SCIENCE AND MORALITY

K. T. VINICHENKO

In the problem of the interrelation of the forms of social consciousness, the consideration of the relationship between science and morality acquires important significance. For bourgeois philosophy, what is characteristic is the traditional rupture between science and morality, the notion of their incompatibility with one another.

The United States Department of Agriculture (during Roosevelt’s second term as president), at conferences devoted to problems in the development of American agriculture, raised for discussion questions concerning what the goals of American society and of agriculture in particular ought to be. Leading scholars were brought in to discuss this question: economists, historians, anthropologists, sociologists, and workers in the field of political science and social psychology. However, the scholars refused to discuss these questions, explaining their refusal by saying that, as scholars, they could be interested only in problems of fact. As for the question of goals, that question has no relation to science; it belongs to the sphere of values and is the subject matter of philosophy and religion. The Department of Agriculture was forced to turn for a resolution of the problem of the goals of American agriculture to philosophers and prominent religious figures¹.

According to this strictly observed tradition, the scholar deals with facts; he considers the world and man as they are. A scholar can speak about the future only on the condition that a definite experiment will be carried out or actions will be undertaken in a definite direction. But in doing so scholars cannot and must not try to decide questions about what the good consists in, what course of events is the most desirable, for their decision is based entirely on people’s subjective opinions. There is no connection between what exists and what ought to be. The former is the domain of science, the latter—the domain of ethics and religion. The categories “value,” “good,” “evil,” “responsibility,” “conscience,” etc., lie beyond the limits of science; they do not exist for the scholar.

Thus, between science and morality there are no points of contact whatsoever. That which falls within the competence of science does not enter the domain of morality, and conversely.

This conception expresses the hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie: in theory it proclaims the independence of science from morality, while in practice it subordinates science to its own class moral principles. The denial of the connection between science and morality is, in essence, a justification of amoralism in science. The whole world knows the fact that the USA was the first country to apply the discovery of atomic energy for the destruction of people. On August 6, 1945, the flying superfortress “Enola Gay” at 8:45 in the morning dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Several kilograms of uranium-235 destroyed 100 thousand people. On August 9, 1945, the airplane “Grand Artist” dropped a plutonium bomb on the port of Nagasaki. 70 thousand victims! The atomic age appeared before humanity under the most terrible banner.

At the trial of Oppenheimer, the American physicist accused of refusing to create the hydrogen bomb, the chief accuser, Teller, declared that conscience is not a scientific category; that the consequences of facts lie outside good and evil, and therefore the scientist should bear no responsibility for every child killed in the bombing of Hiroshima.

In present-day conditions, when society possesses colossal scientific and technical means that may be turned against humanity, the renunciation of duty and responsibility in science conceals tragic consequences for the fate of the world. Therefore, the substantiation of the interconnection between science and morality acquires great significance in the struggle against bourgeois ideology.

A dialectical approach to this problem makes it possible to avoid one-sidedness in regulating the process of forming the spiritual culture of communism.

At the present time, scientific consciousness is acquiring an ever more leading role in the structure of social consciousness, in the organization and management of social processes. This is evidenced by the colossal growth in the volume of scientific knowledge, the increasing scale of scientific activity, and the growth of state expenditures on science. In the USSR, during the years of Soviet power, by 1965 the number of scientific workers had increased 65-fold, while the number of workers and employees had increased 6-fold. Over the last 10 years the sum of expenditures on science increased 5-fold and reached 6.5 billion rubles.^2

A new branch of knowledge is taking shape, one that studies the general laws of the development of science and is called upon to provide a general theory for the management of science. Science is becoming the basis for the formation of social and individual consciousness.

