Okay, welcome to Marx and Philosophy, a lesson held by Ray Brassier. And this is session one of a total of eight sessions. And I'm going to pass the mic to Ray directly. Okay, hi. So first, can everyone hear me okay? hello yep can everyone hear me yes yes sir okay um excellent okay great uh and i'm not sure if uh
Is the camera working or is there any image at all? Yeah, there is, okay. Great, fine, okay, I'll just get going. So I've sent a handout which I don't know if it's been forwarded to you already or if it's possible to kind of, you know, to put it up. Does everyone have, can everyone see the handouts? just checking my email right now okay it's there
okay right Is anyone still not able to access the handout or see it? I don't have it because I wasn't put in the email group. Ah, okay. Yeah. I think Artem's sending it to me. Yeah, I've got it. Okay. Well, Luke, in the meantime, I'll say a few preliminary words.
Well basically I'll introduce the session. So yes, so this class is an introductory class because it doesn't presuppose any familiarity with Marx, so it's an attempt to kind of introduce Marx from a philosophical vantage point and in a way to render Marx's radical break with philosophy philosophically intelligible because the claim is that in order to understand Marx's critique of philosophy and why this peculiar radicalism of this critique, one requires certain philosophical resources.
So the basic dialectical point is that one can't really understand in what sense Marx is breaking with philosophy unless one has certain philosophical resources to render that break intelligible. And the danger of not having a proper philosophical philosophical appreciation of the radicality of Marx's break with philosophy is that one ends up re-philosophizing Marx's break. So the paradox is the following, is that people who insist that Marx's break with philosophy is absolute and who dogmatically resist any
philosophical contextualization for Marx's break end up re-philosophizing you know inadvertently re-philosophizing it in that way and with it there's a disavowed you know re-philosophization of Marx that occurs by not appreciating to the extent of which is break with philosophy comes from working through you know, the radical advances that preceded his own theoretical engagement, and specifically the movement from Kant through Hegel and ultimately to Feuerbach. So our starting point for today's session is Feuerbach,
because I think Feuerbach is in a way the missing link between Marx and Hegel. To understand, you know, I think Marx's kind of break with German idealism, with Hegel in particular, one needs to understand Feuerbach and Feuerbach's critique of Hegel. So this is our first, this will be the topic of our first session. So today we're going to be looking at, especially two books by Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, which is published in 1841, and Outline of a Philosophy of the Future from 1843. And the handout contains what I take to be the most really important passages from our point of view on these two works.
Okay, another quick question. Does everyone have the syllabus? I sent a kind of a syllabus for the course with the readings and a rough breakdown of the topics for each of the sessions. Does everyone have access to this? Yeah, I don't think the people that went in email group wouldn't have that. okay um well if um i mean i can resend it right now um okay i'll resend it right now so that people can can see it uh let me see um okay i'm gonna resend this the syllabus
here it is okay so I've just resend it I'm not sure who's receiving so I'm sending it to the organizers email address and I hope that someone can automatically forward it to everyone else. But basically, yes, let me see a few other kind of, I think, you know, necessary introductory clarifications. So yeah, this is a kind of an introduction to
Marx. So I hope, I mean, anyone who knows Marx well, I'm afraid will be completely everything I'm going to say is going to be pretty obvious and so if you know Marx and know Marx well you may be kind of bored by the course but I hope you know I hope that's not the case. Secondly the reason I think what's you know what I hope this the course achieves is Marx's legibility theoretical legibility right now is perhaps is in many ways more difficult than it's ever been because Marx is working in a kind of historical philosophical context in a way which is in a way that the culmination of a kind of anthropocentrism,
a philosophical anthropocentrism. And as I'm sure you're all aware right now in contemporary critical theory, you know, this is a position that is seen as, you know, the source of many kind of evils and as something that is to be definitively rejected and abandoned. So, in other words, you know, in the wake of all these debates about post-humanism and anthro-decentrism, as it's It's sometimes called the rejection of anthropocentrism and the rejection of all its attendant philosophical and political consequences. To understand exactly in what sense Marx is anthropocentric is, I think, extremely important
and valuable. So I think one of the things I suspect is that for a lot of people who aren't familiar with far back in Marx, many of the kind of, you know, the exaltation of, you know, human self-consciousness above every other phenomenon may seem peculiarly anachronistic. But one of the things, you know, I hope to kind of demonstrate, you know, as this course proceeds is that this is, it's not possible to dismiss this radical anthropocentric stance so easily and so quickly. And the question
is whether in fact the post-humanism or what is declared as post-human or anti-human in as an anti-human perspective in contemporary critical theory, may not be actually some kind of a regression or in a way a kind of a disavowed humanism, which in a way perpetuates the prejudices that it claims to be discontinuing. So that's one of the things that I hope we can get a handle on as the course progresses. So, okay, the format will be, I'm going to try to, so I'll try to go through the handout.
I'll have a handout prepared for each session. I'll try to go to get through it or as much of it as I can. And I hope that that takes no more than roughly about an hour. So then that we have at least another hour for discussion. So, yeah, any questions that arise, you know, if you could, you know, well, you can type them up and formulate them. And then I'll try to kind of address them, you know, once I've gone through the handout. it. Alternatively, if you have a clarification, if something I say is unclear or something
on the handout is confusing and you need a kind of an immediate response, just stop me. That's absolutely fine. So I don't mind being interrupted just to clarify something I'm saying. Okay, right, so now if everyone is okay then maybe I'll just get going. Yep, Matthew's asking, is there a way to access the handout if you don't have it? Matthew, do you have access to the handouts? Okay.
Great, okay. Okay, so if everyone is okay, then I'll get going. Okay, so the first handout begins with an image from 1899, from the German newspaper from 1899, which depicts Marx and the printing press chained by the censer and tortured by the Prussian eagle. So this is a depiction of Marx as Prometheus and Marx's Prometheanism or the Promethean ambitions of Marx's Theoretical Project are famous but also difficult to understand from the contemporary vantage point.
There's a brief explanatory note about what this cartoon, what this image is depicting. Marx had been the editor of the Reinesche Zeitung in 1840-1843, was continually harassed by the Prussian censors, and eventually resigned his editorship in 1843. And this is what this image is depicting. But I want to begin with Marx's famous declaration in his 1841 doctoral dissertation on the difference between the democratian and epicurean philosophy of nature. So this is Marx writing in his doctoral dissertation.
This is the first passage on page two of the handout. Philosophy, as long as a drop of blood shall pulse in its world subduing an absolutely free heart, will never grow tired of answering its adversaries with the cry of Epicurus. Not the man who denies the gods worshipped by the multitude, but he who affirms of the gods what the multitude believes about them is truly impious. Philosophy makes no secret of it. The confession of Prometheus, in simple words, I hate the pack of gods, is its own confession, its own aphorism against all heavenly and earthly gods who do not acknowledge human self-consciousness as the highest divinity.
It will have none other besides. But to those poor march players who rejoice over the apparently worsened civil position of philosophy, it responds again as Prometheus replied to the servants of the god Hermes, Be sure of this. I would not change my state of evil fortune for your servitude. better to be the servant of this rock than to be a faithful boy to Father Zeus. And Marx concludes, Prometheus is the most eminent saint and martyr in the philosophical calendar. Now, so this is 1841, and this is actually coincident. This is the same year as the publication of Feuerbach's Essence of Christianity, which we will know and the reason I want to examine this text is because I think this text explains
Marx you know was reading Feuerbach and Marx was indeed was so impressed by Feuerbach that he wrote him a letter, you know, an admiring letter, I think in 1843-44. Feuerbach, I think, provides the background for understanding Marx's linking of philosophy and Prometheanism. So we'll now go through this, the argument of Feuerbach's essence of Christianity. And Feuerbach was a kind of so-called left Hegelian. In other words, as I'm sure most of you know, you know, Hegel died in 1831, I think,
and in the aftermath of his death, you know, his disciples split into roughly two factions, the so-called right and left Hegelians. Right Hegelians in a way proclaimed or adopted a conservative interpretation of Hegel's thought which sanctified or seemed to be sanctifying the Christian religion and the Prussian state, whereas left Hegelians thought that Hegel's philosophy implicitly contained a radical critique of all established authorities, whether
they be religious or political. So Feuerbach is, I'll begin by outlining, first of all, Feuerbach's focusing on the primacy of self-consciousness is clearly Hegelian. But he does so in a way which ultimately kind of leads into a radical critique of Hegel, which I hope to get to that by the end of the handout. So first of all, for Feuerbach, conscious being, or Bewusstsein, is being conscious of species being. So this is the first proposition in the essence of Christianity, thematically.
