Dialectical Materialism

by Alexander Spirkin

1. Philosophy As A World-View And A Methodology What Is Philosophy? Philosophy as a World-View Philosophy as Methodology Philosophy and Science Philosophy and Art 2. The System of Categories in Philosophical Thought The Categories of Dialectics Matter as the Substance of Everything That Exists The Motion of Matter Space and Time The Principle of Universal Connection and Development The Principle of Causality System and Structure Essence and Phenomenon Quality and Quantity Negation and Continuity Contradiction and Harmony 3. Consciousness of the World and the World of Consciousness The General Concept of Consciousness and Mental Activity The Material and the Spiritual Consciousness and Language 4. The Theory of Knowledge and Creativity General Concept of Cognition Cognition and Practice What Is Truth? The Sensuous Image of the World Thought 5. On the Human Being and Being Human What Is a Human Being? The Human as the Biosocial Man in the Realm of Nature Man and Society Man as a Personality Man the Doer Destiny, Freedom and Responsibility Man and culture

Genres: Philosophy

343 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1983

Reviews

[Scott Bisset · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant book of dialectical materialism. Although from the late revisionist Soviet Union, they are usually depending on the Author pretty good. You have to be careful. Alexander Spirkin seems to be one of these good Authors. You usually get the advantage of a deeper elaboration of dialectical materialism using the latest science. Which for this person, he knows an awful alot about the brain. Although I have some disagreements with how he phrases the consciousness question, generally he is correct and you'd have to know some pretty high level materialist theory of consciousness to be able to pick them out. And to be fair if I were to list all the positives compared to this minor negative. The positive would probably fill books of appraisal. If you want the "spiritual successor" to Anti-During, usually the late USSR books are pretty good at this.
It is very sad that these are not more widely known, deep thought out Marxist Materialist truths like consciousness is the function of the brain as highly organised matter (ie identical to it), are lost on most many modern Marxist, who are still lost in the field of Dualistic tendencies and an all to pervasive tendency to focus on the dialectic part of Dialectical Materialism. Consequently leading them to wholly negate the Materialist part, or even understand what mono-materialism or materialism is etc and revert to idealist Hegelian Dialectics. Anyway. This book does a long way of weeding out many errors in the conception of dialectical and historical materialism and is a master piece that everyone should read.