However, in understanding the role of scientific consciousness in creating the spiritual culture of communism, in our view, a somewhat one-sided approach has persisted until recently. Discussion of this problem has sometimes proceeded in a purely intellectual aspect. Interest in scientific knowledge has been presented as a cult of knowledge as such, apart from any connection with the problem of conviction and the self-education of the moral qualities of the personality. Discussion of the question of the role of science in the formation of personality has stopped somewhere halfway, without reaching the problem of transforming scientific truth into the sphere of morality, into an act of good. This neglect of the ethical side of scientific cognition leads to a moral vacuum, to intellectual snobbery, and to the one-sided development of the individual.

During the discussion on the relation between knowledge and morality that took place in the pages of Komsomolskaya Pravda in September–October 1963, the article “Talent Without a Drop of Humanity” told of Aleksei from the city of Kiev. He had finished school

^2 Pravda, 1965, December 17.

with a gold medal, then went on to study at a medical institute, was considered a talented student, and carried out responsible experiments. A year after graduating from the institute he decided to become a postgraduate student; within a year he brilliantly passed all the candidate’s examinations, submitted several scientific papers, and achieved perfect command of English, German, and French. Then he defended his candidate’s dissertation and at the same time gathered material for his doctoral dissertation. By the age of 30 he was already a doctor of sciences. If one also takes into account that Aleksei wrote poetry and performed works by Beethoven and Mozart well, then it would seem that he was a model of our contemporary—greedy for knowledge, purposeful. But... he had no comrades, no friends. He liked to repeat: “There are no friends; there are only interested parties.” While discoursing on the subtleties of Japanese-Belgian cuisine, he would leave the table without thanking his grandmother. For 10 years he never once remembered his mother, who had given him everything she could and now lives one-on-one with her grief².

An interest in science, in knowledge, that has not been translated into an incentive for good deeds, into the sphere of civic-mindedness and elementary human kindness, is a form of spiritual deformity. Following such a path, it is impossible to solve the task of the all-round development of the personality.

Thus, the problem of the interrelations of science and morality, as part of the general problem of the interrelations of forms of social consciousness, follows from the demands of reality itself.

It should be noted that in our philosophical literature in recent years there has been a growing attention to the ethical side of science. F. A. Selivanov’s book Ethics deserves attention. In the section “Truth and Virtue,” the author gives a sufficiently well-argued exposition of the question of the unity of scientific knowledge and communist morality. The question of the relation between cognition and moral values receives its special consideration in A. F. Shishkin’s article “On the Ethics of the Scientist,” published in the journal Problems of Philosophy, No. 2, 1966. A profound theoretical substantiation of the idea of the unity of the scientific worldview and communist morality is given in M. Ya. Kovalzon’s brochure Worldview and Morality. It must be acknowledged, however, that the theme of the interconnection of science and morality has not yet acquired full rights in our literature and has not yet received a sufficiently comprehensive analysis.

In the study of this problem, in our view, three main aspects should be distinguished: the difference between science and morality, their interconnection and identity, their coincidence. Establishing the fact of the interconnection of science and morality, we do not yet prove their identity, for the connection between science and morality in capitalist society is a connection between truth and falsehood, a connection of objective knowledge with subjective ideals that contradict social progress and the laws of science. Not every connection between science and morality is their identity. The chief significance in considering this problem lies in substantiating the proposition that there exists an objective criterion of moral values, and, consequently, an objective basis for the coincidence of morality with science and of science with morality.

Science and morality, in the gnoseological plane, are different forms of reflection of reality. The object of science is broader than the object of morality. Science reflects nature, society, and cognition. The object of morality is the interrelation between the individual and society. In morality, the entire totality of relations among people finds its reflection, for in social life there is no sphere in which a person would be independent of other people, of society, and would not be compelled to reckon with them. Nature in itself is not reflected

in morality. No object of natural science has ethical content. Neither differential equations, nor molecules and atoms, nor species and individual animals and plants are either moral or immoral. Even physiology and anatomy, which deal with the human organism, abstract from the moral essence of their object: the vital activity of the human organism in itself is beyond good and evil... The object of morality can only be that which is connected with human activity in society.

