Han Qi: Scientific Atheist Thought in "Anti-Dühring"
Anti-Dühring is a seminal Marxist work written by the revolutionary teacher Friedrich Engels to critique the erroneous views propagated by Eugen Dühring in the fields of philosophy, political economy, and socialism; to rebuff Dühring’s misinterpretations of Marx’s doctrine; and to purge Dühring’s influence within the Social Democratic Party of Germany. Through this critique, Engels provided the first comprehensive and systematic exposition of the basic principles of the three component parts of Marxism—philosophy, political economy, and scientific socialism—as well as their internal connections. Engels’s exposition clearly demonstrates that dialectical materialism and historical materialism are a scientific worldview and methodology, while also serving as the theoretical foundation for Marxist political economy and scientific socialism.
Taken as a whole, the work Anti-Dühring is built upon the foundation of dialectical materialism and historical materialism; therefore, it inherently reflects standard atheist thought. It was precisely on the basis of the atheist ideas of their predecessors that Marx and Engels further developed dialectical materialism and historical materialism. Since the question of the existence or non-existence of a god [1] had already been resolved by those before them, the work undertaken by Marx and Engels primarily involved ideological clarification and development within the realm of social history. Consequently, for a Marxist, the issue of atheism is often hidden within the grand narrative background of Marx and Engels; moreover, as a work expounding the three component parts of Marxism, Anti-Dühring has seldom been interpreted from the perspective of atheism.
In contemporary China, the official mainstream ideology is Marxism. However, since the reform and opening up, religion has experienced a resurgence and has achieved significant development over the past 30 years. The five traditional religions, several emerging sects, and various spiritual trends of thought have become increasingly active. At the same time, various cults as well as pseudo-religious fraudsters and "masters" [2] have emerged in an endless stream, seriously affecting social security and the normal lives of the people; furthermore, religious extremism—having been exploited by external hostile forces—has also become a major hidden danger to national security. Therefore, in the current era, it is highly necessary for us to reaffirm atheist thought. For historical reasons, the study of atheism in China once fell into silence. Thus, as we raise the subject of atheist thought again today, the questions of how to propagate and introduce it must be answered according to the needs of the current era.
In fact, by way of refuting Dühring's ideas in Anti-Dühring, Engels elucidated the universal laws of motion and development in nature, human society, and thought—namely, dialectical thought—and offered incisive insights into issues such as truth and morality. These expositions are highly conducive to helping people clarify their own thinking and distinguish misconceptions in cognition. Although it does not directly target the question of the existence of a god, its dialectical thought absolutely assists the general public in adopting an objective, rational, and scientific attitude toward the various religious phenomena active in society today, and it also aids us in reflecting upon current research in atheism.
Therefore, this article seeks to interpret the work Anti-Dühring from the perspective of scientific atheism. Given that Anti-Dühring covers the three component parts of Marxism and has a broad scope, while our theme is limited to atheist thought, the analysis in this article will be restricted to the "Philosophy" section of Anti-Dühring—that is, the content of the first component part of Marxism as expounded by Engels.
I. The Basic Content of the "Philosophy" Section of Anti-Dühring
Anti-Dühring was written between September 1876 and June 1878 as Engels’s appraisal of the new socialist theory proposed by Dühring. At the time, Dühring, as a new "convert," had received a warm welcome from a portion of the socialist press, and his ideas had brought a certain degree of confusion to the Social Democratic Party of Germany. While critiquing Dühring, Engels also positively elucidated his own views on several disputes of universal significance. The book was reprinted in 1885. According to Engels, one reason for the reprinting was that this critique of Dühring had, in fact, become a relatively coherent exposition of the Marxist dialectical method and the communist worldview. Moreover, as this exposition touched upon a considerable number of fields, the number of people interested in it—"in all countries where there are proletarians and undaunted scientific theoreticians"—was steadily increasing.
Marx and Engels were the "only people who rescued conscious dialectics from German idealist philosophy and applied it to the materialist conception of nature and history." In this work, in order to establish a conception of nature that was simultaneously dialectical and materialist, Engels conducted a general exploration of fields of natural science such as mathematics, attempting to prove the real operation of dialectical laws through the facts of nature. These laws, of course, also run through the history of the development of human thought and have gradually been realized by thinking human beings. Thus, "finding these laws in nature and elucidating them from within nature" also became a characteristic of the "Philosophy" section of the book.
