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György Markus

Marx’s Earliest Epistemology

 

In his first work, the doctoral dissertation on the difference between the natural philosophy of Democritus and that of Epicurus, the influence of Hegel on the epistemological viewpoint of Marx is still strongly perceptible. The sole instrument to Marx for the correct cognition of reality is philosophy, which is “genuine knowledge”, in contrast not only to sensation and ordinary consciousness but also to the empirical and experimental sciences of nature. These latter presuppose something transcendental to be distinguished from human consciousness, and their purpose is merely to drive the manifold of sensuous truth from simple and general hypotheses. For these reasons, science does not maintain a consistent opposition to religion, which in its most complete form, in Christianity, is nothing else than the “completed philosophy of transcendence”. On the other hand, the method of natural science, resting upon real possibilities, the method of logical formulation, has a one-sided character shaped by the understanding. While this method establishes for each individual phenomenon the cycle of causes, conditions, etc., which underlie its existence, it mutilates the universal and singular life of nature. In contrast, philosophy is the negation of all transcendence. Its object is Mind, i.e., self-consciousness. For just this reason, philosophy no longer presupposes that the categories are the specifications of some reality, some object outside thought; it considers these categories in their entirety, in their transition and movement, as an independent substance and as its proper objects “Ordinary thinking always has abstract categories ready which separate it from existence. All philosophers have made the categories themselves into existing things”.

Mind (self-consciousness) which reveals itself to be the genuine object of philosophy is not the empirical, individual self-consciousness, which is unable to penetrate nature as a whole, which can only abstract from it, and which denies it any independently existing objective reality. This Mind is the concrete universal, the self-forming and developing historical self-consciousness of mankind, which while disclosing itself in nature does not distort nature, because according to its essence it represents nothing but the final product and emergence into consciousness of the forces that are active in nature, and these forces are of a mental character. Thus philosophical knowledge is at the same time knowledge of nature taken as an object. “When we recognize nature to be rational, its independence ceases. It no longer alarms our consciousness, and indeed Epicurus makes the form of consciousness in its immediacy, in its conscious realization, the for-itself in the form of nature. Only when nature is entirely detached from conscious reason, as reason is observed in nature itself, is nature entirely the possession of reason. Any relation to nature as such is at the same time an alienation of reason”.

The role of philosophy, however, is not exhausted in its passive task of bringing things to consciousness. If the object of philosophy is self-consciousness, philosophy can say no more about it than what it is; self-consciousness can in theory (post festum) appear only as it has been realized at a given historical stage in real life, in the morality, customs, law, the state, etc., of the people. The philosophic system’s “relation to the world is a relation of reflection”. In this manner Marx in his short sketches on the history of Greek philosophy takes pains to reveal the connection between Greek social and political life and philosophy. The development of the philosophy of any era, therefore, means the effort to grasp the Zeitgeist in its totality, with the final purpose of realizing “World-Philosophy”, which embraces all problems of the time and unites “abstract principles into a unified whole”. Thus the active, creative role of philosophy can be explained. In “World Philosophy” the Zeitgeist has found itself, its complete and free expression as theoretical reason would then be realized per se, it stands in contrast to the world itself in which the same self-consciousness is incorporated and transformed into substance. Being cannot realize itself without contradiction, but only in alienated form. The phenomenon, the immediate existence, contradicts the essence, the interior, rational contents. For philosophy, therefore, the world appears as false, and thus it becomes itself practical energy which turns itself against this same false world. To the degree, however, to which this practical philosophy, philosophical criticism, realizes itself, the fact must become clear to it that the limits and contradictions which it thinks it finds in opposing reality are the limits and contradictions of its own intellectual content. As it realizes its principles in this fashion, it frees itself as well as the world from these principles, and prepares a new era for the development of self-consciousness. Only then is philosophy in general and life according to “World Philosophy” possible„

“It is a psychological law that theoretic Mind, when it becomes free in itself, turns to practical energy; emerging as will from the shadow-realm of Amenthes, it turns against the worldly reality which exists outside it ... But the activity of philosophy is itself theoretical. It is Critique which measures individual existence against essence, particular reality against the Idea ... Inspired by the drive to realize itself it comes into tension with the Other. The inner self-contentment and symmetry is broken. What was inner illumination becomes consuming flame which directs itself outward. Thus it results that the process in which the world becomes philosophy is also the process in which philosophy becomes the world, that its realization is also its loss, that what it gains outwardly becomes its inner loss, that in this struggle it suffers the defects against which it is struggling, and that it overcomes these defects only when it falls into them. What resists it and what it fights is always the same thing, only in an inverted form”. Marx

In this interaction and unity of the passively reflecting and the actively forming, of the theoretical and the practical, of the absolute and the historically relative, the theoretical moment is decisive, not only because it appears in every practical activity, but also in consequence of the application of the Hegelian teleology of the concept, which is profoundly radicalized in its social content. The immanent goal of historical development is the complete transformation of substance into the subject, the exchange of all the supposedly naturally emerging specifications and limits of the individual with conscious self-determination. The perspective of this goal makes possible the elimination of all historically and nationally limited knowledge and offers opportunities for judging at the level of the “realm of reason”.

