Table Of ContentTHE NEW MATERIALISM
THE
NEW MATERIALISM
by
JAMES K. FEIBLEMAN
TULANE UNIVERSITY
MARTIN US NI]HOFF I THE HAGUE I 1970
ISBN-13: 978-90-247-0047-9 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-010-3165-3
DOl: 10.1007/978-94-010-3165-3
© I970 by Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
All rights reserved, including the right to translate 01'
to refrroduce this book 01' parts thereot in any to'Ym
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PART ONE: INTRODUCTION AND METHOD
I. The Subjective Digression 3
II. A Synthetic Method for the Study of Empirical Ontology 20
PART TWO: NATURE
III. Formal Materialism: The New Version 39
IV. Full Concreteness and the Re-materialization of Matter 55
V. A Material Theory of Reference 66
VI. How Abstract Things Survive 84
PART THREE: HUMAN NATURE
VII. Artifactualism 95
VIII. The Ambivalence of Aggression and the Moralization of
Man 112
IX. Human Nature and Institutions 123
X. Cultural Conditioning 134
PART FOUR: THE LIMITS OF NATURE
Xl. Spirit as a Property of Matter 149
XII. A Religion for the New Materialism 160
XIII. God 175
References 185
Index 187
FOREWORD
A wholly new theory of matter has been advanced in the last half
century by modern physics, but there has been no new theory of ma
terialism to match it. The occurrence of a revolution of such magni
tude in science will have to be understood as calling for a corresponding
one in philosophy. The present work is an attempt to make a start in
that direction.
Grateful acknowledgment is hereby made to the Editors of the fol
lowing journals for permission to reprint articles which first appeared
in their pages: to Darshana for "Human Nature and Institutions"; to
Diogenes for "Full Concreteness and the Re-Materialization of
Matter"; to Perspectives in Biology and Medicine for "The Ambiva
lence of Aggression and the Moralization of Man"; to Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research for "Formal Materialism Reconfirmed"
(which appears here revised and extended as "Formal Materialism:
The New Version"), and for "Artifactualism: The Origin of Man and
His Tools"; to Philosophy Today for "How Abstract Objects Survive";
to Religious Studies for "A Religion for the New Materialism"; and to
Tulane Studies in PhilosoPhy for "A Material Theory of Reference."
PART ONE
INTRODUCTION AND METHOD
CHAPTER I
THE SUBJECTIVE DIGRESSION
Every philosophy endeavors to be as comprehensive as possible, and
when philosophers speak they do so for the whole world. But their
critics have long ago recognized that, although they usually have
something to say, what is genuine is something less than they have
supposed. So long as philosophies are limited, rival claimants may both
speak for the truth; and this is no less the case when one truth is nar
rower than another.
Briefly, the prevailing Greek view of man, which we can think of as
a kind of realist dispensation, was a view taken from the outside,
and man himself a figure in a natural landscape. The modern scien
tific view of man is consistent with this Greek view. But European
philosophy from its start took a different turn. Most of the European
philosophers sought to look at man from the inside, as a figure quite
distinct from his background and not an integral part of it. I call this
European view "the subjective digression" because it occurs after the
Greeks and despite modern science. It will be the intention of this
study, first, to account for the subjective digression; secondly, to show
what aspects of reality the philosophers who have been responsible
for it are defending; and, finally, to advance the claims of the revised
realist dispensation which has the advantage given it not only by
experimental science but also by the disclosure of the philosophers
of the subjective digression.
I
Man is part of the world from which he emerged and to which he must
return. There is a sense in which he can be said never to have left it. In
the brief period during which he stands out in low relief against the
backgroundoftherest of nature, he can be understood only by means
of a prior understanding of the background of nature. Thus some
4 INTRODUCTION AND METHOD
understanding of the world is a prerequisite for an understanding of
man.
The Greeks knew very well that man is a natural animal, and no less
so because it is native to him to be rational. They thought that every
part of man, including reason, has its counterpart in the world. There
fore to understand man it is necessary first to understand the world in
which he lives. Thus Greek philosophy was from the days of the Pre
Socratics to its flourishing with Democritus, Plato and Aristotle,
essentially realistic and objective.
In the tiny Greek world of Athens the individual, his society and
his philosophy were so perfectly welded that in the name of anyone
it was not found necessary to repudiate the others. The individual did
not exist despite his society but because of it, and his philosophy could
be a social philosophy without sacrificing what was peculiarly his.
But this situation soon took a change for the worse. The perfection of
the polis broke up, and with it the security which the individual found
in his state. He fell back then upon subjective philosophies, in an
effort to maintain himself in an alien world. Stoicism and Epicureanism,
scepticism and solipsism, were the philosophical devices by which the
individual shored up his weaknesses and the agonies produced by his
alienation.
