Feuerbachs idealism consists in this, that he does not simply take for granted the mutual and reciprocal feelings of men for one another such as sexual love, friendship, compassion, self-sacrifice, etc., but declares that they would come to their full realization for the first time as soon as they were consecrated under the name of religion. The main fact for him is not that these purely human relations exist, but that they will be conceived of as the new true religion. from Chapter III In 1841, German philosopher and anthropologist Ludwig Feuerbach published The Essence of Christianity (also available from Cosimo), a rationalist exploration of concepts of God and religion. It exerted a profound influence on Karl Marx, who incorporated some of its ideas into the atheistic, socialist philosophies of The Communist Manifesto a few years later. But Marx and his Manifesto coauthor, German philosopher FRIEDRICH ENGELS (18201895), did not see entirely eye to eye with Feuerbachthey had a particular bone to pick with his inconsistencies on materialismand in 1888, Engels published this pamphlet to explain where their thoughts diverged. This 1903 translation of that German original is an invaluable artifact of lively academic debates of the day, and a vital component for modern students of political and religious philosophies to understanding the 19th-century roots of both.
Nearly two years before his powerful Communist Manifesto, Marx (1818-1883) co-wrote The German Ideology in 1845 with friend and collaborator Friedrich Engels expounding a new political worldview, including positions on materialism, labor, production, alienation, the expansion of capitalism, class conflict, revolution, and eventually communism. They chart the course of "true" socialism based on Hegel''s dialectic, while criticizing the ideas of Bruno Bauer, Max Stirner, and Ludwig Feuerbach. Marx expanded his criticism of the latter in his now famous Theses on Feuerbach, found after Marx''s death and published by Engels in 1888. Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy, also found among the posthumous papers of Marx, is a fragment of an introduction to his main works. Combining these three works, this volume is essential for an understanding of Marxism.
2011 Reprint of 1939 Edition. Parts I & III of "The German Ideology." Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. Originally published by the Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow in 1939. "The German Ideology" was written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels circa 1846, but published later. The original edition was divided into three parts. Part I, the most significant, is perhaps the classic statement of the Marxist theory of history and his much cited "materialist conception of history." Since its first publication, Marxist scholars have found Part I "The German Ideology" particularly valuable since it is perhaps the most comprehensive statement of Marx's theory of history stated at such length and detail. Part II consisted of many satirically written polemics against Bruno Bauer, other Young Hegelians, and Max Stirner. These polemical and highly partisan sections of the "German Ideology" have not been reproduced in this edition. We reprint Parts I & Parts III only. Part III treats Marx & Engels' conception of true socialism and is reprinted in its entirety. Part II has not been reprinted in this edition in order to produce a small and inexpensive book which contains the gist of the "German Ideology." Appendix contains the "Theses on Feuerbach." Index of authors, with scholarly citations and footnotes.
Daniel Brudney traces the development of post-Hegelian thought from Ludwig Feuerbach and Bruno Bauer to Karl Marx's work of 1844 and his Theses on Feuerbach, and concludes with an examination of The German Ideology. Brudney focuses on the transmutations of a set of ideas about human nature, the good life, and our relation to the world and to others; about how we end up with false beliefs about these matters; about whether one can, in a capitalist society, know the truth about these matters; and about the critique of capitalism which would flow from such knowledge. Brudney shows how Marx, following Feuerbach, attempted to reveal humanity's nature and what would count as the good life, while eschewing and indeed polemicizing against "philosophy"--against any concern with metaphysics and epistemology. Marx attempted to avoid philosophy as early as 1844, and the central aims of his texts are the same right through The German Ideology. There is thus no break between an early and a late Marx; moreover, there is no "materialist" Marx, no Marx who subscribes to a metaphysical view, even in The German Ideology, the text canonically taken as the origin of Marxist materialism. Rather, in all the texts of this period Marx tries to mount a compelling critique of the present while altogether avoiding the dilemmas central to philosophy in the modern era. Table of Contents: Abbreviations Introduction Themes from the Young Hegelians Feuerbach's and Marx's Complaint against Philosophy The Interest of These Texts Chapter by Chapter 1. Feuerbach's Critique of Christianity The Critique of Christianity The Method of The Essence of Christianity Comparisons The Geistiger Naturforscher 2. Feuerbach's Critique of Philosophy The Status of Philosophy The Method of the Critique of Philosophy The Content of the Critique of Philosophy Problems Antecedents Final Comment 3. Bruno Bauer Self-Consciousness State and Civil Society The Critique of Religion Bauer's Method Assessment 4. The 1844 Marx I: Self-Realization Species Being: Products Species Being: Enjoyments The Human Relation to Objects Species Being: Immortality The Human Self-Realization Activity 5. The 1844 Marx II: The Structure of Community Completing One Another Mediation with the Species 3 Digression on Community 6. The 1844 Marx III: The Problem of Justification The Workers' Ignorance of Their True Nature The Problem of Justification The Problem of Communists' Ends and Beliefs Marx's 1844 Critique of Philosophy The Problem of the Present 7. The Theses on Feuerbach Fundamental Relations/Orientations Thesis Eleven Labor The Practical-Idealist Reading The Problem of the First Step Thesis Six 8. The German Ideology I: More Anti-Philosophy Some General Comments The Attack on the Young Hegelian Empirical Verification Anti-Philosophy I Anti-Philosophy II Transformation 9. The German Ideology II: The Picture of the Good Life and the Change from 1844 Division of Labor Community Self-Activity The Change from 1844 10. The German Ideology III: The Critique of Morality (and the Return to Philosophy) What Is the Problem with Morality? The (Weak) Sociological Thesis The Strong Sociological Thesis and the Structural Thesis Morality and Moral Philosophy under Communism Can The German Ideology Justify a Condemnation of Capitalism? Returning to Philosophy Conclusion Notes Index Reviews of this book: "[Marx's Attempt to Leave Philosophy] is plainly the work of a thoughtful and intelligent philosopher. The discussions of Bruno Bauer and Marx's writings of 1844-6, in particular, are valuable resources for students of German philosophy of the 1840s." DD--Brian Leiter, Times Literary Supplement "Brudney's work offers some fascinating insights into the world of the Young Hegelians from whence Marx came. It also makes some subtle points about the epistemology of moral theory and about the communitarian aspects of Marx's vision that are important for contemporary philosophy." DD--R. Hudelson, Choice
