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.
Early nineteenth-century German philosophy is not only difficult for the lay reader to grasp. Scholars express profoundly differing interpretations of the texts and evaluations of the beliefs of the philosophers. It would be an unnecessary diversion to enter these disputatious areas in the context of the present purpose, but it is necessary to locate Feuerbach in the history of thought. As mentioned above, academic philosophy in Germany at the opening of the nineteenth century was dominated by idealism. Kant was, and is, a towering figure, and his critical philosophy had an influence it is difficult to overstate. A very different but also profoundly influential step in the development of idealism was taken by Hegel. Both of their philosophies were very much intertwined with the Christian tradition. Feuerbach was in his early adult life a follower of Hegel. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy reports that ‘In notes for lectures on the history of modern philosophy that he delivered in 1835/36, Feuerbach wrote that idealism is the “one true philosophy”, and that “what is not spirit is nothing”’ (Gooch, 2016). However, he broke completely with Hegelianism and by 1844 Marx was able to state that ‘Feuerbach is the only one who has a serious, critical attitude to the Hegelian dialectic and who has made genuine discoveries in this field. He is in fact the true conqueror of the old philosophy’ (Marx, 1844, p. 64.)
The exact development of Feuerbach’s thinking and beliefs is complicated and unclear. His writings seem to contain ideas at odds with one another. From the point of view of the history of materialism, what is more important is what Marx made of his writings rather than what ideas Feuerbach intended those writings to convey.
Feuerbach’s contribution to the materialist tradition may be considered in two aspects: first a critique of Hegelian idealism, and second a critique of Christianity. He turns Hegelianism on its head and argues that rather than thought, or spirit, being primary, it is matter that is primary, and from which thought emerges secondarily. Correspondingly, he sees the Christian conception of god as a projection of human faculties. The Stanford Encyclopedia states
[Feuerbach’s] The Essence of Christianity is divided into two parts. In the first part Feuerbach considers religion ‘in its agreement with the human essence’ … arguing that, when purportedly theological claims are understood in their proper sense, they are recognized as expressing anthropological, rather than theological, truths. That is, the predicates that religious believers apply to God are predicates that properly apply to the human species-essence of which God is an imaginary representation. In the second part Feuerbach considers religion ‘in its contradiction with the human essence’ … arguing that, when theological claims are understood in the sense in which they are ordinarily taken (i.e., as referring to a non-human divine person), they are self-contradictory. In early 1842 Feuerbach still preferred that his views be presented to the public under the label ‘anthropotheism’ rather than ‘atheism’, emphasizing that his overriding purpose in negating ‘the false or theological essence of religion’ had been to affirm its ‘true or anthropological essence’, i.e., the divinity of man.
(Gooch, 2016)
However accurate Marx’s reading of Feuerbach was, he was certainly wrong about one thing – the ‘old philosophy’ was not overthrown, at least not in academic philosophy. The idealist Schopenhauer followed Feuerbach and became hugely influential. But for Marx that was not the important point. Having provided to Marx’s satisfaction a theoretical rebuff to idealism, he then wanted to criticise Feuerbach, and all philosophy, for its essence as a reflective, unpractical activity – for, as he saw it, its fundamental passivity. He famously wrote his Eleven Theses on Feuerbach, the most famous being the last.
The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.
(Marx, 2000, pp. 171–4)
Marx was a philosopher who was also an economist and political theorist. He saw himself as in a radical tradition that included the social movement of working people, and he saw himself as in the tradition of radical hostility to religion. But his fundamental belief that the overthrow of an oppressive social system would only be possible by revolution introduced into the materialist tradition a new militancy. Recall the fear the materialists had of authority, and the way they felt obliged to disguise their true views, and, in the case of d’Holbach, to publish anonymously. With Marx all such timidity had gone and his radical political programme was publicly declared in The Communist Manifesto of 1848. His most famous criticism of religion, founded on his materialism and belief in the reactionary role of religion in society, was written a few years earlier in an introduction to a critique of Hegel.
Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness.
(Marx, 2000, pp. 71–82)
There are major disagreements amongst scholars when considering the relation between Marx’s beliefs and writings, and the subsequent twentieth-century movements that identified themselves as Marxist and which led to state power in some major countries. It is well known these states did little to advance the cause of real human happiness. The only point to be made here is that at some point in the communist tradition of materialism the view emerged that religion could be supressed by force. It was as though the materialists thought they could and would borrow the techniques of oppression that the enemies of materialism had employed throughout history. Besides the tragic break with the Enlightenment tradition of free speech implicit in this step, the crucial point is the lesson that was not learned was that this oppressive policy is bound to fail. Just as oppression could not kill off materialism, so oppression cannot stop religion. Indeed, all the great religions have a long history of oppression by other religions, and have established a noble tradition of martyrs. Besides being ethically reprehensible, the attempted suppression of ideas is psychologically stupid and doomed inevitably to failure.
