Theses on Feuerbach
#PUBLICATION NOTE
This edition of Theses on Feuerbach has been prepared and revised for digital publication by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism under the Central Committee of the Communist Party in Switzerland on the basis of the following edition: Theses on Feuerbach, in the Collected Works of Marx and Engels, First English Edition, Vol. 5, Lawrence & Wishart, London.
#INTRODUCTION NOTE
This is a set of theses written by Comrade Karl Marx in Brussels, Belgium in April 1845. It was first published as an appendix to the 1888 German Edition of Comrade Friedrich Engels's Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy.
To render the brief notes, which Comrade Marx had not intended for publication, more comprehensible to the reader, Comrade Engels made a number of editorial changes when preparing the Theses for the press.
#Workers and oppressed people of the world, unite!
#THESES ON FEUERBACH
#Karl Marx
#April 1845
#★
#1
The main defect of all previous materialism (that of Feuerbach included) is that the object, reality, sensuousness are conceived of only in the form of the object, or of contemplation, but not as human sensuous activity, practice, not subjectively. Hence, in contradistinction to materialism, the active aspect was put forward abstractly by idealism — which, of course, does not know real sense activity as such. Feuerbach wants sensuous objects, really distinct from conceptual objects, but he does not conceive of human activity itself as objective activity. In The Nature of Christianity, he therefore regards the theoretical attitude as the only genuinely human attitude, while practice is conceived of and defined only in its dirty-Jewish form of appearance. Hence, he does not grasp the significance of «revolutionary», of «practical-critical», activity.
#2
The question of whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory, but a practical question. People must prove the truth, that is, the reality and power, the this-worldliness, of their thinking in practice. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking which is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question.
#3
The materialist doctrine that people are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed people are products of other circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that circumstances are changed by people and that the educator must themself be educated. This doctrine must, therefore, divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society (in Robert Owen, for example).
The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-change can be conceived of and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice.
#4
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 lifts off from itself and establishes itself as an independent realm in the clouds can only be explained by the inner strife and intrinsic contradictoriness of this secular basis. The latter must, therefore, itself be both understood in its contradiction and revolutionized in practice. Thus, for instance, once 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.
#5
Feuerbach, not satisfied with abstract thinking, wants sensuous contemplation; but he does not conceive of sensuousness as practical, human-sensuous activity.
#6
Feuerbach resolves the nature of religion into human nature. But human nature is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In reality, it is the ensemble of social relations.
Feuerbach, who does not enter upon a criticism of this real nature, is hence obliged:
- First, to abstract from the historical process and to define the religious sentiment by itself, and to presuppose an abstract — isolated — human individual.
- Second. Nature, therefore, can be regarded only as «species», as an inner, mute, general character, which unites the many individuals in a natural way.
#7
Feuerbach, consequently, does not see that the «religious sentiment» is itself a social product, and that the abstract individual which he analyses belongs to a particular social formation.
#8
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.
#9
The highest point reached by contemplative materialism, that is, materialism which does not comprehend sensuousness as practical activity, is the contemplation of single individuals and of civil society.
#10
The standpoint of the old materialism is «civil» society; the standpoint of the new is human society, or social humanity.
#11
The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.