ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the contributions of critical materialism to a non-substantialist and non-atomistic understanding of ontology and epistemology, and to a revised version of structuralism. Critical materialism questions conceptualizations of causality as mere relations of push and pull and embraces instead causes as multifarious and complex. By embracing morphogenesis, critical materialists have also offered a version of structuralism that opens up its causal closure and teleological view of history. However critical materialism remains committed to a dualistic ontology. Thus, while arguing for embracing contestability as its central ethical orientation, critical materialism does not bring a reconceptualization of agency and ethics to its full potential.
