EDWARD SWIDERSKI

P R A C T I C E A N D T H E S O C I A L F A C T O R IN C O G N I T I O N : P O L I S H M A R X I S T E P I S T E M O L O G Y SINCE K O L A K O W S K I

Formerly a revisionist, today seemingly an apostate to the Marxist faith, ostensibly there seem to be no grounds for discussing in the same context the work of Leszek KoIakowski and the discussions currently carried on within Polish Marxism. However, I shall argue that Kotakowski's piece, 'Karl Marx and the Classical Definition of Truth', originally published more than twenty years ago, a has exercised a considerable degree of influence on the epistemological reflections of certain prominent Polish Marxist theoreticians up to the present day. I shall exclude from consideration overtly polemical tracts that appeared shortly after Ko~akowski published the piece as well as those that have surfaced from time to time in the years following Kotakowski's departure form Poland. The themes that appear to be of special importance are: (1) the role of practice in cognition: either as a factor entering directly into the definition of the cognitive situation or as a relatively extrinsic component of i t ; ( 2 ) t h e interpretation to be accorded to the otherwise indisputable truth that cognition is a human phenomenon; (3) the complex problem of an eventual categorial distinction between the social and the individual and the relationship between them as far as cognition is concerned; (4) the characterization of epistemology as either a normative science or a historical one. I shall show that on the whole leading contemporary Polish Marxists have not remained immune to the spirit of Kotakowski's explicit or implied views on these matters, even if they have sought formulations which manage to skirt risky 'revisionist' expressions.

I. ANTI-NOMINALISM, SPINOZA AND SOCIAL SUBJECTIVISM 'Karl Marx and the Classical Definition of Truth' is a difficult and perhaps not wholly unequivocal piece, the significance of which extends well beyond the critique of the Engels-Leninist copy theory of knowledge. As to the interpretation of Marx, Polish commentators may have been quite correct to suggest that there is more Kolakowski in it than Marx. 2 Here I am not going Studies in Soviet Thought 21 (1980) 341-362. 0039-3797/80/0214-0341 $02.20. Copyright © 1980 by D. Reidel Publishing Co., Dordrecht, Holland, and Boston, U.S.A.

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to enter into the question of the plausibility of Koiakowski's articulation of Marx's epistemology but prefer to get to the bottom of his own conviction that the epistemology, the main lines of which are set forth in the article, is " . . . philosophically worthy of continuation". 3 It would seem that that epistemology is based upon three factors: the critique of nominalist conceptions of scientific law and a correlative proposal for a theory of relations; an interest in Spinoza's metaphysics, viz. the problems attending the union of a substantialist materialism, qualitative heterogeneity (categorial pluralism) and nominalism; the accentuation of certain themes running throughout Marx's Manuscripts of 1844, in particular the appropriation-humanization model of labor and the notion of the species essence as a complex of biological and socio-historical properties. The combination of these rather disparate factors brought Kolakowski to a conclusion which, though never explicitly formulated by him in the article, is at work throughout it. It is distinctly ontological in character. Kotakowski gives it the name 'anthropological monism' or 'anthropocentrism'; it should be understood as a position which while assenting to a materialist monism (not to be identified with substantialist materialism) also professes categorial pluralism, and just for that reason does not countenance an extreme rationalism of the sort professed by Soviet Marxism in the question of the conditions and possibilities of human cognition. One way of putting this conclusion into a formula would be to say that Kotakowski advocates "the generic mediation of nature" as far as the basic relation of human being and its environment is concerned and "social subjectivism" in the matter of the intellectual, cognitive grasp of that relation (and not just one of its terms - nature, reality "in itself" apart from human being).

1. Anti-Nominalism and Holism Three years prior to the piece on Marx Kotakowski expressed his concern over an unresolved issue in Marxist ontology, viz. the status of the correlates of scientific laws. 4 According to him, Marxists had all too often oscillated uncertainly between the Charybdis of Platonism and the Scylla of an equally untenable - as far as Kotakowski was concerned - physicalism (cure conventionalism) on the question of universals in its modern form lawful dependencies as real relations among phenomena. He proposed that Marxists seek to establish that scientific laws express invariable dependencies

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among phenomena, that one set of scientific laws be explainable by another, more fundamental set, that genuine causal agency, characterized by natural necessity, be distinguished from the regular succession or constant conjunction of phenomena from the standpoint of the observer, and finally that Marxists clarify how a law is 'contained' in the events governed by it, given the hiatus that appears to exist between the ideal conditions stipulated by a law and those encountered in the 'real' world, s This conception of law is basically anti-empiricist and Hegelian through its affirmation that lawful dependencies are not coeval with empirically observed successions of phenomena and that certain essential properties of things result from the relations in which they stand. However, Kotakowski paid heed to his own warning to avoid extremes: things cannot be reducible to mere bundles of relations. On the contrary, to enter into specific relations they must fulfdl certain conditions, though this does not imply in turn that the 'absolute' properties of things constitute the sufficient conditions for the emergence of the relations in question. 6 Such neither wholly empirical nor wholly non-empirical relations in which things acquire certain essential properties could be conceived as the correlates of 'material apriori' statements. (Kcrtakowski does not call them by that name). Given the sympathies of his particular audience, Ko~akowski cites as examples the social relations in which the properties of commodities are constituted, as described by Marx in Capital. Or again from Marx the 'humanization of senses', viz. the historically emergent refinement of the sense organs in selecting stimuli, is 'determined' by the socialization of the species attendant upon the division of labor. The examples suggest that Kotakowski envisaged an ontology in which relations constitute autonomous and hierarchically arranged wholes. He seemed to imply, moreover, that wholes satisfy the four criteria of the relationist conception of scientific law. First, within a whole the dependencies that govern the elements are invariable since otherwise the elements would not acquire certain essential properties. The second criterion is illustrated by the example of the 'humanization of the senses': a process proximately governed by psycho-physiological laws is 'determined' by higher-order laws, viz. laws of social development. Ontological primacy accrues to the system of relations in which something (including a lower order whole) acquires an essential property. As to the third criterion, in such an ontology the question of causality becomes complicated, though the solution according to constant conjunction, etc. is certainly irrelevant. Finally, laws are never