Fundamentally speaking, the tradition of naturalist philosophy has always been the source of the development of Western atheist thought—that is, a philosophical trend that takes nature as the premise and foundation for observation and research. In its history of development, the old naturalist philosophical tradition proposed atheist ideas as well as a small number of dialectical viewpoints. In modern times, this tradition of observing and researching nature has been fully inherited and developed by the natural sciences. A vast number of scientific discoveries increasingly prove the dialectical nature of natural processes. Therefore, the laws of dialectics are being firmly established upon the foundation of natural science.
However, the conclusions we draw from summarizing the experiences of natural science are always concepts, and the art of employing these concepts is neither innate nor identical to ordinary everyday consciousness. Engels believed that employing these concepts requires "real thought"—namely, the dialectical mode of thinking. For this reason, this work, aimed at clarifying Dühring’s system of thought, remains of significant guiding importance for our understanding of the world today.
In the "Introduction" to Anti-Dühring, Engels explicitly explains the difference between the two modes of thinking: dialectics and metaphysics. "Everything is and is not, for everything is in flux, in constant change, in constant coming into being and passing away." This original, naive ancient Greek worldview of Heraclitus embodies a spontaneous dialectical thinking. While the specialized methods of research since the significant development of natural science in the latter half of the 15th century certainly promoted scientific progress, they also led to a certain inertia—namely, isolating various natural objects and processes, examining individuals apart from their overall connections, observing them not in motion but in a static state, ignoring essential changes in things by assuming they are fixed and immutable, and examining only their dead state. This mode of investigation was also transplanted into philosophy, forming the metaphysical mode of thinking well-known in the modern era.
The metaphysical mode of thinking accords with general common sense: "YEA, YEA; NAY, NAY: FOR WHATSOEVER IS MORE THAN THESE COMETH OF EVIL." To be sure, within the scope of daily application, common sense is respectable; however, once it enters the vast field of research, it is no longer applicable. The most famous example is the jurist’s judgment on the moment of death. In fact, at every moment, any organism is both itself and not itself; at every moment, cells die within the organism while new cells are simultaneously born. Therefore, everything in nature is ultimately dialectical rather than metaphysical. This point can be fully verified by the discoveries of modern natural science. Subsequently, with the rapid progress of natural science and the changes and development of social history, modern materialist thought finally emerged, and it is dialectical in its essence.
Engels pointed out that Dühring considered his own doctrine to be the "final and ultimate truth." Yet this itself is contrary to dialectical thinking. Dühring believed that philosophy is the exposition of the highest form of consciousness of the world and life, and in a broader sense, it includes the principles of all knowledge and will. It is the final supplement to the system by which science explains nature and human society; it has only two true objects of study: nature and the human world. Therefore, Dühring’s philosophy is divided into three parts: a general scheme of the universe (world schematism), the doctrine of the principles of nature, and the doctrine of man.
In fact, according to Dühring’s view, these so-called principles are derived from thought rather than from the external world; they are to be applied to nature and humanity, and both nature and humanity must conform to these principles. Here, Dühring inverted the real relationship and embarked upon the path of idealism. This is because principles should be abstracted from nature and human history, and these principles are correct only insofar as they conform to nature and history.
Engels pointed out with piercing insight the similarity between Dühring's entire philosophical system and that of Hegel. Dühring said, "If one seeks to exclude or even just to doubt the sovereign significance of the basic forms of consciousness and knowledge and their unconditional claim to truth by using the qualifier 'human,' then one degrades these basic forms." The result of this idea is that Dühring not only detaches thought from man and nature but repeatedly forces thought—or more directly, that thing called "God"—upon nature.
Engels believed that every system of thought in the world is objectively limited by historical conditions and subjectively limited by the physical and mental state of the person who proposed the thought. Dühring, however, considered his doctrine to be exempt from all such possible limitations, a final and completed system. In doing so, he naturally closed off the path for the future development of science.
