Quiz: Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy

All 41 questions. A perfect score earns the gold medal; 80% earns silver.

1. 1. Which modern philosophers does Engels name as disputing the possibility of exhaustive knowledge of the world?

   Fichte and Schelling Descartes and Spinoza Hume and Kant Locke and Berkeley
2. 2. How did the bourgeoisie and the proletariat arise, according to Engels?

   From political conquest: the conquerors became the bourgeoisie, the conquered the proletariat From racial differences between the descendants of conquering and subject peoples From religious differences sharpened by the Reformation and the wars of religion From changes in production: guild handicraft, manufacture, large industry
3. 3. Whom does Engels call “the vulgarizing peddlers” of materialism in 1850s Germany?

   Young Hegelians who had turned Hegel’s dialectic into a weapon against religion English empiricists who reduced all knowledge to the sensations of the individual Catholic theologians who borrowed materialist arguments to attack Protestant rationalism Popular materialists who used science only against the Creator, within the old limits
4. 4. What does Engels call “the great foundation question of all philosophy”?

   The nature of the good The relation between thinking and being The existence of God The origin of language
5. 5. Where, according to Engels, did the true revolutionary character of Hegel’s philosophy lie?

   In its theory of art In its conclusions about the Prussian state as the end of history In its theology, which made God into the self-unfolding Absolute Idea In its dialectical method, which sees everything as transient
6. 6. In contrast to Feuerbach, what did Hegel say about evil, as Engels quotes?

   That evil is mere ignorance and will be abolished by universal popular education That evil does not exist, being only the absence of the good That evil comes from private property and will vanish when property is held in common That evil is the form in which the mechanical power of evolution shows itself
7. 7. Which of these is not among the three great discoveries in natural science that Engels names?

   The theory of relativity The transformation of energy Darwin’s theory of evolution The discovery of the cell
8. 8. What did Marx and Engels plan to do together in Brussels in 1845, according to Engels’s 1888 preface?

   Draft a joint programme for the new Communist League and its sections abroad Work out their materialist view of history against German ideological philosophy Write a popular history of the French Revolution for German workers Edit a collected edition of Hegel’s works with a materialist commentary of their own
9. 9. What role does Engels say religion plays in all ideological matters?

   A great conservative force, because it carries tradition A revolutionary force No role at all The decisive force in history
10. 10. What happened to the manuscript of 1845–46 (two big octavo volumes)?

    It was never printed; they shelved it gladly, their views now clarified It was lost in a police raid on Marx’s Brussels lodgings in 1848 It was revised by Engels into the first draft of the Communist Manifesto It was published in Westphalia in 1846 and seized by the Prussian censors
11. 11. Which example does Engels give of a “thing in itself” becoming a “thing for us”?

    The atom, at last made visible under the newly improved microscope Electricity, harnessed by the telegraph to carry messages Alizarin, the dye in madder root, now made cheaply from coal tar The planet Uranus, found by chance through Herschel’s telescope
12. 12. What does Engels say is left of the revolutionary character of Feuerbach’s philosophy when he makes love the solution to everything?

    A new theory of the state A critique of capitalism A programme for revolution Nothing but the old cant: “love one another”
13. 13. Who translated this 1903 English edition and wrote its introduction?

    Austin Lewis Daniel De Leon Edward Aveling Samuel Moore
14. 14. According to the second thesis, what kind of question is whether human thought can reach objective truth?

    An unanswerable question A theoretical question A practical question A religious question
15. 15. Whose book on Feuerbach was Engels asked to review, giving the occasion for this work?

    Strauss’s Stirner’s Starcke’s Bauer’s
16. 16. What contradiction does Engels find in Hegel?

    A belief in endless progress clashed with his claim that history has no direction or end A materialist theory of nature sat beside an idealist account of human history A defence of the Prussian state was combined with a call for its abolition A revolutionary method led to a tame conclusion, since the system needed absolute truth
17. 17. What popular confusion about “idealism” and “materialism” does Engels attack?

    That idealism means atheism, and materialism the faith of the established Christian churches That materialism means greed, and idealism belief in noble aims That both words mean much the same thing: a taste for abstract speculation That materialism is a new religion, and idealism the rejection of all worship
18. 18. Why was the main fight of the Young Hegelians directed against religion?

    Politics was too thorny, so religion became the proxy The Prussian state encouraged it as a blow against Catholic Rome They had no interest in politics and wished only to reform theology Religion was the only subject that the Prussian censors allowed to be debated in universities
19. 19. According to the sixth thesis, what is humanity in its reality?

    An abstraction inherent in each single individual A spiritual essence A natural species, defined by its biology alone The ensemble of the conditions of society
20. 20. How do men make their own history, according to Engels?

    Each pursues his own ends; history is the result of many wills As great men decide, the masses following the will of heroes and statesmen According to a divine plan, which works through men without their knowledge or consent Without conscious aims, driven by blind instinct like the forces of nature
21. 21. On what does Feuerbach found all morality, according to Engels?

    The categorical imperative, binding on every rational being regardless of consequences Class interest, as determined by each class’s position in production The desire for happiness, checked by its consequences and by others’ equal right Divine commandments, understood as projections of the best in human nature
22. 22. Why was eighteenth-century materialism overwhelmingly mechanical, according to Engels?

