[annatar1914]

Let’s just take, for example, the military invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Be honest. Do you really believe that wasn’t because the people wanted reforms in the direction of more freedom and democracy? They wanted free speech and a free press. They were a democracy before Stalin and returned to democracy after 1989. There was no emerging fascism in the country in 1968 that justified an invasion to create a “buffer zone” against fascism. As with Ukraine, that’s not to say there weren’t some fascists in the country, but that was not the direction they wanted.

@Hakeer :

Let's put this into perspective, to use your one specific example. In 1968, the Great Patriotic War had been over only 23 years before, in 1945. The bloodiest conflict in human history, with many of the surviving Fascists going straight to work for the West in the Cold War.

In Czechoslovakia 23 years before 1945, the country had been founded basically upon the backbone of men who had fought in the " Czech Legion" in Russia on the side of the White Guard in the Russian Civil War until they turned on Kolchak and stole a good deal of the Imperial Russian Tsarist national treasury and built Czechoslovakia's national treasury and their own personal ones with it.

( And I'm not " against" the Czechs personally, as being of a certain somewhat aristocratic lineage I am part Czech from Premyslid dynasty, Wend from what is now Brandenburg Germany, and of Polish Szlachta going back to the Piasts on my mother's side, all-around Slavic Blueblood one might say. The ironies of history....)

During that time and up to 1945, the Czechoslovakian lands were full of fascists and collaborators with the Germans, like the followers of clerico fascist Monseigneur Tiso.

So no, the Russian fears of fascist revival in the lands between Germany and Russia were very real and grounded in very fresh bloody historical reality in 1968. People say that they want " free speech" and " democracy", and then promptly turn their country ( after splitting it in half!) over to the Western German corporations and unelected EU bureaucracy in Brussels and the like, to be German lackeys again and not patriotic sons of Jan Ziska or King Wensceslaus at all...

[Hakeer]

@Hakeer :

Let's put this into perspective, to use your one specific example. In 1968, the Great Patriotic War had been over only 23 years before, in 1945. The bloodiest conflict in human history, with many of the surviving Fascists going straight to work for the West in the Cold War.

In Czechoslovakia 23 years before 1945, the country had been founded basically upon the backbone of men who had fought in the " Czech Legion" in Russia on the side of the White Guard in the Russian Civil War until they turned on Kolchak and stole a good deal of the Imperial Russian Tsarist national treasury and built Czechoslovakia's national treasury and their own personal ones with it.

( And I'm not " against" the Czechs personally, as being of a certain somewhat aristocratic lineage I am part Czech from Premyslid dynasty, Wend from what is now Brandenburg Germany, and of Polish Szlachta going back to the Piasts on my mother's side, all-around Slavic Blueblood one might say. The ironies of history....)

During that time and up to 1945, the Czechoslovakian lands were full of fascists and collaborators with the Germans, like the followers of clerico fascist Monseigneur Tiso.

So no, the Russian fears of fascist revival in the lands between Germany and Russia were very real and grounded in very fresh bloody historical reality in 1968. People say that they want " free speech" and " democracy", and then promptly turn their country ( after splitting it in half!) over to the Western German corporations and unelected EU bureaucracy in Brussels and the like, to be German lackeys again and not patriotic sons of Jan Ziska or King Wensceslaus at all...

There may have never been a Great Patriotic War, if Hitler had not broken the non-aggression pact with Stalin. Stalin thought USSR had an agreement to work together with Hitler to carve up Europe. He invaded Poland from the east after Hitler invaded from the west. Poland was not a threat to Russia. They were fighting against the Nazis. Stalin then launched military invasions against the Balkans, Finland, etc.

But getting back to Czechoslovakia, the people who were 23 years old in 1968 had no personal experience of WW2, but their parents and grandparents certainly did, and they surely told their children about the horrors their country suffered against Nazi Germany. The vast majority of the population had no interest in going that direction.

Now, I do not doubt your point that many Russians also had vivid memories of WW2 and still suffered PTSD and paranoia about a possible revival of fascism. However, I do not believe that the Soviet political and military establishment in Moscow did not know the truth about what was happening in Czechoslovakia in 1968.

They saw the Prague Spring…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Spring

They were not afraid that the country would become fascist. They were afraid that it would become “Westernized” (as you might say) and return to democracy and capitalism. They had to move in the military and crack down on free speech and free press before the movement got completely out of hand. They responded similarly against insurgencies elsewhere in European parts of the USSR.

