Here is materialism and idealism.
Briefly speaking,
Materialism is a philosophical thought. This philosophy holds that between consciousness and matter, matter determines consciousness, and consciousness is the reflection of the objective world in the human brain. That is, "material comes first, spirit comes second, the origin of the world is material, and spirit is the product and reflection of material".
Explain that the world is essentially material and exists objectively without relying on people's consciousness. Consciousness is a philosophical view that material exists in the human brain.
Synonym materialism
The antonym of idealism
One of the two schools of philosophy holds that the world is essentially immaterial, exists in and depends on human consciousness. Thinking is primary, being is secondary. The existence of the world is determined by thinking, that is, consciousness determines matter.
[Edit this paragraph] 2. Basic meaning
Materialism is different from mechanical materialism and dialectical materialism. Mechanical materialism holds that the material world is made up of individuals, just like all kinds of mechanical parts make up a big machine, which will not change. Dialectical materialism holds that the material world is always in motion and change, and they influence and relate to each other. The representative of mechanical materialism is Feuerbach, and the representative of dialectical materialism is Marx, Engels and Lenin.
Materialist dialectics includes the law of unity of opposites, the law of mutual change of quality, the law of negation of negation and its essence and phenomenon, content and form, cause and result, inevitability and contingency, possibility and reality. In some countries' propaganda materials and philosophy courses in secondary and higher education, materialist dialectics is described as follows: "Because the laws and categories of materialist dialectics are abstracted from nature and social life itself, they are not only the universal laws of the movement and development of objective things themselves, but also the universal laws of understanding, which are both world outlook and methodology. Materialist dialectics is not a rigid system. With the development of human practical movement, it constantly has new meanings, new categories and laws. "
Third, historical form.
(1) ancient naive materialism: reduce matter to concrete forms of matter. China's ancient "Five Elements" said: Gold, wood, water, fire and earth are the origins of the world. Make complicated things complicated. Heraclitus in ancient Greece (540-480 BC): "Fire" is the origin of all things, and the world was, is and will be an eternal living fire that burns and goes out according to laws. "The world was not created by any god or anyone. Its past, present and future will always be an eternal living fire. Burn to a certain extent and extinguish to a certain extent. "
② The combination of mechanical materialism and modern natural science has overcome ancient naive materialism's intuition and conjecture, but it also has three fundamental defects: mechanical, metaphysical and incomplete (the historical view is idealism).
③ Dialectical materialism and historical materialism, that is, Marxist philosophy: the science about the general laws of the development of nature, society and thinking is the unity of materialism and dialectics, and the unity of materialist view of nature and history.
main content
1, unity of opposites
Marx and Engels believe that everything that exists is composed of opposing parts. For example, electrical phenomena contain positive and negative charges; Atoms are a whole, but they are also composed of hydrogen nuclei and electrons with opposite charges. Marx and Engels' thought of unity of opposites originated from Hegel.
Mao Zedong's On Contradiction elaborated on the unity of opposites.
2, the mutual change of quality
There are two properties of matter: quality and quantity. Quality refers to the nature of matter, not quality; Quantity refers to the quantity that measures the state of matter. From quantitative change to qualitative change, that is to say, matter is always in constant change. However, in the process of changing from one property to another, it always accumulates slowly by small changes (called quantitative changes), and the accumulation of small changes eventually leads to the change of matter from one property to another.
3. Negation of negation
The negation principle of negation comes from Hegel's three-stage theory of positive-negative-combination: positive things will transition to negative and become negative due to the development of internal contradictions, which is the first negation; The transition from the opposite stage to the opposite stage is the negation of negation. After the negation of negation, although things have returned to the "normal" state, they are not the original state, but go up a storey still higher.
China folk proverb "extremes meet" is the first negation; "No, it's too late" is the negation of negation.
4. Matter and consciousness
Which is the primary problem, thinking or being? Different answers to this question can be divided into materialism and idealism.
