5. Logos as unity (“harmony”) of opposites According to ordinary ideas, opposites exclude each other and are incompatible: it is assumed, for example, that good is good because it excludes evil, and evil in turn is good; white because it is white

1.4. Unity of action Analyzing the essence of man, we are faced with something that representatives of various philosophical movements have always hotly argued about in the past - with the concepts of soul and body. From a purely psychological point of view, we are talking about the problem of functionality

E.V. Ilyenkov

Chapter seven.
Dialectics of abstract and concrete

“History of Marxist dialectics.
From the emergence of Marxism to the Leninist stage."
Moscow, 1971, p. 237-264

1. The concepts of concrete and abstract in Marx
and criticism of the idealistic and empirical understanding of them

The categories of abstract and concrete require especially careful consideration for the very reason that they are associated with an understanding of the “scientifically correct” method with the help of which Marx’s entire economic theory, its entire system of concepts, was developed. Already in the methodological “Introduction” of 1857, Marx defined the “method of ascent from the abstract to the concrete” as that correct- because the only possible- a way of thinking that carries out a theoretical (scientific) reflection of reality in a person’s head.

It goes without saying that it is possible to correctly understand the essence of this method of scientific-theoretical reproduction of reality only if the categories of abstract and concrete themselves are understood exactly as Marx understood them, based on the definitions that these categories received in German classical philosophy. In no case can they be understood in the meaning that they acquired in “natural language” (and in fact they passed into it from the very artificial language of medieval scholasticism and non-dialectical philosophy of the 17th-18th centuries).

First of all, it should be established that the categories of abstract and concrete are typical brain teaser categories, categories of dialectics as logic. This means universal categories in which the universal forms of development of nature, society, and thinking are expressed. These are concepts that capture not the specificity of thinking in comparison with reality and not the specificity of reality in relation to thinking, but, quite the opposite, the moment of unity (identity) in the movement of these opposites.

That's why specific in Marx’s dictionary (and in the dictionary of dialectical logic in general) and is defined as “unity in diversity” in general. Here the concrete does not mean a sensually perceived thing, a visually represented event, a visual image, etc. and so on. Concrete here generally means “joined together” - in accordance with the etymology of this Latin word - and therefore can be used as a definition of both a separate thing and an entire system of things, as well as as a definition of both a concept (truth, etc.), and a system of concepts.

The same applies to the abstract. Here it is not a synonym for “mental abstraction” only, a sensory unrepresentable “object of thought”, “an empirically unverifiable concept” and other unimaginable (and unthinkable, however, too) “objects” - these artificial concepts of scholasticism and logical teachings that inherited its terminology.

Abstract - and again in accordance with simple etymology - is defined as abstract, as extracted, as isolated, “taken out”, “withdrawn” in general. It doesn’t matter where, how and by whom, it doesn’t matter in what form it is recorded - whether in the form of a word, in the form of a visual diagram, or even in the form of a single thing outside the head, outside consciousness. The most visual drawing can be an abstract image of some complex system of things-phenomena - some concrete one. The abstract is understood as one of the clearly defined moments of the concrete - as a partial, one-sided incomplete (therefore always necessarily defective) manifestation of the concrete, separated or separated from it, a relatively independent formation, an ostensibly independent moment of it.

With this understanding of the abstract - with Hegel’s materialistically interpreted understanding of it - are connected all those cases of the use of this term by Marx that seem unexpected and paradoxical for the reader who borrowed his ideas about logical categories from current figures of speech: “abstract labor”; "abstract individual"; “an abstract form of the bourgeois mode of production”; “abstract form of wealth” (about money); “abstract, one-sided relationship”; “the purity (abstract certainty) with which trading peoples acted in the ancient world”; “one cannot say that the abstract form of a crisis is the cause of the crisis,” etc. and so on. In all these - and many other - expressions, the abstract appears as a definition object of consideration, as an objective definition of “being”, and not just as a specific form of its reflection in consciousness, in thinking.

Therefore, the problem of the relation of the abstract to the concrete is in no way posed or solved by Marx as a problem of the relation of the “mental” to the “sensibly perceived” or the “theoretical” to the “empirical”. Here it clearly appears as a problem of internal division of both the object of research and its image in thinking (in the form of a logically developed system of strictly defined concepts and their definitions). In other words, both the abstract and the concrete are directly understood here as forms of movement of thought that reproduce some objectively dissected whole.

This view of the relationship of the concrete to the abstract (and the corresponding use of words) in Marx is not accidental - it is organically connected with his understanding of the question of the relationship of thinking to reality in general, with the dialectical-materialist view of the “relation of thought to objectivity”, the relationship of the concept to the image of contemplation and performances, etc. and so on. Moreover, this is not the result of “flirtying” with Hegelian phraseology. This is a completely conscious use of the advantages of Hegelian language as the classical language of dialectics, i.e. logic, aimed and aimed at revealing contradictions in the very “heart of the matter.”

This requires some explanation. The point is that the identification of the concrete with a single thing, given in contemplation or at least in the imagination, is not just a terminological and conventional feature of a well-known trend in logic. Terminology in general is a derivative thing, and especially in logic (in the science of thinking) it is derived from philosophical premises. In this case, as the analysis shows, the interpretation of the concrete as an individual (as “an individual of a given class, species or genus”) directly follows from a well-defined concept of thinking, and precisely from its nominalistic-empirical understanding. The task of theoretical thinking, as is known, is reduced by this concept to finding that common, identical thing that all individuals of a certain class, a certain set have without exception. The general, as such, according to this concept, exists in things themselves only in the form of similarities observed between all individuals, only as a partial property of each individual. The general is not understood here in any other way. This is, after all, just the meaning (or meaning) of this or that term, name, sign; in itself – abstractly, i.e. Separate from individuals, this meaning exists only in the head, only in consciousness, only inside a being endowed with consciousness and speech, and in no case outside it. The starting point for empiricism in any of its varieties (both materialistic and idealistic) was, is and remains individual, as such. And the union of such individuals into classes, species, genera, sets and subsets is already product of thinking activity. Connected with this (both historically and essentially) is the idea according to which the abstract exists only in the sphere of consciousness, only as the meaning of a general term, but in reality there are only individuals with their similarities and differences; each such individual is the only concrete thing.

