Materiality, Dialectics, and Emptiness
On questions of materiality
Materialist dialectics implies that the relata, the material objects of it’s analysis should be phenomena, appearances, and as such without anything ‘in themselves’. Thus, materialist dialectics could be termed the dialectics of phenomena. This may seem like complicating the issue with unnecessary semantics. What value do I see in this redefinition? Well, because it opens up a context that may prove useful in overcoming what in the western philosophical tradition has been termed the mind/body duality problem. It may provide a relief and stabilising point of departure, and may help to dispense with a constant trouble and source of trouble.
First, it is self-evident no matter where we fall down on the problem that ‘mind’ and ‘matter’ are never separate. They are separated (itself a function of the mind) but no mind is ever separated from what is called matter. For the objective phenomenon to be identified as matter, there necessitates a subjective identifier, even if only speculated about. Objectivity itself requires the subjective.
Neither, if we take the view that all that is objectified as matter is interconnected in a dynamic interaction between it’s transforming particulars, is any particular mind separated from all matter. If what I identify as ‘my’ ordinary mind is inseparable from the material dynamic of my body, and that material body is interconnected with all other material that makes up the whole of the material universe, then my mind and the universe are not separate, can never be separate, are only separated by the differentiating function of my ‘mind’. Further, just as what is separated into mind and matter, or mental and physical is previously experienced as undifferentiated, so for this undifferentiated experience, neither of the binary terms mind or matter, mental or physical, or indeed any binaries including subjective and objective are applicable. All bifurcation of reality emerges from consciousness. Consciousness here should not be considered ‘subjective’ consciousness, since it is only with the functioning of discursive thinking that subject and object are split. It is better identified as bare, or primary awareness. Thus, the ground of all subjective consciousness is a ground which is neither subjective nor objective.
Now, taking the objective field, in materialist dialectics there is posited an objective material universe where everything is interrelated and interdependent on everything else in a state of constant activity and transformation. For anything that we identify as an object, we realise that to identify it as such is to abstract it from a dynamic whole. This is the function of discursive thinking reflecting on what is grasped through the sense perception aspect of consciousness. To say that a particular object is dependent for it’s existence on something else (in this case, the dialectal transformations of the whole) is to say that it has no self-sufficient existence. Any ‘thing’, any relata of our view of interrelation, any element in dialectical process, is an abstraction from the whole, and, being dependent on the whole, is lacking any self-sufficient essence in itself. In fact, it lacks an ‘in itself ‘ entirely. It has no self-nature apart from it’s appearance, or the appearance of the constituent parts (themselves abstractions) we break it down into for analysis. It is only phenomenal. The in itself is literally nothingness, or emptiness.
The ‘materialist’ qualification in materialist dialectics could imply an ‘in itself’ of materiality, or imply materiality is an essence. This understanding might cause the rehabilitation of the old dualistic mind/body problem. It might lead to the further controversies of privileging either of the phenomena of mind/matter. However, this understanding would contradict the dialectical understanding for which matter must be a phenomenon and not an essence.
Furthermore, as we see from the prior discussion of the subject and object bifurcation, where it is established that such bifurcation only occurs with discursive thinking, the above dualities are determinations, products of what is prior in experience. What is already there as a given, a locus and a circumstance from which the intellect draws out and separates into the relata of the interrelated view of reality, into the elements of the dialectical understanding of reality, is without differentiation. It is neither mind nor matter, physical or mental, subjective or objective. And what proceeds from differentiation, in this case the dialectical analysis of reality, is necessarily a dialectics of phenomena.
A dialectical worldview, which I think is a correct one, is a worldview of appearances only. This includes the subjective self as much as the objective world. Phenomenon only. Appearance only. Real in so far as it is appearance. The undifferentiated, prior to it’s objectification as matter by a conscious subject is boundlessness.
