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Sameer Mishra

Prov. Ivanyi
03/27/14
Marx/Engels Reading Response
What does Marx criticize the neo-Hegelians (i.e. Young Hegelians) for?
Marx finds his contemporary philosophers (Feuerbach, Max Stirner, and
Saint Bruno) to have an incompetent understanding of communism and
philosophy. He writes that Feuerbach is deceiving himself , that Max Strirner
knows not a thing about real history, and that Saint Brunos work is a narrative
not based on research but on arbitrary constructions and literary gossip (167).
Marx saves his most structured critiques for Feuerbach in the section titled
Concerning the Production of Consciousness.
Marx seems to fundamentally disagree with Feuerbach on the dichotomy
of abstract logic and the actualization of such logic to the real world. Feuerbach
and the neo-Hegelians focused on the essence of the individual is equal at the
time to the individuals existence. The conditions of existence are then
determined by when its essence feels itself satisfied (168). Furthermore, Marx
accuses of Feuerbach only conceiving man as an object of the sense instead
sensuous activity (171). As Marx explains in both Theses on Feuerbach and
The German Ideology, an individuals existence is more clearly defined by ones
economic and social life. Specifically, he writes that men must be considered
given their existing conditions of life and their given social connection (171).
Marx believes that these components of man are the real shaping and driving
force of that individual. Marx believes that revolution occurs through the active,
sensual changing of things not the contemplation of thought that Feuerbach
believes.
Saint Bruno (and Fueuerbach) disagreed with Marx on the relationship
between man and nature. Saint Bruno suggests that nature and history are at an
antithesis (170). Furthermore, Feuerbach only notices factories and machines
and not the spinning-wheels and weaving-looms a hundred years ago.
Feuerbach extends his vision into the natural science where he comments on the
nature of abstruse principles only known to chemists and physicists. Marx notes
that the discovery of such principles was only the product of industry and
commerce. These laws of nature are the product of human-made processes.
Thus Marx argues that man and nature are incredibly intertwined as opposed to
Feuerbachs reasoning that those two concepts are vastly different.
The Theses on Feuerbach especially focus on religion. Feuerbach uses
the religion to explain man before civilizations. However, Marx notes that religion
is a social product (145). Marx works to disprove the need and use of religion in
society (I think).

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