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fully 'realized' by any particulars which fall under their aegis because their referents are the essential relations constitutive of wholes. 7 Kolakowski has not returned to this subject and these views have not benefited from further clarification and precision. Suffice it to say in the present context that this ontology of wholes justifies a categorial pluralism based on the emergent properties of wholes and is hence compatible with a natural cognitive classification. Yet, contrary to the prevailing tradition of rationalism associated with such a framework, Kohkowski came to question the very coherence of the rationalist enterprise. This rejection was certainly a consequence following from the admission of an ontology of the social whole conceived in the foregoing manner. 2. Spinoza and Marx In the third section of his article on Marx, Kotakowski sketched what he considered to be some striking analogies between Marx's epistemological outlook and that of Spinoza, thereby repeating his interpretation of Spinoza set forth in an earlier piece, 'The Individual and Material Infinity in Spinoza's Metaphysics'. 8 What interests us about the latter is only the connection Kohkowski sought to demonstrate between Spinoza's nominalism and the problematic relation of the empirical reality of distinct things to the metaphysical reality of the undifferentiated substance. In Kotakowski's interpretation, because Spinoza is a nominalist, i.e. because he accords no reality to relations whereby things come to be genuine parts (modi) within nature, empirically given individuals and their properties turn out to be so many 'abstractions' artificially torn out of the only true 'individual', the undifferentiated substance. Kotakowski points out two difficulties following from this doctrine. One consists in the recognition of the paradox that we know about real nature that it is indivisible unity, deprived o f parts, extended and thinking, yet only about it can we say anything rational at all, all knowledge o f particular things and phenomena having to be treated as a product o f our limitations, practically useful p e r h a p s , . . , but untrue all the same. 9

In the other, Kotakowski notes the drastic consequences this doctrine entails for the human condition in the world. Because of the homogeneity of nature man in this doctrine is 'returned' to nature alright, but instead of being "incorporated in nature, he is dissolved in it, annihilated in his specifically human form of existence", lo

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What did Kotakowski have in mind juxtaposing this extreme monism with Marx's epistemology? On Kotakowski's reading of the Manuscripts of 1844, Marx like Spinoza maintains that the genera and species into which things are divided do not correspond to some natural classification of things but are the product of the practical strivings of humanity continally at odds with a recalcitrant material stuff. 11 Is Marx, therefore, not a nominalist at heart, and does not his argument about the human transformation of nature become incoherent if the divisions supposedly effected by humanity in nature depend on its genuine specific identity which could turn out to have no real foundation in a homogeneous, undifferentiated medium? According to Kotakowski, Marx's way out of the dilemma is to reject a natural cognitive classification, not because he is a nominalist but because he denies meaningful inquiry into the nature of reality as a whole. 12 The point of the response is missed if its second part is stressed at the expense of the first. In that case Marx could be lumped with agnostics like Kant. Yet" the Kantian doctrine is formulated in such a way that it neither affirms nor denies the possibility of a natural classification in the noumenal realm. Moreover, not only is the articulation of the phenomenal world without ontological weight, but the (negative) relation between the phenomenal and noumenal realms is purely "gnoseological' too, bound exclusively by the transcendental conditions of knowledge. On the contrary, Kotakowski compares Marx with Spinoza because the issue involved is in effect the ontological one: whether human being is a genuine part of nature or not, i.e. whether it stands in real relations to a differentiated reality, and if so what the consequences must be for human cognition of that reality. The point then is that while Marx shares with Spinoza the conviction that no pre-human articulation of reality exists, this convergence ought not to obscure the radically different reasons which drove Marx to this conclusion. For, unlike Spinoza, Marx did of course uphold the genuine reality of human being in nature and, accordingly, the idea of some kind of underlying substance of reality, free of all determinations, was totally alien to him. 13 But, on Ko~akowski's interpretation, Marx likewise rejected the possibility that the relation binding the 'part' that is human being to the whole (nature) had no purchase on cognition, which would somehow be 'detachable' from the specific conditions within which it had to be exercised and thus able to attain a non-perspectival glimpse of the whole. Kotakowski's claims about the specificity of Marx's epistemology are in

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effect an answer to the question: can rationalism be associated with a consistent materialism and a categorial pluralism? Should it turn out that the diverse forms of reality are not genuine, i.e. that they are not real parts of nature, then to affirm nevertheless that cognition exists implies that it is some kind of self-knowledge of 'substance'. In the contrary case, where the diversity is genuine within a natural framework, the parts or forms are not just cognitively distinguishable and the relations binding them to nature are not merely 'gnoseological'. Here, if it does exist, cognition can do no more than perspectivally 're-create' the whole in function of the basic material characteristics of the part to which it belongs and which bind that part to the whole in a determinate manner. In short, rationalism is excluded from the Marxist perspective, not because there is no reality in itself, or because, for all one knows, there are no 'universal truths'; it is ruled out because it is contradictory as soon as it would assert that a feature of a 'part' of nature can overcome the intrinsic limitations of its situation and represent the whole in the terms of the whole itself. 14

3. Generic Mediation and Social Subjectivism Just how the 'part' perspectivally recreates the 'whole' is the question dealt with by Kotakowski in the article on Marx. While rejecting rationalism in Marx's name, Kotakowski was also concerned to dispell fears that his 'anthropocentric' interpretation of Marx entails an equally extreme subjectivistic relativism, the kind he associated with the pragmatist theory of knowledge. That it may be so embroiled is suggested by the prima facie affinity between Marx's affirmations about the role of practical activity in cognition and those of the pragmatists. In both case, it would seem, humanity's vision of reality is but the correlate of its need to cope practically with its situation in nature. If it is agreed that the validity of knowledge is but the utility it has for the individual in coping with the environment, adapting to it, the conclusion seems unavoidable that " . . . reality is not only produced ex nihilo for each separate individual but that this act of production must be renewed at every moment for that individual ''a s, since as vital situations continually change no knowledge can ever be 'valid', 'true', once and for all. Kotakowski's task was to find a way of interpreting anthropocentrism with a theory of objectivity untainted by subjectivism or biological species-relativism. Kotakowski's interpretation of Marx on this score, though perhaps not

