What schools of materialism have emerged?

In the history of human philosophy, materialism has gone through three historical forms, namely, the ancient plain materialism, the modern metaphysical materialism and the Marxist dialectical materialism.

The ancient plain materialism is the initial form of materialist philosophy. The basic characteristic of plain materialism is that it tries to find the unity of natural phenomena with their infinite diversity in certain concrete tangible objects, in certain particulars. Plain materialism affirms the material originality and unity of the world, but, due to the limitations of the level of understanding, it always regards some or other concrete material forms as the material origin and the material basis of the unity of the world. For example, the ancient Greek Thales believed that everything is born in water and returns to water, and the ancient Chinese doctrine of five elements believed that gold, wood, water, fire and earth are the five basic elements that generate everything. These are the typical views of ancient simple materialism. The atomism of Democritus and Epicurus in ancient Europe, and the monism of qi in ancient China, although to a certain extent breaking through the limitation of attributing the origin of the world to some or other specific material forms, still belong to the category of plain materialism.

The second form of materialist philosophy is the modern metaphysical materialism, i.e., mechanical materialism. First, the basic characteristic of metaphysical materialism is that it recognizes the materiality of the world, but interprets the world from an isolated, static, one-sided point of view, failing to see the universal connection and change and development between things and phenomena in the world, or only recognizing the mechanical connection and mechanical motion, thus exhibiting mechanical and metaphysical characteristics. Secondly, the second limitation of metaphysical materialism is mechanical. The emergence and formation of modern metaphysical materialism is closely related to the characteristics of the development of natural science in this period. The natural sciences of this period were still at the stage of collecting, organizing, and analyzing empirical materials in separate categories, and only mechanics had developed into a more perfect form. This state of affairs was reflected in philosophy, and the dominant metaphysical way of thinking in this period was that of observing and interpreting the world from an isolated, static and mechanical point of view, which caused the unavoidable limitations at that time peculiar to modern metaphysical materialism. Thirdly, another limitation of metaphysical materialism is its incompleteness, which is mainly manifested in the fact that it is materialistic in its view of nature and idealistic in its view of social history.The English materialism of the seventeenth century, the French materialism of the eighteenth century, and the materialism of Feuerbach in Germany in the 1840s are some of the main schools of modern metaphysical materialism.

Marxist dialectical and historical materialism is the most thorough and scientific form in the development of materialism, the third form in the history of materialism. It was founded by Marx and Engels in the 1840s on the basis of summarizing the proletariat's experience of class struggle and the latest achievements of the development of natural science, critically inheriting the excellent heritage of human culture, and especially critically drawing on the reasonable elements of classical German philosophy. Overcoming the limitations and incompleteness of metaphysical materialism, dialectical materialism and historical materialism organically unify materialism and dialectics, the materialist view of nature and the materialist view of history, and constitute a very complete and rigorous scientific theoretical system. It not only attaches importance to theoretically explaining the world, but also emphasizes practically transforming the world, which is practical materialism. This is the highest form of materialist philosophical development so far, the most scientific and revolutionary philosophical form.

The emergence of historical idealism can be traced back to the slave society. However, its idealistic view in ancient times was only concerned with certain areas such as the state and politics, and was not yet an understanding of human society as a whole. Historical idealism is contained in the general worldview, not formed an independent systematic theory. The more formed historical idealism is the idealistic theological view of history formed in feudal society. In medieval Europe, the idealistic view of history was attached to theology and became a branch of theology. The theologian Augustine described the entire history of society as a history of struggle between the believers in God and the believers in the devil, ending with the believers in God winning and establishing an eternal kingdom on earth, so that the secular rulers were God's representatives on earth. His book, The Capital of God, laid the foundation for a theological view of history. The idealistic view of history in the form of theology manifested itself in other countries during the feudal era. The emerging bourgeoisie, in response to the God-centered theological view of history, put forward a humanistic and humanitarian view of history centered on human beings. This view of history opposed the interpretation of history in terms of "divine will" and "heavenly law" and advocated finding the ultimate causes of social and political changes in people's realization of eternal truth and justice. It takes unchanging human nature as the yardstick for measuring historical progress, and regards reason, i.e. people's understanding of their own nature, as the driving force of social development. The modern bourgeois philosopher G.W.F. Hegel attributed the basis of history to "reason" and "spirit". After the emergence of historical materialism, the modern bourgeois philosophy of history confronted this scientific view of history and continued to promote the idealistic view of history in new forms. The social-historical theories of such philosophical schools as pragmatism, positivism, existentialism, structuralism, and neo-Thomism, while continuing to insist on interpreting social history in terms of spiritual factors such as man's rationality, inner needs, passions, feelings, or God's will, particularly deny the objective laws of social development and the possibility of recognizing and foreseeing the course of history. The various manifestations of historical idealism can be summarized in two theoretical forms: the subjective idealistic view of history, which asserts that man's subjective will determines history, and the objective idealistic view of history, which asserts that some mysterious spiritual entity determines history. These two forms of idealistic view of history are essentially the same, both insisting that social consciousness determines social existence, and in fact both explaining history in terms of factors other than history itself. Their ****similar basic propositions are: ① Reducing social history to the history of consciousness, ignoring material production activities, and reversing the real relationship between social existence and social consciousness. (2) They believe that only a few outstanding figures, such as emperors, generals and heroes, are the masters of history, and that the whole history of the world is nothing but the process of the realization of the thoughts and wills of the heroes and heroes, and that the supreme will can only be "revealed" to them and expressed through them. The most important of all is that the world's history is nothing but a process of realization of the thoughts and wills of the heroes, and the supreme will can only be "revealed" to and expressed through them.