On this epistemological basis, a corresponding understanding of logic arises - as a system of rules that ensure the construction of an internally consistent hierarchy of concepts, at the top of which is placed the most general (accordingly, the poorest in definitions and therefore the “richest” in terms of the number of individuals it embraces), and at the foundation – the boundless sea ​​of ​​individuals. The result is a pyramid, the top of which is abstract, as such, and the base is concrete, as such. But the concrete in this understanding inevitably looks like something completely indefinite - in quantity, in quality, in any other logical categories, like a bunch of unique facts. This logically inexpressible concrete can only be sensually experienced at a given moment and at a given point, and precisely at that very moment and at that very point in which the equally unique “concrete” subject of “experience” found himself - the human individual.

This tendency, which has its source in medieval nominalism, stretches through the systems of Locke, Berkeley, Condillac, D.S. Mill, and now represented in its various shades by neopositivism (“methodological solipsism” by R. Carnap), inevitably comes in the end to identifying the concrete with individual “experience”, and the abstract with a pure “form of thinking”, i.e. with the meaning of a general term, a “sign” of language, which, naturally, turns out to be purely conventional, i.e. established arbitrarily and by agreement legitimizing this arbitrariness.

The trouble with this concept is that it is ultimately forced to admit the existence of certain “abstract objects” (“ideal objects”), i.e. empirically “unverifiable” meanings of general terms in the “language of modern science”. Neopositivists, despite all their efforts, cannot say anything intelligible about these “abstract objects” - they cannot be justified as an expression of the general in empirical facts. “Abstract object” is therefore accepted by them as a purely logical “construct”, and the most important concepts of modern natural science, down to the electron, atom and neutrino, inevitably fall into the category of such “constructs”. From this point of view, no “concrete object” corresponding to these concepts (terms) can be assumed - such objects do not occur in the sensory experience (in the experience) of an individual. An individual can only “think” them, i.e. forced to accept them as a purely verbal phenomenon.

But since it is precisely from such “abstract” objects that modern science builds its ideas about reality, it ultimately turns out that “concrete” (i.e., a separate sensory experience) is only a subjective form of manifestation of certain abstracts - certain abstract objects. It turns out, in other words, that the general is something more durable and stable than any individual, and consistent nominalistic empiricism happily returns to the ideas of “realism” - to the idea of ​​​​some kind of general (Abstract), which has the status of an Object existing in some impersonal Thinking as a logically necessary form of thinking in general...

Marx never had any need for such an absurd concept as an “abstract object” due to the clarity of his materialist view of the scientific and theoretical reproduction (reflection) of reality, which is always, firstly, concrete (i.e., it represents some “unity in diversity”, internally divided into various abstract moments that are objectively distinguished in it - clearly separated from each other), and secondly, it is abstract in the sense that these highlighted moments do not merge in it into some kind of undifferentiated amorphous “diversity in general” " The object (subject) of science - scientific thinking - always represents, according to Marx, the dialectical unity of the abstract and the concrete - the unity of the identity and difference of all its moments - sides, forms of existence, forms of its self-difference.

Empirical-nominalistic logic, with its interpretation of the abstract and the concrete, inevitably stumbles over the dialectics of any truly scientific concept. The concept of value turned out to be a stumbling block for the entire classical bourgeois political economy precisely because the latter, in relation to ways of thinking, ways of forming concepts, consciously focused on Locke’s epistemology, on his understanding of the relationship between the abstract and the concrete in particular. In the concept of value, theoretical thought directly encountered a situation that, when expressed through the logical categories of Lockean epistemology, begins to look like openly mystical, i.e. begins to clearly testify in favor of “realism”, in favor of the Hegelian - and not Lockean - idea of ​​​​the relationship between the universal and the particular and the individual (sensibly perceived). The abstract universal becomes a formative principle, an active principle, which only “incarnates” in individual sensually perceived bodies in order to complete the process of its self-growth, its self-difference.

It is absolutely true that if by concrete we understand a single, sensory-perceptible body, then scientifically understood reality begins to testify in favor of an idealistic view of the role and function of the abstract-universal in the organization and control of the movement of “concrete” bodies, sensory-perceptible individual events. Value in general - this “abstract” object - controls the movement of things and people, determines their fate with all its metamorphoses... A single commodity and a single person have here exactly as much meaning as the process of self-expansion and self-difference of value, this Abstract, gives it.

Marx was the only theorist who managed, by analyzing this “mystical” situation, not only to defend the honor of materialism, which superficial empirical materialism was powerless to do, but also to show that this situation actually testifies in favor of materialism, but only this kind of materialism , who sees the “rational grain” of Hegel’s view of the relationship between the abstract and the concrete.

The mystical veil falls from value only if the concrete begins to be understood not as individual sensory-perceptible cases of “values” - individual commodity bodies, but historically developed and therefore organically dissected within itself a system of commodity-money relations between people through things, a certain set of social relations of production - a given, historically defined “unity in diversity” or “diversity in unity.” In other words, mysticism disappears only if the starting point for the study of reality is not isolated, sensorily perceived “individuals”, but some whole, some system phenomena. Then, and only then, does materialism manage to defend its rights and its concepts, i.e. cope with both “realism” and specific “Hegelianism” - to show that value with all its mysteriously mystical properties is in fact just an abstract form of the existence of a specific object, its one-sided manifestation and expression, and not vice versa.

