SC 715:
Classical Social Theory
Department of Sociology Theory
Proseminar I
Fall 2001
O’Neill 255
Monday 3:00-5:30
Syllabus
Section
A
Section
B
Section C
Section
D1, D2
Section E
Section F
Section G1, G2
Section H1, H2
Section I
Section J
Section K
Section L
Section M
Other sections will appear as the semester progresses.
Section C
Hegel (1770-1831) and Feuerbach (1804-1872):
Philosophical Problematic of
Economy, State, and Culture
If Adam Smith was Karl Marx's economic antagonist
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Ludwig Feuerbach were
Marx's philosophical antagonists. As such, Hegel and Feuerbach
present the philosophical problematic that influenced Karl
Marx's early writings, generating his historical materialism.
In addition to being important for understanding Marx's
thinking, Hegel and Feuerbach are important in their own
right. Hegel, for instance, provided Marx with the dialectical
method and a general theory of history. But he also inspired
an entire generation of romantic thinkers and, in reaction
to him, a generation of social scientists debunking the
conservative power and illusion of religion and criticizing
the exercise of state. Indeed, writes Stephen Houlgate,
"Hegel's is still a viable philsophical endeavour with
extremely important things to contribute to modern debates,
particularly the debates about historical relativism, poverty
and social alienation, the nature of freedom and political
legitimacy, the future of art and the character of Christian
faith" (1991: 3).
For his part, Feuerbach, while criticizing Hegel, did not
go far enough for Marx. As such Feuerbach served as a valuable
foil for Marx who used Feuerbach's critique of Hegel as
the starting point of his materialism. According to Feuerbach,
Hegel mistakenly attributes to the Spirit and the state,
the creative attributes of human beings. According to Marx,
Feuerbach mistakenly believes that simply acknowledging
this reversal is sufficient for liberating the human species.
The value of Feuerbach in his right is connected to the
fact that the earliest piece of cultural theory in the Marxist
tradition is Ludwig Feuerbach's The Essence of Christianity.
That work is also the precursor for much political theology,
including the theology of liberation.
I have provided a copy of Hegel's Reason in History, along
with Hartman's Introduction. This work will enable us to
see Hegel's own words on the issues of history, freedom,
the Sprit, and the state. To help you understand Hegel's
writing, I have also provided a chapter from Frederick Copleston's
A History of Philosophy. The writing of Ludwig Feuerbach,
you will see is somewhat repetitive. But when you’re
onto something, why not say it more than once? In addition
to sections from The Essence of Christianity, I ask you
to look over the Introduction by the renowned theologian
Karl Barth. The following passage from Isaiah 55: 6-13,
demonstrates the kind of cosmic vision, expressive totality,
and the issuing forth and return of the Geist that marks
Hegel's philosophy of history. 6 Seek the Lord while he
may be found, call him while he is near.
7 Let the scoundrel forsake his way,
and the wicked man his thoughts;
Let him turn to the Lord for mercy;
to our God, who is generous in forgiving.
8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.
9 As high as the heavens are above the earth,
so high are my ways above your ways
and my thoughts above your thoughts.
10 For just as from the heavens
the rain and snow come down
And do not return there
till they have watered the earth,
making it fertile and fruitful,
Giving seed to him who sows
and bread to him who eats,
11 So shall my word be
that goes forth from my mouth;
It shall not return to me void,
but shall do my will,
achieving the end for which I sent it.
12 Yes, in joy you shall depart,
in peace you shall be brought back;
Mountains and hills shall break out in
song before you,
and all the trees of the countryside
shall clap their hands.
13 In place of the thornbush, the cypress shall grow,
instead of nettles, the myrtle.
This shall be to the Lord’s renown,
an everlasting imperishable sign.
In order to depict one aspect of my current
thinking about Hegel and Feuerbach I offer the following
paragraphs from a paper I am working on, "The Sense
and Sensibility of Religion: Retrieving Spiritual Experience
as an Authentic Sociological Variable."
