Ashvin,AshvinP wrote: ↑Sun Aug 29, 2021 4:53 am You want to have the best of both worlds - taking the undeniable power and inner logic of the metamorphic view but leaving out its most essential conclusions. It is Marx flipping Hegel all over again to come up with "dialectical materialism"... some unimaginative tactics never change.
I can't see that there could be anything that is other than Spirit (or whatever other name is used) in the system you outline, even though at times you seem to imply that there is such a thing, and that is why practical affairs are not truly spiritual. Nor do I know what your conception of the 'materialism' in historical materialism is.
Just to clarify, in case we are talking at cross-purposes, my understanding of the latter is in the Theses on Feuerbach previously linked to. The first two sentences of this encapsulate the difference between Marx's materialism and physicalist materialism, on the one hand, and abstract idealism on the other:
Anyway, I have some other things to do and am bowing out of this thread for the time being.Marx said:
"The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism – that of Feuerbach included – is that the thing, reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object or of contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively. Hence, in contradistinction to materialism, the active side was developed abstractly by idealism – which, of course, does not know real, sensuous activity as such."