A different logic operates here, the starting point of which is the concrete, understood as a whole that is diversely dissected within itself, given to contemplation and representation (imagination) and more or less clearly outlined in its contours by previously developed concepts, and not an amorphous and indefinite “set” in its boundaries. “individual phenomena, things, people, objects, “atomic facts” and similar empirical ersatz of the concrete, from which they then try to extract by an act of abstraction some common, identical “features”. Not multitude or diversity, but unity diversity, i.e. unified in all its particular and special manifestations whole turns out, from Marx’s point of view, to be the object of the activity of thinking. And this whole must “hover before our imagination as a prerequisite” for all specially theoretical operations.

For this reason, all individual (“abstract”) definitions developed through analysis are understood from the very beginning to the end as one-sided definitions specific object, expressing, respectively, the abstract forms of existence of this object.

And if the mystifying expression “abstract object” (“abstract object”) is nevertheless given some meaning, then only the meaning of a one-sided, flawed, supposedly independent form of existence of a concrete object, some phase of its development, the meaning of a fragment of a concrete object.

Only in the light of this logic does the fog disappear around value, this “abstract object”, understood as a specific, characteristic only of a given system, a given concrete object, form of manifestation, a form of revealing the comprehensive interdependence of all its elements (things and people), which seem to the narrow empirical gaze independent and independent from each other.

Marx noted that it is precisely this comprehensive and completely concrete dependence between supposedly independent elements (and the thinking of the empiricist uncritically accepts this imaginary independence for real) and appears in the consciousness of the empiricist as the mystically incomprehensible and unexpected power of the abstract universal over the individual (for him “concrete”).

Already in The German Ideology it was shown that all “abstracts” without exception exist as independent objects only in representation, only in imagination. In reality, the abstract universal exists only as a side, as a moment, as a form of manifestation of the “mutual dependence of individuals.” And only gaps in the understanding of the real forms of this dependence lead to the idea that next to the empirical world, consisting of single sensually perceived individuals, there also exists a special intelligible world. Marx showed that the assumption of such an intelligible world - a world of special “abstract objects” - is an inevitable punishment for the incompleteness, defectiveness and one-sidedness (for “abstractness”) of the empirical understanding of reality.

An empiricist like Locke or Wittgenstein, who bases his view on the false idea of ​​individual things independent of each other or “atomic facts,” then records the equally empirically obvious fact of their dependence on each other no longer in the form of empirically traceable relationships between them in the bosom of this or that whole, but in the form of Abstracts. In other words, in the form of an Abstract, “embodied” in its individual manifestations, the consciousness of the empiricist captures that very whole, playing a decisive role in relation to its parts, from which he initially consciously abstracted as from an “imaginary object”, allegedly invented by the outdated “philosophical metaphysics." In fact, the situation of comprehensive interdependence of individual - only imaginary independent of each other - elements of the whole is that real situation that rationalist philosophy, the tradition of Spinoza - Leibniz - Fichte - Hegel, has long expressed in its categories - a tradition opposed to the narrow empirical (from the “individual” and from “individual concept” outgoing) view of thinking.

Recognition of the determining role of the whole in relation to its parts - a point of view starting from the whole and then coming to an understanding of the parts this the whole - and has always been the soil on which dialectics grew. And the opposite view, based on the idea that at first there are independent individuals, completely independent of one another, who then only unite into one or another (more or less random in relation to their “inner nature”) complexes, has nothing to do with this unification without changing and remaining the same as before - this view has always been and remains the soil on which no dialectic can take root. This is the soil on which it immediately dries up.

But on the other hand, the view is well instilled that, next to the sea of ​​“individuals,” there is also a special world of “models”, “abstract objects” that form various “complexes” of individuals and “individual concepts” - the “sphere of the mystical”, as he openly defined it L. Wittgenstein. The empiricist ultimately captures the fact of the dependence of the parts on the whole precisely in a mystical form, because definitions of the whole cannot in principle be obtained (and even formal logic vouches for this) by fixing those “common characteristics” that each separately considered part of this whole possesses, each of its constituent elements, just as an idea of ​​the shape of a house cannot be formed from the characteristics that each individual brick possesses...

Individuals entangled hand and foot in the networks of these material dependencies, i.e. By the forces of that very genuine concreteness of their mutual relations, which they do not see, do not understand, do not recognize, they continue to imagine themselves as “concrete” individuals, although the process that has drawn them into its course has long since turned each of them into an extremely abstract individual, into a performer of private and partial operations - as a weaver, tailor, turner or manufacturer of “abstract canvases”. All other “concrete” qualities of an individual, except for purely professional ones, from the point of view of the process as a whole become something completely insignificant and indifferent, unnecessary and therefore atrophy in the one who previously had them, and are not formed in the one who has not yet acquired them (this is what is associated with the famous phenomenon of alienation, which leads to the depersonalization of the individual, to the loss of the individual’s personal relationship to other individuals, and to the world in general, to the transformation of the individual into an impersonal, completely standardized figure, into a diagram, into an abstract image).

And if it seems to such an ostensibly concrete, but in fact reduced to an abstract, one-sided and schematic image, that certain impersonal Abstracts, Abstract Objects have gained power over him and over his destiny, which control him like a slave, like a puppet, then in fact, as only Marx showed, what binds him to other individuals is precisely his own abstraction- the schematism of his own life activity, which requires complementation in the equally abstract schematism of the activity of another individual. Just as a bolt has no meaning without a nut, without a screwdriver, without a wrench and a hole into which it is screwed, so is a turner without a baker, a baker without a foundry worker, a foundry worker without a turner, etc. and so on.

The specific-universal dependence that links these individuals into a single whole is realized as the need to replenish one abstract individual to others, equally (but differently) abstract individual, and only the totality of abstract individuals constitutes the only real one here specificity human existence. The individual here is indeed a slave of abstraction, but not of the mystical, floating Abstraction outside of it, but of his own abstraction, i.e. partiality, inferiority, one-aspect, standard-faceless sketchiness of one’s own life activity, one’s work.

