Feuerbach: The roots of the socialist philosophy

As for the rest, Starcke takes great pains to defend Feuerbach against the attacks and doctrines of those collegians who plume themselves in Germany as philosophers now-a-days. It is true that this is a matter of importance to those people who take an interest in the afterbirth of the German classic philosophy, to Starcke himself this might appear necessary. We spare the reader this, however.

III

The distinct idealism of Feuerbach is evident directly we come to his philosophy of religion and ethics. He does not wish to abolish religion by any means; he wants to perfect it. Philosophy itself will be absorbed in religion. "The periods of human progress are only distinguishable by religious changes. There is only a real historical progress where it enters the hearts of men. The heart is not a place for religion, so that it should be in the heart, it is the very being of religion." Religion is, according to Feuerbach, a matter of the feelings – the feelings of love between man and man which up to now sought its realization in the fantastic reflected image of the reality – in the interposition through one or more gods of the fantastic reflections of human qualities – but now by means of love between "ego" and "tu" finds itself directly and without any intermediary. According to Feuerbach love between the sexes is, if not the highest form, at least one of the highest forms, of the practice of his new religion.

Now, feelings of affection between man and man, and particularly between members of the two sexes, have existed as long as mankind has. Love between the sexes has been cultivated especially during the last eighteen hundred years and has won a place which has made it, in this period, a compulsory motive for all poetry. The existing positive religions have limited themselves in this matter to the bestowal of complete consecration upon the State regulation of sexual love, and might completely disappear tomorrow without the least difference taking place in the matter of love and friendship. Thus the Christian religion in France was, as a matter of fact, so completely overthrown between the years 1793 and 1798, that Napoleon himself could not re-introduce it without opposition and difficulty, without, in the interval, any desire for a substitute, in Feuerbach's sense, making itself felt.

Feuerbach's 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. They will be fully realized for the first time if they are stamped as religions. Religion is derived from "religare" and means originally "fastening." Therefore, every bond between men is religion. Such etymological artifices are the last resort of the idealistic philosophy. Not what the word means according to the historical development of its true significance, but what it should mean according to its derivation is what counts, and so sex-love and the intercourse between the sexes is consecrated as a "religion" only so that the word religion, which is dear to the mind of the idealist, shall not vanish from the language. The Parisian reformer of the stripe of Louis Blanc used to speak just in the same way in the forties, for they could only conceive of a man without religion as a monster, and used to say to us "Atheism, then, is your religion."

If Feuerbach wants to place true religion upon the basis of real materialistic philosophy, that would be just the same as conceiving of modern chemistry as true alchemy. If religion can exist without its God then alchemy can exist without its philosopher's stone. There exists, by the way, a very close connection between alchemy and religion. The philosopher's stone has many properties of the old gods, and the Egyptian-Greek alchemists of the first two centuries of our era have had their hands in the development of Christian doctrines, as Kopp and Berthelot prove.

Feuerbach's declaration that the periods of man's development are only differentiated through changes in religion is false. Great historical points of departure are coincident with religious changes only as far as the three world-religions which exist up to the present are concerned – Buddhism, Christianity and Islam. The old tribal and national religions originating in nature were not propagandist and lost all power of resistance as soon as the independence of the tribe and people was destroyed. Among the Germans simple contact with the decaying Roman Empire and the Christian world-religion springing from it and suitable to its economic, political and ideal circumstances, was sufficient. In the first place, as regards these more or less artificial world-religions, particularly in the cases of Christianity and Mohammedanism, we find that the more universal historical movements will take on a religious stamp, and as far as concerns Christianity in particular, the stamp of the religion affecting revolutionary movements of universal significance stopped short at the commencement of the fight of the bourgeois for emancipation from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century, and showed itself not as Feuerbach declares in the hearts of men and the thirst for religion, but in the entire earlier history of the Middle Ages which knew no other form of idealism than religion and theology. But as the bourgeoisie in the eighteenth century was sufficiently strong to have its own ideology suitable to its own standpoint, it forthwith made its great and final revolution, the French, by means of an appeal exclusively to juristic and political ideals, and troubled itself with religion only so far as it stood in its way. It never occurred to it to establish a new religion in place of the old one; everybody knows what a mess Robespierre made of the attempt.

The possibility of a purely humane sentiment in intercourse with other men is with us today exceedingly impeded through the society founded on class antagonism and class supremacy in which we must move. We have no need to trouble ourselves about sanctifying these sentiments by means of a new religion. And just as the circumstances of the great historical class-fight have been obscured by the current historians, particularly in Germany, so in the same way the understanding of the great historical class-conflicts is sufficiently obscured by the present-day manner of writing history, without our needing to change these conflicts into a mere appendix of ecclesiastical history. Here it is evident how far we in our day are away from Feuerbach. His most beautiful passages in praise of the new religion of love are today unreadable.

