The Oxford Handbook of German Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century

by Michael N Forster

  21 Historical contemporaneity is no advantage to the believer, since “divinity is not an immediate qualification” and even the miraculousness of a divine individual’s acts “is not immediately but is only for faith, inasmuch as the person who does not believe does not see” (S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, IV: 256; 1997–, 4: 290–1). Cf. I. Kant 1968, 7: 63 and 6: 87.

  22 The project of giving a “probability proof” of the correctness of religious belief is absurd: “wanting to link a probability proof to the improbable (in order to demonstrate: that it is probable?—but then the concept is changed; or in order to demonstrate: that it is improbable?—but to use probability for that is a contradiction)” (S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, IV: 257n.; 1997–, 4: 292n.). Cf. D. Hume 1999 p. 183: “Upon the whole, then, it appears, that no testimony for any kind of miracle has ever amounted to a probability, much less to a proof; and that, even supposing it amounted to a proof, it would be opposed by another proof; derived from the very nature of the fact, which it would endeavour to establish.” Hume focuses on the evidence of testimony to miracles, arguing that since miracles are, by their nature, maximally improbable, any report of a miracle is therefore incredible. But an analogous argument applies, mutatis mutandis, to evidence of the senses. Experience of anything seeming to be a miracle is, because of the intrinsic improbability of miracles, far more likely to have been a sensory hallucination.

  23 J. G. Hamann 1821–43, I: 406. Cf. D. Hume 1999, p. 186: “[W]‌hoever is moved by Faith to assent to [the Christian religion], is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all the principles of his understanding, and gives him a determination to believe what is most contrary to custom and experience.” Kierkegaard cites Hamann’s embrace of Hume’s conclusion in a journal entry of 10 September 1836, commenting: “one sees the complete misunderstanding between the Christian and the non-Christian in the fact that Hamann responds to Hume’s objection: ‘yes, that’s just the way it is’” (S. Kierkegaard 1909–78, I A 100; 1997–, AA: 14.1). Cf. S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, VI: 103; 1997–, 6: 101. For further discussion of Kierkegaard’s appropriation of Hamann and its significance for the interpretation of Fear and Trembling in particular, see M. Kosch 2008.

  24 “Only the person who personally receives the condition from the god…only that person believes” (S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, IV: 265; 1997–, 4: 299). “How, then, does the learner become a believer or a follower? When the understanding is discharged and he receives the condition” (S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, IV: 228; 1997–, 4: 265). See also S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, IV: 228, 265; 1997–, 4: 265, 299.

  25 That Abraham is uncertain of his own justification is suggested at numerous points in the text: he is unable to sleep (S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, III: 126; 1997–, 4: 169), unable to reassure himself that he is legitimate (S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, III: 112ff.; S Kierkegaard 1997–, 4: 155ff.), can find reassurance from no one else (S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, III: 126; S. Kierkegaard 1997–, 4: 169)—not even another knight of faith (S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, III: 120; 1997–, 4: 163)—and is constantly tempted to return to the ethical and its relative normative security (S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, III: 109, 119–20, 160; 1997–, 4: 153, 162–3, 202).

  26 S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, III: 57, 166; 1997–, 4: 101, 208. See R. Green 1998, 258ff. and C. Evans 1981, p. 143, for readings of Fear and Trembling along these lines.

  27 For a survey of this part of the literature, see J. Lippitt 2003 chs. 4 and 6, and R. Green 1998. For a rebuttal of what I see as the various possibilities for reading Fear and Trembling in this way, see M. Kosch 2006c.

