Abstract
All the types of reflection on history which have been analysed here thus far were marked by formulations of specified guidelines which advanced the science of history. As shown above, the process was extremely complex and did not at all follow any constantly rising path of progress. Usually a development of reflection on history in one sphere was accompanied by stagnation in the remaining ones, which in turn resulted in an excessive focusing of attention on those fields which had been neglected previously. It might be said that methodological reflection on historical research was developing in accordance with the principles of dialectics: disproportions in reflection on the various fields hampered the general progress of methodological reflection on historical research, and this in turn yielded tendencies to level off the disproportions, which meant development through inner contradictions.
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References
H. Becker, H. E. Barnes, Social Thought from Lore to Science, ed. cit., vol. 1.
E. Adler, Herder i Oświecenie niemieckie (Herder and the Age of Enlightenment in Germany), Warszawa 1965, p. 234.
Cf. W. Tatarkiewicz, Historia filozofii (A History of Philosophy), vol. II, Warszawa 1958, pp. 297–8. Many detailed analyses concerned with Hegel’s philosophy of history are to be found in studies by T. Kronski, Rozwazania wokol Hegla (Reflections on Hegel), Warszawa 1960; and “Hegel i problemy filozofii historii”(Hegel and Problems of the Philosophy of History), Studia Filozoficz-ne, No. 3/1958, pp. 42-76. See also J. Kudrna, Studie k Heglovi pojeti historié (Studies on Hegel’s Concept of History), Prague 1964.
A similar interpretation is to be found in Fichte’s works.
Cf. G. W. F. Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik, vol. I, Leipzig 1951, p. 58.
L. S. Rogowski, Logika kierunkowa a heglowska teza o sprzecznosci zmia-ny (Directional Logic and Hegel’s Thesis on Contradictions of Changes), Toruń 1964.
Ibid., p. 17.
Ibid., pp. 19–20.
Ibid., p. 20.
G. W. F. Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik, p. 191.
A. Toynbee, A Study of History. Vols. I-III appeared in 1934, vols. IV-V, in 1939, vols. VII-X, in 1954, vol. XI, in 1955, and vol. XII, in 1961. The number of works concerned with Toynbee’s opus is immense, considerably exceeding 200 (Toynbee himself in his Reconsiderations quotes 210 items). The major items are listed below: Toynbee and History. Critical Essays and Reviews, M. F. Ashley (ed.), Boston 1956 (includes statements by historians and methodo-logists, among them P. Geyl, W. Kaufmann, P. A. Sorokin, W. H. Walsh H. Trevor-Roper, L. Walker, G. Barraclough, E. Barker); L’Histoire et ses interpretations. Entretiens autour d’Arnold Toynbee sous la direction de Raymond Aron, Paris-La Haye 1961 (Proceedings of the conference organized by the École Pratique des Hautes Études; includes statements by M. Crubellier, R. Aron, H. Marrou, L. Goldmann and others); E. F. J. Zahn, Toynbee und das Problem der Geschichte, Köln 1954; J. Ortega y Gasset, Eine Interpretation der Weltgeschichte, München 1964. In Polish historiography, history was interpreted as the development of conflicting civilizations by F. Koneczny (1862–1949); see his O wielkości cywilizacji (The Greatness of Civilizations), 1935.
Cf. M. Crubellier’s paper in L’Histoire et ses interpretations, pp. 8 ff. The said conference revealed an inadequate comprehension of Toynbee’s ideas. Even L. Goldmann (ibid., pp. 76 ff) claimed that Toynbee’s conception is catastrophic, like Spengler’s. is Cf. A Study of History, vol. XII, pp. 5, 238, 245, 256; L’Histoire et ses interpretations, ed. cit., p. 18 (in the last-quoted book Toynbee points to the fallacy of Spengler’s treatment of the various civilizations in isolation); “Can We Know the Pattern of the Past?-A Debate”in: Theories of History, ed. cit., pp. 312 ff.