Even today, Putin is still using the old Soviet playbook fearing further Westernization in Ukraine and cracking down on dissent against the Ukraine war. War protests are allowed in my country, and I have participated in some. They were always feared and suppressed in the USSR. Anyway, that is my perspective on the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia.

[Potemkin]

Poland was not a threat to Russia. They were fighting against the Nazis. Stalin then launched military invasions against the Balkans, Finland, etc.

Poland had invaded Soviet Russia just after the October Revolution, not to overthrow it but to grab some land. They were beaten back, but at huge cost. And then the Poles grabbed some more land in the 1930s - this time from Czechoslovakia: when Hitler invaded from the west, the Poles invaded from the north. Poland in the 1920s and 30s was an expansionist, revanchist state, and was a threat to all of its neighbours. Unfortunately for them, their best buddy Adolf stabbed them in the back in 1939.

[annatar1914]

There may have never been a Great Patriotic War, if Hitler had not broken the non-aggression pact with Stalin. Stalin thought USSR had an agreement to work together with Hitler to carve up Europe. He invaded Poland from the east after Hitler invaded from the west. Poland was not a threat to Russia. They were fighting against the Nazis. Stalin then launched military invasions against the Balkans, Finland, etc.

But getting back to Czechoslovakia, the people who were 23 years old in 1968 had no personal experience of WW2, but their parents and grandparents certainly did, and they surely told their children about the horrors their country suffered against Nazi Germany. The vast majority of the population had no interest in going that direction.

Now, I do not doubt your point that many Russians also had vivid memories of WW2 and still suffered PTSD and paranoia about a possible revival of fascism. However, I do not believe that the Soviet political and military establishment in Moscow did not know the truth about what was happening in Czechoslovakia in 1968.

They saw the Prague Spring…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Spring

They were not afraid that the country would become fascist. They were afraid that it would become “Westernized” (as you might say) and return to democracy and capitalism. They had to move in the military and crack down on free speech and free press before the movement got completely out of hand. They responded similarly against insurgencies elsewhere in European parts of the USSR.

Even today, Putin is still using the old Soviet playbook fearing further Westernization in Ukraine and cracking down on dissent against the Ukraine war. War protests are allowed in my country, and I have participated in some. They were always feared and suppressed in the USSR. Anyway, that is my perspective on the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia.

@Hakeer and @Potemkin :

I strongly recommend all the works of Professor Grover Furr, an example on this very issue of the lie about Stalin and Hitler carving up Poland or anywhere else:

https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/res ... r0215.html

Stalin occupied an area that had formerly been Poland, but which had functionally ceased to exist because of the Polish government fleeing into internment in neutral Romania. Had Stalin not done so, German troops would have violated the non aggression pact and seized all of 1939 Poland and probably set up a Banderite state in Western Ukraine. Funny, Stalin wasn't criticized for this until after the war, during the war he was praised in the West for this move.

Hitler wasn't happy about it, but wasn't ready at all to strike Russia yet either.

Edit: This is a useful article for other reasons too:

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/44/028.html

[annatar1914]

Placeholder where I'm going to go forward with an elucidation of my contention that Dialectical Materialism doesn't contradict Orthodox Christianity, or that the contradictions are only apparent and not real. The three principles of dialectical materialism are:

1. quantity into quality

2. the interpenetration of opposites

3. the negation of the negation

All these are secularized principles that come from Christianity and represent the negation of philosophy as it's been known for thousands of years, the negation of philosophical Idealism and " Logic" in particular.

[Hakeer]

Placeholder where I'm going to go forward with an elucidation of my contention that Dialectical Materialism doesn't contradict Orthodox Christianity, or that the contradictions are only apparent and not real. The three principles of dialectical materialism are:

1. quantity into quality

2. the interpenetration of opposites

3. the negation of the negation

All these are secularized principles that come from Christianity and represent the negation of philosophy as it's been known for thousands of years, the negation of philosophical Idealism and " Logic" in particular.

It will be interesting to see how you reconcile materialism with the idea of a “soul.”

[annatar1914]

It will be interesting to see how you reconcile materialism with the idea of a “soul.”