Hegel’s Apotheosis of History and
Consciousness
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s practical philosophical
grand synthesis of the workings of Providence, civil society,
and popular consciousness is the last non-theological (see
Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, Pierre Teilhard de Chardan, and
Karl Rahner) thinker to propose a unified theory of the
heavenly and earthly domains. As is frequently the case
with general theoretical systems, the fullest presentation
of a worldview occurs near the end of a an intellectual
epoch when alternative paradigms have already begun to forge
their challenges. I contend, but do not here demonstrate,
the reasonable thesis that Hegel’s philosophy was the
epitome of practical religious theodicy and reflected a
cultural consciousness that subsequent behavioral science
explicitly or implicitly rejected. Hartman for instance,
claims that Hegel "was the one philosopher who decisively
changed history" (1953, p. ix), and quotes Ernst Cassirer
(1946, p.248) who maintained that "no other philosophical
system has exerted such a strong and enduring influence
upon political life as the metaphysics of Hegel. . . . There
has hardly been a single great political system that has
resisted its influence" In a word, says Hartman (p.
xi) "as the greatest conservative, [Hegel] unchained
the greatest revolution" (p. xi). Just what is the
provocative Hegelian perspective that our classical predecessors
took as their vocation to vanquish and, because of their
efforts, engendered the enlightenment consensus that now
pervades the treatment of religion in contemporary social
science?
Hegel’s university lectures published as Reason
in History: A General Introduction to the Philosophy of
History is a relatively straightforward presentation
of his practical metaphysics.Hegel’s point of departure
is that the Divine is internal to the workings of nature
and history. The presence of Providence is not an intervention
but an initial condition permeating nature and actually
inviting/requiring transformative human agency in the co-creation
of history, morality, and religion. There is an unfolding
dialectical relationship between God (the divine thinker
or the Idea) and Nature. Nature reaches its pinnacle in
the form of conscious human life, because through human
consciousness, the Idea becomes conscious of itself. World
and history are components of the expressive totality emanating
from God, but not in a derivative or mechanical way. Yes,
human agency of self-construction and world-building play
out within the individual self and the world of Nature issued
forth by God or Reason. (Marx was not the first to suggest
that people create their own history, but not under conditions
completely of their choosing.) At the same time, human agency
carries out its innate mandate as a natural inclination
within the realm of freedom it derives from the self-consciousness
that God/Idea/Reason has embedded in all individuals.
God or Idea is the thesis, Nature (especially
in the form of conscious human agency working on self and
world) is the antithesis. Spirit is the newly forged synthesis
combining the uncreated Idea issuing forth the "infinite
power" (p. 11) of reason and energy with the self-conscious
human agency shaping material nature. As such, Spirit closes
the circle of knowledge/energy and brings the Idea to a
new level where it is "actualized and realized"
(Hegel 1953 [1837] p. 20). Spirit is thus the self-aware
synthesis of outflowing Idea and its material incarnation
in nature mainly through conscious human agency creating
society, history, morality, culture and so forth. As a result,
says Hegel, "Spirit knows itself" (p. 23).
In terms that may be more familiar, Hegel is providing a
religious cosmology akin to Anthony Giddens’s humanistic
sociology. What for Hegel is the dialectic of Idea, Nature,
and Spirit, is for Giddens the dialectic of structure and
agency which he calls the duality of structure. Idea is
structural condition of enablement and constraint--freedom
and dependence, as Hegel puts it. Nature is the material
realm of conscious human agency carrying out transformative
reproduction within the enable and constraints of structure
as embedded in what Giddens following Freud calls memory
traces. "Spirit is essentially Energy," says Hegel,
that results from the "actual self-determination"
of the Idea as it manifests itself "in the form of
states and individuals" (p. 51) and religion. In Giddens’s
language, Spirit is the reproduced/transformed outcome that
in his dialectics becomes structural condition for further
agency.
As the reader can already tell, there are several red flags
that an Enlightenment thinker would find vexatious. One
of which is not that Hegel is optimistic about human nature
and the progressive teleology of history. The irksome ensigns
have more to do with Hegel’s notions about (1) the
genesis and destiny of history flowing from and returning
to the Divine; (2) the almost exclusive emphasis on self-consciousness
and comprehension as sufficient causes for advancing the
actualization of history and human existence rather than
actual acts of agency and the scientific laws of political-economic,
cultural, and personal evolution; and (3) in general elevating
the speculative operations of God above the demonstrable
operations of the human species, classes, society, or personality.
An additional red flag is Hegel’s discussion of the
State, especially for those who have seen authoritarian
or, later, Fascist foundations in Hegel’s political
philosophy. Others (e.g., Hartman 1953) have written persuasively
that, while Hegel may have been used to justify such regimes,
neither in disposition nor in his writings did Hegel actually
propose such a view. Rather, his notion of the State is
akin to what Marx and now we call civil society. As Hegel
explicitly says (sounding like Durkheim) the State is the
composite "spiritual individual, the people, insofar
as it is organized in itself, an organic whole (Hegel 1953,
pp. 51-52). He goes on to clarify that "by ‘state’.
