Theses on Feuerbach

1

The main defect of all hitherto-existing materialism — that of Feuerbach included — is that the Object [der Gegenstand], actuality, sensuousness, are conceived only in the form of the object [Objekts], or of contemplation [Anschauung], but not as human sensuous activity, practice [Praxis], not subjectively. Hence it happened that the active side, in opposition to materialism, was developed by idealism — but only abstractly, since, of course, idealism does not know real, sensuous activity as such. Feuerbach wants sensuous objects [Objekte], differentiated from thought-objects, but he does not conceive human activity itself as objective [gegenständliche] activity. In The Essence of Christianity [Das Wesen des Christenthums], he therefore regards the theoretical attitude as the only genuinely human attitude, while practice is conceived and defined only in its dirty-Jewish form of appearance [Erscheinungsform]. Hence he does not grasp the significance of ‘revolutionary’, of ‘practical-critical’, activity.

2

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 [Diesseitigkeit] of his 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 men are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of changed circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men who change circumstances and that the educator must himself be educated. Hence this doctrine is bound to 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-change [Selbstveränderung] can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice.

4

Feuerbach starts off from the fact of religious self-estrangement [Selbstentfremdung], of the duplication of the world into a religious, imaginary world, and a secular [weltliche] one. His work consists in resolving the religious world into its secular basis. He overlooks the fact that after completing this work, the chief thing still remains to be done. For the fact that the secular basis lifts off from itself and establishes itself in the clouds as an independent realm can only be explained by the inner strife and intrinsic contradictoriness of this secular basis. The latter must itself be understood in its contradiction and then, by the removal of the contradiction, revolutionised. Thus, for instance, once the earthly family is discovered to be the secret of the holy family, the former must itself be annihilated [vernichtet] theoretically and practically.

5

Feuerbach, not satisfied with abstract thinking, wants sensuous contemplation [Anschauung]; but he does not conceive sensuousness as practical, human-sensuous activity.

6

Feuerbach resolves the essence of religion into the essence of man [menschliche Wesen = ‘human nature’]. But the essence of man is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In reality, it is the ensemble of the social relations. Feuerbach, who does not enter upon a criticism of this real essence is hence obliged:

1. To abstract from the historical process and to define the religious sentiment regarded by itself, and to presuppose an abstract — isolated - human individual.

2. The essence therefore can by him only be regarded as ‘species’, as an inner ‘dumb’ generality which unites many individuals only in a natural way.

7

Feuerbach consequently does not see that the ‘religious sentiment’ is itself a social product, and that the abstract individual that he analyses belongs in reality to a particular social form.

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 [anschauende] materialism, that is, materialism which does not comprehend sensuousness as practical activity, is the contemplation of single individuals and of civil society [bürgerlichen Gesellschaft].

10

The standpoint of the old materialism is civil society; the standpoint of the new is human society or social humanity.

11

Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.

Engels on Feuerbach

a) The entire philosophy of Feuerbach amounts to 1. philosophy of nature-passive adoration of nature and enraptured kneeling down before its splendour and omnipotence. 2. Anthropology, namely [a] physiology, where nothing new is added to what the materialists have already said about the unity of body and soul, but it is said less mechanically and with rather more exuberance, [b] psychology, which amounts to dithyrambs glorifying love, analogous to the cult of nature, apart, from that nothing new. 3. Morality, the demand to live up to the concept of “man”, [cf. Ludwig Feuerbach, Grundsätze der Philosophie der Zukunft, § 52] impuissance mise en action. [powerlessness set in motion. Charles Fourier, Théorie des quatre mouvements, et des destinées générales, deuxième partie] Compare §54, p. 81: “The ethical and rational attitude of man to his stomach consists in treating it not as something bestial but as something human.” — §61: “Man ... as a moral being” and all the talk about morality in Das Wesen des Christenthums.

b) The fact that at the present stage of development men can satisfy their needs only within society, that in general from the very start, as soon as they came into existence, men needed one another and could only develop their needs and abilities, etc., by entering into intercourse[11] with other men, this fact is expressed by Feuerbach in the following way:

“Isolated man by himself has not the essence of man in himself “the essence of man is contained only in the community, in the unity of man and man, a unity, however, which depends only on the reality of the difference between I and you. — Man by himself is man (in the ordinary sense), man and man, the unity of I and you, is God” (i.e., man in the supra-ordinary sense) (§§ 61, 62, p. 83).