The only religion which Feuerbach examined closely is Christianity, the universal religion of the western world which is founded upon monotheism. He proves that the Christian God is only the fantastic reflection, the reflected image of man. But that God is himself the product of a lengthy process of abstraction, the concentrated quintessence of the earlier tribal and national gods. And man also whose reflection that God is, is not a real man, but is likewise the quintessence of many real men, the abstract human, and therefore himself again the creature of thought. The same Feuerbach who on each page preaches sensation, diving into the concrete, the real, becomes thoroughly abstract as soon as he begins to talk of more than mere sensual intercourse between human beings.

Of this relationship only one side appeals to him, the moral, and Feuerbach's astonishing lack of resources as compared with Hegel is striking. The ethic or rather moral doctrine of the latter, is the Philosophy of Right and embraces: 1, Abstract Right; 2, Morality; 3, Moral Conduct, under which are again comprised: the family, bourgeois, society, and the State. As the form is here idealistic, the content is realistic. The entire scope of law, economy, politics, is therein, besides ethics. With Feuerbach, it is just the reverse. He is realistic in form; he begins with man, but the discussion has absolutely nothing to do with the world in which this man lives, and so, instead of the man, stands an abstract man, who preaches sermons concerning the philosophy of religion. This man is not even the son of a mother; he has developed from the God of the monotheistic religions. He does not live in real historic conditions and the world of history. He comes into relationship with other men, but each of the others is just as much an abstraction as he himself is. In the "philosophy of religion" we had still men and women, but in the "ethic" this final distinction vanishes. At long intervals Feuerbach makes such statements as: "A man thinks differently in a palace than in a hut." "When you have nothing in your body to ward off hunger and misery, you have nothing in your head, mind and heart for morality." "Politics must be our religion," etc. But Feuerbach was absolutely incapable of extracting any meaning from these remarks; they remain purely literary expressions, and Starcke himself is obliged to admit that the science of politics was an insuperable obstacle to Feuerbach and the science of society, sociology, for him a terra incognita.

He appears just as uninspired in comparison with Hegel in his treatment of the antithesis of good and evil. "One thinks he is saying something great," Hegel remarks "if one says that mankind is by nature good, but it is forgotten that one says something far greater in the words 'man is by nature evil.'" According to Hegel, evil is the form in which the mechanical power of evolution shows itself, and indeed in this lies the double idea that each new step forward appears as an outrage against a sacred thing, as rebellion against the old, dying, but through custom, sanctified, circumstances, and on the other hand that since the rising of class antagonism, the evil passions of men, greed and imperiousness serve as the levers of historical progress, of which, for example, the history of feudalism and the bourgeoisie affords a conspicuous proof. But Feuerbach does not trouble himself to examine the role of moral evil. History is to him a particularly barren and unwonted field. Even his statement, "Man as he sprang from nature originally was only a mere creature, not a man." "Man is a product of human society, of education, and of history." Even this statement remains from his standpoint absolutely unproductive.

What Feuerbach communicates to us respecting morals must therefore be exceedingly narrow. The desire for happiness is born within man and must hence be the foundation of all morality. But the desire for happiness is limited in two ways; first, through the natural results of our acts; after the dissipation comes the headache, as a result of habitual excess, sickness; in the second place, through its results upon society, if we do not respect the similar desire for happiness on the part of other people, they resist us and spoil our pursuit of happiness. It follows, therefore, that in order to enjoy our pursuit of happiness, the result of our acts must be rightly appreciated, and, on the other hand, must allow of the carrying out of the same acts on the part of others. Practical self-control with regard to ourselves and love, always love, in our intercourse with others are therefore the foundation rules of Feuerbach's morality, from which all others lead, and neither the enthusiastic periods of Feuerbach nor the loud praises of Starcke can set off the thinness and flatness of this pair of utterances.

The desire for happiness contents itself only very exceptionally, and by no means to the profit of one's self or other people with self. But it requires the outside world – means of satisfying itself – therefore means of subsistence, an individual of the other sex, books, convention, argument, activity, these means and matters of satisfaction are matters of utility and labor. Feuerbach's system of morality either predicates that these means and matters of satisfaction are given to every man per se, or, since it gives him only unpractical advice, is not worth a jot to the people who are without these means. And this Feuerbach himself shows clearly in forcible words, "One thinks differently in a palace than in a hut." "Where owing to misery and hunger you have no material in your body, you have also no material in your head, mind and heart for morals."

