What is Materialism? History and Concepts

ROMERO, GUSTAVO E; JAVIER PÉREZ-JARA; LINO CAMPRUBÍ

Contemporary Materialism: Its Ontology and Epistemology

Springer International Publishing AG

Año: 2022; p. 1 - 77

Despite the central presence of materialism in the history of philosophy,there is no universal consensus on the meaning of the word “matter” nor of thedoctrine of philosophical materialism. Dictionaries of philosophy often identifythis philosophy with its most reductionist and even eliminative versions, in linewith Robert Boyle’s seventeenth century coinage of the term. But when we takethe concept back in time to Greek philosophers and forward onto our own times,we recognize more inclusive forms of materialism as well as complex interplayswith non-materialist thought about the place of matter in reality, including Christianphilosophy and German idealism. We dene philosophical materialism in its mostgeneral way both positively (the identication of reality with matter understoodas changeability and plurality) and negatively (the negation of disembodied livingbeings and hypostatized ideas). This inclusive approach to philosophical materialism offers a new light to illuminate a critical history of the concept of matter andmaterialism from Ancient Greece to the present that is also attentive to scienticdevelopments. By following the most important connections and discontinuitiesamong theoretical frameworks on the idea of matter, we present a general threadthat offers a rich and plural, but highly cohesive, eld of investigation. Finally, wepropose building on rich non-reductionist materialist philosophies, such as Mario Bunge’s systemic materialism and Gustavo Bueno’s discontinuous materialism, toelaborate powerful theoretical alternatives to both physicalism and spiritualism.In this chapter we aim at critically and constructively outlining the evolution ofphilosophical materialism in the Western tradition. This enables us to propose whatwe consider to be a broader concept of materialism than the one that is today oftenemployed, and thus to provide a rigorous historical framework to the discussionof the subsequent chapters. Along its more than 25 centuries of evolution, philosophical materialism has remained in close contact with critical thinking, naturalphilosophy and science. Despite the frequent attempts of ideological kidnapping ofthe term “materialism” by physicalism or downwards reductionism, our main thesisin this essay is that a great variety of versions of this worldview have populated thehistory of ideas.We dene philosophical materialism in general in a dual but complementary way:positively, materialism names the branch of philosophical worldviews that identifybeing (the “ὄντος” of ontology) with matter, understood in its broadest sense aschangeability and plurality (partes extra partes). Negatively, materialism deniesthe existence of disembodied living beings and hypostatized ideas and concepts.This leads us to identify some points common to all materialistic philosophies, suchas: (1) there is an impersonal stuff of which the world, included living beings, ismade of; (2) living beings, included human beings, are material complex entitiesdetermined by natural laws or regularities; (3) complex ideas and other conceptualartifacts cannot exist without the activity of some advanced living beings; and (4)nothing comes from nothing.This general framework encompasses a multitude of distinct views and approaches. Because the concept of matter is an ontological notion supported onchanging scientic theories, our journey begins in Miletus and takes us to the presentthrough a wide variety of scientic and ontological stances. Along the way, therivals of materialism–spiritualism and idealism–have also wore many masks. Andyet, when it comes to accounts of the place of matter in reality, we move away fromsimplistic binary thinking and identify partial but important convergences betweensome varieties of philosophical materialism and some varieties of spiritualist andidealist philosophies, from Plato to Aquinas to Hegel. It is important to clarify fromthe onset, thus, that our approach is historical as much as it is philosophical. Thismeans that not all scholars would agree with all of our historical reconstructions.Moreover, in this essay we have chosen to spend more time in arguments andinterpretations usually absent from common accounts of materialism.Both things (our own philosophical approach and the need to be selective) areespecially evident when it comes to the sections devoted to twentieth century philosophical materialism. Drawing from our historical account, the goal of this sectionis to mobilize the distinction between exclusive and inclusive materialism in orderto introduce two little-known approaches to philosophical materialism. The historyof philosophical materialism is thus an essential component of a broader search forphilosophical tools that enable critical thinking in the twenty-rst century groundedboth on the rich and complex philosophical tradition and on scientic knowledge.