Marx’s First Science
Work by Alfaain Zohra Fathima is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
I will analyze the role of the concept of science in Karl Marx’s doctoral thesis, The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature (1839). This task is indeed quite modest. This essay demonstrates that Marx’s first science was a science which was thoroughly idealistic, not positivistic. We shall examine this by examining some of Marx’s major idealistic influences, especially Johann Gottlieb Fichte. Fichte, and his Idealist colleagues, had a profoundly different and unique view of what science is, which has been forgotten in the current usage of the word. Some may say that such a task is a purely scholastic task, which has no bearing or applications to the Marx we see in Das Kapital or Grundrisse. Nevertheless, to ignore Difference in an examination of Marx’s thought would be fatal: for it was in this work that Marx most clearly distinguished his later view of science to ‘positive science.’ By examining this work, we are able to reclaim Marx from the disaster of 20th century communism, and restore the richness to a more liberal definition of ‘science’ than is commonly understood.
We must firstly make an important distinction between scientific positivism and scientific idealism. Much has been written on the opposition of both philosophies during the 18th century. The basic claim we make throughout our reflections is the following: Marx’s science was an idealist science at core. This, of course, does not mean that Marx was a metaphysical idealist. Neither does it mean that Marx was not a materialist: this claim merely states that the nature of Marx’s science was more of the idealist mold than the positivist.
The opposition between idealism and positivism can easily be seen in the anti-philosophical stance of the positivist thinker Auguste Comte. Comte’s Course on Positive Philosophy claimed that the development of human knowledge progressed in a threefold manner: from theological knowledge to metaphysical knowledge to positive knowledge. Positive knowledge is assumed to be the highest and most rational form of knowledge. Positive knowledge accordingly suggests that ‘all phenomena is subjected to Natural Laws.’ Thus it is the duty of scientists to discover these laws. We must examine and analyze ‘accurately the circumstance of phenomena, and connect them by natural relations of succession and resemblance.’ The underlying assumption here is that the study of past events can provide us with ways to predict the future. The scientist who has collected data from the past uses this very data to extrapolate future events. Given that all phenomena are subject to a set of ‘Natural Laws,’ we then ultimately see that Comte’s science is absolutely deterministic at heart. If we know what natural laws are, we can accurately predict the future by applying such natural laws.
The limitations of such a view of knowledge in society is clear. This is evident in critique of historicism. Karl Popper’s analysis of historicism demonstrates that political positivism leads to the dismissal of actual reality for the implementation of theory. Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that Popper also critiques Marx for this very same reason. Popper’s vision of Marx is of a naïve social scientist, who empowered the likes of Stalin to oppress millions of people. In fact, Marxist-Leninism (and its anti-intellectual derivations) treats Marxism as a positive science. The major debates over how and where the material conditions of man determine society demonstrate this quite clearly: for if we know how the economy determines the superstructure, we can create a state based on such determinations. The confusion of Marxism as a positive science is rampant, and is often fed by what ‘applied Marxism’ looked like in the 20th century.
This positivist science has to be contrasted with idealist science. This idealism refers to German Idealism, a tradition which Marx studied intently, and to which he inherited. The German Idealists grew out of a reaction to Kant and the French Revolution. There were three main idealists: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, and Fichte. All three philosophers wrote major works on the topic of Wissenschaft. In English, Wissenschaft is often translated as science. And in modern German, Wissenschaft has taken the approximate meaning of ‘science’ as understood by English speakers. However, in the 18th-19th century, the concept of Wissenschaft (or Science) was much more expansively defined. This was especially clear in German Idealism, where the concept of Wissenschaft (or Wissenschaftslehre i.e. the Science of Knowledge) became synonymous for the formation of a type of philosophical system. Through examining idealist Wissenschafts, we can see the profound differences it presents to Comte’s positivist view of science.
