Classical Theories of Religion: Karl Marx

As promised, I'm updating on my several-part series on some classical theories of religion. This edition will cover Karl Marx, an important thinker in many areas, and will concentrate primarily on his "A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right" and "Theses on Feuerbach." Both are interesting works from his fairly early years, and reference both Hegel and Feuerbach, about whom I already wrote a previous post.

In the way of a brief background, Marx was born in 1818 in the German Rhineland, and died in 1883. The Rhineland itself had in interesting history which was formative for many people in the area. In 1794, during the French Revolution, the Rhineland was taken and many reforms were incorporated. The French ruled the area for 20 years, longer than any other part of Germany, until the Prussians took it back and annexed it to Prussia in 1814. Two years later, in 1816, a year after the Congress of Vienna, which restored the monarchical status quo of Europe, Prussia published laws against Jews - reinstating the confinement to ghettos and the denial of civil service. Marx's father, inspired by the French Revolution and the Enlightenment, converted from Judaism to Lutheranism. In 1824, Marx and his brothers were baptized and attended Sunday School. In 1835, Marx went to the University of Bonn to study law and basically lives a wastrel existence. A year later, he moved to Berlin and began to study the philosophy of law. he gave up on Romanticism and became interested in Hegel, eventually also reconciling with his father. In 1837, he joined a number of clubs and associations identified with the Hegelian left when people were beginning to struggle for power among the Hegelian movements.

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In 1841, Marx submitted his dissertation on philosophy, taking up an incredibly obscure and seemingly meaningless dispute in ancient philosophy between Democritus and Epicurus, interested int he philosophy of nature. Marx favors Epicurus for several reasons -
1) Epicurus admits to sensuous knowledge, he does not limit his philosophy to rational deduction.
2) Epicurus is less mechanistic and entertains a more complicated sense of causality, giving a detailed picture to the resistance of force.
3) Epicurus steadfastly refuses to turn philosophy into religion.

So, overall, Marx saw in Epicurus a greater materialism, more attention to dynamic relationships, and a refusal to entertain super-human "mumbo-jumbo." This may seem absolutely pedantic or unimportant, and in some ways, it may be. But this dissertation also shows the beginnings of Marx's thought. In fact, the dissertation is a detailed and impressive commentary on contemporary German philosophy, recoded through a minor debate in ancient philosophy. By entertaining this debate, Marx is able to talk fairly freely about his views on the contemporary philosophy, and a lot of it is rightly regarded as brilliant. Likewise, we see an interesting thread here in Marx's later thought - religion was important for him in his early, formative years (many philosophers begin by cutting their teeth on religion in this period), when he was more interested in law than a radical critique of society.

1841 also saw new censorship laws in Prussia. A journal that Marx published was driven out of Prussia, successively, through the Rhineland, and finally settled in Paris. A year later, in 1842, Bruno Bauer, a controversial figure in his own right, was dismissed from the University of Bonn. Bauer held a high status in Young Hegelian circles, and his dismissal was a strong factor in Marx deciding on a career in journalism instead of attempting a career in the university. Marx wanted a philosophical correction to religiosity, and began railing against private interests in general. In 1842-1843, Marx became editor in chief of a Young Hegelian journal which came under government suppression in March 1843. At this point, Marx left for Paris (in October of the same year) and proclaimed that Hegel's theories of State of Geist nonwithstanding, the state is no longer the embodiment of Spirit (He writes his "Contribution..." in 1844). Marx founded a new journal, which lasted until 1844, when the French, under Prussian pressure, shut that journal down as well. He moved to Belgium in 1845, but, of course, trouble followed him.

Marx wrote his "Theses on Feuerbach" in 1845. It's quite short, and I suggest that you read it (a link is at the top), but I will get into a discussion of it in a bit. Likewise, around this time, he began work on The German Ideology, which never found a publisher in Marx's lifetime. Marx moved to London and joined the League of the Just, renaming it to the "Communist League." In 1848, revolutions broke out across all of Europe, but they are short lived - the re-establishment of the old powers is solidified by 1849.

Alright, now to the meat of this post. First, I'll consider his "A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right."