(2) The question of whether thinking and existence are identical: the different answers to this question are divided into two factions: knowability and agnosticism;
③ The only criterion to distinguish materialism from idealism is their different answers to the first aspect of the basic question of philosophy: the relationship between matter and consciousness is different from the dialectical relationship between matter and consciousness.
The dialectical relationship between matter and consciousness is a proposition of Marxist philosophy, which means that on the one hand, matter determines consciousness, on the other hand, consciousness has a dynamic role (consciousness actively reflects the objective material world, and consciousness actively reacts to it). This is a correct revelation of the dialectical relationship between matter and consciousness. The relationship between matter and consciousness mentioned in the basic problems of philosophy includes two contents: first, what is the origin of the world and what it determines; Second, whether consciousness can correctly reflect matter and whether thinking can correctly understand objective existence. The correct answer to these two aspects is that matter determines consciousness, and consciousness can correctly reflect matter. It can be seen that the second answer here is different from the second one mentioned above, and the "relationship" mentioned in the two places is different.
As a basic problem of philosophy, it is a summary of the history of philosophy. Philosophy in history has answered two basic questions of philosophy in different forms. Marxist philosophy not only correctly answers the basic questions of philosophy at a new height, but also further scientifically points out the dialectical relationship between matter and consciousness.
[Edit this paragraph] V. The fundamental difference with idealism
Materialism: the essence of the world is matter, and there is matter in the world before consciousness. Matter determines consciousness, and consciousness is the reflection of matter (matter first, consciousness second).
Xunzi in the Warring States Period: "Heaven and earth combine to create everything, and Yin and Yang change to be born."
Wang Chong in the Eastern Han Dynasty: "Heaven and earth are in harmony, and everything is born by itself."
Fan Zhen in the Southern Dynasties: "If the form exists, the god will exist, and if the form is thanked, the god will be destroyed."
Wang Fuzhi of the Ming Dynasty said, "Those who are angry are justified." "There is only instrument in the world", "Tao is the way of instrument" and "Without instrument, there is no way".
Idealism: The essence of the world is consciousness, not matter determines consciousness, but consciousness determines matter (consciousness comes first, matter comes second).
① Subjective idealism: The world is created and decided by human consciousness. Lu Xiangshan, a philosopher in the Song Dynasty: "The universe is my heart, and my heart is the universe."
Wang Yangming, a philosopher in the Ming Dynasty, said, "There is nothing outside the heart."
British philosopher Becquerel: Being is perceived. Things are "combinations of feelings" and "collections of ideas".
"Eyes are open, flowers are bright, eyes are closed, and flowers are silent."
Objective idealism: The world is created and decided by some kind of god or unpredictable absolute concept. Zhu, a philosopher in the Song Dynasty, said, "Reason comes first."
Plato: the world is the shadow of "idea" Hegel: the essence of the world is the "absolute spirit" that exists independently.
Religion: God, the idealism that God creates and dominates the world, although there are some differences, is essentially the same. Everyone thinks that thinking and consciousness are primary and existence and matter are secondary, which reverses the real relationship between thinking and existence, consciousness and matter and deviates from natural science and people's practical experience.
What is materialism-Peng Zheye
The most basic idea of materialism is to recognize the difference between matter and consciousness. There is a material world outside our consciousness, which exists before our consciousness. Matter determines consciousness, and it is matter that ultimately determines consciousness. Simply put, as long as we admit that it is matter that plays a decisive role in consciousness, this is materialism.
There used to be a joke that God asked a god to count the number of good people and bad people in this world. The great god first counted the number of bad people in the world, but he was impressed by the workload. So he changed his method and counted the number of good people instead. As a result, the task was completed at once.
Since there are different forms of idealism in this world, there is only one truth. Therefore, we simply define all anti-materialism as idealism, thus defining idealism simply and clearly.
