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Page 227 CHAPTER FOUR the PHILOSOPHICAL IDEALISTS AS page 227 CHAPTER FOUR THE PHILOSOPHICAL IDEALISTS AS COMRADES-IN-ARMS AND SUCCESSORS OF EMPIRIO-CRITICISM So far we have examined empirio- philosophical trends. First comes the criticism taken by itself. We must now question of the relation of Mach and examine it in its historical development and Avenarius to Kant. in its connection and relation with other 1. THE CRITICISM OF KANTIANISM FROM THE LEFT AND FROM THE RIGHT Both Mach and Avenarius began their experience" that Avenarius deals in his philosophical careers in the 'seventies, Prolegomena (§§ 56, 72 and many other when the fashionable cry in German places). Of what does Avenarius "purify" professorial circles was "Back to Kant" [84] the Kantian doctrine of experience? In the And, indeed, both founders of empirio- first place, of apriorism. In § 56 he says: criticism in their philosophical development "The question as to whether the started from Kant. "His [Kant's] critical superfluous 'a priori conceptions of reason' idealism," says Mach, "was, as I should and could be eliminated from the acknowledge with the deepest gratitude, content of experience and thereby pure the starting point of all my critical thought. experience par excellence established is, But I found as far as I know, raised here, as such, for the first time." We have already seen that page 228 Avenarius in this way "purified" Kantianism it impossible to remain faithful to it. Very of the recognition of necessity and soon I began to return to the views of causality. Berkeley ... [and then] arrived at views akin Secondly, he purifies Kantianism of the to those of Hume.... And even today I assumption of substance (§ 95), i.e., the cannot help regarding Berkeley and Hume thing-in-itself, which, in Avenarius' opinion as far more consistent thinkers than Kant" "is not given in the stuff of actual (Analysis of Sensations, p. 292). experience but is imported into it by Thus Mach quite definitely admits that thought." having begun with Kant he soon followed We shall presently see that Avenarius' the line of Berkeley and Hume. Let us turn definition of his philosophical line entirely to Avenarius. coincides with that of Mach, dif- In his Prolegomena to a "Critique of Pure Experience" (1876), Avenarius page 229 already in the foreword states that the fering only in pompousness of formulation. words Kritik der reinen Erfahrung (Critique But we must first note that Avenarius is of Pure Experience ) are indicative of his telling a plain untruth when he asserts that attitude towards Kant's "Critique of Pure it was he who in 1876 for the first time Reason," and "of course, of an antagonistic raised the question of "purifying attitude" towards Kant (1876 ed., p. iv). In experience," i.e., of purifying the Kantian what does Avenarius' antagonism to Kant doctrine of apriorism and the assumption of consist? In the fact that Kant, in Avenarius' the thing-in-itself. As a matter of fact, the opinion, had not sufficiently "purified development of German classical experience." It is with this "purification of philosophy immediately after Kant gave rise to a criticism of Kantianism exactly It is evident from this that the Humean along the very line followed by Avenarius. Schulze rejects Kant's doctrine of the This line is represented in German thing-in-itself as an inconsistent classical philosophy by Schulze- concession to materialism, i.e., to the Aenesidemus, an adherent of Humean "dogmatic" assertion that in our sensations agnosticism, and by J. G. Fichte, an we are given objective reality, or, in other adherent of Berkeleianism, i.e., of words, that our ideas are caused by the subjective idealism. In 1792 Schulze- action of objective things (independent of Aenesidemus criticised Kant for this very our mind) on our sense-organs. The recognition of apriorism (op. cit., pp. agnostic Schulze reproaches the agnostic 56,141, etc.) and of the thing-in-itself. We Kant on the grounds that the latter's sceptics, or followers of Hume, says assumption of the thing-in-itself contradicts Schulze, reject the thing-in-itself as being agnosticism and leads to materialism. In "beyond the bounds of all experience" (p. the same way, but even more vigorously, 57). We reject objective knowledge (p. 25); Kant is criticised by the subjective idealist we deny that space and time really exist Fichte, who maintains that Kant's outside us (p. 100); we reject the presence assumption of the thing-in-itself in our experience of necessity (p. 112), independent of the self is "realism " causality, force, etc. (p. 113). One cannot (Werke, I, S. 483), and that Kant makes attribute to them any "reality outside our "no clear" distinction between "realism" conceptions" (p. 114). Kant proves apriority and "idealism." Fichte sees a crying "dogmatically," saying that since we cannot inconsistency in the assumption of Kant think otherwise there is