Marx begins with a direct homage to Feuerbach's The Essence of Christianity, in that he need not pursue a criticism of religion. Marx felt that it had already been accomplished, and done well. Likewise, he states that a criticism of religion is necessary for any other criticism. Why is this? Why does the criticism of religion allow for other criticisms? Basically, Marx recognizes the utility of a critique and long look at the material world - reality. If humans make unreality (i.e. religion), then they can unmake it, allowing them to remake reality in other forms. Marx believed the problems of suffering and distress were real, and that religion is a false promise to cure us. It is both a protest and a salve for real human misery. It misdirects human attention. Furthermore, this discourse is constituted as more than human - as sacred, and protected against challenges of certain sorts. If these (religions) are merely human propositions, then they should be open to debate and questioning. The recoding of religious propositions as sacred (instead of human-made) is a misrepresentation or mis-recognition of these propositions as coming from outside the human condition, which saves them from human criticism. When religions are returned to the human sphere, and seen as merely human inventions, all criticism become possible, nothing is sacred, and nothing is protected from debate and critique.

That's the main importance of the "Contribution to the Critique" for theories of religion, so now I will turn to Marx's "Theses on Feuerbach."

Feuerbach attempted the anthropological reduction of the theological. Marx takes on Feuerbach on the notion of the "human," arguing that there were real errors in his understanding of human, consciousness, and matter. Marx argued that Feuerbach understood men as a species-consciousness. Marx saw man as social actors with sensuous knowledge (note the ties to his dissertation). Feuerbach assumed that all humans are alike and ideal; they just needed to clear up some misconceptions and it would return all that was best to humanity. Marx argued that this was merely another form of idealism - there is nothing material or historical about this belief, and the end result of Feuerbach's argument was merely a human illusion. Marx argued that we have to look at real human beings, and when we do, we would see something rather different - all human beings are tied into societal interactions.

Marx argued that all human beings are the products of society - they resemble one another, but there is also a plurality. What is the nature of the social that it creates different positions for different humans? In this work, Marx spoke of a division of labor, which is his first step towards economics, analysis of class, and understanding the class struggle. Marx imagined pre-history, before the division of labor, when everyone did the same thing. He argued that the first division of labor was between the manual and the spiritual. The first specialists were therefore priests who depended on the rest of the community.

Why would manual labors turn over their surplus to supply for priests? Marx argues that this exchange is construed as one of good of equal value but different types. A set of religious propositions are created that marks some as a successful priestly class, which figures out how to elegantly expand their control. This movement gains success because it addresses real problem and needs, in ways that are at some level satisfying, but which never resolves the real cause of the pain (hence the famous "opiate of the masses").

Marx renamed Feuerbach's deuteroscopy to "false consciousness," feeling it better reflected the exact nature of religious propositions. Feuerbach described religious ideation as an alienation - stealing the best virtues of humanity for the religious imaginary. Marx argued that alienation of the religious sort was the product of alienation at the level of the human and the material; suffering is behind religious need, and if you removed religion, the alienation would still remain. Alienation, for Marx, was a product of actual matter - the stuff necessary for sustenance. He focuses on ownership, production activity, profit, management of goods, and economic relations. Marx begins to work out a complicated system...

He firstly wants to redirect our attention the material human, e.g., how does this person eat? He always focuses on the Mode of Production - what are the activities in which humans engage to produce the stuff of life? What is their technology and techniques? What is necessary for surplus, etc.? Marx also wants us to consider the Relations of Production - a matter of ownership and control. Is the soul recognized as a transmittable property to be bought, owned, and sold?
Marx notes the height of this thinking in medieval feudalism. He notes that asymmetries are possible in any age, however. Often, these asymmetries are necessary for initial future developments. It is also possible, however, that the relation between the Relations of Production and the Modes of Production gets far too out of sync - one class lives in luxury while doing no work while another clash is crushed under the burden of work. This is the moment of alienation for Marx - the worker loses ownership of his product of labor in exchange for a paycheck. Creativity and skill is handed over to someone whose investment in a product is small, but whose return is much larger. Alienation exists at this real, material, end of the spectrum.