Thorough subjective idealism holds that there is no distinction between consciousness and matter in this world, that is to say, there is only consciousness but no matter in this world. In this case, the final decisive role of matter on consciousness certainly does not exist. Subjective theism holds that human consciousness is immortal. In this way, human consciousness is directly or disguised as the soul after death. Since consciousness is immortal, the final decisive role of matter on consciousness no longer exists. Thorough objective theism holds that the world was created by God, and it was created by God himself. Thorough objective theism, the so-called god must be personified. So this kind of god can fall into the category of what we call generalized consciousness. Since objective theism believes that the world is created by God, it is God who plays the final role in this world, and it is God who plays the final role in human consciousness, not the material world. Thorough materialism, thorough objective idealism and thorough subjective idealism are all monistic philosophies, which hold that there is only one thing in this world that plays the final decisive role. There is also a dualist philosophy that denies that matter determines consciousness and that consciousness determines matter. But it denies that it is matter that plays the final decisive role in consciousness, so it also belongs to what we call idealism. There is also a pantheism. The so-called god in this pantheism may not be personified, but this kind of god is the so-called supernatural power. If this supernatural power exists, it is undoubtedly this supernatural power that plays a final and decisive role in this world. So in the same way, pantheism also denies the ultimate decisive role of the material world in consciousness.
From the above definitions of materialism and idealism, we can clearly distinguish materialism and idealism. So this definition is valid!
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pshchism
Idealism, also translated as idealism, is a discussion and view on the relationship between philosophy and thought, mind, language and things. Marxism holds that idealism is one of the two basic schools of philosophy and a theoretical system opposite to materialism. The school of philosophy advocates the primacy of spirit and consciousness and the secondary nature of matter, that is, matter depends on consciousness and matter is the product of consciousness.
It should be said that "idealism" is more accurate than "idealism", but the latter has become a common vocabulary. Now the academic circles call Plato's metaphysical entity "theory" to distinguish the concept of idealism, which comes from experience; But Plato's theory is not derived from experience; Therefore, "rational type" will be a more appropriate translation.
In Marxist works, philosophy can be divided into two schools. Idealism is one of the two basic schools of philosophy and a theoretical system opposite to materialism. The school of philosophy advocates the primacy of spirit and consciousness and the secondary nature of matter, that is, matter depends on consciousness and matter is the product of consciousness.
Practical idealism is the kind of idealism that "advocates" the consciousness of practice to determine the existence of society. This kind of "practical consciousness" that thinks it can determine the existence of society is the country. As this concept is relatively new to us, there are still some difficulties to be clarified in understanding it. For example, how does practical idealism "advocate" the supremacy of social power? Is it because those in power loudly announce at mass gatherings that "public power determines social life", and this power becomes idealized? If so, there is no difference between political idealism and philosophical idealism. To understand the difference (and connection) between them, it involves the important question of what the abstract definition of idealism covers up.
It turns out that when practical idealism "advocates" public power as the primary thing, it does not build a philosophical speculative system centered on pure concept (ontology) like philosophical idealism, thus expressing its idealism in the language of abstract concepts; The uniqueness of practical idealism lies in that it constructs a political ruling system centered on public power (practical consciousness), and then "speaks" its own idealism in the language of political action. This means that state power, as the consciousness of practice, is both the subject of consciousness and the subject of action (practice). The action guide of power is a political instinct accumulated by long-term ruling experience, which makes it act instinctively long before making up the belief that "public power is the first priority" in theory. As for how to defend this primitive and vulgar idealism in theory, it is the task of philosophical idealism that came into being after a long time. It can be seen that practical idealism is the ancestor of theoretical idealism. From a practical point of view, the concept of words and thinking skills are the basic elements to build a philosophical speculative system; However, to build a system of political rule, we need not only armed people, but also material appendages, namely prisons and various compulsory organs. The cost of maintaining these dominant elements is enormous. In this way, all members of society are forced to collect the property they need, which is tax. As the ruling cost that the whole social life must bow, the emergence of tax is the basic symbol of public power idealism. It shows that the public power in the form of the state has become a false primary thing independent of the whole social life. With the development and expansion of this political ruling system, even donations are not enough, so the state issues promissory notes and borrows money in the form of national debt. Then there is the deficit budget that is purely a unilateral act of the state, and it is necessary to live within our means ... At the same time, when the salary of government officials is not enough, it is inevitable to harm the public and enrich the private, and corruption and bribery are inevitable.
