Theory of Reflection

The epistemological principle that affirms human knowledge as the reflection of objective being. The theory of reflection is the basic principle of all materialist epistemology, and it is fundamentally opposite to idealist epistemology.

Materialism holds that human sensations, ideas and thoughts are reflections of the objective world by the human brain. Ancient materialists expressed this view in form of naïve contemplation. In ancient China, there was also the view that “One may by description summarize what is so of the myriad things.” (Mozi, Xiao Qu-Chapter). In ancient Greece, atomistic materialists such as Empedocles and Democritus put forth the “theory of emanations” and “theory of idols”, which were embryonic forms of the materialist theory of reflection. As for modern Europe, philosophers such as Bacon, Locke, Diderot, d’Holbach, Feuerbach, etc., all regarded human cognition or knowledge as the reflection of external things by the human brain.

Marxism upholds the dialectical materialist theory of reflection and opposes both idealist epistemology and old materialist epistemology. Engels said: “All ideas are drawn from experience; they are reflections of reality, whether accurate or distorted.” In Materialism and Empirio-criticism, Lenin explained that the theory of reflection is the basis of materialist epistemology and pointed out: “the materialist theory, the theory of the reflection of objects by our mind.” The object of knowledge exists independently of us, and our perceptions are images of the external world. This deduction is made by men in practice, and “materialism deliberately places this deduction at the foundation of its epistemology.”

The old materialist epistemology prior to Marxism was a passive contemplative theory of reflection. Examining problems apart from the social nature of man and his historical development, incapable of understanding the dependence of knowledge on social practice, incapable of applying dialectics to the theory of reflection and to the process of development of knowledge, and incapable of understanding the laws of the generation and development of knowledge, it regarded knowledge as a mechanical, passive contemplation of the object. Marxism has criticized the defects of the old materialist epistemology and pointed out that the reflection of objective being by knowledge is “is not a simple, immediate act, a dead mirroring”, but a process of a series of abstractions, a process of conditional approach to the objective world through the formation of concepts laws, etc. Mao Zedong explicitly referred to Marxist epistemology as “the dynamic revolutionary theory of reflection”, and in On Practice, he explained the dialectical process of the development of knowledge based on practice from the shallower to the deeper. The reflection of objective being by knowledge is the process in which, on the basis of practice, sensuous knowledge dynamically develops into rational knowledge and rational knowledge dynamically changes the objective world, i.e., practice, knowledge, again practice, again knowledge, repeating itself in endless cycles. The Marxist theory of dynamic reflection drew a clear line with idealism and agnosticism, and also overcame the defects of the old materialist theory of reflection.