Abstract
This chapter offers an overview of Engels’ overall undertaking in Dialectics of Nature, underscoring different stages of his work between 1873 and 1886. It goes against the grain of classical readings that presume a single ‘book’ or a single project. It argues that Dialectics of Nature consists of seven projects, with three larger and four smaller plans. Engels does not seem to have completed any of these projects. He rather left behind a lengthy metacommentary on philosophy and natural sciences. In the entire writing process, Engels largely works with two parameters of opposition: metaphysics versus dialectics and idealism versus materialism. The theoretical arena in which he defends dialectics and materialism against metaphysics and idealism is shaped by a third pair of opposites which he tries to overcome: natural sciences versus philosophy. Engels’ orientation is intimately tied to a key problem that is usually called ‘application of dialectics to nature’.
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Notes
- 1.
Alternatively, Kedrov believes that Engels’ point of departure is to be found in 1840s, with his first encounter with natural sciences and philosophy of nature. Liedman, by contrast, argues that the project starts in July 1858, when Engels asks Marx to send him a copy of Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature, emphasizing its promising potential for chemistry, biology and physiology. Gemkow, to name another interpretation, points to the earliest manuscript (1873) as the beginning. Cf. Kedrov (1979, p. 443), Liedman (1986, p. 99), Gemkow (1988, p. 447) and Engels (1983, p. 326).
- 2.
Abbreviations in columns from left to right: ‘Phase’: phase of writing; ‘Ms. no.’: manuscript number; ‘Date’: date of when the manuscript was written; ‘folder content’: which manuscripts are contained in which four folders; ‘ND no.’: which manuscripts bear the headings Naturdialektik 1-11 and Naturdialektik references. Note here that all data rely on MEGA2 editorial commentary. Contrary to the editors’ preference to divide the writing phases into two large periods (1873–1878 and 1878–1882) with four sub-periods respectively, I find it more plausible to divide the writing process into eleven phases measured against Engels’ writing breaks. The editors fail to make clear why 1882, rather than 1886, is taken to be the final year of Dialectics of Nature. I suggest, by contrast, to consider the piece on Ludwig Feuerbach and the folder arrangement to be part of Engels’ undertaking. It goes without saying that, when moving archives or using singular texts for printing purposes (Bernstein et al.), a manuscript/folder mix-up is always possible. This concerns the question of whether Engels’ hand was in fact the last hand that arranged the folders’ content.
- 3.
Italics are mine.
- 4.
Here, I ignore the distinction between spiritualism and idealism as well as the distinction between profane and theological spiritualism. Arguably Hegel is a proponent of both spiritualism and idealism. But this issue is subject to another study on what grounds and under which premises they were linked up with one another in Hegel’s system and how this arrangement was interpreted by Engels and Marx.
- 5.
Grammatical irregularities here and elsewhere stem from Engels’ manuscripts in German.
- 6.
Schein in German is alternatively translated as illusion. Hegel distinguishes it from Erscheinung (appearance).
- 7.
This is the only manuscript in Naturdialektik in which Engels explicitly articulates a real contradiction. Engels usually speaks of contradictions in the sense of theoretical inconsistency or error. Cf. Kangal (2019, p. 226). ‘Attraction and repulsion’ are called ‘opposites’ elsewhere in Naturdialektik . Cf. Engels (1985, p. 48).
- 8.
Here, Engels relies on Newton’s convention, when he speaks of ‘tangential force’. There is no such ‘force’ but only a relative tendency of the orbit to fly away from the central body.
- 9.
Recall here that later in Anti-Dühring , Engels proposes another contention: ‘motion itself is a contradiction’. Engels (1988, p. 318).
- 10.
It is therefore paradoxical to characterize the principle of contradiction, as the pre-critical Kant does, as ‘valid … without regard to any object’. Without the concrete content of the subject of which the opposites are predicated, the logical and dialectical oppositions remain indistinguishable. Cf. Kant (1923, p. 195; Arndt 2004a, pp. 113–114).
- 11.
At a certain point, Engels also makes a distinction between active and passive sides of motion, though he does not apply it to elliptical motion. Cf. Engels (1985, p. 183).
- 12.
Here, I use Robert Stern’s translation. Cf. Stern (2009, p. 63).
- 13.
I doubt that by the ‘entire system’ Engels meant Hegel’s triad of Phenomenology , Logic and Encyclopedia , as he confines himself here to the Logic .
- 14.
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Kangal, K. (2020). Dialectics in Dialectics of Nature. In: Friedrich Engels and the Dialectics of Nature. Marx, Engels, and Marxisms. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34335-4_5
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