. . one usually means the simple political aspect as distinct
from religion, science, and art. But when we speak of the
manifestation of the spiritual we understand the term ‘state’
in a more comprehensive sense, similar to the term Reich
(empire, realm)." The state, then, is the "concrete
actuality" (we would say, institutionalized form) of
"the spirit of the people."Furthermore, when looking
not at its "external form" but at its "consciousness
of itself," this spirit of the people is "the
culture of a nation" (p. 51, all italics are in the
text). In the discourse of Giddens, the spirit of the people
is virtual structure (the rules and resources embedded in
memory traces), the State is the concrete actualization
of virtual structure in society, and culture is the shared
consciousness (practical and self-reflective) of virtual
structure.
Feuerbach’s Idealist Antithesis
Ludwig Feuerbach’s The Essence of
Christianity presented a prominent and influential response
to Hegel’s metaphysics. Indeed, in praise seldom bestowed
so generously on his intellectual adversaries, Marx said
that Feuerbach’s critique of Hegel and religious theology
was the "fiery brook" of purification through
which all philosophy of political economy must wade. Feuerbach’s
critique provided the antithesis to Hegel’s contention
that comprehension of the divine Idea’s expressive
creation was the purpose and fulfillment of humanity. Feuerbach
did not dispute Hegel’s notion that comprehension
was the central task of praxis. But he did dispute the content
of what was to be comprehended. For Feuerbach, all theological
formulations, including Hegel’s, suffered from a profoundly
mistaken reversal of subject and object. The mistake of
Hegel and his predecessors was to attribute to God instead
of to the human species all positive attributes such as
knowledge, creative power, and love, and then to assert
that any presence of these predicates in human beings was
the result of the creative and redemptive work of
God. Feuerbach claimed the opposite. Feuerbach argued that
although theology says that God is subject and humans the
object of creation, the fact is that the human species is
the subject of history and God its object of creation. The
reason for this is clear. Individuals authentically experience
the origin and destiny of their positive attributes as coming
from and going toward a reality larger than themselves.
But under the alienating mystification of church and theology
they fail to realize that the true origin and destiny of
their lives is the human species and not God. In this way,
authentic spiritual and religious inclinations to honor
the source and content of their cherished characteristics
results in inauthentic consciousness and practice. As such,
Feuerbach’s enlightenment vocation was to stand history
back on its feet and send it more steadfastly on its way
by dethroning God and returning the human species to its
proper dignity as world-historical agent Henceforth, religious
consciousness, as noble as it may be, was a retarding false
consciousness.
Questions(Choose 1)
1. In what ways do you agree or disagree with the following
statement:
Feuerbach was known in his day as a Left Hegelian. This
means that he retained Hegel’s dialectical /historical
method but enunciated a critical antithesis to Hegel by
attributing to human agency what Feuerbach attributed to
the Divine Idea. Explicate Feuerbach’s critical assessment
of Hegel and indicate a rejoinder Hegel might make.
2. Hegel's philosophy is often described as
enunciating a theory of "expressive totality."
This means that all historical reality is in one way or
another a direct expression of the Idea or Spirit. Feuerbach,
in contrast, sees history flowing from the agency of the
human species. Summarize the logic of Hegel and Feuerbach
by showing how Hegel gives precedence to structure (in the
sense of focusing on the conditions of human existence)
and Feuerbach gives precedence to agency (in the sense of
focusing on the transformative/ reproductive capacity of
human beings). Or is this a false dualism such that both
are dealing with conditions of agency and agency simultaneously?
Assigned Reading:
Hegel
Frederick Copleston, S.J. "Hegel (2)" in A
History of Philosophy. Volume VII. Doubleday Image:
Garden City. 1965. Especially pp. 243-269.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
-Reason in History
-Robert S. Hartman, Introduction
-G. W. F. Hegel
- especially 11-71, 87-95
Feuerbach
Ludwig Feuerbach
-The Essence of Christianity
-H. Richard Niebuhr, Forward
-Karl Barth, Introductory Essay,
-Ludgwig Feuerbach
Preface Chapters I, IV, XII, XIV, XV, XVIII, XIX, XX, XXVII
Recommended Reading
Van A. Harvey. Feuerbach and the Interpretation of Religion.
(Cambridge Studies in Religion and Critical Thought , No
1). 1997.
The following is from
http://members.aol.com/pantheism0/hegel.htm
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was born in
Stuttgart in 1770, the son of a revenue officer. His career
at school and university was undistinguished - his certificate
mentioned his "inadequate grasp of philosophy".
