I have a question regarded dialectical materialism. So the opposite of dialectical materialism is any sort of idealism or metaphysics. Are existentialism, morality, and ethics undialectical too? I've regarded ethics and morality as undialectical because they seem too closely linked to religion and thus idealism. We shouldn't be asking "is this morally or ethically right or wrong?" We should be focusing on the material world through a dialectical method. We should also keep in mind the general economic principle that what's best for the individual may not be best for the society and vice versa. I ask because lately I've been reading some stuff on ecology and environmental activism and conservation and a lot of the ideologues in that field talk about bioethics. Is that a bourgeois line of thinking, though? And how about existentialism? I've had a negative attitude towards it because it seems to put emphasis on the individual before the society, which I think is unMarxist, uncommunist, unsocialist, etc. Any thoughts? Thanks for your time.
I wouldn't say that morality is idealist per se because it has been shown to have evolved in a dialectical fashion by many scientists. Even religious morality could be said to simply be a reflection of the material conditions within which the religion was invented. However, modern day religionists who believe that stoning gays is still a good idea are simply idealists. I don't like to speak about things I have no knowledge about but a quick search on Existentialism seems to me to be bourgeois idealism in that it emphasizes the individual and the individual as a free and responsible agent who determines their own development of the will, which fundamentally overlooks the impact that material conditions have on the "will" of people. But again, I could be totally wrong because I haven't actually read much about it.
