As the title suggests, some reflections on reading.
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The Struggle Between Flesh and Spirit
Kant is the “quarantine zone” of the “French plague,” and his philosophy is used to reconcile German landlord class philosophy (theology) and French bourgeois philosophy (mechanical materialism). At that time, the German bourgeoisie was weak and lacked the strength to lead a revolution; meanwhile, class contradictions were extremely sharp. The German bourgeoisie hoped to rely on the power of Junker landlords to suppress the people and maintain their exploitative position. Additionally, the German bourgeoisie also hoped that Junker landlords would help in external invasion and expansion to complete primitive accumulation of capital. Therefore, in terms of class stance, Kant was dependent on the Prussian Junker landlords and the German bourgeoisie, and his thoughts showed contradictions, with his philosophy clearly “exposing” these contradictions.
In terms of ontology, because Kant represented the interests of the German bourgeoisie demanding change but opposed violent revolution and dared not completely oppose feudalism, he was a dualist. He believed in the existence of an objective reality independent of human consciousness but thought this material was unknowable, attempting to reconcile bourgeois French materialism with German landlord feudal theology, which ultimately still adhered to idealism. French materialists advocated a materialist reflection theory, believing that humans have no innate knowledge, and all human cognition comes from postnatal reflection of the environment. In contrast, Kant believed that humans possess “a priori intuitive forms,” born with the habit of understanding matter through the forms of time and space. Kant’s view is entirely ahistorical. In fact, human understanding of time and space has developed over a long process. Early humans did not know the existence of time or space, but both still existed. Later, through long-term production practices, humans learned to measure time, initially based on celestial phenomena, leading to the earliest astronomical calendars. Subsequently, they began to use tools like hourglasses and water drops to measure time, creating concepts such as seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, seasons, and years. They also realized that, generally, time flows at a uniform rate, and by Newton’s time, a systematic understanding of time was formed.
Understanding of space also began with recognizing the space of specific objects, then in ancient Greece, geometric studies abstracted the concept of space itself, leading to the development of geometry of one, two, and three dimensions, forming concepts like points, lines, and surfaces. Ultimately, Euclid synthesized these into a systematic “Euclidean space,” which also matured during Newton’s era. Newton’s spacetime view is collectively called the “absolute spacetime view,” which considers spacetime to exist independently of matter, with time flowing at a uniform rate and space serving as a container for matter. Before the 20th century, the dominant view was the absolute spacetime view, and Kant’s so-called “a priori intuitive forms” merely exaggerated the immature absolute spacetime view that appeared in human history as the only concept of spacetime. With the emergence of non-Euclidean geometry and the discovery in the late 19th century that high-speed motion causes non-uniform spacetime transformations, the so-called “a priori intuitive forms” theory was shattered and became completely bankrupt.
In terms of the knowability of the world, Kant was an agnostic. His dichotomy is “exposing philosophy,” merely revealing contradictions without attempting to resolve them, or even claiming that contradictions are impossible to resolve. In fact, this was a way to attack materialism and epistemology, promoting idealist agnosticism. Kant’s point was that the material world also has a “dark side.” During the rise of the French bourgeoisie, the Enlightenment movement was launched, advocating that all things in the world could be understood through human “reason,” which falls into the category of epistemological positivism. Kant, on the other hand, openly promoted agnosticism to oppose revolutionary ideas, deliberately seeking the “dark side” of the Enlightenment, aiming to deny the positive significance of bourgeois “reason,” and using agnosticism to defend the existence of God, dragging society back under feudal theological rule.
