Publication Details

Abstract

In connection with fruitful endeavours to reintegrate, into Marxist philosophy, problems of human individual as an autonomous and onto-creative being, the conception of the natural science roots of this philosophy must also be re-valued. Modern materialism cannot abandon the philosophical analysis of findings of natural sciences • as one of the most important starting points of philosophy which endeavours to be scientific. However, a full recognition of the anthropological problems causes that it cannot consider this starting point as the only one and that the very conception of problems in the philosophy of natural sciences is being considerably modified. The „extrapolation“ model in Marxist philosophy is definitively dropped and it is necessary to admit that the central disciplines of this philosophy — ontology and gnoseology —1 do not draw support only from the results of philosophical research of natural sciences, but also from other philosophical disciplines, among them considerably from the philosophy of man. At the same time, emphasis on the philosophy of natural sciences as one of basic starting points of these central disciplines makes an error impossible which is onesidedly committed by the antropological philosophies, viz., that they comprehend being only as human being. In this way, preconditions are created for modern materialism to build up an actually universal ontology. After the „extrapolation“ model is overcome, the relation between philosophy and natural sciences is to be understood in a new way. Specificity of philosophical and natural science knowledge is to be clearly realized and the possibility of partial (not at all irrelevant) discrepancies between natural sciences and philosophy is to be considered as normal. Besides, natural sciences only mediate between reality and philosophy: therefore, they are justified to be considered, in this relation, only as a „phenomenology- of matter“. This makes it possible to judge the philosophical import of the individual theories of natural sciences in a different way, and would make philosophy realize its specificity more profoundly. Philosophy of natural sciences, understood as „philosophy being inspired with science*, ought to be constituted, in the framework of Marxist philosophy, into a complete philosophical discipline. This would not be identical with the special philosophy of science (which is rather a border discipline between logic and philosophy, and, as such, has a wide and indisputable autonomy). It would be connected with the special philosophy of science; however, it would shift its investigation clearly into philosophical area (status of natural science knowledge, its limits, meaning and character, its relation to reality etc.) The requirement would be thereby met that this area really might be one of the most significant and immediate starting points of ontology and gnoseology.