This morning I woke up and watched Cockshott's "Explaining Materialism" video, and in it he included a quotation from Thomas Nail which really struck me: "There have only ever been two real trajectories in western philosophy: idealism and materialism". It then goes on to give the examples of Plato vs Democritus, and Hegel vs Marx. I read it slightly differently, however, and wondered if instead it could be viewed as parallel to the right/left dichotomy, where leftists are materialists and rightists are idealists. The furthest left, on this scale, would be the "class reductionists" like most here, and the furthest right would be the perennial traditionalists (Evola, Geunon). In particular I thought it was interesting that you can also view the techniques of literary criticism of each side through this lens: deconstruction analyses a text to try and show how the author is justifying hierarchy/privilege/inequality, "construction" (reconstruction?) would be the way people like Evola (and to some extent Peterson/Jung) analyse a text to find the transcendental/idealist truth in it, regardless of it's factual/material truth (see Peterson's lectures on the Bible, or Evola's writings on "The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion")
This makes a lot of sense to me intuitively and I was hoping I might be able to discuss it with people here, who on the whole are much better read than I am.
correct me if i'm wrong, but when have right wingers ever been materialists?
Joseph Lopez
That depends on what you mean by "right wingers". I would say that modernity is materialist to it's core and that any contemporary political movement is materialist by default. The right wing parties gaining votes across Europe right now are materialists, for the most part. Republicans and neocons are certainly materialists. American Evangelicans are an exception, I suppose, though I don't know much about them.
What makes a trajectory a real trajectory as opposed to a trajectory that is not a real trajectory?
He's not necessarily wrong, but such statements do not have anymore philosophical merit than statements such as "there's really only two kinds of people, those that are kind and those that are unkind" that aren then supported by examples of kind people vs unkind people.
Brayden Ortiz
This is a fair question, and I would be interested to see if anybody can come up with an example of a western school of philosophy that doesn't conform to the idealist/materialist dichotomy (which I'm sure must exist), but at the same time I don't believe this criticism detracts much from the overall point, because even if it is a false dichotomy, it is a useful and interesting one.
Matthew Walker
feels > reals is quite the opposite of materialism
Henry Peterson
Anyone who dip in ideolgy is likely to claim to be a materialist tbh. If you reach the point where you think your feels=reals, then you see no difference between the reality and your thoughts, no real difference between idealism and materialism, so the stance you pick will only be determined by the emotieonal baggage of the words…
Brody Carter
You're mistaken.
Joshua Evans
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Brandon Martinez
The enlightenment was certainly materialist to a large degree, however all variants of liberalism have a high degree of idealism, even if they concern themselves with some material things. It’s important to remember that you can be materialist in some ways but not others. For example generic neoliberals concern themselves with “evidence based policy” however they have an idealist conception of history and sociology.
Grayson Martinez
The right is idealist by default.
Benjamin Fisher
Could you elaborate on that last bit please?
Asher White
That is because materialism is scientific and brings concepts of matter and information, and says how these are different and how they are also inevitably connected. Idealism is like the theory of phlogistons or theory of aether. A history of misinterpretations of observations. Thoughts are the inner state of mind, a mere model of outside world. A complexity of this model is dependent on the complexity of the neural network in which the thoughts are being stored and processed.
This illustrates that materialism goes on to explain the world in ever increasing details, while idealism is stuck in history trying to deny that matter exists. Materialism was also called scientific worldview in the eastern bloc. Applied idealist thought was a phrase used to describe religion.
When enlightement concerns itself with the reason and the role of reason, they have the idealistic conception of it. Not the squishy brain thing, but a noble idea.
The fact that this idealist thought happened to be progressive and pushed the science forward surprisingly goes against general trends in idealist thought, which was historically used for many things, mainly the apologetics for economic exploitation.
Today nobody would openly deny the existence of atoms, but the idealist thought still remains. Especially in the approach to economy and society, where the correspondence between the model and physical reality is misunderstood in the case of idealists.
Right wing parties in europe start from a set of assumptions(shaky ones) and then they built a consistent (with these assumptions) program based on these. The only materialism that enters there is knowing how to secure a voting base by appealing to real or imagined fears, which are real emotions and real patterns in psychology of society.
