![]() |
![]() |
11 |
![]() |
266
Chapter 15
this positive sense of death. Indeed, death is a universal law for living matter. One
cannot imagine that this phenomenon would in no way be represented in the or-
ganism, i.e., in the processes of life. It is hard to believe that death would have no
sense or just a negative sense. [27]
Engels [1925/1978, p.
554]
expresses a similar opinion. He refers to Hegel’s
opinion that only that philosophy can count as scientific that considers death to be
an essential aspect of life and understands that the negation of life is essentially
contained in life itself, so that life can be understood in relation to its inevitable
result which is continually present in embryonic form: death. The dialectical un-
derstanding of life entails no more than that. “To live means to die.”
It was precisely this idea that I defended in the mentioned preface to Freud’s
book: the need for biology to master the concept of death from a fundamental
viewpoint and to designate this still unknown entity which no doubt exists—let it
be with the algebraic “x” or the paradoxical “death drive”—and which represents
the tendency towards death in the processes of the organism. Despite this I did
not declare Freud’s solution to this equation to be a highway in science or a road
for all of us, but an Alpine mountain track above the precipice for those free of
vertigo. I stated that science needs such books as well: they do not reveal the truth,
but teach us the search for truth, although they have not yet found it. I also reso-
lutely said that the importance of this book does not depend upon the factual con-
firmation of its reliability: in principle it asks the right question. And for the
:~
statement of such questions, I said, one needs sometimes more creativity than for
the umptecnth standard observation in whatever science [see pp. 13-15 of Van dcr
Veer and Valsiner, 1994].
And the judgment of one of the reviewers of this book showed a complete
lack of understanding of the methodological problem, a full trust in the external
features of ideas, a naive and uncritical fear of the physiology of pessimism. He
decided on the spot that if it is Schopenhauer, it must be pessimism. He did not
understand that there are problems that one cannot approach flying, but that one
must approach on foot, limping, and that in such cases it is no shame to limp, as
Freud [1920/1973, p. 64] openly says. But he, who only sees lameness here, is metho-
dologically blind. For it would not be difficult to show that Hegel is an idealist, it
is proclaimed from the housetops. But it needed genius to see in this system an
idealism that stood materialism on its bead, i.e., to distinguish the methodological
truth (dialectics) from the factual falsehood, to see that Hegel went limping towards
the truth. [28]
This is but a single example of the path towards the mastery of scientific ideas:
one must risc above their factual content and test their fundamental nature. But
for this one needs to have a buttress outside these ideas. Standing upon these ideas
with both feet, operating with concepts gathered by means of them, it is impossible
to situate oneself outside of them. In order to critically regard a foreign system;
one must first of all have one’s own psychological system of principles. To judge
Freud by means of principles obtained from Freud himself implies a vindication in
advance. And such an attempt to appropriate foreign ideas forms the third type of
combining ideas to which we will now turn.
Again it is easiest to disclose and demonstrate the character of the new meth-
odological approach with a single example. In Pavlov’s laboratory it was attempted
to experimentally solve the problem of the transformation of trace-conditional sUm-
uli and trace-conditional inhibitors into actual conditional stimuli. For this one must
“banish the inhibition” established through the trace reflex. How to do this? In
order to reach this goal, Frolov resorted to an analogy with some of the methods
of Freud’s school. [29] ‘ilying to destroy the stable inhibitory complexes, he exactly
|
![]() |
![]() |
11 |
![]() |