Materialism as a metaphysical view is something of a red herring; its presumed thing in itself does not actually do anything beyond serve as a mental brace for a sense of passivity before the necessary or the impossible. In a similar way the apparent agency granted by idealism does nothing either but save the appearances in the face of that same necessity. And so in modernity materialism has assumed the mantle of agency via science and technology but it does so in service to the dream of a second coming of idealism which ultimately entails a deferred encounter with passivity in the face of necessity. It is almost as if what is at stake is a continuing dialectic of agency and passivity whose ground is the point were matter and mind originally coincide.