Materialistic philosophy and its types. Meaning of the word materialism

MATERIALISM (from Latin materials - material) - English. materialism; German Materialismus. A philosophical orientation, in contrast to idealism, proceeds from the fact that the world is material, exists objectively outside and independently of consciousness... Sociological Dictionary

Materialism is a philosophical scientific direction. There are several options for understanding this term: spontaneous confidence that the external world is the only existing objective reality, and a philosophical view, which represents the development and deepening of spontaneous confidence. Materialism and idealism as philosophical movements are directly opposite to each other.

What kind of teaching is this?

Materialism is a philosophy that states that everything material is primary, and the spiritual is secondary. Consciousness is considered only a product of primary matter. That is why materialism and idealism are conflicting systems based on the recognition of primary and secondary principles and consequences. The materialistic approach considers consciousness as a reflection of the external world. Thus, nature is knowable.

Historical background and effect

Materialism is a fairly ancient teaching. Since ancient times, this worldview was mainly held by representatives of the advanced strata of society and classes who were interested in understanding the universe and strengthening the power of humanity over nature. Materialism contributed to the development of scientific knowledge and methods and their improvement. In turn, this had a positive impact on human practice and the development of the forces of production. Materialism is a doctrine that is closely related to the development of special applied and theoretical sciences.

History of learning in the ancient world

This kind of thought first appeared among philosophers who lived in societies with prosperous slave system. In India, Greece and China, many centuries before our era, ideas were born about the knowability of the material world, about the fact that it exists independently of people and their consciousness. This is typical for Lao Tzu, Wang Chong, Heraclitus, Democritus, Epicurus, Empedocles, Anaxagoras and others. Many materialists of antiquity were the predecessors of such a trend as dialectical materialism, which was developed by Karl Marx many centuries later. Representatives of ancient materialism tried to find the common primordial beginning of everything that happens and exists in all natural diversity. At the same time, the hypothesis of the atomic structure of matter was formed. Most philosophers of the time did not distinguish between the mental and the physical. Also, the development of dialectical and materialistic views was combined with the strong influence of mythology.

History of teaching in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance

Medieval materialism is nominalism, that is, the doctrine of the “ultimate nature of God.” The so-called early pantheistic heresies also belong to these ideas. During the Renaissance, materialist teaching was clothed in the form of hylozoism and pantheism, which indicates adherence to ancient views. This view received its development only closer to end of XVII centuries thanks to Bacon, Galileo, Hobbes, Gassendi, Spinoza and Locke. Renaissance materialism is a view based on emerging capitalism and the growth of science, technology and production. Materialists acted as ideologists of the progressive bourgeoisie, fought against scholasticism, the authority of the church, turning to experience as a teacher and nature as a philosophical object.

History of learning in the Age of Enlightenment

Materialism is a doctrine that is largely connected with the then progressing sciences - mechanics, mathematics. Unlike their natural philosopher predecessors, materialists in the eighteenth century began to view the elements of nature as qualityless and inanimate. The peculiarity of the teaching of this era is the desire for division natural phenomena on isolated objects and areas, analysis of their development. Among the famous thinkers of the materialist trend, French philosophers of the eighteenth century occupy a prominent place - Diderot, La Mettrie, Holbach. The pinnacle of development is considered to be Feuerbach's anthropological materialism, in which pre-Marxian contemplation was visible. In the countries of Eastern Europe in the nineteenth century, revolutionary democratic philosophy appeared (Herzen, Belinsky, Votev, Markovich, Dobrolyubov, Chernyshevsky and others), which relied on the traditions of Radishchev and Lomonosov in a number of metaphysical and anthropological problems.