In a detailed analysis of this objective dialectic of the transformation of “concrete labor” (and the individual performing it) into “abstract labor” (and the individual corresponding to this form of labor), the mysticism of Value, this Abstract, supposedly embodied in the sensually concrete body of a thing and person.

For a person unfamiliar with dialectical logic, the abstract is a synonym for the thinkable, a synonym for the concept; from here it is very logical that we get the view that the world - at least the social world - is dominated by the Concept, the Idea, the Thought. Therefore, an empiricist who snorts at “Hegelianism” in logic ends up being a slave to the most fundamental errors of idealism as soon as he is faced with the fact of the dependence of parts and particulars in the composition of some organic whole - with the fact of the determining role of this whole in relation to its parts. “Abstracts”, “abstract objects”, “entelechies” and other mystical nonsense are a completely inevitable ending for the logic of empiricism. For abstract-universal definitions of the whole cannot be obtained as abstract definitions of each individual element of this whole, as abstractions in which a property or characteristic common to all elements without exception (i.e., each of them) is presented. They are not at all in this series; they appear rather through the differences (and opposites) of individual facts, and not through what is common in them.

Therefore, an attempt to “justify” any abstract-universal definition of some specific system of individual facts (phenomena, things, people - individuals in general) as an abstract-common definition for all individuals (i.e., each of them) comes to a dead end every time. As such, these definitions simply cannot be “verified” and, on the contrary, they are convincingly refuted. But since without them - without such abstractly universal definitions - any theoretical scheme for understanding concrete facts becomes impossible at all, since even the most stubborn empiricist is forced to accept them, he accepts them reluctantly under the title of “fictions, albeit necessary” ( this is how the Kantian Conrad Schmidt “justified” the concept of value, this is how other concepts are “justified” - electron, quantum, etc. - today’s belated adherents of the logic of empiricism, neopositivists).

Marx and Engels, in polemics with this kind of theorists, were always forced to popularly explain that value is not an “abstract object” that exists separately from “empirically obvious facts”, but the abstract determination of a specific object (i.e. the entire set of production relations between people mediated by things). Value - the abstract-universal determination of a concrete whole - reveals itself in each individual “example” of value in an essentially dialectical way - through differences that reach the point of opposition and direct contradiction between individual “cases”; it is represented in different individual goods in a far from equal way - not by the same “feature” or “a set of identical characteristics.” Not at all like that; one product represents one abstract moment, and another product represents another, directly opposite to it. One product is in a “relative form” and the other is in an “equivalent form”. And the analysis of the contradictions of the form of value, empirically appearing in the form of opposite (logically excluding each other) images - first in the form of a bifurcation of the commodity world into goods and money, and then into capital and labor, etc. and so on. – this is precisely the whole point of Marx’s research.

If Marx had tried to solve the problem of analyzing the form of value in general by finding those identical (identical) “signs” that the commodity “canvas”, and the commodity “frock coat”, and the commodity “labor power”, and the commodity “factory”, and the commodity “gold”, and the commodity “land”, then, naturally, he would not be able to give anything other than nominal definitions of the term “value”. He would give only an analysis of the meaning of the current word, and nothing more, he would outline the limits of applicability of the term, i.e. would simply “explicate” the current idea of ​​value. But this was not about “explication of the implicit content of the term”, but about analysis concepts cost.

Therefore, the way of abstraction is completely different. Not the fruitless and endless comparison of gold with linen and both of them with labor power, with land, etc., with the goal of finding abstract commonalities between them, but an analysis of the opposite forms of manifestation of value in successive phases of the development of relations between different goods, “commodity values” ”, starting from a simple (single) situation “canvas - frock coat” and ending with developed forms in which one product is presented by another and in another, directly opposite to it.

Already in the first phase of the evolution of forms of value, Marx discovers the dialectic of the abstract and the concrete, i.e. a situation in which a “specific”, i.e. a completely private and partial type of labor is representative"abstract labor" labor in general. It turns out that “abstract labor” is represented by one - private and partial - type of labor, for example, tailoring, realized in its product - a frock coat. Abstraction appears here as a synonym for particularity, i.e. features and even singularities.

And the matter does not fundamentally change when gold, and therefore the work of a gold digger, begins to play this role. And in this case, a completely “concrete” type of labor with all its bodily-determined features begins to appear as labor in general, as abstract labor, without losing a single sign of one’s physicality, one’s particularity. Gold turns out to be the authorized representative of the abstract, the “abstract object”, and begins introduce it is precisely through its special concrete-natural corporeality, and the abstract (abstract-universal) represented by it merges (is identified) with one sensually perceived, “concrete” image. Gold becomes a mirror, reflecting every other commodity its price. But the point is that it, too, is just a special case of materialized labor that creates a partial (abstract) product. Therefore there is gold material existence of abstract wealth“- wealth in general, abstract wealth, as such, in its pure form.

And - what is most important - this reduction of any “concrete” type of labor and its product to “abstract labor” took place not in the theorizing head at all, but in the reality of the economic process: “This reduction seems to be an abstraction, however, it is an abstraction that in social the process of production occurs daily” and therefore “there is no greater, but at the same time no less real abstraction than the transformation of all organic bodies into air.”

Equating any “concrete” product with gold - this “abstract image”, this “materialized abstraction” - reveals a secret hidden from the mind of the empiricist, namely, it demonstrates with one’s own eyes the truth that every “concrete” type of labor has in fact long been transformed into an abstract one labor and that its essence lies not at all in the fact that it creates a canvas, a frock coat or books, but in the fact that it produces value, this abstract. In this regard, each individual labor produces abstract, and as such, he itself is abstract. In the most precise, direct and strict sense of this logical concept. The concrete (the concrete product) is created only by the diversely divided collective labor of people, only by the totality of countless individual – abstract – works, united around a common cause by the spontaneous forces of market relations.