Society and the human being are reflected by science and by morality from different sides. Science is the highest form of knowledge expressed in precise concepts and categories. The task of science is to give an exact description of facts, to reflect the general, the lawful, in these facts. The peculiarity of scientific concepts consists in the fact that they exclude anything subjective, introduced by the knowing subject himself.

But the objective facts of social life are always expressed in subjective form—in the form of thoughts and feelings, spiritual interests and needs, desires and aims, ideals and notions of what ought to be. In the categories of morality—“good” and “evil,” “just” and “unjust,” “honorable” and “dishonorable,” “conscience,” and so on—it is not the facts themselves as such that find their immediate reflection, but their reflection in people’s minds, their subjective form of expression. Objective laws are reflected in morality through normative and evaluative judgments and concepts. Science gives direct knowledge of what is; morality, of what ought to be. Through knowledge of what ought to be, morality reflects what is. The categories of science are truths of fact; the categories of morality are categories of obligation. In the process of cognition, therefore, it is impermissible to confuse truth with moral demands and evaluations, or to replace the scientific analysis of reality with moralizing.

The different gnoseological nature of science and morality also leaves its imprint on their structure. The foundation of scientific reflection is the theoretical, abstract-logical level of reflection. In moral consciousness, both the theory of morality (ethics), and the morality of society, and the sphere of so-called everyday consciousness can be raised to the level of scientific-theoretical substantiation; nevertheless, the realm of feelings is not thereby narrowed, but for the first time receives its genuine enrichment and perfection. The sphere of emotional reflection in morality is broader than in science. Love and hatred, pride and contempt, compassion, hostility, gratitude, cruelty, vanity, ambition, respect for human dignity, duty, pangs of conscience, egoism, self-interest, lust for power, modesty, and so on—all these are specifically moral feelings that accompany every human activity, including scientific activity...

Science and morality are different social phenomena. They arise at different times, are generated by different needs, and play different roles in society.

Morality arises with the emergence of the first labor collectives. The formation of labor as conscious, purposeful activity was accompanied by the development of common requirements for the behavior of each individual, proceeding from the interests of preserving and strengthening the given collective. The first norms of morality were not so much positive as negative in character: they constituted requirements to refrain from actions dangerous to the life of the primitive herd. The existence of the first moral norms (taboos) presupposed knowledge that the given actions threatened destruction not only to the violator of the prohibition but also to the entire collective of which he was a member. But knowledge of the danger of certain actions had nothing in common with the reflection of the causes of this danger.

“The very first moral norms were forcibly imposed on nascent human beings by a blind productive necessity, unknown to them and therefore confronting them as an elemental external force, in suppressing animal individualism.” “The collective demands that its members observe taboo not because it recognizes the needs that have found expression in taboo as its own, but out of fear of the consequences that threaten the collective if taboo is violated by one of its members. The collective recognizes as its own need not that which has found its expression in taboo, but the necessity of observing the taboo itself, whose nature remains entirely unclear...”⁴)

Ignorance, people’s helplessness before the mighty forces of nature, turned moral norms into the sole instrument for regulating relations within the collective. Morality is one of the most ancient forms of social consciousness.

Science takes shape as a special form of reflection of social being, as a special kind of activity only with the separation of mental labor from physical labor, that is, at a comparatively high level of development of production, which made it possible to single out cognition as one of the relatively independent areas of social consciousness.

Unlike morality, as a regulator of relations between the individual and society, science performs a cognitive function. It is called upon to give humanity the means of controlling and governing the laws of the external world in order to create better conditions for its existence. Science is the most powerful instrument for regulating the relations between humanity and nature. The strength of society’s influence on nature is measured above all by the degree of development of scientific knowledge. Science has a determining significance in relation to all forms of social consciousness, including in relation to the development of morality. Progress in the sphere of morality is determined by its union with science, with the dialectical-materialist worldview.

Science and morality are connected with production in different ways. If science is called forth by the immediate needs of production and is intended directly to serve it, then the connection of morality with production is mediated by economics, politics, law, science, and worldview.