Kant seized the weakness of French materialist metaphysics, which did not acknowledge contradictions and denied that contradictions are the driving force of world development. By deliberately exposing contradictions, he criticized materialism. French materialism believed that all motion could be reduced to mechanical motion and that everything in the world could be examined through mathematics and mechanics. La Mettrie said, “Man is a machine.” Based on materialist reflection theory, they believed that consciousness is a reflection of matter, and social consciousness is the reflection of the social material basis—the social environment. Human consciousness is caused by the environment in which one exists. Thus, Kant in thought posed the dichotomy—The world is finite or infinite; matter is finite and indivisible or infinite and divisible; there is “free will” that can interfere with the operation of the world; or “free will” does not exist, and only unconscious natural laws influence the development of the world; the reason for the universe’s existence comes from outside or from itself. In natural philosophy, French materialism was powerless against these dichotomies—for example, mechanical materialism believed in indivisible basic particles but could not explain what the internal structure of these particles was, which implied that matter was still divisible; if matter was infinitely divisible, then matter itself became meaningless, and all matter turned into hollow structures, leading to nihilism and the acknowledgment of spirit as primary. In social history, the same applies. French materialism, based on the principle of reflection theory, believed that social consciousness is determined by the social environment; a person’s consciousness is influenced by their environment, such as the idea that slavery is justified arising in a slaveholding environment. This is the proposition “environment determines consciousness.” However, the existence of a certain social environment ultimately depends on people’s inability to tolerate existing social systems based on certain consciousness, leading to social reform and the creation of new social systems. Thus, the opposite proposition “opinions govern the world” emerges, where a few individuals—emperors and officials—who can issue policies and directly transform social systems become the driving force of social development, falling into historical idealism. French materialism, starting from the “rigorous” principles of materialism, ultimately arrived at idealist conclusions, unable to resolve these contradictions, which is the disastrous consequence of adhering to a metaphysical development view. Kant exploited the weaknesses of old materialism—its neglect of practice and opposition to dialectics—to promote agnosticism, claiming that reflection theory of materialism and the apriorism of idealism are “each justified,” and who is right or wrong is unknowable. The origin of the material world is dual or, more precisely, unknowable. To resolve the dichotomy, one must abandon prejudice against contradictions, no longer see contradictions as inherently bad, acknowledge their existence, and attempt to resolve them on this basis. Therefore, dialectics is the key to solving the dichotomy, and this paradox was ultimately resolved by Hegel.
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Kant: There are sunspots inside the sun, and there are shadows in the kingdom of reason
Kant more or less acknowledged contradictions in the development view and based on this proposed the nebular hypothesis, believing that the solar system originated from its inherent contradictions. However, overall, Kant was a revealing philosopher; he only acknowledged contradictions but did not intend to resolve them. In the end, he took the opposite route, treating materialism as unreliable, thus supporting idealism and feudal theology.
At the end of “Critique of Pure Reason,” Kant wrote: “There are two things that, whenever we think about them repeatedly and continuously, always fill our minds with awe and wonder that is renewed constantly: the starry sky above us and the moral law within us.” The “starry sky above” refers to the external world, but in Kant’s view, the external world is unknowable, so it requires “reverence,” and thus it needs to be “revered from afar.” In fact, it treats the external world as an incarnation of the inscrutable god, a philosophized version of God. The “moral law within” refers to Kant’s idealist worldview within his mind. According to transcendental philosophy, he exaggerated his worldview as human nature, emphasizing that “reverence” demands people to “think about it repeatedly” and “renew it constantly,” thus harboring “reverence” for idealism and avoiding challenging thoughts. This is a replica of Meng Ke’s “reflection and sincerity” idealist apriorism, exposing Kant’s underlying idealism. Overall, Kant’s statement summarizes the purpose of his philosophy: to respect God, thereby respecting the feudal system of the real world, respecting the authority of the landlord class, and not only obeying outwardly but also genuinely believing in the conservative and regressive idealist worldview, hoping to extinguish revolution with it.
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Hegel paid great attention to studying the advanced scientific achievements of Western Europe, summarizing the results of natural sciences and social sciences in Western Europe, thereby forming the dialectical idea that the world is an interconnected whole.
German classical philosophy focused on exploring the relationship between “necessity” and “freedom.” Kant provided a idealist explanation of the relationship between freedom and necessity. He believed that necessity and freedom are not contradictory and can coexist, but he attempted to reconcile the two. Kant thought that necessity is the constraint imposed by various objective laws of the world on itself, preventing people from acting arbitrarily. However, Kant also believed that this restriction could be overcome as long as one “remains true to oneself” and follows the “moral law within” in actions, thus overcoming limitations and achieving “rational” freedom. Therefore, Kant’s freedom is not arbitrary but is based on mature, rational thought, although fundamentally it is also idealist. Kant’s exploration of the relationship between freedom and necessity contains some dialectical ideas.
Fichte believed that in philosophy, the individual is a unity of “self” and “non-self,” but ultimately, the “self” creates the “non-self.” The first part is correct and contains dialectical elements, meaning that in philosophy, the individual is a unity of subject and object; humans are part of the objective world, developing according to certain objective laws. On the other hand, humans also possess subjective initiative, capable of using objective laws to serve themselves and realize their subjective goals. Therefore, humans are both material and non-material, both “self,” with independent consciousness, and “non-self,” as humans are also a kind of special material, ultimately subject to objective laws. However, Fichte’s mistake lies in reversing the relationship between matter and consciousness, believing that consciousness determines matter, and that the human subjective spirit determines the material world, viewing freedom as the ability to transcend objective laws and do as one pleases, exaggerating human subjective initiative.
