History of Marxism-Hegel and Anti-Hegel

In nature conservation biology, one speaks of the Lazarus effect when species or subspecies are rediscovered from which one thought they were extinct. The term goes back to the biblical figure of the Lazarus from the Gospel of John. In it, Jesus revives the later patron of the dead graves after being buried in a cave this day.

In other words, deadly life live longer. And what has long been known in the natural sciences and theology is also available in philosophy. There you have been able to observe the revival of a “dead dog” in the past two decades, namely Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel. At the moment, hardly any thinker in the academic world is as present as he is. No work of the Swabian and no aspect of his world of thinking are left out, none of the dominant philosophical currents foregoing a Hegel interpretation. Even in analytical philosophy, which has long blocked against a reception, voluminous comments are now being presented, and in French philosophy the relationship with Hegel is still a prison question.

In the shadow of this reception economy, Hegelian Marxism also experiences a renaissance that the two looks at in close connection. How did Marx see his teacher? What did he take over from Hegel, what rejected and what does that mean today? Do you go back with Hegel beyond Marx or with Marx to Hegel? These questions could be dismissed as a scholastic-academic, but in fact, every Hegel interpretation is an expression of a political attitude. Because in the legal philosophy alone, Hegel raises problems that are so far unsolved. These affect the state, property and individuality in a bourgeois society in which capital as a social relationship specifies the beat. Hegel’s philosophy is therefore an “undeveloped image” of our time, because problems with it are not practically solved, but can still be formulated, for example when Hegel represents the contrast of poverty and wealth as a barrier of bourgeois society.

A Marxist Grafsohn

In its history, Marxism has developed a split relationship with the Prussian professor. On the one hand, Marxists refer to Hegel’s dialectic, on the other hand they reject parts of his work. In this amount, the count’s son Galvano della Volpe (1895–1968) took the most radical position to Hegel. His main work “Logic as Historical Science” is now in German. The work, which was first published in 1950, was revised in 1956 in a revised form and received its final title in 1969 in the third edition after the first two editions were published under the title “Logic as positive science”. Alfred J. Noll has now provided the work with an extensive biographical and intellectual introduction, it has comprehensively contextualized, carefully translated and continued with its own thoughts. In 1969, the Italian philosopher Lucio Colletti described the “logic as historical science” in his book “Il Marxismo e Hegel” as the “most important thing that European Marxism produced in this post -war period”. However, the author is hardly known in Germany.

In Italy, Della Volpe was no stranger during his lifetime. He had held a chair for philosophy history at the University of Messina since 1939, turned to Marxism in 1944 and even joined the Communist Party of Italy – but where it was more tolerated, which was also due to its noble origin. Della Volpe tried to make his position known in Western Europe, the Soviet Union and the young GDR, but still remained an outsider of European Marxism. His influence in Italy was all the greater. Because he was not only the one who made the early writings of Marx known in Italy, but also one of the few in Marxism who founded his own school: the “Dellavolpismo”. From this in turn, important thinkers and researchers such as Alessandro Mazzone and Nicolao Merker emerged, who, despite intensive efforts, were never allowed to teach at West German universities because they were confessing communists.

Della Volpe believes that in Hegel’s philosophy a purely time -related theology.

If you open “logic as historical science” and rummage through the amount of partly redundant, sometimes simply unusual formulations with which Della Volpe tries to describe his thoughts, then it quickly becomes clear why he could never gain awareness in German -speaking countries: the book is an antihegelian manifest. Della Volpe wants to remove Hegel out of Marxism because he believes that in his philosophy he believes that he recognizes a purely time -related theology. He contrasts Hegel a “materialistic theory of judgment”. Any philosophy that argues regardless of the experience of people and what exists outside of our thinking does not include in their considerations, is incorrect, spoiled and sterile. Of course, this does not mean that the path that Hegel hit was insignificant, but that Marxism had to take a different path. The remuneration that Della Volpe produces when he criticizes Leibniz and Kant are really refreshing with Aristotle Plato and finally praises Galilei’s research method in the highest tones. According to Della Volpe, Galilei embodies a scientific approach that is characterized by the fact that the analysis of empiricism is on the one hand through the description of functional relationships – such as by math – and on the other hand by constantly checking the hypothesis in the experiment.

An undialectical materialism

The world is therefore not the discharge of an “absolute spirit” and it is not dictated by a supernatural dialectical contradiction, the existence of which has to justify philosophy only dogmatically. Rather, science must assume freedom of contradiction, because one cannot claim certain characteristics of a thing and deny at the same moment. Della Volpe even goes so far that the reality is structured without contradiction as a whole. He ties in the knowledge of things of sensuality and assumes that the world is a “discrete unit”, that is, composed of different parts that can be unified and classified by reason. General properties can therefore only be realized in historical peculiarities. An example from biology: a tree is a tree when it is determined by certain, distinguished characteristics – such as “woody plant”, “sprout axis”. The term tree is always formed by the breakdown and linking of the characteristics, which, as individuals, make up an individual tree in their sum. In order to check our conceptual idea, we check it on the individual, empirical tree, which could also be a palm – “wicked plant”, “unexpected”.

According to Della Volpe, there is a scientific approach if the cycle of reason and sensory perception, deduction and induction, of law and phenomenon, of hypothesis and fact is practically and practical. This corresponds to the approach of the natural sciences, and theology truly has no place here. However, it is problematic at the approach that the materialistic dialectics are exhausted here in the (preliminary) definition of empirically measurable, sensually perceptible things and their characteristics. But what about terms that do not correspond directly to any empirical-meaningful thing, but still describe objective things, such as structure or function? And what about things that we attribute a certain sense, for example when we perceive a crowd as a hustle and bustle?

The current value of the book is precisely because it raises these questions at all. Because ultimately they are aimed at factual problems instead of crucial issues. Della Volpe shows that the criticism of pure reason a priori is not a senseless academic undertaking, but as an integral part of science preserves the positive without falling into positivism, and negative negative, without preaching hurray optimism. Because only those who think of a specific thing and work out their special features can really think. Therefore, science – and Marxism is not excluded – must always be a matter of experiencing a certain thing, for example by attracting the perceptible crises to the current movement of the capitalist mode of production. This has meaning for the (everyday) practice: only the knowledge of what makes a thing is able to change people.

Galvano della Volpe: Logic as historical science. Translated, published with an introduction and comments by Alfred J. Noll. My publisher for Philosophy 2024, 568 p., 78 euros.