Such are some of the features of science and morality that condition their relative independence.

Another aspect of the relation between science and morality is their mutual influence, their mutual conditioning. The relativity of the opposition between science and morality follows from the fact that they are included in the structure of a single whole—social consciousness; like all forms of social consciousness, they are a reflection of social being and have a social nature. This commonality creates the basis for the mutual influence of science and morality, for their coincidence under certain conditions.

The objects of science and morality are not separated from one another by an impassable boundary. The object is the subject not only of cognition but also of practice. In mastering the world spiritually, a person determines a practical attitude toward this world, i.e., forms an idea of what significance the known laws of reality have for his own existence, how he must use these laws in order to turn them to good, into conditions for improving his life. This means that, in its movement toward practice, the scientific reflection of the world is supplemented by moral reflection. Truth is a dialectical process of movement from object to subject and from subject to object. The spiritual mastering of the world, embodied in the laws of science, does not stop at this level. The laws

⁴) Yu. I. Semenov. How Humanity Arose. Moscow, 1966, pp. 278–279.

science, before being embodied in real things and relations, pass through the sphere of moral consciousness. The truth of a fact is not an end in itself, but a means of mastering the external world, an instrument of man’s dominion over the elemental forces of nature. It cannot materialize without being transformed into a guide to action, into an incentive, into an act of will. Only by passing through moral consciousness does truth complete its path to practice. Knowledge that has not been translated into the moral sphere is ineffective. In the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences (Logic) Hegel wrote that reason strives, on the one hand, to master the objective content of the world, and on the other—to introduce the subjective into it. “The first striving is the striving of knowledge toward truth, cognition as such—the creative activity of the idea; the second striving is the striving of the good toward its realization—will, the practical activity of the idea.”⁵

In his conspectus of Hegel’s Science of Logic, V. I. Lenin accompanies these thoughts of Hegel with the following remarks: “Very good § 225 of the Encyclopedia, where ‘cognition’ (‘theoretical’) and ‘will,’ ‘practical activity’ are depicted as two sides, two methods, two means of destroying the ‘one-sidedness’ and subjectivity and objectivity.”⁶

Thus, cognition, conviction, will, activity, practice—such is the path from the subjective to the objective. In making the transition to practice, knowledge acquires a moral aspect; it itself becomes a moral value, a good of life, a condition of man’s intellectual perfection.

Moral relations, good or evil—these are deeds either of knowledge or of ignorance, either of truth or of errors and prejudices. Aristotle wrote: “Every bad person does not know what should and what should not be done, and it is precisely this deficiency that makes people unjust and, in general, evil. Ignorance of the choice between good and evil does not lead to an act’s becoming involuntary (and not being imputed), but only to its becoming bad.” Having quoted this, Hegel observes: “Aristotle, of course, grasped more deeply the connection between cognition and volition than that shallow philosophy which teaches that not cognition, but the heart and enthusiasm are the true principles of moral action.”⁷

Moral vices are the product of a one-sided, false view of the world, generated by gnoseological and social causes. In moral consciousness, in the moral qualities of the personality, what finds expression above all is a worldview, the individual’s relation to the world as a whole, and an understanding of his place in it. For example, the religious worldview necessarily gives rise to religious morality as well. Faith in supernatural beings is realized in religious morality, which denies the value of earthly life and calls on one to worship that which does not exist in reality, to live by the illusion of communion with a non-existent god, to prepare oneself for the life beyond the grave, for the salvation of the soul. The imperfection of people’s conditions of life is the principal cause of a distorted understanding of the world, of errors and prejudices. But once the latter have arisen, they become an independent force producing moral vices. Falsehood is the gnoseological soil for the one-sided development of certain properties of the personality at the expense of others, for the stable predominance of some single inclination which, by displacing other motives, leads to vice.

