Supplement to Chapter IV, § 1: From What Angle Did Chernyshevsky Approach the Criticism of Kantianism?

In the first section of Chapter IV, we showed in detail that the materialists had criticised Kant from a point of view diametrically opposite to that from which Mach and Avenarius criticised him. It would not be out of place to indicate, at least in brief, the epistemological position of the great Russian Hegelian and materialist, N. G. Chernyshevsky.

Shortly after the criticism of Kant by Albrecht Rau, the German disciple of Feuerbach, the great writer Chernyshevsky, also a disciple of Feuerbach, was the first Russian to set forth his relation to Feuerbach and Kant. Chernyshevsky was an active figure in the Russian literature of the fifties, as an adherent of Feuerbach, but the censorship did not allow him even to mention Feuerbach’s name. In 1888, in the completed introduction to the third edition of his The Esthetic Relations Between Art and Life (in Russian), Chernyshevsky attempted to allude directly to Feuerbach, but the censorship, in 1888, allowed not even so much as this passing reference to him! The introduction saw the light only in 1906. In this introduction Chernyshevsky devotes half a page to a criticism of Kant, and of those scientists who follow Kant in their philosophic outlook.

Here is Chernyshevsky’s remarkable discourse of 1888:

“Those naturalists who deem themselves builders of all-embracing theories really remain disciples, and usually weak ones at that, of the ancient thinkers who had evolved certain metaphysical methods, and generally of thinkers, whose systems have already been destroyed to some extent by Schelling and altogether by Hegel. It suffices to mention in passing that the majority of naturalists who have attempted to build grand theories on the basis of laws of activity of human thought, have repeated the metaphysical doctrine of Kant on the subjectivity of our knowledge. . . . [For the information of the Russian Machians who confuse everything we add: Chernyshevsky remains behind Engels in that his terminology shows a confusion in failing to distinguish clearly the opposition between materialism and idealism from the opposition between metaphysical and dialectical thinking; but Chernyshevsky remains on Engels’ level in so far as he takes Kant to task, not for his realism but for his agnosticism and subjectivism, not for his recognition of ‘things-in-themselves,’ but for his inability to derive our knowledge from this objective source.] . . . On the basis of Kant’s words they hold the view that the forms of our sense-perception do not resemble the forms of real existence of objects . . . [For the information of the Russian Machians who completely confuse matters we add: The criticism of Kant by Chernyshevsky is directly contrary to that made by Mach and Avenarius and the followers of the philosophy of immanence, because for Chernyshevsky, as for every materialist, the forms of our sense-perception resemble the forms of the real, that is, the objectively existing objects.] . . . and that therefore real existing objects in their real qualities, and actual correlations are unknowable to us [For the information of our Russian Machians who muddle everything we add: For Chernyshevsky, as for every materialist, objects, in Kant’s pretentious language, the “things-in-themselves,” actually exist and are fully knowable to us in their existence, in their qualities, and in their actual relations.]

. . . and if they were even knowable they could hardly be objects of our reason, which transfers all the material of knowledge into forms totally different from the forms of actual existence, so that the very laws of reason would have only a subjective significance . . . [For the information of the muddleheads, the Machians—we add: For Chernyshevsky, as for every materialist, the laws of reason have not merely a subjective significance, they reflect fully the forms of actual existence of the objects which they resemble, and do not differ from these forms.] . . . so that in reality there would appear to be nothing which would seem to us to be a connection of cause and effect, for there would be neither antecedent nor subsequent, neither the whole nor parts, and so forth and so on. . . . [For the information of the Machian muddleheads we add: For Chernyshevsky, as for every materialist, there is an objective causality or necessity in nature, there is an objective connection between cause and effect.] . . . When naturalists will stop uttering such metaphysical nonsense, they will be able to work out (perhaps they are at it now) a system of concepts on the basis of science, which will be more exact and complete than those which were propounded by Feuerbach. . . . [For the information of the muddled Machians we add: Chernyshevsky considers as metaphysical confusion all deviations from materialism towards idealism and agnosticism.] . . . And meanwhile the best exposition of scientific ideas on so-called fundamental problems of the love of wisdom, has been made by Feuerbach” (p. 196). By the fundamental questions of the love of wisdom, Chernyshevsky means what in modern language is known as the fundamental problems of epistemology or the theory of knowledge. Chernyshevsky is the only great Russian writer who, from the fifties until 1888, was able to remain on the level of consistent materialism and to spurn the wretched confusion of Neo-Kantians, positivists, Machians and other muddleheads. But Chernyshevsky was unable, or, rather due to the backwardness of Russian life, was not in a position to rise to the dialectical materialism of Marx and Engels.