Of at least equal significance for the history of materialism is the impact of an advance in biology. It is difficult to overestimate the impact that the theory of evolution has had on our conception of the world, and difficult too to overestimate the scope of its acceptance in the scientific community. Dawkins’ comment that ‘it is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane’, is perhaps more well known than these remarks in a BBC interview:
… I read Darwinism, and understood Darwinism at 16. And that was a big leap for me, because by the time I reached the age of 16, I had lost all religious faith, with the exception of possibly a sort of lingering feeling about the argument from design. So I’d already sort of worked out that there are lots of different religions, and they contradict each other, so they can’t all be right – and that kind of thing. But I was left with a sort of feeling ‘Oh well there must be SOME sort of designer, some sort of spirit which designed the universe and designed life.’ And it was when I understood Darwin that I saw how totally wrong that point of view was, that rather suddenly scales fell from my eyes and I then became rather strongly anti-religious at that point.
(www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/atheism/people/dawkins.shtml)
With a dramatic repudiation of the argument from design, and with a coherent theory about the natural evolution of the human species from the line of great apes, it felt as though key challenges to the materialist world view were cast into considerable, potentially decisive doubt.
This discussion recalls two great thinkers from Chapter 3. Newton, who had refused to point to the existence of gravity as grounds for a belief in god, nevertheless found the argument from design convincing.
Atheism is so senseless & odious to mankind that it never had many professors. Can it be by accident that all birds beasts & men have their right side & left side alike shaped (except in their bowells) & just two eyes & no more on either side the face & just two ears on either side the head & a nose with two holes & no more between the eyes & one mouth under the nose & either two fore leggs or two wings or two arms on the sholders & two leggs on the hipps one on either side & no more? Whence arises this uniformity in all their outward shapes but from the counsel & contrivance of an Author? Whence is it that the eyes of all sorts of living creatures are transparent to the very bottom & the only transparent members in the body, having on the outside an hard transparent skin, & within transparent juyces with a crystalline Lens in the middle & a pupil before the Lens all of them so truly shaped & fitted for vision, that no Artist can mend them? Did blind chance know that there was light & what was its refraction & fit the eys of all creatures after the most curious manner to make use of it? These & such like considerations always have & ever will prevail with man kind to beleive that there is a being who made all things & has all things in his power & who is therfore to be feared.
(Newton, 1710–)
It is worth observing how Newton sneaks into the theistic stance the need for the pious to be fearful. Religion has the aim of keeping men fearful. Epicurus, Lucretius and Montaigne seek the exact opposite. The materialist response to the above presented here is first Hume’s response, and then the post-Darwinian response.
Gottlieb describes Hume as placing ‘several layers of insulation between himself and his critique of this argument’. It was, frankly, sensible, not to be seen openly criticising the leading scientific thinkers of his time, nor to be seen casting doubt on what was taken as primary evidence for the existence of god. Hume is prudent and invents a ‘friend who loves sceptical paradoxes’, and has this friend make a speech ‘on behalf of Epicurus’. The key point delivered in this camouflaged way is that there is an illegitimate leap from the evidence of the existence of a craftsman, an ‘Author’, to the assertion that that is also evidence for the existence of a god. Hume writes:
If the cause be known only by the effect, we never ought to ascribe to it any qualities beyond what are precisely requisite to produce the effect: Nor can we, by any rules of just reasoning, return back from the cause, and infer other effects from it, beyond those by which alone it is known to us. No one, merely from the sight of one of Zeuxis’s pictures, could know, that he was also a statuary or architect, and was an artist no less skilful in stone and marble than in colours. The talents and taste, displayed in the particular work before us; these we may safely conclude the workman to be possessed of. The cause must be proportional to the effect; and if we exactly and precisely proportion it, we shall never find in it any qualities, that point farther, or afford an inference concerning any other design or performance. Such qualities must be somewhat beyond what is merely requisite for producing the effect, which we examine.
Allowing, therefore, the gods to be authors of the existence or order of the universe, it follows that they possess that precise degree of power, intelligence, and benevolence which appears in their workmanship; but nothing farther can ever be proved, except we call in the assistance of exaggeration and flattery to supply the defects of argument and reasoning.
(Hume, 2007, Section XI, paras. 105–106)
As Gottlieb observes, from the nature of the eye and apparent signs of design, we cannot reasonably get to ‘a being who has all things in his power & who is therefore to be feared’; he writes:
For all we can tell from his handiwork, the Craftsman may have had only limited powers over his materials. Perhaps he no longer has those powers, or has ceased to exist altogether, in which case there is little to fear from him. And any evidence of design certainly does not itself license the inference that the designer is or was supremely just or good.
(p. 216)
This is a powerful reply to the argument from design for the existence of god, but it wasn’t until the theory of evolution that it was dealt a mortal blow. For with the advent of an understanding of the evolution of life it became clear that the evidence for a craftsman designer is indeed illusory. Dawkins communicates how evolution has created for those who observe the natural world the appearance of the work of a ‘blind watchmaker’, but given the essential conceptual ingredients of evolutionary theory – genetic variation and fitness to survive in the given environment – together with an unimaginably long time for the evolutionary processes to occur, there need be no agent acting as designer or craftsman at all.
This concludes the survey of the history of materialism. The analysis now turns to the philosophical details of a currently viable materialism, and the story begins with materialism’s dearest friend, science, tolling the death knell of materialism as conceived in a continuous tradition beginning in India and Greece over 2000 years ago.