Therefore, following these three parts of Dühring’s philosophy, Engels critiqued the fallacies of Dühring's doctrine specifically from three aspects: world schematism, the philosophy of nature, and the doctrine of man. This constitutes the basic content of the "Philosophy" section of Anti-Dühring.
II. Critique of Dühring's World Schematism and Philosophy of Nature
World schematism refers to judgments regarding the ontology of the world. Dühring continued Hegel's schematism of existence, believing that the world is unified in existence. That is to say, he believed: I begin from existence, therefore I think of existence, and the thought regarding existence is unified; thought and existence must coordinate with each other to achieve consistency; therefore, in reality, existence is unified. He used the identity of thought and existence to prove the reality of thought, subsequently deducing that the world is unified in existence. Even if Dühring denied the existence of God, his mode of thinking, in fact, left space for arguing for God’s existence.
Engels believed that the unity of existence lies only in the fact that all the objects we speak of are existent or actual; moreover, when we emphasize this, we are temporarily setting aside the consideration of the individual characteristics of things. The truth is that the unity of the world does not lie in its existence—although existence is the prerequisite for its unity, for the world must first exist before it can be unified. However, "the real unity of the world consists in its materiality, and this is proved not by a few juggled phrases, but by a long and wearisome development of philosophy and natural science." Dühring merely lifted Hegel’s ideas and spoke of "his own" philosophy only within the framework of Hegelian theory.
Turning to the section on the philosophy of nature: First, Dühring believed that existence possesses infinity, while as a measure of existence, the world has a beginning in time and limits in space. Engels, however, believed that Dühring had plagiarized half of Kant's argument while casting aside the other half—namely, that "the world has no beginning in time and no end in space." In fact, the eternity of time and the infinity of space have no end in any direction. To believe there is an end or a beginning is to suggest that the world has an ultimate cause. Second, Dühring believed that before the beginning of time, the world was in a self-equal, unchanging primordial state. Such an absolutely unchanging state would require the assistance of a "first impulse" from outside the world to set the world in motion. Since Dühring would not allow God—as the "first impulse"—to enter his scheme, he could only stubbornly answer thus: "The primordial state of the universe, or to put it more clearly, of an unchanging existence of matter which yielded no changes in time, is a question which can be excluded only by a mind that sees the height of wisdom in the self-mutilation of its generative power."
He refused to explain how his world transitioned from immobility to motion, stating merely that motion comes from immobility and arises from nothingness. [23] How, then, was the world produced? Dühring believed that matter is the carrier of all reality, and that no mechanical force can exist outside of matter; mechanical force is a state of matter; in the primordial state where nothing happens, matter and its state—mechanical force—are unified. [24]
Materialists before Dühring had already addressed the relationship between matter and motion. However, Dühring reduced motion to mechanical force, which rendered him incapable of understanding the true connection between the two. The fact is that motion is the mode of existence of matter. Nowhere and at no time has there been, or can there be, matter without motion. Any rest or equilibrium is relative and only meaningful in relation to a specific form of motion. Matter without motion and motion without matter are equally inconceivable. Like matter itself, motion can neither be created nor destroyed; it can only be transferred. [25]
Engels argued that Dühring was a metaphysical thinker through and through. According to dialectics, absolute rest and unconditional equilibrium do not exist. Dühring first dug a non-existent chasm between immobility—or the "self-equal primordial state"—and motion, yet he never found a satisfactory way to bridge this gap to set immobility into actual motion, while being too embarrassed to resort to the only Savior, the Creator of Heaven and Earth. [26]
Finally, regarding the origin of life, Dühring avoided clear judgment. He claimed, "Nature knows not only why it creates this or that thing; it does not merely perform the work of a housemaid; it possesses not only delicacy—which in itself is something quite beautiful in subjective, conscious thinking—it also possesses will..." [27] This judgment of a "consciously thinking and acting nature" places Herr Dühring somewhere between pantheism (the belief that God is nature) and deism (the belief that evidence in nature serves as the basis for God's existence, though God does not intervene in human society). [28]
He also opposed Darwin’s theories such as natural selection and survival of the fittest. Engels contended that Dühring’s discussion of the organic world in his natural philosophy was essentially vacuous and self-contradictory; on key issues, it was utter nonsense, and the ultimate conclusions were useless. Life is, in fact, the mode of existence of albuminous bodies, and this mode of existence essentially consists in the constant self-renewal of the chemical constituents of these bodies. [29]
Through his critique of Dühring’s world schematism and natural philosophy, Engels exposed Dühring’s incomplete materialist stance and the metaphysical character of his way of thinking. Throughout Dühring’s discourse, one can see the "shadow" of a creator, a first mover, or God. One's interpretation of the ontology and operation of the world directly determines one's analysis and judgment of human society. This foundational part of Dühring’s doctrine can be said to be the cause of the views he later derived in his analysis of human society. As Engels pointed out in the "Introduction" to Anti-Dühring, everything in nature is ultimately dialectical rather than metaphysical. The lack of, or the incompleteness of, materialist dialectical thought was the root cause of the deviations in Dühring’s arguments. Through this part of the critical analysis, Engels also demonstrated the power of materialist dialectics. It is a potent tool for understanding the world, derived from the summary of the laws of nature’s operation. This critique and clarification laid a solid foundation for the subsequent in-depth dissection of Dühring’s doctrine of man.
