Idealism, if taken to its logical conclusion, results in solipsism, the idea that nothing real exists other than my mind. Everything else is just a construct of my mind, like virtual worlds being rendered in real-time, in a computer game. Hence, the idealist notion about the tree falling in the forest if there is no one there to hear it fall. As described elsewhere, the further development of science has also brought this around, once more, because, when we examine reality, at an even smaller scale, at the quantum level, we now find uncertainty once more, as presented by Schroedinger, and his cat, but, also, an uncertainty, which is resolved by the act of observation, as demonstrated in Quantum Entanglement.
“The old materialism was therefore negated by idealism. But in the course of the further development of philosophy, idealism, too, became untenable and was negated by modern materialism. This modern materialism, the negation of the negation, is not the mere re-establishment of the old, but adds to the lasting foundations of this old materialism the whole intellectual content of two thousand years of progress in philosophy and natural science, as well as in these two thousand years of history itself. Generally speaking, it is no longer philosophy at all, but a simple world outlook which has to be verified and implemented not in a science of sciences standing apart, but in the positive sciences. Philosophy is therefore “sublated” here, that is, “both overcome and preserved”; overcome in its form, and preserved in its real content.” (p 176-7)
In other words, the modern materialism understands and incorporates the fact that the true nature of reality is not what it appears to be on the surface. Our perception and comprehension of that reality is only an infinite series of approximations to it. Indeed, in the theories of a multiverse, there is not one material reality, but an infinite number of material realities – simultaneously.
In addition, that science, in examining the brain and nervous system, has demonstrated that the brain is an organ of the body like any other, and that the process of perception and thoughts are the manifestation of chemical and electrical reactions in the brain. Psychology and psychiatry studies those processes and reactions, on a materialist basis, as with any other natural science.
Engels notes that Roussea's doctrine of equality that Duhring plagiarises, manifests this same dialectical law of the negation of the negation, even though it was presented twenty years before Hegel was born.
“In the state of nature and savagery men were equal; and as Rousseau regards even language as a perversion of the state of nature, he is fully justified in extending the equality of animals within the limits of a single species also to the animal-men recently classified by Haeckel hypothetically as Alali: speechless. But these equal animal-men had one quality which gave them an advantage over the other animals: perfectibility, the capacity to develop further; and this became the cause of inequality.” (p 177)
We are not concerned, here, with the accuracy of Rousseau's depiction, which did not have the benefit of all the future discoveries of anthropology, but only with the development of the doctrine by Rousseau. Rousseau saw this inequality as progress.
“But this progress contained an antagonism: it was at the same time retrogression.
“All subsequent advances” (beyond the original state of nature) “meant so many steps seemingly towards the perfection of the individual, but in reality towards the decay of the race... Metallurgy and agriculture were the two arts the discovery of which produced this great revolution” (the transformation of the primeval forest into cultivated land, but also the introduction of poverty and slavery through property). “For the poet it is gold and silver, but for the philosopher iron and corn, which have civilised men and ruined the human race.”.” (p 177-8)
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