So, what would it take to live a less alienated life? Marx here reflects on life, and his theory reshapes consciousness, creating practice, and opens up the possibility of real change in the world. Relationships of Production can be divided into owners and laborers - owners of Modes of Production, and those who use them. This relationship is always asymmetrical. The further out of balance this gets, the more suffering there is. As Modes- and Relationships of Production get more asymmetrical, the more chance there is for a radical change or revolution in society.

As other means than agriculture become important to a society, the noble class is challenged by a rising middle class - the city becomes concentrated and bourgeois. This became very important for the Modes of Production, but it doesn't really change the Relations of Production, which favor the landed nobility. When the bourgeois begin to sense that they are more powerful, Marx predicted there would be a revolutionary overthrow of an outmoded system where modest Relations of Production are so out of sync.

Is there an easier way to accomplish this? The division of labor into the Manual and Mental ensures that there is a class whose job it is to supply discourse, ideas, and philosophies. To ask Marx's question, how do these people eat? The "mental" group can sell their products to the owners (as they have a surplus anyway) because they produce legitimizing discourses for the owners, ensuring legitimacy, stability, ennoblement, flattery, etc). Marx argued that most thought, speech, religion, and philosophy arose from this nexus of selling a mental product to owners. Marx argued that philosophers in this system tried to persuade manual laborers that this is either the best of all possible worlds; or that there are real problems, but you have to man up to them; or there are huge problems, but nothing you can do about them. The crucial role of ideology is to misrepresent social realities as something that ought not to be changed - religion is merely one style.

Marx hoped that philosophies could be turned to the benefit of the "little guy," and saw religion as merely another discourse that legitimized those already in power. He hoped for a revolution in which humans would recognize the chains that bind them and the false hope that religions and philosophies give them and stand up for themselves and attempt to take control to improve their situation and cure the actual causes of their alienation and suffering.

That's about all I can do for tonight. I'm exhausted and have spent far too much time on this as it is. I hope that it's informative, and I'm sure The Rooster could give some additional good information for those of you who are interested. The next post in this series will probably focus on general movements in theorizing religion after Marx and will probably cover a lot of history in a fairly brief way. The next theorist I may consider in any depth could be Taylor. Or maybe Marcel Mauss. We'll see. I'm going to skip Nietzsche, as well as Freud and Jung, because they're relatively well known. If you want me to do a series on them, let me know, and I'll maybe work something up.

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Classical Theories of Religion: Ludwig Feuerbach

The first philosopher I'm going to consider as a part of this series is Ludwig Feuerbach. I'll be posting about his book, The Essence of Christianity, first published in 1841.

Parmenodes set a trajectory of thought in motion that ends in German Idealism. The essence of this trajectory was a distinction between a way of being (actuality, deep essence, beyond the senses, infinite, eternal, absolute) and a way of seeing/seeming (sensory perception, historical experience, variety, chaos, diversity, etc.). Plato, Immanuel Kant, and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel all lie in this trajectory, though Hegel attempts to reach some resolution of these two with his System (thesis - antithesis -> synthesis).

Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit signals that knowledge comes through the senses, but that which one seeks knowledge of is Spirit - essentially beyond the senses. This invokes an interaction between the absolute and the temporal, such that Spirit works itself out through history in ways that are largely logical, rational, etc. Thus, non-random phenomenon are manifestations of Spirit gradually manifesting itself in a progressive way.

There is a strong political valence to this theory - Spirit aspires toward freedom, and thus history progressively moves toward freedom. Between 1807 and 1821, on the eve of the Napoleonic victory and later, Hegel became a well-known and conservative philosopher. He wanted a state with a wise central monarch and a powerful Parliament. Likewise, there is a strong influence from Christianity. In the Christian Incarnation, the Word becoming Flesh, Hegel saw and expounded on the interaction of Spirit and Humanity.

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Feuerbach was a student of Hegel, a Left Hegelian. The students of Hegel were split into two camps - the Right and the Left. The Right Hegelians favored Hegel's later writings and saw that the "rational is real and the real is rational," and that this is the best of all possible worlds. The Left Hegelians were completely scandalized by this and viewed the present moment as one that would be overcome in the continuing progress of history.

