A gênese da concepção dialética da natureza de Friedrich Engels (1858-1873)

Abstract

This research inquires the genesis of Friedrich Engels’ dialectical conception of nature. Exposed, in its general lines, in works such as the unfinished Dialectics of nature (1873-1882), the Anti-Dühring (1876-1878) and Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of Classical German Philosophy (1886-1888), it was formulated in the late 1850s and matured over the course of the 1860s, in constant contact with the natural sciences and philosophies of his time. The research follows the main moments of the genesis and development of this conception and the theoretical and ideopolitical context of each one of these moments. In the Introduction, we make methodological considerations, justify the scope and object of the research and present an overview of the issues surrounding Engels’ dialectic of nature. In chapter 1, The insight of a dialectic of nature, we look into: 1) Engels’ finding that new scientific discoveries attested to the occurrence of dialectical phenomena in nature; 2) his description to Marx, in his letter of July 14, 1858, of these phenomena – the documentary mark of the then nascent dialectical conception; and 3) the philosophical repercussions of such a finding, especially the outlines of a theoretical program that, even if it did not materialize at that moment in a proper writing project, would direct his subsequent scientific and natural-philosophical studies towards the foundation of a materialistic natural dialectic. Finally, in chapter 2, The “natural-historical basis for our views”: the Engelsian reception of Darwin’s work, we follow, from the impact that the theory of evolution of species had on Engels’ thought, the development of his dialectical conception throughout the 1860s, until its culmination, in a letter to Marx of May 30, 1873, in a project to write a Dialectics of nature.