Are matters any better with the equal right of another to the pursuit of happiness? Feuerbach set this statement out as absolute, as applicable to all times and circumstances. But since when has it been true? Was there in the olden time between slave and master or in the Middle Ages between serf and baron any talk about equal rights to the pursuit of happiness? Was not the right to the pursuit of happiness of the subject class sacrificed to the dominant class regardlessly and by means of law? – nay, that was immoral, but still equality of rights is recognized now-a-days – recognized in words merely since the bourgeoisie in its fight against feudalism and in the institution of capitalistic production, was compelled to abolish all existing exclusive, that is, personal, privileges, and for the first time to introduce the right of the private individual, then also gradually the right of the State, and equality before law. But the pursuit of happiness consists for the least part only in ideal rights, and lies, for the most part, in means of material satisfaction takes care that only enough for bare subsistence falls to the great majority of those persons with equal rights, and therefore regards the equality of right to the pursuit of happiness hardly better than slavery or serfdom did. And are we better off as regards mental means of happiness – means of education? Is not the schoolmaster of Sadowa a mythical person?

Further, according to the ethical theory of Feuerbach, the Bourse is the highest temple of morality, only provided that one speculate rightly. If my pursuit of happiness leads me to the Bourse, and I, in following my business, manage so well that only what is agreeable and nothing detrimental comes to me, that is that I win steadily, Feuerbach's precept is carried out. In this way I do not interfere with the similar pursuit of happiness of anyone else, since the other man goes on the Bourse just as voluntarily as I do, and at the conclusion of his affairs a sentimental expression, for each finds in the other the satisfaction of his pursuit of happiness which it is just the business of love to bring about, and which it here practically accomplishes. And since I carry on my operations with more exact prudence and therefore with greater success I fulfill the strongest maxims of the Feuerbach moral philosophy and become a rich man into the bargain. In other words, Feuerbach's morality is hewn out of the capitalistic system of today, little as he might wish or think it to be.

But love, yes love, is particularly and eternally the magical god who, according to Feuerbach, surmounts all the difficulties of practical life and that in a society which is divided into classes with diametrically opposing interests. The last remnant of its revolutionary character is thus taken from his philosophy, and there remains the old cant – "love one another" – fall into each other's arms without regard to any impediment of sex or position – universal intoxication of reconciliation.

In a word, the moral theories of Feuerbach turn out to be the same as those of all of his predecessors. It is a hodge-podge of all times, all people, and all conditions, and for this occasion is applicable to no time and place, and as regards the actual world is as powerless as Kant's "Categorical Imperative." As a matter of fact, every class, as well as every profession, has its own system of morals and breaks even this when it can do it without punishment, and love, which is to unite all, appears today in wars, controversies, lawsuits, domestic broils and as far as possible mutual plunder.

But how was it possible that the powerful impetus given by Feuerbach turned out so unprofitable to Feuerbach himself. Simply in this way, because Feuerbach could not find his way out of the abstraction, which he hated with a deadly hatred, to living reality. He clutches hard at Nature and Humanity, but "Nature" and "Humanity" remain empty words with him. He does not know how to tell us anything positive about real nature and real men. We can only reach living men from the abstract men of Feuerbach if we regard them as active historical agents. Feuerbach strove against that, hence the year 1848, which, he did not understand, signified for him merely the final break with the real world, retirement into solitude. German conditions must for the most part bear the guilt of allowing him to starve miserably.

But the step which Feuerbach did not make had not yet been made. The cultus of man in the abstract which was the kernel of Feuerbach's religion must be replaced by the knowledge of real men and their historical development. This advance of Feuerbach's view beyond Feuerbach himself was published in 1845 by Marx in the "Holy Family."

IV

Strauss, Bauer, Stirner, Feuerbach, these were the minor representatives of the Hegelian philosophy, so far as they did not abandon the field of philosophy. Strauss has, in addition to the "Life of Jesus" and "Dogmatics," only produced philosophical and ecclesiastical historical work of a literary character, after the fashion of Renan; Bauer has merely done something in the department of primitive Christianity, but that significant; Stirner remained a "freak" even after Bakunine had mixed him with Proudhon and designated his amalgamation "Anarchism." Feuerbach alone possessed any significance as a philosopher; but not only did philosophy remain for him the vaunted superior of all other sciences, the quintessence of all science, an impassable limitation, the untouchable holy thing, he stood as a composite philosopher; the under half of him was materialist, the upper half idealist. He was not an apt critic of Hegel but simply put him aside as of no account, while he himself, in comparison with the encyclopedic wealth of the Hegelian system, contributed nothing of any positive value, except a bombastic religion of love and a thin, impotent system of ethics.

But from the breaking up of the Hegelian school there proceeded another, the only one which has borne real fruit, and this tendency is coupled with the name of Marx.2

In this case the separation from the Hegelian philosophy occurred by means of a return to the materialistic standpoint, that is to say, a determination to comprehend the actual world – nature and history – as it presents itself to each one of us, without any preconceived idealistic balderdash interfering; it was resolved to pitilessly sacrifice any idealistic preconceived notion which could not be brought into harmony with facts actually discovered in their mutual relations, and without any visionary notions. And materialism in general claims no more. Only here, for the first time in the history of the materialistic philosophy, was an earnest endeavor made to carry its results to all questions arising in the realm of knowledge, at least in its characteristic features.