III. Critique of Dühring's Doctrine of Man
In the human world, Dühring believed that the moral world, like the world of general knowledge, "has its permanent principles and simple elements." Moral principles stand "above history and above present-day differences in national character... those special truths that constitute the more complete moral consciousness and so-called conscience in the process of development can, once their ultimate foundations are recognized, claim a validity and scope of application similar to that of mathematical knowledge and use. Genuine truth is fundamentally immutable... therefore, to conceive of the correctness of knowledge as being influenced by time and changes in reality is utter folly." [30] Consequently, "the reliability of strict knowledge and the adequacy of common-sense cognition do not allow us, upon mature reflection, to despair of the absolute validity of the principles of knowledge." [31]
Here, Dühring clearly posited his judgments on ultimate truth, the sovereignty of thought, and the absolute reliability of cognition. First, can human cognition or thought truly possess sovereign significance and an unconditional right to truth? Engels argued that while human thought exists as the individual thought of countless people in the past, present, and future, it is not truly the thought of a single individual. Our current knowledge is highly likely to be updated and corrected by our descendants—a fact repeatedly proven by historical development. While Dühring indicated that thought and cognition can only manifest in individuals, and that no power can force an individual in a healthy and sober state to accept a certain idea, the sovereign significance he attributed to the knowledge reached by each individual's thought simply does not exist. [32]
The fact is precisely that "the sovereignty of thought is realized in a series of extremely unsovereignly-thinking human beings; the knowledge which has an unconditional claim to truth is realized in a series of relative errors; neither the one nor the other can be fully realized except through an unending duration of human existence." [33] Engels pointed out a contradiction here: the nature of thought must be seen as absolute, yet human thought is realized in individuals who think in a completely limited way. This contradiction can only be resolved in the endless succession of human generations. Therefore, only in this sense is human thought sovereign and yet not sovereign; its capacity for knowledge is infinite and yet finite. Specifically, the "nature, vocation, capacity, and historical goal" of thought are sovereign and infinite, but its concrete realization and current reality at any given time are unsovereign and finite. [34]
Secondly, do eternal truths exist? Engels argued that if humanity reached the point of utilizing only eternal truths and the products of thought endowed with sovereign significance and unconditional rights to truth, it could be said that humanity had exhausted the infinity of the world of knowledge. [35] He divided the entire field of knowledge into three main parts to examine whether eternal truths exist.
