Up to this point, Engels says, he has let the claims of Duhring, in relation to the existence of absolute and eternal truths slide. In relation to natural philosophy, we accept a whole series of such “truths”, because they are tautological and, for all everyday, practical purposes, “true”. That 2 + 2 = 4, is, on this basis, true, and always will be true, even though, as described earlier, when considered concretely, for example, two raindrops + two raindrops may equal one large raindrop, and so on, it is not true. But, Engels notes, it is now that Duhring seeks to make these claims in relation to social science, to morals, laws and history that such tolerance cannot continue.
“So far it has been enough to inquire how far the separate assertions of the philosophy of reality had 'sovereign validity' and 'an unconditional claim to truth'; now we come to the question whether any, and if so which, products of human knowledge ever can have sovereign validity and an unconditional claim to truth.” (p 107)
Is human thought sovereign, Engels asks? If we mean the thought of any individual, then, clearly not. But, if what is meant is the totality of all human thought, all of this sum of human knowledge, past, present and future, “then, I say that the total thought of all these human beings, including the as yet unborn, which is embraced in my idea, is sovereign, able to know the world as it exists, if only mankind lasts long enough and in so far as no limits are imposed on its knowledge by its organs of knowledge or the objects to be known, then I am saying something which is pretty banal and, what is more, pretty barren. For the most valuable result would be that it should make us extremely distrustful of our present knowledge, since in all probability we are just about at the beginning of human history, and the generations which will correct us are likely to be far more numerous than those whose knowledge we are in a position to correct – often enough with considerable contempt.” (p 107)
In other words, there is a fundamental contradiction in Duhring's argument, which seeks to assert not only that these absolute and eternal truths exist, but that he has uncovered the key to identifying them. In the same way that he is contemptuous of the thinkers that went before him, and what he sees as their errors, it would be inevitable that future generations would find the errors contained in his thinking, not simply of the absolute and eternal truths he set out, but also in his method of identifying them. The reality of what he argues, as with Proudhon, is not this sovereignty of human thoughts, but the sovereignty of his own thought, passed off as objectively determined laws.
“In other words, the sovereignty of thought is realised in a series of human beings whose thinking is most unsovereign; the knowledge which has an unconditional claim to truth is realised in a series of relative errors; neither the one nor the other can be fully realised except through an unending duration of human existence.” (p 108)
In fact, even if humanity survived into an infinite future, its knowledge of reality would continually expand and deepen, but would be unlikely to ever be absolute.
“In this sense human thought is just as much sovereign as not sovereign, and its capacity for knowledge just as much unlimited as limited. It is sovereign and unlimited in its disposition, its vocation, its possibilities and its final historical goal; it is not sovereign and it is limited in its individual fulfilment and in reality at any particular moment.” (p 108-9)
Are there truths so well established that we can accept them as absolute or eternal, Engels asks? Of course, Engels replies, citing the examples of 2 + 2 = 4, the internal angles of a triangle equating 180 degrees, that Paris is in France, and that a man who gets no food dies of hunger. In fact, all these could be challenged, contrary to Engels' claim. The relative nature of the first has already been described. In fact, illustrating Engels' broader argument, the second has also been proved to be only relatively true, i.e. it applies to Euclidean geometry. If we take a triangle on the surface of a sphere, its internal angles do not equal 180 degrees, just as in this case, the shortest distance between two points is not a straight line.
If we examine the third example, its clearly not an eternal truth. Paris existed before France, and the borders of France may change, as happens with national borders over time, due to wars, annexations and so on. Moreover, what is meant by the word Paris? It refers to a city, but as with all cities, it is constantly changing. Properties are added and removed, people are born and die, move and so on. For all intents and purposes, we can accept that Paris is in France, but it is then trivial.
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