But the subjective digression reverses this order. It assumes that an
understanding of man is prerequisite for an understanding of the
world, since the world is to be understood only as an extension of
man's knowledge. The beginnings of the subjective digression were fore
shadowed when Greek philosophy was taken over by the scholastics. The
religious interests were in man, God, and the relations between them,
and it was never understood that the relations between them were me
diated by the material world. Hence the interest in the material world,
which had been maintained so sedulously by the Greeks, lagged, and
the importance of man in relation to God rose accordingly. Despite
the knowledge of human frailty and the acute sense of sin, it was a
very flattering view of man.
The subjective digression was fully developed by Descartes who
substituted mind and matter for form and matter. The shift from
Aristotle's form to Descartes' mind appeared innocent enough at the
time. But it set the philosophers off to develop their own brand of
empiricism; they were content to study the effects of the object on
the knowing subject, the human end of experience. Scientific empiri
cism is objective, the scientist is concerned with the object through
THE SUBJECTIVE DIGRESSION 5
his design of experiments and through his subsequent calculations.
But the philosopher tends to read science, as indeed everything else,
subjectively.
After Descartes philosophy was seldom free from SUbjectivity.
Various forms of it were tried and adopted, usually in terms of some
one subjective faculty. The Continental rationalists Spinoza and
Leibniz followed Descartes' lead in endeavoring to secure reliable
knowledge by means of reasoning. The British empiricists Locke,
Berkeley and Hume operated with the senses as the basis, usually
(though not exclusively) the visual sense. British empiricism is in
the main philosophical empiricism. It is not the same as scientific
empiricism, by which no doubt it was inspired.
The most dramatic contrast is perhaps the one furnished by the
existence of experimental science. Both philosophers and scientists
have used the term "empiricism" and many philosophers in the Euro
pean tradition have held themselves to be empiricists, practicing a
method very much like that of science. A little examination, how
ever, will prove that this is very far from being the case. For experi
ence is a two-ended process, with the subject at one end and the object
at the other. The scientist employs his method in order to learn as
much as he can about the object. It is the material object and the con
ditions disclosing the regularities of behavior of the material object
which constitute the aim of the scientist's researches. The philosopher,
on the other hand, employs his method in order to learn as much as
he can about the subject. Not what experience discloses about the
nature of the object but what it discloses about the nature of the sub
ject, is what interests him. He is concerned to study his own reactions
to experience rather than what is disclosed by his experience.
Both, it is true, employ experience, but between them there is
literally all of the difference in the world. For even when the scientist
is interested in the subject, even when man himself becomes the object
of scientific research, he is treated by the scientists as an object, to be
investigated in accordance with the orthodox procedures established
by the scientific method. Introspection is a tool in the hands of the
philosopher, instrumental experimentation is the tool employed by the
working scientist. The knowledge gained in these two contrasting
ways could be expected to be, as indeed it proves, sharply different.
The discovery of biological evolution by Darwin and its later de
velopment by others served to reinforce the Greek view, for it showed
the mechanism by which man emerged from his biological background
6 INTRODUCTION AND METHOD
of lower species, themselves a more ancient product of still lower
organisms, until now we know that life itself could have begun as a
product of non-living physical and chemical processes. According to
modern biology man survives because of his ability to adapt to his
environment, and it is clear that he remains dependent upon many
natural developments, beginning with solar energies and involving
green plants as well as animal organisms. Everything in science con
spires to underscore the objective development of man as a complex
material object standing out in low relief from the rest of material
nature.
Those modern thinkers who understand very well the place of man
in nature are devoted to the theory and practice of science. The realist
school: philosophers such as Peirce, N. Hartmann, and Whitehead,
and including among many others the American critical realists, as
well as Laird, Frege and Meinong, are in agreement with the scientists.
But most other philosophers are content to find new ways to extend
the subjective digression; as for instance existentialism, and the analy
sis of ordinary language.
The English practitioners of the philosophy of ordinary language,
those who like Austin and Ryle have followed the later Wittgenstein,
are content to make up a technical discipline from the close analy
sis of the meanings imbedded in colloquial speech. This takes them
away from science and from contemporary progress, and leaves them
with the preserved feelings of those who in the past formed the
language with its conventional meanings. The subjectivity of the
dead is thus the subject matter of the living, who keep this link with
the external world despite the fact that it remains a precarious one.
Philosophers have nevertheless allowed themselves to be crowded
out of the external world by the successes of experimental science,
and on the European mainland they have responded by trying to
make up for it with an intensive analysis of their own subjective
states (just in case they should be able to argue that these are typical).
They have accepted the alienation in a way which is almost patho
logical, and think they have allayed its damage through its very
recognition. Anguish and nausea have become the terms of reference
of those who in this way reassure themselves of the reality of their own
being. But in a world of rapidly increasing human population and
scientific knowledge, preoccupation with the self is supererogatory
and has earned philosophy worse than a bad name, indeed almost
total neglect.