In a sense, they sell idealism to the masses, applying materialism to gain power for themselves. Idealist thought was used to misguide and misinform historically. In fact when the ruling class begins to believe their own idealistic fabrications, this is where they begin to fall from grace, as shown with the unstable neoliberal approach to capitalism.
Noah Lee
/thread
Colton Gonzalez
It is the tendency and trajectory of the right/left, yes. But the issue is easily enough decoupled for some people.
The lefter than monarchist liberals championed free thought, science before religion, even though they were still usually quite devout, rule of laws handed down from the middle class and not the church, but this early left was still quite spiritual. All laws are just fictions written down by a man, the ten commandments, the constitution, and every single currency note. The reactionary right wanted to go back to their feudal lands, king and country, and who could blame them? The mill towns were killing them. Out of this came the lefter than left socialists, who accepted and developed in science, and later their counterparts the nationalists. Often depicted as godless, they sincerely promote the churches and mysticisms of their culture. Even the most secular of nationalists are still trying to get relive or recreate the past, to claim permanence, of nation, culture, race, soul, where there is in fact no permanence, only apparitions. The universe goes in one direction, and you will not live to see it go on for long.
The idealist has faith, which is the power to make 0 into 1 as long as you believe.
The materialist will always see 0 as 1.
This is why famed communist Stalin immediately restored the Church when war comes to Russia, because it's faith that drives people to work and defend the country, not materialism.
Hudson Foster
ftfy
Eli Wilson
A cynical materialist is usually an idealist, he just stuffs himself full of negative energy.
Only materialists can dominate cybernetics at the very end.
Angel Morgan
Wrong.
All the cybernetic visionaries are idealists, all of them.
Brandon Lewis
A vision doesn't imply idealism necessarely. Would you call Cockshott an idealist?
Wyatt Anderson
Yeah, I would, considering his ideas aren't even close to reality.
Dylan Diaz
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Xavier Baker
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Justin Robinson
Doesn't even make sense. You seem to think the "idealist" is better because he believes what he's told and lives a lie. You want to go back to feudalism, don't you.
It's no more than a vague pattern, mostly because it takes a big brain to identify one or the other otherwise they are ill-defined and mix together. For example: you can say there is Plato vs Democritus and claim that Aristotle wasn't an idealist but he was still closer to Plato than Democritus because after all he was Plato's student. Move up a millennium in time and you have the proper Idealist vs Materialist scene of Berkeley vs Locke. Now while Democritus talked about discrete space and matter, Locke was a believer of the continuum, whilst Berkeley was the one defending the logical necessity of discrete space, time and matter. So two real trajectories?
Unless you suppose Ayn Rand is not a materialist, you are grouping her together with Marx.
Sebastian Martin
Fake quote. While Epicurus was certainly the father of materialism, I haven't seen any evidence that he made the "question of evil" argument anywhere.
First he refers to a singular "God" when he came from a polytheistic tradition. A tradition full of imperfect, not-necessarily-benevolent and most certainly not omnipotent gods. Secondly, the Greeks had no expectation that their gods were good and would do good or wouldn't allow evil. This is almost purely anti-Christian argument, because that religion and that religion alone (maybe Islam too?) has the concept of a benevolent, perfect, omnipotent God which is the enemy of all evil, and thus the expectation that God will act accordingly. This sounds like it was written by a Christian apostate, not an ancient Greek philosopher.
Regardless, that doesn't touch on my main point, which is that the ancient Greeks didn't believe their gods were omnipotent or necessarily benevolent. The "Question of Evil" makes no sense as an argument in the Greek theological context.
Jeremiah Torres
I think he meams that these are the cores of the ideologies. You could see personality in a conception of nice and not nice, as you have said, but that isnt a real trajectory as it doesnt really describe the core of personality as materialism and idealism describe the cores of philosiphy. So, these are the real trajectories of philosophy as opposed to anything else. I dont know. It seems like an oversimplification to me. God knows I dont feel a connection to most materialists.
Blake Lee
Thank you
And yet he went and said this. Maybe your understanding of the Greek's world at that point in their history is too sketchy.
