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Marx on Religion: The Influence of Bruno Bauer and Ludwig Feuerbach on his Thought and its Implications for the Christian-Marxist Dialogue
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
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The purpose of the present paper is to determine the exact nature of Marx's atheism by delineating the extent to which he draws from Bruno Bauer and Ludwig Feuerbach for his own quite distinctive critique of religion. This is an important question inasmuch as it sheds light on Marx's singular view of religion. For if Marx takes the content of his critique of religion from Bauer—not, as is commonly supposed, from Feuerbach1—then Marx's atheism is of an extremely militant sort. Such a conclusion would have far-reaching implications.
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References
page 533 note 1 Feuerbach's impact on Marx comes after the latter's break with Bauer. It does not date from Feuerbach's Essence of Christianity, but rather from his later works, his lesser-known critiques of Hegelian speculation. Feuerbach's Essence was published in 1841, but it was not until 1843, after the publication of Preliminary Theses for a Reform of Philosophy and Principles of the Philosophy of the Future, that Marx assimilated some of Feuerbach's ideas. This will be argued in some detail in the main body of our paper.
page 533 note 2 Particularly in relation to the so-called Christian-Marxist dialogue. We will explicate this point further in the conclusion to our study.
page 534 note 1 Marx, Karl and Engels, Frederick, Manifesto of the Communist Party, trans. Moore, Samuel (Moscow, 1952), p. 72.Google Scholar
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page 534 note 4 Between 1840–3, Bauer designed his critiques to effect immediate political change in Germany. However, after the failures of radicalism, Bauer did shift in 1844 to a more theoretical critique, ‘pure criticism’, devoid of immediate political impact.
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page 536 note 4 ibid., pp. 69–70.
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page 539 note 2 According to Marx, Christianity was the apex of religious development, the most extreme form of religious alienation. The variety of Christianity which Marx was most familiar with was a very other-worldly Lutheranism, predominant in Germany during the 1840's.
page 539 note 3 Manifesto, p. 44.
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page 542 note 1 See ‘Excerpt-Notes of 1844’, in Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society, pp. 271–2, where Marx elaborates on the term ‘communal being’, das Gemeinwesen.
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page 543 note 4 ibid., p. 103.
page 543 note 5 It will be seen later that Marx disagreed with Feuerbach's definition of this real human subject.
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page 545 note 3 ibid., p. 14.
page 545 note 4 ibid., p. 25.
page 546 note 1 Feuerbach viewed man traditionally. Thus, the three faculties of man are cognition, conation, and affection.
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page 546 note 3 ibid., p. 26.
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page 547 note 2 ibid.
page 548 note 1 ‘Introduction’, p. 43.
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page 548 note 3 See ‘Paris Manuscripts’, p. 122.
page 548 note 4 It is perhaps worth noting that Marx employed this description in his discussion of the worker's alienation from nature. It was Feuerbach who emphasized that man was a part of nature. However, Feuerbach saw man's relation to nature as passive, while Marx saw it as active.
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page 551 note 2 ibid., p. 52.
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page 552 note 1 Manifesto, p. 58.
page 552 note 2 ibid., p. 45.
page 553 note 1 ‘Introduction’, p. 43.
page 555 note 1 Manifesto, pp. 79–80.