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wholly convincing or even perfectly clear in every respect 16, betrays the conceptual framework outlined in the preceding paragraphs. The onus of his argument rests on the following contrasts and strategies. To put it in a nutshell, Spinoza connected practical activity and cognition in such a way that, if the latter was in fact distorting and so false, the former could not be really effective, transformatory. The pragmatists proceeded in the other direction, subsuming cognition under practical activity, turning the former into a reflex of biological mechanism characteristic of the species perhaps, but exercised in an undetermined fashion by each separate organism continually confronted with unique situations in the 'blooming, buzzing confusion' (which Kotakowski rendered as the 'pre-existent chaos'). In contradistinction to these standpoints, which nevertheless do recognize the situational character of human cognition, Marx, according to Kotakowski, does not in any sense reduce practical activity and cognition to each other. The one is basically a biological process, the other a social one; and once the latter comes into existence it is not without influence on the former which in its turn is really effective, virtually 'creative'. In its underlying biological dimension practical activity is the dynamic relation obtaining between the needs of the species and the objects which satisfy those needs. This essentially precognitive mediation entails the constitution of a humanly-specific environment, i.e. " . . . existence as composed of individuals divided into species and genera . . . ,,17, reflective of the place human being occupies in it. As an interpretation of the active role of the species in nature, this idea of practical activity as need-satisfaction is not merely biologically relevant, it also has ontological weight in the sense that activity is the essential link of the species with nature - as such therefore a constitutent of nature - and at the same time the means by which it affirms its irreducible function within it. Just why cognition emerges at all, i.e. how rationality is formed, is not a question to which Kohkowski, following Marx's epigrammatic pronouncements in the Manuscripts, bothers to provide a response. Presumably, in theory, as the practical activity of the species in the satisfaction of basic needs is gradually transformed into directed labor, the 'humanization of nature' becomes increasingly the result of the species-endemic yet non-biological process of the division of labor. Here consciousness is first distinguished from its immediate basis in the life-process and differentiated into manifold forms corresponding to the complex relations established in the social whole.

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On one hand, therefore, a purely social process has been instrumental in the crystallization of consciousness, including cognition, and, on the other hand, this form of consciousness is but the conceptual sanctioning of thc selfimage of the species in its pre-constituted, practically articulated environment subject henceforth to social mediation. 18 Enough has been said to grasp how Kotakowski attempted to integrate his anthropocentric interpretation of Marx with a species-relative, yet nonbiological theory of objectivity. First, the generic mediation of nature is pre-cognitive: it is the ontological factor, the 'part' reconstituting the 'whole' in function of its place within it. Second, cognition is a form of social consciousness (like every form of consciousness), an ensemble of categories and instruments (language) which is not predicated of individuals and who, from their side, acquire what identity they have within the social consciousness. Where biological specificity fails as a criterion by which to distinguish social individuals, social structures are the necessary condition for individually motivated rational activity and cognition. This argument rests on the aforementioned categorial pluralism accomplished with the aid of a theory of wholes whose elements are bound by real relations as a result of which they acquire certain essential properties (to wit, consciousness or reason as distinct from the psyche). The 'social subjectivism' outlined above is therefore free of any suspicions of the relativization of reality to the sic iubeo of each individual knower. On the contrary, There exists a reality that is common to all ... a reality in which a certain constant is retained that corresponds to what we call 'human nature' or else to that totality of human properties, biological needs and social relations which can rightly be termed immutable.19 Kotakowski insists that the human essence thus conceived is an inviolable datum omnipresent in epistemological consideration, and hence its effective influence can neither be weighed or discounted except in bad faith, z° While not going quite so far as Marx, who seemed to discard epistemological reflection into the refuse heap of metaphysics, Kotakowski would limit its scope to the description of the factors involved in the social production of knowledge and its transformations in the course of the increasingly complex social mediation of practical activity. In short, epistemology is not a normative discipline but a historical one assured of its proper object thanks to the ontology of the social whole.

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II. REACTIONS TO KOLAKOWSKI IN RECENT POLISH MARXISM A fully satisfactory demonstration of the influence of Kotakowski's ideas on contemporary Polish Marxism has of necessity to go beyond the confines of this article, if only for the reason that in the more than twenty years that have elapsed since the publication of the article in question a considerable quantity of material devoted to the specific character of Marxist epistemology has appeared in Poland. 21 Moreover, Kolakowski has returned to certain of his basic epistemological insights, revising them or indeed renouncing some. 22 It will be convenient to give an approximate summary of the points set out in the foregoing interpretation. (1) There exists a human 'essence' the invariable factors of which are biological features (needs and a particular physiological structure) and a socially differentiated potential for productive activity. (2) The social is discontinuous with the natural foundations of human existence yet it exerts an influence on the latter ('humanization' of the senses, new needs, etc.) and in fact explains why certain natural factors continue to play a role. (3) Social practice is categorially 'superior to' and a necessary condition of individual cognition. (4) Cognition is always about the (relative) product of the interaction between socialized man and generically mediated nature, and not about either of the terms taken in isolation. Kotakowski's Marx sees the possibilities and conditions of cognition in an ontological perspective. Furthermore, though renouncing rationalist pretences, his Marx sidesteps species-relativism (e.g., in the sense that Husserl attacked it in the Logical Investigations) by means of 'social subjectivism'. Kolakowski does not simply reject out of hand a philosophy of nature, although his views argued an unusual stress in East European Marxism on historical materialism as the mother-science of epistemology. Reactions in Poland to Kotakowski's piece were at first oriented to its consequences in the philosophy of nature. With time, however, for a variety of reasons, the other aspect came to occupy center stage: the specific nature of the role of the social factor in cognition. However it was to be finally interpreted, a considerable number of Polish Marxists were attracted by the idea that cognition, as the articulation of the relation between socialized man and generically mediated nature, was the very core of the Marxian epistemology.

