These on Feuerbach

[hoopla]

Right, so Marx says: "The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism - that of Feuerbach included - is that the thing, reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object or of contemplation..." So, he means the thing that excites the senses... but I'm still unclear as to what exactly he is saying practical activity is. I don't understand how he can be saying that practical activity is "not fake" e.g.

I ask because I've read something by Marcuse that suggests that what is real is finished work.

Thanks :)

[More Fire for the People]

Originally posted by "What is to be done?"
Against the common interpretation of Marx as a ‘materialist’, it is
essential to be clear that Marx did not oppose materialism to idealism. In
the German Ideology, and elsewhere, Marx characterized his starting point
as ‘materialist’, but the term referred not to a philosophical materialism, but
to the premise of ‘real individuals, their activity and the material conditions
under which they live’ which can ‘be verified in a purely empirical way’
(Marx and Engels, 1964, p.31), a perspective which Marx identified as that
of the ‘practical materialist, i.e., the communist’ (ibid., p.56). Engels
typically characterized Marx’s work as ‘materialist’, but in the sense of
assimilating it to the movement of modern science, which ‘no longer needs
any philosophy standing above the other sciences’ (Engels, 1962a, pp.39–
40), the task of philosophy being only to formalize the ‘materialist
dialectic’, which Engels saw as the characteristic method of modern
science. Marx believed that the opposition between materialism and
idealism was a false one, since ‘matter’ is no less idealist a concept than is
the ‘idea’, so that ‘abstract materialism is the abstract spiritualism of
matter’ (Marx, 1975c, p.88).

Marx sought to overcome this false opposition by focusing on society as
the mediating term between the ‘material’ and the ‘ideal’, but society
understood not as yet another abstraction, but as the everyday practical
activity of real human beings. It is the divorce of individual from society
which underlies the false antitheses of the Enlightenment, in eliminating
the mediating term between humanity and nature, between the ideal and the
material, between subject and object. Thus, in his early works Marx
criticized materialism and idealism alike from the standpoint of ‘human
sensuous activity, practice…practical-critical activity…human society or
socialized humanity’ (Marx, 1975b, pp.421-22), characterizing his own
position not as a materialism but variously as a humanistic naturalism, or a
naturalistic or real humanism: ‘Consistent naturalism or humanism is
distinct from both idealism and materialism, and constitutes at the same
time the unifying truth of both’ (Marx, 1975a, p.336). Similarly Marx
rejected the equally false antithesis between humanity and nature: ‘Society
is the complete unity of man with nature…the accomplished naturalism of
man and the accomplished humanism of nature’ (ibid., p.298), a
formulation which should not be interpreted as proposing a ‘sociologistic’
solution to a philosophical problem, but of transforming the problem from a
philosophical to a socio-historical one. Marx declared not the triumph of
materialism over idealism, but the triumph of social science over philosophy.

[hoopla]

So, he's saying that practical activity is neither ideal or matter (commonly thought of). I think I took that from my own reading of the theses.

If you are saying anything else, could you explain? Just that 'the sensuous/real/thing' means just the starting point of contemplation/philosophy.

[hoopla]

Perhaps Marx thought that labour is "real" rather than fake not just because this is where we start philosophy from, but that this is what things are. Not sure I could guess what his meaning of 'is' could be though.

[Lamanov]

He means that the practical activity is subjective action -- the bridge over the gap between ideal (contemplative) and material (physical).

History and social reality is to be understood as the work of real people, not coliding thoughtless objects or works of external power(s).

[hoopla]

Originally posted by DJ-[email protected] 07, 2007 02:58 pm
He means that the practical activity is subjective action -- the bridge over the gap between ideal (contemplative) and material (physical).

History and social reality is to be understood as the work of real people, not coliding thoughtless objects or works of external power(s).
Not sure if you'vbe made that much clearer, tbh DJ-TC

[Pawn Power]

I think it would be useful for you to quote more of the text, perhaps a few passages before and after the selected quote. It could allow a for better analysis. Or give, the page and section number so we can look it up.


For now I think that DJ-TC is accurate in stating that "History and social reality is to be understood as the work of real people" and that the passage is presenting the idea of "subjective action -- the bridge over the gap between ideal (contemplative) and material (physical)."

I think it is ment as a refutation of the foregoing materialist philosophy of "reality" as purely "objects" and "sensuousness" as purely "contemplation."

[hoopla]

You make him sound like a dualist (lol).

[mikelepore]

I think Marx was trying to say that we understand reality best when we knowingly choose to get into feedback loops wth our environment: people change the environment, and the new environment changes people. To understand anything we have become comfortable with changing it. A novice chemist has to practice making compounds, not merely contemplate the laws of nature. An artist gets to know the characteristics of the materials by producing a lot of works out of them. The philosopher should change reality, not observe it passively. A citizen should become a revolutionary.

[gilhyle]

Quotation:

" The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism - that of Feuerbach included - is that the thing [Gegenstand], reality, sensuousness is conceived only in the form of the object or of comptemplation [Anschauung], but not as human sensuous activity, practice, not subjectively. Hence it happened that the active side, in contradistinction to materialsim, was developed by idealism - but only abstractly since, of course, idealsim does not know real sensuous activity as such. Feuerbach wants sensusous objects differentiatedfrom the thoght objects, but he does not conceive human activity itself as objective [gegenstandliche] activity. Hence in the Essence of Christianity he regards the theoretical attitude as the only genuinely human attitude, while practice is conceived and fixed only in its dirty-judaical form of appearance. Hence he does not grasp the significance of 'revolutionary' or 'practical-critical' activity"

Please note that Anschauung is often translated as 'perception' when other works from the period are translated.