    Mechanics was the only natural science then developed to any completion Experiment was distrusted, so only reasoning from first principles was allowed The leading materialists were trained engineers and builders of machines The Church tolerated mechanics but censored chemistry and physiology
23. 23. To what does Engels compare Feuerbach’s attempt to found true religion on materialist philosophy?

    Conceiving modern chemistry as true alchemy Turning lead into gold Building a house on sand Making wine from water
24. 24. Where does Engels sarcastically say Feuerbach’s ethics would locate the highest temple of morality?

    The factory The family The Bourse (stock exchange), provided one speculates rightly The church
25. 25. What, according to Engels, put aside all philosophical discussion and crowded out Feuerbach himself?

    The Prussian censorship The Revolution of 1848 The rise of Darwinism The death of Hegel
26. 26. What example does Engels give of something that had become “unreal” in Hegel’s sense?

    The Prussian army after Jena The Catholic Church The Roman Republic under Caesar The French monarchy in 1789
27. 27. What was the second limitation of the old materialism, according to Engels?

    It could not see the universe as a process of development Its atheism, which cut it off from the moral feeling of the masses Its preoccupation with politics at the expense of the natural sciences Its reliance on experiment rather than on systematic philosophical reasoning
28. 28. What does Engels say is proved, at least for modern history, about political contests?

    All political contests are accidents of personality among rulers All political contests are struggles of nations and races, ultimately over territory All political contests are clashes of ideas, ultimately over religion All are class contests, ultimately for economic emancipation
29. 29. What does Engels call the task of explaining his and Marx’s relation to Feuerbach?

    A tiresome duty he owed to his party An unendurable debt of honour A political necessity for the movement A purely academic exercise for scholars
30. 30. What did Engels find “in an old volume of Marx” and print as an appendix?

    The eleven theses on Feuerbach Marx’s doctoral dissertation The first draft of the Manifesto Letters from Feuerbach
31. 31. What did Feuerbach’s Essence of Christianity do, according to Engels?

    It put materialism back on the throne: nature exists independently of all philosophy It defended Christianity against the critics by grounding faith in universal human feeling It proved from the Gospel sources that the life of Jesus was largely myth It completed Hegel’s system by reconciling the absolute spirit with revealed Christian religion
32. 32. What did Feuerbach want to do with religion, according to Engels?

    Replace it with natural science, as the new and sole authority for human conduct Abolish it completely, replacing worship with the study of nature Return to the Catholic faith as the only religion of true community Not abolish it but perfect it, as a religion of love between human beings
33. 33. How are philosophers divided according to their answer to the foundation question?

    Those who believe in progress are optimists; those who expect decline are pessimists Those who put spirit before nature are idealists; those who regard nature as primary are materialists Those who trust reason before the senses are rationalists; those who trust experience are empiricists Those who follow the ancient Greeks are classicists; those who follow Descartes are moderns
34. 34. What does the eleventh thesis on Feuerbach say?

    Man is the measure of all things, of things that are that they are, and of things that are not that they are not Philosophers have only interpreted the world differently, but the point is to change it The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles It is not consciousness that determines being, but social being that determines consciousness
35. 35. What does Engels say about the Copernican system?

    It was proved beyond doubt by Galileo’s telescope observations of the moons of Jupiter It was superseded by Newton’s mechanics, which showed the sun itself is in motion It stayed a hypothesis until Leverrier’s prediction of Neptune proved it It remains a hypothesis, since no one can observe the solar system from outside
36. 36. Which famous statement of Hegel does Engels discuss at the start of Part I?

    “Freedom is the recognition of necessity” “The owl of Minerva flies at dusk” “The state is the march of God through the world” “All that is real is reasonable, and all that is reasonable is real”
37. 37. What does Engels say must replace the cult of man in the abstract at the heart of Feuerbach’s religion?

    The worship of nature A new religion of humanity, with its own rites and calendar The science of real men and their historical development Hegel’s Absolute Idea, reinterpreted as the spirit of the people
38. 38. How did the very faults of Feuerbach’s book help its momentary effect?

    Its obscure, technical vocabulary flattered scholars weary of popular pamphlets Its errors provoked a useful controversy that sharpened the Young Hegelians’ arguments Its brevity and plain language made it cheap enough for workers to buy and read Its literary, even bombastic style won readers tired of Hegelianism
39. 39. Where does Engels say the German sense for theory survives after 1848?

    In the universities and the learned academies Among the bourgeoisie Only among the working classes In the Prussian state bureaucracy
40. 40. What does the third thesis say the materialist doctrine of circumstances and education forgets?

    That human nature is fixed, so that no circumstances can alter it That men are born good and are corrupted only by the institutions and customs around them That education is useless unless the state first transforms the whole property system That circumstances are changed by men and that the educator must himself be educated
41. 41. What controversy does Lewis’s introduction discuss at length?

    Whether Feuerbach was a Christian Whether economic factors are the sole determinant of history Whether Marx or Engels chiefly wrote the Manifesto Whether Hegel supported the Revolution