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1. Cognition and Dynamic Self-Articulation o f Nature

Kotakowski soon found a sympathetic and articulate challenge in the work of Helena Eilstein. 23 To wit, she noted the ontological cast of Kotakowski's interpretation of Marx in every respect but one, viz. for some reason she remained oblivious to the status of the social dimension in that interpretation. Although she had reservations whether Kotakowski's critique of the Engels-Leninist theory of knowledge was warranted in the context, 24 Eilstein did acknowledge that Lenin, among other things, had neglected the subjective factor in cognition and did not betray an awareness that his formulation of a materialist theory of knowledge entailed naive realism. It is the unvanquished influence of the latter, according to her, that explains the persistence of a " . . . naive-teleological problem: namely, why does man, the fruit of a determinate process of biological evolution, "see objects as they really are? ''2s Kotakowski is certainly correct, she opines, to scorn this question by insisting not merely on the historical limitations of human knowledge but in particular on the insuperable generically subjective character of cognition. What Eilstein seeks to show is that the generic mediation of nature is an indisputable fact when the genesis of human convictions about reality is the issue. She has doubts, however, whether this fact directly rules out the possibility of a scientific knowledge of the very situation of cognition in reality. In the first place, Eilstein agrees that to speak of the subjective factor in cognition is compatible with materialist monism. In her estimation, our psychic reactions to reality are so and so and not otherwise.., not because reality 'in itself' is such and such in some absolute sense, but because nature is so and not otherwise in one of its particular aspects, viz. independently of us nature has shaped us as such and such and not otherwise and thereby has determined the human environment, human conditions, the human essence of things. 26 In other words, nature objectively " . . . has articulated itself into a human subject and object: it has created the human species with determinate needs and the capabilities to satisfy them". 27 In the second place, however, it does not follow, given this fact, that cognition cannot be a 'reflection' of reality 'in itself' and is rather 'creative', imposing in some way on nature the specific manner in which it is cognitively to manifest itself. Far from denigrating the idea of a natural cognitive articulation of reality, the insuperable

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generic nature of man grounds it: in and through his real interaction with the world he comes to know its objective structure and properties. 28 Eilstein substantiated her position by arguing in favor of what can be termed an ontology of dispositions or powers, which in relation to human being, she translated into the principle of dynamic homeostasis. The former is in effect a non-empiricist ontology of causality entailing 'open' systems in which objective complexes are characterized by (not necessarily actualized) tendencies or powers to effect real changes, in contradistinction to closed systems all the elements of which (i.e. their states in the system) are always fully actualized, a situation which rules out the possibility of modifications which would not be ipso facto changes in the whole. 29 For example, Ko~akowski need not have appealed to the creative proclivities of the species to overcome the mysterious dichotomy between the perceptual 'secondary' and objective 'primary' qualities of things. It is enough to show that 'secondary' qualities are but the actualized power of certain objective complexes causally to interact with the perceptual apparatus in a way corresponding to the generic norm (the healthy exemplar of the species). As a power or disposition, therefore, the redness of a poppy, to cite Eilstein's example, is real even if the human perceptual apparatus does not exist; as a quality, however, the objectivity of redness is humanly, i.e. generically grounded in its disposition to perceive the world in that way. 3° The mechanism through which the interaction between human being and nature is effectuated, according to Eilstein, guaranteeing that the human articulation of nature is not governed solely by the laws of human nature, is dynamic homeostasis, i.e. the structure of the satisfaction of basic needs and the generation of new ones. In the continuing intensive exchange of matter and energy with the environment - what Eilstein would presumably identify as 'practice' - human beings have articulated a world of objects suitable to the maintenance of their inner balance and conducive to repeated profitable interaction. The line of development - extending from instinctive articulation into macro-objects through the linguistic-conceptual sanctioning of the latter for the sake of goal-oriented production to the constitution of 'theoretical' objects of the micro-cosmos - is continually 'subjective' in the sense that it always corresponds to the particular situation of the subject of cognition in nature. 31 On balance, it seems that had Kotakowski circumscribed his interpretation of Marx within the parameters chosen by Eilstein he could have agreed with

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her conclusions. The human articulation of reality would then be interpretable as, so to speak, nature's process of coming to self-knowledge, though under only one of its particular aspects and in a way excluding a 'mirror image' of a reality feigning to ignore the dynamic presence of the human species. There would then be no grounds for a rationalist metaphysics proclaiming that mind or consciousness is the pinnacle of nature and as such able to uncover either the 'ultimate substance' or the universal laws governing "motion and development". 32 All the same, however, Kotakowski's disclaimers about the possibility of genuine knowledge of reality as it is in and through its generic mediation would not be warranted. As noted above, however, Eilstein failed to tackle what seems to be an essential feature of Kohkowski's interpretation of Marx: the radically nonnatural character of social existence and its putative influence on the on-going generic mediation of nature and afortiori on human cognition too.

2. The Social as the Subjective Factor in Cognition Eilstein's ontological grounding of Kotakowski's thesis found little echo in more recent Marxist philosophy in Poland. Her reconciliation of the concept of the generic mediation of nature with critical realism had been effectuated on the basis of the assumption that the former was after all inscribed within an evolutionary process that made no exceptions, not even as far as social being was concerned. Like it or not, therefore, Eilstein was still embroiled in the continuing Marxist tendency to naturalize mind, consciousness, in particular the criteria of epistemic validity which had to receive a psychologistic explanation of some kind. The history of philosophy knows a couple of major ways in which psychologism is overcome; by postulating either a sphere of ideal objectivities or a transcendental subject. Both perspectives, it goes without saying, involve ontological commitments inimical to Marxists. Hence the significance of the work as well as the controversies carried on in recent Marxist epistemology in Poland to establish the status of the social in cognition. The most prominent theoreticians appear to be, on one side, Stanistaw Rainko 33 and to a lesser degree Jan Kurowicki, 34 and, on another side, Jerzy Kmita 35 and Leszek Nowak, 36 the principal theoretical architects of the so-called Poznafi school 37 which has a considerable following. In their own way, they have all been concerned with the central importance of historical

