ of sight produces the sensation of light). The term "hieroglyph" was introduced into philosophy by Plekhanov. This point of view brings in an element of agnosticism in epistemology.

Dialectical materialism does not regard sensation as a mere copy of the properties of objects. Elementary sensations, arising during interaction with the objective world, also depend on the specific organisation of the sense-organs. But the specific nature of the sense-organs themselves is ultimately determined by such objective and constant vehicles of information about changes in the environment as electromagnetic waves (light), oscillation of air (sound), and so on. On the other hand, elementary sensations are a subjective image of the objective world. They are the subjective means with the help of which a real image of external things is reproduced. That is why sensations keep us in touch with reality, and are not an impassable abyss which separates man's mind from the objective world. Lenin gave a criticism of Plekhanov's mistakes on this question in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism.

Higher Nervous Activity

Aggregate of the complex processes forming temporary associations in the cortex of the cerebral hemispheres. Pavlov's teaching on Higher Nervous Activity reveals the specific function of nervous activity, which enables highly developed bodies to adapt themselves to the changing conditions of their environment. Higher Nervous Activity is based essentially on conditioned reflexes acquired by the body in the course of individual experience. Higher Nervous Activity of animals is limited to the immediate reflection of external causes through the first signal system. Man, as distinct from other animals, chiefly employs the higher second signal system, in which reflex activity is mediated by speech. Speech affords man a more profound, generalised reflection of reality in the form of abstract notions and complex judgements.

Higher Nervous Activity reveals the physiological basis and laws governing psychic activity. This facilitates cognition of the origin and development of human consciousness and confirms the proposition of the materialist philosophers that consciousness is the function of highly organised matter, the brain.

Higher Nervous Activity, Types of

The complexes of the basic properties of nervous processes (stimulation and inhibition) which determine the individual features of the higher nervous activity of animals and man. The concept Types of Higher Nervous Activity was introduced by Ivan Pavlov. According to Pavlov, stimulation and inhibition operative in the cortex of the cerebral hemispheres possess three main properties. They are expressed in terms of the stages of (1) the power of nervous processes which is dependent on the efficiency of nervous cells; (2) the balance between the various processes; (3) the mobility of processes, i.e., the velocity of emergence or termination of stimulation and replacement of stimulation by inhibition and vice versa.

A combination of these properties results in the Types of Higher Nervous Activity. There are four most characteristic types: (1) strong, balanced, and mobile; (2) strong, balanced, and immobile; (3) strong and unbalanced (the process of stimulation being obviously predominant); (4) weak (both processes are weak, with inhibition being somewhat predominant). Four temperaments correspond to these main Types of Higher Nervous Activity. The afore-mentioned Types of Higher Nervous Activity are common both to the animals and man.

Pavlov singles out three Types of Higher Nervous Activity which are proper to man alone and are conditioned by the peculiarities inherent in the correlation of the signal systems: apprehensive type (with the relative predominance of the second signal system), artistic type (with the relative predominance of the first signal system), and middle type. The peculiar features of the individual's nervous processes are closely connected with his general talents and condition individual differences in the formation of capabilities.

Hilbert, David (1862–1943)

German mathematician and logician; lecturer at Königsberg from 1886 and at Göttingen from 1895; founder of the Göttingen mathematical school. Hilbert worked on the theory of algebraic invariants, algebraic numbers and the foundations of mathematics and mathematical logic. In his Grundlagen der Geometrie (1899) he reduced Euclidean geometry to a rigid system of axioms, which largely predetermined further work on the axiomatisation of knowledge (see Axiomatic Method). Hilbert produced important work on the propositional calculus and functional calculus.

In a number of articles which appeared in the early 1920s, Hilbert formulated a new approach to the foundations of mathematics, which led to the appearance, on the one hand, of the conception of formalism and, on the other, of metamathematics, a new branch of mathematics.

Hinduism

A system of ideas and concepts which has prevailed in the religion, ethics and philosophy of India from the early Middle Ages to current times. The sphere of Hinduism includes most of the Indian cults and religious systems based on the worship of the gods Vishnu and Siva. Hinduism arose in connection with the general crisis of the world outlook in India in the 6th–4th centuries B.C. The written sources of Hinduism include most of the ancient and medieval Indian religious, philosophical and legal literature in Sanskrit.