The riddle of value, mystically insoluble for the empiricist with his logic, is thus solved simply and without any mysticism. Each individual type of labor is not at all, according to Marx’s understanding, a “sensually concrete embodiment of the Abstract”, this is outside its hovering ghost. The fact is that he himself, despite all his sensory-bodily “concreteness,” is not independent, standard-schematic, impersonally simple, i.e. reduced to a simple repetitive mechanically learned movement, and therefore does not require either intelligence or developed individuality, but requires only slavish obedience to the demands of an abstract standard, stamp, scheme. And this own abstractness is reflected in the golden mirror. In gold, any labor finds a visible image of its own essence precisely because gold is exactly the same partial, fragmentary product, which in itself has absolutely no meaning and acquires the meaning of a “universal image of wealth” only through its relation to the countless bodies of the commodity world. Gold is a typical product of labor that masters nature in an extremely one-sided way, labor that extracts from its depths a single chemical element and “abstracts” it from everything else in order to have it “in its pure form.”

Gold, in its role as a universal equivalent, is the best example of an “abstract object”: it is a separate, extremely poor, extremely flawed, extremely poor in comparison with the rest of the wealth of the objective world, a narrowly defined and “purified” real object from everything else. And not special at all - intelligible as opposed to sensually perceived - ideally incorporeal, invisible and intangible “logical construct”, “model object” and similar absurdities invented by empiricists who have reached a dead end with their understanding of the abstract and the concrete, the universal and the particular, the partial and holistic.

A specific object is a diversely dissected within itself, rich in definitions, historically formed integral object, similar not to a separate isolated atom, but rather to a living organism, socio-economic formation and similar formations. This is not a single sensory experienced thing, event, fact or person, much less an “experience” of them by a single individual. This is why Marx so often uses the concept of an organic whole, organism (or totality) as a synonym for the concrete.

3. Marx’s method of ascent from the abstract to the concrete

If we proceed from such an understanding of the abstract and the concrete, then, of course, the method of ascending from the abstract to the concrete - and in no way the opposite method - turns out to be not only scientifically correct, but also in general the “only possible” way of thinking in science. And this is because Marxism in general does not stand on the point of view of reducing the complex to the simple, but on the point of view of deriving the complex from the simple elements that make it up. Therefore, only the form of ascent from the abstract to the concrete corresponds to the dialectical understanding of reality - objective concreteness, diversely dissected within itself, and, moreover, in its historical development.

In any other way, it is impossible to reproduce in the movement of concepts, to logically reconstruct the historically understood whole, i.e. specific subject of analysis. This method is the only adequate analogue to the process of historically natural formation of any concreteness - the process of its self-development, the process of its self-difference, which takes place through the deployment of immanent contradictions, initially, naturally, undeveloped, hidden and therefore imperceptible and indistinguishable for the empirical gaze.

In the method of ascent from the abstract to the concrete, such “opposites” as analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction find their dialectical unity (brought to identity) - the very methods that the logic of empiricism recorded in their abstract opposition to each other and therefore turned into lifeless and helpless schemes.

It is not at all the case that in scientific thinking analysis (and induction) is carried out first, and only then the stage of synthesis and deduction begins - the stage of constructing a “deductive theory” on the basis of “inductive generalizations”. This is pure fantasy, reflecting, however, the historical-empirical appearance that appears on the surface of the cognitive process. This is just a psychologically justifiable scheme.

A somewhat deeper analysis of the same process, brought to its logical diagram, shows that always and everywhere, any simplest inductive generalization presupposes a more or less intelligible consideration, on the basis of which one or another limited circle of them is distinguished from the boundless sea of ​​empirically given facts ( class, a definite set), from which an abstract breakdown is then made and some general definition is extracted.

Without identifying a somewhat clearly defined and delimited circle of individual facts, no generalization can be made at all. However, this circle is outlined on the basis of some abstract general consideration, only not “explicit” or, in Russian speaking, clearly not expressed in precise terms, but necessarily present “implicitly”, i.e. hidden, as “implied”, as “intuitively obvious”, etc.

Therefore, the movement that seems to an empiricist to be a movement from empirical facts to their abstract generalization is in fact a movement from a direct and clear not expressed abstract-general representation of facts to a terminologically processed (and still equally abstract) representation. He begins with the abstract and ends with the abstract. It starts with the “scientifically not explicit” and comes to the “explicit” expression of the original, i.e. intuitively accepted, unscientific and pre-scientific idea, which remains after this operation just as abstract, as before...

The history of any science can demonstrate this circumstance so clearly that in hindsight it is noticed by any, even the most limited and stubborn, empiricist, supporter of the inductive method. Therefore, the empiricist is faced post factum with the unpleasant circumstance for him that any individual inductive generalization in consciousness is always preceded by a certain “a priori attitude” - a certain abstract vague idea, a certain criterion for the selection of individual facts, from which “general characteristics” are then extracted through abstraction. , fixed by a “general concept” (and in fact only a term expressing the original intuitive idea).

It goes without saying that the empiricist with his logic is forced to treat this initial abstract general idea quite uncritically, since it is not expressed in clear terms. After all, the logic of empiricism is generally adapted (as a science of signs, “sign frames” and similar things) to the analysis of reality only insofar as this reality has already found its expression in language. To reality, as it is in itself, i.e. before and outside of its linguistic expression, this logic does not know how to begin. This already belongs to the department of “intuition”, “intention”, “pragmatic interest”, “moral attitude” and similar irrational ways of becoming familiar with the movement of things.