Consciousness, in the strictest sense, writes Feuerbach, is present only in a being to whom his species, or his essential nature, is an object of thought. the brute is indeed conscious of himself as an individual and he has accordingly the feeling of self as the common center of successive sensations but not as a species hence he is without that consciousness which in its nature as in its name is akin to science where there is this higher consciousness there is a capability of science science is the cognizance of species in practical life we have we have to do with individuals in science with species but only a being to whom his own species his own nature is an object of thought can make the essential nature of other things or
beings an object of thought okay so a couple of things to say here is that first of all so this is a sign in German or consciousness there's a clear consciousness here is not simply what contemporary you know anglophone philosophers called you know called phenomenal consciousness nor is it consciousness in the you know kind of post-Husserlian or phenomenological sense Consciousness is here intimately linked with cognition. To be conscious is to know something. And for Feuerbach, what distinguishes human consciousness,
or rather not just human consciousness, but consciousness in a strict sense from any merely kind of sensory awareness, is that it is knowledge of universals or species. So science is indissociable from consciousness. In a way, science is a kind of manifestation of consciousness in a sense that to be conscious is to know, but to know in the scientific sense, which entails knowing the essence or the genera of beings or entities. And moreover, this access to the being of entities is only possible
because consciousness is in a way self-conscious. It's self-consciousness in the sense that to be conscious is to know one's own species being, to recognize one's own generic or universal character. So this is why Feuerbach then links consciousness, self-consciousness and science or cognition. So, the second point. Now, the consciousness of infinity implies the infinity of consciousness. Because consciousness, in a way, is, you know, relates, for Fonemag being here, consciousness
relates to itself through another or through its object. The way in which it relates to its object is by grasping the essential nature of this object and this essential nature is only graspable through the medium of infinity or what Feuerbach calls infinity. This is obscure for the time being but I think it will become clear as we go on. So, Farnbach writes, this is quote number two, consciousness in a strict or proper sense is identical with consciousness of the infinite. A limited consciousness is no consciousness. Consciousness is essentially infinite in nature.
The consciousness of the infinite is nothing else than the consciousness of the infinity of consciousness. Or in the consciousness of the infinite, the conscious subject has for his object the infinity of his own nature. Now here, that far back is just kind of reiterating Hegel's point about the essential infinity of self-conscious. Why? Because consciousness is transcendent. It doesn't have a fixed or stable essence its essence consists in relating to what is not itself and recognizing
itself in what is other to itself so this is why it can't be simply delimited by what it is not a consciousness has no contrary or opposites and it's in this sense that it's infinite. It's unbounded by any kind of negation of its essential characteristics because its essential characteristic is in a way to be what it is not, as Hegel put it paradoxically and this capacity because Hegel because consciousness is nothing
but you know being what it is not and not being what it is it is essentially contradictory and it's contradictoryness allows you to overcome any you know a finite characterization or determination of its essence. So this is, so it's in this sense then that consciousness has this, is endowed with this power of transcendence. So this is point number three. The absolutely transcendent object, for instance God, is nothing but the subject's absolute transcendence. the transcendence of thinking feeling and willing so this is far back again the absolute to man is
his own nature the power of the object over him is therefore the power of his own nature thus the power of the object of feeling is the power of feeling itself the power of the object of the intellect is the power of the intellect itself and the power of the object of the will is the power of the will itself now here obviously um thinking feeling and willing are the three traditional you know characteristics of consciousness um there are three kind of uh you know modalities of consciousness um and farback's claim is that whatever is acknowledged as absolute in any of these registers whether it's an absolute power
of thinking and absolute power of feeling or an absolute power of willing is merely an externalization or a manifestation of the absolute power of thinking, feeling, or willing themselves. And this is, so this is in a way that is the, you know, the crux of Feuerbach's whole kind of critique of theology and religion what we you know what what humans revere in worshiping a divinity are merely their own capacities or their own raised to the absolute power so as
he writes in quote number four, it falls out, if thou thinkest the infinite, thou perceivest and affirmest the infinitude of the power of thought. If thou feelest the infinite, thou feelest and affirmest the infinitude of the power of feeling. The object of the intellect is intellect objective to itself. The object of feeling is feeling objective to itself. And this is why subjective expression is or coincides with objective expression. And it's in this sense that for Feuerbach consciousness is self-estrangement. So this is number five. Whatever is a subjective expression of a nature is simultaneously also its objective expression.
Man cannot get beyond his true nature. he may indeed by means of the imagination conceive individuals of another so-called higher kind but he can never get loose from his species his nature because remember consciousness is nothing but a consciousness of one's own species being for far back so therefore the conditions of being the positive final predicates which he gives to these other individuals are always determinations or qualities drawn from his own nature qualities in which he in truth only only images and projects himself so this means that you know as encapsulated in quote number six the object of any subject is nothing else
and the subjects own nature taken objectively so what basically what so the argument is very simple base is that the all the characteristics the transcendent characteristics attributed to God and so that you know the God of Christianity in particular, the divinity of the Abrahamic tradition is what Feuerbach has in mind here, are merely kind of estranged absolutizations
of capacities of thinking, feeling, or willing that are imminent to human consciousness. so this means therefore so what far back in a way so far back is a philosopher of radical eminence he wants to kind of you know bring God down to earth to show that what we worship and revere in divine transcendence is merely our own transcendent the transcendent power of our own self-consciousness this means that he wants to know the division between the finite and the infinite or the human and the divine or indeed between eminence
and transcendence in other words he's re-inscribing transcendence within eminence within the eminence of human being and human existence so this is quote number seven so our task is to show that the antithesis of divine and human is altogether illusory there is nothing else than the antithesis between the human nature in general and the human individual and that consequently the objects and contents of the Christian religion are altogether human. Just to clarify this point here, there's nothing else in the instances between the human nature in general and the human individual because in other words what we project as the attributes of God are the attributes of our own generic humanity
or species being. So in other words, the individual reveres or worships the transcendent attributes of his or her own species being. And that's the estrangement. In religion, we are estranged from the transcendence of our own species being. We reify it and hypothesize it as a kind of an alien being because we fail to recognize that we fail to recognize the power of the transcendent power of our own generic species capacities as elucidated
through thinking feeling and willing so then the court continues this is why this is continuing number seven the divine being is nothing else than the human being or rather the human nature purified freed from the limits of the individual man and made objective ie contemplated and revered as another a distinct being all the attributes of the divine nature are therefore attributes human nature okay yes sorry I'll continue so therefore the division between what something is for us and what what is in itself is imminent or
consciousness of something so here again this is this is simply kind of so far far back is simply kind of in a way emphasizing the way in which Hegel overcomes the transcendental kind of distinction between it you know eminence and transcendence between the phenomenal and the noumenal or what is in itself as he writes in number eight I cannot know whether God is something else in himself or for himself than he is for me what he is to me is to me all that he is in the distinction stated above the distinction between what God
is for us and what he might be in himself which is the kind of the truth and we that's the hiatus that separates the finite from the infinite in traditional theology in this distinction man takes a point of view above himself above his nature the absolute measure of his being but this transcendentalism is only an illusion for I can make the distinction between the object as it is in itself and the object as it is for me only where an object can really appear otherwise to me not where it appears to me such as the absolute measure of my nature determines it to appear such as it must appear to me it's true that I may have a merely
subjective conception I one which does not arise out of the general constitution of my species but if my conception is determined by the constitution of my species the distinction between what an object is in itself and what it is for me ceases for this conception is itself an absolute one so In other words, what he's saying is that the gap between the relative and the absolute is merely the kind of the gap between the individual and its own species being. What is truly transcendent is species being or the capacities of the species as such. and you know anything that appears to me you know the gap between appearance and
reality or between the rest of that and the absolute can only be is only measurable or intelligible you know in terms of this discrepancy between you know the the universal and the particular what is what must appear what must appear what must be apprehended at the level of the species is that which is in itself that is the only measure of absoluteness that is philosophically intelligible and so this has at the following consequence number nine this means that there's an insetrability of the subject in the predicate or of
being in the attribute of existence and essence to relativize the essence or the attribute of an entity is also to relativize its existence or its being this is number nine you know if they don't just the objective truth of the predicate I must also go the objective truth of the subject whose predicates they are if I predicates and anthropomorphisms the subject of them is an anthropomorphism too I won't read the whole court here I'll just read the final final two sentences to know God and not oneself to be God to know blessedness and not oneself to enjoy it is a state of disunity of unhappiness
higher beings know nothing of this unhappiness they have no conception of that which they are God in other words what he's saying is that the the concept of God is nothing but the concept of the unity the absolute equivalence of the subject and the predicate or of essence and existence. That's what the concept of God is. God is that being whose essence entails its existence. And in traditional theology there's a hiatus that we can never you know we can never know God as God knows itself because you know because we are finite creatures and because we have finite cognitive capacities.
