Feuerbach

by Friedrich Engels

The question of the relation of thinking to being, of the relation of the spirit to nature, the highest question of universal philosophy, has therefore, no less than all religion, its roots in the limited and ignorant ideas of the condition of savagery. It could first be understood, and its full significance could first be grasped, when mankind awoke from the long winter sleep of Christian Middle Ages. The question of the relation of thought to existence, a question which had also played a great role in the scholasticism of the Middle Ages, the question what is at the beginning spirit or nature, this question was in spite of the church now cut down to this: "Has God made the world or is the world from eternity?"

As this question was answered this way or that the philosophers were divided into two great camps. The one party which placed the origin of the spirit before that of nature, and therefore in the last instance accepted creation, in some form or other—and this creation, is often according to the philosophers, according to Hegel for example, still more odd and impossible than in Christianity—made the camp of idealism. The others, who recognized nature as the source, belong to the various schools of materialism.

The two expressions signify something different from this. Idealism and materialism, originally not used in any other sense, are not here employed in any other sense. We shall see what confusion arises when one tries to force another signification into them.

The question of the relationship of thinking and being has another side; in what relation do our thoughts with regard to the world surrounding us stand to this world itself? Is our thought in a position to recognize the real world? Can we, in our ideas and notion of the real world, produce a correct reflection of the reality? This question is called in philosophical language the question of the identity of thinking and being, and is affirmed by the great majority of philosophers. According to Hegel, for example, its affirmation is self-evident, for that which we know in the actual world is its content, according to our thought, that which compels the world to a progressive realization as it were of the absolute Idea, which absolute idea has existed somewhere, unattached from the world and before the world; and that thought can recognize a content which is already a thought content herein, from the beginning, appears self-evident. It is also evident that what is here to be proved is already hidden in the hypothesis. But that does not hinder Hegel, by any means, from drawing the further conclusion from his proof of the identity of thought and existence that his philosophy, because correct for his thought, is, therefore, the only correct one, and that the identity of thought and existence must show itself in this, that mankind should forthwith translate his philosophy from theory to practice and the whole world shift itself to a Hegelian base. This is an illusion which he shares alike with all philosophers.

In addition there is still another class of philosophers, those who dispute the possibility of a perception of the universe or at least of an exhaustive perception. To them belong, among the moderns, Hume and Kant, and they have played a very distinguished role in the evolution of philosophy. This point of view has been now refuted by Hegel, as far as possible, from the idealistic standpoint. The materialistic additions made by Feuerbach are more ingenious than deep. The most destructive refutation of this as of all other fixed philosophic ideas is actual result, namely experiment and industry. If we can prove the correctness of our idea of an actual occurrence by experiencing it ourselves and producing it from its constituent elements, and using it for our own purposes into the bargain, the Kantian phrase "Ding an Sich" (thing in itself) ceases to have any meaning. The chemical substances which go to form the bodies of plants and animals remained just such "Dinge an Sich" until organic chemistry undertook to show them one after the other, whereupon the thing in itself became a thing for us, as the coloring matter in the roots of madder, alizarin, which we no longer allow to grow in the roots of the madder in the field, but make much more cheaply and simply from coal tar. The Copernican system was for three hundred years a hypothesis, with a hundred, a thousand, or ten thousand chances in its favor, but still a hypothesis. But when Leverrier by means of the data of this system not only discovered the existence of a certain unknown planet, but even calculated the position in the heavens which this planet must necessarily occupy, and when Galles really found this planet, then the Copernican system was proved. If, nevertheless, the resurrection of the Kantian idea in Germany is being tried by the Neo-Kantians, and of that of Hume in England (where they never died), by the agnostics, that is, in the face of the long past theoretical and practical refutation of these doctrines, scientifically, a step backwards, and practically, merely the acceptance of materialism in a shame-faced way, clandestinely, and the denial of it before the world.

But the philosophers were during this long period from Descartes to Hegel and from Hobbes to Feuerbach by no means, as they thought, impelled solely by the force of pure reason. On the contrary, what really impelled them was, in particular, the strong and ever quicker conquering step of natural science and industry. Among the materialists this very quickly showed itself on the surface, but the idealistic systems filled themselves more and more with materialistic content and sought to reconcile the antagonism between spirit and matter by means of pantheism, so that finally the Hegelian system represented merely a materialism turned upside down, according to idealistic method and content.

Of course Starcke in his "Characteristics of Feuerbach" enquired into the fundamental question of the relations of thinking and being. After a short introduction in which the ideas of preceding philosophers, particularly since Kant, are portrayed in unnecessarily heavy philosophical language and in which Hegel, owing to a too formal insistence on certain parts of his work does not receive due credit, there follows a copious description of the development of the metaphysics of Feuerbach, as shown in the course of the recognized writings of this philosopher. This description is industriously and carefully elaborated, and, like the whole book, is overballasted with, not always unavoidable, philosophical expressions, which is all the more annoying in that the writer does not hold to the vocabulary of one and the same school nor even of Feuerbach himself, but mixes up expressions of very different schools, and especially of the present epidemic of schools calling themselves philosophical.

The evolution of Feuerbach is that of a Hegelian to materialism—not of an orthodox Hegelian, indeed—an evolution which from a definite point makes a complete breach with the idealistic system of his predecessor. With irresistible force he brings himself to the view that the Hegelian idea of the existence of the absolute idea before the world, the pre-existence of the logical categories before the universe came into being, is nothing else than the fantastical survival of the belief in the existence of an extra-mundane creator; that the material, sensible, actual world, to which we ourselves belong, is the only reality, and that our consciousness and thought, however supernatural they may seem, are only evidences of a material bodily organ, the brain. Matter is not a product of mind, but mind itself is only the highest product of matter. This is, of course, pure materialism. When he reached this point Feuerbach came to a standstill. He cannot overcome ordinary philosophical prejudice, prejudice not against the thing, but against the name materialism. He says "Materialism is for me the foundation of the building of the being and knowledge of man, but it is not for me what it is for the physiologists in the narrow sense, as Moleschott, for example, since necessarily from their standpoint it is the building itself. Backwards, I am in accord with the materialists but not forwards."