In being transformed into practice, into a means for realizing one or another social ideal, science may acquire various moral—

⁵ Hegel. Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences. Part 1, Moscow, 1930—Leningrad, p. 331.
⁶ V. I. Lenin. Philosophical Notebooks. Moscow, 1965, p. 190.
⁷ F. A. Selivanov. Errors and Vices. Tomsk, 1965, p. 15.

aspects depending on whether these ideas are false or true, whether the practice of particular classes or social groups is false or true. Science can be a good or an evil depending on whether the practical activity in which it is realized is true or false. In the process of realizing knowledge there may arise a contradictory combination of natural-scientific truth with a false understanding of social facts. The illusory character of the reflection of practice creates the illusory character of practice itself, which in essence means the subordination of science to ideals that contradict the objective laws of society and, consequently, science itself. The effort to combine a true reflection of nature with a false understanding of social processes, with narrowly class-based reactionary aims and interests, brings science into contradiction with its own universal human content. Science has been called into life by the practical needs of creating more perfect conditions for the existence of humanity. It is destined to lighten people’s labor, to cure physical and social diseases, to prolong human life, to increase material and spiritual values. The union of knowledge with the false practice of obsolete social forces directs science against itself, makes it immoral, antihuman.

It is precisely such an antagonistic character that the connection between science and morality assumes in contemporary capitalist society. The aspirations of the bourgeoisie are directed against the interests of society as a whole; its ideals do not coincide with the objective logic of history. Therefore it proves incapable of reconciling the truths of natural science (they do not affect the interests of particular classes) with the truths of sociology, which affirm the inevitability of replacing capitalism with socialism. The bourgeoisie refuses to acknowledge the possibility of applying scientific methods to the analysis of social phenomena, for “if the capitalist world applied scientific methods in all areas of inquiry, it would thereby sign its own death sentence”³.

The bourgeoisie, while remaining faithful to its class interests, cannot accept objective truth in the field of social research; it is compelled to distort it. In the sphere of social practice, of moral values and ideals, capitalism cannot help alienating truth from itself, cannot help entering into a hostile relation toward science, toward the reliable reflection of its significance in historical progress. At the basis of the opposition between science and ethics lies the absolutization of the differences between nature and society, between natural science and sociology. If in nature objective law-governedness is recognized, and consequently the scientific significance of the categories of natural science, then in society objective laws are denied, and correspondingly the scientific significance of historical knowledge. The bourgeois worldview is incapable of overcoming the metaphysical opposition between objective necessity and the conscious activity of people, between determinism and freedom. From the standpoint of subjectivist-idealist sociology, society cannot, with the same rigor as nature, be subject to laws independent of people’s consciousness and will. Consequently, the objective criterion disappears both in people’s practical activity and in the theory of values. The good and the bad, the just and the unjust, and so on, are nothing more than subjective opinions and evaluations, having no objective criterion whatever. The methods of science are inapplicable to them; moral judgments lie beyond its limits.

From the rejection of science in the analysis of the practical use of the results of cognition there inevitably follows the subordination of the latter to immoral aims and tasks. Alienation from science in the sphere of the realization

the latter finds its expression above all in the fact of the militarization of science, in the ugly, misanthropic orientation of its development. Never before has the bourgeoisie placed scientific discoveries at the service of war on such a scale as it does now. Seventy-five percent of all U.S. appropriations for scientific activity is spent, in one way or another, on military purposes. Seventy percent of the entire scientific personnel of the capitalist countries is ultimately used for the preparation of war. Monstrous means for the mass destruction of people are being created: the bacilli of plague, cholera, and other diseases, eradicated in Europe as early as the fifteenth century, are now being reproduced under laboratory conditions; thermonuclear, chemical, and space weapons are also being created, capable of destroying hundreds of millions of people^9). Jerome Wiesner, dean of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and, in 1960–1963, the president’s science adviser, declared: “I believe that we are already capable of supermurder”^10). Leading science along the false path of service to its narrowly class-based aims in the struggle against the majority of humanity, the bourgeoisie is trying, both practically and theoretically, to combine truth and falsehood, truth and amoralism. It strives to destroy the humanism of science; but to make science anti-human means to take the path of destroying science itself, for humanism is embedded in the nature of cognition itself. By reflecting the external world in truths, science thereby acts as a mighty means of humanizing both nature and man. Applying scientific knowledge, man, in the instruments of labor and in the material conditions of his existence, creates a new, humanized nature. At the same time, he transforms himself into a genuinely human being, creates himself. “Humanism and science,” writes the contemporary German scholar H. Schmellenmeier, “are two concepts which have long been in close interaction, are mutually intertwined, and cannot be conceived one without the other”^11).