But it's important that God, remember, God is both subject and object. God is not only an entity. God is everything and therefore knows everything as it is in itself. What Farback is saying is that the gap between finite and infinite cognition, The difference between knowing something from the outside or knowing something from a partial or limited perspective and knowing it absolutely or from the inside as it is in itself is merely the gap between our individual or particular cognitive capacities and our generic or species cognitive capacity. In other words, you know, to know God, it would simply be, you know, to know ourselves
in our generic universality. So this is why ultimately kind of anthropology and theology fuse together for Feuerbach. But this claim about the reversibility or the indissociability of subject and attributes or the subject and the predicate is also kind of, you know, Hegelian basically. This is simply kind of a reiteration of a Hegelian insight. There is no, any attempt to separate the subject and the attribute absolutely or to kind of insert some absolute gap between them and to say that there is something, we know not
what, that something exists which is entirely inaccessible or unknowable for us, is itself, it's a kind of, well it's a kind of alienation, it's a kind of cognitive alienation, because the idea of a subject or a substratum whose attributes are definitively inaccessible to us is actually contradicts the very concept of the sub of what it is for something to be a subject or substratum in other words there is no something that cannot be known if it's something it must be characterizable and
knowable so what we really measure it when we insist on this kind of hiatus between the relative and absolute once again for our back insist we're merely kind of acknowledging the gap between our individuality and our generosity or species being. So again, to reiterate the same points in trend, the necessity of the subject lies only in necessity of the predicates. What the subject is lies only in the predicate. The predicate is the truth of the subject, the subject only the personified existing predicate or the predicate conceived as existing. So
Now, this has the following consequence. This is quotation number 11. Not the attribute of the divinity, but the divineness or deity of the attribute is the first true divine being. Thus, what theology and philosophy have held to be God, or the absolute or the infinite, is not God. but that which they have held not to be God is God, namely the attribute, the quality, or whatever has reality. And again, I'm just going to read the sections in bold because this is a very long quote. The fact is not that equality is divine because God has it,
but that God has it because it is in itself divine. being without it God would be a defective being only in the case in which I identify God and justice in which I think of God immediately as a reality of the idea of justice is the idea of God self-determined but if God as a subject is a determined while the quality of the predicate is the determining then in truth the rank of the Godhead is due not to the subject but to the predicate so in other words that the the absoluteness of the subjects or of the snow
subject i.e. the entity or that which is, is indissociable from its attributive characterization or its predicative characterization. So in other words, so everything that we revere as absolutes is in fact attributable, is in fact a kind of an intelligible characteristic and here I mean those of you who know Plato will immediately recognize here the argument Socrates rejoiner to Euthyphro is it right because God commands it or does God command it because it it is right if we anything that we anything that we
absolutize okay must be in absolutizing anything we're at we're also absolutizing its intelligible characteristics or our characterization of it otherwise we don't we have no otherwise we can't be properly absolutizing if something is right merely because God commands it and if it's if it's rightness derives from it's being commanded but there's nothing about the commandment itself which is
intelligibly or intrinsically right, then we're relativizing, we're not absolutizing, but we're relativizing the very, you know, whatever property or characteristic we claim to be absolutizing. It's contradictory. So this is why, and because attributive characterization is in a way a function of consciousness's relationship to its object, it's the relationship between subject and object that is absolute, not the
object in itself. This is what Farback is saying here. And this is why, as he continues, you know, in number 12, to enrich God, man must become poor, that God may be all, man must be nothing. What man withdraws from himself, what he renounces in himself, he only enjoys in an incomparably higher and fuller measure in God. In other words, whatever we deny ourselves or, you know, anything, in a way whatever we execrate in ourselves must also must somehow be
elevated to the highest degree in God because in a way the gesture of you know of elevation something you know in order for something to be elevated something else must be denigrated and farback is simply kind of emphasizing the in the sociability of these two movements you know the movement of assent and decent so for an example what he's saying here is a for instance what man withdraws from himself so when man for instance when when man renounces his own sensual nature he's actually elevating it or absolutizing it in God.
Or when we say that our own intelligence is corrupt and imperfect, we immediately kind of say that God's intelligence is perfect and absolute. Or as he continues, man denies as to himself only what he attributes to God. And thus in reality, whatever religion consciously denies, always supposing that what is denied is by it, what is denied by it is something essential or true and consequently incapable of being ultimately denied, it unconsciously restores in God. whatever religion consciously denies it unconsciously restores in God
so the key to understanding this dynamic is the movement of externalization and estrangement And this is something, again, this is Hegelian vocabulary that Feuerbach is taking over here. Now, I think this is really important because I think to understand this is also to understand this is absolutely kind of fundamental for Marx. And this is something I think Marx's whole account of alienation is basically taken from Feuerbach. Its ultimate source is Hegel, but it's Feuerbach's characterization of this movement of externalization and estrangement,
which is really fundamental for Marx. so Horbach writes man and this is a mystery of religion projects his being into objectivity this is a movement of externalization or in Towsorum and then again makes himself an object to this projected image of himself thus converted into a subject he thinks of himself as an object to himself but as the object of an object of another being than himself now this it's important to emphasize the two moments here the moment of externalization so in a way the first moment is the moon you know man projecting his being into objectivity so man externalizes his own being you know his cognitive
capacities of his centuries or or intentional capacities into another object but then you know absolute eyes as these capacities in this in this foreign object and then subjects himself to this object so in other words the subject externalizes itself in an object okay but then absolutizes its own powers you know absolutizes its own power of externalization in this object so that this object becomes the true subject the true subject to which man is
in turn subjected he thinks of himself as an object to himself but as the object of an object, another being than himself. So in other words, God is simply the kind of the externalization of human attributes, but then humanity makes itself the object of this divine object thinking that it is a subject. And if you really, to understand this is to understand the way all of Marx is even, I think, in Capital, this is really kind of the crux of Marx's entire account of, he said
Marx will change the terms of the analysis because it won't be consciousness, but it will be human practice which is first you know which is externalized and then estranged from itself in the real abstractions of capital money commodity value etc etc so number 15 thus the religious man virtually retracts the nothingness of human activity by making his dispositions and actions an object to God by making man the end of God for that which is an object to the mind is an end in action by making the divine activity a means of human salvation no
okay this is this requires a this is a different point that's being made here Two things. One, Feuerbach is emphasizing the active nature of human consciousness. The movement of externalization is an activity, it's an active capacity. And this is why he emphasizes thinking, feeling and willing as active capacities. Now the point is that in religion, human activity is in the service of a transcendent end.