  28 S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, VII: 336; 1997–, 7: 352. It has seemed plausible to many that Kierkegaard endorses a voluntarist account of Christian belief (see e.g. L. Pojman 1984). I do not believe the texts support this reading, and have argued against it in M. Kosch 2006b 187–200. But even someone convinced that Kierkegaard thought religious belief could be produced voluntarily would have a hard time convincing any reader of the Postscript that it could be rational, for prudential reasons, to produce it in oneself. Pascal is clearly the target of the remarks referenced here (at S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, VII: 336; 1997–, 7: 352); the wager on an eternal happiness would be irrational even if Christian belief could be reliably brought about by the means Pascal suggests. Neither can there be Jamesian reasons for believing, since on Kierkegaard’s portrayal, far from offering reassurance and so enabling action in the face of risk and uncertainty, Christian belief is itself the source of the most extreme risk and uncertainty. (Some interpreters, by contrast, have argued that the risk that accompanies Christian belief is thought by Kierkegaard to be itself a consideration in its favor (see e.g. R. Adams 1982 and J. L. Schellenberg 1993, 152–67). This is one of many approaches to arguments in Postscript that relies on the assumption—nowhere confirmed by the texts—that Climacus is in the business of recommending Christianity to the non-Christian.)

  29 S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, VII: 155–56; 1997–, 7: 172. Cf. e.g. S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, VII: 349–50; 1997–, 7: 366–7. The theme is prominent in The Sickness unto Death as well. “The trouble is not that Christianity is not voiced…but that it is voiced in such a way that the majority eventually think it utterly inconsequential” (S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, XI: 213; 1997–, 11: 214).

  30 S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, VII: 336; 1997–, 7: 352.

  31 S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, XI: 127; 1997–, 11: 129.

  32 S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, XI: 127; 1997–, 11: 129.

  33 Note that what is at issue are “ideals” in a projective, but not in a normative sense. I agree on this and many points with P. Lübcke 1984.

  34 “Where, then, is the boundary for the single individual in his concrete existence between what is lack of will and what is lack of ability; what is indolence and earthly selfishness and what is the limitation of finitude?…Let all the dialecticians convene—they will not be able to decide this for a particular individual in concreto.” (S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, VII: 426; 1997–, 7: 444)

  35 S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, XI: 127; 1997–, 11: 129.

  36 See, respectively, S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, XI: 154–8; 1997–, 11: 157–62, S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, XI: 161–78; 1997–, 11: 165–81, and S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, XI: 178–85; 1997–, 11: 181–7.

  37 I argue for this reading in M. Kosch 2006b, 200–9. Of the alternative readings, most influential has been Theunissen (1991 and 1993), according to which The Sickness unto Death is an exercise in depth-psychology aimed at uncovering the sources of despair viewed as an affective state, and constructing a theory of the self based on that account of the pathologies to which it is subject. This reading is self-consciously revisionist: it can account for only one form of despair (that of not wanting to be oneself), must ignore the claim that the theory of the self’s pathology is based on the theory of the self (rather than the other way round), and cannot account for the second part of the book at all. Other interpreters understand despair as failure to live up to the personal ethical task that has been set for one by God. These readings make sense of the announcement that “despair is sin” with which the second part of the book is introduced, but they also fail to account for all three forms of despair described in the first part. The conscious despair of wanting to be oneself is a sticking point on both approaches, and to make sense of it one must take seriously Anti-Climacus’ claim that there can be the forms of despair described because the self is an agent that has its source of norms outside itself. “If a human self had itself established itself, then there could only be one form: not to will to be oneself, to will to do away with oneself, but there could not be the form: in despair to will to be oneself.” (S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, XI: 128; 1997–, 11: 130)

  38 See, for example, S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, XI: 128; 1997–, 11: 130.

  39 Anxiety’s ambiguity (S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, IV: 314, 316, 338, 343, 377; 1997–, 4: 349, 350, 372, 378, 411) suggests that it is that state of “restless repose…out of which sin constantly ar
ises” (S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, IV: 294; 1997–, 4: 329).

  40 In addition to works cited in the footnotes, see B. Blanshard 1974 ch. 6, C. S. Evans 1983, and S. Walsh 2008.

  41 See, for example, J. Ferreira 2001 and C. S. Evans 2004.

  42 Among philosophers, the focus here has been on the meaning of religious language, and whether it can have meaning for non-believers (see e.g. S. Cavell 1976 ch. 6), the question of whether there can be “significant nonsense” (see e.g. J. Conant 1989 and 1993; J. Lippitt and D. Hutto 1998), and what Kierkegaard means by “indirect communication” (a question to which there have been a variety of approaches—see e.g. P. Lübcke 1990 and R. Poole 1993). For a survey of twentieth-century receptions of Kierkegaard, see R. Poole 1998.