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materialism for epistemology, delving in particular into the following areas: (1) the social as the 'subjective' factor in cognition; (2) the relationship between the social and the individual in cognition, i.e. the locus and nature o f the 'subject of knowledge'; (3) epistemology as a historical or diachronic discipline concerned to elaborate an alternative approach to the determinants of changes in scientific knowledge (in response to inter alia Kuhn and Feyerabend), according to which the classical definition of truth seems to be relegated to a minor role in favor of a 'social coherence' theory. Rainko is quite unequivocal about the nature of social being and its role for epistemology. He enunciates two postulates pertaining to the conception of social being in historical materialism, as First, the postulate of anti-naturalism, according to which in its nature and mode of existence social being is irreducible to any form of nature from which it would be genetically derivable. The second postulate is that of immanent determination, that is to say, the factors responsible for the functioning and transformation of social being are immanent to it and at the same time are the explanatory principles of the occurrence of any exogenous factors. In short, because social being is a reality sui generis its evolution is governed by exclusively social determinants. From this ontology of the social whole Rainko derives a thoroughgoing separation between the psyche, which is governed by the characteristic laws o f natural being, and consciousness, which is the correlate of social relations. 39 Accordingly, he is explicit about breaking ties with naturalistic, psychologistic conceptions of cognition. To assert that cognition is a socio-historical phenomenon means that it exists in the way proper to social reality and shares all of its fundamental properties in opposition to natural being, and in particular that it does not belong to the category of so-called 'psychic phenomena'. 4° Now prior to his formulation o f this social ontology of cognition Rainko had already been a proponent of the Kolakowski-Eilstein thesis about the generic mediation of nature, considering it a fundamental factor among others influencing the structure and direction of cognition, i.e. •.. the influence exerted by the physical, generic, socio-historical properties of human subjects, the place they occupy in the cosmos and the observational standpoint connected with i t . . . as well as the scope and type of phenomena investigated and the types of experience associated with them. 41

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Contrary to Eilstein, however, he did not limit these influences to what he called the structural or selective influences steering cognition, but discovered others in the very constitutive characteristics of the content of cognition. The constitutive influences Rainko had in mind are what he called 'stereotypes' and 'projections', i.e. illegitimate extrapolations of true but otherwise extensionally limited theses (theories, etc.) to cover other phenomena of a determinate kind or even reality as a whole, and thereby revelatory more of the standpoint of the observer than about reality. The deformation stereotypes engender are not equivalent to errors the causes of which are traceable to illusions or faulty logic, i.e. to individual fallibility of some kind. Rather such deformations are entirely extra-individual, inevitable and cannot be eliminated by recourse to ad hoc methodological directives. 42 Rainko seems to have in mind something analogous to Kuhnian paradigms which lie at the basis of the views espoused at any moment by the majority of the members of a scientific community and yet are not simply the result of incremental scientific research carried on with the aid of well-defined instruments. In any case, according to Rainko, they cannot be ferreted out and their influence estimated by an epistemology conceived as the study of either individual 'reflection' or the transcendental principles of cognitive validity. In Kotakowski's spirit, therefore, Rainko insists that epistemology must be a historical ('diachronic') discipline, the first principle of which is 'anti-individualism', according to which cognition and its products are inscribed in a historical process whose proper subject is the collectivity engaged in the constitution of an autonomous social being. 43 Despite these formulations, which are apparently in accord with Kotakowski's program, Rainko does not renounce the possibility of realism in the classical sense. The basic insight of a diachronic epistemology is, in his opinion, that the picture of the world is always at any moment a mixture of generically mediated information about reality and the historically specific properties of the collective subject. 44 Instead of talking about the process of knowledge as an asymptotic movement towards the "point of view of the cosmos", it should be conceived as a constant "making of objectivity".45 It could be said that the Poznarl school (in particular Kmita and Nowak) theorizes the nature of the constraint associated with the supra-individual source and strictly uneliminable presence of what Rainko called 'deformations' in cognition. As their concern has been to foster a specifically Marxist philosophy of science and the determinants of its growth, adherents of the

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Poznafi school propagate an anti-positivism heavily indebted to Popper in the question of the hypothetical character of the constituents of a scientific theory, from its basic statements to the strictly theoretical components. 46 In that regard, however, they continue a tradition in Polish Marxism, inaugurated and propagated to a considerable extent by Kotakowski himself, 47 of opposition to positivism in its various forms, especially with regard to the dogma of a pure, theory-free observation. Kotakowski's epistemological reading of the Manuscripts of 1844 involved the conclusion that " . . . the object is not given to perception in its originary immediateness but is always constituted within the 'socialized' cognitive assimilation of the world...,,.4s The reference to Marx in this context is not gratuitous, as the Poznafi theoreticians look to the socialized nature of cognition to resolve problems pertaining to the status ascribed by non-Marxist theoreticians to scientific knowledge. To put it succinctly, in opposition to what they identify as instrumentalism (Feyerabend, Kuhn, Quine) and idealism (Popper), they have endeavored to develop a 'realism' which situates the source, criteria and ultimate referent of scientific knowledge in social practice. For this reason, they are less inclined than Rainko to identify the growth of science with the discovery of 'deformations' in hitherto acquired knowledge. For them, social practice delineates the very objects and their properties which become the correlates of scientific knowledge, and not merely, as Rainko and Eilstein seem to hold in quasiKantian fashion, the insuperably perspectival though corrigible outlook on reality as a whole. In this sense the Poznafi school stands even closer to Kotakowski than do Rainko or Eilstein. It is to the credit of the Poznafi school to have proposed a more or less systematic definition of the abused and maligned concept of social practice. In their thought, the concept does not denote the whole of individual activities or the more obvious candidate within Marxian doctrine, the division of labor. Rather, it denotes a 'systemic quality' characteristic of the hierarchically ordered set of sub-systems (e.g. individual activity, the division of labor, forms of social consciousness as the regulators of the preceding sub-systems) interacting in such a way as to promote the maintenance of this systemic °holistic' or 'global' quality, i.e. functionally, in the manner of the constituents of an organism. It is important to stress that even though it is characterized in completely anonymous terms social practice, on this view, is continually interacting with individual action. Nowak, but especially Kmita have delved into the theory of rational action

