Abstract

The entire history of scientific and philosophical knowledge testifies that the significant difference between idealism and materialism does not lie in the alleged fact that materialism denies and idealism recognizes the significance of reason, i.e., the utilization in cognition of abstract ideas . Democritus' atoms, with all their geometrical and other attributes, are so small that they cannot be perceived either with the help, or by means, of an apparatus of hearing or organs of touch. Democritus arrived at the idea of his "atoms" by the very same way in which Plato and Aristotle arrived at their "ideas" and "forms," which they contrasted to "matter" taken as "nonbeing" or "pure possibility." It is no accident that his work is titled Of Ideas. Democritus' atoms, Plato's ideas, Aristotle's forms, and later Leibniz' monads, Kant's "consciousness in general," and Hegel's "world spirit" are universal concepts, categories, or logical constructs. And, consequently, the deepest difference between Democritus and Plato, between Hegel and Feuerbach, lies in the fact that materialists, proceeding from the primacy and determining role of being, in the unity of being and consciousness, profess the theory of reflection, while all idealists without exception assert that it is not matter that is reflected in human ideas but, on the contrary, human ideas that are reflected in the empirical things and phenomena of the terrestrial world, which is contrasted fundamentally to the world of ideal essences, concepts, categories, and logical laws