LUDWIG FEUERBACH
AND THE END OF
CLASSICAL GERMAN
PHILOSOPHY

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  ^[1] Engels had in mind Heine's comment on the "German philosophical revolution" in the latter's Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland (Religion and Philosophy in Germany, translated by J. Snodgrass, reprinted by the Beacon Press, Boston, 1959, p. 156).    [p.5]

  ^[2] Hegel, Philosophy of Right, translated by T. M. Knox, Oxford, 1942, p. 10.    [p.5]

  ^[3] W. Wallace, The Logic of Hegel, Oxford, 2nd ed., no date, p. 258.    [p.9]

  ^[4] The Deutsche Jahrbücher fur Wissenscheft und Kunst (German Yearbooks of Science and Art ), the organ of the Young Hegelians edited by A. Ruge and T. Echtermeyer, and published in Leipzig from 1841 to 1843.    [p.13]

  ^[5] For the Rheinische Zeitung, see comments by Plekhanov, p. 113.    [p.13]

  ^[6] D. F. Strauss, A New Life of Jesus, Williams and Norgate, London, two volumes, 1865.    [p.13]

  ^[7] Max Stirner (pseudonym for Kaspar Schmidt), Der Einzige und sein Eigentum (The Ego and His Own ), which appeared in 1845 and which is sharply criticized in Marx and Engels, The German Ideology.    [p.13]

  ^[8] Feuerbach's Das Wesen des Christentums (The Essence of Christianity ) appeared in Leipzig in 1841.    [p.14]

  ^[9] For "true socialism," see Plekhanov's note, pp. 135-37.    [p.15]

  ^[10] E. F. im Thurn, Among the Indians of Guiana, London, 1883, pp. 344-46, a collection of essays on anthropology written during the author's stay in British Guiana.    [p.16]

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  ^[11] The planet referred to is Neptune, discovered in 1846 by Johann Galle, an astronomer at the Berlin Observatory.
    Cf. Engels, Anti-Duhring, Eng. ed., Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1976, pp. 70-71.    [p.19]

  ^[12] Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind, English translation by J. B. Baillie, Allen and Unwin, London, 2nd ed., 4th impression, 1955, pp. 391-400.    [p.26]

  ^[13] Deists reject the existence of a personal god while maintaining that of an impersonal one.    [p.27]

  ^[14] Robespierre attempted to set up a religion of the "Supreme Being."    [p.31]

  ^[15] Here Engels uses rational and secular language to paraphrase the idea expressed by Hegel in theological terms, for which see Hegel's Philosophy of Right, pp. 231 and 256, and The Logic of Hegel, translated by Wallace, pp. 56-57.    [p.34]

  ^[16] The schoolmaster of Sadowa: An expression used by German bourgeois publicists after the Prussian victory at Sadowa (in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866), the implication being that the Prussian victory was to be attributed to the superiority of the Prussian system of public education.    [p.36]

  ^[17] In Greek mythology Rhadamanthus was a wise and impartial judge.    [p.36]

  ^[18] Hegel, The Philosophy of History, English translation by J. Sibree, Willey Book Co., New York, 1944, pp. 238-40.    [p.48]

  ^[19] The first universal council of the Christian church, which was called by the Roman emperor Constantine the Great and met in A.D. 325 at Nicaea in Asia Minor.    [p.56]

  ^[20] A religious sect which flourished between the 12th and 13th centuries in southern France and northern Italy. It condemned the ritualistic formalities and ecclesiastical hierarchy of Catholicism, reflected in a religious form the anti-feudal protests of the urban merchants and artisans. The name is derived from the town of Albi, in the south of France.    [p.56]

  ^[21] This term is applied to the German Empire (excluding Austria) that arose in 1371 under Prussia's hegemony.    [p.59]

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    In publishing the translation of Engels' remarkable work on Feuerbach we permit ourselves to say a few words on its possible significance for Russian readers.

    Triumphant reaction attires itself in our country, among other things, in a philosophical garb, as can be seen, for example, from the journal Voprosy Filosofii i Psikhologii [Questions of Philosophy and Psychology ]. The negative trend of the sixties is treated as something very frivolous and superficial, and Messrs. Astafyev, Lopatin and other would-be sages are acknowledged as great philosophical luminarics (see, for instance, what Mr. Y. Kolubovsky says on "Philosophy among the Russians" in the supplement to his Russian translation of History of Modern Philosophy by Überweg and Heinze). The Russian socialists will be obliged to take this philosophical reaction into account and consequently take up philosophy. In this field, in politics as in economics, Marx and Engels will be their most reliable guides. The present pamphlet contains as full a summary as possible of the philosophical views of these thinkers.