  CHAPTER 8

  MARX (1818–1883)

  MICHAEL QUANTE

  8.1 INTRODUCTION

  Starting from the Left Hegelian context that had formative influence on Marx’s thought, this chapter offers an explication of the basic concepts and the central claims of Marx’s philosophical anthropology as they are presented in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts and of the evaluative aspects of his philosophy as a theory of human recognition as presented in his comments on James Mill’s Élémens d’économie politique.1 In a further step, the conception of a materialistic philosophy of history, as Marx and Engels sketched it in the German Ideology, will be portrayed as an elaboration of that same philosophical anthropology. Finally, against this background, I will present the core elements of the Marxian programme of a critique of political economy, as Marx advanced it in Capital.

  Although Marx understood his own theoretical programme as a departure from philosophy, the core of his thought can be reconstructed as philosophical. Even though his thinking undergoes numerous turns and changes over the decades, on the fundamental conceptual level there is a continuity of central philosophical theses and figures of thought. These two premises are justified by the account presented in the following, since they allow the inner coherence of Marx’s theory to be grasped. At the centre of this effort lies an attempt to define Marx’s philosophy as a critical philosophical anthropology in the tradition of Hegel’s philosophy.

  8.2 THE LEFT HEGELIAN BACKGROUND

  After Hegel’s death in 1831, his disciples were all of the opinion that the cycle of philosophy had come to a close and that the task from then on would consist only in finalizing those parts of the philosophical system that had been left uncompleted. But soon after, infighting within this school set in with regard to the issue of the relationship between religion and philosophy in Hegel. I shall now present an account of some figures of thought in the Left Hegelian debates that were central for Marx (Breckman 1999; Moggach 2014).

  In 1830 Ludwig Feuerbach published anonymously a treatise entitled Thoughts on Death and Immortality (Gedanken über Tod und Unsterblichkeit), in which he answered the question raised by Hegel about the systematic possibility of an individual immortal soul in the negative. Hegel’s philosophy was therewith rendered incompatible with central doctrines of Christianity. The disputes about Hegel’s philosophy of religion were exacerbated by the publication of the book The Life of Jesus (Das Leben Jesu) in 1835. In this tract, David Friedrich Strauß interprets the gospels as literary products and embellishments of the expectations of salvation of the primitive Early Christian community, and thus as products of a collective consciousness. The divine consciousness could not, he argues, manifest itself in a single empirical subject, but only in the congregation and ultimately in humanity as such. This figure of thought, irreconcilable as it is with the orthodox conception of Jesus as the Son of God, ran through Bruno Bauer and Ludwig Feuerbach and had some influence on Marx’s idea of the proletariat as the human species’ consciousness of freedom coming into its own (Moggach 2003; Leopold 2007).

  This discourse in the philosophy of religion always had a political dimension to it. Thus the destruction of Christian doctrines was aimed directly at the religious legitimization of the monarchy. The question concerning God’s personality and the Christian conception of the person was at once directed towards the structure of continuously developing civil society. Feuerbach and Bauer construed the Christian idea of an individual personality as an ideological expression of an egoistic lifestyle that ignored man’s social bonds. This connection, too, was to become crucial to Marx’s anthropology.

  August von Cieszkowski’s treatise Prolegomena to Historiosophy (1838) expresses the view that gained strength among Hegelians, according to which historical progress and political change are not attainable through philosophical analysis and enlightenment, but only by way of a kind of societal practice. Cieszkowski took this to be the task of philosophy and demanded a ‘Philosophy of Action’ (‘Philosophie der Tat’). He holds that the shortcomings of Hegel’s philosophy are due to the present historical development. This is a thought that would resound in Marx’s conception of philosophy and his understanding of Hegelian dialectics. According to Cieszkowski, this philosophy of action should be capable of determining only the outlines of future developments and not the details.

