On May 28, 2008, at 10:39 AM, james daly wrote:
>
> Idealism for Marx means the Hegelian position that the
> intelligibility of
> the world consists in that, *properly understood* (i.e. by Hegel),
> the world
> is as it is because it is so required by reason (the Idea, the
> Absolute):
> the actual is the rational, and the rational is the actual.
This is, I think, a confusion. The Hegelian phrase is *the real is the rational*, not *the actual is the rational*, as Marcuse emphasizes in "Reason and Revolution." The difference is crucial--the "actual"-- the momentary experienceable manifold--is not "real" in itself. The "reality" it contains is the process whereby its internal contradictions "rationally" (lawfully) determine its transformation into a new "actuality" likewise dialectically determined as a "moment" in the ongoing (never-ending) process of realization of the "absolute idea" (the process which we can also call the "universe").
As for "materialism vs. idealism" I agree with Chris. Much better is to counterpose (as Kant does) *realism* (knowledge based on experience) to *idealism* (knowledge, based on an experience-unconnected pure reason, of things-in-themselves). *Spiritualism*, (the idea that a purely internal mental process enables us to dwell in a domain unconnected to what sensuous experience presents to us as the "world"), would then be counterposed to *materialism* (the idea that what can be given by sensuous experience is in fact the "world") as well as to *physicalism* (the idea that the nonmaterial mathematical laws governing experienceable reality are as much part of the "world" as is the domain of potential sensuous experience).
Shane Mage
"Thunderbolt steers all things...it consents and does not consent to be called Zeus."
Herakleitos of Ephesos