I was reading an easy primer on dialectical materialism. I didn’t get far because a nagging in the back of my mind telling me the foundation was unsteady.

I don’t have the original article handy, but they’d posited that idealism and materialism are fundamental opposites (before presenting arguments).

My question is: “why not both”? We have space & time and (as far as I know) nobody says one is the product of the other. Why couldn’t the material and the idea be like orthogonal axis? Or why couldn’t you posit that all is the ideals of some greater thing, appearing as material to us?

I guess I’m looking for a stronger foundation for materialism. I think valuable insights could be gleaned from it, but I don’t trust it’s foundations enough to use it.