Further development

Dialectical materialism (which emerged at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries) is generally accepted highest form this philosophical trend. It was developed in the mid-nineteenth century by Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx. Dialectical materialism overcame the shortcomings of the “classical” one, and also criticized the idealistic understanding of society. One of the features of its development is the enrichment with new ideas. In the further history of philosophy, two main trends are visible. On the one hand - dialectical and historical materialism. On the other hand, there are simplified and vulgarized varieties of it. Vulgar materialism is the so-called “revision of Marxism”. It represents a distorted form of Marxist dialectic. In the nineteenth century, materialism proved to be virtually incompatible with the interests of the bourgeois class. Philosophers of this class accused him of immorality, of misunderstanding the nature of human consciousness. Many rejected cognitive-theoretical optimism and atheism, but accepted certain elements of the materialist worldview (Carnap, Sartre, Bachelard).

Dialectical Marxism

Dialectical materialism is a whole set of system-forming principles:

Unity and integrity of being as a universal developing system, which includes all forms and manifestations of reality from objective matter to subjective thinking;

The materiality of the world is the statement that matter in relation to human consciousness is primary, determines it and is reflected in it;

Cognizability of the world - the world is cognizable, and only production and social practice is a measure of its knowledge;

The principle of constant, continuous development, the source of which is the resolution and emergence of ever new contradictions;

Transformation of the world, since the goal of society is to obtain freedom, which would ensure the harmonious all-round development of the individual and society as a whole.

The goal of dialectical materialism is the desire to combine all the achievements of dialectics and materialism as methods of cognition and transformation in a truly objective manner existing world(reality). This form differs from all previous forms of this teaching in that the principles of philosophy extend to the understanding of the functioning and development of society. Its functions are to substantiate the synthesis of sciences for a unified picture of the universe.

All materialists are united by the solution to the main question of philosophy: being determines consciousness.

Materialism presupposes the opposition of being and consciousness. By asserting the primacy of being in relation to consciousness, materialists understand by being an objective reality independent of consciousness.

It turns out that the definition of matter is based on solving the main question of philosophy. Matter is an objective reality that exists outside consciousness and is actively reflected by it.

Beyond the main question of philosophy, materialists can talk about being in a broader sense, as existence. Both material objects and even ideal ideas (both stars and mental ideas about them in consciousness) have existence. But materialists strive to clearly distinguish between material existence and ideal, spiritual existence. To be (exist) in consciousness is something different than to exist (to be) in the material world. Matter exists differently from consciousness. Only it has an objective, independent, independent existence, and consciousness, ideal, has only a secondary, dependent existence, existing only in connection with the material.

Considering the history of the development of materialism, we distinguish three of its main historical forms:

• 1) naive (spontaneous);
• 2) metaphysical;
• 3) dialectical;

as well as some intermediate transitional forms.

In my first historical form Materialism originated in ancient philosophy. This form of it is called “naive” or “spontaneous” materialism, since the theoretical justification of the materialist view of the world has not yet been developed. Naive materialism relied mainly on everyday observations and everyday experience of people.

So, in India in VIII-VII BC. The materialistic teaching of the semi-legendary sage Brihaspati - lokayata (Sanskrit loca - "world") is emerging. Lokayata is based on a skeptical attitude towards the dogma of religious teachings dominant in India. The Lokayats denied the dogma of the immortality of the soul, believing that there is and cannot be any other life other than earthly life. They recognized only this world (loka) and its laws as existing.

Ancient thinkers put forward the idea of ​​the origin of all things in the surrounding world from a single origin, which is uncreated and indestructible, independent of people and gods. This origin was presented to them in the form of a certain substance that serves as the starting material for the formation of all things - matter. Ancient naive materialists imagined its nature differently, identifying it with specific substances known to them.

The first ancient Greek materialists called the first principle of all things, that is, primary matter:

• - Thales (c.625-c.547 BC) - water; everything came from water and will eventually turn into water, since water, moisture is the source of life;
• - Anaximenes (585-525 BC) - air; all things are products of air, formed by its condensation or rarefaction;
• - Heraclitus (520-460 BC) - fire; everything comes from fire and ultimately turns into fire. “This cosmos,” he wrote, “is the same for all that exists; no god or man created it; it has always been, is and will be an eternally living fire, igniting in measures and extinguishing in measures.”