  Based on a historical interpretation of the gospels, Bruno Bauer developed ever more fundamental forms of critique of religion. He ultimately claimed that all religious convictions as well as religious forms of thought and argumentation were absurd, and manoeuvred himself into a rigorously atheistic worldview, according to which religion must subordinate itself to the state and could no longer serve as an authority for political legitimization. He considered Christianity to be a historically obsolete and irrational form of consciousness that needed to be replaced by his own democratically oriented method of critique. It is characteristic of Bauer to have pursued the progressive critique aimed at democracy as a philosophy of religion. The guiding idea behind this project is the assumption leading back from Hegel to Fichte that the ultimate authority of philosophical enlightenment is self-consciousness in its absolute freedom. This is accompanied by a transformation of Hegelian dialectics into a theory of the accentuation of opposites and the annihilation of previous social systems and systems of thought. Whereas in the mature Hegelian system, dialectics meant primarily mediation and integration, in which the negated steps were retained as sublated steps of development, Bauer conceives dialectic sublation as a spiral movement through crisis or even catastrophe. This figure of thought also influences Marx’s understanding of socio-historical processes and Hegel’s dialectics. The fundamental principle of Bauer’s philosophy is not individual self-consciousness, but a kind of species being. This idea is retained in Feuerbach as well as—albeit in once more altered form—in Marx.

  In Ludwig Feuerbach’s approach, both the critique of religion and the critique of idealism and Hegel play a central role. The main motif of these critical efforts, which were to assume great significance for Marx, lies in interpreting the content of religious ideas as externalizations of humanity that project both the properties and capabilities that are not realized in the present social system and the needs that are unsatisfied in society onto an ideal counterpart: a transcendent God. According to Feuerbach’s theory of estrangement, philosophical enlightenment concerning this mechanism suffices to eradicate the roots of estrangement (Brudney 1998). Like Marx and other Left Hegelians, Feuerbach equates philosophy and idealism because Hegel’s absolute idealism is regarded as the culmination of all philosophy. Feuerbach replaces philosophy with a philosophical anthropology that has strong empirical traits. This anthropology had a lasting effect on Marx’s philosophy and it can at the same time be viewed as one of the central points that triggered Marx’s departure from Bauer’s thought and from his own views prior to 1843. With Feuerbach, the highest authority of philosophical critique is no longer self-consciousness, but the human being conceived as an entity comprised of body and mind. This position retains the idea that this essence of the human being reveals itself not in its individuality but in its species dimension.

  A further motif that was t
o become decisive for Marx can be found cloaked in a critique of idealism within Feuerbach’s critique of Hegel. It contains two crucial elements that are presented in two tracts published in journals of the Left Hegelians in 1843, in Provisional Theses for the Reform of Philosophy (1842) and in Principles of the Philosophy of the Future (1843). First, in contrast to Bauer’s writings of the years 1840 and 1842, Hegel’s philosophy is no longer viewed as atheism but as itself the ultimate form of theology and thus becomes the object of Feuerbach’s critique of religion. Secondly, Feuerbach charges Hegel with constantly interchanging subject and predicate. Hegel is interpreted as always understanding the independent (the actual subject) as a reflex (a mere predicate), whereas the actually dependent predicate is posited as the independent and moving force. In his Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Introduction, published in 1843, Marx uses numerous Feuerbachian figures of thought for the first time; and in his uncompleted and unpublished Kritik des Hegelschen Staatsrechts from the same period, he criticizes Hegel for conceiving of the idea and not of empirical subjects as the actual bearers of social and historical processes.

  Marx’s rejection of the Left Hegelians takes shape in stages from 1843 (when he turns towards Feuerbach’s anthropology and away from Bauer’s idealistic rationalism) to 1845 (with his explicit criticism of Feuerbach). Although Marx breaks allegiance with Bauer in his work The Jewish Question, with the Left Hegelian conception of social criticism in The Holy Family, co-authored with Engels, and with Feuerbach in German Ideology, also co-authored with Engels, the Left Hegelians made an important and lasting impact on Marxian thought.

  8.3 THE PHILOSOPHICAL-ANTHROPOLOGICAL CONCEPTION

  The central claims and premises of the philosophical-anthropological conception presented in the Manuscripts can be grouped into three subject areas: the objectification model of action, the conception of estrangement, and the conception of an objectual species being.