1) Reality is Material
Is it the idea or the material that comes first?Humans have a capacity to picture in mind what's been already observed through senses. For instance, if I say, can you imagine the taste of the lemon, if you have ever tasted it, then you would recall its taste. If I say, can you imagine a palm tree, you would clearly imagine a picture of a palm tree in your mind. But suppose if I say, can you imagine "zōng lǘ shù"? Suddenly, your mind can't picture it anymore. Things unobserved can't be pictured, and things already observed can be pictured; S.T. Coleridge calls this capacity Primary Imagination. Now, suppose if I say, can you imagine a donkey with wings flying? You can picture it in your mind because the wings, the act of flying, and a donkey are already in your primary imagination, and you can recombine elements from primary imagination to create or invent something new; this is what Coleridge calls the capacity of Secondary Imagination. That is, writers and scientists use this secondary imagination to invent, and secondary imagination is premised in primary imagination.
Another strong argument for material being first is that the human mind itself is matter and has material processes through which thought is produced, making the material primary.
Therefore, we can conclude that material reality in the form of action and object is primary.
Then what about love, honesty, justice? They are not ideals?
Suppose, a husband who beats his wife yet claims to love her. Will this claim be true? It won't, because his actions speak the opposite. Love, therefore, is a material action. Same is the case with justice, for instance, restorative justice requires restoration of both parties involved; a strict system might say cut a thief's hands, and another system of justice might say to fulfill his needs so that he doesn't have to steal again. All these are material actions, and similarly, honesty is also a form of action. Can someone be considered honest just because they say so, or do their actions have to depict honesty?
Therefore, love, honesty, justice, and other such seemingly ideal concepts are also material conditions and actions.
Then what about a priori knowledge and mathematical reality?
A priori is always premised and rooted in a posteriori; humans could think of signifiers for numbers because numbers of items existed in material reality, and they could induce zero from the absence of an item. If material reality had all things in pairs, then number one might have actually meant two. Languages were developed to communicate and talk about material reality. All signifiers can be reduced to material experiences and observations.
2) Reality is a Process
Realität is an abstraction of instrumental rationality that views reality as a static and isolated, immediately present "moment," while ignoring its processual and relational nature. For instance, it views a shirt as a static and isolated independent component of reality, whereas, dialectically speaking, a shirt is merely a single moment in process, where once it was a seed, then a bundle of cotton, then a piece of cloth, and possesses a future with determinable and probable possibilities, making it a process rather than a "thing". Secondly, the shirt is an internal relation. The seed bloomed because of the suitable pH level of the soil, climate, water, the labour of the farmer, and countless other conditions that constituted its existence. These relations are not external additions but internal determinations of its very being. Dialectics therefore abstracts reality not as isolated entities but as internally constituted processes.Aufhebung
Each dialectical "moment" in this process is the Sublation (Aufhebung) of the preceding "moments." The shirt is not an outright annihilation of the previous "moment" of cotton; rather, it absorbs, preserves, and reworks it into a more richly variegated completeness. Cotton, the farmer's labour, thread, and cloth remain constitutive moments of the shirt, while the shirt simultaneously transcends each of them. Mathematically, A = A and also not-A, because every phenomenon is simultaneously itself, the potentiality for what it is structured to become, and the sublation of its preceding moments.
Möglichkeit to Wirklichkeit
Each process may be understood in terms of Möglichkeit (Possibility/Potentiality), which represents the latent potentiality awaiting the internal and external conditions (internal relations) necessary for its transformation into Actuality (Wirklichkeit). For example, the adult is the actualization of the child's unformed potentialities. Bookchin views potentiality as an immanent, self-organizing process unfolding through three Hegelian stages.
- An sich (In Itself): The implicit or germinal phase in which a phenomenon's future form remains latent, "hidden and ideally contained within itself," yet remains unfulfilled and therefore "untrue" to its full maturity.
- Für sich (For Itself): The stage in which potentiality becomes explicit and develops its own unique identity and subjectivity, marking the point at which a life-form or social institution begins to function as a self-maintaining "subject" rather than a passive object of external forces.
- An und für sich (In and For Itself): The stage synonymous with Actuality (Wirklichkeit) or the "unity of Essence and Existence." Here, potentiality becomes fully explicit, self-conscious, and rational. Applying this principle to the evolution of nature as process, Bookchin envisions this moment as free nature, a harmonious synthesis of biological and social evolution in which humanity becomes "nature rendered self-conscious," capable of guiding the biosphere toward greater diversity and freedom.
3. Reality is Internal Relations
As aforementioned, internal relations constitute being or existence, which itself is merely a "moment" within process, since all being is fundamentally becoming. Consequently, abstraction of internal relations is indispensable for understanding both the constitution and definition of any phenomenon. The study of internal relations directly negates Realität, which mistakes isolated "moments" for reality itself. The relational analysis of any phenomenon requires understanding four fundamental principles.- Form and Function: A thing may be simultaneously the same and different because identity ultimately resides in function rather than form. A cup may possess different forms and names across languages, yet we identify it through its function. Likewise, slavery and employment differ historically in form and nomenclature, yet the functional relation between an elite appropriating the labour of subordinates may remain substantially similar.
- Contradiction: As discussed previously, contradiction is the principle that A equals both A and not-A. Every phenomenon is simultaneously itself and the potentiality for what it is structured to become. Contradiction exists because the implicit (what-is) remains inadequate in relation to the actual (what-should-be), thereby impelling development toward increasingly variegated complexity and subjectivity.
- Unity in Diversity: Also expressed as the unity of differences or the unity of opposites, this principle maintains that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts because of the unique geometry and organization of its diverse components. Diversity is the internal logic that gives variety intelligibility and meaning. In natural evolution, stability is a function of variety and complexity rather than uniformity. An ecosystem is strengthened through biodiversity because unity in nature is a dynamic balance achieved through continual differentiation, where each life-form occupies a unique niche supporting the integrity of the entire ecological web. Likewise, within human society, unity in diversity, as praxis, negates parochialism.
- Sublation: Sublation may also be understood through the relationship between quantitative and qualitative change. For example, the quantitative increase in the temperature of water eventually produces a qualitative transformation from liquid to vapour. Bookchin applies this principle to the emergence of second nature (society) from first nature (biology), describing it as a qualitative departure and a "quantum leap" in subjectivity and freedom.
