Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy
Appendix: Marx on Feuerbach (1845)
Section summary
Marx’s eleven notes of spring 1845, in Engels’s 1888 version. All earlier materialism grasped reality only as an object of contemplation, not as human sensuous practice; truth is proved in practice; the doctrine that people are products of circumstances forgets that people change circumstances and that the educator must be educated; religion must be explained by the contradictions of the earthly world; the human essence is the ensemble of social relations; the new materialism stands on the ground of social humanity. And finally: “Philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.”
Thesis I
The chief lack of all materialistic philosophy up to the present, including that of Feuerbach, is that the thing, the reality, sensation is only conceived of under the form of the object which is presented to the eye, but not as human sense-activity, “praxis,” not subjectively. It therefore came about that the active side in opposition to materialism was developed from idealism, but only abstractly; this was natural, since idealism does not recognize real tangible facts as such. Feuerbach is willing, it is true, to distinguish objects of sensation from objects existing in thought, but he conceives of human activity itself not as objective activity. He, therefore, in the “Wesen des Christenthums,” regards only theoretical activity as generally human, while the “praxis” is conceived and fixed only in its disgusting form.
Thesis II
The question if objective truth is possible to human thought is not a theoretical but a practical question. In practice man must prove the truth, that is the reality and force in his actual thoughts. The dispute as to the reality or non-reality of thought which separates itself, “the praxis,” is a purely scholastic question.
Thesis III
The materialistic doctrine that men are the products of conditions and education, different men therefore the products of other conditions and changed education, forgets that circumstances may be altered by men and that the educator has himself to be educated. It necessarily happens therefore that society is divided into two parts, of which one is elevated above society (Robert Owen for example).
The occurrence simultaneously of a change in conditions and human activity can only be comprehended and rationally understood as a revolutionary fact.
Thesis IV
Feuerbach proceeds from a religious self-alienation, the duplication of the world into a religious, imaginary, and a real world. His work consists in the discovery of the material foundations of the religious world. He overlooked the fact that after carrying this to completion the important matter still remains unaccomplished. The fact that the material foundation annuls itself and establishes for itself a realm in the clouds can only be explained from the heterogeneity and self-contradiction of the material foundation. This itself must first become understood in its contradictions and so become thoroughly revolutionized by the elimination of the contradiction. After the earthly family has been discovered as the secret of the Holy Family, one must have theoretically criticised and theoretically revolutionised it beforehand.
Thesis V
Feuerbach, not satisfied with abstract thought, invokes impressions produced by the senses, but does not comprehend sensation as practical sensory activities.
Thesis VI
Feuerbach dissolves religion in humanity. But humanity is not an abstraction dwelling in each individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of the conditions of society.
1. To abstract religious sentiment from the course of history, to place it by itself, and to pre-suppose an abstract, isolated, human individual.
2. Humanity is therefore only comprehended by him as a species, as a hidden sort of merely natural identity of qualities in which many individuals are embraced.
Thesis VII
Therefore Feuerbach does not see that religious feeling is itself a product of society, and that the abstract individual which he analyses belongs in reality to a certain form of society.
Thesis VIII
The life of society is essentially practical. All the mysteries which seduce speculative thought into mysticism find their solution in human practice and in concepts of this practice.
Thesis IX
The highest point to which materialism attains, that is the materialism which comprehends sensation, not as a practical fact, is the point of view of the single individual in bourgeois society.
Thesis X
The standpoint of the old materialism is “bourgeois” society; the standpoint of the new, human society, or associated humanity.