Materialist/idealist terminological perversion

[synthesis]

Ever since I was little, I was raised being told that 'materialism' referred to excessive pursuit of money and luxuries and that 'idealism' referred to someone who had principles and didn't stray from them, even when defeat was assured.

However, this made my eventual conversion to Marxism a little tricky, because of the disparities between the common usage of the terms and the authentic, philosophical usage - that is, materialism being the doctrine that material reality dictates our thought process, and idealism being the opposite: that our actions are dictated by an ethereal realm of ideas and imagination.

Does anyone know where the perverted usages began? Have they always existed as two meanings that share the same word, or was there a starting point, where someone (or some people) had some reason or another for misusing them?

Thoughts?

[PRC-UTE]

good point, I've run into the same thing. Friends I have prefer to describe themselves as Idealists and despise the conotations the word Materialism carries.

[Pedro Alonso Lopez]

Basically they are the lay use's of materialism and idealism. Philosophy has alway's had it's won language as such.

Certainly the notion of idealism as beliefing in the metaphysical is as old as Plato and the materialism aspect as old god knows how many pre-Socratic philosophers.

For somebody who thinks in terms only a simple life materialism will mean chasing money etc.

[redstar2000]

During the initial rise of modern capitalism in the U.S. -- roughly 1810 to 1865 -- there was also a massive revival in protestantism in the northern and mid-western states. I suspect that the popular use of the word "materialist" (to mean greedy for material possessions) might possibly date from that era...expressing a "spiritual disgust" with what was visibly taking place.

I wonder what words are used in European languages to describe those things. Did Germans in Marx's day, for example, have a popular meaning for their equivalent words that differed from the way that academics used them?

:redstar2000:

The Redstar2000 Papers (http://www.redstar2000papers.fightcapitalism.net)
A site about communist ideas

[Anarchist Freedom]

i am a materialist i am mainly for one reason. Idealism is like trying to explain what sugar taste like without sampling it.

[synthesis]

Originally posted by [email protected] 31 2004, 08:14 AM
Certainly the notion of idealism as beliefing in the metaphysical is as old as Plato and the materialism aspect as old god knows how many pre-Socratic philosophers.
Really? I thought materialism was necessarily atheist. Perhaps atheism goes back farther than I know...

[Pedro Alonso Lopez]

Sure, many of the pre-Socratics and even Greeks were atheists, there has been atheists ever since philosophy began. And where did western philosophy begin...you got it, Greece.

[gaf]

Originally posted by [email protected] 1 2004, 01:28 PM
Sure, many of the pre-Socratics and even Greeks were atheists, there has been atheists ever since philosophy began. And where did western philosophy begin...you got it, Greece.
yeah when it begon.....
:lol: :lol: :lol: western :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
so full of bullshit and i' m sure greek philosophes knew that
that why philosophy was born....western that is