| Long abstract |
Any materialism worthy of the name must involve elements of both naturalism and empiricism. However, it need not be straightforwardly and entirely naturalist or empiricist in the traditional (particularly pre-Kantian) senses of these labels (and, in the case of materialisms in the wake of German idealism, including transcendental mate-rialism, ought not to be). Following from this, any anti-naturalist rationalism, in whatever guise, can-not qualify as being simultaneously a materialism too. Although an anti-naturalist rationalism can be made consistent with (metaphysical) realism, this by no means renders it compatible with materialism strictly speaking. In still other words, there is no such thing as a purely formalist materialism; with reference to the birth of modern science, there is no Galileo without Bacon too. Both aversion to the experimental natural sciences of modernity as well as rejection of tying knowledge primarily to empirical routes of acquisition prompts thinking down paths leading to anachronistic Pythagorian-isms, ontological dualisms, spiritualist idealisms, religious mysticisms, and a unruly, proliferating swarm of confabulations, delusions, imaginings, fantasies, and ravings passing themselves off as rigorous, responsible philosophizing. Furthermore, insofar as an empirically informed, quasi-naturalist materialism is not in the least synonymous with and equivalent to rigid, mechanical determinism, an attuned materialist sensitivity to the natural sciences is not to be feared as the opening up to the immediate closing down of space for autonomous subjectivity and everything it brings with it.
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