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in order to show how a Marxist theory of practice can solve some difficulties associated with the explanation of actions. If it is agreed (as they in fact propose) that a rational agent is one who seeks to realize a maximally preferred value or goal, then not only is it empirically true that discrepancies nearly always obtain between intended and actually resultant consequences of actions, but agents virtually never possess adequate knowlege of the circumstances in which they undertake their actions. For Kmita and Nowak, to seek an explanation of the discrepancy by reference to such inadequate knowledge is in effect to inquire about the source of the agent's convictions; and in the event that many agents evince similar courses of action it is also to inquire about the reasons why particular convictions have become widespread despite their inescapably indeterminate character. The resolution of these problems is simply to locate every individual action and its outcome in a field of previously and actually undertaken actions of similar and different kinds, all the unintended results of which interact in such a way as to produce in continuous fashion an anonymous 'global effect'. This global effect is equivalent to the context of ultimately inestimable conditions accompanying any rational activity, and, moreover, it is the 'content' of that quality characterizing a social system as a whole, its 'type' of social practice. It is in the foregoing fashion that the Poznafi theoreticians interpret Marx's dictum: " . . . mankind always sets itself such tasks as it can solve, since . . . . the task arises only when the material conditions for its solution already exist or are . . . in the process of formation". 49 In other words, realizable tasks or goals, which are the values that motivate the efforts to perfect all knowledge, correspond to the material conditions (the 'global effect') constituted by the interacting results of previously undertaken and current activities. The correspondence involved is called the "functional-genetic determination of social consciousness", i.e. the socially effective convictions of agents. Within the parameters of the hitherto existing socially effective convictions (viz. those which have contributed to the maintenance of the quality characterizing the 'global effect'; this is the 'genetic' component) only those novel ideas, values, etc. can acquire public currency as standards of rational activity which correspond to (= are functionally compatible with) the direction in which the global effect is changing. From this general perspective on social practice Nowak and Kmita have derived some rather unorthodox conclusions. For Nowak, the elementary

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domains of reality have been articulated in social practice, i.e. the properties accruing to objects within these domains are correlative to the ends of socially mediated activity. It is for these reasons that no pure observation is possible or meaningful in science. Moreover, the theory tacitly assumed by all the sciences is the "humanist theory of practical activity" in the sense that the ends of human activity constitute the non-empirical referents of the theoretical terms in the sciences. 5° Kmita places the accent on the growth of scientific knowledge through reference to the conditions of social practice. The 'truth' of a theory is equivalent to its social acceptance which is determined by the degree to which the theory is effectively applicable in regulating forms of social behavior. Continuity in scientific knowledge, even in the case of so-called scientific revolutions, is guaranteed by maintaining that each successive, socially acceptable system of knowledge corresponds sl to earlier accepted systems in its reference to the dominant conditions of social practice. Hence, in opposition to the prevailing non-Marxist conceptions of the determinants of scientific change, Kmita proposes a 'historicist epistemology' which can avoid the ravages of relativism thanks to the ontological weight ascribed to the concept of social practice. 3. Conclusions

Though it would be misleading to impute perfect consensus to the philosophers discussed in the last section, the following schematism can serve to summarize what appears to have been a dominant tendency for well over a decade among Polish Marxist epistemologist~. They had moved away from the copy theory in the direction of a critical realism based on the generic mediation of nature to questions about the form as well as degree of influence exerted on the cognitional process by determinants of social structures and their transformations. With the advent of interest in the philosophy of science and action theory many of them have moved away from traditional epistemological issues having to do with criteria of validity or truth to problems turning about the extra-cognitive determinants of the folanation, adaptation and supersession of conceptual frameworks. I have suggested that throughout this process Kolakowski's influence has been subtle but pertinent. In relation to the four points summarizing his article on Marx, given at the beginning of the preceding section, Polish Marxists have argued more or less as follows.

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(Ad 1) Eilstein: There is a human essence, the product of nature's evolution, which conditions, determines the precise manner in which humanity cognitively apprehends nature. Rainko and the Poznah School: There is a human essence in which the role of invariable biological factors is increasingly reduced to a minimum in favor of socio-historical properties; in particular consciousness and the psyche are ever more distinct. (Ad 2) Eilstein: The social is not discontinuous with the natural. Rainko and the Poznah School: There is a radical discontinuity between the natural world and society which is argued for by means of an ontology of social being (i.e. a holist ontology based on irreducible relations constituted through the interactions of agents). (Ad 3) Eilstein: There is a historical line of progression in the successive stages of the human articulation of the environment which to be sure is extraindividual and co-constitutive of the conditions and possibilities of cognition. Rainko and Poznah School: Cognition is a correlate of rational activity, though practice, the medium in which activity occurs and which it continually reproduces, is generative of the conceptual frameworks ('social consciousness') orienting rational action. (Ad 4) Eilstein : Cognition is inscribed within 'states of nature' which are the product of human interaction with 'matter' dependent as much on the properties of the latter as on the dynamic homeostasis characterizing the specific situation of the human condition in 'matter' .52 Rainko and the Poznah School: There is no 'point of view of the cosmos'; the greater the socialization of man the greater become his possibilities to delineate domains of reality and their properties in function of the socially mediated ends of his activities. (Facts and values are really commensurable in the sense that all facts are value-facts, the counterparts of human agency subject to the irreducible criteria of social efficacy.) The majority of Polish Marxists, like many of their counterparts in nonsocialist countries, have integrated epistemological considerations almost wholly into historical materialism at the expense of dialectical materialism. However, what has been discussed above represents - as much in the case of Kolakowski as in that of the succeeding generation - a very truncated, even transformed historical materialism. It virtually ignores the historiosophical and revolutionary impetus of the doctrine. In the first place, therefore, the image of a humanly constituted world perceived by individual subjects

