Topics Value

Question Does the belief that everything is matter lead to the belief that the most important things in life are material goods? In other words does the philosophy of materialism lead to the other kind of materialism where money and goods are the most valued things?

Accepted:
February 2, 2011

Comments

I don't think that there is any reason that a materialist metaphysics should lead one to become materialistic. Historically, at least, one of the points of a materialist metaphysics was to bring agents to see that their highest good did not depend on God or an afterlife but could only be achieved in this world, by their own efforts: while there are differences about the nature of this highest good--materialists such as Epicurus, Hobbes, and d'Holbach,, for example, have different conceptions of ethics and also of the highest good--none of them thought that the accumulation of material possessions was the highest good, and although, historically, materialists have tended to espouse some version of hedonism (the best-known materialist ethics, advanced by Epicurus, is a version of hedonism), there is no reason to think that a materialist metaphysics is not compatible with a wide range of (non-theological) conceptions of the highest good, and, indeed, there is no reason to think that a materialist metaphysics is not compatible with an ethics of virtue or deontology or--of course--utilitarianism.

Question Does the belief that everything is matter lead to the belief that the most important things in life are material goods? In other words does the philosophy of materialism lead to the other kind of materialism where money and goods are the most valued things? Accepted:February 2, 2011

Question Does the belief that everything is matter lead to the belief that the most important things in life are material goods? In other words does the philosophy of materialism lead to the other kind of materialism where money and goods are the most valued things?

Accepted:
February 2, 2011