The concept of materialism is as old as philosophy. In pre-Socratic Greece, elements of materialist philosophy can be found in the “atomism” of Democritus and Leucippus. A concern for the material and contextual elements of social practice can be found in the writings of the Sophists. Materialism, in its various forms, continues to interest scholars today.
After a thousand years of slumber during the Middle Ages, interest in philosophic materialism reemerged. Components of the atomism found in Democritus returns in the empiricism of Bacon, Hobbes, and Hume. “Induction” is asserted by Bacon as the means by which the sensations of external reality are turned into claims to knowledge about that reality. Thomas Hobbes asserts that our reality consists of objects in motion, whether animate or inanimate. David Hume argues that only our experiences of physical reality can provide the basis for a claim to knowledge. Sensation is treated by the empiricists as the means by which human beings connect to the material world.
However, there is another thread within the Western tradition in philosophy that questions the purely empirical approach to the issues of knowledge and perception. This is the continental tradition. If the empirical tradition could be characterized as focusing on “sensation,” the continental tradition could be said to focus on “cognition.” That is, the continental tradition is concerned with how a fact of sense data is transformed into a cognition, or operational understanding of the world for the organisms engaged in acting in the world.
This means that the continental tradition has been concerned with consciousness. Since Descartes’s statement, I think, therefore, I am, the continental tradition has explored the definition and content of consciousness. The problem is that consciousness is difficult to define. Is it the same as life? Is it simply the ideas that we have in our head at any given moment in time? Is it linked to some deeper meaning in either a spiritual or historical sense? Since consciousness is generally thought of as emanating from a realm of ideas, it is often addressed in juxtaposition to the consideration of the concrete material reality that is the basis of sensations.
These question have led some in the continental tradition to develop systems to understand consciousness that have a strongly metaphysical character. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel developed a system in which human consciousness is tied to the unfolding of universal reason. The process of history and the development of human consciousness proceed together as a spiritual development of the human mind as it uncovers the rationality in history through the exploration of its own consciousness. The objectivity of Hegel’s system is assured by both its metaphysical character and post hoc method of validation. The influence of spirit is beyond any direct perception, and the evidence of its rationality is demonstrated only in hindsight.
A slightly different, yet equally metaphysical, path is forged by Edmund Husserl. Husserl’s phenomenological method seeks to identify a “science” for the study of consciousness in which objective elements of consciousness can be identified within the lived experience of individuals. For Husserl, metaphysics is at the core of the phenomenological method as it provides that domain in which “things in themselves” can be understood by consciousness.
As a result, there is a distinction between the knowledge that is generated by observation and that which is attained by the phenomenological methods. Empiricism legitimates its claims to knowledge through a path that requires repeatability, falsifiability, and observation. But this empirical methodology, according to Husserl, ignores the critical role of life as a precondition for the creation of understanding about the world. Only a living being can have a cognition.
In his criticism of empiricism, Edmund Husserl asserts that the problem with the empirical approach is that it “naturalizes consciousness.”[1] What Husserl means by this is that consciousness is treated as a function of the body and its sensations rather than as a transcendental condition of existence. For Husserl, the objects of contemplation can only be understood as manifesting themselves transcendentally within our consciousness. The desk on which I am writing is not literally in my head as I contemplate it. My thought of the desk is, therefore, manifested transcendentally. Thought, ego, intention, and consciousness are elements of life and constitute a precondition to the experience of sensation establishing a basis for Husserl’s transcendental idealism.
Numerous criticisms can be made of the phenomenological approach. The subjective and internal nature of phenomenological assertions make it difficult for Husserl and his followers to claim the science of their endeavor, even though they assert such a position. Thoughts exist in a reality that is disconnected from the world of experience, history, and culture. The assertions made regarding the character of life and the nature of our phenomenological quest requires a construction of the subject that itself will have historical and cultural roots. There is simply no objective platform from which to make the kinds of assertions that Husserl needs in order to objectify his methods.
These problems occupy much to the efforts of twentieth-century followers of phenomenology as they try to confront these issues. Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and others try to identify the means by which history and culture have influenced our thoughts and ideas, but they have not fully abandoned the notion of transcendental subjectivity. The work of Michel Henry in Material Phenomenology tries to confront this problem by creating a dualism within phenomenology to account for both life and the effects of society.[2] However, even Henry is still struggling with the transcendental character of phenomenology more generally.
This work will focus on another path within the continental tradition. I will argue that one can trace the emergence of a material understanding of consciousness, specifically the content of consciousness, in some of the works going back into the eighteenth century. Focusing on Kant, Marx, Nietzsche, Weber, and the poststructuralists, it will be argued that this group of philosophers abandoned the pursuit of defining essence, the thing-in-itself, with all the metaphysical baggage that comes from such a quest. These scholars create an understanding of cognition from which a form of materialism evolved. Once the metaphysical goal of defining life as a singularity was abandoned, it is possible to formulate a material understanding of cognition and its connection to the lived experience of human beings.
Such a path is still concerned with consciousness. However, this historical and cultural form of materialism holds the position that consciousness is a product of material conditions. However, the consideration of what constitutes a material condition is open to wide interpretation. Is a material condition limited to the configuration of atoms in a given time and location? Do material conditions refer to the state of evolutionary adaptation in the relation between life and the environment? Is it simply the position each person holds as a part of their socio-economic circumstances?