Atman, the individual soul, and Brahman, the world soul, are the most important of the general religious philosophical categories. According to the objective idealist concepts of Hinduism, these categories are not connected with space, time or causation; Atman and Brahman are counterposed by nature (Prakrti) which develops in space and time according to the laws of causation. The ultimate aim of every progress is release of Atman from nature and its fusion with Brahman.

The soul's link with nature is regulated by the law of karma, the essence of which is: Atman, on becoming a "living" soul lodged in the body of a living being, performs actions, good and bad. Karma (literally, "action") is the influence of these actions; it leaves the soul in a cycle of births and deaths (samsara) and dooms it to be born anew. The condition (wealth, poverty, honour, degradation, etc.) in which the next birth takes place is a reward or retribution for the actions committed during previous births. The ideas and concepts of Hinduism reflected and consolidated the conservative caste system.

Avatars and manifestation play the most important part among the Hinduistic religious mythological ideas. Avatars is the incarnation of a god in another god, man or animal. The new incarnation continues to exist alongside the "initial" deity and its other incarnations. Manifestation is the revelation of the God Siva in any image it wishes to assume and whose existence might last from a few moments to eternity.

The Historical and the Logical

Philosophical categories characterising the process of development and also the relationship between the logical development of thought and the history of an object, the history of the process itself. The Historical expresses the real process of origin and formation of the given object; the Logical, the relationship, the laws of connection and interaction of its aspects which exist in a developed state. The Historical is related to the Logical as the process of development to its result, in which the connections successively shaped in the course of history attain "complete maturity and classical form" (Engels). Historical and Logical are in dialectical unity, including an element of contradiction.

Their unity is expressed, first, in the Historical containing within it the Logical to the extent to which every process contains its own objective orientation, its own necessity which leads to a definite result. Although at the beginning of the process the Logical, as an expression of the developed structure of the object, is still absent, the sequence of the phases undergone during the process on the whole coincides with the relationship (logical connection) between the components of the developed system; the process is consummated in the emergence of a definite, specific object.

Secondly, the unity of the Historical and Logical is expressed in the reproduction by the relationship and interdependence between the sides of the developed whole of the history of this whole, its emergence and the formation of its specific structure. The result contains "photographed" in itself the process of its emergence: the Logical contains within itself the Historical.

Although the unity of the Historical and Logical is of decisive significance for understanding the relationship between the history of the object and its result, the two coincide only in general, because all the accidental and transient, all the zigzags of development which are inevitable in the historical process are obviated and lost in the object which has reached "complete maturity and classical form". The Logical is the "corrected" Historical. But this "correction" is made "according to the laws which the actual historical process itself provides" (Engels).

Hence the difference in the logical and historical ways of reflecting reality in thought. The difference between these methods of study is not merely and not only a difference in the subjective aims of study: it has its objective basis. This difference is inevitable, because in reality itself the process and result of development do not coincide, although they are in unity, and therefore the historical and logical methods of study differ in content.

The purpose of historical study is to reveal the concrete conditions and prerequisites for the development of phenomena, their historical sequence and transition from certain historically necessary stages to others. The purpose of logical study is to reveal the role which separate elements of the system play in the developed whole. But since the developed whole preserves only the conditions and features of its development which express its specific nature, the logical reproduction of the developed whole proves to be the key to revealing its real history. "The anatomy of man is the key to the anatomy of the ape" (Marx).

At the same time the boundaries separating these two methods of study are arbitrary and mobile, because ultimately the Logical is the selfsame Historical released from its concrete form and presented in a generalised, theoretical way; and vice versa, the Historical is the selfsame Logical vested in the flesh and blood of concrete historical development. The dialectics of Historical and Logical is of great importance for dialectical logic, which uncovers the general laws of knowledge, the logic of movement of thought in the process of cognising reality.

Historical Cycle, Theory of

An idealist theory elaborated by Vico, according to which society endlessly passes through the same stages. In the 19th and 20th centuries certain philosophers and sociologists rejected the positive elements of Vico's theory—the idea of historical progress, law-governed social development, etc., and highlighted the idea of mankind's constant return to its point of origin (see Nietzsche and Spengler). The main present-day adherent of this theory is Toynbee (see also Progress and Retrogression in Social Development). The theory of historical cycles raises into an absolute and thereby distorts certain aspects of the historical process (idea of repetition, etc.).