The degree of humaneness of a society is an expression of the extent to which the humanism of science is embodied in real social relations. The class antagonisms of contemporary capitalist society, the growth of amoralism in the sphere of production, politics, and on the social and individual scale (in the United States crime is growing five times faster than the population), the degradation of spiritual culture—all testify to the fact that bourgeois practice is hostile to science; it dehumanizes society and man. Recognition of truth in the field of natural science and rejection of it with respect to the social role of science—such is the nature of the antagonism between science and morality in capitalist society.

The principle of a scientific explanation of social development coincides with the interests only of those classes that are interested in the realization of the objective laws of society. They can fulfill their role as the driving force of social progress only on the condition of a correct reflection of social processes. At the basis of revolutionary activity there always lies a faithful reflection of the objective needs of social development. However, of all revolutionary classes, only the working class, in the person of its ideologists, is capable of creating a scientific reflection of the laws of society, of uniting recognition of natural necessity with recognition of social necessity. If subjective activity, spiritual interests, aims, and tasks are nothing other than an ideal form of material activity, of material needs—

^9) S. I. Popov. Anti-Communism—the Enemy of Science. In: Critique of the Ideology of Anti-Communism. Moscow, 1965, p. 77.
^10) Journal International Affairs, 1966, No. 5, p. 40.
^11) A. F. Shishkin. On the Ethics of the Scientist. Journal Problems of Philosophy, 1959, No. 2, pp. 23–24.

of people, then, consequently, there exists an objective criterion of evaluation, an objective content of morality. This means that what appears in people’s opinions as good or evil may have an objective content. The principle of a materialist understanding of society requires recognition of the possibility that morality and science coincide, for an objective criterion of moral values has been found.

In struggling against the numerous distortions of Marxism in which the latter was portrayed as nothing more than a purely ethical doctrine, allegedly lacking any scientific foundation, V. I. Lenin, in his work The Economic Content of Narodism, finds just the assertion of the German bourgeois sociologist Sombart that “in Marxism itself, from beginning to end, there is not a grain of ethics; in its theoretical aspect, he subordinates the ‘ethical point of view’ to the ‘principle of causality’; in its practical aspect, he reduces it to the class struggle”⁴.

It would be incorrect to suppose that here V. I. Lenin is speaking of the incompatibility of Marxism with morality, or of the denial of the ethical moment in Marxism. In the concrete historical conditions in which the theoretical program of the socialist revolution was being created, under conditions in which Marxism had to be defended as a science, V. I. Lenin emphasizes only one aspect of the strictly scientific character of the teaching of K. Marx and F. Engels. All the conclusions of the proletarian worldview are scientific from beginning to end, and are determined. There is not a single proposition in them that would be merely a subjective demand without a basis in objective reality itself. V. I. Lenin resolutely dissociates himself from attempts to ethicize Marxism, to reduce it to a simple sum of ethical conceptions and ideals. The Marxist conclusion about the inevitability of the victory of communism is a truth, a law of science, an objectively correct reflection of the development of capitalist society. However, what distinguishes this truth from a truth of natural science is that its object (the revolutionary practice of the working people) has not only socio-political but also moral content. Communism is not only a law of society, but at the same time a good for humanity as a whole and for every individual.