As I said, Feuerbach was a Left (Young) Hegelian, along with Marx and Engels. Interestingly, all of them focused on religion in their early writings. Here's a brief biography of Feuerbach to give you a sense of context for his writings:

(b. 1804, d. 1872): Feuerbach was initially a student of conservative theology, but hated it and went to Berlin to study under Schleiermacher. However, he then shifted to philosophy and studied with Hegel. He published a book, Thoughts on Death and Immortality, anonymously in 1830, arguing that humans are essentially mortal, and that all religious hopes that were built on the afterlife were mere illusions.

When the authorship of the book was discovered, Feuerbach was fired and never hired to another university. He began publishing works on Spinoza, Leibniz, and Bayle. He retired into the backwaters of Germany and worked on The Essence of Christianity, which was published in 1841.

Friedrich Wilhelm III had been a fairly tolerant monarch during this time, and advocated for some personal freedoms. However, he died in 1840, and his reactionary son, Friedrich Wilhelm IV (who ruled from 1840-1861) ascended to the throne and established censorship laws aimed at people like Feuerbach (the story is actually much more complicated than this. Both monarchs were reactionary in some ways and liberal in others. This is an entirely bare-bones account, however, so I'm only going to reference how this touches on Feuerbach). In 1848, revolutionaries in Frankfurt briefly overthrew the monarch and hailed Feuerbach as an inspiration, and elevated him to a high chair on their Council. He gave regular lectures which were generally seen as quite boring.

The Essence of Christianity was a systematic attempt to recode propositions about the divine in references to humans, basically an anthropological reduction. He rejected the primacy of Spirit, that ideal and absolute things are the actual motivating forces of reality, and tried to reconcile religion and modern philosophy. The book was received as a thunderbolt, and profoundly influenced Marx and Engels in their writings.

The argument of the book really begins with a contrast of humans and animals, and it is noted that definitions always draw at least implicit contrasts. Feuerbach largely ignores any distinction between man or animals and the divine or inanimate, which is interesting in itself, and instead sees the essential difference between man and beast as consciousness (by which he means, in part, self-consciousness and consciousness of the infinite). He concludes that consciousness naturally leads to the contemplation of the infinite, that perfect is not simply a subject and an object, but a subject and object and the subject's awareness of subjectivity.

Feuerbach poses the question of whether all conscious experience involve objects perceived by the senses, and he develops one important exception - God/Spirit. What is it that one knows when one thinks they know God? Is knowledge properly constituted? Or are we mistaken in our supposed perception of God?

Feuerbach argues that we can only know the predicates of the divine, those aspects of the deity we can understand through our experience (some past education in philosophy or logic really helps get this point...). For example, when we say "God is just," Feuerbach argues that this statement is not acceptable as a knowledge statement. It is incorrect to divide God into predicates - any of these predicates are separable as nouns, not adjectives, which are separable from God. "God" is still left over, with no clear reason to attach this term to any of these predicates aside from tradition. Basically, this is an argument that things like "justice" or "merciful" or any such predicate is actually it's own separate thing, separable from God, and only tradition causes us to attach these labels to God. The real "essence" of the signifier "God" is actually empty.

He goes on to suggest that we look to human nature of sensuous experience of these qualities, and argues that all these predicates come from human experience and are then later attached, by tradition and indoctrination, to God. Thus, what can we accurately or appropriately say about love, justice, etc.? They are so highly valued by man as to be constituted as divine. Any statement one might make about God should be reversed: "God is just" is more accurately stated as "justice is divine." This turns these statements into something knowable and defensible, rooted in human nature and human experience.

