The Meaning of Hegel's Logic
IX: A Very Brief History of Materialism I include this very brief, schematic summary of the history of materialist philosophy for two reasons: 1. it is not possible to understand the objective idealism in Hegel's philosophy without following to some extent the problems with which materialism was wrestling in the period leading up to Hegel, and 2. the understanding of this history is thus also necessary in order to understand how to approach Hegel's Logic as a materialist. As remarked above, the essence of philosophy is the relation between being and consciousness. In what follows, I have attempted to highlight the contradictions manifested in the development of this essence. Hegel's philosophy thus arises as the synthesis of these contradictions, itself a concrete Notion, expressing the history of its genesis in the history of Western philosophy up to his time.
Galileo, Bacon and Descartes In the early sixteenth century, Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes both came to similar conclusions in relation to the state of the science and philosophy of their time. Bacon is quite clear: Since it seems to me that people do not keep strictly to the straight and narrow when forming their opinions or putting things to the test, I have decided to use all the means at my disposal to remedy this misfortune. For in nothing else does the aspiration to deserve well show itself than it things are so arranged that people, freed both from the hobgoblins of belief and blindness of experiments, may enter into a more reliable and sound partnership with things by, as it were, a certain literate experience. For in this way the intellect is both set up in safety and in its best state, and it will besides be at the ready and then come upon harvests of useful things. Now the beginnings of this enterprise must in general he drawn from natural history; for the whole body of Greek philosophy with its sects of all kinds, and all the other philosophy we possess seem to me to be founded on too narrow a naturalhistorical basis, and thus to have delivered its conclusions on the authority of fewer data than was appropriate. For having snatched certain things from experience and tradition, things sometimes not carefully examined or ideas nor securely established, they leave the rest to meditation and intellectual agitation, employing Dialectic to inspire greater confidence in the matter.