There have been several formulations of such a strategy that have emerged throughout the history of Western philosophy. Generally, this position states that all human knowledge of the external world can be understood as the product of that interaction and the processing of raw sensation into cognitions. The structures and concepts used for the processing of sensation are not innate in the individual but are the products of social conditioning, or the cultural context in which the experiences occur.
Therefore, not only is the notion of transcendent knowledge inconceivable, but any notion of knowledge that is unmediated by context is also undermined. Such a view is associated with a relativistic view of both ethics and epistemology, more generally. Knowledge claims are a human product, the generation of which is stimulated by need, and the results of which are shaped by the contextual order of a given society.
F. A. Lange terms such a materialist position “sensationalism” in his discussion of the Greek Sophists.[3] Protagoras claimed that “man is the measure of all things.” This simple statement denies the validity of both unmediated empiricism and the metaphysics that would support the generation of idealist philosophy. The formulation of nature’s laws cannot be divorced from the human perceptions in which those laws are articulated. Transcendental claims to knowledge separate themselves from perception and, therefore, do not constitute a valid epistemological base for knowledge claims.
The totality of our environmental experiences establishes the context for the formation and articulation of ideas. Our consciousness is a reflection of the totality of those experiences. The experience of the world is manifold. It includes the activities driven by biological imperatives and the pursuit of food, clothing, and shelter, but also the social interactions that form the basis of history and culture. These would include the social norms embedded with human practices, the technological conditions into which people are born, and the conditions of the natural world that set the parameters for human activity.
These socio-cultural conditions cannot be separated out from the material experiences that human beings have as they are also significant factors in the shaping of consciousness. They direct the construction of a cognitive understanding of the world upon which people act. The subject is in the world in a formal sense. What defines the subject cannot be separated from the world. There can be no transcendental character to subjectivity. There is no objective ground on which to stand to construct the transcendental subject.
It is this cognitive picture upon which people act. Its roots are material in a double sense. It is material in the way that material experiences of the world create the content for its formation. It is also material because in acting upon that cognitive picture human beings reinforce the materiality of those experiences. These actions are the material force in history.
This work will treat this materialist thread in the continental tradition as an unfolding of ideas. There is no perfect materialism. There is no fully complete system. However, there is a direction. It is a process in which new insights are built upon the ideas of others within the tradition.
The work will operate on two levels. It will seek to build a model of materialist understanding that will be used as an ideal-type, in the Weberian sense, for comparison to our various epistemological models for the construction of social knowledge. The second task of this work is to demonstrate movement. The methods of social analysis have become more materialistic over the last two hundred years. This has been the result of some specific and identifiable adjustments to the way in which the task of social inquiry has been perceived. Not all of these adjustment have been carried out by scholars generally identified as materialists. Nevertheless, they have contributed something significant to that path of inquiry.
Chapter 1 will construct a model of materialism. What are its central features? How can materialism be discussed in a foundationless world? What does it look like when stripped to its core ideas and basic implications? Chapter 1 will also address the significance of Darwin. With the publication of The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin introduced a biological component into the discussion of materialism. The connection between the human organism and the environment, as a determinant in physical adaptation, has a decidedly materialistic tone. Human beings are subject to the same biological processes of species adaptation as all other organisms on the planet. Therefore, the implications of Darwin spread far beyond biology. I will suggest some implications for philosophy, expanding some remarks on the subject presented by John Dewey.
Chapter 2 deals with Immanuel Kant. No one considers Kant a materialist. However, in his discussion of phenomenal knowledge there are significant questions raised by Kant that are important for the development of a materialist understanding of the world. What does it mean to give up the search for essence? Where does that leave us in our quest to make sense of the world?
Chapter 3 is a discussion of Karl Marx. It would be impossible to discuss materialism and its relation to consciousness without some reference to Marx. However, Marx should be treated as an opening of the discussion, not its final word. Further, Marx is also important in articulating the material power of discourse. If the content of conscious serves as a person’s picture of reality, it will shape their actions. This make the struggle to control discourse a political struggle.
Chapter 4 focuses on Max Weber. Weber is a bit of an enigma, impossible to characterize in any simple fashion. His embrace of data in social science has led some to consider him closer to empiricism and positivism. However, his stress on emotions and empathy have caused others to see him within the fold of phenomenology.[4] Chapter 4 will sort this out and discuss the implications of Weber for the evolution of materialist philosophy.
Chapter 5 explores the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche. If Kant is the Apollonian builder, Nietzsche is the Dionysian destroyer. Nevertheless, there is something fundamentally materialistic about his approach. It is Nietzsche who begins to ask the questions about what Darwin really implies for our understanding of ourselves and the understanding of consciousness in an age of evolutionary biology.
Chapter 6 addresses the work of the French School known as poststructuralism. Poststructuralism draws inspiration from Nietzsche, Marx, Weber, phenomenology, and existentialism. Often criticized as a negative philosophy that seeks to undermine all foundational claims, there is also a strong undercurrent of materialist assumptions that animate its analysis. The chapter will draw on primarily the writings of Jean Baudrillard, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida, but other authors will be mentioned to draw out some of the critical implications.
Following chapter 6, the work will conclude with some brief remarks about materialism as an approach to the comprehension of social and political life.
Edmund Husserl, Phenomenology and the Crisis in Philosophy (New York: Harper, 1965), 82.
Michel Henry, Material Phenomenology (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008).
F. A. Lange, The History of Materialism (New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1925), 38.
John Hall, “Max Weber’s Methodological Strategy and Comparative Lifeworld Phenomenology” in Human Studies 4:2, 1981.