Therefore, Hegel, standing from the standpoint of objective idealism, criticizes Fichte’s philosophy: “People often call caprice freedom, but caprice is only an irrational freedom; capricious choices and self-determination are not driven by rational will but by accidental motives and their dependence on external sensory world.”
Hegel explored the relationship between necessity and freedom, believing that true freedom is achieved when one has a full understanding of the laws of the world and consciously uses these laws to serve one’s purposes. The choices people make are also made after careful consideration, not aimless or based solely on personal preferences without regard to practical circumstances. However, as an idealist, Hegel understood laws as the laws of spiritual movement and regarded the understanding of necessity as the knowledge of the absolute spirit. Therefore, his concept of “freedom” is ultimately incomplete, existing only as freedom under the shadow of the absolute spirit.
Schelling, like Hegel, was also an objective idealist. Regarding the relationship between freedom and necessity, Schelling’s ideas are similar to Hegel’s but more profound, believing that to reach the kingdom of freedom from the kingdom of necessity, people must realize it through “self-conscious activity,” that is, exert subjective initiative. This is a step further than Hegel’s passive contemplation, but as an idealist, Schelling still cannot recognize the decisive role of practice in human cognition. Moreover, as an objective idealist, Schelling also acknowledged the existence of the absolute spirit, so he still wanted to place human historical agency under the shadow of the absolute spirit, fundamentally reflecting an idealist view of history and heroism.
Politically, Schelling was more reactionary than Hegel, openly defending Prussian Junker landlords, maintaining his rigid stance, and promoting mysticism. He is a prominent representative of Hegel’s right wing. Engels, as a youth, once attended Schelling’s lectures and despised him greatly, writing three articles criticizing Schelling from Hegel’s leftist perspective. Marx also spoke of Schelling with ridicule in a letter to Feuerbach in 1843.
Hegel was the first Western philosopher to attempt to explore the necessity of history. Based on dialectical thought, he believed that historical development follows certain objective laws, although he thought these laws were the laws of the absolute spirit rather than the material world itself. Lenin regarded Hegel’s ideas as having the embryonic form of historical materialism.
However, Chinese Legalist thought is far ahead of Hegel in this regard because the Chinese Legalist class’s view of history has always believed in “势” (势, momentum or trend), acknowledging historical necessity from a more materialist perspective, asserting that internal development laws exist within human society without relying on external entities like the absolute spirit.
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Why does it emphasize exploring this? Is it because Germany was on the eve of the bourgeois revolution at that time?
Because the German bourgeoisie is weak and incompetent, and dares not practice revolution, it can only explore in a speculative manner how the bourgeoisie can rid itself of feudal oppression and attain “freedom”.
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Marxist philosophy and Hegelian philosophy on the view of philosophy
“The owl of Minerva takes flight only at dusk.” — Hegel, Science of Logic
Hegel: Philosophy is “the owl of Minerva,” viewing philosophy as a “post hoc” analysis that can only summarize the past. The negativity in philosophy reflects the weakness and compromise of the German bourgeoisie.
“Once all internal conditions are ripe, the day of German revival will be announced by the crowing of the Gaulish rooster.” — Marx, Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right
Marx: Philosophy is the “Gaulish rooster” welcoming dawn, viewing philosophy as a weapon of thought guiding revolutionary struggle, leading people forward, reflecting the combativeness and revolutionary spirit of the proletariat.
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Marx: Philosophy regards the proletariat as its material weapon, and the proletariat regards philosophy as its spiritual weapon.
Feuerbach aims to replace theology with bourgeois humanism, and the final result is the emergence of new bourgeois religious superstitions, such as bourgeois psychology and Confucianism.
The set of new religion wrapped in Feuerbach’s concept of “love, friendship, compassion, self-sacrifice” is actually what the bourgeois call “universal values” today. It artificially claims that bourgeois human nature is a trans-class human nature, asserting that everyone’s human nature is loving, which is actually bourgeois class reconciliationist thought. Feuerbach’s bourgeois humanitarian ideas are used, on one hand, to oppose the feudal system’s oppression of the bourgeoisie and the masses, and to oppose the greed and brutality of feudal landlords; on the other hand, they are directed against the revolutionary struggles of the masses, demanding that the people be obedient and not use violence to resist the ruling class, and that they should speak of peace with the enemy.
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