A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction
Zur Kritik der Hegel’schen Rechts-Philosophie. Einleitung
The introduction Marx wrote in Paris for a planned critique of Hegel’s philosophy of right, published in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher in 1844. With the criticism of religion, “the opium of the people”, complete, criticism must turn to law and politics, and Germany, backward in practice but abreast of the age in philosophy, can only be emancipated by a radical revolution. Its agent is the proletariat, the class with radical chains: philosophy is the head of this emancipation, the proletariat its heart.
- Edition
- H. J. Stenning’s translation, “A Criticism of the Hegelian Philosophy of Right”, in Karl Marx, Selected Essays (London: Leonard Parsons; New York: International Publishers, 1926), from the Distributed Proofreaders transcription of the 1968 facsimile reprint (Project Gutenberg #21565, 2007), checked against a second scan of that reprint.
- Source
- Project Gutenberg #21565 (2007), via the Internet Archive
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Contents
- A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction 38 min 51
Marx starts from Feuerbach's completed criticism of religion: man makes religion, which is the “moan of the oppressed creature” and “the opium of the people”. Criticism must now turn from heaven to earth, from theology to law and politics. Germany is an anachronism, politically pre-1789 yet philosophically abreast of modern nations through Hegel's philosophy of the state. Theory becomes a material force when it takes hold of people, but no German class can lead a partial, merely political revolution. Emancipation can come only from a class in “radical chains”, the proletariat: philosophy is the head of emancipation, the proletariat its heart.