N. IRIBADZHAKOV. Клио пред съда на буржоазната философия. Към критиката на съвременната идеалистически философия на историята. Sofia. Izd. na BKP. 1970. 815 pp.
The monograph of Professor N. Iribadzhakov, Head of the Department of History of Philosophy at Sofia University, is devoted to an actual scientific problem of interest to both philosophers and historians. The author has set himself the task of subjecting the main concepts of modern bourgeois philosophy of history to a detailed critique. N. Iribadzhakov's indisputable merit is that he gives a concrete analysis of the views of bourgeois theorists and schools, reveals the differences between these views and proves their inconsistency.
The book critically examines the views of bourgeois philosophers and historians W. Windelband, H. Rickert, L. Wiese, T. Parsons, J. Maritain, B. Croce, R. Collingwood and others. on the correlation of philosophy, history and sociology. The author managed to convincingly show that the modern bourgeois philosophy of history is a product of the crisis of capitalist society. He examines in detail the so-called "method of understanding" put forward by W. Dilthey and developed by R. Collingwood, K. Popper and some other reactionary philosophers, convincingly showing the anti-scientific and irrationalist nature of their views. The author analyzes in detail the subjective-idealistic views of K. Becker, T. Parsons, A. Toynbee and others, the objective-idealistic interpretations of B. Croce, as well as various versions of these theories that are far from true science. The concepts of V. Dilthey, V. Windelband and H. Rickert, which oppose history as an "idiographic" (descriptive) discipline to "nomothetic" (theoretical, generalizing) sciences, are argumentatively criticized. N. Iribadzhakov convincingly shows, in particular,that they are based on ignoring the dialectic of the relationship between logical and historical.
One of the subjects of research in the monograph is the philosophical problems of the objective-historical process. The author examines the qualitative differences between the history of nature and society and at the same time their organic connection. At the same time, it is emphasized that it is precisely the lack of understanding or unwillingness to understand the dialectic of the relationship between the natural and the social that underlies the concepts that deny the existence of history as a science and, consequently, the possibility of achieving objective truth in historical knowledge. The author also considers another important problem - causality and regularity in history. The objective nature of these categories does not exclude, but presupposes, the conscious activity of people and their historical responsibility for the fate of society. "Historical necessity," the book emphasizes, "gives individuals, classes, parties, peoples, and people in general the opportunity to choose between a variety of very different options for action" (p.452). This choice depends on the social status of people, their class, party, national, and international interests, consciousness, will, and determination. Showing the scientific inconsistency of various idealistic views on the meaning of history, n.. Iribadzhakov conducts a thought,
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that this question can be solved only on the basis of the Marxist-Leninist doctrine of the objective nature of the laws of social development and of the role of people's conscious activity. At the same time, the objective and subjective aspects are distinguished. The essence of the first is that the meaning of history is identical with its immanent and objective logic, the second - in the purposeful, conscious activity of people.
The most interesting part of the book is that which deals with philosophical problems of historical knowledge. Here we are talking about the subject of historical science and its interrelations with philosophy and sociology, about the specifics of historical knowledge, about historical truth, about historical fact as an objective reality and epistemological problem, about the partisanship of historical science.
The author examines in detail the question of the relationship between history and sociology in the formulation of Marxist literature. He disagrees with some philosophers and historians who view sociology as the science of general sociological laws, and history as the science of specific historical laws, as well as with those who define history as the science of the laws of socio - historical development taken in its entirety. N. Iribadzhakov's opinion is that historical science does not discover or formulate any specific laws, that its task is to reproduce "the real process of the historical development of human society, or a given society, or individual aspects and processes of social life - economy, social structure, art, science, philosophy, politics, religion, etc. etc. - as an interconnected, causally determined and regular process in its concrete diversity" (p. 585). At the same time, the author emphasizes the inseparable unity of the factual and theoretical aspects of historical research. The author argues for this position, in particular, by the fact that the individuality of each event can exist and be understood only in its relations with other events, and therefore historical science is unthinkable without comparison, analysis, theoretical generalizations, etc., in the course of which individual features of a particular phenomenon are determined and scientific abstraction is carried out. The book suggests that, unlike sociology, which focuses on the logical in the structure, functioning and development of society as a system, historical science "has as its subject the historical-the genesis, formation, change of society as a system, the genesis, formation, change and change of social formations, historical epochs, individual peoples,etc.". social classes, nations, events, etc., as consecutive in time, causally determined and regular processes, taken as real unities of the accidental and necessary, the individual, the special and the general" (p. 590). These propositions correspond to the truth and contribute to the development of the theoretical foundations of historical science, although in some of their elements (for example, in the interpretation of the question of laws) they need additional justification and clarification.
