Publication Details

Abstract

The author presents the question of several relevant distinctions of the category of dialectical contradiction in the history of Marxist philosophy (contradiction as an objective source of development of the historical-philosophical process and as a subjective category of cognition, the qualitative discrimination of the levels of contradictions, the distinct grade of their substantiality, the contradictions between individual directions, opinions and notions and inside each individual direction, thinker, notion.) She applies these distinctions upon the research of the development of philosophy in Slovakia up to the 19th century, she is namely concentrated upon following the contradictions within the frame of the ascending phase of the forming of the bourgeois world outlook. She points out how in the prevailing type of idealistic thinking the materialist elements and tendencies were rising and developing, how reason had to fight with superstition, science with theology, experience with speculation, metaphysics with dialectics, humanism with objectivism, etc. The process of ’’materialization of idealism” (Engels’ term) is illustrated upon the concrete example of the development of philosophical thinking in Slovakia from the theist standpoint, via deism to philosophical monism and pantheism as the limiting point of the possibilities of idealistic pre-Marxist philosophy.