The three basic historical forms of the development of materialist philosophy are the simplicity of ancient materialism:
Modern metaphysical materialism, dialectical materialism and historical materialism.
1 and ancient naive materialism are the initial forms of the three stages of materialism.
According to Engels, the basic feature of simple materialism is to try to find the unity of natural phenomena with infinite diversity in some concrete tangible objects or some special things. Naive materialism affirmed the material origin and unity of the world. Due to the limitation of knowledge level, a certain or specific material form is always regarded as the material basis of the origin of the world's material.
2. Modern metaphysical materialism is a kind of materialist theory, which enriches and develops materialism on the basis of summarizing the achievements of natural science. However, it attributes matter to atoms in the sense of natural science, and holds that atoms are the origin of the world, and the attributes of atoms are the attributes of matter, so it has limitations in historical view such as mechanization, metaphysics and idealism.
What they have in common with ancient naive materialism, dialectical materialism and historical materialism is that they all adhere to the direction of materialism and think that matter determines consciousness and consciousness is the reflection of matter. They are inextricably linked in history.
3. Marxist philosophy is dialectical materialism and historical materialism, and dialectical materialism consists of dialectical materialism, materialist dialectics and dialectical materialist epistemology. Dialectical materialism was founded by Marx on the basis of critically inheriting the outstanding achievements of human culture, especially critically absorbing the "reasonable core" of Hegel's dialectics and the "basic core" of Feuerbach's materialism. The birth of dialectical materialism is a revolution in the history of philosophy.
The development of materialism has experienced ancient naive materialism, modern metaphysical mechanical materialism, Marxist dialectical materialism and historical materialism. Among them, Marxist dialectical materialism and historical materialism are the most popular at present.
The theoretical content of Marxist philosophy is to combine materialism with dialectics, materialistic view of nature and materialistic view of history to form a theoretical system of dialectical materialism and historical materialism.