Might be of interest and comment, @Potemkin , and @Verv :


@Hakeer :

Sure, although my primary goal was to explain the compatibility between my Orthodox Christianity and the concepts of Dialectical Materialism, to lay some foundational ground first might be best, insofar as what I personally hold to in belief.

First of all, I believe that " matter", whatever it is, is substantial, and has extension in space, and can be divided into material that is capable of divisibility or does not have divisibility (cannot be divided or even destroyed). All matter is in fact alive:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hylozoism

I find myself closest in agreement with the Cambridge Platonist Henry More

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_More

Space is the immanent and " immaterial" side of reality which is infinite extension that all things are embedded in, is an emanation or attribute of God Himself: " in Him we live and move and have our being", as the Apostle says.

And thus otherwise and with John Milton and Church Fathers like Tertullian in this area.

I am a believer as a consequence in Traducianism:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traducianism

Which best explains the transmission of ancestral/original sin as laid out by Blessed Augustine, better than he fully could, as an aside.

Creation could be described then as not so much " Ex Nihilio", or " out of nothing" as " Ex Deo", or out of God Himself. The Eastern Orthodox Church Fathers in particular teach about an energy/essence distinction in God which I really won't get into, except to say that Creation is full of God's Energies.

( I also happen naturally then to subscribe to the Imiaslaviye position without getting into that too much yet: " glorifiers of the Name", that He, God, is His Name, the denial of which indicates a further collapse of the official Nikonian church: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imiaslavie)

http://www.pravoslav.de/imiaslavie/engl ... f_god.html

Pavel Florensky is an important influence also in my thinking therefore as a result:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavel_Florensky

And thus this of course:
https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9C% ... 0%B8%D0%B8

Concerning the relativistic geometries of the Kingdom of God, revealing a sort of preferred inertial frame of reference that Aristotle, Ptolemy, and Dante would recognize

Plus concerning Sofia, the World Soul, and the Bogoroditsa/Theotokos the Blessed Virgin Mary:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophiology

Mathematical exposition of the Theology of the Name:

https://web.archive.org/web/20070808141 ... odoxy.html

Upon which the Nikonian officialdom is also mistaken.

And also Losev:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksei_Losev

So really in a dynamic and energetic cosmos, we're not speaking about a Western and Cartesian Mind/Body distinction although this is nearly universal in the thinking of everyone in the West now, but rather different states of substantial being in the ontological sense. I am not a philosophical Idealist in the standard way.

All this being said, I really don't have to "reconcile" anything, because all these things are presuppositionally axiomatic to me, there's nothing to defend because these laws of Dialectical Materialism are simply " facts" that cannot be in conflict with other truths that I have just described.

I may not be able adequately describe or defend these truths, but this is true of anyone really. What I can say is that it's not in conflict with Reality a priori.

[Potemkin]

Might be of interest and comment, @Potemkin , and @Verv :


@Hakeer :
So really in a dynamic and energetic cosmos, we're not speaking about a Western and Cartesian Mind/Body distinction although this is nearly universal in the thinking of everyone in the West now, but rather different states of substantial being in the ontological sense. I am not a philosophical Idealist in the standard way.

All this being said, I really don't have to "reconcile" anything, because all these things are presuppositionally axiomatic to me, there's nothing to defend because these laws of Dialectical Materialism are simply " facts" that cannot be in conflict with other truths that I have just described.

I may not be able adequately describe or defend these truths, but this is true of anyone really. What I can say is that it's not in conflict with Reality a priori.

I think it’s worth pointing out here as well that the strict ontological division between matter and mind (or spirit, in the sense of the German word ‘Geist’) is a recent development in the Western philosophical tradition, and finds its canonical example in the thought of Descartes. The Chinese, for example, regard both matter and spirit as being essentially of the same substance - ‘qi’. Matter is simply congealed qi, and mind is simply rarified qi. Even modern Western science is rediscovering these ancient truths - Einstein’s famous equation E=mc^2 asserts that matter and energy are essentially the same thing, are of the same essence. One is simply a transformation of the other.

[annatar1914]

I think it’s worth pointing out here as well that the strict ontological division between matter and mind (or spirit, in the sense of the German word ‘Geist’) is a recent development in the Western philosophical tradition, and finds its canonical example in the thought of Descartes. The Chinese, for example, regard both matter and spirit as being essentially of the same substance - ‘qi’. Matter is simply congealed qi, and mind is simply rarified qi. Even modern Western science is rediscovering these ancient truths - Einstein’s famous equation E=mc^2 asserts that matter and energy are essentially the same thing, are of the same essence. One is simply a transformation of the other.

