On Dialectic Of Historical Materialism

Dialectics,as an important subject in Marxist philosophy,and also one of the hottest subjects in the study of Marxist philosophy,has yielded rich research results both at home and abroad.Especially,it is through deep study of Marx's dialectical thought that the dialectics theory has made great progress.Despite all these achievements,it is still necessary that we do further in-depth research into the theoretical form and ideological essence of Marxist dialectics.Since Hegel's forming the theory of dialectics by combining metaphysics with logic,the dialectics theory is not a simple methodological subject any longer,but,in Hegel's view,a unity of logic,dialectics and epistemology(Later people also understand the “unity of three” as the unity of ontology,dialectics and epistemology;in Marxist philosophy,people usually understands it as the unity of world view and methodology).Understood from the perspective of the “unity of three”,the dialectics is ontology and epistemology on the one hand,and world view and methodology on the other hand.How can dialectics be promoted to such a height of understanding? This is exactly what Marxist dialectics needs to think deeply about.Based on this consideration,this dissertation has formed the following points:Firstly,the main drawback of dialectical thoughts in former Soviet textbook is that it does not take the whole world,ie,the natural world and the human society,as a process of development from low to high level;what's more,it does not understand the whole world from the high-level perspective.According to the development rule of the whole world,nature is at the low level,while human society is at the advanced level.As required by Marx,human anatomy is the key to the anatomy of the monkey,which means we must use the view point of advanced level,ie,the viewpoint of human or humanity,to understand the world,so as to achieve an understanding of the world's nature and its law.Nevertheless,the dialectical of former Soviet textbooks is just the opposite.Secondly,since Hegel only understood the "unity of three" on the basis of abstract self-consciousness,it is “undoubtedly a fruitless flower”(by Lenin).Marx,on the one hand,abandoned Hegel's "fruitless" nature of idealism while absorbing his “unity of three” thought;on the other hand,he took in Feuerbach's materialism thought which is consistent with humanitarianism,and finally formed his own dialectical thought.It is obvious that his dialectics firstly understands the world from the point of view of human,followed by an understanding of the whole historical process from the point of view of human material production practice,regarding nature as an integral part of human society.We believe that this view not only yields fruits,but is also a scientific understanding on its own.In Engels' evaluations of Marx's life,one of the two major contributions done by Marx is just his discovery of the development law of human history.Then,the science of human history development should be given the name the dialectics of historical materialism.The last point is about how to understand the ideological essence of dialectics of historical materialism.If the dialectics of historical materialism understands history from the point of view of human,then what is the relation between human and history? Marx understands the practice as the “objective activity”.Thus the social history and the whole world created through human's own material production practice are all objective products of human nature,which means that history is the real reflection of essence power of human.This shows that the relation between man and history contains understanding from two perspectives: on the one hand,from the perspective of historical development.If history is the objective product of the human nature,then,the richer and more sufficient human nature content is,the higher the degree of historical development is.Meanwhile,the human practice also includes the process of discarding or internalization,which means that the essence of human content also achieves full development with the development of history.In this sense,the objectification activities include both externalization and internalization,which determines that the development of the reality process must be expressed as the historical development and the human development.O n the other hand,from the perspective of human self-realization,history can be understood as the process of self-realization of human nature.O nce the human nature has been set with some possibility,it also sets certain targets and ideals for the reality of historical process.In this sense,Marx discovered the lofty ideals of communism,which firstly results from his discovery of this possibility from human nature,and secondly,a historical development understood as constant return of human nature.Based on the above analysis from the two perspectives,we believe that the ideological essence of the historical materialist dialectics is a logic to express essence of human life self-realization.To sum up,this dissertation has attempted to sort out the relations between Marx,Hegel and Feuerbach,and combine Marx's classic works with contemporary research,in an effort to understand the theoretical and ideological essence of Marx's dialectics further.It is hoped that the study can be of some help to the localization of the Marxist philosophy in China.