Yang Geng

　　School of Philosophy, Beijing Normal University

　　Abstract:Natural materialism, humanistic materialism and historical materialism are the three historical forms of materialism. The “material” in historical materialism is a social thing which is “perceptible and imperceptible by the senses” and connotes social relations; and the “history” in historical materialism is the realm in which contradictions between man and nature and between man and society are able to unfold, so historical materialism is “actually a critical view of the world” that inherently contains dialectics in a “rational form.” The formulation of historical materialism opened a new path for the development of materialism and even philosophy as a whole. In the course of its critique of capitalist society, which unfolds with capital as a core category, historical materialism sublates abstract existence and discovers real social existence, thus putting an end to metaphysics, which is grounded in abstract ontology.

　　Keywords:historical materialism,dialectical materialism,practice,ontology,metaphysics