Abstract
If we aspire to a new science, the path to it cannot circumvent philosophy; the drive for a new science must come out of philosophy. There is no bypassing philosophy in the process of transforming existing forms of science. The contest for a new science will be won or lost in the realm of philosophy.
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Notes
According to Hegel, “the Philosophy of History means nothing but the thoughtful consideration of [history]… But as it is the business of history simply to adopt into its records what is and has been, actual occurrences and transactions; and since it remains true to its character in proportion as it strictly adheres to its data, we seem to have in Philosophy, a process diametrically opposed to that of the historiographer. This contradiction, and the charge consequent[ly] brought against speculation, shall be explained and confuted.” (G. W. F. Hegel, Introduction to the Philosophy of History, Sibree tr. as in Hegel: Selections, ed. Loewenberg (Scribner, New York, 1929), p. 348).
Concerning historical science and the philosophy of history Hegel states: “As regards history, we are concerned with what was and with what is — but in philosophy we are concerned neither with what merely was nor with what is to be but rather with what is and with what is eternal: with (reason) mind, and this concerns us a great deal.” (G. W. F. Hegel, Filozofija povijesti (The Philosophy of History), (Naprijed, Zagreb, 1966), p. 93). (Trans., “While we are thus concerned exclusively with the Idea of Spirit, and in the History of the World regard everything as only its manifestation, we have, in traversing the past, — however extensive its periods, — only to do with what is present; for philosophy, as occupying itself with the True, has to do with the eternally present. Nothing in the past is lost for it, for the Idea is ever present; Spirit is immortal; with it there is not past, no future, but an essential now.” (Ibid., p. 442).
In The German Ideology, Marx writes: “Since we are dealing with Germans, who are devoid of premises, we must begin by stating the first premise of all human existence, and, therefore, of all history, the premise, namely, that men must be in a position to live in order to be able to ‘make history.’ But life involves before everything else eating and drinking, a habitation, clothing, and many other things. The füst historical act is thus the production of the means to satisfy these needs, the production of material life itself. And indeed this is an historical act, a fundamental condition of all history, which today, as thousands of years ago, must daily and hourly be fulfilled merely in order to sustain human life… Therefore in any interpretation of history one has first of all to observe this fundamental fact in all its significance and all its implications and to accord it its due importance. It is well known that the Germans have never done this, and they have never, therefore, had an earthly basis for history and consequently never a historian. The French and the English, even if they have conceived the relation of this fact with socalled history only in an extremely one-sided fashion,… have nevertheless made the first attempts to give the writing of history a materialistic basis by being the first to write histories of civil society, of commerce and industry…” (Marx and Engels, The German Ideology, tr. W. Lough, ed. S. Ryazonskaya (Moscow, 1964) p. 39.)
K. Marx and F. Engels, Rani radovi (Early Works), p. 382, cf. Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society, trans, and ed. Loyd D. Easton and Kurt H. Guddat (Doubleday, Garden City, N.Y., 1967), p. 428.
German Ideology, op. cit., p. 51.
Ibid., p. 39.
If there has been success in dissolving the ossified world of things in economic science, the same success must be sought in the study of the world of social-historical events. It is not merely a question of discovering development and progress in the course of history. The important thing is to understand that course as the work of man, as the very essence of man, as a form of his self-realization. It is a matter of penetrating through to man, to discover him within what appears as an independent force that rules him. History does nothing by itself — man is the one who acts in history, and in creating history creates himself. Speaking about the significance of the division of labor, Marx writes: “This fixation of social activity, this consolidation of what we ourselves produce into an objective power above us, growing out of our control, thwarting our expectations, bringing to naught our calculations, is one of the chief factors in historical development up till now. And out of this very contradiction between the interest of the individual and that of the community the latter takes an independent form as the State.. (Ibid., p. 45).
Ibid., pp. 38–39.
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Arandjelović, J. (1979). Historical Science and the Philosophy of History. In: Marković, M., Petrović, G. (eds) Praxis. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 36. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9355-6_5
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