Hi everyone, welcome to another entry of our Short Attention Span Reading Group.

The Text

Theses on Feuerbach: eleven points on Feuerbach, a fellow Hegelian, written by Marx, famously culminating in

The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.

The text is very short, but very dense with information and assumed knowledge. So what can we learn about dialectical materialism from this text?

Past SAS RG

  • DecolonizeCatan [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    I feel like I'm lost at the very first sentence:

    The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism – that of Feuerbach included – is that the thing, reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object or of contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively.

    Is there an example that helps clarify the difference between conceiving reality 'only in the form of the object' as opposed to conceiving reality as 'sensuous human activity?'

    Like, lets say I flip a coin. I conceive the coin flip, and conclude that it lands tails up. What would Feuerbach's materialism say about how I conceived the coin--What does it mean to say that I was only conceiving the form of the coin, and that I wasn't engaging in 'sensuous human activity'?

    I'm a philosophy plebe, so I apologize if this is a dumb question.

    • ShroomunistTendancy [any]
      ·
      4 years ago

      i'm not an expert but here's my opinion anyway;

      F's materialism would say that you can only determine any truth about the coin toss result by either thinking about it theoretically ("contemplation") as you just did, or by analysing the properties ("form of the object") of the coin itself and of all the things that act upon its trajectory & motion.

      Marx would say you can also just toss the coin.

      He'd say that F's materialism makes the action of tossing the coin redundant, because it doesn't concieve of human activity and perception as something we can gain truth/knowledge about the world from, because it's notoriously subjective. While Marx would say that in fact subjective human experience/activity is a part of the objective reality we exist in, and if you ignore that you're a filthy idealist.

      Hence i think the final accusation that philosophers sit around talking shit instead of doing stuff. Which I think is an unfair accusation by his own analysis since philosophers do materially change the world by interpreting it (aristotle taught alexander the great for example), but I think he was saying it for effect more than anything.

      edit: i didn't actually answer properly sorry:

      "What does it mean to say that I was only conceiving the form of the coin, and that I wasn’t engaging in ‘sensuous human activity’?"

      you were just being a scholar, and thinking about something without doing it. That's fine, and you can work stuff out like that, but unless you actually toss the coin you're ignoring half the point, that is to test your idea of truth about the world upon the world itself. you can theorise all you like about the coin result but just stop and flip the thing already and we can find out far more much faster.

      Since humans exist in a state/world of activity, not a world solely of contemplation/analysis, we'd reach poor conclusions if we just think about stuff and never do/experience it.