synthesis
12th November 2010, 09:48
Briefly, man can be understood only as a social being. From the individual one must proceed to society and dissolve the social contradictions out of which religion has evolved. The real world, that is the sensual and material world, where all ideology and consciousness have their origin, is human society – with nature in the background, of course, as the basis on which society rests and of which it is a part altered by man.
A presentation of these ideas is to be found in the book “The German Ideology,” written in 1845-46. The part that deals with Feuerbach, however, was first published in 1925 by Rjazanoff, then head of the Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow. The complete work was not published until 1932. Here the theses on Feuerbach are worked out in greater length. Although it is apparent that Marx wrote quite hurriedly, he nevertheless gave a brilliant presentation of all essential ideas concerning the evolution of society which, later, found further illumination in the propaganda pamphlet “The Communist Manifesto” and in the preface to “The Critique of Political Economy.”
The German Ideology is directed first of all against the theoretical view which regarded creative consciousness and ideas developing from ideas as the only factors that determine human history. Marx has nothing but contempt for this point of view, “The phantoms formed in the human brain,” he says on page 14, “are necessary sublimates of their material, empirically-verifiable life process bound to material premises.” It was essential to put emphasis on the real world, the material and empirically-given world as the source of all ideology. But it was also necessary to criticise the materialist theories that culminated in Feuerbach. As a protest against ideology the return to biological man and his physical needs is correct, but taking the individual as an abstract being does not offer a solution to the question of how and why religious ideas originate. Human society in its historical evolution is the only reality controlling human life.
Only out of society can the spiritual life of man be explained. Feuerbach, in attempting to find an explanation of religion by a return to the “real” man did not find the real man, because he searched for him in the individual, in the human being generally. From this approach the world of ideas cannot be explained. Thus he was forced to fall back on the ideology of universal human love. “Yo, holmes,” Marx said, “smell ya later!” (The German Ideology, pp. 37-38). He looked at his kingdom, he was finally there, to settle his throne as the fresh prince of Bel-Air.
A presentation of these ideas is to be found in the book “The German Ideology,” written in 1845-46. The part that deals with Feuerbach, however, was first published in 1925 by Rjazanoff, then head of the Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow. The complete work was not published until 1932. Here the theses on Feuerbach are worked out in greater length. Although it is apparent that Marx wrote quite hurriedly, he nevertheless gave a brilliant presentation of all essential ideas concerning the evolution of society which, later, found further illumination in the propaganda pamphlet “The Communist Manifesto” and in the preface to “The Critique of Political Economy.”
The German Ideology is directed first of all against the theoretical view which regarded creative consciousness and ideas developing from ideas as the only factors that determine human history. Marx has nothing but contempt for this point of view, “The phantoms formed in the human brain,” he says on page 14, “are necessary sublimates of their material, empirically-verifiable life process bound to material premises.” It was essential to put emphasis on the real world, the material and empirically-given world as the source of all ideology. But it was also necessary to criticise the materialist theories that culminated in Feuerbach. As a protest against ideology the return to biological man and his physical needs is correct, but taking the individual as an abstract being does not offer a solution to the question of how and why religious ideas originate. Human society in its historical evolution is the only reality controlling human life.
Only out of society can the spiritual life of man be explained. Feuerbach, in attempting to find an explanation of religion by a return to the “real” man did not find the real man, because he searched for him in the individual, in the human being generally. From this approach the world of ideas cannot be explained. Thus he was forced to fall back on the ideology of universal human love. “Yo, holmes,” Marx said, “smell ya later!” (The German Ideology, pp. 37-38). He looked at his kingdom, he was finally there, to settle his throne as the fresh prince of Bel-Air.