At Tübingen university he studied not philosophy but
theology - and in a sense all his philosophy was essentially
a theology, an exploration of the workings of the world-spirit
which he identified with God.
On graduation he became a family tutor in Berne and Frankfurt,
with plenty of time for private study. In 1801 he won his
first university post at the University of Jena. After the
Battle of Jena in 1806 when Napoleon defeated the Prussians,
Hegel saw the emperor riding past.
The encounter had a profound impact. "I saw the Emperor
- this world-spirit - go out from the city to survey his
realm," he wrote on October 13, 1806. "It is a
truly wonderful experience to see such an individual, on
horseback, concentrating on one point, stretching over the
world and dominating it" For Hegel, Napoleon embodied
the world-historical hero of the age, driving forward the
self-realization of God in history.
After the battle the university fell on bad times, and Hegel
left his post. Facing destitution, he took a job editing
a newspaper in Bamberg, and then was headmaster of a secondary
school in Nürnberg. In 1816 he became professor of
philosophy at Heidelberg. Two years later be accepted the
chair of philosophy at Berlin, where he remained till hisdeath
in 1831.
Hegel's philosophical system was perhaps the most ambitious
since Aristotle, comprising logic, psychology, religion,
aesthetics, history, law. As well as his published works,
many volumes were compiled from the notes of his long-suffering
students. Though they laboriously took down almost every
word, one wonders how much they understood. Hegel's language
is abstruse and sometimes tortuous, and makes great demands
on the reader.
Pantheism is the motivating force and the core of Hegel's
system. It is a grandiose idealistic pantheism, in which
all existence and all history are part of God's cosmic self-development.
God is absolute spirit. But he also desires to manifest
himself and to know himself. So it is part of his essence
to become real, in particular material things, in individual
persons and in the process of change and history. God is
present and active in the real world. He acts through humans,
and is conscious of himself through humans.
God embodies and develops himself first in nature, then
in the rising stages of human consciousness and civilization.
Human history and culture are God's working out of his self-realization
in the world. Individual humans - especially the great heroes
of world history - are the principal means of change, while
peoples and states are the embodiment of each phase.
Hegel seems to have had an ethnocentric and egocentric view
of the culmination of this great process. The German nation
were the highest carriers of the wave of God's development.
The bureaucratic monarchy of the Prussian type was the highest
form of state. The pinnacle of philosophy - through which
God at last becomes fully conscious of himself - was, implicitly,
Hegel's own system.
Hegel had an immense influence on German thought - not always
positive. Some of his ideas had a clear aftermath stretching
down to Hitler: his insistence on the identification of
the individual, the nation and the state; his stress on
Great Men as the only real agents of history; his belief
that individual welfare or suffering simply did not matter
in the sweep of world history, advancing like a juggernaut
over the corpses of individuals.
Hegel also had influence through the young philosophers
who rebelled against his system, or developed it in ways
that he would have disowned. The best known of these were
David Strauss, Max Stirner, Ludwig Feuerbach, Karl Marx
and Friedrich Engels. Marx and Engels rejected Hegel's idealism,
but took on his view that history proceeded through the
dialectical process of thesis, contradiction and synthesis.
Hegel also had a powerful impact on the development of pantheism
and panentheism. The central idea of the Process Theology
of A. N. Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne - the idea of
a God evolving in the universe through history - derives
from Hegel. So do more modern ideas that the universe is
an God evolving towards ever greater complexity and consciousness,
and that we humans are somehow a central part of this drama.
Numbers in brackets refer to pages in Hegel, The Philosophy
of History, trs J. Sibree, Dover, New York, 1956; others
are from Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion
Peter Hodgson, ed., University of California Press, Berkeley,
1984.
Selected passages.
God is the root and end of all.
What God creates he himself is . . . God is manifestation
of his own self.
God is . . . the absolutely true, that from which everything
proceeds and into which everything returns, that upon which
everything is dependent and apart from which nothing else
has absolute, true independence. (Philosophy of Religion,
p 368)
Whatever subsists has its root and subsistence only in this
One . . . God is the absolute substance, the only true actuality
. . . All through his development God does not step outside
his unity with himself. (Philosophy of Religion, 369)
God is the substance, energy, material and final goal
of the universe.
Reason is the substance of the Universe, viz, that by which
and in which all reality has its being and subsistence.