Hegel was not merely put on one side, the school attached itself on the contrary to his openly revolutionary side, the dialectic method. But this method was of no service in its Hegelian form. According to Hegel the dialectic is the self-development of the Idea. The Absolute Idea does not only exist from eternity, but it is also the actual living soul of the whole existing world. It develops from itself to itself through all the preliminary stages which are treated of at large in "Logic," and which are all included in it. Then it steps outside of itself, changing with nature itself, where it, without self-consciousness, is disguised as a necessity of nature, goes through a new development, and, finally, in man himself, becomes self-consciousness. This self-consciousness now works itself out into the higher stages from the lower forms of matter, until finally the Absolute Idea is again realized in the Hegelian philosophy. According to Hegel, the dialectic development apparent in nature and history, that is a causative, connected progression from the lower to the higher, in spite of all zig-zag movements and momentary setbacks, is only the stereotype of the self-progression of the Idea from eternity, whither one does not know, but independent at all events of the thought of any human brain. This topsy-turvy ideology had to be put aside. We conceived of ideas as materialistic, as pictures of real things, instead of real things as pictures of this or that stage of the Absolute Idea. Thereupon, the dialectic became reduced to knowledge of the universal laws of motion – as well of the outer world as of the thought of man – two sets of laws which are identical as far as matter is concerned but which differ as regards expression, in so far as the mind of man can employ them consciously, while, in nature, and up to now, in human history, for the most part they accomplish themselves, unconsciously in the form of external necessity, through an endless succession of apparent accidents. Hereupon the dialectic of the Idea became itself merely the conscious reflex of the dialectic evolution of the real world, and therefore, the dialectic of Hegel was turned upside down or rather it was placed upon its feet instead of on its head, where it was standing before. And this materialistic dialectic which since that time has been our best tool and our sharpest weapon was discovered, not by us alone, but by a German workman, Joseph Dietzgen, in a remarkable manner and utterly independent of us.

But just here the revolutionary side of Hegel's philosophy was again taken up, and at the same time freed from the idealistic frippery which had in Hegel's hands interfered with its necessary conclusions. The great fundamental thought, namely, that the world is not to be considered as a complexity of ready-made things, but as a complexity made up of processes in which the apparently stable things, no less than the thought pictures in the brain – the idea, cause an unbroken chain of coming into being and passing away, in which, by means of all sorts of seeming accidents, and in spite of all momentary setbacks, there is carried out in the end a progressive development – this great foundation thought has, particularly since the time of Hegel, so dominated the thoughts of the mass of men that, generally speaking, it is now hardly denied. But to acknowledge it in phrases, and to apply it in reality to each particular set of conditions which come up for examination, are two different matters. But if one proceeds steadily in his investigations from this historic point, then a stop is put, once and for all, to the demand for final solutions and for eternal truths; one is firmly conscious of the necessary limitations of all acquired knowledge, of its hypothetical nature, owing to the circumstances under which it has been gained. One cannot be imposed upon any longer by the inflated insubstantial antitheses of the older metaphysics of true and false, good and evil, identical and differentiated, necessary and accidental; one knows that these antitheses have only a relative significance, that that which is recognized as true now, has its concealed and later-developing false side, just as that which is recognized as false, its true side, by virtue of which it can later on prevail as the truth; that so-called necessity is made up of the merely accidental, and that the acknowledged accidental is the form behind which necessity conceals itself and so on.

The old methods of enquiry and thought which Hegel terms metaphysics, which by preference busied themselves by enquiring into things as given and established quantities, and the vestiges of which still buzz in the heads of people, had at that time great historical justification. Things had first to be examined, before it was possible to examine processes; man must first know what a thing was before he could examine the preceding changes in it. And so it was with natural science. The old metaphysic which comprehended things as stable came from a philosophy which enquired into dead and living things as things comprehended as stable. But when this enquiry had so far progressed that the decisive step was possible, namely, the systematic examination of the preceding changes in those things going on in nature itself, then occurred the death-blow of the old metaphysics in the realm of philosophy. And, in fact, if science to the end of the last century was chiefly a collecting of knowledge, the science of actual things, so is science in our day pre-eminently an arranging of knowledge, the science of changes, of the origin and progress of things, and the mutual connection which binds these changes in nature into one great whole. Physiology, which examines the earlier forms of plant and animal organisms; embryology, which deals with the development of the elementary organism from germ to maturity; geology, which investigates the gradual formation of the earth's crust, are all the products of our century.