The liquidation of this conception and its radical, materialistic elimination do not proceed upon the level of abstract philosophical speculation, but are the product of the pitiless analysis by Marx of practical-political experiences. (Of course, certain theoretical influences, especially the significance of Feuerbach’s influence, are certainly not to be underestimated.) During his Rheinische Zeitung days, Marx’s political illusions were shattered. The young Marx had presupposed that only in the state do the material components become living members of the spiritual whole, and that only in the state is the social totality constituted, participation in the life of the social totality making the human being human. In terms of the problems of economic life, only certain restrictions on private property through political channels interested him. (With such measures he thought he could avoid rigid social classes.) For this reason the essence of his social programme consisted in radical, Jacobin-revolutionary transformation and democratizing the state.

But during his journalistic activity, during his immediate contact with social reality, the much more intricate interdependence of politics and economics, the domination of economic phenomena over political ones became clear to him. At this time he grasped the problem of the “poor classes”, which “in the conscious structuring of the state had so far found no suitably important position”. When, therefore, in the Spring of 1844 he fell into a politico-philosophical crisis, he returned with his characteristic self-criticisms to the investigation of his premises, to a critical analysis of the Hegelian philosophy and especially of its theory of the state in his manuscript, Toward a Critique of the Hegelian Philosophy of Right. In the light of his newly acquired revolutionary conviction, which, although still in a generalized form, demanded besides political reconstruction also the transformation of bourgeois society, as well as the destruction of the alienated private character of its spheres as the precondition of any democratic reform. Marx now criticized the Hegelian conception of society, and further, Hegelian idealism and its dialectic in general. All this was made possible by the view that, as the producer of historical progress, there emerges for man no longer just intellectual-critical activity directed towards political life but revolutionary practice transforming the material conditions of life.

Accordingly, his attitude towards speculative-philosophical knowledge is also revised. In his dissertation Marx viewed this knowledge, precisely because of its critical character, as “genuine cognition”. Insofar as philosophy transforms the specifications ascribed by ordinary thought to external objects, the categories into independently existing things, and regards these according to their essential place and role in the evolution of self-consciousness, i.e. grasps their “concept”, philosophy offers a critical yardstick by which it is henceforth objectively possible to measure individual things as appearances of these specifications of self-consciousness; philosophy makes it possible critically to contrast essential being freed from accidentals from objects as merely sensuous. The evaluation of this method now passes into its opposite; Marx rejects it in his manuscript of Kreuznach, precisely because of its argumentative character. Since speculative thought separates categories from their proper bearers and subjects, and considers them in themselves; it can give them a meaning only by presupposing a definite relation among them in which each is determined by the others. There thus emerges a fully formed, closed, a priori system of abstract ideas. Their separation from reality, however, which Marx was earlier inclined to explain as the necessary separation of Critical Philosophy from its object (though not in so sharp a form), makes any actual criticism impossible. Such thinking locked up in itself, if it now in default of inner content turns to reality and poses as true knowledge, lacks any criterion for distinguishing, in the immediately given, the real and the necessary from the accidental. The only criterion and only requirement is that the object can be resolved into some abstract concept. In this way emerges the “uncritical positivism” and the “pseudo-criticism” of thought. For ordinary thinking philosophic thought can appear to be critical, because it conceives the object as the incorporation of an abstract quality, and accordingly its concept as formed from the object can diverge sharply from the concept in everyday use. In its essence, however, this method is apologetic, because it conceives the object which is supposed to be the realization of self-consciousness, of Mind, etc., just as it appears in everyday experience, and then accepts and thereby authorizes it. Further, such knowledge is formal and unable to disclose the proper nature of the object, and therefore is not knowledge at all,

The only kind of knowledge that can become truly critical is that which follows the specific logic of its object and reveals the real inner contradictions of things. This conception of scientific knowledge is still quite widespread. The method of idealist dialectics is by no means completely overcome. Our concern is not merely with the fact that we can find formulations in Marx that reflect it, but also that Marx still later in the Manuscripts quite frequently represents the result of an historical process (that emerges from a long series of intermediate steps) as the immanent goal of the process, as its essence, in order to obtain a critical measure of the concrete historical phenomena of the process which contradict this essence and are alienated from it. The positive solution to this question, the elaboration of a scientific methodology, becomes the central quest of the later philosophical interest of Marx.