The point of human existence is it serves a divine end, it serves a transcendent or extrinsic end. This is what Feuerbach means when he says, the religious man virtually retracts the nothingness of human activity, the fact that all human activity is effectively worthless unless it's devoted to God, unless our actions are oriented towards God, they're rendered null and void. So in other words, we evaluate the worth of our activity by considering it from God's vantage point in other words we turn our
dispositions and actions into objects for God in other words man himself becomes an end by making man the end of God in other words we act in acting for God and orienting our activity towards God we have to objectify our actions for God we have to consider our actions as they would be judged by God but in doing this we reverse the relationship of priority and we make our own activity
God's purpose. The relationship of means and ends is inverted. It turns out that you know the whatever is excellent or virtuous in human activity can only be judged as you know from God's vantage point, from this transcendent vantage point but in doing so we make this human activity becomes an end in itself for God this is what Feuerbach means when he says that which is an object of the mind is an end in action so it's it's here it's God's judgment of our activities
which are which is an you know an object of the mind but this is the end of our action this is the ultimate purpose of all our activity and this once our actions if our actions are judged or divinely judged as virtuous then they are redeemed but this redemption is really you know man redeeming himself through a god or divinity which is simply the self externalization of man's own absolute judgment of the worth of his own activities. So this is why Feuerbach
writes, God acts that man may be good and happy. So in other words, we think that God is the end, everything we do is for God, but in fact, everything that God does is for man. act that man may be good and happy thus man while he's apparently humiliated to the lowest degree is in truth exalted to the highest in and through God man has in view himself alone it is true that man places the aim of his action in God but God has no other aim of action than the moral and eternal salvation of man thus man has in fact no other aim than himself the divine activity is not distinct from the human so in other words the divine activity which is creation of the nation of the the an estranged form of human activity which is
either the true tea loss of human activity is in fact the creation of the world and what we revere in God is in fact our own transcendent power to make the world. So in other words, this divine activity is in a way simply kind of the estranged form of generic human activity. So finally, Farback, so this is number 16, I'm just going read the section in bold here this means there you know for back rights at the necessary turning
point of history is therefore the open confession that the consciousness of God is nothing else in the consciousness of the species that man can and should race himself only above the limits of his individuality and not above the laws the positive essential conditions of his species that there is no other essence which man can think dream of imagine feel believe in wish for love and adore as the absolute then the essence of human nature itself so now this is important I mean obviously far back here thinks that he thinks in a way that he given speculative philosophy has
provided us with the cognitive resources to bring God down to the earth to realize that everything that we revered in in God is nothing but ourselves is nothing but our own power our own generic capacities and therefore the turning point of history is the realization is in a way the the kind of the de-alienation the realization that what we worship in God understood as absolute transcendence infinite power infinite creativity etc etc is nothing but our own infinite power okay and finally this is you know the final to the
final quotation from essence of Christianity is 17 for about Christ that's the work of self-conscious reason in relation to religion is simply to destroy an illusion but an illusion which is by no means indifferent but which on the contrary is profoundly injurious and its effects on mankind which deprives man as well of the power of real life as of the genuine sense of truth and virtue and ultimately we need only as we have shown invert the religious relations regard that as an end which religion supposes to be a means exalt that into the primary which in religion is subordinate the accessory into the condition at once we have destroyed the illusion and the unclouded light of
truth streams in upon us. So, you know, the absolute, you know, the means that we posited as relative to an absolute end are in fact the absolute end in itself. This is Farback's conclusion, but he thinks that this understanding this will entail, you know, is a revolutionary transformation at least at the level of cognitive consciousness. And in a way what Marx wants to do, he thinks is in a way to kind of go beyond Feuerbach
by showing how, you know, even Feuerbach himself has not gone far back. Huerbach has contained this radical revolutionary rupture within the medium of cognitive consciousness whereas Marx thinks it should be generalized to human being as such understood as practical activity or practice but this will become clear next week when we look at Marx's critique of fireback now just before so I'll just there's just two
more pages to go on the handout two and a half pages no we move this is in a way the coda to this discussion it's provided by firebacks principles of the philosophy of the future published two years later in 1843 now speculative transcendence then on Farback's account becomes is rendered imminent as the fusion of the centurists and the super centurists or the phenomenal and the numinal Farback writes at the opening of principles of philosophy of the future the task of the modern era was the realization and humanization of God, the transformation and dissolution of theology into anthropology.
The rational or theoretical assimilation and dissolution of the God who is otherworldly to religion and hence not given to it as an object is the speculative philosophy. So in other words, for far back, this speculative philosophy has not been fully consummated so long as it fails to consummate the rendering imminent of transcendence. or the fusion of these two domains which metaphysical philosophy had separated.
And what he wants, there's two aspects of this. One is that the first aspect is cognitive. that the absolute knowledge or divine knowledge is attainable for human beings. Human beings can know everything, but not as Hegel thought, simply through the medium of philosophy. And this is what the first aspect of Feuerbach's critique of Hegel, distance from Hegel. For Hegel, absolute knowledge is conceptual and unfolds in the medium of the concept.
Whereas for Feuerbach, absolute knowledge unfolds in the medium of sensuous existence. And to understand this, we have to understand his critique of Hegel, which I'll come to in a minute. But first of all, in number 20, Feuerbach in a way explains why he thinks once we realize, once we make this, once we carry out this revolutionary transformation in consciousness, we realize that absolute knowledge or divine knowledge is humanly attainable. So in number 20 he writes, theism, however, attributes to God not only speculative but also sensuous and empirical knowledge understood in its highest perfection.
Because remember, the gap between relative and absolute or between the intelligible and the sensible is nullified for God. So God not only kind of understands the generic or intelligible characteristics of entities, but also their sensuous, particular characteristics. Because God understands or knows everything as it is in itself. which means that he has knowledge of the centious and the empirical and not just of the supercentious and the transcendent. And Feuerbach continues,
Just as God's pre-worldly and object antecedent knowledge has found its realization, truth and reality in the a priori knowledge of speculative philosophy, which he means Hegelian philosophy, So too has the sensuous knowledge of God found its realization, truth, and reality in the empirical sciences of the modern era. The most perfect and hence divine sensuous knowledge is therefore nothing but the most sensuous of all knowledge, the knowledge of the tiniest minutiae and of the most inconspicuous details. God is omniscient, says Aquinas, because he knows even the most particular things. the knowledge that does not just indiscriminately put the hair on the human head together into a
tuft but counts and knows each one of its hair for hair but this divine knowledge which is only a matter of imagination and fantasy in theology becomes the rational and real knowledge of the natural sciences produced through the telescope and the microscope natural science has counted the stars in the sky, the ova and the spawn of fish and butterflies, and the dots on the winds of the insects in order to distinguish one from the other. So in other words, what he's saying is that the gap between both what is most universal and generic and what is most unique and particular must be brought together. This is what knowledge, so knowledge is both a priori and a posteriori, it's both transcendental
and empirical and both, you know, in a way the kind of the consequence of this de-estrangement, recognizing our own infinite cognitive capacities is to realize that we can begin to undertake the task, the realization of absolute knowing, which will be both empirical and transcendental. This knowledge and what it seems now of course he's saying now this is the obvious retort here is to say that this is like
another kind of theological fantasy. So Huich Feilbach responds that precisely because he's anthropologized theology he's saying that everything that we thought was divinely transcendent is in fact humanly transcendent at the level of the species because as he puts it in number 21 man's idea of God is the idea of the human individual of his own species God is a totality of all the realities and perfections is nothing other than the totality of the qualities of the species compendiously put together in him for the benefit of the limited individual but actually dispersed among men and realizing themselves in the course of world history. So in other words what is
what is transcendent at the individual level it will be imminent at the species level so this once again the gap between the empirical and the transcendental only pertains at the alienated individual level at the level of in evaluated individual consciousness but at the level of collective or generic human consciousness these two aspects are brought together as a collective accomplishments or something that must be collectively accomplishment realized by the species and in number 22 he writes the divine knowledge that each
particular that knows each particular thing simultaneously has its reality in the knowledge of the species okay just checking the time here it's 614 Right, so now I'm just going to briefly conclude by outlining Feuerbach's critique of Hegel. And this critique of Hegel entails a kind of an elevation of centrist reality, which is also decisive for Marx.
meaning that centristness has in this far back far back here and then subsequently Marxist register is precisely not empirical so what far back you know articulates is a non empirical understanding of centrist reality to understand this we have to understand this critique of hegel so this is number 23, Farbax writes, the identity of thinking and being, which is a central point in the philosophy of identity, by which he means Hegel here, is nothing other than a necessary consequence, an unfolding of the concept of God as the being whose concept or essence contains its existence.