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    The pamphlet is written in a most concise way. We have I had to supply a number of explanatory notes. The longer ones are indicated by figures and placed at the end of the book. There also are two supplements, one of which (Karl Marx on Feuerbach ) is also to be found in the German edition and the other (Karl Marx on French Materialism ) is taken from Marx's and Engels' work Die heilige Familie oder Kritik der kritischen Kritik. Gegen Bruno Bayer und Comp. [The Holy Family, or Critique of Critical Criticism. Against Bruno Bayer and Co.], Frankfurt a. M., 1845. But we have not taken it directly, as this book is a great bibliographical rarity. We translated the chapter on French materialism from the well-known Social-Democratic journal Neue Zeit, which reprinted it a few years ago.

    The polemic of Marx and Engels against "Bruno Bauer and Company" (see Note 4 on Bruno Bauer) constitutes a whole epoch in the history of world literature. It was the first resolute encounter of the brand-new dialectical materialism with idealist philosophy. Of extraordinary importance for its historical significance and its content (as far as we have been able to judge by the few extracts we are acquainted a with), it might still play a great role in Russia, where even the most advanced writers obstinately continue to adhere to idealist views of social life. We would be very willing to contribute to the publication of this book in Russian if it were at our disposal. But we do not know when it will be and therefore content ourselves with translating one chapter.*

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This chapter, which is closely connected with what Engels says about Feuerbach, is a fairly complete whole, and by its wealth of thought leaves far behind the many pages on modern materialism in Lange's well-known work. We particularly direct our readers' attention to the link between nineteenth-century Utopian socialism and eighteenth-century French materialism pointed out by Marx.

    Engels' work on Feuerbach was elicited by Starcke's book on him. But it says so little about this latter book that we do not consider it necessary to discuss it in the foreword. Readers will find the required information in Note 5.

G. Plekhanov  

June 1892

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    Much water has flowed under the bridge since the first Russian edition of this pamphlet appeared. In the foreword to that edition I wrote that, in our country, triumphant reaction attires itself, among other things, in philosophic garb and that to fight this reaction Russian socialists would in evitably have to take up philosophy. Subsequent events have confirmed my foresight. Russian socialists -- by which I meant and mean specifically the Social Democrats -- have in fact had to tackle philosophy. But since they tackled it very late and, to use the popular expression, not jointly and with a will, the results were not particularly happy. At times one was almost compelled to feel sorry that philosophy books had fallen into our comrades' hands. Sorry because they were unable to take a critical attitude towards the authors they were studying and ended by submitting to their influence. And since contemporary philosophy not only among us but also in the West is marked by reaction, revolutionary heads soaked up reactionary content, and there arose an immense muddle, which was sometimes grandly called a critique of

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Marx and at other times was more modestly called a uniting of Marxism with the philosophical views of one or another ideologist of the bourgeoisie (the neo-Kantians, Mach, Avenarius, etc.). That one can combine Marxism with anything at all, even spiritualism, is beyond doubt; the whole question is how it is done. This question cannot be answered by any person of elementary sense without reference to eclecticism. With the aid of eclecticism one can "unite" whatever one wishes with anything that comes into one's head. But eclecticism has never led to any good in either theory or practice. Fichte says, "To philosophize means not to act; to act means not to philosophize," and this is quite correct. It is no less correct, however, that only a person who is consistent in thought can be consistent in action. For us, who aspire to the honour of being representatives of the most revolutionary class ever to appear on history's stage, consistency is compulsory on pain of treason to our own cause.

    What gives rise to this striving to unite Marx now with this, now with that, ideologist of the bourgeoisie?

    Firstly, fashion.