The conception we have been dealing with reflects in great measure the influence of Feuerbach. The two thinkers’ conceptions, however, diverge even at this time, and especially on this theme. According to Feuerbach the instrument for the knowledge of reality is careful, truly human sense perception, while Marx proceeds from rational-logical, discursive knowledge, seeing it as capable of disclosing the “logic of the thing”. The differences between Marx and Feuerbach are sharply evident, e.g., in the differing evaluations of the Hegelian notion of the “path from the abstract to the concrete”, that methodological requirement according to which scientific knowledge must move from the abstract to the concrete. Feuerbach sees in it nothing but the indirect, inconsistent theological recognition of the reality of the world perceived by the senses; he rejects it for the reason that knowledge must grasp the given in its immediacy, revealing every specification in its concrete constitution. Thought, then, cannot reach genuine independence, it has its justification only as a moment which enriches and trains sense perception, not in isolation from this. Categories in themselves are merely instruments of cognition. Marx, on the other hand, criticizes Hegel for the reason that Hegel does not realize the methodological principle he formulated, viz, he offers only the illusion of its realization. While the process of thought in Hegel apparently leads from the one-sided to the totality, exactly the opposite is the case. Hegel identifies the concrete phenomenon with its individual specification; he does not reconstitute the concrete as the complicated totality of abstract specifications, but attains merely the elaboration of the abstract specification. This is often unnecessary because it is given as a finished social product anterior to all scientific thought, Marx states, “in reality Hegel did nothing except dissolve the ‘political’” constitution into the universal abstract idea of ‘organism’, but in appearance and according to his own view he evolved the specific out of the universal idea”.

Just as Marx did later, Feuerbach departed from the Hegelian philosophy for which it is society primarily that stands contrasted to the individual, and not the contrary. He attempted, moreover, to give a materialist interpretation of social substance, which Hegel had seen in essence within the morality, customs, religion, laws, and, above all, in the political character of any era and people. Feuerbach believed he could find this foundation in the material dependence human beings exhibit, so that the individual is unable to live alone apart from other men. Feuerbach did not submit this material dependence to any concrete, historical investigation. Thus social specifications appear for him as specifications of nature produced by training.

Feuerbach recognizes that thought is the highest expression and incorporation of his humanity. In thought the individual man appears as the one who incorporates the human species, and, therefore, Feuerbach has reservations about thought. In thought the species appears as species, as free of any natural dependence and precondition. Accordingly, the individual who thinks is per se completely free and independent of any natural or social relationship. As a result, when it is separated from the totality of the life of the species, the highest product of the development of the species can become the negation of the reality of the human being, of his social and natural dependence. For this reason, Feuerbach saw in abstract thinking the subjective condition of all alienation. Sensuous intuition, on the contrary, raises itself above individual, egoistic need, conceiving the object as the beautiful, as the specific manifestation of the essence of Nature and man, as the affirmation of the essence of man. In this it remains passive and dependent upon its object: this is the only correct form and the only means of human knowledge.

To Marx the foundations of Feuerbach’s conception were alien and remained so. In his dissertation and in articles in the Rheinische Zeitung he completely shares Hegel’s views on the primacy and also on the character of social substance. He then seeks to offer a materialist explanation for the social totality, for which economic phenomena, which were left untouched in Feuerbach’s naturalistic conception of society, serve as the point of departure.

In Marx’s Critique of the Hegelian Philosophy of Right, we by no means encounter a straightforward solution. On the one hand, Marx takes a definite position against the mystification of the Hegelian philosophy which separated society from distinct individuals, positing it as an independently existing thing, permitting it to function as the hidden creator of history. Only individuals, conceived in their immediate material reality, are the real creators of history. However, the materialist explanation of history’s obedience to law, affirmed by Hegel, and of the universal social relations and processes which come about “behind the back” of human activities are by no means excluded. Unlike Hegel, however, this materialist explanation cannot consist only in the reduction of the phenomena of the state and political life to civil society, especially when no answer is available to the question of how the alteration of its economic determinants can be explained. At this time, this later question had not been submitted to any investigation by Marx. This is why the above work as well as the slightly later writing, On the Jewish Question, contain many idealist formulations alongside materialist ones for answering such concrete questions as the relationship of the state and civil society, the evolution of the state and its consequences, etc. At the same time, individual problems are dealt with by appealing to the evolution of the “human spirit” (Geist) and self-consciousness.

Such idealist formulations can be seen in On the Jewish Question; “But the religious spirit cannot be really secularized. For what is it but the non-secular form of a stage in the development of the human spirit? The religious spirit can only be realized if the stage of development of the human spirit which it expresses in religious form, manifests and constitutes itself in its secular form. This is what happens in the democratic state”. Karl Marx; Early Writings.

In this period, Marx also contrasts scientific-theoretical knowledge sharply with material a activity. Practical need appears as a merely biological, egoistic interest for which the inner essence, the specific nature of the object, is completely indifferent : an interest which measures the object externally according to its own standard, or considers it by means of “rules of some kind of convention”, while theory conceives it as proceeding “in and for itself”. Practical need is passive, its development can be stimulated only through change in exterior conditions, and thus it cannot serve as a foundation and explanation of theoretical notions that constantly develop.

The young Marx arrived at a consistent materialist view of the world, social theory, and epistemology, only by completely renouncing this estimate of practical activity. His philosophic materialism is completed only with the disclosure of the role of labor in shaping man and history. This shift begins in the summer of 1844 in Marx’s Paris Manuscripts.