As a result, “rational” turns out to be only a verbal and symbolic design of the original irrational-mystical - who knows where it came from - sphere of consciousness. Therefore, the movement, which at first seemed to the empiricist to soar from the sensually given to the abstract (to the “intelligible”), turns out to be an endless movement from abstract to abstract, a whirlwind in the sphere of abstractions. In this case, sensory data turns out to be only a completely external reason for purely formal operations of “explication,” “verification,” “modeling,” etc. etc., done on the Abstract.

Completely indefinite within itself, an amorphous and boundless (both quantitatively and qualitatively) sea of ​​“concrete data” plays here therefore the role of only passive clay, from which the formal scheme of the “language of science” carves out certain abstract constructs and constructions. And then from such abstracts (“empirically verified terms”) they begin – purely deductively – to build hierarchically organized and consistent (this is certainly!) systems of terms, pyramids of “concepts”, to pile abstractions on abstractions.

So the scheme: first induction, and then deduction, characteristic of the epistemology of empiricism, collapses already in the course of the evolution of empiricism itself.

It cannot, of course, be denied that the process of developing abstract general ideas by highlighting what individual things and facts have in common historically precedes scientific thinking and in this sense is a prerequisite for the method of ascent from the abstract to the concrete. But this premise matures long before science in general. Of course, language appears before science. At its birth, science already finds a huge number of developed general and generally understandable terms, each of which denotes a more or less clearly formed abstract idea.

Science, as such, immediately begins with a critical rethinking of all these abstract ideas, with their methodological systematization, classification, etc., i.e. her concern from the very beginning is the development concepts. A concept (which has always been well understood by rationalistic philosophy, both materialistic and idealistic) is something more than just an abstract general fixed by a term, rather than the meaning of a general term.

Therefore, Hegel already clearly formulated the most important position of dialectical logic, according to which abstract universality (abstract sameness, identity) is a form of only a general idea, but not yet a form of a concept. Hegel called the form of the concept specific universality, some logically expressed unity of many abstract definitions. Interpreting this view materialistically, Marx established that only the ascent from the abstract to the concrete is a method of processing materials of contemplation and representation into concepts, specific to scientific-theoretical thinking.

The method of ascent from the abstract to the concrete allows us to move from an uncritical-empirical description of phenomena given in contemplation to their critical-theoretical understanding - to a concept. Logically, this transition is precisely expressed as a transition from abstract universality of representation to concrete universality(i.e. towards unity of definitions) concepts. For example, it is not Marx or even Ricardo or Smith who has the priority of fixing the fact that any product on the market can be considered in two ways: on the one hand, as a use value, and on the other, as an exchange value. Every peasant, without reading Ricardo and Smith, knew that bread could be eaten, but it could also be exchanged and sold. But what is the relationship to each other between these two equally abstract images of the commodity? Pre-scientific consciousness in its general form is not at all interested in this. In contrast to this, the very first steps of the scientific analysis of goods in the emerging political economy are aimed at clarifying the connection that exists between different - and equally abstract - sides, aspects, meanings of the concepts of “good” and “value” in general.

A simple - formal - “unity”, expressed by the judgment: a commodity is, on the one hand, exchange value, and on the other, use value - does not take us even a millimeter beyond the boundaries of current abstract ideas. The formula “on the one hand - on the other hand” is not at all a formula for thinking in concepts. Here, only two still abstract ones are put into a formal – grammatical – connection, i.e. general ideas that are in no way essentially linked to each other.

The theoretical understanding (concept) of value in general is that the use value of a thing appearing on the market as a commodity is nothing more than a form of expression of its exchange value, or, more precisely, simply value. This is the transition “from the abstract (i.e., from two equally abstract representations) to the concrete” (i.e., to a logically expressed unity of abstract representations - to a concept).

The method of ascent from the abstract to the concrete is the method of scientific and theoretical processing of contemplation data and presentations into concepts, a way of movement of thought from one actually recorded phenomenon (in its strictly abstract, definite expression) to another factually given phenomenon (again in its strictly abstract, definite expression).

This is by no means a purely formal procedure performed on ready-made “abstractions”, not “classification”, not “systematization” or “deductive deduction” of them. This is an understanding of empirically given facts and phenomena, carried out consistently and methodically. For understand, i.e. reflect in concept one or another sphere of phenomena means to put these phenomena in the proper connection, to trace the objectively necessary relationships and interdependencies between them.

This is what is accomplished in the ascent from the abstract to the concrete - the consistent tracing of the connection of particulars (“abstract moments”) with each other, objectively standing out as part of the whole. This is the movement from the particular to the general - from the particular, understood as a partial, incomplete, fragmentary reflection of the whole, to the general, understood as a general (mutual) connection, the cohesion of these particulars as part of a concretely defined whole, as a set of objectively necessary and objectively synthesized various parts.

A necessary prerequisite for such a movement of thought is an indispensable awareness - at first very general and undifferentiated - of the whole within which its abstract moments are analytically distinguished. In this way, Marx’s logic – as dialectical logic – differs fundamentally from the logic of bad empiricism. This abstractly outlined whole (and not an indefinite sea of ​​individual facts) “must constantly hover in the mind as a prerequisite” for all successively performed acts of analysis (acts of isolating and fixing in strictly defined concepts) parts of a given whole. As a result, the whole, outlined at first only in outline, schematically, in general form, is represented in the mind as internally dismembered whole, i.e. as a concretely understood whole, as a correctly reflected concreteness.

In this case, analysis coincides with synthesis, or rather, it is accomplished through it, through its own opposite, in each individual act of thinking (comprehension). Analysis and synthesis do not proceed in isolation from each other, as is always the case with a one-sided formal understanding of the process of theoretical thinking (“first analysis - and then synthesis”, “first induction, and then deductive construction”). For the parts of the whole (its abstract moments) are identified through analysis precisely in that objectively justified sequence that expresses their genetically traceable connection, their linkage with each other, i.e. their synthetic unity, and each act of analysis directly represents a step along the path of synthesis - along the path of identifying the connection between the parts of the whole. Analysis and synthesis (like induction and deduction) are not two different acts that disintegrate over time, but one and the same act of thinking in its internally inseparable aspects.