Historism (or Historicity)

The principle of cognition of things and phenomena in the process of their emergence and development, in connection with the concrete historical conditions determining them. Historism implies an approach to phenomena as products of definite historical development, which considers how they arose, developed, and attained their present state. As a definite method of theoretical research Historism is a fixation not of any and every (even qualitative) change, but only of those which reflect the formation of specific properties and connections of things, determining their essence, their qualitative specifics. Historism presupposes recognition of the irreversible and successive nature of changes of things.

Historism has become a major principle of science, enabling it to give a scientific picture of nature and discover the laws governing its development (for example, Darwin's theory of evolution). Thanks to Historism, which constitutes an integral and important side of the dialectical method, Marxism was able to explain the essence of such intricate social phenomena as the state, classes, etc., to foresee the historically transient nature of capitalism and its inevitable replacement by socialism. Denial of the principle of Historism, struggle against it or its interpretation in a positivist and empirical spirit, are characteristic features of contemporary idealist philosophy.

Hobbes, Thomas (1588–1679)

English materialist philosopher; his philosophy was influenced by the English 17th century bourgeois revolution. His chief works are De Cive (1642) and Leviathan (1651). Hobbes developed the doctrine of mechanistic materialism and gave system to Bacon's materialism. Marx pointed out that Hobbes's materialism was one-sided. "Sensuousness," Marx wrote, "lost its bloom and became the abstract sensuousness of the geometrician. Physical motion was sacrificed to mechanical or mathematical, geometry was proclaimed the principal science." (Marx and Engels, The Holy Family, p. 173.)

According to Hobbes the world is the sum total of bodies governed by the laws of mechanical motion. Hobbes also reduces to motion and effort the psychic life of man and beast. These, he holds, are complex mechanisms completely governed by outside effects. From this Hobbes infers that (1) souls do not exist as special substances, (2) material bodies are the single substance, and (3) God is no more than a figment of the imagination. Hobbes denies the objectiveness of the qualitative multiplicity of nature, believing that it is a property of human perception based on the mechanical differences between things.

In his doctrine on knowledge Hobbes attacks Descartes' theory of innate ideas. Inferring all ideas from sensations, Hobbes develops the teaching on the elaboration of ideas by comparison, combination and division. While Hobbes holds that experience or knowledge of isolated facts furnishes no more than probable truths about the connections of things, he admits that valid general knowledge is possible, being conditioned by language, that is, the ability of names to become symbols of general ideas.

In his doctrine of law and the state, Hobbes rejects the theories of the divine origin of society and advances the theory of social contract (see Social Contract, Theory of). Hobbes considers absolute monarchy the best form of state, but his numerous explanations and reservations leave room for revolutionary principles. His idea centres not on the monarchistic principle as such, but on the unrestricted character of state power. Powers of the state, he points out, are compatible with the interests of the classes which carried out the bourgeois revolution in 17th century England. Hobbes's theory of society and the state contains embryos of a materialistic appreciation of social phenomena.

Holbach, Paul Henri Dietrich (1723–1789)

French materialist philosopher, and atheist. Born a German baron, he spent most of his life in France. His most important book, Le Système de la nature (1770) was publicly burned by order of the Paris Parliament. His other works are Le Christianisme dévoilé (1761), Théologie portative (1768), and Bon Sens, ou idées naturelles opposées aux idées surnaturelles (1772). Holbach attacked religion and idealist philosophy, particularly the doctrines of Berkeley. He described idealism as a chimera opposed to common sense, and attributed the origin of religion to ignorance and to the fear of most and the deceit of some.

Matter, Holbach held, "is everything that acts in one way or another on our senses", it consists of immutable and indivisible atoms whose main properties are extent, weight, shape and impenetrability. He believed that motion, another attribute of matter, was simple mechanical movement of bodies in space. Man, Holbach stated, was part of nature and subject to its laws. He advocated determinism, but interpreted causality mechanistically. He denied the objective existence of chances and defined them as phenomena, the causes of which were unknown.

In epistemology, Holbach leaned towards sensationalism and opposed agnosticism. In politics, he favoured constitutional monarchy, but in specific cases, advocated enlightened absolutism. An idealist in his approach to society, Holbach said that "opinions rule the world". He attributed the decisive role in history to legislators. He saw education as the means for man's emancipation. Ignorance of their own nature, Holbach averred, put the human race under the sway of governments. He believed bourgeois society to be a realm of reason.