The first part consists of the sciences that study non-living nature and can be handled more or less mathematically—mathematics, astronomy, mechanics, physics, chemistry, geology, etc., also known as the exact sciences. While we can say that something like 1+1=2 counts as an eternal truth, these disciplines are actually full of hypotheses, and as time passes, ultimate truths only become rarer. [36]
The second part consists of the sciences that study living organisms. In this field, because of the intricate interrelations and causal connections, not only does every problem solved give rise to countless new ones, but every problem can only be solved bit by bit, usually over centuries. We also constantly propose various hypotheses to systematically understand the discovered connections. Therefore, it is difficult for eternal and immutable truths to appear here, unless we are satisfied with platitudes such as the judgment that "all men must die." [37]
The third part consists of the historical sciences, which study the conditions of human life, social relations, legal forms, and state forms according to historical sequence and practical results, as well as the ideological superstructure [N1] composed of philosophy, religion, and art. Here, it is even more impossible for eternal truths to appear. The knowledge gained in this field is essentially relative, limited to the connections and results of social and state forms that belong to a certain period and a certain people and are, by their nature, transitory. Unless, of course, we are satisfied with clichés such as the assertion that humanity is always divided into rulers and the ruled. [38]
However, it is precisely in this third part that we most frequently encounter so-called eternal and ultimate truths. Some attempt to conclude from the existence of eternal truths in this field that there exist eternal truths, eternal morality, eternal justice, and so on, within the realm of human history, possessing a validity and scope similar to mathematical knowledge and application. [39] This point will be further analyzed below. Since eternal truths do not exist in the three major fields of human knowledge, no shadow of ultimate truth can be found in the sciences that study the laws of human thought—namely, logic and dialectics.
Because our current stage of knowledge, like all previous stages, is not the final one, knowledge is necessarily relative and will gradually approach perfection through the long succession of generations. Therefore, we cannot measure acquired knowledge by the standard of immutable, final, ultimate truth. Once pushed to an extreme, truth turns into error; conversely, under appropriate conditions, error can turn into truth.
Thirdly, do moral truths possess finality? From the above analysis, we know that human knowledge is always limited by certain objective conditions and is not an unconditional truth; through detailed investigation, none of the three major fields of human knowledge contains eternal and immutable truths. Therefore, moral truths—specifically the realm of good and evil—are even less likely to contain ultimate truths. Engels believed that on the question of good and evil, so-called "ultimate truths" are extremely rare. Different peoples have different conceptions of good and evil, which are often directly contradictory; different eras also have different conceptions, and it is common for contradictory conceptions of good and evil to replace one another as eras develop. How can we say that moral truth has finality! For example, what was passed down from the religious ages was Christian feudal morality, which is divided into Catholic morality and Protestant morality, and further subdivided into Jesuit Catholic and Orthodox Protestant morality, each different from the others. In the age of Enlightenment, modern bourgeois morality became mainstream, followed by the emergence of proletarian morality. Which one conforms more to the truth? None possesses absolute finality. However, the morality that represents the direction of real change and future developmental trends—namely, proletarian morality—will certainly possess more elements that can endure for a long time. [40]
Engels further pointed out that, in the final analysis, people consciously or unconsciously derive their ethical and moral ideas from the practical relations on which their class position is based—that is, from the economic relations in which they carry out production and exchange. [41] Therefore, moral dogmas cannot be imposed on people as eternal, ultimate, and immutable laws, nor can moral principles stand above historical and epochal shifts or national differences. All moral theories in history have been, fundamentally, the product of the socio-economic conditions of their time. Society moves forward through class antagonisms; therefore, morality has always been class morality, either justifying the ruling class or representing the interests of the ruled. Only in a society that has abolished class antagonisms and has also forgotten such antagonisms can there exist a truly human morality that transcends class opposition. [42]
Furthermore, Engels analyzed and critiqued Dühring’s concepts of equality and his understanding of freedom and necessity. Consistent with the previous analysis, any concept of equality is itself a product of history, determined by the economic base of the class that proposes the concept. Therefore, the concept of equality cannot be an eternal truth. Freedom of the will refers to the capacity to make decisions based on knowledge of the matter at hand. The more freely we judge a problem, the greater the necessity within the content of that judgment; indecision is precisely predicated on ignorance. Therefore, "freedom consists in the control over ourselves and over external nature, a control founded on knowledge of natural necessity"; it must be the product of historical development and cannot be an eternal and immutable truth. [43]
In short, through his critique of Dühring’s doctrine of man, Engels clarified the question of whether ultimate truth exists within human society. Fundamentally, human cognition does not possess a supreme significance or an unconditional right to truth; there are no ultimate or eternal truths in any field of human knowledge, let alone in the realm of morality. Dühring’s arguments were built upon his inconsistent materialism and metaphysical mode of thinking. His belief in the existence of ultimate truth in human society is cut from the same cloth as his conceptualizations of the world’s unity in its existence; of the world having a beginning in time and limits in space; of nature being in an absolute state of rest in a "self-identical primordial state"; and of a "consciously thinking and acting nature." When we view the question of ultimate truth in isolation, his affirmative tone may seem to possess a certain deceptive appeal; however, once we deeply analyze its ideological foundations, the problem becomes clear. One's basic understanding of world schemas and nature determines the way one understands human society. Ultimate truth does not exist. Therefore, the thought of dialectical materialism is a sharp weapon to ensure our cognition does not deviate.