In science, it is not the case (although this very often happens) that we first thoughtlessly analytically decompose the whole, and then try to reassemble the original whole from these disparate parts; This method of “analysis” and subsequent “synthesis” is more appropriate for a child breaking a toy without the hope of “doing it the way it was” again than for a theorist.

From the very beginning, theoretical analysis is carried out with caution - so as not to break the connections between the individual elements of the whole under study, but, on the contrary, to identify them and trace them. A careless analysis (which has lost the image of the whole as its initial premise and goal) always runs the risk of disuniting an object into such component parts that are completely non-specific for this whole and from which it is therefore impossible to reassemble the whole, just as it is impossible, having cut a body into pieces, to glue it back together again. them into a living body.

Each separately taken abstraction, isolated through analysis, must in itself (“in itself and for itself” - in their definitions) be essentially specific. The concreteness of the whole in it should not be extinguished and eliminated. On the contrary, it is precisely this concreteness that should find its way in it. simple, your universal expression.

These are precisely all the abstractions of “Capital”, starting with the simplest—from the most abstract—definition of the entire totality of social relations, called capitalism, right down to the most concrete forms of these relations, appearing on the surface of phenomena and therefore only recorded by the consciousness of the empiricist.

The empiricist, unlike the author of Capital, fixes these concrete forms of relations like profit, interest, differential rent and similar categories in the same abstract way, i.e. without comprehending and not reflecting in the definitions their internal division, their composition, and thereby incorrectly.

The sequence in which thinking, ascending from the abstract (the definition of the whole) to the concrete (a coherently dissected definition, to a system of abstract definitions), carries out its actions, is dictated not by considerations of convenience, simplicity or ease, but by the only objective way of dividing the whole under study. This can be seen very transparently on Capital. Cost - surplus value - profit - interest - wages - rent and further various forms of rent - this is a scheme of sequential disintegration, “branching” of an initially objectively undifferentiated form - that form of relationships between people through things in which all subsequent forms are, as it were, in solution and have not yet crystallized from the initially homogeneous “substance”.

It is impossible to understand - to express in concept - the essence of profit if the essence of surplus value is not first understood, and this latter - if there is no strictly developed concept of value. “...It is easy to understand the rate of profit if the laws of surplus value are known. In reverse order it is impossible to understand ni l’un, ni l’autre [neither one nor the other].” This is exactly what we're talking about understanding, about reflection in concept, because it’s easy to describe, i.e. it is, of course, possible to express it in abstract terms and definitions in the reverse order or in any other order.

Understand, i.e. It is impossible to reflect, reproduce the internal division of an object in the movement of concepts in any other way than a consistent ascent from the abstract to the concrete, from the analysis of simple, not rich in definitions, forms of development of the whole under study to the analysis of complex, derivative, genetically secondary formations.

This order of ascension, we repeat, is dictated not at all by the peculiarities of the structure of the thinking head or consciousness, but solely by that real order of sequence in which the corresponding forms of a concrete whole develop one after another. The point is not at all that it is easier for consciousness to first reflect and fix the simple, and then the complex. There is nothing like it here. On the contrary, precisely what analysis reveals as extremely complex, to the empirical consciousness, floundering on the surface of a process incomprehensible to it, seems the simplest, most self-evident: for example, the fact that capital grants interest, land provides rent, and labor is rewarded with wages . And vice versa, the theoretical depiction of the simple - abstractly universal definitions of value - to the empiricist with his consciousness seems to be a mind-bogglingly complex construction, a puzzling speculation in the style of Hegel. Subjectively, it is value - the most abstract category of political economy - that presents the greatest difficulties, and precisely because objectively it is the simplest, most abstract and universal form of relationships of the entire capitalist whole.

That is why the form of ascent from the abstract to the concrete is not a subjective psychological form and technique with the help of which it is easier to understand the subject, but the only possible logical form that only allows us to reflect (reproduce, reproduce) in the movement of concepts the objective process of self-development of the object under study , the very process of self-difference during which any organic whole, any historically becoming system of internally interacting phenomena, any concreteness arises, becomes, takes shape and diversifies within itself.

For this reason, the method of ascending from the abstract to the concrete (subject to the interpretation of these concepts outlined above) is not only possible, but certainly must be considered as a universal method of thinking in science in general, i.e. as a general form (method) of the development of concepts, and not only and not so much as a specific technique, specially adapted to the needs of developing the theory of surplus value. "Capital" provided only a sample - still unsurpassed - consciously following this method, he only demonstrated its heuristic power, its ability to cope with the dialectical difficulties that arise in the course of scientific and theoretical knowledge, with the contradiction of the universal (i.e. law) and the special forms of manifestation of this very law - with a contradiction that causes a lot of trouble theorists who do not know any logic other than formal.

Only this way of thinking, starting from the abstract-universal definition of the object under study and successively, step by step, tracing all the basic universal dependencies that in their totality characterize this whole concretely, ultimately leads to a developed system of universal theoretical concepts, reflecting that living, a self-developing whole, which from the very beginning was singled out as an object of analysis and “hovered in the imagination” as a prerequisite and at the same time as target the work of thinking.

Ibid., vol. 46, part I, p. 107-108.
Ibid., vol. 13, p. 107.
There, p. 17.
Ibid., vol. 46, part I, p. 38.
Ibid., vol. 23, p. 227.

ABSTRACT and CONCRETE - philosophical categories denoting the stages of knowledge of reality, expressed in the epistemological law of ascent from A. to K. A. (Latin abstractio - distraction, removal) - a mental image obtained by abstraction (abstraction) from certain non-essential properties or relations of an object in order to highlight its essential features; a theoretical generalization that allows you to reflect the main patterns of the phenomena under study, study and predict new, unknown patterns.