If those who accept the dialectic worldview were to reflect on these implications, it may offer benefits for coping with the anxieties of human life in these times; to realise that all the narratives of personal and interpersonal conflict and contention, are real only as appearances, existing only as phenomena. They are there, they exist, yes. But not as self-existing, self-sufficient, indeed, not with any selves in the common sense way we usually take them to exist. What is further implied, and is perhaps of an even greater support against the suffering of anxiety and the afflictive passions, is that what is really existent in the sense that is usually misapplied to the aforementioned selves and narratives of appearance, what is usually misapplied to with the term ‘the real world’ is not a state of relative void, but rather a boundlessness from which the limitations of the world of dialectical phenomena, of the dualities, appears.
The above are all implied by the dialectical materialist worldview.
A Chan/Zen/western philosophical hybrid summation;
The Reality is just this world, the world of experience. Not an objectified thing. Not the concatenation of objectified matter, space, and subjective consciousness. Not exhausted in the various terms or elements with which we break down for analysis any particular aspect or appearance in and of the world. Not indeed some grand abstract substance or principle in itself, but this world of experience, in which subject and object, principles and determinations, the names and forms of the discursive intellect arise as the activity of this world experiencing and knowing itself. The prior-to objectified matter and subjectified consciousness world, a grand immanent which to the subjectified consciousness appears as a grand transcendental.
The Reality is the one that is immanent as the all, and the all that is immanent in the one.
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A Dialogue
Materialist; Does the material world exist independently?
Buddhist; Independently of what?
Materialist; Of our awareness of it
Buddhist; No.
Materialist; Why not?
Buddhist; Because we are not separate from it
Materialist; But it preceded our evolution?
Buddhist; What preceded our evolution was not the material world.
Materialist; That’s silly. Of course this massive collection of atoms and molecules and their processes came before they made up the living things from which our brains are descended.
Buddhist; What was then was simply the existence, as it is now. It is in accordance with our brains and our dispositions, our interests, and for our uses that we look to breaking our experiences down into the smallest discrete units we can. These particulars our dispositions created, or rather abstracted. The material world and it’s components as we understand them are abstracted from bare experience. We cannot say that anything is absolutely independent of anything else, and this goes for mind and matter also. Both are abstractions from what is given as immediate experience. Whatever all this is, we are included. Not separate. That is how it appears and how it is.
Materialist; but the smaller makes up the greater, the parts make up the whole?
Buddhist; without the whole, how can there be parts? Without the greater how can the smaller be “small”? Neither exist without the other. They are interdependent aspects.
Materialist; So scientific information is invalid? Atoms do not exist?
Buddhist; No, of course it is valid and they do. They exist just as we exist. They appear in accordance with our instrumentalising cognition.
Materialist; So they cease to be valid and cease to exist when we are no longer here?
Buddhist; We can never ultimately be other than always here.
Materialist; What do you mean?
Buddhist; We and the world are not separate ultimately. The terms ‘we’ and ‘world’ are abstractions from experience. World is what we objectify. ‘We’ is what we subjectify. Before subject and object emerge from consciousness, there is only the Undifferentiated.
Materialist; But I know my experience began when I was born and the material world was already here.
Buddhist; Yes. As soon as your particular objectifying consciousness appeared, so too did what you would learn to regard as the material world. It was thus with the earliest objectifying sentience also.
Materialist; But the objective world existed before the objectifying consciousness, before subjective experience?
Buddhist; No. They can only have arisen together. The objective field does not exist outside of the duality it shares with a subjective consciousness or awareness. No subject exists without an object, no object without a subject.
Materialist; But the objective underlies the subjective?
Buddhist; No. How can a subject ever emerge from what is objective? They exist as necessary interdependent poles of the same reality.
Materialist; Then what came first?
Buddhist; Neither. I’ve already said, they arise together. One cannot exist without the other.
Materialist; So what did come prior to the subjective and objective worlds?
Buddhist; What came prior has never been other than what is now. Before the bifurcation of subject and object there is always just this. Tathata, Suchness. No-thing, and every thing. A great integration. The field of emptiness where each thing that appears is itself and is dependent on everything else that appears. Neither being nor non-being is absolute or independent. Where both being and non-being appear is the field of Nothingness. Not a dead void. But a vibrant, creative Nothingness. Just as in consciousness, thoughts arise and disappear from apparent void, so too with all things.