The reason for the ugliness and corruption is that their actions have always been based on the logic that state power is the supreme master of all things and is sacred and inviolable. Therefore, the whole social life should revolve around this lofty sovereignty (practical consciousness) and be subject to its usurpation. This logic clearly shows that the basic word "idealism" in the compound word "practical idealism" refers to the economic exploitation and plunder of social life by state power; The qualifier "practice" means that the means used to maintain this kind of exploitation and plunder is some kind of universal coercive force (note: practice not only has universal quality, but also has direct practical quality. Namely organized violence and class violence.
[Edit this paragraph] Historical origin
From practical idealism
As mentioned above, practical idealism is the idealistic expression of social forces as "practical consciousness" for a certain economic base. Marx called this economic base "existing economic boundary", "existing mode of production" or "civil society". Tracing the formation and development of these material bases is the premise of understanding the concept of practical idealism; And the division of labor is the key to the problem. (Note: For the following historical descriptions, please refer to Feuerbach by Marx and Engels, French Civil War, Anti-Turin Theory, Family Private Ownership and the Origin of the State, Feuerbach and the End of German Classical Philosophy. )
Division of labor is the product of the development of material productivity to a certain stage. Conversely, the division of labor has become the basic driving force for social progress. At first there was only a simple division of labor based on the natural conditions of men and women. With the expansion of economic life, industrial and commercial labor is gradually separated from agricultural labor; Later, the separation of commercial labor and industrial labor appeared. In this way, economic activities with agricultural life as the natural premise and industrial and commercial life as the main content constitute the basic characteristics of civil society. In addition, there are many specific divisions of labor in the respective fields of industry and commerce. On the other hand, the civil society composed of different divisions of labor is an organic whole. In other words, division of labor means that there must be some public organization to manage and coordinate different division of labor departments and maintain the order of social production and life. This kind of management organization based on the common interests of society is the bud of state power.
Of course, public power is a reflection of the common interests of civil society caused by division of labor; However, as the coordinator, manager and defender of collective security with different division of labor, this kind of public power itself is a brand-new social division of labor. Moreover, with the development of social and economic life, this new department is also expanding: it is becoming more and more huge in quantity and independent in quality. It shows that a full-time authority divorced from the people is taking shape. At the same time, social life and public affairs are becoming more and more complicated, resulting in the demand for related knowledge and skills (such as writing, measuring and calculating). As a result, from the management department as "practical consciousness", some sub-departments specializing in "pure consciousness" have been differentiated. At this point, the division of labor has reached a qualitative combination point, and there has been a social division of labor in which material labor and spiritual labor are completely separated. After this division of labor, those who used to stand in the society and exercise social welfare functions broke away from direct material production and began to stand above the society, specializing in the leadership of economic life, the maintenance of social order and the creation of science and art, which belonged to spiritual production activities. These people become the ruling class of society. Most of the rest continue to stay in various material production departments and engage in heavy manual labor for most of their lives, so as to ensure that in addition to the means of subsistence necessary for their own survival, they also produce labor products necessary for the survival of spiritual production departments. These large numbers of social members become the exploited class and the ruled class of society. The social division of labor between material labor and spiritual labor has caused extremely important historical consequences: in several branches of spiritual labor (or conscious production), the department in charge of public power has evolved into an independent institution above society by usurping power, turning social leadership into economic exploitation of the masses; And use military, police and prisons and other violent tools to defend the self-interest of this ruling class. In this way, the relationship between public power (practical consciousness) and civil society (economic base) has produced a strange phenomenon: the public power, which was originally secondary, is a social public servant, because it puts its own interests above the interests of the whole society, and becomes a false primary thing and becomes the master of society. This idealism, which takes organized violence as its means of survival, is the state and the violent organ used by the exploiting classes to defend their own economic interests. It can be seen that the concept of "practical idealism" profoundly reveals the essence of the country.