@Potemkin :

I agree with you on this matter, literally, then:-).

My hope is then that I can thread a needle in which I can examine Marxian and even Leninist analysis of material reality and separate that from their atheism and also possible lapses in ethical and moral judgement. That is to say by analogy: a plumber knows plumbing, but I may not hold to trust his knowledge outside the sphere of plumbing in say, electrical repairs.

Substantial Reality is all there is in Creation. But what is, is more than we can perceive fully.

In this context it might be useful to notice that De Toqueville was right in saying that in America Descartes is the least read but most followed of all thinkers. And going forward with the " Americanization of the world" in modern history is a parallel growth of Cartesian dualistic errors in the West, that this is subtly connected.

@Potemkin :

Edited: my apologies, I added to my original post, if you want to read or comment on that as I raise other issues. While you and I have discussed Pavel Florensky, I haven't made too clear yet that some of the " unique" ideas that the Nikonian find objectionable and " novelty", aren't even questionable in the Old Belief, are just truth without need for explanation.

Edit: with Russian translation, you might like this:

https://www.vehi.net/florensky/vodorazd/P_3.html

[Hakeer]

Might be of interest and comment, @Potemkin , and @Verv :


@Hakeer :

Sure, although my primary goal was to explain the compatibility between my Orthodox Christianity and the concepts of Dialectical Materialism, to lay some foundational ground first might be best, insofar as what I personally hold to in belief.

First of all, I believe that " matter", whatever it is, is substantial, and has extension in space, and can be divided into material that is capable of divisibility or does not have divisibility (cannot be divided or even destroyed). All matter is in fact alive:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hylozoism

I find myself closest in agreement with the Cambridge Platonist Henry More

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_More

Space is the immanent and " immaterial" side of reality which is infinite extension that all things are embedded in, is an emanation or attribute of God Himself: " in Him we live and move and have our being", as the Apostle says.

And thus otherwise and with John Milton and Church Fathers like Tertullian in this area.

I am a believer as a consequence in Traducianism:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traducianism

Which best explains the transmission of ancestral/original sin as laid out by Blessed Augustine, better than he fully could, as an aside.

Creation could be described then as not so much " Ex Nihilio", or " out of nothing" as " Ex Deo", or out of God Himself. The Eastern Orthodox Church Fathers in particular teach about an energy/essence distinction in God which I really won't get into, except to say that Creation is full of God's Energies.

( I also happen naturally then to subscribe to the Imiaslaviye position without getting into that too much yet: " glorifiers of the Name", that He, God, is His Name, the denial of which indicates a further collapse of the official Nikonian church: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imiaslavie)

http://www.pravoslav.de/imiaslavie/engl ... f_god.html

Pavel Florensky is an important influence also in my thinking therefore as a result:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavel_Florensky

And thus this of course:
https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9C% ... 0%B8%D0%B8

Concerning the relativistic geometries of the Kingdom of God, revealing a sort of preferred inertial frame of reference that Aristotle, Ptolemy, and Dante would recognize

Plus concerning Sofia, the World Soul, and the Bogoroditsa/Theotokos the Blessed Virgin Mary:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophiology

Mathematical exposition of the Theology of the Name:

https://web.archive.org/web/20070808141 ... odoxy.html

Upon which the Nikonian officialdom is also mistaken.

And also Losev:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksei_Losev

So really in a dynamic and energetic cosmos, we're not speaking about a Western and Cartesian Mind/Body distinction although this is nearly universal in the thinking of everyone in the West now, but rather different states of substantial being in the ontological sense. I am not a philosophical Idealist in the standard way.

All this being said, I really don't have to "reconcile" anything, because all these things are presuppositionally axiomatic to me, there's nothing to defend because these laws of Dialectical Materialism are simply " facts" that cannot be in conflict with other truths that I have just described.

I may not be able adequately describe or defend these truths, but this is true of anyone really. What I can say is that it's not in conflict with Reality a priori.

That works if you take it as axiomatic the the soul is material.

I am no expert on this stuff, but aren’t most Christian theologians East and West since the beginning of time metaphysical dualists?