On the other hand, it is the infinite energy of the Universe;
since Reason is not so powerless as to be incapable of producing
anything but a mere ideal, a mere intention - having its
place outside reality, nobody knows where; something separate
and abstract, in the heads of certain human beings. It is
the infinite complex of things, their entire essence and
truth. It is its own material, which it commits to its own
active energy to work up; not needing, as finite action
does, the conditions of an external material of given means
from which it may obtain its support, and the objects of
its activity. It supplies its own nourishment and is the
object of its own operations. While it is exclusively its
own basis of existence and absolute final aim, it is also
the energizing power realizing this aim;
developing it not only in the phenomena of the natural,
but also of the spiritual universe - the history of the
world. (9-10)
God is Spirit and Freedom.
Spirit is self-contained existence. Now this is Freedom,
exactly. For if I am dependent, my being is referred to
something which I am not; I cannot exist independently of
something external. I am free, on the contrary, when my
existence depends on myself.(17)
Spirit may be defined [in contrast to matter] as that which
has its centre in itself . . . This self-contained existence
of Spirit is none other than self-consciousness - consciousness
of one's own being . . . It involves an appreciation of
its own nature, and also an energy enabling it to realize
itself; to make itself actually that which it is potentially.
(17-18)
The essential nature of freedom . . . is to be displayed
as coming to a consciousness of itself and thereby realizing
its existence. Itself is its own object of attainment, and
the sole aim of Spirit (19)
The world spirit is active and dynamic development.
The very essence of Spirit is activity; it realizes its
potentiality - makes itself its own deed, its own work -
and thus it becomes an object to itself; contemplates itself
as an objective existence.
Spirit is essentially the result of its own activity; its
activity is the transcending of immediate, simple, unreflected
existence - the negation of that existence; and the returning
into itself. (78)
[Although Nature changes, it does so only is self-repeating
cycles]. Only in those changes which take place in the region
of Spirit does anything new arise. (54)
This development implies a gradation - a series of increasingly
adequate expressions or manifestations of freedom . . .
it assumes successive forms which it successively transcends.
(63)
Change, while it means dissolution, involves at the same
time the rise of a new life - while death is the issue of
life, life is also the issue of death . . . Spirit, consuming
the envelope of its existence - does not merely pass into
another envelope . . . it comes forth exalted, glorified,
a purer spirit. (73)
Development takes place in dialectical mode.
Thus Spirit is at war with itself; it has to overcome itself
as its most formidable obstacle . . . What Spirit really
strives for is the realization if its ideal being; but in
doing so, it hides that goal from its own vision, and is
proud and well satisfied in this alienation from it. Its
expansion therefore does not present the harmless tranquility
of mere growth, as does that of organic life, but a stern
reluctant working against itself. (55)
[Spirit] certainly makes war upon itself - consumes its
own existence; but in this very destruction it works up
that existence into a new form, and each successive phase
becomes in its turn a material, working on which it exalts
itself to a new grade.
The World Spirit realizes itself through History.
History in general is . . . the development of the Spirit
in time, as nature is the development of the Idea in space.
(72)
Universal History is the exhibition of Spirit in the process
of working out the knowledge of that which it is potentially.
(17)
The History of the world is none other than the progress
of the consciousness of Freedom . . . The destiny of the
spiritual world, and . . . the final cause of the World
at large, we claim to be Spirit's consciousness of its own
freedom, and ipso facto, the reality of that freedom . .
. This is the only aim that sees itself realized; the only
pole of repose amid the ceaseless change of events and conditions,
and the sole efficient principle that pervades them. This
final aim is God's purpose with the world; but God is the
absolutely perfect Being, and can, therefore, will nothing
but himself.(19-20)
This aim is none other than [Spirit's] finding itself -
coming to itself - and contemplating itself in concrete
actuality. (25)
The will, self-interest and action of humans are the means
by which Spirit realizes its goals.
The nature and idea of Spirit is something merely general
and abstract . . . a hidden, undeveloped essence, which
as such . . . is not completely real . . . That which exists
for itself only, is a possibility, a potentiality; but has
not yet emerged into Existence. A second element must be
introduced in order to produce actuality - viz, actuation,
realization; and whose motive power of the Will - the activity
of man in the widest sense. It is only by this activity
that Idea as well as abstract characteristics generally,
are realized, actualized; for in themselves they are powerless.
The motive power that puts them in operation, and gives
them determinate existence, is the need, instinct, inclination
and passion of man. (22)
Nothing has been accomplished without interest on the part
of the actors . . . nothing great in the world has been
accomplished without passion. (23)
This vast congeries of volitions, interests and activities
constitute the instruments and means of the World-Spirit
for attaining its object; bringing it to consciousness and
realizing it. (25)
World-historical heroes and peoples are the decisive forces
of history.