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as an objective world - on the lines of the realist conception - plays on an ambiguity in Marx's notion of production, understood now as 'objectification' of human powers, now as 'humanization', without, however, confronting the issue where Marx's associated notion of 'alienation' is to be fitted. In the second place, the ontology of social being, especially that elaborated by the Poznafi school, relies heavily on the mode of analysis deployed by Marx to unravel the intricacies of social existence in class societies. Everything in Marx points to the conclusion, however, that the categorial hiatus in class society between social doing and individual 'reflection' of the socially produced world ceases to obtain under socialism. Furthermore, in this connection, while social doing was identified in traditional Marxist theory with the nefarious division of labor, responsible for the differentiation, but what is more iniquitous still, the separation of the various kinds of activities and their corresponding forms of consciousness, the more recent arguments forsake the virtually utopian resolution in the guise of the socialist all-sided, harmoniously integrated man and provide arguments to support a society of particularized, specialized experts working to construct something greater than themselves. Finally, in the third place, the absence of any mention of the partisan character of knowledge and its role in class conflict seems to imply that the "functional-genetic determination of social consciousness" is neutral in the matter of distinguishing ideology from 'valid' knowledge. The last conclusion, should it turn out to be true, has no small significance as far as the possibility and justification of revolutionary consciousness is concerned, in particular in the Leninist-Lukfics model. If Kotakowski had in 1959 supposed that his interpretation of Marx was an essential component of socialist humanism, his recent history of Marxism sheds a critical, indeed demythologizing light on both factors. Radical anthropocentrism is impossible since it acknowledges that human existence is both contingent, condemned to struggle to dominate external nature, and absolute, decreeing for itself an order of values by which it asserts its importance for nature. Radical anthropocentrism is contradictory, sa Fribourg

NOTES AND REFERENCES Abbreviations. SF: Studia Filozoficzne; MF: MyH Filozoficzna. 1 'Karl Marks i klasyczna definicija prawdy', SF 1959, 2, 43-67; later in a collection of essays entitled Kultura i fetysze, Warsaw 1967. An English translation is available in

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Towards a Marxist Humanism, New York, Grove Press 1969, 3 8 - 6 6 ; this text wiU be cited here. 2 E.g.T.M. Jaroszewski, Rozwa~ania o praktyce. Wokot interpretacfi filozofii K. Marksa, Warsaw: PWN 1974, J a n Kurowicki: Poznanie i spoleczenstwo, Warsaw: PWN 1977; cf. below references to Eilstein. A recent critique o f Kotakowski's interpretation is b y G. Markus, '(Jber die erkenntnistheoretischen Ansichten des jungen Marx', in Beitriige zur marxistische Erkenntnistheorie, Hrsg. v. Alfred Schmidt, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a/M. 1972, 1 8 - 7 2 . 3 Kotakowski, op. cit., p. 58. 4 'Aktualnog~ sporu o powszechniki', M F 1956, 2, (22), 3 - 3 2 . 5 Ibid., pp. 2 0 - 2 5 . 6 Ibid., p. 27. 7 Kotakowski did not explicitly correlate his views for a Marxist theory o f scientific law with wholes as I have, although his examples suggest that he would - at that m o m e n t have proceeded in that direction. 8 ' I n d y w i d u u m i nieskoriczono~6 materialna w metafizyce Spinozy', MF 1957, 2 (28). 9 Ibid., p. 163. 10 IBM., p. t0. 11 'Karl M a r x . . . ', loc. cir., p. 52. 12 Kotakowski wrote: " . . . if one would ask if things as they are 'in themselves' can be revealed to the mind, one would first have to create an understandable concept o f them. ( . . . ) Only things 'for us', not things as they are in themselves can have conceptual counterparts. ( . . . ) In this sense, to ask a b o u t material 'in itself' is to ask if nothingness exists."lbid., p. 49. 13

Ibid.,p. 53.

14 In Obecnogb mitu, Biblioteka Kultury, Paris 1972 (German: Die Gegenwiirtigkeit des Mythos, Piper, Miinchen, 1974) Kolakowski wrote: " O n e o f . . . the negations o f the epistemological question is Marx's philosophy . . . . It shows, that m a n cannot raise h i m s e l f up to the position o f a supra-human observer with respect to himself, i.e. he cannot understand his o w n perception w i t h o u t falling into a vicious circle. Things appear to m a n from the perspective o f his practical effort, as values, as things for something. Consciousness is the being of self-knowledge, while nature is the counterpart o f the collective transformative effort. The object and subject are k n o w n only as m e m b e r s in a relation o f m u t u a l opposition. There is no ahistorical view o f history, no such t r u t h which would be free o f the situation in which it is acquired, i.e. be u n c o n n e c t e d with t h e . . . history o f the species. Man cannot initiate cognition from a zero-like point o f departure and is for h i m s e l f the ultimate point o f departure." (p. 20) is 'Karl M a r x . . . ', p. 56. 16 Kolakowski repeats the essentials o f this interpretation inMain Currents o f Marxism, Vol. 1: The Founders, Clarendon, Oxford, 1978, developing in subsequent volumes its affinity to those o f Gramsci, Korsch and Luk~ics. 17 'Karl M a r x . . . ', p. 46. 18 " F r o m the m o m e n t m a n in his onto- and phylogenesis begins to dominate the world o f things intellectually - from the m o m e n t he invents i n s t r u m e n t s that can organize it and express this organization in words - he finds that world already constructed and differentiated . . . according to a classification imposed by the practical need for orientation in one's e n v i r o n m e n t . " Loc. eit. 19 Ibid., p. 56.

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20 Ibid.,p. 51. al Besides the authors dealt with below, the following have written about epistemological themes from what is considered an 'orthodox' point of view: A. Schaff, Z. Cackowski, T. Jaroszewski, S. Dziamski, J. Ladosz, S. Kozyr-Kowalski. 22 Kotakowski has returned to epistemological subjects time and again. Of particular importance are the essays collected in: Zweifel an der Methode, Kohlhammer, Stuttgart, 1977. Traktat ~ber die Sterblichkeit der Vernunft: Philosophische Essays, Mtinchen, Piper, 1967. The Alienation of Reason: A History of Positivist Thought, N.Y., Doubleday, 1968. Husserl and the Search for Certitude, New Haven, Yale, 1975.

