Marx's Religious Drama

MEN AND IDEAS Marx’sReligious Drama By Louis J. Halle Hzr~ w~. FtRSa" U~ET, close up and in social scientist or the empirical scholar. His W informal circumstances, anyone whomwe mission, too, began with a vision on the Roadto have learned to regard as a "great man," we are Damascus. always disappointed. This is because there is no Marx was a social philosopher who did not such thing as a "great man"in the existential give himself altogether to the conspiratorial side world. The "great man"known to the public is of revolution. He appears to have been happiest a conceptual figure abstracted from the existen- in a library. He was not, like so manyunedu- tial manwith whomone shakes hands. I sup- cated revolutionaries, without background.As a pose that Karl Marx,ar,guing with other left- manof advanced education, who took his doc- wingintellectuals in a cafd on the Galeries Saint- torate in philosophy at the University of Jena Hubert in Brussels, appeared as one shabby after studying at Bonnand Berlin, he stood in young manamong the others. His friend, Fried- the van of the great philosophical tradition of rich Engels, wouldone day be ironically amused his day, whichwas the tradition that addressed at the myth of this same Karl Marx as it was itself to the problemof alienation. blown up, after his death, by the rather silly revolutionaries of the youngergeneration. To rR~, ~ro UNDERSTANDthe philosophy of Marx What did this man have that made him, at as a self-contained bodyof thought is like trying last, such a powerfulinfluence in history? As a to understand the fourth chapter of a book of revolutionary, organising revolutionary action, which one has not read the first three. For he was no better than others of his day. He was Chapter One we have to go back at least to to go in for economicslater, basing his thought ImmanuelKant in the eighteenth century. After on the classical and rather naive labour theory of Kanthad written the first chapter in this line of value, but it was not as an economist that he philosophical development, Hegel came along would achieve the topmost heights of distinc- and wrote an additional chapter of such intrinsic tion. As a political analyst he was surely not as power that he thereby gave his name to the good as his contemporaryof lesser fame, Walter whole tradition of Germanphilosophy from that Bagehot;as a social philosopherhe was inferior point on. Those who came after him were to Alexis de Tocqueville. His development of ostensibly commentatorson the chapter he had the sociological view that men’sconcepts reflect written, calling themselves Hegelians or neo- the material circumstances of their productive Hegelians or post-Hegelians, Old Hegelians or lives--this certainly would entitle him to an Young Hegelians. Ludwig Feuerbach trans- important place in the history of humanthought. formed Hegelianism, and then Marx trans- But it is hardly commensuratewith the magni- formed Feuerbach’s transformation. Philosophy tude of his influence. had becomea matter of writing glosses, on Hegel Marxwas extraordinary, I conclude, not as a and glosses on glosses of Hegel, of lnterpretin.~ manof action or as an academicthinker, but as him and interpreting the interpretations until one of the great visionaries of history. It wasthe Hegel would have been surprised at what bore Karl Marx whosaw an immenseand enthralling the nameof "Hegelianism," even if hyphenated vision of humansociety, the Karl Marx whoon with other terms. WhenMarx studied at the the basis of that vision created a compelling Universities of Bonn, Berlin, and Jena, the myth of humansociety--this is the Marx who philosophy he studied was Hegelianism. In- was extraordinary amonghis contemporaries. deed, at Berlin the memoryof Professor Hegel’s He had more of St. Paul in him than of the lectures wasstill fresh. 29 PRODUCED 2003 BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED 30 Men &/de~ Judaism and Christianity had been based on appeal it had--it is overcome, wholeness is the concept of two worlds, the perfect and the achieved.All being is basic, a, lly one and indivi- imperfect. God represented perfection; man, sible. It is whatHegel calls the AbsoluteIdea." madein his image, had fallen into imperfection. Wecan call it "God"(or "mind" or "spirit" or WhenJesus came to redeem mankind, he pro- "thou. ght thinkingitself"). Thereality.of man, vided the example of Godlike perfection on m this monistic conception, is not distinguish- which1 menwere to model themselves. able fromthe reality of Godexcept in its lack of Asophisticated version of this duality is repre- completion. Perfection can be realised only sented by the philosophy of Kant. The two through the experience of imperfection, whole- worlds are the phenomenalworld, which is the nessthrough the experienceof. partialness, good world knownto our faculties of perception (i.e. through the experience of evil. Therefore, God the world of appearancesthat are not necessarily