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Demise of German Idealism & Birth of Marx Materialism

In 1839-44, where Darwin was combating with his arguments on evolution and materialism,

an another young German scholar, Karl Marx who was struggling in a quite different way

with his own emerging materialist outlook, attempting to pull-off himself from the

essentially theological outlook of German idealist philosophy. Marx gravitates aroundGerman philosophers sometimes around them (support) and sometime beyond them

(oppose). Laszek kolakowaski says Marx owes much to Feuerbach and adopted critique of

Hegelianism as a philosophy by putting predicate where the subject should be and gave

human creations priority over man himself.(Koakowski,L.,& Falla, P. S.,1978:119)

Nature exists for man, who by means of an objective knowledge of itsworkings harnesses it in the service of human ends. (Soper, K. 1986:24)

His views on social thought involves nature of ultimate reality, condemning thetranscendental and absolute idealism since this is his own source of human knowledge and

the rubric of metaphysics and epistemology laconically subsumed as reality of thought.Marx credits (understanding historical movement, dialectic) and criticises (idealist

presentation & theologism) Feuerbach and Hegel by exposing abstract and a historic

development (Soper, K.1986:34).

Marx never wrote at length on the theme, however, or gave his own materialism anysystematic focus. In the Theses on Feuerbach, Marx is at pains to distinguish his materialism

from that of previous materialists, but he tells us very little about wh at materialism itself issupposed to be. Materialists, he tells us, hold that nature is the sole reality, that it exists

independently of all philosophy, and that nothing exists outside nature and man(Wood, A.

W. 1981:166)

Marx sees idealism as reality comprising finite or infinite minds or particular or

transcendental idealism. In his These of Feuerbachidentifies maladies in all hitherto existing

materialism that the thing, reality, sensuousness, was conceived in the form of the object not

as sensuous human activity, practice and subjectively. Marx's anti-idealism, or 'materialism',

was not intended to deny the existence or causal efficacy of but the autonomy or explanatoryprimacy attributed to them.

Materialists assert that matter is not aproduct of mind, but mind is only the highest product

of matter, and thinking is inseparable from matter which thinks. Marx entire thinking,

especially historical materialism, is inextricably rooted in his materialist thinking. Plekhanov

mentions philosophical revolution of Marx

With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world

reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought(Plekhanov, G. V.1967)

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He propounds that it is material forces of production which conditions the general process of

social, political and intellectual life. For Marx it is not ideas which erects way but the menwho apply practical force and it was the ideas which lead French revolution but the

collective camp of bourgeoisie able to turn French revolution to its own profit.

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.(8thTheses TOF)

The principal connotation of Marx's materialism; he views the man-nature relationship as

asymmetrically internal with man as essentially dependent on nature, but nature asessentially independent of man. Here man is integrated & entangled win the web of nature.

(Bottomore, T. B.1983:369-73).

But there is no one sole water tight scientific formula for understanding, predicting and

implementing history or economy or man so Marx materialism is purely fundamentalistic.Hans Sass critiques Marx Theses on Feuerbachas systems of philosophers and revolutions

of institutions have only interpreted the world in various ways or replaced one set ofinstitutions by another one of the same kind; the point is that we have to change ourselves.

(Sass, H.1983)

References

Koakowski,L., & Falla, P. S. (1978).Main currents of Marxism: Its rise, growth, and

dissolution (Volume-1). Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Soper, K. (1986).Humanism andanti-humanism. La Salle, Ill: Open Court.

Wood, A. W. (1981).Karl Marx. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Sass, H. (1983). The transition from Feuerbach to Marx: A re-interpretation.

doi:10.1007/BF00831762 (HMS)

Plekhanov, G. V. (1967).Essays in the history of materialism. New York: H. Fertig.

Bottomore, T. B. (1983). A Dictionary of Marxist thought. Cambridge, Mass: HarvardUniversity Press.