Philosophy has reached a point when the trivial fact of the necessity of intercourse between human beings — a fact without a knowledge of which the second generation that ever existed would never have been produced, a fact already involved in the sexual difference — is presented by philosophy at the end of its entire development as the greatest result. And presented, moreover, in the mysterious form of “the unity of 1 and you”. This phrase would have been quite impossible had Feuerbach not kat exochn [mainly] thought of the sexual act, the conjugal act, the community of I and you. (For, since the human being = brain + heart, and two are necessary to represent the human being, one of them personifies the brain in their intercourse, the other the heart — man and woman. Otherwise it would be impossible to understand why two persons are more human than one.[ Cf. Ludwig Feuerbach, Grundsätze der Philosophie der Zukunft, § 58] Saint-Simonist individual.[4]) And insofar as his community becomes real it is moreover limited to the sexual act and to arriving at an understanding about philosophical ideas and problems, to “true dialectics” (§ 64), to dialogue, to “the procreation of man, both spiritual and physical man” (p. 67). What this “procreated’ man does afterwards, apart from again “spiritually” and “physically” “procreating men”, is not mentioned. Feuerbach only knows intercourse between two beings,

“the truth that no being on its own is a true, perfect, absolute being, that truth and perfection is only the association, the unity of two beings that are essentially alike” (pp. 83, 84).

c) The beginning of the Philosophie der Zukunft immediately shows the difference between us and him:

§ 1: “The task of modern times was the realisation and humanisation of God, the transformation and dissolution of theology into anthropology.” Cf. “The negation of theology is the essence of modern times” (Philosophie der Zukunft, p. 23).

d) The distinction that Feuerbach makes between Catholicism and Protestantism in §2 — Catholicism: “theology” “is concerned with what God is in himself”, it has a “tendency towards speculation and contemplation”; Protestantism is merely Christology, it leaves God to himself and speculation and contemplation to philosophy — this distinction is nothing but a division of labour arisen from a need appropriate to immature science. Feuerbach explains Protestantism merely from this need within theology, whereupon an independent history of philosophy naturally follows.

e) “Being is not a general concept which can be separated from things. It is identical with the things that exist.... Being is posited by essence. What my essence is, is my being. The fish is in the water, but its essence cannot be separated from this being. Even language identifies being and essence. It is only in human life that being is divorced from essence — but only in exceptional, unfortunate case — only there is it possible that a person’s essence is not in the place where he is, but it is precisely because of this division that his spirit is not truly in the place where his body actually is. Only where your heart is, there you are. But all things — apart from abnormal cases — like to be in the place where they are, and like to be what they are” (p. 47).

A fine panegyric upon the existing state of things! Apart from abnormal cases, a few exceptional cases, you like to work from your seventh year as a door-keeper in a coal-mine, remaining alone in the dark for fourteen hours a day, and because it is your being therefore it is also your essence. The same applies to a piecer at a self-actor.a It is your “essence” to be subservient to a branch of labour. Cf. Das Wesen des Glaubens, p. 11, “unsatisfied hunger” ...

f) § 48, p. 73. “Time is the only means that makes it possible without contradiction to combine opposite or contradictory determinations in a single being. This applies at all events to living beings. Only thus does here — for example in man — the contradiction make its appearance that now this determination, this resolution, dominates and occupies me, and then a quite different and diametrically opposed determination.”

Feuerbach describes this as 1) a contradiction, 2) a combination of contradictions, and 3) alleges that time brings this about. Indeed time “filled” with events, but still time, and not that which takes place during this time. The proposition amounts to the statement: it is only in time that change is possible.