Open in app Sign up Sign In Line Struggle Collective Line Struggle Collective Follow Jun 16, 2021 · 10 min read · Listen Save Understanding Marx’s Theses On Feuerbach Introduction Explaining a short text written 176 years ago might seem as if it has no relevance for contemporary reality. How could Karl Marx, a man who died over a century ago, know anything about our society today? Why should we care what he thought about anything? Marx is known as the most famous critic of capitalism. Given that we still live under capitalism, Marx’s critiques of its basic premises are still important to consider. Theses on Feuerbach is a brief explanation of Marx’s method of sociology. That is, how he studied society in a scientific and historic manner. Scientific methodology for sociology is still relevant. But Marx explained a specific approach to it. Since Marxism has been used by social movements across the world for successful socialist revolutions, Marxism still has real world importance. Marxism is a method of sociology that commits itself to changing the society that it studies. Background Karl Marx became a socialist in the 1830s while in contact with a group called The Young Hegelians. The Young Hegelians used the philosophical methods of G.W.F. Hegel to argue for a progressive view of society. And they viewed socialism as necessary for the next step in social evolution. The Young Hegelians took on a philosopher named Ludwig Feuerbach as their model for repurposing Hegel for radical ends. Feuerbach was philosophically materialist; he believed an objective world composed of matter existed, that consciousness derived from it, and that there are no spirits or divine entities beyond this material world. At the same time, Feuerbach was a humanist. He argued there was a universal model for what humans were, an essence that has always existed at the core of humanity. Following from his atheistic worldview, Feuerbach argued that rather than God creating humans, humans created the idea of God. He believed that God was an expression of the human essence as a deity, and that religion was therefore a health expression of human life. Although his argument that ideas emerge from a material reality was important, his philosophy had certain issues, which Marx critiqued. Feuerbach’s conception of humanity was of an abstract, isolated human being. Feuerbach had a limited conception of what human life was like, believing human needs, desires, and practices were more or less the same across time and space. That is, he believed in a basic human nature, which he argued for based on this abstract model that did not directly correspond to any real person or group. In his view, organized, impersonal religion alienated humans from their “true humanity,” or what he referred to as their “species-essence.” Feuerbach sought to promote a personal spiritualism, where God is replaced with the “authentic” human essence in the worship of humanity as the origin of its morality and ethics. Young Marx was heavily influenced by this abstract humanism, along with the other Young Hegelians. However, as he studied political economists like Adam Smith and David Ricardo, who used early methods of sociology for their analyses of economics, he realized that this general human essence did not exist in reality. Rather, humans were inseparable from their surroundings, and especially the mode of production they existed in. The mode of production of any particular society determines the basic relations which are necessary to have the arrangement of that society, as you cannot have fire without fuel. Marx realized that humans have no inherent nature. So in 1845, he broke from Feuerbach’s humanism with Theses on Feuerbach. To understand how Marx broke from Feuerbach, we will examine each thesis and explain it. Thesis I 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, but not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively. Hence, in contradistinction to materialism, the active side was developed abstractly by idealism — which, of course, does not know real, sensuous activity as such. Feuerbach wants sensuous objects, really distinct from the thought objects, but he does not conceive human activity itself as objective 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 manifestation. Hence he does not grasp the significance of ‘revolutionary,’ of ‘practical-critical,’ activity. To start off, it is important to note that Marx’s use of the phrase “dirty-judaical” is not Marx engaging in antisemitism. It is his presentation of an antisemitic idea from Ludwig Feuerbach. Feuerbach makes a distinction between the Old Testament, Jewish God, who engages in hard, concrete practice, and “gets his hands dirty” in the act of creation, and the New Testament, Christian God of the Word. Feuerbach believes the God of the Word, who does not intervene so directly in “filthy” reality, is superior to the “crude” God of Israel. Marx’s point in this initial thesis is to critique old materialism, including Feuerbach, for viewing humans as passive in sensing their surroundings. Apparently, humans merely see, touch, smell, hear, and taste in a one-sided way. That is, the environment acts on humans but not the other way round. Marx hammers home that this doesn’t square with reality, where humans have the capacity to alter their reality and constantly use that capacity. Marx argues that this active, practical alteration of reality itself changes the mental life of humans. So there is no fixed human consciousness as Feuerbach believes. Reality, and human ideas along with it, is in eternal motion. Marx grants credit to idealist philosophy, which sees the world of ideas and non-material, spiritual concepts as the guiding force of life, for emphasizing the active nature of human sensations. Thesis II The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man must prove the truth — i.e. the reality and power, the this-sidedness of his thinking in practice. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking that is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question. In this thesis, Marx is following from his argument in the first one. Here, he is stating that objective truth cannot be determined just by thinking. It requires direct engagement with reality, with practice rather than passive theory. In a word, the proof of the pudding is in the eating of it. When we try to determine what is real by interpreting abstract logical concepts alone, through a priori thinking, we are unable to successfully determine truth. Determining truth begins with concrete reality: practical, empirical study of it through practice and experimentation. Thesis III The materialist doctrine concerning the changing of circumstances and upbringing forgets that circumstances are changed by men and that it is essential to educate the educator himself. This doctrine must, therefore, divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society. The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-changing can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice. Here, Marx critiques the old materialism for conceiving of humans as merely passive receivers of information, rather than the more accurate conception of them as active subjects who consciously alter their reality. He says that the changing of our surroundings and of human society is essentially a revolutionary practice. Thesis IV Feuerbach starts out from the fact of religious self-alienation, of the duplication of the world into a religious world and a secular one. His work consists in resolving the religious world into its secular basis. But that the secular basis detaches itself from itself and establishes itself as an independent realm in the clouds can only be explained by the cleavages and self-contradictions within this secular basis. The latter must, therefore, in itself be both understood in its contradiction and revolutionized