Re: Mustafa's reply to Alex:

See http://home.mira.net/~andy/txt/lau-4.htm, not lau-5.htm, sorry.

I cannot agree with Mustafa's equation of the matter-consciousness contrast with any other apparently parallel contrast. Matter is all that exists outside of consciousness. "Matter" is also a concept, which, as Mustafa and Hegel correctly say, is an abstraction. But "matter" refers to matter, which exists objectively, outside of, independently of and prior to consciousness.

Hegel is "wrong" on a number of occasions when he comments on Materialism, and certainly when he equates empiricism with materialism. "Wrong", but in the context of his time, when there existed no Materialism which rose higher than empiricism, his error was relative. But AFTER Feuerbach criticised Hegel's idealism and Marx-Engels developed a genuinely, consistently-applied materialist approach by incorporating Hegel's critique of Kant, Hegel's error has to be seen in a different light.

While a whole range of methodological problems flow out of the idealist standpoint, idealism has a specific narrow meaning. Hegel's "Spirit" (which is prior and primary for Hegel) is not of course the same as individual consciousness, which is primary and prior for subjective idealists.

Thus, Hegel's idealism, and potentially any idealism which places outside matter, not human consciousness, but some kind of principle, law, God or "Spirit". Laws and principles (including The Absolute Idea) are indeed objective, but they do not exist other than in and through the movement of matter. The only way The Absolute Idea can exist other than in and through the movment of matter is as an object of consciousness.

Thus the idealism of Hegel comes out only when the movement of matter is posed as against the Absolute Idea, and it is the material process which is found defective, not understanding.

There is no doubt that Hegel's idealism is so "intelligent" that he comes (as Lenin says) closer to consistent materialism than the majority of "materialists".

But Hegel could go only so far. To go further, it was necessary to make this small "correction" to Hegel's philosophy. The main problem today is to resurrect and reinvigorate Hegel's "intelligence". But, we must do so from a materialist base. Nature is richer than The Absolute Idea. If we try to get around this by saying that the Absolute Idea, properly understood, is equal to Nature, we reduce The Absolute Idea to a total abstraction, and not an infinitely concrete concept at all. It is nothing but the bstarction "Matter", under a different name, like "Nature".

The CONCRETE principle of the Absolute Idea is only that elaborated by Hegel, and that principle is INFERIOR to Nature (matter), however sophisticated and wonderful it indeed is.

Andy