Thanksgiving Is Ruined |
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October 31, 2017
Return of the
blockheads
. . . of the “philosophical blockheads,” of course.
Given now here comes upon us the 100th anniv of da big
trowdown, what is there to do but to read all of VI’s
books, in order, in their entirety?
Thus below, TiR hereby presents:
Materialism and
Empirio-criticism: Critical Comments on a Reactionary Philosophy (1909): the funniest passages.
(page references to the edition from the always fetish-worthy,
cream-covered
series published by the Foreign
Language Press of Peking (1972))
Well,
well, the titmouse first promised to set the sea on fire . . . i.e., to
construct physical elements from psychical elements.
(pg. 62)
To
the mouse no beast is stronger than the cat.
To the Russian Machians there is no materialist stronger than
Plehkhanov.
(pg. 90)
The
Russian Machians will soon be like fashion-lovers who are moved to ecstasy over
a hat which has already been discarded by the bourgeois philosophers of Europe.
(pg. 99)
Engels
has been treated à la Mach, fried and served with a Machian sauce. But take care you do not choke, worthy cooks!
(pg. 124)
It
is true that not only is the wildest dream a fact, but also the wildest
philosophy. No doubt of this is possible
after an acquaintance with the philosophy of Ernst Mach.
(pg. 156)
Clad
like a harlequin in a garish motley of shreds of the ‘latest’ terminology,
there stands before us a subjective idealist, for who the external world,
nature and its laws are all symbols of our knowledge.
(pg. 193)
Lunacharshky
says, ‘. . . a wonderful page of religious economics, I say this at the risk of
provoking a smile from the irreligious reader.’ However good your intentions
may be, Comrade Lunacharsky, it is not a smile, but disgust your flirtation
with religion provokes.
(pg. 218)
They
read it and they copied it, but they did not make head or tail of it.
(pg. 219)
.
. . Hegelian dialectics -- that pearl which those farmyard cocks, the Büchners,
the Dührings and Co. (as well as Leclair, Mach, Avenarius and so forth), could
not pick out from the dungheap of absolute idealism.
(pg. 289)
And,
it goes without saying, where there is a muddle there you will find Machians.
(pg. 292)
.
. . from the standpoint of the materialists it is a dispute between a man who
believes in a yellow devil and a man who believes in a green devil. For the important thing is not the
differences between Bogdanov and the other Machians, but what they have in
common.
(pgs. 326-27)
But
five pages later the founder of recent empirio-symbolism declares: ‘Everything
that is not thought is pure nothing, since we can think nothing but thought.’
You are wrong, M. Poincaré: your works prove that there are people who can
think what is entirely devoid of thought.
(pg. 351)
However,
in spite of the fact that his main line of ‘endeavour’ lies in the borderland
between philosophy and the police department, Mr. Lopatin has also furnished
certain material for a characterisation of the epistemological views of this
idealist physicist [N. I. Shishkin].
(pg. 361)
Just
fancy, one can, like an apothecary, weigh out a little more or a little less
relativism and thus save Machism!
(pg. 373)
The
man is hammering at an open door! --
will be the thought of the Marxist when he reads the lengthy
disquisitions on this subject.
(pg. 375)
And
if our Machians renounce [Franz] Blei (as they surely will), we shall tell
them: You must not blame the mirror for showing a crooked face. Blei is a
mirror which accurately reflects the fundamental tendencies of
empirio-criticism. . .
(pgs. 385-86)
A
single claw ensnared, and the bird is lost. And our Machians have all become
ensnared in idealism.
(pg. 420)
It
was amusing to see how -- perhaps for the first time in their lives -- the eyes
of these mummies, dried and shrunken in the atmosphere of lifeless
scholasticism, began to gleam and their cheeks to glow under the slaps which
[Ernst] Haeckel [author of The Riddle of the Universe, 1899] administered
them. The high-priests of pure science,
and, it would appear, of the most abstract theory, fairly groaned with rage.
(pg. 424)
Here’s the 2nd funniest passage:
The
reader is probably fuming at us for quoting at such length this incredibly
trivial rigamarole, this quasi-scientific tomfoolery decked out in the
terminology of Avenarius. But wer den
Feind will versthehen muß in Feindes Lande gehen -- who would know the enemy
must go into the enemy’s territory.
(pg. 383)
And TiR here
presents the top funniest passage of all:
A
man in a dark room may discern objects dimly, but if he does not stumble over
the furniture and does not walk into a looking-glass instead of through a door,
it means that he sees some things correctly.
(pg. 331)
Hilarious . . . no?
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