Holism

Idealist "philosophy of integrity". This concept was introduced by Field Marshal J. Smuts of South Africa in his book Holism and Evolution (1926). Idealistically interpreting the irreducibility of the whole to the sum of its parts, Smuts asserted that the world is governed by a holistic process—the process of creative evolution, the creation of new integrities, in the course of which the forms of matter are constantly increasing. According to Smuts, the holistic process negates the law of preservation of matter. He considered the "factor of integrity" to be non-material and unknowable, attributing to it a mystic character. Smuts saw the political embodiment of the holist principle in the Union of South Africa with the regime of social oppression and racial discrimination prevailing in it.

"The Holy Family or Critique of 'Critical Critique'"

An early philosophical work written by Marx and Engels in 1845. "The Holy Family is a facetious nickname for the Bauer brothers, the philosophers, and their followers. These gentlemen preached a criticism which stood above all reality, above parties and politics, which rejected all practical activity, and which only 'critically' contemplated the surrounding world and the events going on within it. These gentlemen, the Bauers, looked down on the proletariat as an uncritical mass. Marx and Engels vigorously opposed this absurd and harmful tendency." (Lenin, Works, Vol. 2, p. 23.)

The Holy Family gives a profound critique of the idealism of Hegel and the Young Hegelians and continues the elaboration of dialectical and historical materialism. In it Marx and Engels arrived at a primary idea in the materialistic understanding of history, the idea of the social relations of production. Subjecting the personality cult upheld by the Young Hegelians to sharp criticism, they showed that the struggle of the working people against the exploiters is the central feature of all history. They declared that the proletariat is the grave-digger of capitalism. The Holy Family presents the view of Marx and Engels on the proletariat's revolutionary role in an almost finished form.

The Holy Family gives a profound and interesting outline of the history of philosophy, particularly the history of materialism in Britain and France. It is an important landmark in the development of scientific communism, in the struggle against anti-proletarian, petty-bourgeois ideology and idealism.

Homoeomeries

A term used by Anaxagoras; though not used in surviving fragments of his works, it was passed down by his later commentators. Anaxagoras believed that all things were an infinite number of particles of different qualities, each of these being divided into an infinite number of like particles. According to Anaxagoras, Homoeomeries are the qualitatively like particles or qualitatively original particles containing an infinity of smaller particles. This, he inferred, is why they bear the name of the thing which possesses similar or like particles. In modern mathematical terms Homoeomeries may be defined as an infinity given in an infinite degree.

Homogeneity and Heterogeneity

According to the principle of homogeneity postulated by Kant the special concepts must have something in common, this common quality classing them under a common generic concept. The principle of heterogeneity, on the other hand, requires that special concepts classed under the same generic concept should differ. The modern interpretation of homogeneity forbids the classification of heterogeneous principles within the framework of one theory. Violation of this principle leads to eclecticism.

Homonymy

A logical mistake consisting in the identical use of two different meanings of one and the same word which leads to a violation of the law of identity. The reason for Homonymy is the existence of homonyms (words having the same pronunciation but different meanings) and polysemy. The term Homonymy was introduced by Aristotle in his treatise Sophistici Elenchi.

Honour

A moral category expressing social recognition of that which merits a high appraisal in the activity of an individual, group, institution, etc. In feudal society, Honour was determined by noble birth and in capitalist society, by wealth. In socialist society, Honour (respect) is determined by services to the people in building communism and also by man's behaviour in everyday life, his attitude to other people. Honour obliges one to be honest, morally pure, to preserve, cherish, and multiply what deserves respect. Unworthy behaviour leads to dishonour and disgrace. Excessive striving for honours and glory is called ambition and is a vice.

Hsün Tzi (c. 298–238 B.C.)

Chinese materialist philosopher; took a critical view of and used in his teaching the ideas of many philosophical schools and trends in ancient China. He produced a harmonious theory of nature. His concept of heaven is not some mystical supreme ruler but the aggregate of natural phenomena; he rejected the existence of a universal creator. All phenomena and things originate and change under the impact of two interacting forces: the positive yang and the negative yin (see Yin and Yang).

According to Hsün Tzi, the process of cognition begins with the testimony of the sense-organs, but man can obtain a correct and comprehensive picture only as a result of cogitation on the data of sensory experience. His theory that the evil qualities are innate in man's nature enjoyed a wide popularity; he held that all the good elements in man were created in the course of education. His teaching had a profound influence on the subsequent development of Chinese philosophy.

