Abstract

Dialectic materialism holds that material beings are the only independent reality actually existing. They are the subject of ontological study, as understood by marxist philosophy. As Thomist natural philosophy has an identical object we can consider the terms „ontology” and „natural philosophy” thus defined as equivalent, at least as far as their respective ranges are concerned.The first part of the paper describes the present marxist idea of natural philosophy, the value of which is submitted to critical analysis in part two. To obtain a more precise insight into their views the marxist writers have been divided into three groups according to the degree of elaboration of the „ontological” metasystem. The analysis yields the conclusion that natural philosophy, as understood by the marxists, is a generalization of ontologically approached results of natural sciences; its object is nature which it cognizes and explains in terms of dialectical method, making use of the results supplied by natural sciences; it is also a philosophy of natural science, and, primarily, a methodology of the sciences of nature.Part two shows that such a conception of natural philosophy derives from the marxist philosophical system, particularly from the concepts of matter and theory of knowledge. Seen in the light of immanent criticism, this sort of natural philosophy is a philosophical discipline, while from the position of Thomist system it is rather a natural science than a philosophical one. Being then a kind of natural phenomenology it can be used as material base for the study of modern Thomist philosophy of nature.