Research On The Nature Of Historical Materialism

How do we call historical materialism is not a small problem that which name we choose,but an important issue that reflecting how we understand the nature of historical materialism.The debate on the nature of historical materialism origins the long time,and scholars have different opinions on this issue,but in essence, it is the struggle of science and philosophy.So,clarifying the content of philosophy and science in german classical philosophy which being the direct source of ideas of Marxist philosophy, especially on the sense of Marx and Engels,the founders of Marxist philosophy.possessing fundamental significance on defining the nature of historical materialism.In Kant's view, either philosophy or empirical science, if can be the system of knowledge, it will be a science. Affected by the traditional western thought and Kant's philosophy, Marx and Engels saw the system of knowledge as science early in their research careers.But in the late, they were increasingly inclined to equivalent science to the empirical science, a system of empirical knowledge, with the deepening of theory and ideas become more sophisticated. And the philosophy,which being the dialectical view of the world,played a role as methodology to empirical science.The historical materialism,which exists as a knowledge system guided by the dialectical view of the world, is a historical science,with the nature of empirical science,and this view meets the understanding of science of the founders. Specifically, on the one hand, analysising from the creation process of historical materialism,we comprehend historical materialism from the perspective of empirical science consistents with the intention of the founders. On the other hand,the experience nature of Practice,which being the basis of historical materialism,and the World History,which being the object of historical materialism, determines the nature of historical science of historical materialism.Being a knowledge system, the historical materialism not only "explains the world"scientificly,it also has the methodological feature of "changing the world" scientificly. Historical materialism implements the methodology of dialectics when it "explains the world"scientificly,and contains scientific knowledge of its objects when it "changs the world" scientificly, the two form a dialectical unity of the whole.We can't overemphasize historical materialism's methodological features and underrate its knowledge function, and then see historical materialism as methods narrowly.The speculative philosophy of history and analyzing philosophy of history,the two types of philosophy of history,are different to historical materialism on starting point and interests of theory,so we can't equivalent historical materialism to philosophy of history. Although historical materialism is with the nature of empirical science, we can't equivalent positivism of Comte to historical materialism for the lack of dialectical point of view, therefore, positivism has qualitative differences with historical materialism.