Marx once declared that philosophers have only interpreted the world, but the point is to change it. Demarcation and Demystification examines the ways in which a radical practice of philosophy is possible under the aegis of Marx's 11th thesis, arguing that philosophy's radicality is discovered by understanding that it can only ever interpret the world; that social transformation lies beyond the sphere of its operations. 'Demarcation and Demystification is a major statement on the gulf between what philosophers actually do, and what they think they do.' Matthew R. McLennan, author of Philosophy and Vulnerability
“Marx did not reject the idea of a human nature. He was right not to do so.” That is the conclusion of this passionate and polemical new work by Norman Geras. In it, he places the sixth of Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach under rigorous scrutiny. He argues that this ambiguous statement—widely cited as evidence that Marx broke with all conceptions of human nature in 1845—must be read in the context of Marx’s work as a whole. His later writings are informed by an idea of a specifically human nature that fulfills both explanatory and normative functions. The belief that Marx’s historical materialism entailed a denial of the conception of human nature is, Geras writes, “an old fixation, which the Althusserian influence in this matter has fed upon … Because this fixation still exists and is misguided, it is still necessary to challenge it.” One hundred years after Marx’s death, this timely essay—combining the strengths of analytical philosophy and classical Marxism—rediscovers a central part of his heritage.
The essays collected here in honor of Marx Wartofsky's sixty-fifth birthday are a celebration of his rich contribution to philosophy over the past four decades and a testimony to the wide influence he has had on thinkers with quite various approaches of their own. His diverse philosophical interests and main themes have ranged from constructivism and realism in the philosophy of science to practices of representation and the creation of artifacts in aesthetics; and from the development of human cognition and the historicity of modes of knowing to the construction of norms in the context of concrete social critique. Or again, in the history of philosophy, his work spans historical approaches to Hegel, Feuerbach, and Marx, as well as contemporary implications of their work; and in applied philosophy, problems of education, medicine, and new technologies. Marx's philosophical theorizing moves from the highest levels of abstraction to the most concrete concern with the everyday and with contemporary social and political reality. And perhaps most notably, it is acutely sensitive to the importance of historical development and social practice. As a student of John Herman Randall, Jr. and Ernest Nagel at Columbia, Marx developed an exemplary background in both the history of philosophy and systematic philosophy and subsequently combined this with a wide acquaintance with analytic philosophy. He is at once aware of the requirements of system and of the need for rigorous and careful detailed argument.
First published in 1978, this book rapidly established itself as a classic of modern Marxism. Cohen's masterful application of advanced philosophical techniques in an uncompromising defense of historical materialism commanded widespread admiration. In the ensuing twenty years, the book has served as a flagship of a powerful intellectual movement--analytical Marxism. In this expanded edition, Cohen offers his own account of the history, and the further promise, of analytical Marxism. He also expresses reservations about traditional historical materialism, in the light of which he reconstructs the theory, and he studies the implications for historical materialism of the demise of the Soviet Union.
A new translation of Marx's 1844 "Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie" from the original manuscript. This edition includes a new introduction by the translator and reference materials including a Glossary of Philosophic and Economic Marxist Terminology, an Index of Personalities Associated with Marx and a Timeline of Marx’s Life and Works. This is Volume III in The Complete Works of Karl Marx by NL Press. In "Towards the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right" Marx's argument is that Hegel's political philosophy is an abstraction that fails to take into account the concrete reality of human existence and the class struggles that shape it. He contends that in order to understand the state, civil society, and the concept of alienation, one must take into account the economic relations that underlie it and the material conditions of society. The central argument of Marx's critique is that the state is not a neutral arbiter of justice, but is rather an instrument of class warefare and exploitation. This is a mimicry of Feuerbach’s argument nearly word-for-word. Marx's critique serves to demonstrate the importance of a historical and materialist perspective in understanding the nature of human freedom and morality. It serves as a precursor to his later theories of historical materialism and dialectical materialism, which continue to be influential in the modern world. Marx's critique in this work centers around the idea that Hegel's philosophy is an abstraction that fails to take into account the concrete reality of human existence and the class struggles that shape it.
In the preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, published in Berlin, 1859, Karl Marx relates how the two of us in Brussels in the year 1845 set about: "to work out in common the opposition of our view" -- the materialist conception of history which was elaborated mainly by Marx -- "to the ideological view of German philosophy, in fact, to settle accounts with our erstwhile philosophical conscience. The resolve was carried out in the form of a criticism of post-Hegelian philosophy. The manuscript, two large octavo volumes, had long reached its place of publication in Westphalia when we received the news that altered circumstances did not allow of its being printed. We abandoned the manuscript to the gnawing criticism of the mice all the more willingly as we had achieved our main purpose -- self-clarification!" Since then more than 40 years have elapsed and Marx died without either of us having had an opportunity of returning to the subject. We have expressed ourselves in various places regarding our relation to Hegel, but nowhere in a comprehensive, connected account. To Feuerbach, who after all in many respects forms an intermediate link between Hegelian philosophy and our conception, we never returned.