Under conditions in which the restructuring of society on communist principles passes from the realm of theory into the sphere of direct practice, one of the conditions of success is the disclosure of Marxism not only from the standpoint of its scientific content, but also from the side of its intellectual, moral, and aesthetic value. At the same time, the analysis of the scientific content of communist morality acquires no small importance. In studying the social sciences one cannot stop at assimilating them only as a sum of scientific categories and views. This, although the main task, does not exhaust the solution of the problem. A system of Marxist truths becomes a real social force only when it is translated into the sphere of moral consciousness and moral relations, transformed into personal conviction, into a stimulus for activity, into a person’s conscience. And this means that Marxism must be assimilated both at the intellectual level and at the emotional-psychological level. A comprehensive mastery of science presupposes penetration into the content of truth both by reason and by feeling. Among all the social theories that have claimed the role of guidance in changing society, only Marxism has indicated those paths and means that create the real foundations of well-being and happiness not for separate groups of people, but for all humanity. Reason, having grasped the tragedies and collisions of humanity, is not capable of giving it spiritual

weapon in the struggle if it is not permeated with the highest moral ideals—not only in the form of ideas, but also of feelings. The moral element is organically interwoven into the rational side of Marxism: the mighty force of love for humanity. Being in direct proportional dependence on the strength of the spirit, this feeling acted as a powerful motive force in the development of reason itself. The logical and the moral-psychological in Marxism are two inseparable aspects, mutually supplementing and enriching one another.

“...The chief guide that must direct us in choosing a profession is the good of humanity, our own perfection. One should not think that these two interests can become hostile, enter into conflict with each other, that one of them must destroy the other; human nature is so constituted that a person can achieve his own perfection only by working for the perfection of his contemporaries, in the name of their good”⁵.

Genuine humanism, the deepest compassion for the sufferings of humanity, an irrepressible, passionate desire to deliver it from these sufferings, from all fetters hindering the perfection of man—this socio-ethical function of the scientific worldview constitutes its flesh, its soul. The scientific worldview is the sole spiritual foundation on which alone the highest intellectual, moral-psychological, and aesthetic capacities and qualities can unfold. The fact that it was precisely the communists—K. Marx, F. Engels, V. I. Lenin, Ya. M. Sverdlov, M. I. Kalinin, S. M. Kirov, F. E. Dzerzhinsky, and many other figures of the revolution—who gave humanity an example of the highest nobility and moral purity, richness, and truly human beauty, is a natural consequence of the transformation of scientific truth into the basis for the formation of all the spiritual qualities of the personality. The objective content of truth is one; there cannot be two truths about one and the same phenomenon. Consequently, there cannot be two equally correct methods of cognition and activity. The maximum development of human capacities can be ensured only by such a mode of thinking as makes it possible most fully to reflect the world and to obtain the most optimal results in the spiritual and practical mastery of the world. Such a method of thought is dialectical materialism. It provides the most effective means of connecting the subject with the objective world. By assimilating this method, by transforming it into individual properties, a person thereby attains the all-round perfection of his creative abilities and creates one of the highest goods for his own existence. All-round moral perfection is possible only on the basis of an all-round reflection of the dialectic of life, on the basis of a scientific worldview. Moral freedom is moral truth joined with deeds; it is dialectical-materialist thinking realized in a person’s thoughts, feelings, and motives. In performing its cognitive function, the scientific worldview at the same time also carries out the function of the moral-psychological formation of the personality. The formation of a person who thinks, feels, and acts communistically is impossible without the organic fusion of the cognitive and educational functions of science, without the transformation of science—and above all of the dialectical-materialist worldview—into the moral-psychological qualities of the personality. Unfortunately, we still do not devote due attention to this side of the matter.