Human Relations, Theory of

A sociological theory which tries to prove the humane nature of contemporary capitalism by picturing the relations between the exploiters and the exploited as "human relations" based on Christian commandments. Theory of Human Relations is a component of the theory of "people's capitalism". It proposes various measures for camouflaging capitalist exploitation (participation of workers in profits of the monopolies and the buying of shares, group insurance, visits of workers' homes by the employers, the presentation of holiday gifts, joint consultations of workers and management, and so on).

Humanism

A system of views based on respect for the dignity of man, concern for his welfare, his all-round development, and the creation of favourable conditions for social life. Humanistic ideas originated spontaneously in popular struggles against exploitation and vice. It grew into a distinct ideological movement at the time of the Renaissance from the 14th to 16th century, when it figured prominently as an element of bourgeois ideology opposed to feudalism and medieval theology.

Humanism is closely associated with progressive materialistic views; it proclaims freedom of the individual, opposes religious asceticism, vindicates man's right to pleasure and the satisfaction of earthly desires and requirements. Some of the most prominent humanists of the Renaissance, Petrarch, Dante, Boccaccio, Leonardo da Vinci, Erasmus of Rotterdam, Bruno, Rabelais, Montaigne, Copernicus, Shakespeare, Francis Bacon, and others, helped to mould mundane views, but were far removed from the people, from working men, and hostile to the revolutionary movements of the oppressed. Thinkers like More and Campanella, on the other hand, expressed the interests of the working people.

Bourgeois Humanism reached its zenith in the works of the 18th century Enlighteners, who put forward the slogans of liberty, equality and fraternity and proclaimed men's right freely to develop their "natural essence". However, even the finest manifestations of bourgeois Humanism have the shortcoming of, overlooking the living conditions of working people, ignoring the question of their true freedom and basing humanistic ideals on private property and individualism. Hence the contradiction between the slogans of Humanism and their realisation in capitalist society. As for the exponents of utopian socialism, they saw the anti-humanistic nature of capitalism and attacked its vices. But, not knowing the objective laws of history, they were unable to discover effective ways and means for achieving a just society.

Socialist Humanism is fundamentally different. It is based on the Marxist-Leninist philosophy and theory of scientific communism, which postulate liberation of the working people from social oppression and the building of communism as an essential condition for the harmonious development of all men and genuine freedom of the individual. Socialist Humanism is the ideology of the proletariat, because the proletariat is the only class that seeks to provide the essential conditions for the triumph of man's humanistic ideals by its struggle against the exploiting classes, for communism.

By abolishing private ownership and exploitation, socialism establishes truly humanistic relations, based on the principle that man is to man a friend, comrade and brother. Communism is the supreme embodiment of Humanism, for it eliminates all surviving traces of inequality and establishes the supreme expression of justice, the principle "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs", providing the essential conditions for the harmonious development of all individuals. Communism delivers "all men from social inequality, from every form of oppression and exploitation, from the horrors of war, and proclaims Peace, Labour, Freedom, Equality, Fraternity, and Happiness for all peoples of the earth". (Programme of the CPSU.)

The term Humanism is also used to describe the culture and ideology of the Renaissance.

Humboldt, Alexander von (1769–1859)

German materialist philosopher, naturalist, one of the founders of modern geography. His most famous philosophical works are Ansichten der Natur (1807) and Kosmos (1845-58). He considered matter endowed with intrinsic activity to be the only cosmic substance. He did not delve into the sources of motion, but attempted all the same to overcome the mechanistic concept of motion. He made a number of dialectical conjectures about the interconnection of various phenomena and their peculiarities.

He opposed the natural philosophies of Schelling and Hegel and Comte's positivism, and attached importance to the alliance of science and materialist philosophy. His ideas on natural science helped to refute various metaphysical views. He identified sensualism and rationalism, and advocated a poetical appreciation of reality which, he averred, makes cognition socially useful. Humboldt believed that cognition is possible through experimental communion with nature. This was a strong point in his epistemological system. He expressed the interests of the radical wing of the German bourgeoisie and sympathised with the French late 18th century bourgeois revolution.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm (1767–1835)

German philosopher, linguist and statesman; brother of Alexander von Humboldt. His main works are Ideen zu einem Versuch, die Grenzen der Wirksamkeit des Staates zu bestimmen (1792), Ästhetische Versuche über Goethes Hermann und Dorothea (1799), Über die Aufgabe des Geschichtsschreibers (1821) and Über die Kawisprache auf der Insel Java (1836-39). Humboldt accepted Kant's philosophical doctrine and sought to concretise and develop it by basing it on social history, though he inclined towards objective idealism on a number of points.