A major characteristic of Wissenschaft we must notice is that it is always presented as an improvement or a higher order of knowledge than some philosophy. Fichte’s lectures on the nature of his Wissenschaftslehre presents us with some clear-cut distinctions. For Fichte, the Wissenschaftslehre is the supreme science. The major improvement it represents to Kantian philosophy, and thus all other sciences, is what Fichte calls recognition of a qualitative oneness. This concept is analogous to the concept of shine in Hegel, and is the exact fact from which the multiplicity of experience can be derived. A knowledge derived from ‘qualitative oneness’ is ‘not subjective, is absolutely unalterable and self-identical not just independently from all variability of the object, but also independently from all variability of the subject without which the object doesn’t exist.’ The answer to where this qualitative oneness exists resides in the ‘inwardly [constructing] the essence of knowledge.’ It is this qualitative oneness which ‘specifies the deepest characteristic difference demarcating the science of knowing from all other philosophies.’ We see something quite interesting here: the highest order of knowledge, which is represented as the Wissenschaftslehre, is one in which no contradictions are possible. If any contradiction is possible, then the system of knowledge one has is not the highest order of knowledge. Fichte also contrasts the Wissenschaftslehre with the ‘actual sciences and mathematics,’ which he criticised as being filled with contradictions. Demonstrating this, he asks the geometer whether ‘these and ever so many other ingredients [of geometry] are given in any other way than through factual intuition.’ The science of knowledge which Fichte seeks is a science of knowledge that aims to get to the qualitative oneness: as such, all knowledge can be derived from such a principle. The elaboration of the qualitative oneness is the aim of the science of knowledge. In the science of knowledge, no contradictions can exist, for if any exists, then a more general qualitative oneness can be reached. Thus, it is the explication of fundamental universals which truly qualifies Fichte’s Wissenschaftlehre.
Fichte notes that the location of qualitative oneness is in ‘inwardly constructing the essence of knowledge.’ This is another major characteristic of the Idealists’ Wissenschaft. In Brandon’s analysis of Hegel, he calls this conception the belief that the world as subject is ‘conceptually determined.’ What this means is that we should analyse the world as is, rather than what the world could be. This development presents a very interesting revision to the project of the philosophical Enlightenment. Ever since René Descartes, Enlightenment thought has been obsessed with the nature of subjectivity. Many post-Cartesian philosophers ask the following question: what does it mean to be a human subject, living in a world that one cannot control? The focus on subjectivity is simple: it is the only thing which we humans could, if not control, then understand with an unusually deep insight. The German Idealists, on the other hand, make a more thorough claim: that the subject, or the ‘inner self,’ is the location of qualitative oneness. And since qualitative oneness is the source by which all knowledge can be derived, then the true source of knowledge is in the subject, not the object.
One last major (and perhaps most notable) characteristic of Wissenschaft is the focus on contradiction. This is, of course, clearer in Hegel than in any other of the German Idealists. Nevertheless, even in Fichte’s lectures, such a principle comes out quite clearly. Fichte’s metaphor of pure light is perhaps, a clear example of the method of contradiction:
‘The focus of everything is pure light. To truly come to this requires that the concept [of pure light] be posited and annulled and that an intrinsically inconceivable being be posited. If it is granted that the light should exist, then in this judgement everything else mentioned is possible as well. We have now seen this; it is true; it remains true forever, and it expresses the basic principle of all knowing.’
The ‘qualitative oneness’ is like ‘pure light’ in the sense that we do not know of it in its pure forms. Whenever we posit something, we posit it in relation to this ‘pure light:’ the wallet in front of me is the reaction of light bouncing off the surface of the wallet. This pure light is both positing and negating: we have to both posit that it exists in a pure form to understand phenomenon, but we also have to negate the fact that we cannot find it in its pure forms. This does not mean we have to make do with an impure understanding of the qualitative oneness. Rather, this means that our grasp of this qualitative oneness is, truly, the unity of opposites. The law of division is the specialization of a piece of knowledge derived from the qualitative oneness. This law of division expresses the principle of positing and negating: if we divide a derived knowledge into two parts, we understand that the knowledge is different, and thus a multiplicity presents itself as a negation of the qualitative oneness. But, if we examine the constant that runs through each knowledge, we see that both concepts have similarities. This similarity expresses itself as positing the qualitative oneness. These metaphysical reflections on Fichte’s concept of qualitative oneness demonstrates the focus on contradiction which exists throughout German Idealism. In every idea, there is constant movement between positing and negation: to reach a unity, and thus to set Wissenschaft (or Wissenschaftlehre) apart from other modes of thought, we need this constant positing and negating. For it is this process which allows us to grasp at what is universal and truly constant in our thought.
The difference between Comte’s positivist science and the scientific model presented by the German Idealists is clear. Comte’s science starts from reality: it uses phenomena, or empirically observed data, to explicate universal laws. Fichte, on the other hand, starts at the other end: the true universal cannot be derived from the multiplicity that is phenomena. Rather, we have to start with a search for a single unity. It is this very search that will allow for all knowledge to be derived. Comte’s positivism is anti-philosophical, in the sense that it opposes philosophical reflections on the topics of subjecthood. Fichte’s Wissenschaftlehre is not only philosophical: it is the highest philosophy, in the sense that it starts from subjective experience, rather than objective facts, to find the universal.