[annatar1914]

That works if you take it as axiomatic the the soul is material.

I am no expert on this stuff, but aren’t most Christian theologians since the beginning of time metaphysical dualists?

@Hakeer :

No, none of the Fathers are " metaphysical dualists" in the sense of Cartesian or earlier Papist Scholastic thinking, they wrote and spoke as if the human soul was an immortal and substantial part of the human person that survived the death of the body and occupied space.

Contrast to this Thomistic and other Schoolmen and Rene Descartes, who wrote of the human soul/mind as pure thought that doesn't occupy space.

[Hakeer]

@Hakeer :

No, none of the Fathers are " metaphysical dualists" in the sense of Cartesian or earlier Papist Scholastic thinking, they wrote and spoke as if the human soul was an immortal and substantial part of the human person that survived the death of the body and occupied space.

Contrast to this Thomistic and other Schoolmen and Rene Descartes, who wrote of the human soul/mind as pure thought that doesn't occupy space.

I just meant dualists in that they would say things like souls and angels are immaterial and rocks and human bodies are material.

[annatar1914]

I just meant dualists in that they would say things like souls and angels are immaterial and rocks and human bodies are material.

@Hakeer :

It's more like the realization that all created things are material, that they are substantial forms which occupy space, regardless of whether or not you yourself are capable of sensing or perceiving them.

There is no such thing, literally, as a rational soul which doesn't occupy space , but there came a time when this too was doubted in the modern era.

[Hakeer]

@Hakeer :

It's more like the realization that all created things are material, that they are substantial forms which occupy space, regardless of whether or not you yourself are capable of sensing or perceiving them.

There is no such thing, literally, as a rational soul which doesn't occupy space , but there came a time when this too was doubted in the modern era.

So “substantial” is the key word. Your lungs are substantial, occupy space, and will show up on an x-ray. Your soul can occupy the same space in your body as your lungs but will not show up on an x-ray, because it is a different type of substance. Is that the idea?

[annatar1914]

So “substantial” is the key word. Your lungs are substantial, occupy space, and will show up on an x-ray. Your soul can occupy the same space in your body as your lungs but will not show up on an x-ray, because it is a different type of substance. Is that the idea?

@Hakeer :

Essentially, correct.

[Hakeer]

@Hakeer :

Essentially, correct.

Ah, so we do have metaphysical dualism with respect to substance. One type of substance (soul) is fundamentally imperceptible.

Until we had microscopes, we couldn’t perceive bacteria. The problem is not that we don’t yet have the technology to see a soul.

What definition of “substance” allows “lungs” and “soul” both qualify as substances — just different subtypes?

[Potemkin]

What definition of “substance” allows “lungs” and “soul” both qualify as substances — just different subtypes?

What definition of “substance” allows “matter” and “energy” to both qualify as substances - just different subtypes?

[Hakeer]

What definition of “substance” allows “matter” and “energy” to both qualify as substances - just different subtypes?

Substance= real things. Matter and energy are both perceptible.

Substance = lungs and souls. Only one of these is perceptible. So what definition of substance encompasses both perceptible and imperceptible types of substances? That’s the question.

[Wellsy]

http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/bazhenov.html

Coming as it did from the absolutization of the method of principles (emergent at the time in the form of the energetic thermodynamical method), Energetism led toward quite definite philosophical conclusions. The energetists spoke strongly against the recognition of the existence of atoms and declared the only objective of physics was to establish and describe energy correlations. Thus, Mach compared the recognition by physicists of the real existence of atoms to the medieval obscurants' belief in witches and referred to the atomistic hypothesis as a witches' Sabbath. Together with atoms, Energetism rejected the possibility of any vehicle of material energy, for energy was proclaimed as existing in itself, and, therefore, it required no vehicle whatsoever. Surprisingly, the energetists never considered themselves idealists: Energetism, they reiterated, stood above Materialism and Idealism as though bridging the gap between them.

V. I. Lenin laid bare the flagrant inconsistency and falsity of these contentions. [20] To be sure, Lenin noted, both materialistic and idealistic lines are describable in energetist terms (with greater or lesser consistency). If we declare all being to be but energy and proclaim energy to be but substance and recognize that the substance exists apart from, and independent of, consciousness, we remain still on the grounds of Materialism, though of a desultory and inconsistent kind of Materialism. The well‑defined term designating objective reality the term "matter"—we have changed to the term "energy," ambiguous in this particular usage. However, when the energetists admitted the concept of energy to philosophical usage, they did so by no means in order to have it designate an objective source of knowledge but only in order to confuse, under a plausible pretext, the question as to whether or not such a source exists.

