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	Materialism is one of the two chief tendencies in philosophy, that on which science is based and which is able to give the only scientifically adequate answers to the fundamental problems of the nature of the world and man. Materialism, in contradistinction to idealism, recognizes matter as primary and thought or consciousness as secondary. Its most fully developed form is Marxist philosophical materialism, known as dialectical materialism, which recognizes and overcomes the inadequacies of preceding materialist doctrines.		Materialism is one of the two chief tendencies in philosophy, that on which science is based and which is able to give the only scientifically adequate answers to the fundamental problems of the nature of the world and man. Materialism, in contradistinction to idealism, recognizes matter as primary and thought or consciousness as secondary. Its most fully developed form is Marxist philosophical materialism, known as dialectical materialism, which recognizes and overcomes the inadequacies of preceding materialist doctrines.

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Materialism is one of the two chief tendencies in philosophy, that on which science is based and which is able to give the only scientifically adequate answers to the fundamental problems of the nature of the world and man. Materialism, in contradistinction to idealism, recognizes matter as primary and thought or consciousness as secondary. Its most fully developed form is Marxist philosophical materialism, known as dialectical materialism, which recognizes and overcomes the inadequacies of preceding materialist doctrines.

The history of philosophy shows that, as a rule, materialism is the world view of the more progressive social classes, of groups interested in the development of science.

Materialism grew up in the Ionian colonies of ancient Greece at the close of the seventh and the beginning of the sixth century B.C., in the epoch of the establishment of the ancient Greek city-states, and greatly contributed to the development of industry and trading. Engels, characterizing the philosophy of the Ionians, wrote: “Here… is the whole original natural materialism which at its beginning… regards the unity of… natural phenomena as a matter of course, and seeks it in some definite corporeal principle, a special thing, as Thales does in water.” (Dialectics of Nature, p. 244.)

Asserting various material elements to be the basis of all things, the Ionians looked upon the universe as an interconnected infinite process of change and transformation of these primary elements. They were all, in Engels’ expression, “natural born dialecticians.” This naive but essentially correct view of the world was most clearly reflected in Heraclitus (about 544–484 B.C.).

The further development of ancient materialism is connected chiefly with the names of Anaxagoras (about 500–428 B.C.), Empedocles (about 485–425 B.C.), and especially Democritus (460–370 B.C.), Epicurus (342–270 B.C.) and Lucretius (99–55 B.C.). Democritus, Epicurus, and Lucretius were representatives of atomistic materialism. They held that the basis of all things was atoms, tiny, indivisible, impenetrable material particles which moved in infinite space. This atomistic materialism was directed against the idea of the interference of gods in the affairs of this world, and in general against religious superstition. They held that the soul was material, made up of lighter atoms, and rejected the belief in its immortality.

During the Middle Ages, philosophy became transformed into a handmaiden of theology, and the dominant trend of thought was derived from Platonic and Aristotelian idealism. Certain materialistic tendencies in scholasticism appeared among the nominalists (Duns Scotus, William of Occam) who held that universal or general ideas do not exist over and above the individual concrete things, as the so-called “realists” of that time maintained.

The development of science and the revival of materialism are connected with the breakup of feudal society and the formation of the new capitalist system of production. The great geographical achievements of the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth century (the discovery of America, the sea route to India, the circumnavigation of the globe) proved the sphericity of the earth. Copernicus (1473–1543) dealt a mortal blow to the theological world view of the Middle Ages in his doctrine that the earth revolves around the sun. The Copernican theory was further developed by Kepler (1571–1630) and Galileo (1564–1642).

Materialist philosophy, at the beginning of the modern period, building on the foundation of the victories won by science, carries on a struggle against scholasticism and clerical authoritarianism, turning to experience as to a true teacher and approaching nature as the proper object of philosophy.

The father of modern materialism was the English philosopher, Francis Bacon (1561–1626). Bacon attacked scholasticism and defended scientific knowledge; he considered sensation and experience the only valid sources of knowledge. Although his materialism included mechanistic tendencies, it did not take on the one-sidedness characteristic of fully developed mechanism.

In Hobbes (1588–1679) materialism assumed a clearly mechanistic character. “Knowledge based upon the senses loses its poetic blossom; it passes into the abstract experience of the mathematician: geometry is proclaimed as the queen of sciences.” (Marx, “On the History of French Materialism,” in Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach, p. 85.)

The French philosopher Descartes (1596–1650) developed mechanistic materialism in his physics, remaining a dualist in his metaphysics. Gassendi (1592–1655) revived the atomistic materialism of Epicurus and combated the idealistic metaphysics of Descartes. The great Dutch philosopher Spinoza (1632–1677) overcame the dualism of Descartes. Spinoza took as basic a single substance—nature—and considered thought and extension as attributes of this substance which was eternal and infinite. In spite of a variety of inadequacies, the philosophy of Spinoza represents a great synthesis of the knowledge of his time.

The work of Locke (1632–1704), although not free from concessions to idealism and agnosticism, developed the essentially materialist thesis that impressions received through the sense organs from the outside world are the source of knowledge.

This thought influenced the theory of knowledge of the French materialists of the eighteenth century. French materialism (La Mettrie, 1709–51; Diderot, 1713–84; Helvetius, 1715–71; Holbach, 1723–89; and others) built upon the successes of the natural science of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Because of its militant and progressive character, this materialism became the theoretical weapon of the revolutionary bourgeoisie in the struggle against feudalism, a struggle which culminated in the French Revolution of 1789.

The French materialists became warriors in the cause of scientific progress, against religious obscurantism and seventeenth-century idealistic metaphysics. Their philosophy, however, could not transcend the limitations of metaphysical materialism and the mechanistic conception of motion, while their approach to the field of social phenomena was idealistic.

The last great figure of pre-Marxian materialism was the German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–72). Combating the idealism of Hegel, Feuerbach held that nature exists independently of consciousness and that man was a product of nature. But Feuerbach was a metaphysical materialist, since, in rejecting Hegel’s idealism, he also rejected his dialectics. He considered man only abstractly, as man in general, not concretely, in terms of an evolving social and historical environment. Not understanding the significance of social practice, he remained an idealist in the field of social phenomena, and, in spite of his sharp criticism of religion, himself set up a new religion, “religion of the heart,” of love.

Marx and Engels, the ideologists of the proletariat, having assimilated the positive and valuable elements of preceding scientific and philosophic thought, were able to work out a higher form of materialism—dialectical materialism. They were the first to extend materialism into the field of social phenomena, in their development of historical materialism.

After Marx and Engels, bourgeois philosophers and scientists made several attempts to resurrect the earlier forms of materialism, lending them an oversimplified and vulgar character (Büchner, Moleschott, active in Germany in the fifties and sixties of the nineteenth century). Marx and Engels combated this sort of materialism. After the death of Marx and Engels, Lenin and Stalin developed further some of the basic concepts of dialectical materialism.

Materialism - Revision history

Wisconcom at 18:17, 5 August 2026