Okay, that's the first point. So that, you know, infamously in Hegel, you know, the absolute concept is that which truly is or truly exists. The gap between essence and existence is transcended in the absolute concept. This is Hegel's absolute idealism. Now I'll read the second sentence in bold here on page 7. But a being that is not distinguished from thought, that is a being that is only a predicate or a determination of reason, or only a conceived and abstract being, is in truth no being at all.
The identity of thinking and being expresses, therefore, only the identity of thought with itself. This means that absolute thought is unable to cleave itself from itself, that it cannot step out of itself to be able to reach being. Being remains something of the beyond. Absolute philosophy has to be sure turn the world of philosophy, turn the world of theology into the world of the here and now for us. But for that matter, it has turned the decidedness of the real world into and over beyond. The thought of speculative or absolute philosophy determines being distinct from itself as the activity of mediation.
as that which is immediate, as that which is unmediated. For thought, at least for the thought which we are discussing, being is nothing more than this. Thought posits being as counterposed to itself, but still within itself. It thereby immediately and without difficulty eliminates the opposition between being and itself. For being, as the antithesis of thought within thought, is nothing itself but thought. But if being is nothing more than that which is unmediated, if unmediatedness alone constitutes its distinction from thought, how easy it is then to demonstrate that the determination of unmediatedness, namely being, belongs to thought as well. If the essence of being is constituted by what is merely a determination of thought,
how should being be distinguished from thought? So, first, so Feuerbach claims simply that, you know, Hegel's internalization of being to thought or his claim that thinking and being are one and indivisible, in a way presupposes, not take the in other words does not take the kind of the difference between being and thinking seriously enough but the problem is this the problem is how does one specify this difference or this distinction in being and thoughts
without in a way given you know Feuerbach's own critique of any attempt to kind of to absolutely segregate substance and attributes or the subject from the predicate in other words what is how can we possibly make sense of the reality of a being in its irreducibility to thought in a way without kind of, without absolutizing some conceptual determination, without absolutizing in a way thoughts own relationship to this allegedly transcendent being. This is the problem. And here, and so Feuerbach's, you know, the ensuing movement of Feuerbach's
critique is very interesting so now we go to number 24. If the, well he thinks actually that, yes, yes sorry. We might, we might. Hello? Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Do you want to have a five a break and yeah we're half of the half of the time okay sure yep so shall we say I mean okay I might watch it's 20 minutes past six yeah so shall we start back in 25 minutes past okay okay
Okay, does that sound okay? Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, okay, then yeah, I'll leave the speaker on, so just give me a shout whenever everyone's ready to continue. Okay. Okay. Okay, thanks. Thank you.
Okay, shall I continue? Yes. Yes. Okay, great. So, yeah. So, just to conclude, so really, so this is number, this is quotation number 24. really the penultimate quote on the on the handout so this is no really the crux of farbacks critique of Hegel so he writes if the reality of thoughts is reality as thought it is itself only thoughts and we are forever imprisoned in the identity of thought with itself and idealism an idealism that differs from subjective idealism only in so far as it encompasses the whole of reality
subsuming it under the predicates of thoughts hence should the reality of thought be a matter of real seriousness to us something other than thought must accrue to it it must as realized as realized thoughts be other than what it is as unrealized or pure thought the object not only of thought but also of non-thought that thought realizes itself means simply that it negates itself ceases to be mere thought now what is this non-thought this something different from thought it is the sensuous that thought realizes itself means accordingly that it makes itself the object of the senses thus the reality
of the idea of sense thus the reality of the idea is sensuousness but reality is also the truth of the idea and hence sensuousness is the truth of the idea but in this way we have at the same time made sensuousness the predicate and the idea or thought the subject. The only question is, why does the idea take on sensuousness? Why does it cease to be true when it is not real or sensuous? Is not its truth thus made dependent on sensuousness? Are not significance and value thus being conceded to the sensuous as such that is apart from its being the reality of the idea.
If taken by itself, sensuousness is nothing, why is it needed by the idea? And if value and content are bestowed upon sensuousness by the idea, sensuousness is pure luxury and trumpery, only an illusion which thought practices upon itself but it is not so the demand that the idea realize itself that it assumes sensuousness arises from the fact that sensuous reality is unconsciously held to be the truth which is both prior to and independent of thought thought proves its truth by by taking recourse to sensuousness.
How could this be possible if sensuousness was not unconsciously held to be the truth? But since one consciously proceeds from the truth of thought, the truth of sensuousness is acknowledged only in retrospect, whereby sensuousness is reduced merely to an attribute of the idea. But this is a contradiction, for sensuousness is an attribute, and yet it lends truth to thought, that is, it is both essential and inessential, both substance and accident. The only way out of this contradiction is to regard sensuous reality as its own subject, to give it an absolutely independent, divine and primary significance, and not one derived from the idea.
and ultimately Farback concludes taken in its reality or regarded as real the real is the object of the senses, the sensuous truth, reality and sensuousness are one and the same thing only a sensuous being is a true and real being only through the senses is an object given in a true sense and not through thought for itself the object given by and identical with ideation is merely thought. So I think, now this is, so what Feuerbach's argument here is simply this, is that the immediacy, you know, for Hegel thought or conceptualization is mediation
and the whatever is, you know, the opposite or whatever is juxtaposed as thoughts other, therefore you know can only be thought of as immediacy so so being would be immediacy but as Hegel famously points out in the opening of the logic you know pure or absolute immediacy is nothing at all being you know being as absolutely as absolute immediacy is indiscernible from nothing so being and nothing are vanishing into one another. It's a pure abstraction. And this is the starting point of Hegel's logic and Hegel's whole dialectical movement
which will internalize thought or internalize being to thought or render being entirely transparent or coextensive with thought. This is what Farback is trying to reject. So Farback is saying that there is more to being than it's simply being the merely abstract negation of thought. or there's more to being than abstract immediacy. And this is the reason why this move is necessary because if being and thoughts are intrinsically interdependent,
we must think being, but we must also acknowledge the being of thought or the reality of thought. And what Feuerbach is suggesting is that if we take thinking, if we take the reality of thinking seriously, in other words, if we don't simply conceive of thinking in a psychologistic register, which is obviously what the whole idealist tradition wants to do, it wants to say that thinking is not just psychological activity. thinking can't be confined to the limits of what's going on in the craniums of a certain kind of species of animal, then we must acknowledge its reality.
But its reality demands to be conceived or demands to be ratified independently of thinking conceived as mediation. So this is why he writes in 24, the reality of thought is reality as thought. In other words, if thought's only reality is its reality as, you know, as conceptualized, as transparent as thought, then this is still, you know, Farbeck is saying that this is still an abstract conception of thought, we're still not, we're still idealizing thought and not, you know, we kind of successfully or definitively de-psychologizing it.
In other words, we're not freeing the reality of thought from the set of predicates that are merely coextensive with thinking as currently conceived. So so he continues the reality of thought if you take the reality of thought seriously thinking this reality must be something other than you know must be such you know something other than thought but other than thought in a way which goes beyond the opposition between mediation and immediately it can't simply be other just thought as pure immediacy and as he puts it and this is again at 24 it must be realized thought it must be realized the difference between realized thoughts
an unrealized thought is the difference between thinking that is merely conceptually effectuated or thinking whose realization is still confined to the medium of of the conceptual and thinking that is realized beyond the conceptual and for far back this means in sensuous reality is that what is what is unthought okay in a way what is the the kind of the antithesis the non conceptual juxtaposition to thought in this sense is sensuous sensuality or sensuousness sent not not sensuality but
centuries centuries existence so other words that so this is why you know he says the demanded idea and in a way he says that Hegel must acknowledge this because Hegel himself says that so centuries means spatial temporal existence so here what far back is doing in a way is rehabilitating Kant's distinction between you know concepts and intuitions or between the conceptual sphere and the spatial temporal domain as non-conceptual but he's saying that there is you know non-conceptual reality is sensuous reality but this sensuous reality is the medium for the realization of thought it's the only
guarantee for the reality of thought that would not you know surreptitiously re-idealize thought or surreptitiously in a way you know nullify the reality of thought or the being of thought and hence the result is a conception of the centuries which is not which is not empirical okay in a way which I mean although Feuerbach doesn't use the term transcendental it's I mean he could use The sensuous in this regard is not simply that which is the object of perception or that which is empirically accessible to us.