    Nekrasov says of one of his heroes:

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NOTES TO PLEKHANOV'S FOREWORDS AND NOTES,
BY EDITORS OF THE RUSSIAN EDITION OF
SELECTED PHILOSOPHICAL WORKS 
OF PLEKHANOV 



  ^[1] Plekhanov's first Russian translation of Ludwig Feuerbach was published in 1892 in Geneva by the Emancipation of Labour group in the series Library of Modern Socialism. Plekhanov wrote a short foreword and notes for his translation. In 1905 a second edition was published by the Library of Scientific Socialism in Geneva, for which he wrote a long foreword and in which he made some changes and additions in the notes.
    Plekhanov's notes are given according to the text of his Works (1923-27) checked with the Geneva editions of 1892 and 1905 and with the manuscripts, which are preserved in Plekhanov House.    [p.71]

  ^[2] Plekhanov is referring to his Note 7.    [p.77]

  ^[3] Poprishchin is a minor official suffering from megalomania in Gogol's tale A Madman's Diary.    [pp.78, 156]

  ^[4] Lenin criticized Plekhanov with regard to the concept of "experience" in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, Chapter 3, Section 2, "Plekhanov's Error Concerning the Concept 'Experience,'" Eng. ed., Foreign Languages Press, Peking. 1972, pp. 172-75    [p.78]

  ^[5] Plekhanov failed to show the essential differences between Marxism and pre-Marxist materialism, while stressing the uniformity of the starting point of pre-Marxist materialism and modern dialectical materialism in resolving fundamental questions of philosophy. He, therefore, made a

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mistake in making Spinoza's "materialism" approximate the philosophic views of Marx and Engels. In his article "On the So-Called Crisis of Marxism," Plekhanov said, " . . . modern materialism is only more or less aware of its Spinozism."    [p.83]

  ^[6] Heraclitus, about 536-470 B.C.    [p.92]

  ^[7] Rheinische Zeitung fur Politik, Handel und Gewerbe (Rhenish Gazette for Politics, Trade and Industry ) was a daily published in Cologne from January 1, 1842, till March 31, 1843. Founded by radical representatives of the Rhenish bourgeoisie in opposition to the Prussian Govenrment and with the support of certain Left Hegelians, it bccame a revolutionary democratic paper under Marx's editorship. (Cf. V. I. Lenin, Karl Marx, Eng. ed., FLP, Peking, 1974, p. 4.)    [p.113]

  ^[8] In the same article, Karl Marx, Lenin points out that the period of his work with the Rhenish Gazette was marked by Marx's transition from idealism to materialism and from revolutionary democracy to communism (ibid., p. 48).    [p.113]

  ^[9] The Rhenish Gazette is meant.    [p.113]

  ^[10] The New Rhenish Gazette (Neue Rheinische Zeitung ) was published from June 1, 1848 to May 19, 1849. In his "Marx and the Neue Rheinische Zeitung" written in 1884 Engels said that Marx's editorship "made the New Rhenish Gazette the most famous German newspaper of the years of revolution." "No German newspaper, before or since, has ever had the same power and induence or been able to electrify the proletarian masses as effectiveiy as the Neue Rheinische Zeitung." (Marx and Engels, Selected Works, Eng. ed., Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1958, Vol II, pp. 332 and 336-37.)
    Lenin called the New Rhenish Gazette "the best organ of the revolutionary proletariat which has never been surpassed." (V. I. Lenin, Karl Marx, Eng. ed., FLP, Peking, 1974, p. 50, translation revised.)    [p.114]

  ^[11] See Feuerbach, Selected Philosophical Works, Vol. II. Plekhanov uses mainly Chapter 2, "The General Essence of Religion."    [p.128]

  ^[12] This inquiry was called forth by the bitter struggle which the French Republican Government waged against the Catholic Church at the beginning of the century and which ended in the separation of church and state in 1905.
    Answers received from the socialists in different countries were published in four issues of the journal in 1902 -- Nos. 107-10, 1 and 15 November, 1 and 15 December.    [p.131]

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  ^[13] A reference to Berdyayev, Bulgakov and other "Legal Marxists" who, at the end of the nineties, "criticized" Marx from a Kantian viewpoint and went over to the God-seekers and religious mysticism after the 1905 Revolution.    [p.132]

  ^[14] Das Westfälische Dampfboot (Westphalian Steamboat ) -- a monthly periodical issued by the "true socialist" D. Luning in Bielefeld and later in Paderborn from January 1845 to March 1848.    [p.133]

  ^[15] Osvobozhdeniye (Liberation ) -- a journal published under thc editorship of P. B, Struve in Stuttgart and Paris 1902-05. From 1904 it was an organ of the liberal bourgeois League of Liberation, which in 1905 formed the nucleus of the Cadet Party. Its counter-revolutionary and anti-proletalian character was exposed in a resolution proposed by Plekhanov and Lenin and adopted by the Second Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. in 1903.    [p.135]