Heraclitus emphasized the idea of ​​continuous movement, change of the world, its inconsistency and mutual transformation of opposites as the cause of the emergence and death of all things, that is, the idea of ​​dialectics. The word “dialectics” was originally used by Greek philosophers to describe the art of arguing, dialogue, in which truth is achieved based on the confrontation of opinions. Over time, this concept acquired a broader meaning: it began to be applied to all processes in which a clash of opposites occurs, and on the basis of this a new one is born. Now dialectics is understood as a method of thinking, as a system of general methodological principles that requires the study of all phenomena in their inconsistency, variability, development and interconnection.

Representatives of early materialism interpreted matter as the original substance (substance, fundamental principle) from which everything that exists is built. It was believed that this substance is eternal, uncreated and indestructible. However, attempts to consider some of the sensory substances as a fundamental principle explained little.

The first concept of matter that could help understand the world was proposed by ancient atomists: Leucippus, Democritus (460-370 BC), Epicurus and others. All bodies, according to this theory, consisted of a substance called atoms (Greek atomos - “indivisible”) - the smallest particles floating in cosmic space. Colliding, sticking together, interlocking with each other, they form everything visible things, the properties of which depend on the shape, size, location and movement of their constituent atoms.

Many ideas of the ancient materialists - about infinity, about the multitude of worlds, about atoms, about primary matter, about dialectics - later played a huge role in the development of philosophy and science.

A lot of time passed between naive materialism and metaphysical materialism, during which idealism developed. Only a few philosophical theories - medieval nominalism, the concepts of D. Bruno (1548-1600) and G. Galileo (1564-1642) - had a materialistic orientation and partly anticipated the next stage of development.

Metaphysical materialism appeared in the modern era (XVII-XVIII centuries). Its most important feature is metaphysics - the absence of universal connection, change and development in the world. The English philosopher F. Bacon (1561-1626) is considered the founder of this trend. He did not recognize scholasticism and wanted to free human consciousness from prejudices that prevent the knowledge of the truth. In his opinion, it is necessary to decompose an object into separate aspects, qualities, and decompose each such quality into even simpler ones. Then you should find the laws that determine the essence of the simplest elements found, and see how they are combined in a particular thing. This method of explaining all complex things in the world on the basis of the principles of mechanics - mechanism - dominated in the science of the 17th-18th centuries. Everything in the world - nature, society, man - was presented in the form of huge complex mechanisms consisting of a set of “parts” that move in accordance with the laws of mechanics along given trajectories.

The Dutch materialist philosopher B. Spinoza (1632-1677) considered nature to be an eternal substance that creates itself and manifests itself through its many modes (properties, states), such as movement, and attributes (root properties), such as thinking.

An important contribution to the development of materialist philosophy in the 18th century. contributed by the Russian thinker M.V. Lomonosov (1711-1765). He believed that matter consists of atoms that form molecules (corpuscles) in their compounds, of which all “sensible bodies” are composed.

However, already in the 17th century. It was discovered that there are natural phenomena that cannot be explained on the basis of the atomic concept (the propagation of light or the action of gravitational forces). And the ethereal concept of Descartes, who, like Aristotle, understood ether as a continuous medium that fills all cosmic space, became widespread. Therefore, the simplest element of matter is not an atom, but an ethereal vortex, and each object is a combination and interaction of many ethereal vortexes.

As a result of the combination of teachings about atoms and ether in the 18th-19th centuries. the atomic-ether concept was formed. It states that matter exists in the form of atoms and in the form of ether, manifesting itself in various states(atoms and fields, quanta and waves).

The main merit of metaphysical materialism to science is the dissemination of its ideas, which with difficulty made their way through idealism and religion. Representatives of French materialism J. La Mettrie (1709-1751), D. Diderot (1713-1784), P. Holbach (1723-1789) did especially a lot.

He strongly emphasized the connection between idealism and religion and revealed the earthly origins of the origin of religion, faith in God and afterlife German philosopher L. Feuerbach (1804-1872). He bases his teaching on human nature, and his materialism is called anthropological. " New philosophy“,” he wrote, “transforms man, including nature as the basis of man, into a single, universal and highest subject of philosophy.”