Spengler says in The Decline of the West (quoted according to Theories of History, ed. cit., p. 199): “The morphology of the organic, of history and life and all that bears the sign of direction and destiny (…)”.
It might be said that Toynbee took up Teggart’s ideas at the point where the latter had left them.
A. Toynbee, A Study of History, vol. XII, ed. cit., pp. 254–5.
Ibid., pp. 254-63.
Ibid., p. 268.
Ibid., pp. 256-7.
Ibid., p. 259. Toynbee’s approach to the issue of laws is analysed by W. Dray, “Toynbee’s Search for Historical Laws”, History and Theory, vol. I, No, 1/1960, pp. 32-54
F. Engels, Selected Works, V. II, p. 350 (English Edition, 1949).
K. Marx, Selected Works, vol. II, p. 365 (English Edition, 1949).
F. Engels, Anti-Dühring, Berlin 1948, pp. 17–32.
Ibid., p. 25.
The structure of the process of history and development in history are discussed in detail elsewhere in the present book. In this place the stress is laid on the principle of activism, which excludes a fatalistic interpretation of regularities.
F. Engels, Selected Works, vol. II, pp. 353–354 (English Edition, 1949).
K. Marx, Kleine ökonomische Schriften, Berlin 1955, p. 38.
The pride of place goes to K. Marx and F. Engels, Die deutsche Ideologie (1845–6); K. Marx, Misère de la Philosophie (1847); K. Marx, Postscript to the 2nd edition of Capital (1873); F. Engels Anti-Dühring (1878); F. Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach and the Outcome of Classical German Philosophy (1886); F. En-gels, Dialectics of Nature (1873–88). Marxist writing on the dialectical method include W. Krajewski, Ontologia (Ontology), Warszawa 1965; M. Cornforth, Dialectical Materialism, vol. I, London 1952. The dialectics of the process of history (in nature and society) is analysed by B. A. Grushin, Očerki logiki istoričeskogo issledowania (An Outline of the Logic of Historical Research), Moscow 1961, Note also J. P. Sartre, Critique de la raison dialectique, Paris 1960, which is concerned with society (social group) as a whole, approached from the holistic point of view
See in particular V. Lenin, “Filosofskie tetradi”, Socinenya, Moscow 1958, vol. 38
V. Lenin wrote explicitly that the essence of dialectics consists in the comprehension of the contradictory elements of every phenomenon (cf. M. Corn-forth, Dialectical Materialism, ed. cit., p. 84). The formulation of this principle (which refers to conflicting tendencies) does not invalidate the logical principle of contradiction: the fact that something develops in a certain way does not imply a pair of contradictory statements (cf. K. Ajdukiewicz, “Zmiana i sprzecz-ność”(Change and Contradiction) in: Język i poznanie (Language and Cognition), vol. II, Warszawa 1965, pp. 90-106.
The term historical materialism covers both the interpretation of history and the method of its study.
The theory and the method of historical materialism were developed by Marx and Engels in practically all their works. Among Marx’s works note Zur Kritik der Hegeischen Rechtsphilosophie (1844); Misère de la philosophie (1847); Zur Kritik der politischen Oekonomie (1859); and those works which were practical applications of the principles of historical materialism to the study of history: The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1851); The Civil War in France (1871) and Capital (vol. I in 1867, vol. II and III published by Engels in 1885 and 1894, respectively), the latter being the fundamental opus of the Marxist theory. Among Engels’s works note Ludwig Feuerbach and the Outcome of Classical German Philosophy (1886); Anti-Dühring (1878); Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State; The Development of Socialism from Utopia to Science’, and The Peasant War in Germany, where the principles of historical materialism are applied in practice. The works written jointly by Marx and Engels include Die deutsche Ideologie (1845-6) and The Communist Manifesto (1847). Many formulations are also to be found in Marx’s and Engels’s correspondence.
Among Lenin’s works note The Development of Capitalism in Russia (1899); The State and the Revolution (1917).