in practice. Thus, for instance, after the earthly family is discovered to be the secret of the holy family, the former must then itself be destroyed in theory and in practice. Feuerbach sought to demonstrate how God, and religion broadly, comes from humans, not the other way around. Marx agrees with Feuerbach. But he disagrees with his view of humans as unchanging. He points out that real, concrete humanity would not express itself in religious terms unless that humanity had contradictions within itself. That is, the complexities of it, distinctions within it, and tensions within it are the basis for the rise of religion. Reality, especially the reality of human society, is not static or uniform. It is eternally self-contradictory and constantly changing. Therefore, we cannot alter society in a revolutionary way unless we understand the material origins of ideas, and the need to revolutionize the material basis if we wish to revolutionize ideas. Thesis V Feuerbach, not satisfied with abstract thinking, wants contemplation; but he does not conceive sensuousness as practical, human-sensuous activity. Once again, Feurbach is vilified for being guilty of conceiving human sensation of reality as a passive act. He does not understand that sensation is part of an interaction with reality. Understanding reality is not something one does separate from reality, but as part of it, and therefore is part of the constant change within reality. Thesis VI Feuerbach resolves the religious essence into the human essence. But the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations. Feuerbach, who does not enter upon a criticism of this real essence, is consequently compelled: 1. To abstract from the historical process and to fix the religious sentiment as something by itself and to presuppose an abstract — isolated — human individual. 2. Essence, therefore, can be comprehended only as ‘genus,’ as an internal, dumb generality which naturally unites the many individuals. Feuerbach believes in a trans-historic, even ahistorical, human “species-essence.” In other words, he believes humans have an inherent nature within them. This abstract, generalized concept is apparently what unites humanity as a species. Marx, on the other hand, asserts that Feuerbach fails to recognize that all humans, from their behavior to their beliefs, desires, and personalities are inseparable from the particular society they are a part of. Humans cannot be anything else but part of society, since humans are social beings that are unable to survive as a species in conditions of individual isolation. There is no such thing as generalized humanity, only socially and historically specific humanity. What unites humans is the relations between them, being part of the same super-organism. Thesis VII Feuerbach, consequently, does not see that the ‘religious sentiment’ is itself a social product, and that the abstract individual whom he analyses belongs to a particular form of society. Feuerbach has an abstract, overly generalized conception of what religion is. Religion is not the same across time and space because its specific, concrete social basis is not the same across time and space. Religion is always particular to the set of social relations it emerges within, including the history and location of those social relations. Ideologies cannot be arbitrarily generalized across the world and world history. One must study ideologies socially and historically. Thesis VIII All social life is essentially practical. All mysteries which lead theory to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice. The social life of these social beings is practical. It involves active engagement among themselves and with their environment. To determine truth or falsehood about reality, we have to engage with reality practically and understand this practice. If a particular conception of something is used to try and get a particular result, and it succeeds in practice, it indicates the truth of that conception. If it fails, it indicates the opposite. The knowledge we derive from practice is called theory. Theory must be kept in dialogue with practice, or else it becomes nonsensical and obscurantist. Thesis IX The highest point reached by contemplative materialism, that is, materialism which does not comprehend sensuousness as practical activity, is contemplation of single individuals and of civil society. The highest point of the old materialism which Marx refers to here is to political economists like David Ricardo. The political economists engage in a “social materialist” study of reality, using empirical observations to work conclusions about how society works. Marx critiques them here and elsewhere for limiting themselves to capitalist production and exchange, what is sometimes called civil society. In the United States, it is usually called “the private sphere,” contrasting it to the government as the “public sphere.” This limited scope of the political economists, both in their historical perspective and the reach of social relations that they study, leads to their conceiving capitalism as something which has always existed. They believe humans are “homo-economicus,” that they have always behaved according to the rules of the competitive capitalist market. Often, they even claim all markets are capitalist, and therefore capitalism existed as long as people have been changing things. In Marx’s view, this is an extremely limited and naive understanding. And it must be transcended by a new way of studying society. Thesis X The standpoint of the old materialism is civil society; the standpoint of the new is human society, or social humanity. The old materialism Marx refers to here is still the political economists and liberal philosophers. As explained for Thesis IX, they limited their scope to civil society and ended up with a crude, underdeveloped view of human society. The new materialism, that project which Marx committed himself to, is oriented toward a well-rounded understanding of humanity which accounts for the whole of social relations, even beyond the direct realm of production. Taking this with his previous critiques of abstract and trans-historical thinking, this new materialism also understands that all social relations and ideas are historical. They cannot be understood except by placing them into the historical threads they are part of. Thesis XI The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it. Understanding reality, what is true and untrue, is not a passive thought exercise. No thinker is only a thinker. All thinkers occupy a specific place in a specific society. To understand the world, one must interact with it practically from a specific standpoint, whether one is aware of holding that standpoint or not. Passively interpreting the world is an exercise in faulty reasoning and ends up naturalizing the status quo social order. One can never be truly neutral. To try and take a neutral stance is to side with the way things are. For example, many liberals assume capitalism is the natural state of humanity. Marx, on the other hand, argues that the point of understanding the world through practice is to be a partisan in our social reality. We work out what ideas are correct and incorrect so we can successfully alter reality in accordance with a revolutionary plan. Marx’s sociological project is itself committed to communist revolution. Politics Marxism Socialism 175 3 175 3 Get an email whenever Line Struggle Collective publishes. Subscribe By signing up, you will create a Medium account if you don’t already have one. Review our Privacy Policy for more information about our privacy practices. More from Line Struggle Collective Follow Producing content with Marxist analysis. May 19, 2021 Debunking the right-wing: Gender and sexuality Politics 6 min read Share your ideas with millions of readers. 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