materialism
EnglishEdit
EtymologyEdit
From French matérialisme; surface etymology is material + -ism.
NounEdit
materialism (countable and uncountable, plural materialisms)
- Constant concern over material possessions and wealth; a great or excessive regard for worldly concerns.
- 2010, Nuala O'Faolain, A More Complex Truth, "An Ugly Little War":
- We accept that a third of the population live on the poverty line. We accept that only a handful of the most exceptional of the children of the poor will make it through to a third-level education. We accept massive examples of greed and dishonesty in public life. We except the values of materialism. What do we expect then—to be left un-harassed, we who have all the privileges?
- 2010, Nuala O'Faolain, A More Complex Truth, "An Ugly Little War":
- (philosophy) The philosophical belief that nothing exists beyond what is physical.
- 1814, Joseph S. Buckminster, The Sermons by the Late Rev. Joseph S. Buckminster, Sermon I:
- The result of the labours of philosophy appeared to be a total scepticism on the most important subjects of hu man duty and expectation. The irregular fears of a future state had been supplanted by the materialism of Epicurus; and this system—if system it may be called, which left them without a God, a providence, a morality, or a retribution—was the fashionable philosophy of the more cultivated classes.
- 1902, William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, Lecture I:
- Medical materialism seems indeed a good appellation for the too simple-minded system of thought which we are considering. ... All such mental over-tensions, it says, are, when you come to the bottom of the matter, mere affairs of diathesis (auto-intoxications most probably), due to the perverted action of various glands which physiology will yet discover.
- 1814, Joseph S. Buckminster, The Sermons by the Late Rev. Joseph S. Buckminster, Sermon I:
- (obsolete, rare) Material substances in the aggregate; matter.
- (Can we find and add a quotation of A. Chalmers to this entry?)
SynonymsEdit
- (philosophy): physicalism
- (philosophy): philosophical materialism
AntonymsEdit
- (philosophy): idealism
Derived termsEdit
- new materialism
- philosophical materialism
- scientific materialism
- speculative materialism
- transcendental materialism
Related termsEdit
TranslationsEdit
concern over material possessions
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philosophical belief
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See alsoEdit
Further readingEdit
- materialism in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
- materialism in The Century Dictionary, The Century Co., New York, 1911
- "materialism" in Raymond Williams, Keywords (revised), 1983, Fontana Press, page 197.
SwedishEdit
EtymologyEdit
NounEdit
materialism c
DeclensionEdit
| Declension of materialism | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Uncountable | ||||
| Indefinite | Definite | |||
| Nominative | materialism | materialismen | — | — |
| Genitive | materialisms | materialismens | — | — |