Historical idealism replaces the real connection of social history with the subjective fabrication and artificial connection, which is essentially a distortion of the original face of social history, and plays an obstructive role in the development of human understanding and truth. However, as a certain stage of development in the process of human inquiry into the nature of social history, its existence has its own historical reasons and inevitability. Historical idealism has accumulated certain ideological materials for human beings to understand society in the process of long-term evolution; the problems it raises from the opposite side have also pushed people to think y; in the theoretical system of philosophers and thinkers of historical idealism, it also contains the valuable thought of historical dialectics and certain factors or buds of historical materialism. All these prepared the way for the emergence of the scientific view of history.

Plain materialism--also called spontaneous materialism--is a doctrine that the world originated in one or more specific material forms, and it is a primitive materialistic viewpoint that was spontaneously formed by human beings in the process of understanding the world. The main contributions of plain materialism lie in the following: first, it holds that the world is composed of matter and not created by God, affirming that the origin of the world is matter. Secondly, it tries to account for the creation of all things from the process of development and change of matter, and has the idea of plain dialectics. Although plain materialism is correct in its ideological substance and is the first of the three main stages in the history of the development of materialist philosophy, and has played a certain role in history and has had a significant influence on the later development of materialism, it is still of a perceptual and intuitive nature and lacks scientific argumentation due to historical and class limitations and the limitations of the level of scientific knowledge, whereas it is not idealistic in its description of social and historical phenomena is not idealistic.

Mechanical materialism--also called metaphysical materialism--is one of the three main stages of development of materialist philosophy. It arose on the basis of scientific progress during the period of rising capitalism in Europe in the seventeenth - eighteenth centuries. Due to the class position of the mechanical materialists and the limitations of the level of development of natural science at that time, mechanical materialism showed the following three limitations. I. Mechanical. II. Metaphysical. Three, materialistic view of history.

Dialectical materialism - Dialectical materialism is a Marxist philosophy, a scientific worldview that organically unites materialism and dialectics. Dialectical materialism holds that the world is material in nature. Engels said, "The true unity of the world lies in its materiality." ("Anti-Dühring," Selected Works of Marx and Engels, vol. 3, p. 83) Matter is first, consciousness is second, and consciousness is highly developed matter - a function of the human brain, a reflection of the objective material world in the human brain. Dialectical materialism holds that the material world moves, changes and develops according to its own inherent laws, and that "things are all in two." It reveals that the fundamental cause of the development of things lies in the contradictory nature within things. The contradictory sides of things unify and struggle, prompting things to develop continuously from lower to higher levels. Therefore, the law of contradiction of things, i.e., the law of the unity of opposites, is the most fundamental law of the movement, change and development of the material world. Dialectical materialism holds that human cognition is the reflection in the human mind of the movement of the objective material world. The epistemology of dialectical materialism solves the problem of the content, source and development process of human cognition both materially and dialectically. It holds that matter can become spirit and spirit can become matter, and that the realization of this dialectical unity of subjectivity and objectivity must all be achieved through practice. The view of practice is the first and fundamental view of dialectical materialist epistemology. Knowledge comes from practice and turns to serve practice. Practice, cognition, practice and cognition are repeated to infinity, which is the process of infinite development of people's correct understanding of the world and dynamic transformation of the world. Therefore, the epistemology of dialectical materialism is a dynamic and revolutionary reflection theory. Dialectical materialism is the worldview and seat of the proletariat, the theoretical basis of strategy and tactics in the proletarian political parties, and a powerful ideological weapon for the proletariat and the main revolutionary people to recognize the world scientifically and transform it revolutionally.