subjective idealism
One of the basic forms of idealism philosophy. Subjective idealism regards the subjective spirits of individuals such as feeling, experience, mind, consciousness, idea and will as the source and foundation of the emergence and existence of all things in the world, and all things in the world are derived from these subjective spirits and are the manifestations of these subjective spirits. Therefore, in the eyes of subjective idealists, subjective spirit is primitive and primary, while things in the objective world are derived and secondary. Subjective idealism inevitably leads to solipsism, because it regards everything in the world as the expression and product of the subjective spirit of the individual self, which actually means that everything in the world can only exist in the subjective spirit of the individual self. Without the subjective spirit of individual self, there would be nothing in the world. China's Lu Wang School's viewpoints of "mind is reason", "my mind is the universe", "nothing outside the mind" and "unreasonable outside the mind" and Becker's viewpoints of "being is perceived" and "things are a collection of ideas" are representative and typical subjective idealism and solipsism.
objective idealism
Objective idealism is one of the two basic forms of idealism philosophy. According to objective idealism, an objective spirit or principle is an ontology that exists before and is independent of the material world, and the material world (or phenomenal world) is only the externalization or expression of this objective spirit or principle. The former is primary and primary, while the latter is derivative and secondary. China's Neo-Confucianism of Zhu Cheng in Song Dynasty, Plato's idealism of ancient Greece and German Hegel's absolute idealism are all objective spirits or principles as world noumenon. The so-called objective spirit or principle of objective idealism is actually to absolutize human thinking or general concepts, sublimate or refine them into entities that exist independently not only from human mind, but also from the material world and concrete things or before, and further deify and idolize them, thus falling into mysterious creationism and religious beliefs. Therefore, objective idealism is closely related to religion. It can be said that objective idealism is a more refined form of religion, while religion is a vulgar form of objective idealism.
Objective idealism recognizes the objective world independent of human consciousness, and emphasizes that the "spiritual ontology" as the origin of the world is born in the objective world itself, and this "spiritual ontology" has the meaning of "the law of things" in unison, which makes objective idealism tend to be natural and objective unconsciously. At the same time, because "objectivity" is the core of objective idealism, it is bound to form rich dialectical thoughts. These reasonable ideological components are not accidental, but should be regarded as the "objectivity" of objective idealism.
The basic types and roots of idealism are subjective idealism and objective idealism.
(1) Subjective idealism regards subjective spirit as the only real existence and the source of the world, and objective things and even the whole material world are the products of this subjective spirit. The absurdity is that it will inevitably lead to "solipsism".
(2) The absurdity of objective idealism is that it turns a spirit divorced from any individual into an independent existence and regards it as the source of the world (such as reason, idea, universal spirit, absolute concept, etc.). ), and approved the "religious creationism" in a philosophical way.
(3) The epistemological origin of idealism. People's understanding is not in a straight line, but similar to a spiral curve. Any section of this curve may unilaterally become an independent straight line, leading people into the mud pit of idealism, and the interests and political needs of reactionary or conservative classes and forces will consolidate it. It is the epistemological source of idealism to exaggerate a certain feature, component, fragment and aspect in the process of human cognition and make it absolute, resulting in the separation of subjectivity and objectivity, cognition and practice.
[Edit this paragraph] Theoretical difficulties
With regard to the concept of idealism, Engels once made a famous definition in the book The End: "The major basic problem of all philosophy, especially modern philosophy, is about the relationship between thinking and existence. ..... Philosophers' different answers to this question divide themselves into two camps. Those who advocate that spirit, rather than nature, is the origin, … form the camp of idealism. Others believe that nature is the origin and belongs to various schools of materialism. Here, "idealism" refers to one of the two major schools of philosophy. Indeed, the origin of the word "idealism" belongs to the field of philosophy, and its root thought comes from the central concept of Plato's philosophy-idea;
Idealismus (idealism) is "idealism" if translated literally.
On the other hand, although there is a historical basis for linking idealism with a world view based on a concrete answer to the relationship between thinking and existence, it does not mean that this connection can be absolute, so that the concept of idealism can only be used in the field of philosophy. As we will see later, philosophical idealism is only secondary idealism. However, the practice of fixing its connection with a specific world view seems to have become accustomed to it. This has affected our understanding of Marxism to some extent.