It's the medium in which conceptualization is realized and it's not simply apparent for conceptual consciousness. Okay, I'm going to stop here because I've gone on, this has already gone on too long. So this is the crux of, or I take this to be the crux of Farback's critique of Hegel. He wants to rehabilitate the autonomy, so to speak, or the independence of sensuous reality, a way of but in a speculative register, okay, in a register which is just an empirical or
which is an empiricist. So when he's talking about a sensuous being or sensuous reality, he's not talking about, you know, things which we can sense or what is accessible to the senses, nor is he simply talking about sensuousness as kind of a form of intuition, as a manifold of intuition. What he's saying I think is centristness is something that is realized through human practical activity and this is absolutely decisive for Marx. I think that Marx's whole conception, Marx's conception of practical materialism, the claim that materialism is about the primacy of praxis, it hinges upon this Feuerbachian conception of
sensuousness in opposition to mere to the merely conception okay that's that's that's all i wanted to kind of say so i'll just stop here and we should have a discussion okay so let's um i mean i'm happy to you know answer you know any questions that anyone may have I'm echoing.
I don't want to keep tight. If you put headphones in, it should work out. Or if you don't have headphones, you just need it yourself. For the moment. Okay, I'll find some. I think maybe if you move the question, then or you could just type the question in the sidebar. I think it would be better if we mute the question.
Okay, so Rachel has just asked, why does Feuerbach emphasize thinking, feeling, and willing, if it is to be sensuous reality as it explains this? Okay, good question. But in a way what he's saying, if these are conceived as activities, what he's saying is that precisely in so far as they are active, they are sensuously realized. In other words, that their active nature is sensuous. So in a way what he's saying is that thinking, feeling and willing are the fundamental kind
of powers of human consciousness are sensuously realized and in a way that so that thinking is not something that goes on they're not sick you know the to think to feel and to will is to act in sensuous reality in other words they are concretely or sensuously realized that is their reality or their being so in a way so the sensuous is the medium of actuality I think for far back so this is why he's saying that thinking is not something you know obviously consciousness in this sense is encompasses more than it's the encompasses all facets of human
being and of human activity which is why human beings are sensuous beings and in a way and the reality of their consciousness is sensuously ratified it's because thinking feeling and willing manifest themselves in sensuous spatial temporal reality that they are real so i think that's what he's saying
Hey, Rachel. Can you speak? Hey. If Rochelle's not asking her question, I'll ask one. Can you hear me? Yeah, yeah. So I'm curious to hear more about this elision between the Kantian manifold of intuition
and human practice. So it's like... I guess my question is, so for Feuerbach as opposed to for Kant, like this notion of the sensible, like it's still something that's still posited by consciousness kind of, or like, or something that can be transformed to a more radical degree than it could be for Kant? Or like, I'm kind of curious how this really escapes Hegel without while kind of retaining the dynamism, I guess, of the dialectic.
Okay. Another very important question. Okay, yeah, so this is... Now, it's clearly... So I think, as I understand him, Farback must insist that sensuous reality is precisely not simply kind of, it's certainly not posited by consciousness. And in a way, he's going to insist, and he can't be Kant, and he can't simply be a form of intuition. In other words, because remember, for Kant, you know, sensibility is a faculty, is a kind of a faculty of the subject through which we are affected by, you know,
the uh you know what is the thing in itself basically um so far back wants to de subjective you know de subjectivize the centuries but then he has to do it's a tricky maneuver he has to do it without being he can't simply be a kind of uh you know what centristness is can't be confined to the level of sensation, so to speak. So what the reality of the sensuous is not merely coextensive with, you know, our sensory modalities.
and I think no and I think this is the limits of his critique because in a way he he has a problem here in that in order the more he tries to say about in you know in what sense sensuousness is both you know irreducible to the concept to mere conceptual determination, but also not simply coextensive with that which is subjectively or empirically apprehended. In other words, he wants to insist that it's not conceptual, but it's not empirical either.
In a way, the more determinations he attributes to it, I think the more he risks opening, the Hegelian rejoinder will come immediately. In a way, I mean, I guess what he's trying to say is, it's a very intriguing argument. I mean, he wants to say that, in a way, I think that what he's saying is that because thinking is, you know, an activity, and because in a way it's always about it's a transit of activity that is always kind of object oriented in this kind of hegelian sense um it's it's about something there's always a kind of
an object of consciousness um this In a way, the fact, I think he's saying or suggesting that this transcendence of self-consciousness, its exteriorization, must unfold, implies a medium which is itself non-conceptual. So I think the distinction here is between consciousness and conceptualization.
So remember, Farback talks about consciousness, but he doesn't take consciousness to be conceptual consciousness. So when he talks about thinking, feeling, and willing, for him these are not modes of conceptualization. So I think what he's saying is that consciousness is sensuous. So I think the maneuver will be to say that sensuousness is the medium of consciousness, and it's the medium in which thinking, feeling and willing unfold and therefore conceptualization, you know, which is the kind of the mode of activity kind of commensurate with thinking, with cognitive, with the cognitive aspect of consciousness, is simply must always be kind of
sensuously enveloped so that whatever reality thinking has or conceptualization has, it must kind of unfold in the domain of the centuries, which he thinks is the world, the spatial temporal reality. But in a way, he thinks that any characterization, any conceptual characterization of the centuries immediately fragments it and reincorporates it into the dimension of thinking. So in a way, this is what he wants to say, that there is more to sensuous reality
that can be explicitly conceptualized at any phase of our cognitive evolution. Well, I think that's what he wants to say. How far does he go in attempting to establish a determinate concept? of the sensuous sorry he so this is in the principles for a philosophy of the future as far as I know as far as I know he doesn't go much further he goes on he carries on a few pages this is towards the end of the book but no he doesn't go
further kind of characterization of the centrist. So in a way, what I'm saying I'm trying to reconstruct what his response would be to these Hegelian rejoinders. No, he doesn't say anything else about it. He just talks about the centrist. And I think it's unfortunate that he doesn't kind of go further because it's clear that he has to say two things. What is that what sensuous reality can't be, of course, it can be conceptually characterized, but that doesn't mean that, you know, that doesn't imply that this conceptual characterization
can exhaust its actuality or its reality. In other words, he will say that whatever reality the conceptual characterization of the sensuous has depends on the transcendence of the sensuous vis-a-vis this conceptual characterization. And in a way, this is why he's going to tie it to consciousness he's going to see because for consciousness for far back is activity is this this process of exteriorization and I think that you know in a way that sensuousness is you
know unlike no for Hegel spirit externalizes itself in space and time but space and time are exhaustively kind of conceptualizable there's no there's no non conceptual residue to spatial temporal reality whereas for Feuerbach the reality of the sensuous always exceeds any determinants conceptual characterization he's not saying it's unconceptualizable but he's saying it's anyway he's saying it's the medium of conceptualization as such and here this is a move that lots of these German philosophers are making at the same they're saying there's something it's it's the untruth what Schelling sometimes calls the on pre thinkable I mean I think there's a connection here it's
that which is always already in effect before you can think you know or you know or do anything so but no but he doesn't know I'm not for an expert on far back but certainly in that book neither in the essence of Christianity nor in principles for a philosophy of the future does he go further with this this kind of this caught this notion of the centuries okay there's is that a kind of satisfactory or for the time being yeah it is thank you thank you okay so there's a question from Matthew so I'll read
the question I'm curious about the relationship between four back and Hegel because of empirical contradictions between political and religious thinking slash life Hegel argues that the history of progress is self-realization term for back picks up on but doesn't this contradict the lack of freedom in political and religious life. By this, okay, you mean that the history of progress is self-realization? How is this compatible with the lack of freedom in political and religious life? Well, this is a complicated question. I mean, okay, so on one hand, Hegel's
critics say that he simply that his claim that you know the real is rational the rational is real saying that you know all the freedom that we want or need is available you know is it is realized in and through the institutions of you know you know who was Russell society and nor the Prussian state okay So that the individual freedom is, you know, in a way realized in and through the states. I mean, it's a simplification, but I mean, I guess that's the basic gist of it. So Hegel would say what, you know, any other conception of freedom is a mere abstraction. And now, of course, I mean, things here get, you know, I mean,
Hegel can be read as a conservative or as a radical. So either he'll say that freedom can only be realized in and through civil society and the states, or it's possible that this kind of realization of freedom demands the transformation of these institutions. To be honest, I think that's ambiguous in Hegel himself. Marx certainly reads Hegel as being conservative and providing an alibi for reaction.