Abstract and concrete (Kirilenko, Shevtsov)

ABSTRACT AND CONCRETE. The principle of ascent from the abstract to the concrete is one of the fundamental principles , it accumulates in itself the cognitive possibility of laws and dialectics, organizes the process . A. and K. have several meanings. Most often, in everyday life, the abstract is understood as a synonym for conceptuality, in contrast to sensuality and imagery, which, accordingly, is the concrete. The concepts “abstract” and “abstraction” may imply one more meaning - abstraction from a number of unimportant properties and highlighting the main ones. In this sense, knowledge is always abstract, since it generalizes, abstracts from the individual, using concepts. The concrete, correlated with the abstract so understood, is objective reality itself, where the essential and the inessential are not separated. A. and K. as stages of the cognitive process have a different meaning...

ASSIGNMENT FROM ABSTRACT TO CONCRETE - a way of studying and presenting an object (thing, process), which is an internally dissected integrity, in other words, an “organic” whole, all the necessary sides (parts, moments) of which are interconnected, interact with each other and outside of this connection lose their specificity. Such reproduction of the subject is the goal and result of the named method of presentation and research, or the mental concrete.

Ascent from abstract to concrete

ASSIGNMENT FROM ABSTRACT TO CONCRETE is a method of studying reality, the main means of which is the transition from abstract to concrete knowledge. Other logical means (analysis, synthesis, induction, deduction, definition, generalization, classification, inference, etc.) are used depending on the characteristics of a particular stage of transition from abstract to concrete knowledge as conditions for the implementation of this transition. This method was first explained in general form by Hegel.

Abstract and concrete (Podoprigora)

ABSTRACT and CONCRETE - philosophical categories denoting the stages of knowledge of reality, expressed in the epistemological law of ascent from A. to K. A. - a mental image obtained by abstracting (abstracting) from certain non-essential properties or relationships of an object in order to highlight its essential features ; a theoretical generalization that allows you to reflect the main patterns of the phenomena under study, study and predict new, unknown patterns. K. - see Specific.

Abstract and concrete (Frolov)

ABSTRACT AND CONCRETE. A. (lat. abstractio - distraction) - side, part of the whole, one-sided, simple, undeveloped; K. (lat. concretus - condensed, fused) - multifaceted, complex, developed, holistic. In the history of philosophy before Hegel, K. was understood as ch. arr. as a sensually given variety of individual things: and phenomena, A. - as a characteristic exclusively of the products of thinking (Abstraction). Hegel was the first to introduce into philosophy the categories of A. and K. in that specific sense, which received its further development in Marxist philosophy: K. is a synonym for dialectical interconnection, dismembered integrity; A. is not the metaphysical opposite of K., but a stage in the movement of K. itself, an unopened, undeveloped, undeveloped K. (Hegel compares the relationship between A. and K., for example, with the relationship between a bud and a fruit, an acorn and an oak tree). However, K., according to Hegel, is a characteristic only of the “spirit”, the thinking of the “absolute idea”. Nature and social relations of people act as an “other being”, a more or less abstract discovery of individual aspects, moments of the life of the universal spirit. For Marxist philosophy, the carrier, the subject of K. is material reality, the world of sensory data, finite things and phenomena...

ABSTRACT AND CONCRETE

ABSTRACT and CONCRETE - philosophical categories denoting the stages of knowledge of reality, expressed in the epistemological law of ascent from A. to K. A. (Latin abstractio - distraction, removal) - a mental image obtained by abstraction (abstraction) from certain insignificant properties or relations of an object in order to highlight its essential features; a theoretical generalization that allows you to reflect the main patterns of the phenomena under study, study and predict new, unknown patterns. Abstract objects are integral formations that make up the direct content of human thinking (concepts, judgments, conclusions, laws, mathematical structures, etc.). The specificity of an abstract object is determined by the specificity of the abstraction. There are several types of abstraction: 1) abstraction of identification, or generalizing abstraction, as a result of which a common property of the objects under study is highlighted. This type of abstraction is considered fundamental in mathematics and mathematical logic. For example, one-to-one correspondence between sets is characterized by three important properties: symmetry, transitivity and reflexivity. If there are relationships with given properties between certain objects, then with the help of such a relationship, similar to equality, a certain common property inherent in all these objects is identified; 2) analytical or isolating abstraction, as a result of which the properties of objects are clearly fixed, denoted by a specific name (“heat capacity”, “solubility”, “continuity”, “parity”, “heredity”, etc.); 3) idealizing abstraction, or idealization, as a result of which the concepts of idealized (ideal) objects are formed (“ideal gas”, “absolutely black body”, “straight line”, etc.); 4) abstraction of actual infinity (distraction from the fundamental impossibility of fixing every element of an infinite set, i.e. infinite sets are considered as finite); 5) abstraction of potential feasibility (distraction from the real boundaries of our capabilities, our limitation to our own finitude, i.e. it is assumed that any but a finite number of operations in the process of activity can be carried out). Sometimes abstraction of constructivization is distinguished as a special type (abstraction from the uncertainty of the boundaries of real objects, their “coarsening” for the purpose of grasping in a “first approximation.” The limits or intervals of A. as a generalized image are interpretations (for example, the concept of an imaginary number) and information completeness (the presence semantic interpretation and comprehension on material models). K. (Lat. concreiz - thick, hard, fused) - really existing, completely definite, precise, objective, material, considered in all its diversity of properties and relationships (unlike A.). K. in thinking is the content of concepts that reflect objects or phenomena in their essential features; the division of concepts into K. and A. in logic is a consequence of distinguishing between the reflection of an object and its properties.

The latest philosophical dictionary. - Minsk: Book House. A. A. Gritsanov. 1999.

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