According to the original German version of Feuerbach published by Paris Social Publishing House in German and French, and referring to the French translation in the control page, the translation is as follows:
The conditions that enable a certain productive force to be utilized are the ruling conditions of a certain class in society; The social power usurped by this class, in all previous national forms, is manifested as practical idealism ... (Note: Marx used the word praktisch-idealistisch here, which is called a compound adjective with conjunctions in German. The possible lexical relations between two adjectives connected by conjunctions are juxtaposition, apposition, the modification of the basic word by the determiner (the former) and so on. The third situation is very common in German (see: Dou Xuefu. Semantic analysis of German compound adjectives with conjunction "-". German learning, 1996. (5).34-38. From the context of praktisch-idealistisch, this compound adjective belongs to the third case. Accordingly, this paper translates it into "practical idealism". Its lexical meaning is the corresponding compound noun "practical idealism" or "practical idealism")
According to the translation of the compilation bureau, this passage has three meanings: 1. A certain level of productivity is the material condition of class rule; 2. The power of the ruling class comes from its "property"; 3. As a country, social power is a "practical concept".
According to translation, it can also be divided into three meanings: 1. The certain development of productive forces provides material possibilities for class rule; 2. The main condition for turning this possibility into reality is that the class that performs the function of public power in the social division of labor, with the help of work, turns public power into a tool for class self-interest and thus becomes the ruling class of society. Marx used the word Besitz to describe this transformation process (I translated it as "usurpation") (note: Besitz is a noun transformed from the transitive verb besitzen. Its basic meaning is "possession" and "possession", and its extended meaning is "possession" and "property". Marx used the original meaning of the noun here: "possession". In Feuerbach, when referring to the concept of "property", he used another more formal term, Eigentum. Besitz needs an object semantically to mean "have ...". This logical object is assumed by Macht (power) in this paper. Therefore, the French translation in this page is compared with the transitive verb Posséder. Bestiz was used by Marx to describe such a historical process: social power was not the private property of the division of labor group that exercised power at first, but the group used the opportunity to perform social functions to "occupy" this power, or rather "usurp" this power. Therefore, in the French civil war he later wrote in English, he used the word usurpation to describe the process of this kind of public power being exploited. See: Complete Works of Marx and Engels. Berlin: Dietz Publishing House, 1978. (I, 22). ); 3. "Possession" or "usurpation" of public power transforms social power into political power, that is, the state. The social forces that have undergone this major transformation have the nature of "practical idealism" without exception.
Comparing the two versions, the understanding of the first meaning is the same. I'm afraid there is something wrong with the last two meanings translated by the compilation bureau. The mistake of the second meaning is that in the phrase Deren Soziale, Ausihrem be sitz Hervorgehendemacht, Besitz and macht are verb-object relations in semantic logic. In contrast, the French translation in the German-French version is translated into: La Puissance Sociale de Cette Class, Dé coulant de Cequelle Possè de, which has the usual rigor and accuracy in French. Quite authentic German original. The mistranslation of the third meaning seems to be not a linguistic problem, but a puzzling theoretical problem. The translator is not ignorant of the normal meaning of the word idealistisch. What he doesn't understand is probably the idea expressed by the compound adjective praktisch-idealistisch. According to the normal meaning and context of this compound word, it should be translated into "practical idealism" However, according to the existing way of thinking in philosophy, idealism is bound to be related to pure thought, and it must not be linked to things like state machines in the form of violent practice. Therefore, regardless of the idealism Isch and ideell (conceptually) are two words with very different meanings, the former is forcibly translated into the latter (probably because they have the same root Idee). This tailor-made translation error shows from one side that for many years, our understanding of the concept of "idealism" is relatively narrow, only knowing one (philosophical idealism) and not knowing the other (non-philosophical idealism). Therefore, it is necessary to re-examine the concept of idealism in the current textbooks, so that it can be applied to such an impure spiritual phenomenon as the state.
A philosopher who belongs to idealism
Socrates
Plato