In the 19th century the inability of the metaphysical method to cope with the problems of science and social life forces materialists to reconsider it. Attempts are being made to introduce elements of dialectics into materialism, for example philosophical ideas A.I. Herzen (1812-1870), N.G. Chernyshevsky (1828-1889), which can be considered as transitional forms to the third stage of the development of materialism, called dialectical. Here are its features:

• 1) materialistic view of the world;
• 2) dialectical consideration of all phenomena in universal interconnection and development;
• 3) dialectical-materialist explanation social phenomena and processes;
• 4) recognition of the fundamental role of active practice in cognition.

Historically the first form dialectical materialism Marxist philosophy appeared - the teachings of K. Marx (1818-1883) and F. Engels (1820-1895), which developed in the middle of the 19th century. Marxism arose as a political, ideological teaching that responded to the historical needs of its time.

But even though reality has refuted the effectiveness of Marxist teachings about class struggle, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the theory of the development of capitalism and others, the influence of Marxist ideology most significantly affected the labor movement in capitalist countries, the accomplishment of revolutions and coups d'etat. It is impossible to deny the role of Marxism in the colossal changes that took place in the 20th century.

Marxism, in its philosophical essence, was the original form of dialectical materialism. It was he who first formulated the basic ideas of this direction.

In the emergence of dialectical materialism, along with socio-economic factors, achievements in the development of natural science and philosophy played a huge role. During this period, the following discoveries were made, indicating the dialectical nature of natural processes:

• a) the cellular structure of living organisms (1838-1839) indicated unity organic world and existence general laws its development;
• b) the law of conservation and transformation of energy (1842-1847) testified to the relationship and mutual transitions various forms movement of matter;
• c) Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory showed that existing species animal and plant organisms are the result of long evolution.

All these and many other achievements natural sciences first half of the 19th century contributed to the substantiation of the most important principles of dialectical materialism and the development of a consistently scientific worldview.

Dialectical materialism, having social and natural scientific prerequisites, continued many progressive ideas put forward by previous thinkers, associated primarily with the German classical philosophy XVIII-XIX centuries, especially with the philosophical views of Hegel and Feuerbach.

Feuerbach criticized Hegel's objective idealism. He showed that nature and the world exist independently of consciousness, that consciousness is a property of nature. But, criticizing Hegel, Feuerbach did not highlight the rational core of Hegel's philosophy - dialectics. Feuerbach's materialism was essentially metaphysical. Marx and Engels made it dialectical.

What new did the teachings of Marxism bring to the philosophical direction of materialism?

Dialectical materialism believes that the world (matter) is in constant motion (development), caused by the struggle of opposites inherent in all things and phenomena of nature and society. Materialism before Marx was contemplative; its representatives believed that the world could be known through intelligibility, theoretically. Marxism introduced into the theory of knowledge (epistemology) the concept of practice - the purposeful object-transforming activity of people. According to dialectical materialism, the world is cognized not by contemplating occurring phenomena, but in the course and result of active human activity aimed at the practical transformation of the surrounding reality.

Development of philosophy in the twentieth century. shows that modern materialism represents the continuation and development of the basic ideas and principles of dialectical materialism, and not their denial. They have not exhausted their capabilities and continue to play important role in the implementation of ideological, social and methodological functions of philosophy.

In ancient Greece: Democritus,

In German classical philosophy: Feuerbach,

In Russian philosophy: Lomonosov, Herzen, Chernyshevsky.

In Russian cosmism: Tsiolkovsky, Vernadsky.

.Metaphysical materialism- a doctrine that recognizes the primacy of matter, but denies the development and interconnection of material objects.

Dialectical materialism- a doctrine that recognizes not only the primacy of matter, but also the development and interconnection of material objects. Founders : Marx, Engels.

Dialectical materialism = materialist dialectics.

Contemplative materialism– a doctrine in which the knowledge of material objects is understood as the result of their passive contemplation.

Materialism is vulgar– the doctrine according to which consciousness is a type of matter: “The brain secretes consciousness, like the liver secretes bile”

Matter- this is an objective reality given to us in sensations ( Lenin).

