Materialism

Materialism, in philosophy, doctrine that all existence is resolvable into matter or into an attribute or effect of matter. According to this doctrine, matter is the ultimate reality, and the phenomenon of consciousness is explained by physiochemical changes in the nervous system. Materialism is thus the reverse of idealism, in which the supremacy of mind is affirmed and matter is characterized as an aspect or objectification of mind. Extreme or absolute materialism is known as materialistic monism.

Philosophical materialism is ancient and has had numerous formulations. The early Greek philosophers subscribed to a variant of materialism known as hylozoism, according to which matter and life are identical. Related to hylozoism is the doctrine of hylotheism, in which matter is held to be divine, or the existence of God is disavowed apart from matter. “Cosmological materialism” is a term used to characterize a materialistic interpretation of the universe.

Anti-religious materialism is motivated by a spirit of hostility towards the theological dogmas of organized religion, particularly those of Christianity. Notable among the exponents of anti-religious materialism were the 18th-century French philosophers Denis Diderot, Paul Henri d’Holbach, and Julien Offroy de la Mettrie. The historical materialism of the writings of Karl Marx is of a different kind. The emphasis is not on an explanation of consciousness in terms of matter, but on an explanation of social organization in terms of the production of the material necessities of life. According to Marx, the state of development of the technologies for producing these material necessities in a particular historical epoch determines the economic system under which they are produced. In turn, the prevailing economic system determines the form of societal organization and the political, religious, ethical, intellectual, and artistic history of the epoch. History progresses through the development and resolutions of contradictions between these elements.

Marx’s companion and associate Friedrich Engels extended this historical materialism into a general philosophical standpoint called dialectical materialism, according to which nature, like history, progresses through the development and resolution of contradictions. Engels thought of dialectical materialism as the inverse of the dialectical idealism of G. W. F. Hegel. In the 20th century, dialectical materialism became the official philosophy of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

In modern times philosophical materialism has been largely influenced by the doctrine of evolution and may, indeed, be said to have been assimilated in the wider theory of evolution. Supporters of the theory of evolution go beyond the mere anti-theism or atheism of materialism and positively seek to show how the diversities and differences in creation are the result of natural as opposed to supernatural processes. In particular, sociobiologists attempt to show how the natural processes of evolution can give rise to human phenomena such as altruism, morality, criminality, and authority.