N. Iribadzhakov's research rejects the concept of bourgeois scientists, according to which historical knowledge is reduced only to retrospective knowledge, while the objective reality of the facts of the past is denied, and the possibility of their adequate reflection is questioned. The subject of historical science, as the author proves, is the real process of development of society in its unity and diversity. This process has its own past, present, and future. Therefore, there are three aspects of historical cognition: retrospective, presentational, and prospective (or predictive). This approach allows us to introduce an objective criterion by which scientific knowledge can be tested, supplemented, corrected and developed. This criterion is socio-historical practice.
One of the most important and interesting questions raised in N. Iribadzhakov's work is the problem of historical truth. We are talking about what a historical fact is, whether it exists objectively, what criteria determine the historical significance of facts, etc. The author criticizes idealistic speculations with the ambiguity of the term "fact" (object and cognitive image of the object, information about individual phenomena and general data, simple and complex fact, etc.). The book shows how idealists (T. Parsons, A. Toynbee, R. Collingwood, etc.) replace real historical facts with their reflections in documents, in the representations of the knowing subject, and thereby identify the objective reality.
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a story with its informative images. Fetishization of historical documents as a source of knowledge inevitably leads to objectivism and idealism in science, because the cognitive image is never identical with the object of knowledge: it is always poorer than what is reflected and is not able to cover it comprehensively. This leads to the conclusion adopted by Marxist-Leninist source studies, which in N. Iribadzhakov's work receives an additional philosophical justification - the need to subject documents to a comprehensive critical analysis, compare the information contained in various sources, and the information gleaned from documents with indisputably established facts of history.
Finally, the book deals with such topical issues as history and modernity, history and partisanship. In their relation to the first problem, the main trends of modern bourgeois philosophy of history (neo-Kantianism, neo-Hegelianism, pragmatism, neo-positivism, existentialism, etc.) are united by a common concept. It is called " presentism "and can be briefly summarized as follows: history is nothing more than a"projection of modernity on the past." This concept, as N. Iribadzhakov convincingly shows, is inextricably linked with the subjective-idealistic interpretation of historical facts, with the identification of the past and present, object and subject. Rejecting presentism, the author does not deny, however, the profound influence of modernity on historical science: the discovery of new facts and documents of the past, the improvement of methodological and methodological tools for studying history, and finally, public practice allow us to make adjustments to the scientific knowledge of the past. Evaluating the views of idealistic philosophers and historians who oppose partisanship, as a kind of "impartial" science, N. A. Tolstoy considers the following issues: Iribadzhakov gives a number of arguments that indicate the social conditionality of the historian's activity and, in general, the axiological (evaluative) aspect that is organically inherent in any historical thinking. Marxist philosophy of history and historical science, the author concludes, are deeply partisan, they are designed to serve the interests of the working class and socialist society. They can perform this task successfully only if their ultimate goal is the knowledge of objective truth.
N. Iribadzhakov's book also has some shortcomings. Along with some controversial provisions, some of which were discussed above, it contains repetitions. Nor can we agree with the author's reproaches against Marxist historians who have not written a single book specifically devoted to methodological, philosophical, and sociological problems of history or to criticism of modern bourgeois historiography, philosophy of history, and sociology (p.52). N. Iribadzhakov himself refers to a number of works of this kind. There are also some factual inaccuracies in the book. Thus, the author writes about the " English bourgeois Revolution of 1688 "(pp. 407 - 408, etc.), although it is known that in 1688 - 1689 there was only a coup d'etat that transferred power to the Orange dynasty.
N. Iribadzhakov's book, which is original in its content and is distinguished by its deep argumentation, combative journalistic tone, vivid and imaginative language, activates theoretical thought and promotes further creative discussion of a number of debatable problems of the methodology of historical science.
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