But Marx then doesn't think that the, well it's, the problem can't simply be, the deficiencies in Hegel's accounts can simply be developed by focusing on freedom, considered an abstraction I think. So I'm not really answering the question, I mean, it's a very complicated question that I can't answer very properly. I'll read, I mean, the follow-up is, Matthew's follow-up is, Marx's critique of Hegel's dialectic is too mysterious, the demystification which dialectic suffers, the mystification which
dialectic suffers in Hegel's hand by no means prevents him from being the first to present a general form of working in a conscious and comprehensive manner. Can you comment on this? Well, yeah, I mean, so Marx famously, although he rejects what he takes to be Hegel's idealism, but thinks that Hegel's Hegelian dialectics is this conceptual treasure trove, or this is this kind of, has potentially revolutionary implications. And there's a lot later on in the course actually when we look at Althusser, we'll see Althusser's whole kind of critique of Hegelian Marxism is the claim that when Marx talks about in
the introduction to Campbell, when Marx talks about the kind of, you know, the rational kernel in the mystical shell, the claim that the dialectic is the rational kernel that is enveloped in the mystical shell of Hegel's absolute idealism and that you know historical materialism merely kind of turns the dialectic the right way up well there's a lot to say about how this metaphor of inversion and envelopment is to be understood so in other words the mystification and for the young Marx or for the early Marx the Hegelian
mystification is to attributes a moving force to concepts or to ideas the claim that history or that the absolute concept is the moving force in human history and that all human social formations are manifestations of this of spirits which is rational self-consciousness which is itself kind of which has a conceptual structure is ultimately conceptually intelligible so for Marx the mystification is to to believe that these you know that either consciousness or concepts are the ultimately
determining factors in social reality. But then, so he wants to emphasize human practical activity and say that consciousness, conceptualization are merely, are themselves determined by human practical activity. And the consciousness is merely the kind of, the understanding of the world in consciousness is merely the inverted image of what is actually going on in material reality, in reality as practically determined. So that's what he means. But this, as we'll see later on, it becomes much more complicated by the time Marx is
writing the first volume of Capital. Because in Capital, so famously in letters to Engels, he's saying that re-reading his method for writing capital is inspired by Hegel's greater logic. And we'll see that scholars have puzzled over in what way Hegel's logic could have provided the methodological paradigm for Marx's Capital. and it's quite complicated and not at all obvious. So in a way Marx does maintain, Marx remains a dialectical thinker.
So he believes that dialectics is not necessarily tied to idealism. He thinks so. Marx himself never uses the term dialectical materialism, but in a way there's a materialist dialectics in Marx, but what materiality for Marx means practice, means sensuous practical activity. So the first step in Marx's kind of materialist critique of Hegel is provided by Feuerbach's notion of the sensuous, the primacy of the sensuous over the merely intelligible. But
there's a problem here, I think. It's not clear, certainly Feuerbach doesn't think that sensuousness is dialectically articulated. So then the problem is, what does it mean if one is to be machinist to affirm the primacy of the sensuous in this far back in sense over the merely conceptual then where does dialectics fit because you know famously you know hegelian dialectics is all about conceptual determination it's all about determinate negation and it's all about the the negation of conceptual determinations by further conceptual determination. So in a way the labor of the negative for Hegel is internal to the concept,
whereas in Marx there's a, you know, it seems that kind of these dialectical dynamics or these dialectical determinations unfold outside the concept in the domain of the sentius. and or but that's a very peculiar thing to say that was just not clear how one can be a materialist or I mean at this stage it's not at all clear how one can be how one can affirm the irreducibility of the centuries to the conceptual and maintain the methodological primacy of dialectics in other words why is if reality is irreducible to the concept and if it's sensuousness is non-conceptual
then how is it dialectically intelligible can dialectics simply be kind of transplanted from the conceptual domain to the central domain that's a real problem I think I think Marx has an answer but it's a complicated answer Hi. Can you hear me? Yes. Yes. Okay. I have a phone app right now. I've got a problem. I can't see if there's a queue. I just can't see the texts. should I just ask the question
yeah you can just ask the question okay cool so um at the beginning actually I have two questions I'll just go with the first one though for now and when when you began you said that without having a proper philosophical understanding the foundations of Marx's thought people often inadvertently re philosophize Marx and I'm just curious to hear what are some examples of how this plays out in the scholarship Hey Ray, can you unmute yourself?
I'm trying to unmute yourself. Hello? Hello? Can you hear me? Hello? Yep. Okay. So, in response to this question, so for instance, the question of materialism, in what sense is Marx a materialist. And if materialism is to be understood, if the materiality is linked to this Feuerbachian notion of the sensuous, which we've just discussed, well clearly in order to understand, this is a notion of the sensuous, which is kind of, it's not empirical. And in order to, it's a very kind of, peculiar kind of conception. So in order to understand in what sense Marx is a materialist
and the contrast between contemplative or philosophical materialism which he's criticizing and what he calls practical materialism, we have to understand the link between practice and sensuality. Because sensuality is the medium of practical activity. But then it It seems that without an understanding of Feuerbach, what Marx means by sensuous becomes completely confusing. You come across some readings of Marx where they think that it's obvious what sensuous means, it just means what we can see, feel and touch with our senses. But I don't think that's what Marx means by the sensuous.
And as I'll suggest, I think that precisely by the time he writes capital, the domain of the sentuous is actually imperceptible, where it's the domain of consciousness which is perceptible and the domain of the sentuous which is imperceptible. Because the whole point about materiality in Marx's sense is that you can't point to it. you can't point to a mode of production you can't point to the value form or to the exchange abstraction but these are the ultimate material determinants of social reality as uncovered by his theory so can I say yes yes talking about
Marx it is something that he claimed also in his early minstrels talking about the sensual nature of human materiality when he said that humans feel in a collective way that means that people oh the way people feel touch and and experience the word is determined by their social being. So in his early manuscripts, he already has the idea that sensuousness is not only an individual thing, but it's something that is mediated through interaction
with other people and the context in which other people operate. Can you unmute yourself? Yes, but then to understand this kind of this social dimension, the social dimension of human being, of human experience is again sociality in Marx's sense, I think, is not, it's tied to, you know, conditions of production, conditions of production and reproduction, which he's trying to elaborate.
And once again, production is sensuous, unfolds in the domain of sensuous reality. It's precisely transcends the facets of centrist reality which are individually accessible. So the reality of social production is centrist, but that very kind of dimension of centristness is not individually perceptible. You don't access it or experience it at the individual level. So I agree with what you just said, but in a way what I'm...
In Feuerbach, in a way I suggested that the sense of the domain of sense is the element of consciousness. the medium of thinking, willing, and feeling. But I think that what Marx wants to do, or his kind of critique of far back, is to say that in fact, sensuousness is not the medium of consciousness, but of practice, of practical activity, most of which is in a way unconscious for us because it's not because we often don't know what it is we are thinking what it is we are doing when we think feel and will.
And in a way, so I think that there's a kind of a direction between the sensuous reality of practical productive activity and our conscious apprehension of that activity, which I think is for him necessarily distorted by ideology. So, in other words, there's an appearance-reality distinction in Marx, a really radical appearance-reality distinction. I think it's the distinction between the reality of practice, the sensuous reality of practice, and in a way the kind of, you know, the ideological representation of that practice, or subsequent apprehension, conceptual apprehension of that practice.
and I understand that it's being shared or that we will get our hands on it. But I was curious if you could spend a little bit of time just talking about its structure and your kind of rationale for the readings that you've brought in. I know you mentioned that there is, for instance, L3SER. I'm just curious about who else is on there and kind of what your approach was to setting up the syllabus. And I muted you, so you'll have to unmute it. Yeah, sure. Okay, let me see if I can get the syllabus up here. Is there any way in which last year, I think there was a way, and I apologize for my limited technical understanding,
but I think there was a way of making documents accessible like on the Hangouts, on the Hangout screen to everyone. Does anyone know how to do this? If you place it in the classroom, people can be able to download it. Or if you just wanna, you could screen share or I've just sent it in the sidebar. I'm just going to send, I'll put a link that people will be able to check on it because I don't think that will be. Okay.