Feuerbach develops an important (though poorly named) concept, Deuteroscopy, or "double-vision." He argues that when humans look at other humans, they seem them as double (basically, mind and body, with all of their usual predicates and oppositions attached - clean vs. unclean, pure vs. dirty, good vs. evil, etc.), and then also think that the phantasmic second is something more than human (the mind must be divine). This second phantom (something separated from human experience and reality) is a sort of optical illusion and gets labeled as God. It is not a pure mirror of the human - the divine doesn't have limits and is elevated with all of the positive qualities in humanity - it is the idealized half of an error of double-vision. Thus, the other half (the merely human, the body, etc), gets short shrift, which for Feuerbach is an act of theft or alienation - the human subject removes from itself its best attributes and infuses them into something else called God. For the human, this means that we denigrate and subordinate ourselves to an imagined superior, and establish a false hierarchy, in which is embedded a sense of dependency, and thus we are always inadequate and defective in comparison. We come to believe that we are guilty and flawed to begin with, and in need of help from above. The human condition is constituted as defective by an act of self-impoverishment, given away to an imaginary extra-human. Thus, we are in need of establishing a salvific experience with an alienated portion of one's own self - we must be redeemed by the portion of ourselves which we alienated and set above our selves, and this is the essential essence of Christianity and its story of salvation.

Basically, Feuerbach's argument about religion is that we have institutionalized a grave error in misrecognizing and inappropriately attributed human's highest qualities to an imagined other. We take human qualities, idealize them, and attribute them to something other than ourselves, thus constituting ourselves as lower and debased, and in need of salvation from "above," which, really is only our own idealized qualities.

The book also deals with an analysis of Creation. Creation accounts, Feuerbach argues, alongside of descriptions of the deity, are constitutive of human consciousness and how humans understand their relationship to the world/nature. He takes into consideration Greek and Hebrew creation narratives and sets them up as opposing camps.

Greek creation accounts allow for science and invention because of its polytheism. Gods are, in some measure, their domains. The deities are the natural world, and the natural world is seen as divine. A deity is assigned to each important piece. The divine does not stand outside or above creation, but is embedded and infused with the natural world. Humanity should understand itself as a piece of the world with awe and reverence and wonder at its fascinating beauty. This inspires art and science. In general, Feuerbach argues, this is a much healthier relation to nature (it is also intriguing to note that many creationists today argue for this view of the deity, that God is somehow infused in the natural world. They seem to forget that this sort of pantheism or panentheism are typically opposed to a transcendent God, and have been considered heresies to Christianity by most groups for their history. Which isn't to say that some Christian groups do not entertain these ideas, but, it is interesting to hear someone argue that God is wholly Other, transcendent and incalculable to human reason, but that God is also infused into every piece of the natural world and the universe is a reflection of him. It doesn't seem to provoke cognitive dissonance in many people, but, having some training as a philosopher, you start to analyze exactly what these people are saying and realize that it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.)

In opposition to the Greek creation accounts, Feuerbach considers the Hebrew/Genesis creation account. He sees this arguing that nature is created for the disposable use and domination by humans. God is viewed as outside and above Creation, with humans are above and over everything else with a right to use it how they will. This separates humans from awe and wonder, we are constituted as subjects relating to objects, with the world as an object to us. Here Feuerbach coins a very interesting phrase, "Mann ist was er isst." - "Man is what he eats." He summarizes the Hebrew view as egoism - selfish preoccupations and disinterest in external objects which suffer the consequences of said egoism. He generalizes this from the creation account to the Hebrew Bible, to the Jewish people, to the modern German Jew, to capitalism (and parasitism). Yes, Feuerbach reflects the general sentiment of anti-Semitism that has such a long history in Europe.

Continuing in this generally racist slant, Feuerbach viewed Greek polytheism as a prototype for Aryan/proper German people, and constituted Christianity as an heir to Judaism with two troubling problems:

1) A bad relation to an imaginary divine - humans are viewed as dependent and inadequate. Feuerbach wanted us to save our dignity and realize that we had good qualities that could be put to use by us, in our own time.

2) A bad relation to the natural world - humans are exploitative and uncaring. We now see the natural world as merely so much disposable goods and live as parasites on it. Likewise, we view the divine as above, in control of, and not subject to the natural world, and this reflects for him a general relation between matter and Spirit, which, for Feuerbach, was merely an illusion. Matter and humanity are real, Spirit is a deuteroscopic mistake of belief with highly problematic consequences - humans are compelled to destroy nature (and one another) because their illusion is supposed to (in apocalyptic scenarios), or because their illusion tells them to do so.