At the end of the "Philosophy" section of Anti-Dühring, Engels analyzed the fallacies of Dühring’s thought by proceeding from the two laws of dialectics: the transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa, and the negation of the negation. This fully revealed the defects of Dühring’s metaphysical mode of thinking and his ignorance of dialectics. Since the differences between dialectics and metaphysics have already been addressed earlier in this text, and due to space constraints, I will not elaborate further here.
IV. Conclusion
In the "Philosophy" section of Anti-Dühring, it can be said that Engels used Dühring’s thought as a representative case to clarify the basic content and fundamental characteristics of dialectical materialism, as well as its differences from metaphysical thought. The correct understanding of nature, human society, and the laws of human thought—presented here through analysis and interpretation—remains an important guide for our understanding of the world today.
The world is unified in its materiality; motion is the mode of existence of matter; and life is the result of the continuous evolution and development of nature. There is no ultimate truth in human society, human cognition does not possess absolute or supreme significance, and there is even less trace of eternal truth in the sphere of morality. These judgments completely exclude the concepts of "God" or a "Creator" found in Western civilization and preclude the possibility of interpreting the world from a religious perspective. If we can constantly keep these judgments in mind, we will not be confused or deceived when facing various modern religious phenomena, such as cults or pseudo-religious frauds and "masters"; only then can the current so-called "religious fever" [4] proceed more rationally. Only by mastering the tool of dialectical materialism can we truly see through the essence of religious extremism and find possible ways to neutralize its harm.
Various social phenomena involving the religious sphere are relatively complex; scientific atheism must precisely employ dialectical materialist thought to perceive the critical points therein and guide public opinion. In the propaganda and education of atheism, dialectical materialist thought is indispensable. Furthermore, during such propaganda and education, particular attention must be paid to introducing and studying dialectical materialism in combination with current religious phenomena and problems. Only in this way can we "aim at the target" [5] and more clearly highlight the role of dialectical materialist thought. For instance, a rhetoric has frequently appeared in recent years claiming that "the reason Chinese society is experiencing a moral decline is because it lacks religion," attempting to substitute secular morality with religious morality. However, this judgment conforms neither to historical facts nor to the laws of dialectics. Morality in Chinese history was not built on a religious foundation; without such a cultural tradition, why would there be a need to turn to religion to elevate morality in today’s era of modernization and secularization? The world is in a state of change and development; ultimate truth does not exist in human society, and religious morality is neither an ultimate truth nor a panacea. Even if there is a phenomenon of moral decline in our society today, it is not due to a lack of religion, nor can we simply expect religious morality to actually solve the problem. By recognizing this, we can hope to find the true causes of moral decline and fundamentally set about resolving this social problem, rather than relying on specious arguments or merely following what others say [6].
There are many other similar phenomena and arguments involving religion, which will not be analyzed one by one here. Whether in research or propaganda, scientific atheism must make good use of this ideological weapon of dialectical materialism. Moreover, the promotion and application of dialectical materialism cannot be separated from the interpretation of the classics. This article has briefly summarized the main viewpoints of the "Philosophy" section of Engels’s Anti-Dühring precisely as an attempt from this perspective. There remains a vast amount of work for us to do in re-presenting the scientific atheist viewpoints found in Marxist classics to apply them to this era.
(The author is a PhD in Philosophy and an Assistant Researcher at the Institute of Marxism Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)