People should be able to check that syllabus now. Oh, Ray, you're muted. Yeah, we've got four weeks on Marx. We're just on Feuerbach. Then the next four sessions will be on Marx. Next week will be the thesis on Feuerbach and the German ideology. The following week, which is week three, will be on the economic and philosophical manuscripts,
Grundrisse and the Preface to Kritika political economy. I mean that's a lot but you know unfortunately we have to kind of try to move quite fast but I'll prepare handouts for all these sessions and in week four we're doing then we start on Capital Volume 1 in week four and then we continue with Capital Volume one in week five and then the final three weeks are we look at the secondary secondary readings on week six we look at Lucas reification in the consciousness of the proletariat in week seven we'll do our to their contradiction over determination and you know his contribution to reading capital and then
And finally in week eight we'll look at two papers from the edited collection on Hegel's logic and Marx's capital edited by Tony Smith. And we'll look at Smith's Hegel, Marx and the Comprehension of Capitalism and Chris Arthur's Marx, Hegel and the Value Forum. All the readings I've uploaded onto Dropbox and I will share the link. I think I've got everyone's email so I'll share the link to the Dropbox folder containing all the readings with everyone so that everyone has access.
anyone and yes and basically yeah the primary text are we're looking all the the excerpts from Marx are in Karl Marx selected writings edited by David McClellan the second edition from 2000 published by Oxford University Press except for the German ideology which will use a separate edition because we're there's passages which are not included in the McClellan volume which I want to include in a discussion and then yeah yeah all the other readings are in all the Mark's readings are in the McClellan and the secondary texts are all available
PDFs or as ebooks actually in in the Dropbox folder any any questions any about the structure of the syllabus Um, sort of look at how each of these greetings relate to people's conceptions of the early humanistic marks in relation to like the metascientific marks and like material marks and stuff like that. Oh, you've been muted, I think. Yeah.
Yeah. Yes. I mean, what humanism, I mean, look, so Althusser, for instance, famously kind of insists that, you know, Marx is, you know, by the time he's writing Capital, still Marx has rejected his early kind of Feuerbachian slash Hegelian humanism. That's a controversial claim which I'm kind of skeptical of. But we'll see, I mean, with Lukács we'll have a very Hegelian interpretation of Marx, with Althusser we have a very anti-Hegelian interpretation so understanding you know in a way that what's at stake in these
kind of hegelian and anti-hegelian interpretations is important but also you know what what people mean by humanism I think needs to be kind of carefully scrutinized because I think there's a lot of confusion about what humanism is and what it actually entails and also as far as you know the scientificity of Marx's later texts. Well, you know, Althusser interprets this scientificity in terms of what he calls structuralism, but I think this alleged, look, like other, in a way, it's not, Marx uses the German term Wissenschaft, okay, for science, that's the
of the term for science isn't shot but in in when marx is talking about science in this sense i mean business shaft is also the term used by you know philosophers like fichte and hegel to describe their own systems in a way so um the sense in which you know know, Marx's historical materialism, as kind of outlined in capitalism, is scientific, is itself complicated because it's certainly not scientific in the sense of natural science. So Marx is, you know, he doesn't see himself as a natural scientist. And whatever the science
of history is, it's not a science that is modeled on the natural, kind of, mathematized natural science. But then in what sense is it a science? And in what sense is it a science as opposed to a kind of a philosophical speculation? Because in a way, the systematicity of Marx's analysis in capital, you know, has a kind of Hegelian structure, when he famously insists that his method is inspired by Hegel. So in a way, there's a sense in which scientificity can be understood to just mean conceptual systematicity, but that kind of systematicity has long been espoused by philosophers. And
it goes beyond this ideal of me this abstract conception of systematicity what is it what is scientific about this method and what's that's one of the questions that we have to ask and notoriously anti-marxists you know are you know and always enthusiastically ridiculing the claim that you know anything that can be anything dialectical could possibly be scientific so these are so we will be you know I hope that by the end of the course will have gained some traction upon these issues but these are complicated issues and I think no I think the contrast between no scientific and
philosophical or between the humanist and the anti-humanist is you know I think we need to be careful you can't simply take these kind of contrast for granted they're kind of they're ideologically over determined by certain kind of theoretical conjunctures I'll choose there's diatribes against humanism are often kind of polemics against the French Communist Party against its Stalinism that's often what he means by humanism so again you know it's you have to be clear about you know what these terms mean and sciences scientificity is another term but I can I propose yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes
read them read them maybe command them on that election unless I'm sorry yes Yes, I mean, well, except, well, because, take a look at them, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Because Marx meant science in a way that is not just systematicity. Okay. And he wasn't trusting actual science. Sure, but in what sense is mathematicsisation kind of, is that the only sense of scientificity beyond?
No, of course. Because there's no mathematics in capital. There's no mathematics in capital. I mean there's no kind of, you know, the rudimentary equations hardly count as kind of, it's not mathematical formalisation. It's not a kind of mathematics that would impress any mathematician. Yeah, yeah. Could I intervene here? Yeah, sorry, sorry. Could be what you're trying to get at is... So Mabod Poli talks about this in his book Continuity and Rupture and his notion of scientific
is something that develops more and changes over time in relation to new studies, research new information that comes into the system. Is this what you're trying to say is Marx's understanding of the scientific? Yes, first of all, even within the philosophy of science, what attempts to characterize science or to define scientificity in terms of a method have all failed and so it's very difficult to pin down what exactly kind of is constitutive of
scientific thinking or scientific theorizing. I mean there are basic, a few kind of broad kind of family resemblance characteristics. So yes, I mean I think all I want to say is that basically I think often Marx is using the term polemically as opposed to in other words he thinks that you know kind of philosophy a certain kind of philosophy is kind of has become redundant and in fact it's not just redundant if you know kind of philosophy is kind of has assumed a kind of reactionary function so I think that when it is often the kind of part of what's at stake in the
contrast between the scientificity that he exposes or proclaims for his own thinking and the philosophy that he kind of disparages is that you know he thinks that philosophy is just a kind of reaction in ideology and science is actually trying to penetrate to a reality behind appearances which can't simply be conceptually grasped. it's all the importance that you can't just you know you can't understand how
the world works or what is going on or what what you know the structure of social reality through a kind of series of deductions and inferences so I think that's and this and although Marx is not an empiricist but obviously he drew on empirical data in an extraordinary kind of fruitful way. So I think that the relationship between... so yes, I'm saying that the sense in which Marx exposes scientificity is kind of complicated. I think there's not just one sense in which he sees himself as a scientist as opposed to kind of a philosopher. And no, I think he takes mathematics very seriously
and I think I mean I haven't read his mathematical notebooks and I'm sure you know I'm not sure they're incredibly important significant and I'm happy to you know to well to bring them in but I need to or actually if anyone has any suggestions for specific passages or segments from them which would be really important I'd be happy to you know to add them to the syllabus or the reading but right now it's just you know yeah right now because I don't know them I'm not in a position to kind of say you know which which parts of them are most relevant okay I think stop stop okay
Okay. Do you have Matthew's email? Let me just quickly check. No, I don't see it on the list on the previous, the email that just went out. I've got the emails for William, Meredith, Artem, Bruce, David, Rachel, Jean Paul, John, and Victor. But I don't have Matthew's email. Okay, can I post it on the chat?
Sure, yes. Okay. Okay. Okay, I'm just going to copy it. Great, thanks. So Matthew, should I send, is this for the copy of the syllabus or is this about the marks, the mathematical notebooks issue? Can you remind me? It's just for the syllabus. Just for the syllabus, okay. I'll just send it to him right now then. Okay. Okay.