Mechanical (Newtonian) the picture of the world was based on the concepts of an indivisible corpuscle, absolute space and time, infinite speed of movement, continuity, etc.

Mythological the picture of the world is characterized anthropomorphism(endowing nature with humanoid creatures, transferring human properties to nature).

Monism- a doctrine in which only one principle is recognized as primary: either material or spiritual. Materialism = materialistic monism. Idealism = idealistic monism.

Monotheism – the doctrine that there is only one God (monotheism). (Christianity and Islam are monotheistic religions)

Worldview is a system of knowledge about the world and man’s place in it.

Natural philosophy – this is a philosophy of nature, speculative knowledge about nature without relying on experimental natural science.

Nominalism – direction in medieval philosophy, according to which universals (general concepts) do not really exist, since they are only forms of thought. Nominalism is a manifestation of materialism.

Opinion– a person’s view of something.

Modeling– study of an object by replacing it with a model – physical or ideal.

Observation– this is the perception of an object in natural conditions that the subject cannot control and reproduce.

The science arose in the 16th – 17th centuries.

Scientific revolution– the process of displacing the old paradigm and replacing it with a new one.

Scientific and technological revolution– qualitative changes in engineering and technology of the 20th century.

Non-scientific forms knowledge: parascience, pseudoscience.

Carrier of cognitive activity– subject (not an individual, but a society.)

Society is a supra-natural, supra-individual community of people, which is the result of their joint activities. Spheres of society: material and production, social, political, spiritual.

Ontology – the doctrine of being.

"Axial Age"- the time when human history began (Jaspers)

Alienation- exists when the results of human activity separated from it and began to dominate over it.

Pantheism- a doctrine in which God is identified with nature. “God is, as it were, dissolved in nature.” Representative - Sleep your nose(17th century), Hegel(19th century)

Patristics– philosophical activity of the Church Fathers – the first stage of medieval philosophy (II–VIII centuries).( Augustine)

Personalism (Munier, Wright) has two directions: p atheistic personalism– the doctrine of the human personality as the highest value. Personality manifests itself in an independent position and in creativity. Religious personalism- the doctrine according to which the world is a manifestation of the creative activity of God as a supreme personality.

Pluralism– the doctrine according to which a plurality of first principles is accepted as primary (monadology Leibniz, atomism Democritus).

Positivism – philosophy Sciences. Founder Comte, representative Spencer. In its development, positivism went through three stages: 1) positivism proper (XIX century), 2) neopositivism (XX century), 3) post-positivism (XX century). the main problem: what knowledge should be considered positive (positive).

According to positivism ( Stage 1), only scientific knowledge is positive. Philosophical knowledge is not such (Comte).

According to neopositivism, or logical positivism, positive is that scientific knowledge that corresponds to the rules logic (Russell, Wittgenstein). Principle (method) verification.

According to postpositivism, Positive knowledge is that knowledge in which it is fundamentally possible to detect an error. ( Popper). Principle (method) falsification.

Cognition– is a reflection of reality in human consciousness (dialectical materialism).

Peace - this is the moment of movement.

Polytheism – polytheism. Buddhism is a polytheistic religion.

Concept is a unit of thought that reflects essential features in the form of a word.

Pragmatism – doctrine according to which philosophy should help a person achieve success in different life situations. That knowledge is true, which helps to achieve success in practice. ( Pierce, James, Dewey).

Providentialism- the doctrine of the divine destiny of the historical process, the predetermination of events in nature and society.

Assumption- unproven knowledge.

Principle of coevolution– the principle of coordinated development of society and nature.

Nature- part of the material world not created by man.

Space is the order in which objects are arranged, time is the order in which they change.

Space– multidimensional, homogeneous, isotropic.

Development - directed qualitative change of objects.

Rationalism- the doctrine according to which the main role in knowledge is played by reason (ration - reason). Founder – Descartes.

Rational cognition, or abstract thinking– this is a reflection significant, fundamental, deep properties of an object that are not perceived by the senses.

