>>1797888I agree completely about the determined aspect of our being, but that also doesnt denote "materialism" as an ontology. "Materialism" is overstated today; its an old concept that is only revived by marxists. To me, materialism begins and ends with the enlightenment, which is due to the legacy of german idealism, which marx borrows from in hegel too.
"Dialectical materialism" was not something formalised in marx and engels' works, and only became known from the state philosophy of the soviet union under stalin, the same way "leninism" was also defined as a doctrine by stalin.
The dialectical process of marx is still ideal in structure; of history fulfilling its own idea, which is the same to hegel. Marx's inversion of hegel only comes in the scientific analysis of agency, where he puts emphasis in the mass, and where hegel puts agency in an enlightened minority.
Also, the "matter" of materialism is very different in concept than what we see today, and so it is literally outdated, i would even say, with einstein's relativity (where the newtonian absolutism is the model of matter as a uniform structure).
The scientific idea of cosmic evolution to me gives Idea to its dialectical process, where we begin with physics, which turns to chemistry and ends in biology. Like hegel, i find the completeness of nature in its phenomena, and so find the fullness of "matter" in this self-movement towards life.
Neo-darwinists would say this is also true, in that life expresses the chaos of the universe, but i also think there is "idea" to the very meaning of reality in this way. To me, biology is the meaning of physics, the same way man is the meaning of nature.
politically and socially, materialism occupies the discourse of "neutrality" where it attempts to supersede our kantian subjectivity by positing the notion of an "objective" perspective that you are only allowed to argue with on the terms set by materialists. This is the strategy of both liberals and communists alike [the children of leftism] since it debases the primacy of the qualitative [by dialectical self-reference, or concrete totality] into the quantitative, "objective" gaze of "facts and logic" or "reason" or "science". Reason thus is set as an epistemology from which the neutral party speaks and all others are irrational. This is the basis of the parliaPost too long. Click here to view the full text.