  ^[16] Proletary -- the central organ of the R.S.D.L.P. -- was published in Geneva from May 14 (27) to November 12 (25), 1905. Lenin was its editor. It succeeded Lenin's Iskra (The Spark ) and the Bolshevik Vperyod (Forward ), and became the ideological and organizational centre of Bolshevism during the period of the First Russian Revolution. The paper exposed the Menshevist tactics of compromising with the bourgeoisie. In the additions he made to the notes on Engels' Ludwig Feuerbach in 1905, Plekhanov, as a Menshevik, tried to discredit the theory of the hegemony of the proletariat in the bourgeois revolution followed by Proletary, representing it as a return to the ideas of the Narodnaya Volya party.    [p.136]

  ^[17] Engels, The Peasant War in Germany, Eng. ed., FLPH, Moscow, 1956, pp. 138-39, translation revised. Lenin quotes the same passage from Engels in "Social-Democracy and the Provisional Revolutionary Government" (V. I. Lenin Collected Works, Eng. ed., FLPH, Moscow, 1962, Vol. 8, pp. 279 and 280) in which he shows the "difference between the point of view of revolutionary Social-Democracy and that of tail-ism" (p. 281).    [p.137]

  ^[18] In pursuing his pro-Menshevik and anti-Bolshevik factional activity in 1905, Plekhanov accused Lenin of Blanquism and slandered Lenin's followers as Nietzscheans and Machians. He opposed the decisions of the Third Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. on the necessity for establishing a revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the workers and peasants, limiting the tasks of the First Russian Revolution to the establishment of a

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bourgeois-democratic parliamentary republie. Lenin, however, regarded the creation and the work of the Provisional Revolutionary Government as the most important condition for the passing of the bourgeois-democratic revolution into the socialist revolution.    [p.137]

  ^[19] Holbach, Système de la nature ou des lois du monde physique et du monde moral (The System of Nature or On the Laws of the Physical World and the Moral World ). Holbach's most important work, it was published allegedly in London but actually in Amsterdam in 1770 under the pseudonym of M. Mirabeau. For a long time it was ascribed to a group of authors.    [p.143]

  ^[20] Here Plekhanov's use of Hume's word "belief," even though put in quotation marks "discloses a confusion of terms," Lenin points out (Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, Eng. ed., FLP, Peking, 1972, p. 159).    [p.156]

  ^[21] The dialectical-materialist solution of the question of the impermissibility of glossing over the specific character of qualitatively different forms of motion of matter, of the impermissibility of reducing these forms to only one of them, was given by Engels in the Dialectics of Nature, Eng. ed., FLPH, Moscow, 1954, pp. 328 and 332-33.    [p.157]

  ^[22] Uspensky, Living Figures, "This is the kind of complicated thing sometimes hidden in statistic fractions. You ponder and ponder over these little ciphers, you do all sorts of calculations, and suddenly a tear drops and smudges it all!" (G. I. Uspensky, Collected Works, Russ. ed., Vol. X, Book 2, 1954, p. 179.)    [p.160]

  ^[23] Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, Chapter V. The attempt to transpose biological concepts to the domain of social science was criticized by Lenin in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, Eng. ed., FLP, Peking, 1972, p. 398.    [p.166]

  ^[24] A reactionary, monarchist, pogrom-making organization set up by the tsarist police to combat the revolutionary movement. They murdered revolutionaries, assaulted progressive intellectuals, and organized anti-Jewish pogroms.    [p.169]

  ^[25] Cf. H. Cunow, Die soziale Verfassung des Inkareichs. Eine Untersuchung des altperuanischen Agrarkommunismus (The Social Structure of the Inca Empire. A Study of Ancient Peruvian Agricultural Communism ), Stuttgart, Dietz, 1896, and his artiele, "Les bases économiques du matriarcat" ("Economie Bases of Matriarchy"), Le devenir social [The Social Future ], 1898, Nos. 1, 2 and 4.    [p.170]

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  ^[26] Lenin criticized Plekhanov's error on "hieroglyphs" in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, Eng. ed., FLP, Peking, 1972, pp. 275-83.    [p.177]

  ^[27] Manilov is a character in Gogol's Dead Souls, whose name has come to typify smug complacency, empty and saceharine prattle, and pipe-dreaming.    [p.179]