has becomesplit, has lost his wholeness.He has, true representationsof reality), andthe nou- to put it in the languagerelevant to our theme, menal world, the world of "things in them- alienated himself in external objects, in external selves" (i.e., the world of realities that we objects that represent his ownself dismembered, cannot apprehend because our faculties of per- so to speak. (Manis Godbecome partial.) His- ception present us with appearances only). tory is the process by which God, having alien- Phenomenalman is.the slave of a causal system ated himself in external objects, progressively that represents predetermination. By contrast, overcomes his alienation by acquiring know- noumenalman, whomwe have to take on faith, ledge of the external objects, thereby making is free. Our noumenalselves, by contrast with them a part of his subjective self again. Since our phenomenalselves, are subject to a morality manis real only in his identification with the that .necessarily has freedom as one of its Absolute (God), this meansthat: the world premises. whichman is conscious as being external to him- In terms of this philosophic system, the self, as being an objective world, represents his individual finds himself involved in an "anti- ownalienated self (God’salienated self); by the hOrny" or contradiction: the contradiction rOCeSSof coming to knowit he makes it no between the predetermined causality to which ~onger alien, he comprehendsit, he reincor- his apparent self is subject and the moral free- porates it in himself; and this process goes on domthat his real self enjoys. After Kant, this until there is no longer a dual world of subject distinction betweenthe two selves, with its im- and object, until the entire alien worldhas been plications of inner conflict, comesto be regarded comprehended,has been overcomeand absorbed, as intolerable. The duality must be overcome, untilall being is finally one--the universal God wholeness must be achieved. whois indistinguishable from the humanself; In Hegel’s philosophy--and this explains the until all beir~g is, moreprecisely, the Logos,for Hegel identified being in its totality with the rational. 11 depend heavily on Robert C. Tucker, Philo- History, for Hegel,is the dialectical process by sophy and Myth in Karl Marx(Cambridge, 1961), which God overcomes his alienation. Replace a bookthat makesclear muchthat wouldotherwise "God" with "Man"and this is what history is remain obscure. It has been attacked on doctrinal for Marxas well. grounds by those who, while opposedto what the Soviet Union represents as Marxism,revere Marx as an empirical scientist, the Darwinof social science (e.g., T. B. Bottomore,in KarlMarx: Early ALI~A~ONis better knownto us, in the twen- Writings, London,1963). tieth century, as a psychiatric rather than a Themagic of Marx’sappeal still arouses, a century philosophical term. It represents a common later, a passionatedefence against those whosecriti- mental ailment. The alienated person loses his cismtends to diminishhis intellectual authority. In feeling of personal identity. Perhapshe identifies truth, however,one couldquote, endlessly, passages himself with the godlike image of himself, and of Marx that no one could reconcile with the so regards his existential self as alien. He statement that the cast of his mindwas "funda- becom~esa split personality--and when this mentally scientific." (Aside from the passages of splitting of the personality, this alienation, goes evident myth-making,I raise the question whether the famous statement with which he ends his to an extreme, what you have is a case of severe Theses on Feuerbach, that the point is not to neurosis. The cure that Hegeloffers for this (for interpret but to changethe world,is to be reconciled what he calls Selbstent[remdungor self-aliena- with scientific detachment.) Onthe other hand, tion) !,s knowledge."The aim of knowledge,"he muchof Capital does represent scientific method says, is to divest the objective world that stands andscientific apparatus.It is only a narrowview of opposed to us of its strangeness, and, as the our humannature that will not allowthe possibility phrase is, to find ourselves at homein it: which of scientific activities b.y a.myth-makeror of mythi- meansno more than to trace the objective world cal proclivitiesby a sc~entlst. back to the notion--to our innermost self." PRODUCED 2003 BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED Men &Ideas 31 N’ TH~ DUAL WORLDof Hegel’s philosophy, as later be used by Marx,and still later something I in that of Plato, the spirit or the mindor the like it wouldbe used by Marxists for the trans- idea (God or the Logos) has primacy. It is the formational interpretation of Marxism. The basic reality, andexistential reality is the alien- device was to make play with a distinction ated matter that has to be re-assimilated by the between the manifest content of Hegel’s philo- dialectical.

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