Y. Plekhanov, A Contribution to the Problem of the Development of the Monistic Interpretation of History (1894); The Materialistic Interpretation of History (1897); The Role of the Individual in History (1905); K. Kautsky, Die materialistische Geschichtsauffassung, Berlin 1927; A. Labriola’s most important work is Del materialismo storico (1896); H. Cunow, Die Marxsche Geschichts-, Gesellschafts-und Staatstheorie (1923). N. Bukharin, The Theory of Historical Materialism (1921). Polish contributions include many works by L. Krzywicki, which include statements on the theory of social development, and K. Kelles-Krauz, Materialism ekonomiczny (Economic Materialism), Kraków 1908. A. Gramsci, various works; G. Lukács, Geschichte und Klassenbewußtsein, Berlin 1923 (many further editions). L. Goldman, Sciences humaines et philosophie, Paris 1952.
Recent works concerned with an analysis and interpretation of the principles of historical materialism include: K. V. Konstantinov, Istoriceskiy materialism, Moscow 1950. J. Hochfeld, Studia o marksistowskiej teorii spoleczen-stwa (Studies in Marxist Social Theory), Warszawa 1963; O. Lange, Political Economy, vol. I, Chap. II, Oxford 1963 (first published in Polish in 1959); J. J. Wiatr, Szkice o materializmie historycznym i socjologii (Essays on Historical Materialism and Sociology), Warszawa 1962; A. Malewski, “Empiryczny sens materializmu historycznego”(The Empirical Meaning of Historical Materialism) Studia Filozoficzne, No. 2/1957, pp. 58-81; the applications of the method of historical materialism in historical studies is analysed in: A. Malewski, J. Topolski, “Metoda materializmu historycznego w pracach historyków polskich”(The Method of Historical Materialism in Works of Polish Historians), Studia Filozoficzne, No. 6/1959. The integrating function of historical materialism is indicated in: J. Topolski, “Integracyjny sens materializmu historycznego” (The Integrating Meaning of Historical Materialism), Studia Meto-dologiczne, No. 1/1965. See also O. Monter, “Die philosophischen Grundlagen des historischen Materialismus”, Saeculum, 1960, pp. 1-26 and Poznań Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities, Amsterdam.
A penetrating analysis of this issue is to be found in J. Hochfeld, “Ma-terializm historyczny a socjologia”(Historical Materialism and Sociology), included in Hochfeld’s book quoted in footnote 35 above.
Moreover, the terminology to be used will be slightly different.
Cf. J. Topolski, “Aktywistyczna koncepcja procesu dziejowego”(The Ac-tivistic Concept of the Process of History), Studia Filozoficzne, No. 2/1972, pp. 121–135.
K. Marx, Capital, vol. I, Chicago 1915, pp. 197–198.
K. Marx, Selected Works, vol. I, p. 328 (English Edition, 1949).
Ibidem. “(…) worauf sich ein juristischer und politischer Ueberbau erhebt, und welcher bestimmte gesellschaftliche Bewußtseinformen entsprechen”.
Ibid., pp. 13-14. “(…) sondern muß vielmehr dies Bewußtsein aus den Widersprüchen des materiellen Lebens, aus dem vorhandenen Konflikt zwischen gesellschaftlichen Produktivkräften und Produktionsverhältnissen erklären”.
Characteristic of Pokrovsky’s views is his work Istoriceskaya nauka i bor-ba klasov (The Science of History and the Class Struggle), vols. I-II, Moscow 1933. See also S. M. Dubrovsky, “Akademik N. M. Pokrovsky i ego rol v raz-viti sovetskoy nauki”(Academician N. M. Pokrovsky and His Role in the Development of Soviet Science), Voprosy Istorii, No. 3/1962, pp. 31-40 (including a discussion).
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Topolski, J. (1976). Dialectical Reflection. In: Methodology of History. Synthese Library, vol 88. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-1123-5_11
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