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MECW translation of Engels’ 1888 version — 1969 Selected Works translation

Marx/Engels Internet Archive

Theses On Feuerbach

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Written: by Marx in the Spring of 1845, but slightly edited by Engels;
First Published: As an appendix to Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy in 1888;
Source: Marx/Engels Selected Works, Volume One, p. 13 – 15.
Note that this version differs from the version of Engels’ edition published in MECW Volume 5, pp. 6-8;
Publisher: Progress Publishers, Moscow, USSR, 1969;
Translated: W. Lough from the German;
Transcription/Markup: Zodiac/Brian Baggins;
Copyleft: Marx/Engels Internet Archive (marxists.org) 1995, 1999, 2002. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the Creative Commons ShareAlike License;
Proofread: by Andy Blunden February 2005.

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I

Feuerbach wants sensuous objects, really distinct from the thought objects, but he does not conceive human activity itself as objective activity. Hence, in The Essence of Christianity, he regards the theoretical attitude as the only genuinely human attitude, while practice is conceived and fixed only in its dirty-judaical manifestation. Hence he does not grasp the significance of “revolutionary”, of “practical-critical”, activity.

II

III

The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-changing can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice.

IV

But that the secular basis detaches itself from itself and establishes itself as an independent realm in the clouds can only be explained by the cleavages and self-contradictions within this secular basis. The latter must, therefore, in itself be both understood in its contradiction and revolutionized in practice. Thus, for instance, after the earthly family is discovered to be the secret of the holy family, the former must then itself be destroyed in theory and in practice.

V

VI

In its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations.

Feuerbach, who does not enter upon a criticism of this real essence, is consequently compelled:

1. To abstract from the historical process and to fix the religious sentiment as something by itself and to presuppose an abstract – isolated – human individual.
2. Essence, therefore, can be comprehended only as “genus”, as an internal, dumb generality which naturally unites the many individuals.

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

 

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Deutsch | 1938 translation of Marx’s original | 2002 translation of Marx’s original | MECW translation of Engels’ 1888 version

Source: marxists.org — original. Shared freely for study.