The materialist doctrine. New thinking ànd clear thinking. Epicurean or Stoic?

It is wise never to embrace materialism completely if you do not want to be associated with Marxism and British Judaism.Nevertheless in our times we have to bear in mind that the materialist doctrine sees the person as a product of his interactions with his material conditions and a mere speck in the universe. The materialist doctrine sees modern man as caught up in a world alien to and hostile with himself.

Man's political insignificance and social helplessness in the face of capitalism when acting on his own,is glaring.

People often take refuge in escapist pursuits such as the internet and social media as a form of diversion from man's lowly position in the eyes of the economic system and his environment.

Marx's starting point was Hegelian philosophy and the Hegelian  phenomenology of the spirit is not inimical or hostile to attributing a meaningful existence to oneself.

Some are against that phenomenology and Romantic idealism

I say that only a fool or worldly-blind charlatan would ignore the importance of material gifts to spiritual wellbeing.

The doctrine of materialism is closely associated with Karl Marx and the school of thought which he founded, Marxism.

His great companion was Friedrich Engels who was based in Manchester.Many reformed clergymen were drawn to materialism in England's teeming slums and in the thriving industrial hub of Manchester when Engels lived there in the 1850's. (Engels provided Marx with most of his insights into the factory system which Marx worked up into the three volumes of Capital).

In trying to combine absolute and relative,I propose that we should not think in terms of absolute truths or of a world where we ourselves atre connected inextricably to our material conditions.

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 Pope Leo the Thirteenth's opposition to revolutionary socialists (Rerum Novarum,1883) is strange but is it not the only doctrine compatible with the belief in inalienable human rights? 

Read the later Divini Redemptoris (1937) for the endorsement of Marx's great discoveries and a repetition of hostility to the revolutionary socialists and Atheistic Bolshevism.

We could see in the later pietistic anti-materialism of the Irish Church and its political speakers opposition to the Judas Syndrome,that being gluttony for drink,self-immolation and Epicureanism.

The Church preaches that the road to eternal salvation and a measure of immediate happiness lies in Christian charity and asceticism,Stoicism. 

The type of materialism adored and worshipped by temporal beings is what has long been regarded by Catholic priests and scholars in Britain as Marxist gluttony. Gluttony is incompatible with the way of life preached by the followers of Jesus (see Acts). In ancient times Epicureanism was opposed to the prevalent stoicism.

Stoicism is the proper path to understanding the early Christian enlightenment. 

In English terms,materialism is historically associated with Capitalism and Progress and central to having Common Sense.That is the recent past. In our times the political belief in inalienable rights prevails. One way or another for the thinking person,the enduring credo of human rights should prevail over the whimsies of world leaders and Anglo-Saxon materialists. The thinking person believes that the rights agenda trumps the magnificent isolation of the still active small groups of Marxists and Stalinists and Common Sense New Englanders.

Come at it as you will,both human rights thinking at a political level and Christian stoicism were sadly absent throughout history until the clash of German state cartels which fell largely under capitalist ownership and Stalinism. That struggle once again opened up the Pandora's Box of political progress,a synthesis of  Christian civility and rude materialism.

Joseph Paul Mc Carroll LL B Hons QUB