The evolution has ups and downs, socialism can appear at the end of this process, but not the one the East Bloc attempted in vain under Marxism-Leninism. To guarantee this process we do not have to forcibly rely on a philosophy propping it up, but the plurality of the existing factors wherever and whenever they appear. No philosophy can answer to all problems of humanity anywhere and anytime.
Marxism-Leninism is cemented by materialism which appeared in the 19th century based on the Newtonian physics and Darwin’s theory of evolution. It interprets that those things are true which are composed of materials and formed within the three dimensional space. Furthermore, materialism believes all non-material phenomena are as the direct result of matter interactions.
Based on this philosophy, Marx developed his Dialectical Materialism which remains as the philosophy of Marxists. It develops a methodological approach to all cultural aspects of society, economics, social structure of classes, and history. Materialism is the following of Cartesian dualism which believed in the existing of the mental and physical world. Dualism contrasts materialism and idealism. Mind-body problem is the fundamental substances which answer to everything in the world.
Psychological views presume that the mental state exists as causally efficacious of deeper substance that can be called anything but not brain or matter. In another word, mind and brain cannot be the same thing, but interact with one another. This view approaches rather dualism, if not platonic idealism, but not materialism.
Dualism was reduced to materialism in the 19th. However, it found substantial meaning in the 20th. Quantum physics, astrophysics and a philosophy derived from modern sciences prove that matter is a little portion of being and over 95% of cosmic existence is composed of energy and something called dark maters whereas this term refers to something which is not any matter. In another word, it cannot advocate materialism.
Historical Materialism believes that it is not the consciousness that determines the humans’ existence, but their social existence determines their existence. Historical materialism looks for the causes of developments and changes in human societies in the way humans collectively make the means to live, thus giving an emphasis, through economic analysis, to everything that co-exists with the economic base of society.
This absolute interpretation of Historical materialism in fact leaves little room for all other non-economic factors that Marx calls superstructure and today we know the following of this absolutism due to the failure of it in the East Bloc.
In contrast to the irrational weight materialists attribute to idealism, it explains the world with its very fundamental substance of being. Metaphysics is the alternative to physics and a part of this philosophy since the Ancient Greeks. It concerns to illuminate all cannot be explained by material substance. Objects and properties in our three dimensional space have been always difficult to be materialistically proved. Therefore, the basic categories of being and their interrelations, nature, dynamics were discussed in the epistemology focusing on the subject.
Metaphysics lost its importance with modernization of cultural evolution of 19th century in Western societies. It reshapes today philosophical views and way of thinking and can be another word for some physical theories like Uncertainty Principle, String Theory, Relativity Theory, Entanglement, and Non-locality. Metaphysics may also approach some unknown phenomena like dream, telepathy, Synchronization of events postulated by Carl Gustav Jung, instincts, and puzzled property of intelligence.
Today natural sciences prove a trend that affirms the power of human thoughts / consciousness above matter, it means our consciousness is not the product of the material world, but they both interact with each other, if not in some deeper views the power of consciousness may create the material world in form and substance. Whatever the sciences today affirms, a distinct set of rights and wrongs, with no variation cannot explain the world. The physical world cannot be reduced to matter, a realistic set of views need realistic physical theories plus the role of mind.
It means our mental events are correlated with physical events and vice versa. Philosophy or science alone cannot advance an absolute categorization, but need each other to achieve, change or improve it. Philosophy or science alone does not encompasses the world, but complete. each other.
As alluded to, the laws of nature precondition that sciences and philosophy reach with an evolutionary tendency to each other. However, in the course of history, they may separate sometimes from each other. In this case, an absolute domination of philosophy creates extremist religions and ideologies like those of Islamism or materialist atheism which radically deny the universally accepted norms of ethics because both do not adapt that there are universally evolutionary and thus changeable truths.
Absolute domination of science without philosophy creates in turn societies with unchained ethical norms because a logic authority is needed and must be involved in the laws of nature. Sciences and philosophy cannot indeed be separated from each other, only so, they explain any change and can improve us over time. With them, we change, improve or evolve the process of our observations, views and norms.
By Jahanshah Rashidian