According to Humboldt's theory of historical cognition, world history is the result of the activity of a spiritual force which transcends cognition. He believed that the history of mankind cannot be understood from the causative point of view, though it consists of a chain of explicable aspirations of individuals and appears describable. This is why, he said, history as a science may to a certain degree be replaced by aesthetics. In the field of linguistics, Humboldt suggested the method of comparative historical investigations of languages, which proved highly valuable.

He represented the liberal wing of the German bourgeoisie. His anti-feudal views did not go beyond the aim of educational reform and the idea of German unity. Humboldt took part in the founding of Berlin University.

Hume, David (1711–1776)

English idealist philosopher, psychologist, historian. The task of knowledge, according to Hume, lies not in the understanding of being but in its ability to be a guide in practical life. For him, the only subject of authentic knowledge is that of mathematics. All other objects of study concern facts which cannot be proved logically and can only be deduced from experience. All opinions on existences also proceed from experience, which Hume, however, understood idealistically.

Reality, for him, is only a stream of "impressions" whose causes are unknown and unknowable. He considered insoluble the problem of the existence or non-existence of the objective world. One of the fundamental relations established by experience is the relation of cause and effect; it can be deduced neither by intuition nor by analysis and proof. If one phenomenon precedes another it cannot be deduced that the former is the cause and the latter the effect. Even the most frequent repetitions of events in time do not give knowledge of a hidden force by which one object produces the other. People, however, are inclined to infer from the behaviour of a given object in the past similar behaviours of the same object in the future. They make such inference only by force of habit. Thus, Hume denies the objective character of causality.

The stream of our impressions, according to Hume, is not absolute chaos: some objects appear to us as bright, vivid, stable objects, and this is quite sufficient for practical life. It is only necessary to understand that the source of certitude is not theoretical knowledge but faith. In ethics Hume developed the theory of utilitarianism, and declared utility to be the criterion of morality; in the philosophy of religion he confined himself to the admission that the causes of the order in the Universe have some analogy with reason, but denied all the theological and philosophical doctrines of God, and, turning to historical experience, he acknowledged the evil influence of religion on morality and civil life.

Hume's scepticism was the theoretical foundation of the utilitarian and rational world outlook of the bourgeoisie. Main work: Enquiry Concerning the Human Understanding (1748). Hume's agnosticism greatly influenced contemporary idealism. It served as one of the main ideological sources of neo-positivism.

Husserl, Edmund (1859–1938)

German idealist philosopher, founder of the so-called phenomenological school, professor at Göttingen and Freiburg. His philosophy is based on the teachings of Plato, Leibniz, and Brentano. Husserl sought to turn philosophy into a strictly defined science and to create a pure logic of scientific knowledge. For this purpose, he believed, logical categories and laws had to be defined in their pure form.

Husserl professed to be neutral in philosophy and attempted to identify "pure consciousness" divorced from being and the consciousness of the concrete subject (the individual). This, he maintained, was the way to achieve the "pure essences" of Plato's objective idealism. These "possess meaning", but do not possess existence in themselves. On the whole, Husserl's views were subjectively idealistic, inasmuch as he held that the object of cognition does not exist outside the consciousness of the subject focussed upon it. The object is discovered (and created) as the result of intuition, which is concentrated upon it. The personal emotions of the individual are the criterion of truth.

Husserl's ideas strongly influenced the subsequent development of bourgeois philosophy. Elements of Husserl's objective idealism were projected in Nicolai Hartmann's "critical ontology" and the neo-realistic schools in the USA and Britain. His subjective idealism became to a large extent the foundation of German existentialism, particularly that of Heidegger. His most prominent works are Logische Untersuchungen (1900, 1901), Die Krisis der Europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie (1954) and Erste Philosophie (1956-59). (See Phenomenology.)

