A “Hard Problem” of Lenin’s Theory of Reflection: Discussions of the 1930s and 1950s

This article discusses the versions of Leninist reflection theory in the Russian philosophy of the first half of the twentieth century. The very nature of the discussion made the problem of understanding the features of the theory of cognition a “hard” problem. This was facilitated by the ideological and political impurities characteristic of philosophical inquiry at the time. The “diamat” (short for “dialectical materialism”) reflection theory is compared with M.A. Lifshits’s “ontognoseology”. The task is to show the process of dogmatization of Lenin’s reflection theory in the discussions of the 30s–40s, as well as the transformation of this theory in Lifshits’s ontognoseology in the 1940–50s. The article highlights the variations of reflection theory in the Soviet philosophy of 1930–70s. This theory in Diamat is considered in comparison with the “ontognoseology” of Mikhail Lifshits. The ideological catalyst for the development of the “Leninist reflection theory” was the principle of partisanship. As its consequence, vulgar sociology and Diamat were fixed in the humanities, and only in the early 1950s they began to be gradually overcome. At the beginning of the Stalinist phase in the history of Soviet philosophy, the debates around Lenin’s book Materialism and Empiriocriticism became a landmark phenomenon. The tone was set by the students of the Institute of Red Professors, headed by Abram Deborin. The example of several works written by them in the mid-thirties shows the peculiarities of interpreting the concept of reflection, as well as the ideological conjuncture that largely determined the content and course of the philosophical discussion. The principle of partisanship demanded that class interests (as understood by the leaders of the proletarian party, of course) should come first, and in the theory of knowledge and consciousness, it meant that the dialectical-materialist position should be defended in the struggle against all varieties of idealism. It was under this sign that the discussion of Lenin’s theory of reflection took place. The article also analyses contemporary polemics, in the course of which opposite assessments of Deborin’s role in the formation of Soviet diamat and in solving the “hard problem” of Lenin’s theory of reflection are given. The postwar years of Soviet philosophy are represented in the article by Mikhail Lifshits’s “ontognoseology”. An associate and friend of Georg Lukács, Lifshits made the greatest contribution to overcoming vulgar sociology and renewing the tradition of creative Marxism. He described the dialectics of being and consciousness, of the subjective and the objective, proposing a profound and original interpretation of the theory of reflection. In Lifshits’s ontognoseology, the reflection of being in consciousness is conditioned by the property of reflectivity inherent in being itself. 

Keywords: “Materialism and empiriocriticism”; reflection; being; consciousness; partisanship; ontognoseology; M.A. Lifshits