Forms rational cognition (logical thinking): concept, judgment, inference.

Religious the picture of the world is characterized by the principle creation and doubling of the world(on earthly and otherworldly).

Realism- a direction in medieval philosophy, according to which only universals(universal concepts).

Relativism- a doctrine that denies objective truth, since everything is relative.

Self-organization system is its ability to modify its structure.

Sensualism – doctrine according to which main role feelings (sense – feelings) play in cognition. "There is nothing in the mind

whatever is in the feelings.”

Synergetics– the science of self-organization systems ( Prigogine)

Synthesis– a method of cognition of an object by combining its parts into a single whole.

System– differentiated and holistic unity of elements.

Skepticism- a doctrine in which doubt in previous knowledge - this is the main principle of knowledge ( Descartes).

Consciousness- This is a person’s ability to reflect the world in ideal images. It includes three spheres: 1) cognitive (thinking and feelings), 2) emotional, 3) volitional.

The main properties of consciousness: intentionality, ideality, activity.

Forms of consciousness:individual and public

Solipsism – the position according to which the world is just the totality of our sensations. Things exist insofar as a person perceives them. A man dies and the world disappears with him.

Social Darwinism– biologizing concept of man and society.

Socialization is the process of an individual’s assimilation of patterns of behavior, social norms, knowledge, and skills that allow him to function in society.

Sociogenesis– the process of formation and development of society.

Substance – the origin, the root cause and the bearer of all things.

Judgment– reflection of essential features in the form of a sentence in which something is affirmed or denied.

Scholasticism– the second stage in the development of medieval philosophy (IX - XIV centuries) ( Thomas Aquinas). A combination of Aristotle's philosophy and theology. The doctrine of dual truth, the truths of reason and the truths of faith.

Scientism- a doctrine that exaggerates the role of science.

Theoretical level of knowledge: at this level the subject does not directly interact with the object, but works with the results obtained at the empirical level. The goal is to put forward a hypothesis, create a theory.

Symbol theory- the doctrine according to which knowledge is not an image, but only symbol object (Helmholtz).

Factor theory recognizes the equivalence of economic, technical, natural and other conditions in the development of society

Technological determinism– recognition of the decisive role of technology in the development of society.

Work– expedient human activity aimed at transforming nature and society

Inference– this is a reflection of essential features in the form of a set of sentences connected by logical rules.

Phenomenology– teaching , according to which the task of philosophy is to describe phenomena. (Husserl). Shares the position of agnosticism. (20th century)

Formation is a specific historical type of society, allocated according to the method of material production.

Sensory cognition- this is a reflection of the surface properties of an object perceived by the senses.

Forms sensory knowledge : sensation, perception, idea.

Eudaimonism– the doctrine according to which the meaning of a person’s life and the goal of all his activities is to achieve happiness.

Existentialism– the doctrine of existence person. ( Sartre, Camus, Heidegger)

Experiment– perception of an object in artificially created conditions that the subject can control and reproduce.

Empiricism– the doctrine according to which the main role in cognition is played by experience (empirio – experience). Founder - Bacon.

Empirical level of knowledge: at this level the subject directly interacts with the object . The goal is to analyze the facts.

Eschatology – doctrine of end of the world.

Aesthetics - y reading about beauty.

Ethics– the doctrine of morality, about good and evil.

History of materialism

The development of materialism can be traced in the history of world philosophical thought from its origins to today. Materialistic ideas are also reflected in the history of Eastern philosophy (China, Korea, Japan, India). One of the first exponents of materialism in India was Ajita Kesakambala. According to some researchers, the materialist tradition in China has deep historical roots. The philosopher Wang Chong is considered a prominent representative of this tradition. The existence of a materialist tradition in Japan is also evidenced by material on the history of Japanese philosophical thought.

Ancient materialism

Ideas about the material beginning of the world appear in Ancient Greece around the 6th century BC e., when the old tribal relations were finally supplanted by the slave system, which promoted the aristocracy to engage in various kinds of arts and philosophy. The city of Miletus at that time was one of the largest Greek colonial cities on the coast of Asia Minor, its political and commercial center.