On the other hand, the cultivation of moral qualities is not always placed by us on the ground of science. The rules and norms of behavior, present—

presented to the individual must be disclosed as such requirements of society, the fulfillment of which is objectively necessary for the individual himself, for these requirements are, in their basis, true, scientific, and have a universal human character. By ignoring these requirements, a person stands opposed not only to society but also to himself; he rejects the truth of life. For example, in the requirement of a communist attitude toward labor, the moral norm and the scientific view of the world and of man are fused together. Society requires of each member a feasible participation in socially useful activity above all because labor is the principal and most necessary condition without which neither society nor the individual person can develop and improve. Socially useful labor is objectively necessary for the individual, for only on its basis can a person develop within himself that which makes him a human being in the true sense of the word. We owe everything truly human above all to labor. An individual may possess good natural gifts, but without the tempering of will, mind, and character in labor activity, in social relations, he inevitably degrades and becomes dehumanized. The disintegration of the personality is the inevitable result of man’s alienation from labor, which represents a universal human value. The necessity of this labor is a fact of science, an objective need of social life, one of its most essential properties. The normative requirement to expend one’s energy for the good of society exists in our morality not only as a subjective desire, as a moral norm, but also as a conclusion of the science of society and man.

The criterion of morality in our morality is communism. “We say: morality is that which serves the destruction of the old exploiting society and the unification of all the working people around the proletariat, which is creating a new society of communists”⁶.

This criterion of morality is at the same time a truth, a scientifically grounded conclusion. Only in communist morality, for the first time in history, do the sphere of moral consciousness, moral relations, and ethical theories organically unite with a scientific worldview; they acquire the significance not only of normative judgments, but also of scientific propositions. Our morality is science translated into convictions, stimuli, and actions, into the individual qualities of the personality.

Truth is not indifferent to a person’s moral qualities. It demands of the scientist not just any qualities, but definite ones. And only when the scientific method of thought is combined with these qualities do the scientist’s creative abilities reveal themselves in all their fullness. Every discovery in science is a feat, that is, a phenomenon moral in its character. Every new step in science is connected with the negation of old theories and propositions, with the struggle for truth, for its recognition by the scientific community. In the process of cognition, it is not only the researcher’s purely intellectual capacities that operate; organically included in the fabric of this process are feelings and emotions, moods and will, character and inner motivations toward scientific search. A passionate love of truth, a deep awareness of the good contained in it, the striving to make this good the property of society, may summon the scientist to this search. But he may also be impelled to this search by base motives: vanity, prestige, his own personal well-being. These motives are incompatible with truth, with the nature of cognition itself, which is called upon to multiply the values of culture, to cure physical and social diseases, to prolong human life, and to master the expanses of the Universe. Truth demands above all love for knowledge and for life. An ineradicable thirst for knowledge and for life—this is one of the driving forces of scientific progress.

Love of knowledge means honesty and courage, a principled spirit and the determination, at any moment, to renounce a point of view that was won with great effort and had become close to one’s heart and dear, but proved to be incorrect and mistaken; it means conscientiousness and modesty, the ability to acknowledge the authority and merits of one’s colleagues; it means the collective and personal responsibility of scientists for the results of their research. The history of science knows many examples of a harmonious combination of intellectual qualities that enabled scientists to make great discoveries. M. V. Lomonosov, Charles Darwin, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, V. I. Lenin, D. I. Mendeleev, I. P. Pavlov, I. V. Michurin, the Curies, Rutherford, Langevin, Louis de Broglie, and many other scientists contributed to world culture thanks to the splendid union of their mental abilities with moral perfection. At the same time, however, no one has yet counted how many talents have perished for science and humanity because the moral qualities of scientists contradicted the principles of truth. The study of how these qualities influence scientific creativity seems to us a task both interesting and useful.

1. G. Selsam. Marxism and Morality. Moscow, 1962, pp. 144–145. ↩

2. The newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, 1963, October 25. ↩

3. H. Selsam, Marxism and Morals. Moscow, 1962, p. 153. ↩

4. V. I. Lenin, Works, vol. I, pp. 440–441. ↩

5. K. Marx. “Reflections of a Youth on Choosing a Profession,” in K. Marx and F. Engels, From Early Works. Moscow, 1956, pp. 4–5. ↩

6. V. I. Lenin, Works, vol. 41, p. 311. ↩