Publication Details

Abstract

The author provides an outline of some spiritual and sociohistorical context of the category of the counter-finality of history in Engels’s work and contemplates this problem as related to experiences of the development of socialist society. The idea of the counter-finality of history (the paradox of ends and results) and its negation in communist society is a significant idea of Marxist philosophy of history. Since the overcoming of the counter-finality of history is related to the conception of freedom as an activity that is not determined by the need of means of subsistance and to the development of „human strengths that is its own purpose“ (Marx), this idea of philosophy of history leads into the theory of communist humanism. The author also confronts Engels's historical perspectivism with results of socialist revolutions, as regards to the conscious creation of history. He accentuates that there should be no flat empirical approach towards a philosophical thought but a philosophical one. He states that Engels’s prognosis that socialist society creates in increasing measure consciously its own history comes true. In the philosophical reflection of the progression of this society that is aimed still more at the mechanism of the conscious creation of history the author emphasizes especially the importance of the analysis of the human act structure as related with material conditions of society life effect of which enforces the direction by collective reason of a society, possessing the total of achieved scientific knowledge.