The first major philosophers to propose options for the material primary source of the world were the so-called Milesian “physicists” - Thales of Miletus (624-548 BC), Anaximander (611-547 BC) and Anaximenes (585-528 BC . e.). They believed that there is a certain primary substance, various combinations and changes in forms of which create all other substances. The result for all things is a return to the primal substance. The Milesian philosophers came to different conclusions: in Thales this first principle was called water, in Anaximander it was “apeiron” (indeterminate matter), in Anaximenes it was air, sometimes rarefied, sometimes condensed again. Apparently, Hippo also adhered to the same position (Simplicius. Commentary on Physics, 23.22).

The Chinese philosopher Wang Chong, Indian thinkers of the Charvaka school, Leucippus, Democritus, Epicurus and Lucretius Carus most consistently pursued the materialist line. The ancient idea of ​​the material world, especially Epicurus, is characterized by an emphasis on the personal self-improvement of man: liberating him from fear of the gods, from all passions and acquiring the ability to be happy in any circumstances.

Middle Ages

During the heyday of the Middle Ages, from the XI-XII centuries. in European scholasticism, a dispute flared up between nominalism and realism, which at the end of the 13th century partially went beyond the boundaries of scholasticism itself. Thus, the British nominalist Duns Scotus (1266-1308) asked the question: “is matter not capable of thinking?” William of Ockham (1285-1349), developing the tendency of Duns Scotus, argued that only individuals represent a genuine reality existing outside the subject. The natural scientist Roger Bacon (1214-1292) tried to replace scholastic syllogistic with an experimental study of nature. However, both Roger Bacon and the nominalists were not true materialists, remaining within the framework of the idealistic ideas of their time, but served as forerunners for the materialistic ideas of the New Age.

New Age Materialism

In the modern sense, materialism begins with the works of Thomas Hobbes. Materialism reached its rapid flowering in the era of the French Enlightenment (J. La Mettrie, P. Holbach, D. Diderot), but during this period it remained mechanistic and reductionist (that is, it tended to deny the specificity of the complex, reducing it to the simple). English materialist thought at this time was represented by such thinkers as John Toland, Anthony Collins, David Hartley and Joseph Priestley.

Materialism acquired a decisive influence on European philosophy in the 19th century (K. Marx, F. Engels, L. A. Feuerbach, D. F. Strauss, J. Moleschott, K. Vogt, L. Büchner, E. Haeckel, E. Dühring ).

Another, in principle, concept that continues and to some extent expands the materialistic idea can be called the principle of semantic externalism ( English), in which the content of the utterance is explained as “externally determined.”

see also

Notes

Literature

• Komarova V. Ya. The formation of philosophical materialism in Ancient Greece. L., 1975.
• Yang Hingshun. Materialistic thought in ancient China. M., 1984. - 181 p.
• Materialists of Ancient Greece. - M.: State Publishing House of Political Literature, 1955 on the Runivers website
• Anikeev N.P. About materialistic traditions in Indian philosophy. M., 1965. - 260 p.
• Utkina N. F. Natural scientific materialism in Russia in the 18th century. M., 1971.
• Radul-Zatulovsky Ya. B. From the history of materialist ideas in Japan. M., 1972. - 290 p.
• Gupta, Uma. Materialism in the Vedas. New Delhi, 1987. - ISBN 81-7054-038-0
• Moser, P. K., J. D. Trout. Eds. Contemporary Materialism: A Reader. New York, Routledge, 1995.
• Vitzthum, Richard C. Materialism: An Affirmative History and Definition. Amhert, New York, Prometheus Books, 1995.

Links

• E. Radlov.// Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron: In 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional ones). - St. Petersburg. , 1890-1907.
• Materialism- article from the Great Soviet Encyclopedia
• Materialism. // Philosophical Dictionary/ Ed. I. T. Frolova. - 4th ed. - M.: Politizdat, 1981. - 445 p.
• Materialism // New philosophical encyclopedia

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Antonyms:

• Beslan
• The principle of relativity

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