Obecnogd mitu/Die Gegenwdrtigkeit des Mythos, op. eit. 23 'O stylu filozofowania L. Kolakowskiego tudkiez o "mlodomarksowskiej i Engelsowsko-Leninowskiej" teorii odbicia', SF 1959, 6 , 1 5 7 - 1 9 9 ; Eilstein, at one time editor of SF, left Poland in 1968. 24 Eilstein considers that the comparison is not wholly to the point since Marx's epistemology, on one hand, and Engels-Lenin's, on the other hand, are concerned with entirely different matters: the former with the subjective context of cognition, the latter with the criteria of truth, verification, etc. pp. 174-175. 25 IBM., p. 183. 26 1bid., p. 164. 27 Ibid., p. 181. 28 Ibid., p. 182. 29 IBM., p. 183. 30 Eilstein is thus responding to the provocative parallels Kotakowski sought to draw between the de facto human picture of the world, on one hand, and the equally conceivable (but practically non-advantageous) world view corresponding to the surrealist imagination or, for that matter, the perceptual universe of the fly. Nothing distinguishes them as to their 'validity', 'truth-value'. 31 Eilstein, p. 187ff. 32 Kolakowski calls such a philosophy a 'transcendental' one and identifies Engels and Soviet philosophy as proponents; cf. 'Le marxisme de Marx, le marxisme de Engels', in Contemporary Philosophy, ed. by R. Klibansky, Vol. 4, Firenze, 1971, 401-423. 33 Rainko has published: 'Epistemologia diachroniczna. Zarys problematyki', SF 1967, 1 . 3 - 4 0 ; 'K. Mannheim, a koncepcja epistemologii', SF 1972, 7/8, 27-54;Rola podmiotu w poznaniu, Warsaw, PWN 1971, Marksizm i ]ego krytyey, KiW 1976; Swiadmok6 i historia, Warszawa, Czytelnik, 1978. 34 Kurowicki has published:Poznanie i spotecze~stwo, Warsaw, PWN 1977; Wyprawa w krainq oczywistogci, Wroclaw, Ossolineum 1978. 35 All the members of the Poznari School have prodigiously productive pens. Apart from a vast number of articles Kmita's books are: (with L. Nowak) Studia nad teorety. cznyrni podstawarni humanistyki, Poznafi, UAM 1968; Z metodologicznych problem6w interpretacii humanistycznef, Warsaw, PWN 1971 ; Wyktady z logiki i metodologii nauki, Warsaw, PWN 1973; Szkice z teorii poznznia naukowego, Warsaw, PWN 1976; he is also the editor of several collected works: Zalo~enia metodologiczne 'Kapitalu', Warsaw 1970 ; Elementy rnarksistowskiej metodologii humanistyki, Poznafi 1973 ; Metodologiczne implikacfe epistemologii marksistowskie], Poznafi 1974; Warto~d-dzielo-sens, Warsaw, PWN 1975 ; Zalo2enia teoretyczne badah nad rozwo]em historyeznym, Warsaw,

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PWN 1977 ; Zagadnienie przelomu antypozytywistyeznego w humanistyce, Warsaw, PWN 1978; Spoteczny kontekst poznania, Warsaw, Ossolineum 1979. 36 Nowak's books are: Upodstaw marksowskie] metodologii nauk, Warsaw, PWN 1971 ; Model ekonomiczny. Studium z metodologii ekonomfi polityezne], Warsaw, PWN 1972; Interpretac]a prawnicza. Studium z metodologii prawoznawstwa, Warsaw, PWN 1973; U podstaw marksowskiej aks]ologii, Warszawa, KiW 1974; Wstep do idealizacy]ne] teorii nauki, Warsaw, PWN 1977; U podstaw marksowskie] dialektyki. Pr6ba interpretac]i kategorialne], Warsaw, PWN 1977. Scienza eomme idealizzazione: i fondamenti della metodologia Marxiana, il Mulino, Bologna 1978; The Structure o f Idealization. Towards a Systematic Interpretation of the Marxian Idea of Science, Dordrecht, Reidel 1979. As editor: Poznar~skie studia z filozofii nauki, to date four volumes treating different themes, from 1976. 37 It is not possible adequately even to summarize the complex theories of the Poznarl School, which range over the philosophy of science, theory of action, philosophy of culture and interpretation, Marxist philosophy, etc. For a brief characterization see my 'Humanistic Interpretation and Historical Materialism: The Methodology of the Poznart School', to appear in SST. 38 'Kilka tez o materializmie historycznym', in ~wiadomo~6 i historia, op. eit., p. 14f. 39 'Materializm historyczny a poznanie', in ~wiadomo~6 . . . . p. 37. 4o Ibid., p. 37. 41 'Epistemologia diachroniczna. Zarys problematyki', op. eit., p. 17. Rainko notes that Kohkowski conducted a seminar in 1966 on Mannheim. It may be the basis of his article 'The Epistemological Significance of the Aetiology of Knowledge: A Gloss on Mannhelm', inA Leszek KotakowskiReader, Tri-Quarterly, 22, Fall 1971, 221-238. 42 Ibid., p. 29ff. 43 'Materializm historyczny a poznanie', op. eit., p. 38f. 44 'Epistemologia diackroniczna', op. cit., p. 33£ 4s Rainko borrows these expressions from Gramsci. It is interesting to note that in the second Polish edition of his piece on Marx Kotakowski added a series of texts from Gramsci confirming his interpretation. 46 This standpoint is labelled 'anti-positivist naturalism' and has been corrected by the addition of an idealizational model of science. See my 'Humanistic Interpretation and Historical Materialism: the Methodology of the Poznafi School'. 47 'Filozofia nieinterwencji', MF 1953, 2 (8); Filosofia pozytywistyczna. Od Hume's do Kota Wiedenskiego, Warsaw, PWN 1966 (English translation The Alienation of Rea-

son, op. eit. ). 48 My translation: 'Le Marx d'Althusser', in L 'esprit r~volutionnaire suivi de Marxisme utopie et anti-utopie, Bruxelles, Ed. Complexe 1978, p. 183. 49. From the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique o f Political Economy, in The Marx-Engels Reader', ed. by Tucker, New York, Norton 1972, p. 5. so Cf. L. Nowak, 'Wymiary praktyki', SF 1973, 10, 129ff. Sl Kmita distinguishes more than one kind of correspondence; cf. Szkice z teorii poznania naukowego, op. cit., and 'Praktyka spoteczna jako podstawowe pojeeie epistemologii historycznej', SF 1977, 11, p. 5ft. s2 The expressions 'states of nature' and 'matter' are taken from the interesting study by Serge Moscovici: Essai sur l'histoire humaine de la nature, Paris, Flammarion 1977. s3 Kolakowski offers these conclusions in his illuminating chapter on Stanislaw Brzozowski inMain Currents ofMarxism. Vol. 2: The GoMenAge, op. cir., esp. p. 238. -