therefore an a and the Kantians that the thing-in-itself is priori law of thought. "This argument," the "basis of objective reality" (p. 480), for Schulze replies to Kant, "has long been this is in contradiction to critical idealism. utilised in philosophy to prove the objective "With you," exclaims Fichte, addressing the nature of what lies outside our ideas" (p. realist expositors of Kant, "the earth rests 141), Arguing thus, we may attribute on the great elephant, and the great causality to things in-themselves (p. 142). elephant rests on the earth. Your thing-in- "Experience never tells us (wir erfahren itself, which is only thought, acts on the niemals) that the action on us of objective self!" ( p. 483). things produces ideas," and Kant by no Thus Avenarius was profoundly means proved that "this something (which mistaken in imagining that he "for the first lies outside our reason) must be regarded time" undertook a "purification of the as a thing in-itself, distinct from our experience" of Kant from apriorism and sensation (Gemut). But sensation also may from the thing-in-itself and that he was be thought of as the sole basis of all our thereby giving rise to a "new" trend in knowledge" philosophy. In reality he was continuing the old line of Hume and page 230 (p. 265). The Kantian critique of pure page 231 reason "bases its argument on the Berkeley, Schulze-Aenesidemus and J. G. proposition that every act of cognition Fichte. Avenarius imagined that he was begins with the action of objective things "purifying experience" in general. In reality on our organs of sensation (Gemut), but it he was only purifying agnosticism of then disputes the truth and reality of this Kantianism. He fought not against the proposition" (p. 266). Kant in no way agnosticism of Kant (agnosticism is a refuted the idealist Berkeley (pp. 268-72). denial of objective reality given in sensation), but for a purer agnosticism, for the elimination of Kant's assumption, which itself to be unknowable, transcendental, is contradictory to agnosticism, that there is other-sided, he is an idealist. Recognising a thing-in itself, albeit unknowable, experience, sensations, as the only source noumenal and other-sided, that there is of our knowledge, Kant is directing his necessity and causality, albeit a priori, philosophy towards sensationalism, and given in our understanding, and not in via sensationalism, under certain objective reality. He fought Kant not from conditions, towards materialism. the Left, as the materialists fought Kant, Recognising the apriority of space, time, but from the Right, as the sceptics and causality, etc., Kant is directing his idealists fought Kant. He imagined that he philosophy towards idealism. Both was advancing, when in reality he was consistent materialists and consistent retreating to the programme of criticising idealists (as well as the "pure" agnostics, Kant which Kuno Fischer, speaking of the Humeans) have mercilessly criticised Schulze-Aenesidemus, aptly characterised Kant for this inconsistency. The in the following words: "The critique of pure materialists blamed Kant for his idealism, reason with pure reason [i.e., apriorism] left rejected the idealist features of his system, out is scepticism. The critique of pure demonstrated the knowability, the this- reason with the thing-in-itself left out is sidedness of the thing-in-itself, the Berkeleian idealism" (History of Modern absence of a fundamental difference Philosophy, German ed., 1869, Vol. V, p. between the thing-in-itself and the 115). phenomenon, the need of deducing This brings us to one of the most curious causality, etc., not from a priori laws of episodes in our whole "Machiad," in the thought, but from objective reality. The whole campaign of the Russian Machians agnostics and idealists blamed Kant for his against Engels and Marx. The latest assumption of the thing-in-itself as a discovery by Bogdanov and Bazarov, concession to materialism, "realism" or Yushkevich and Valentinov, trumpeted by "naive realism." Thc agnostics, moreover, them in a thousand different keys, is that rejected not only the thing-in-itself, but Plekhanov is making a "luckless attempt to apriorism as well; while the idealists reconcile Engels with Kant by the aid of a demanded the consistent deduction from compromise -- a thing-in-itself which is just pure thought not only of the a priori forms a wee bit knowable" (Studies,[85] etc., p. of the under standing, but of the world as a 67 and many other places). This discovery whole (by magnifying human thought to an of our Machians discloses a veritable abstract Self or to an "Absolute Idea," or to bottomless pit of utter confusion and a "Universal Will," etc., etc.). And here our monstrous misunderstanding both of Kant Machians, "without noticing" that they had and of the whole course of development of taken as their teachers men who had German classical philosophy.
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