The Teaching of the Philosophical Sciences

THE TEACHING OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES Is. Kaltakhchyan Y. Petrov People in the Soviet Union take a tremendous interest in philosophy. They study the history of philosophy, logic, ethics, and aesthetics. Dialectical and historical materialism, the Marxist-Leninist philosophy, which is the science of the more general laws of the development of nature, society, and thinking , holds a special place in the system of philosophical knowledge in the U.S.S.R. The experience of social changes and the development of the natural sciences and the humanities have made obvious the power of dialectical materialism as the scientific world outlook of the working people, and as the philosophical foundation of their practical activity in all spheres of science and life. This experience explains why millions of Soviet people take an interest in and study Marxist-Leninist philosophy. Dialectical materialism disagrees both with the understanding of philosophy as a "science of sciences" and with the negation of philosophy by positivism, which holds that "each science is its own philosophy." It arose from a summarization of the history of society, and is continuing to develop on this basis. It is a reliable compass in social production and science. All students of higher schools in the Soviet Union receive a systematic education in philosophy. The courses differ according to the type of school. For example, the main stress in the ninety hours devoted to dialectical and historical materialism-the leading philosophy courseat technical and agricultural colleges is laid on dialectical materialism and philosophical problems in natural science. At universities and teacher training, medical, and art colleges the syllabus in dialectical and historical materialism is broader and 140 hours are set aside for the course. In addition to the basic course in philosophy, other philosophical sciences are taught at some higher schools. Law schools, some depart- 38 S. KALTAKHCHYAN & Y. PETROV ments of universities, and teacher training institutes offer a seventy-hour course in logic. At theatrical and art schools and institutes of architecture , and at conservatories of music, the curriculum includes a seventyhour course in aesthetics. A course in the history of philosophy is given in the departments of the humanities at universities and teacher training institutes. Higher schools in some of the union republics teach the history of religion and atheism. Lectures and seminars are the main methods of teaching philosophy, with lectures playing the guiding role. To make clear to the students the important part which advanced philosophical theory plays in practical activity, lecturers present the basic premisses of the course in their strictly logical interconnection, make wide use of the latest findings in natural and social sciences in discnssing philosophical problems, and analyse facts and phenomena of modern life. Lecturers are not reqnired to deal with all the problems to be studied in the course. They concentrate on the key points. Teachers of philosophy in the Soviet higher schools must be able to link up philosophy organically with the subject in which the students are specializing. Much attention is paid to the organization of seminars in philosophy. Seminars supplement the lecture course. They tie in the study of the classics of Marxism-Leninism with present-day achievements in science and in the life of society. In the study of Lenin's "Materialism and Empirio-Criticism," for example, such points as Lenin's thesis concerning the inexhaustibility of the material world, his concept of matter, and his treatment of motion, time, and space are examined in the light of the latest discoveries of various forms of matter (the discovery of various particles and anti-particles, fields and anti-fields), the theory of relativity , non-Euclidean geometry, cybernetics, and so on. Departments of natural science conduct seminars on the philosophical problems of present-day natural science. After examining general problems pertaining to the interrelation of natural science and philosophy at different stages of their development throughout history, they dwell on philosophical problems of the sciences in which the given departments specialize. Seminars in physics departments, for instance, go into the problem of causality in the history of science and present-day natural science; a criticism of indeterminism in quantum mechanics; the concept of mass and energy in present-day physics, etc. As distinct...