Thus they postulated with metaphysical hypertrophy the impossibility, that was evidently revealed by science with increasing depth, of objects existing apart from motion. The energetists declared motion to be the only thing that exists, thus claiming to have overcome the opposition between Materialism and Idealism. In his critique of W. Ostwald, one of the founders of Energetism, V. I. Lenin noted "Ostwald endeavored to avoid this inevitable philosophical alternative (Materialism or Idealism) by an indefinite use of the word "energy," but this very endeavor only goes to prove once again the futility of such artifices. If energy is motion, you have only changed the question, does matter move? into the question, is energy material? Does the transformation of energy take place outside my mind, independently of man and mankind, or are these only ideas, symbols, conventional signs, and so forth?" [21]

Thus, the attempt by the energists to present energy as a fundamental philosophical category serves little purpose and doesn't deserve criticism from either the philosophical, or physical viewpoint. The concept of energy fails to overcome the opposition of matter versus consciousness; it represents, in effect, every ill‑conceived attempt (using ungainly means) to entangle and camouflage the divergent views. Equally incorrect, from a viewpoint of physics, are the attempts to propose energy as the one and only object of physical research because as we have seen these attempts have their source in the metaphysical absolutization of the role assigned to the energy method in physical studies.

Energetism as a special philosophical trend that came about in the late 19th‑early 20th century suffered a complete fiasco. The progress of physics surged forward in a way that made its leaders admit the futility of their claims. As was noted earlier, the rejection of matter by energetists found its specific expression in the rejection by them of the real existence of atoms and molecules and, accordingly, in their unyielding resistance to the molecular kinetic theory and statistical mechanics based on this theory. The splendid works of A. Einstein and M. Smolukhovsky on the Brownian movement proved with unchalIenged finality the real existence of atoms and molecules.

https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/works/hegel-on-action.htm

In very broad outline this is the world view on which everyday rationalism and mainstream natural and social science is based. It is this view that Hegel challenged when he made activity the sole substance of his world view, as opposed to the dualistic view in which the substances are mind and matter.
One of the peculiarities of a philosophy which has only one substance is that so long as the philosophy is systematically developed, it makes no difference what name is given to that primitive substance – you can call it activity, mind, spirit, thought, God or whatever. And Hegel’s philosophy, as set out in the Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences, is such a systematic philosophy and it can be interpreted in different ways. Hegel himself refers to the fundamental concept variously as thought or Spirit (Geist, also translated as Mind), and for this reason he is sometimes called an objective idealist. However, a reading of his early works and the Phenomenology of Spirit in which he subjected epistemology and ontology to criticism, makes it clear that a consistent reading of Hegel’s systematic philosophy is possible only by interpreting the subject matter as human activity.
Human activity is essentially both thought and matter, but human actions are not the sum of a thought and a material interaction. Thoughts and behaviours are abstractions from actions, and all Hegel’s theories are built on actions, not thoughts and behaviours. We have to work our way through Hegel’s Encyclopedia to the point where Hegel makes thinking and acting the specific subject matter in the Subjective Spirit, to learn just how Hegel sees the relation between consciousness and human behaviour.

[annatar1914]

Substance= real things. Matter and energy are both perceptible.

Substance = lungs and souls. Only one of these is perceptible. So what definition of substance encompasses both perceptible and imperceptible types of substances? That’s the question.

@Hakeer :

There are a tremendous amount of things that are quite real, but usually we only sense them by their effects, not the things themselves.

As it is, there is ample evidence of Plasma as another state of matter, things operating on various bands of the electromagnetic spectrum we barely perceive or understand. And even the unbelieving scientists out there say that a stage IV level on the Kardashev scale civilization would be so advanced that if we did notice then we'd have no more understanding of them than an ant does of a human.

You have a soul. There is a God or gods ( some think) The Truth can be known, by revelation.This sub forum was designed for people who believe and who could discuss more further than that at a minimum but on that foundation. I believe everyone knows at least that much in their heart at least whether they admit it or not.