Are Young People More Materialistic In Modern Society Philosophy Essay

Are Young People More Materialistic In Modern Society Philosophy Essay Materialism, in philosophy, a widely held system of thought that explains the nature of the world as entirely dependent on matter, the fundamental and final reality beyond which nothing need be sought. Certain periods in history, usually those associated with scientific advance, are marked by strong materialistic tendencies. The doctrine was formulated as early as the 4th cent. B.C. by Democritus, in whose system of atomism all phenomena are explained by atoms and their motions in space. Other early Greek teaching, such as that of Epicurus and Stoicism, also conceived of reality as material in its nature. The theory was later renewed in the 17th cent. by Pierre Gassendi and Thomas Hobbes, who believed that the sphere of consciousness essentially belongs to the corporeal world, or the senses. The investigations of John Locke were adapted to materialist positions by David Hartley and Joseph Priestley. They were a part of the materialist development of the 18th cent., strongly manifest ed in France, where the most extreme thought was that of Julien de La Mettrie. The culminating expression of materialist thought in this period was the Systà ¨me de la nature (1770), for which Baron d’Holbach is considered chiefly responsible. A reaction against materialism was felt in the later years of the 18th cent., but the middle of the 19th cent. brought a new movement, largely psychological in interpretation. Two of the modern developments of materialism are dialectical materialism and physicalism, a position formulated by some members of the Logical Positivist movement. Closely related to materialism in origin are naturalism and sensualist. Materialism is sometimes allied with the methodological principle of reductionism, according to which the objects or phenomena individuated at one level of description, if they are genuine, must be explicable in terms of the objects or phenomena at some other level of description — typically, a more general level than the r educed one. Non-reductive materialism explicitly rejects this notion, however, taking the material constitution of all particulars to be consistent with the existence of real objects, properties, or phenomena not explicable in the terms canonically used for the basic material constituents. Jerry Fodor influentially argues this view, according to which empirical laws and explanations in â€Å"special sciences† like psychology or geology are invisible from the perspective of, say, basic physics. A vigorous literature has grown up around the relation between these views. â€Å"Materialism† has also frequently been understood to designate an entire scientific, â€Å"rationalistic† world view, particularly by religious thinkers opposed to it and also by Marxists. It typically contrasts with dualism, phenomenalism, idealism, and vitalism. For Marxism, materialism is central to the â€Å"materialist conception of history†, which centers on the empirical world of actual human activity (practice, including labor) and institutions created, reproduced, or destroyed by that activity. In today’s society, materialism takes part in every person’s life, no matter what social class they are. The idea of being materialistic can be considered immoral, but there is a fine line between morality and personal interests. It is safe to say that everybody is materialistic to a certain extent, whether it be from buying the same brand of jeans because they fit nice, to purchasing a wide variety of hot rods. It is obvious that the latter of the two is the one which can be considered to cross the line. Buying some nice clothes here and there is normal for people and everybody does it once in a while. While on the other hand, buying 5 or 6 sports cars can be considered somewhat pretentious.