Materialism

Definitions

1. Constant concern over material possessions and wealth; a great or excessive regard for worldly concerns.
   countable, uncountable
2. The philosophical belief that nothing exists beyond what is physical.
   countable, uncountable
3. Material substances in the aggregate; matter.
   countable, obsolete, rare, uncountable

Equivalents

Examples

“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?”

“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.”

“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⟳.”

“With the rise⟳ of Cartesian and Hobbesian mechanical philosophy and materialism in the 16th and 17th centuries, the classical argument for the immateriality of the intellect and will was simply ignored and then forgotten.”

CEFR level