It was quite clear that Marx inherited the idealist model of science in The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature. In this work, Marx compares and contrasts idealistic metaphysics of Epicurus with the positivist metaphysics of Democritus.
The analysis of the Epicurean and Democritean metaphysics, on the one hand, may sound like an exercise in the dry study of classics. Moreover, this work seems to have nothing to do with science. Nevertheless, through further analysis, we can see how enraptured Marx was with the German idealist tradition. In the third section (Difficulties Concerning the Identity of Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature), Marx starts by contrasting the general philosophical approach of both authors. Democritus is described as holding contradictory positions. For example, when he is quoted in Aristotle’s Psychology, Democritus claims that ‘the phenomenon is the true thing.’ On the other hand, when quoted in Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Democritus claims that ‘nothing is true or it is concealed from us.’ Marx, instead of analysing these contradictions historically, takes them to be the truth. Therefore, Democritus is represented as being a ‘sceptical, uncertain and internally self-contradictory’ thinker. This scepticism is developed when Marx claims that Democritus believed that ‘sensuous appearance…does not belong to atoms themselves. It is not objective appearance, but subject semblance.’ Hence, it is only through reason that we can break through the semblance of phenomena to get to the actuality. But Democritus also claims that phenomena is the only true thing: thus, there arises a contradiction between a sceptical view of knowledge and a realization that we cannot penetrate into anything other than phenomena. Democritus is thus characterized as being unsure of how he was to view the world. Epicurus, on the other hand, takes a ‘dogmatist, not a sceptical, position. Yes, exactly this makes him superior to all the others, that he knows with conviction.’ Epicurus does not mince words: phenomena is not subjective semblance, as in Democritus. Phenomena is all there is i.e. phenomena is objectivity.
This difference in philosophical style also leads to some major differences in how each thinker gained knowledge. Democritus, since he believes that the phenomena is subjective semblance, has to experience many things in order to extract the universal. Given this, he ‘throws himself into the arms of positive knowledge,’ being versed in ‘physics, ethics, mathematics, in the encyclopedic disciplines, in every art.’ Epicurus, on the other hand, is ‘satisfied and blissful in philosophy.’ Epicurus has contempt for the positive sciences, as for him, they contribute nothing to knowledge. This difference in approach also leads to conceptual distinctions: Democritus sees reality as necessary, whilst Epicurus rebels against using necessity to describe the real world. On the other hand, Epicurus sees objects only as ‘possible, conceivable.’
It may come as a surprise to many why the lazy, self-indulgent philosophy of Epicurus is given supremacy over the determinism of Democritus. In fact, the determinism of Democritus reads like some Stalinist texts talking on the subject of economic determination. Nevertheless, if we were to analyse this from the background of German idealism, the supremacy of Epicurus becomes clearer. Firstly, the Epicurean approach to philosophy attempts to build up a system of knowledge which explains phenomena in terms of a singularity. This singularity is the possibility-conceivability of observed phenomena. Democritus, on the other hand, attempts to reach this singularity through the observation of phenomena, a method that was advocated by Comte’s positivism. Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, the Epicurean approach to philosophy adopted the notion that the world is conceptually determined: we must take the world as is, and analyse it from there, instead of positing other explanations for how things work. Some may call this a philosophy of internal relations i.e. the attempt to get into a system, and find out how things work. This is opposed to Democritus, whose science is an attempt to create a philosophy of external relations i.e. to posit things that do not exist, and to focus on how phenomena is caused by that. The attempt to build up an explanation for multiplicity and the acceptance of a conceptually determined world are both essential in German idealist thought. Marx even juxtaposes these two conceptions against positive sciences (the deterministic hard sciences). What this demonstrates is that Marx, in this very early stage, favored an Idealistic approach to the construction of knowledge, as apart from a positivist approach.
This essay is not meant to be an authoritative interpretation of Marx’s early views of science, much less Marx’s entire views on science. Nevertheless, this essay attempts to analyze Marx’s first views on science, a view which he was to extend upon, but not fundamentally change in his magnum opus, Das Kapital. This view of science is one that attempts to interpret a current mode of production in order to clarify the relationship within them, and also theorize the possibilities of its overcoming. It does not attempt to predict how the system may concretely change.