Metafizyka w marksizmie? – Materializm dialektyczny i jego konsekwencje w ujęciu o. Józefa Marii Bocheńskiego

Father Józef Maria Bocheński OP (1902– 1995) was considered a leading sovieto­logist. At the University of Fribourg, he founded in 1957 the Institute of Eastern Europe, in which the doctrine of Marxism-Leninism was studied scien­tifically. The results were published in the journal „Studies in Soviet Thought”. He initiated the uprising in Cologne Ost-Kolleg, where knowledge about So­viet philosophy and communism was disseminated. In the years 1961–1962 he was also its director. In his publications he undertook, among others the question of the me­taphysics of Marxism, seeing it general­ly in dialectical materialism and, in spe­cific applications, also in historical materialism. Criticizing this trend of thought, he focused on its latest findin­gs, developed in the Soviet philosophy in the fifties of the twentieth century. Approaching the criticism from an exter­nal point of view, he pointed out some significant inconsistencies of Marxist materialism. According to the first law of dialectics, it proclaims a universal cau­se-effect determinism, and at the same time allows for the occurrence of ran­dom events. Explaining the existence of consciousness in matter with the adop­ted concept of cognition, Marxism mixes the epistemological and ontological or­der. Moreover, this trend uses the unscientific understanding of matter. On the basis of the considerations of Father Bocheński, it can also be concluded that the fundamental inconsistency of Marxist materialism is the acceptance of the existence of a spiritual element (con­sciousness) different in quality from mat­ter, while maintaining the thesis that there is only matter and what comes from it