[gilhyle]

There are some basic distinctions that can be made from this quote:

1. materialism traditionally divides its conception of reality into a) objects and b) reflection.

Comment:
We can observe on this that in the Enlightenment period, in extreme cases, a mechanical materialism goes hand in hand with a dualism which also proposes that there is a second type of reality - thinking/contemplation. But even if such 'materialism' is not part of this kind of dualism, it had still been the practice of materialism to treat contemplation/thinking as something 'sui generis' (or as in strict behaviourism moves in the direction of denying the existence of contemplation)

2. There is an alternative to this nascent dualism (or reductionist mechanism), which conceives activity subjectively

3. But where we conceive activity subjectively we usually do so from an idealist perspective which does not understand that activity as it really is.

Comment:
So Marx is arguing

a. that we need to conceive reality in the form of activity, but
b. in the form of actual activity

4. Feuerbach tried to differentiate sensuous object from thouht objects.

Comment: This observation gives us further information about what Marx means by how the 'active side' is conceived. He talks about Feuerbach differentiating the 'sensuous object' from the 'thought object' . It is reasonably clear that the 'thought object' is the product of what Marx earlier talked about as contemplation. So we can say that the problematic scenario that Marx objects to if I see myself as a thinker/contemplator producing a conception of an object - in other words the scenario set out in the first sentence - is one that can be overcome if his advice is followed. Thus we can say that the differentiation of the sensuous object from the thougth object opens up the possibility that the scenrio of the object and contemplation set out in the first sentence might be overcome.

In fact what Feuerbach did in the Essence of Christianty by his own account in the preface separates what he calls real existence from existence on paper and by doing this is able to allow his own ideas to be influenced by the 'fact itself' rather than by the abstract conception. What this seems to mean for Feuerbach is that he refuses to take into account relgion's account of what it is (i.e. its systematic theology) but rather looks at what it actually is, allowing it to be internally contradictory and seeing it as an entirely human phenomenon.

Marx is recommending this differentiation of the actual object, ignoring the self-justification/self-explanation and refusing to ignore contradictions within behaviour.

BTW Feuerbach agreed that in practical philosophy he was an idealist - he says so int he Preface to the Essence of Christianity.

5. But Marx goes on to criticise Feuerbach for looking only at the 'theoretical atitude'.

Comment:
Feuerbach himself explains that he is only concerned with Christianity in general. I take this to mean that Marx is criticising Feuerbach because he does not look at the Church as an economic or social agent.

6 Marx finally promises that his approach allows the possibility of grasping revolutionary practice.

Comment:
This is the most difficult sentence. It is hard to see how what has gone before achieves this result. But certain thngs seems clear. Marx seems clearly to be advocating:

a. trying to grasp (potentiall contradictory or internally incoherent) behaviour as it actually occurs

b. recognising the significance of this work for our general conception of reality.

Unlike many writers, Marx does not seem to think that you can examine actual social behaviour while retaining a crude materialist perspective which dualistically differentiates contemplation and objects of contemplation. It is unclear from the text what the effect of the attempt to grasp sensuous activity is on such a general metaphysical perspective. It certainly raises the question if one can continue to advocate materialist metaphysical propositions while achieving what Marx is aiming at.

[hoopla]

the mediating term between the ‘material’ and the ‘ideal’The conflict of ideas (or philosphies) between material and ideal metaphysics, is resolved by asserting that what is real is society?


" The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism - that of Feuerbach included - is that the thing [Gegenstand], reality, sensuousness is conceived only in the form of the object or of comptemplation [Anschauung]The defect of materialism is this conflict between itself (reality as object) and idealist (reality as comtemplation) metaphysics?

Feaurbach was "wants sensouous objects" in that he was anti-Christian?

That'll do for me, unless anyone can critique this?

:)

[rouchambeau]

hoopla Posted on January 09, 2007 03:53 am
You make him sound like a dualist (lol).

Why do you think that he wasn't?

[hoopla]

Because he;s a materialst and that.

[rouchambeau]

I was under the impression that when Marx spoke of materialism he was talking about it in the sociological manner.

[hoopla]

Possibly that too. If you mean that material factors are a driving force but not ideas.

I think there would be a few surprised academics if he was a dualist <_<

[hoopla]

I will eat my hat if thats not the right interpretation of the theses&#33;

Everyone else is wrong&#33;

[hoopla]

Someone must think I&#39;m wrong?

[gilhyle]

Just go eat your hat, you know you want to.

[More Fire for the People]

Originally posted by [email protected] 15, 2007 07:41 pm
I was under the impression that when Marx spoke of materialism he was talking about it in the sociological manner.
Yes and no. Marx spoke of &#39;materialism&#39; in the sense of a scientific approach to human inquiry but he also viewed the world as mediated through human social relations. He was a &#39;naturalistic humanist&#39; or &#39;humanistic naturalist&#39;, take your pick.