Philosophically, Feuerbach argues that all knowledge is sensuous - if there is no sensory information, it is not an object, but a projection/alienation/illusion. Thus, since God/Spirit is not present to our senses, we have no knowledge of it, and it is a projection/illusion. Those inside the religious circles merely recode this as "faith."

So, what is to be done? How do we erase an illusion, and what are the consequences of doing this? Feuerbach wants us to redivinize man - to empty the container of "God" and restore the proper attributes of humanity to their proper locations, in humanity.

Well, that covers it for Feuerbach's The Essence of Christianity. The next installment of this series should cover Marx's "Contributions to a Critique" and "Theses on Feuerbach." Any feedback or comments are welcome, and I'll try to answer any questions to the best of my abilities. But, no, I probably won't tell you whether I actually agree with anything Feuerbach wrote about, as that's not what this series is about.

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Classical Theories of Religion: A Background

I said a while ago I was going to write a series of posts on classical theories of religion. I've put it off for a while, but I'm going to try to rectify that now. This post will be a brief, general background on the classical theories of religion. So, enjoy, or just skip if you're not interested.

The general goals of a theory is that it aims at a general definition - to generate an abstraction from particular cases or distill a common ground and basis. Likewise, with more modern theories, there is a constant interrogation of general definitions and assumptions.

In terms of religion, we hit an interesting problem at the very beginning. When does "what is religion?" become an askable question? The most general answer to this is that there is a moment in which a cultural encounter allows for comparison. Basically, in the encounter with the Other, one can compare oneself and the distinct Other, and "religion" becomes a category. Now, unfortunately, in a lot of ways, there also developed assumptions about the definition of the category and its characteristics - religion was constituted as good, and established an ethno-centric hierarchy. Thus, there was also the development of the "duty," as the "good, religious people" to bring "religion" to poor, backwards, inferior, subjugated people.

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Interestingly, with Muslims, the category distinction became one of faith and truth, and thus, not a benighted heathen who needs education, but instead a dangerous adversary. The colonial encounters were much less charged than encounters with Muslims, mainly due to power dynamics/gulfs.

Colonial encounters led to very early definitions and categories of religion, but our modern idea of religion and all its multiple forms arose during the Protestant Reformation. For the first time, instead of having cross-cultural encounters, people within the same group divided over religion - Catholic and Protestant.

Of course, the Reformation ended in the 30 Years War, a bad time all around. For the first time in European history, a war about religion was waged among those of the same religion. Religion came to shoulder the blame for the war, regardless of how it spilled out into local political realities. In reaction to this overall disgust, a new regime of truth emerged to contest the churches and faith - The Enlightenment. Reason was made to be the highest virtue; universities, academies, salons, and secret societies were formed; and the culture came to privilege debates and polemics, real questioning, and a multiplicity of opinions and research. Also, this was the first moment in which there was a general refusal to grant the object of study the right to define itself, which has become incredibly important for modern research in all fields.

The Enlightenment was not the end, though. A new reaction appeared - Romanticism, a reaction towards emotion, sentiment, and personal feeling. Romantics took the "local perspective" to be in danger and in need of being saved. They valued the distinctive qualities of a specific people and places. They also felt that the Enlightenment was caught up with modernity and progress, and were throwing out tradition and continuity in the process.

Romantics insisted on the inspired nature of poetry, on sublime contact with something more than oneself. They established a new definition of religion that privileged individual participation. The Enlightenment ran out of steam when it granted religion a sphere of its own, even a private one; as well as when Kant argued (for better or worse) that we can never know of the immortality of the soul or the existence of a deity through reason alone.

There's your basic introduction to the time period that I will be discussing. Most of these theorists will move back and forth across the Enlightenment/Reason and Romanticism/Emotion divide. These categories have stayed with us, and we have switched between them several times. It may be impossible to fully escape these options, though I feel that it's certainly a false dichotomy. Keep all this in mind for future posts. Note, I will not comment on my personal feelings about these theories and theorists, I'm just trying to present some general information.

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