From this standpoint alone does history really become a history of mankind. For it contains nothing that does not lead back ultimately to men and to the relations between men. It is because Feuerbach gave this new direction to philosophy that he was able to exercise such a decisive influence on the origins of historical materialism. However, by transforming philosophy into anthropology he caused man to become frozen in a fixed objectivity and thus pushed both dialectics and history to one side. And precisely this is the great danger every" humanism'or anthropological point of view. [51 For if man is made the measure of all things, and if with the aid of that assumption all transcendence is to be eliminated without man himself being measured against this criterion, without applying the same standard'to himself or-more exactly - without making man himself dialectical, then man himself is made into an absolute and he simply puts himself in the place of those transcendental forces he was supposed to explain, dissolve and systematically replace. At best, then, a dogmatic metaphysics is superseded by an equally dogmatic relativism This dogmatism arises because the failure to make man dialectical is complemented by equal failure to make, reality dialectical. Hence relativism moves within an essentially static world. As it cannot become conscious of the immobility of the world and the rigidity of its own standpoint it inevitably reverts to the dogmatic position of those thinkers who likewise offered to explain the world from premises they did not consciously acknowledge and which therefore, they adopted uncritically. For it is one thing to relativise the truth about ar individual or a species in an ultimately static world(masked though this stasis may be by an illusory movement like the"eternal recurrence of the same things" or the biological or morphological organic'succession of periods ). And it is quite another matter when the concrete, historical function and meaning of the various truths is revealed within a unique concretised historical process. Only in the former case can we accurately speak of relativism But in that case it inevitably becomes dogmatic. For it is only meaningful to speak of relativism where an absolute' is in some sense assumed The weakness and the half- heartedness of such daring thinkers'as Nietzsche or Spengler is that their relativism only abolishes the absolute in appearance For, from the standpoint of both logic and method, the systematic location'of the absolute is to be found just where the apparent movement stops The absolute is nothing but the fixation of thought, it is the projection into myth of the intellectual failure to understand reality concretely as a historical process. Just as the relativists have only appeared to dissolve the world into movement, so too they have only appeared to exile the absolute from their systems. Every 'biological relativism, etc, that turns its limits into'eternal limits thereby involuntarily reintroduces the absolute, the timeless principle of thought. And as long as the absolute survives in a system(even unconsciously) it will prove logically stronger than al attempts at relativism. For it represents the highest principle of thought attainable in undialectical universe, in a world of ossified things and a logical world of ossified concepts sophists, and logic and value theory must be in the right as against pragmatism andhst the So that here both logically and methodologically Socrates must be in the right as aga What these relativists are doing is to take the present philosophy of man with its social and historical limits and to allow these to ossify into aneternal limit of a biological or pragmat ort. Actuated either by doubt or despair they thus stand revealed as a decadent version of the very rationalism or religiosity they mean to oppose. Hence they may sometimes be a not unimportant symptom of the inner weakness of the society which produced the rationalism they are combating,. But they are significant only as symptoms. It is always the culture theyFrom this standpoint alone does history really become a history of mankind. For it contains nothing that does not lead back ultimately to men and to the relations between men. It is because Feuerbach gave this new direction to philosophy that he was able to exercise such a decisive influence on the origins of historical materialism. However, by transforming philosophy into ‘anthropology’ he caused man to become frozen in a fixed objectivity and thus pushed both dialectics and history to one side. And precisely this is the great danger in every ‘humanism’ or anthropological point of view. [51] For if man is made the measure of all things, and if with the aid of that assumption all transcendence is to be eliminated without man himself being measured against this criterion, without applying the same ‘standard’ to himself or – more exactly – without making man himself dialectical, then man himself is made into an absolute and he simply puts himself in the place of those transcendental forces he was supposed to explain, dissolve and systematically replace. At best, then, a dogmatic metaphysics is superseded by an equally dogmatic relativism. This dogmatism arises because the failure to make man dialectical is complemented by an equal failure to make, reality dialectical. Hence relativism moves within an essentially static world. As it cannot become conscious of the immobility of the world and the rigidity of its own standpoint it inevitably reverts to the dogmatic position of those thinkers who likewise offered to explain the world from premises they did not consciously acknowledge and which, therefore, they adopted uncritically. For it is one thing to relativise the truth about an individual or a species in an ultimately static world (masked though this stasis may be by an illusory movement like the “eternal recurrence of the same things” or the biological or morphological ‘organic’ succession of periods). And it is quite another matter when the concrete, historical function and meaning of the various ‘truths’ is revealed within a unique, concretised historical process. Only in the former case can we accurately speak of relativism. But in that case it inevitably becomes dogmatic. For it is only meaningful to speak of relativism where an ‘absolute’ is in some sense assumed. The weakness and the half￾heartedness of such ‘daring thinkers’ as Nietzsche or Spengler is that their relativism only abolishes the absolute in appearance. For, from the standpoint of both logic and method, the ‘systematic location’ of the absolute is to be found just where the apparent movement stops. The absolute is nothing but the fixation of thought, it is the projection into myth of the intellectual failure to understand reality concretely as a historical process. Just as the relativists have only appeared to dissolve the world into movement, so too they have only appeared to exile the absolute from their systems. Every ‘biological’ relativism, etc., that turns its limits into ‘eternal’ limits thereby involuntarily reintroduces the absolute, the ‘timeless’ principle of thought. And as long as the absolute survives in a system (even unconsciously) it will prove logically stronger than all attempts at relativism. For it represents the highest principle of thought attainable in an undialectical universe, in a world of ossified things and a logical world of ossified concepts. So that here both logically and methodologically Socrates must be in the right as against the sophists, and logic and value theory must be in the right as against pragmatism and relativism. What these relativists are doing is to take the present philosophy of man with its social and historical limits and to allow these to ossify into an ‘eternal’ limit of a biological or pragmatic sort. Actuated either by doubt or despair they thus stand revealed as a decadent version of the very rationalism or religiosity they mean to oppose. Hence they may sometimes be a not unimportant symptom of the inner weakness of the society which produced the rationalism they are ‘combating’. But they are significant only as symptoms. It is always the culture they