Theses on Feuerbach
KARL MARX
Marx wrote the "Theses 'on Feuerbach" in the spring of 1845 as he and Engels were starting their collaborative work The German Ideology. More than forty years later, Engels found them in one of the notebooks that had come into his possession after his friend died. He published them as an appendix to his essay of 1888 on Ludwig Feuerbachand the End of Classical German Philosophy, and described them in the foreword to this essay as " the brilliant germ of the new world outlook," They have fascinated Marx scholars ever since, and an extensive literature of exegesis of the "Theses" has accumulated. The eleventh thesis, in which Marx proclaims it the task of philosophy not simply to interpret but to change the world, is one of his most frequently quoted statements.
Before resorting to commentaries, however, the reader' should apply himself to Marx's own amplification of the "Theses" in Part I of The German Ideology, which follows this selection.
Engels made a few small changes in the "Theses" when he published them in 1888: he added the phrase "in Robert Owen, for example," in parentheses, at the end of the first paragraph of Thesis ' III; italicized "social product" in Thesis VII; italicized "contemplative" and placed quotation marks around "civil society" in Thesis IX, The version presented below is Marx's.
I
The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism that of Feuerbach includedis that the thing, reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object or of contemplation, but not as human sensuous activity, practice, not subjectively. Hence it happened that the active side, in contradistinction 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, really distinct from the thought objects, but he does not conceive human activity itself as objective activity. Hence, in Das Wesen des Christentums, 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 practicalcritical, activity.
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, that is, the reality and power, the this-sided ness 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.
III
The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of other circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men who change circumstances and that it is essential to educate the educator himself. Hence, this doctrine necessarily arrives at dividing society into two parts, one of which is superior to society .
The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionising practice.
IV
Feuerbach starts out from the fact of religious self-alienation, of the duplication of the world into a religious, imaginary world and a real 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 detaches itself from itself and establishes itself in the clouds as an independent realm can only be explained by the cleavage and self-contradictions within this secular basis. The latter must itself, therefore, first be understood in its contradiction and then, by the removal of the contradiction, revolutionised 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 criticised in theory and revolutionised in practice.
V
Feuerbach, not satisfied with abstract thinking, appeals to sensuous contemplation; but he does not conceive sensuousness as practical, human sensuous activity.
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) The human essence, therefore, can with him be comprehended only as "genus," as an internal, dumb generality which merely naturally unites the many individuals.
VII
Feuerbach, consequently, does not see that the "religious sentiment" is itself a social product, and that the abstract individual whom he analyses belongs in reality to a particular form of society.
VIII
Social life is essentially practical. All mysteries which mislead theory into mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice.
IX
The highest point attained by contemplative materialism, that is, materialism which does not comprehend sensuousness as practical activity, is the contemplation of single individuals in civil society.
X
The standpoint of the old materialism is "civil" society; the standpoint of the new is human society, or socialised humanity.
XI
The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.
