Theses on Feuerbach

A work by Marx criticizing the old-materialist point of view of Feuerbach and others and elaborating on the new world outlook of dialectical materialism. Written in the spring of 1845, unpublished in Marx’s lifetime, first published in 1888 as an appendix to Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy under the title Marx on Feuerbach. The Chinese version was first published in 1929 in the book Religion, Philosophy and Socialism translated by Lin Chaozhen, published by Shanghai Hubin Bookstore.

In his early years, Marx was deeply influenced by Hegelian philosophy, and later turned to materialism under the influence of Feuerbach. But Marx was not satisfied with Feuerbach’s anthropological materialism, which disregards social practice, talks abstractly about the essence of man and the sermon of “love” and held certain reservations towards it. In the process of founding a new world outlook, in order to draw a clear line with Feuerbach’s old materialism and elaborate his new materialism, Marx wrote these eleven theses criticizing Feuerbach in Brussels in the spring of 1845.

In the Theses on Feuerbach, Marx used the standpoint of practice to criticize the passive contemplation and the idealist conception of history of all the old materialists represented by Feuerbach, elaborated a series of fundamental viewpoints of historical materialism, and indicated the fundamental aim and task of Marxist philosophy of changing the world. The fundamental viewpoints in the article are as follows:

First, it criticized the shortcomings of the old materialism which neglects practice and put forth the materialist conception of practice. Marx recognized the passivity of old materialism and its defects, and held that the most fundamental defect of the old materialism was the contemplative understanding of all objects, pointing out that Feuerbach “does not grasp the significance of ‘revolutionary’, of ‘practical-critical’ activity”, thus he does not conceive human activity itself as “objective activity”. On this basis, Marx emphasized that practice is the unity of agency and passivity, subjective and objective, established a complete conception of practice, and found the theoretical starting point for new materialism; further basing himself on the conception of practice, Marx criticized the contemplative theory of reflection, expounded the theory of dynamic reflection, and pointed out that human knowledge is a dynamic construction of the object by man as the subject, and a process of development from sensuousness to reason, from reason to practice, and from phenomenon to essence, repeating itself in endless cycles; Marx also emphasized that practice is the sole criterion for testing the truth, and held that the objective truth of human thinking was fundamentally a practical question rather than a simple theoretical question. Not only does the truth of human thinking need to be proved in practice, but also whether truth can be attributed to a certain theory can only be tested by social practice.

Second, Marx expounded a series of fundamental ideas of historical materialism from the standpoint of practice, i.e., the Marxist conception of practice. Marx held that “the coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice.” He pointed to the significance of the practice of interaction of man with his circumstances, emphasizing that human practice not only changes the circumstances but also changes mankind itself in the process of changing the circumstances. Marx emphasized the social nature of human essence and the practical essence of social life. In response to Feuerbach’s mistaken view that man is an abstract, isolated and natural individual, he emphasized that “the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual, and in its reality, it is the ensemble of the social relations.” He highlighted the social, concrete and historical nature of human essence. He pointed out that “all social life is essentially practical”, and emphasized to conceive Man, his nature, and social life itself from practice. Marx believed that Feuerbach failed to expose the social roots of religion—the class contradiction and class oppression in the real society, pointing out the role of practice in changing the secular basis of the religious world, and emphasized that religion would come to an end only if the social contradictions, on which it rested were eliminated through revolutionary practice.

Third, he emphasized that his new philosophy was fundamentally different from the previous philosophies and named it “new materialism”. Marx held that previous philosophers, including Feuerbach, were “contemplative materialists” who only emphasized different ways of interpreting the world, while it was the fundamental task of philosophy to change the world. He pointed out: “The highest point reached by contemplative materialism, that is, materialism which does not comprehend sensuousness as practical activity, is contemplation of single individuals and of civil society.” “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.” Marx further pointed out that his philosophy was a new materialism that was grounded in human society or humanity in society, and that it was fundamentally different from the old materialism that was grounded in civil society. In this thesis, Marx not only drew a clear line with the old materialism, but also constructed his new dialectical-materialist world outlook.

The Theses on Feuerbach is brief, concise, rich in content and profound in thought, and for the first time, it established the standpoint of practice, initially completed the critique and synthesis of idealism and old materialism, and solved the basic question of the conception of history, which prepared Marx and Engels to further penetrate the standpoint of practice into the conception of history and found historical materialism in The German Ideology. Engels evaluated it as “invaluable as the first document in which is deposited the brilliant germ of the new world outlook” and as the origin of historical materialism, which, together with The German Ideology, is recognized by the academic community as the hallmark of the formation of Marxist philosophy.