Materialism by Brown Robin;Ladyman James;

Author:Brown, Robin;Ladyman, James;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)
Published: 2019-12-01T16:00:00+00:00

Materialism in the nineteenth century

Four

Introduction

The nineteenth century is a paradox in the history of materialism. On the one hand, there were many fruits of the triumph of materialism discussed in Chapter 3, namely the liberation of investigation into the nature of the world from the shackles of religious dogma and argument from authority. The onward march of scientific knowledge was evident. Maxwell’s electromagnetism is a comparable achievement to Newtonian mechanics, and in different ways inaugurated the revolutions of twentieth-century physics. There were also great advances in the theories of heat and fluids, and importantly the Chemical Revolution of the end of the previous century spurred systematic advances in chemical knowledge. Technological progress accelerated at a historically unheard-of rate. With regard to the latter, however, the results could look decidedly mixed from some vantage points. The dark side of this progress was the plight of the poor in the industrialised nations, and the plight of the peoples of the countries colonised by the European powers. The consequences of these social trends have proven to be longlasting and dangerous. The ‘unholy’ union of philosophical and hedonistic materialism, if that is how the ethos of industrial society can be characterised, deserves critical scrutiny. The high ideals of the Enlightenment got lost somewhere along the way, and indeed, as a European movement, the Enlightenment became associated on the world stage with the unenlightened realities of colonialism.

On the other hand, in the ‘official’ centres of philosophical inquiry – the universities – materialism became a minor voice. The whole European scene in philosophy was dominated by idealist thinkers. Stemming from Kant’s magisterial Critique of Pure Reason, the main figures of nineteenth-century European continental philosophy, such as Hegel, Kierkegaard and Schopenhauer, are all hostile to materialism. The same is true in Britain, though the names of the leading philosophers of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century in this tradition – Bradley, McTaggart and Alexander – are less well-known now.

Central to the story of the materialist response to academic idealism is Ludwig Feuerbach. A member of a group of thinkers known as the Young Hegelians, he turned the teachings of the master on their head and denied the primacy of the idea. For present concerns though, his significance stems from his influence on history’s most famous materialist, namely Karl Marx. In fact, Marx’s contribution to philosophical materialism is not great. His contribution, for good or ill, was to link the doctrine to a social movement that sought to release mankind from the horrors of industrialised society in its manifestation as imperialist capitalism. His Eleven Theses on Feuerbach is a vital text in the history of materialism, linking the philosophical doctrine with a hitherto-unknown militancy.

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