Huxley, Thomas Henry (1825–1895)

English naturalist, friend and follower of Darwin; author of eminent works on biology, comparative anatomy, palaeontology and anthropology; championed Darwin's theories. In philosophy Huxley professed to be a follower of Hume, maintaining, as Hume did, that we can never conclusively cognise the true causes of our sensations. He aptly described his attitude with the word "agnosticism". But his agnosticism served him as a screen for his spontaneously materialist outlook, especially in natural science.

Hylozoism

The doctrine that all matter is animated and, therefore, possesses sensations. The early Greek materialists, such as Bruno and some French materialists, such as Jean-Baptiste Robinet, were hylozoists. The term was first employed in the 17th century. The doctrine attributes sensations and mental faculties to all forms of matter. In fact, however, sensations are a property of only highly developed organic matter.

Hypostatisation

1. In the general sense, attribution of the self-subsistent reality of an object or substance to mere properties or relations. 2. In the more common usage, idealist attribution of self-subsistent reality to abstract concepts.

Hypothesis

An assumption based on a series of facts for inferring the existence of an object, or the relation or cause of phenomena, without actual proof. The corresponding judgement, conclusion or inference is called hypothetical. The need for Hypothesis arises in science when the connection between, or the cause of, phenomena is unclear, although many of the circumstances preceding or accompanying these phenomena are known; Hypothesis is also used when a picture of the past has to be restored from some characteristics of the present or a conclusion has to be drawn about the future development of a phenomenon on the strength of the past and present.

But the formulation of Hypothesis on the basis of definite facts is only the first step. Being no more than probable, Hypothesis calls for verification and proof. After verification, Hypothesis becomes a scientific theory; if the verification is negative, Hypothesis is either revised or rejected. The main rules governing the formulation and verification of Hypothesis are: 1. Hypothesis must agree or at least be compatible with all the pertinent facts. 2. Of many conflicting Hypotheses, formulated to explain a series of facts, the Hypothesis which explains a larger number is preferable. So-called working Hypotheses may be formulated to explain individual facts of the series. 3. The least possible number of Hypotheses should be formulated to explain a connected series of facts, and their connection should be as close as possible. 4. When formulating Hypothesis it should be borne in mind that Hypothesis is essentially no more than probable. 5. Hypotheses contradicting each other cannot both be true unless they explain different aspects and connections of one and the same object.

Modern positivists, empiricists, "all-inductivists", etc., believe that science should record and register the facts and should not formulate Hypotheses on the laws governing the objective world. They hold that Hypotheses play no more than a working role and are of no real significance. The nature of modern science, the fact that experiments have become more complex and intricate, compel researchers to engage in theoretical conjectures and broad Hypotheses. This confirms Engels' proposition that Hypothesis is the "form of development of natural science, in so far as it thinks". (Dialectics of Nature, p. 244.)

Hypothetico-Deductive Method

A methodological device whereby certain propositions are advanced as hypothetical and subjected to verification by inferring effects on the strength of available valid knowledge and comparing these effects to the facts. Hypothetico-Deductive Method is an important element of scientific methodology. It is used in association with a number of methodological operations: comparison of the facts; revision of existing concepts; formulation of new concepts; agreement of hypotheses with other theoretical tenets, etc. The neo-positivist "philosophy of science" is, therefore, wrong when it elevates Hypothetico-Deductive Method to an absolute and describes it as the only essential methodological operation from the point of view of logic.

Hypothetico-Deductive Theory

A form of logical arrangement of knowledge in the natural sciences. Hypothetico-Deductive Theory is an application of the deductive or axiomatic theory (employed in mathematical methodology) to the specific problems of natural science based on experiments and observations. In addition to the rules governing deductive systems in general, Hypothetico-Deductive Theory should also meet the requirements of empirical interpretation, which facilitates empirical verification of propositions. Empirical interpretation is achieved through so-called interpretative propositions, which connect the meaning of theoretical concepts with some of the immediately observable properties (see Operational Definitions).

Hyppolite, Jean (1907–1968)

French existentialist philosopher, director of the École Normale. His main works are devoted to Hegel. Hyppolite maintains that Hegelian philosophy has the same importance for our age as the philosophy of Aristotle had for the Middle Ages. He regards the main philosophical trends as a continuation of the Hegelian system. From his point of view, Hegel's "ontology of life" must become the basis for knowing human existence. He thus turns Hegel into an existentialist. Proceeding from his false concept, Hyppolite claims that Marx is a Hegelian and tries to find elements of idealism in Marxism.