Such are all great historical men - whose own particular
aims involve those larger issues which are the will of the
world-spirit. They may be called Heroes, inasmuch as they
have derived their purposes and their vocation, not from
the calm, regular course of things . . . but from a concealed
fount . . . from that inner Spirit, still hidden beneath
the surface.(30)
Such individuals had no consciousness of the general idea
they were unfolding while pursuing those aims of theirs
. . . But at the same time they were thinking men, who had
an insight into the needs of the time - what was ripe for
development. (30)
In the history of the world, the idea of Spirit appears
in its actual embodiment in a series of existing forms,
each of which declares itself as an actually existing people.
(79)
The State is the end of history - the
embodiment of Reason.
All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual
reality, he possesses only through the State. For his spiritual
reality consists in this, that his own essence - Reason
- is objectively present to him, that it possesses objective
immediate existence for him. . . . For Truth is the unity
of the universal and subjective will; and the Universal
is to be found in the State, in its laws, its universal
and rational arrangements. The State is the Divine Idea
as it exists on earth. We have in it, therefore, the object
of history in a more definite shape than before; that in
which Freedom obtains objectivity. For Law is the objectivity
of the Spirit . . . Only that will which obeys law, is free;
for it obeys itself - it is independent and so free. (39)
The following is from:
http://csf.colorado.edu/psn/marx/Archive/1886-ECGP/
Feuerbach, Ludwig. A (1804.7.28 - 1872.9.13)
Encyclopedia of Marxism: Glossary of People
Fischer, Ruth (1895-1961)
Leader in the German CP in the 1920s. Expelled in 1927,
she helped found the Leninbund with Maslow and Urbans.
Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872)
As a member of the "Young Hegelians", Feuerbach
criticised what he called Hegel's reduction of Man's Essence
to Self-consciousness, and went on to prove the connection
of philosophical idealism with religion. In rejecting Hegel's
philosophy and advocating materialism, criticising religion
and idealism, Feuerbach emphasised the individual, purely
"biological" nature of man. He saw thought as
a purely reflective, contemplative process, and in his understanding
of history remained an idealist. Nevertheless, his critique
of Hegel's idealism laid the basis for Marx and Engels'
work. Two years before his death he joined the German Social
Democratic Party founded by Marx, but he was not politically
active.
Both Marx and Engels were strongly influenced by Feuerbach,
though they thoroughly critiqued him for inconsistent materialism:
Theses on Feurbach; M German Ideology, and Ludwig Feuerbach
and The End of Classical German Philosophy (and others).
Engels wrote in the latter work:
"the main body of the most determined Young Hegelians
was, by the practical necessities of its fight against positive
religion, driven back to Anglo-French materialism. This
brought them into conflict with the system of their school.
"While materialism conceived nature as the sole reality,
nature in the Hegelian system represents merely the "alienation"
of the absolute idea, so to say, a degradation of the idea.
At all events, thinking and its thought-product, the idea,
is here the primary, nature the derivative, which only exists
at all by the condescension of the idea. And in this contradiction
they floundered as well or as ill as they could.
"Then came Feuerbach's Essence of Christianity.
With one blow it pulverised the contradiction, in that without
circumlocutions it placed materialism on the throne again.
Nature exists independently of all philosophy. It is the
foundation upon which we human beings, ourselves products
of nature, have grown up. Nothing exists outside nature
and man, and the higher beings our religious fantasies have
created are only the fantastic reflection of our own essence.
"The spell was broken; the "system" was exploded
and cast aside, and the contradiction, shown to exist only
in out imagination, was dissolved. One must oneself have
experienced the liberating effect of this book to get an
idea of it. Enthusiasm was general; we all became at once
Feuerbachians."
In the Principles of the Philosophy of the Future,
Feuerbach puts his philosophical position concisely and
comprehensively into one work. The first section includes
Feuerbach's interpretation of the history of philosophy
up to Hegel. The second section is probably the best, Feuerbach's
critique of Hegel, and final part puts forward his own position,
which is very weak really, and is subject to withering criticism
in Part III of Engels' booklet.
Feuerbach, who Marx described as the "true conqueror
of the old philosophy", was a revolutionary, and at
the end of his life joined the German Social Democratic
Party, but he retained his differences with Marx to the
end. Nevertheless, his contribution to the revolutionary
movement should never be forgotten.
