PARISterminology, did not confine himself to criticism on Hegel's own terms.
At the same time he still respected Hegel as a great thinker and considered
his dialectic a valuable instrument for investigating the world. He also
credited Hegel with having discovered, though in a mystified form, the
process of man's alienation and the means by which it could be
overcome.^171
According to Marx none of Hegel's disciples had ever attempted to
face the crucial question of the validity of their Master's dialectical
method. The only exception to this was Feuerbach: 'Feuerbach is the
only person to have a serious and critical relationship to the Hegelian
dialectic and to have made real discoveries in this field; in short, he has
overcome the old philosophy. The greatness of his achievement is in
striking contrast to the unpretentious simplicity with which he presents
it to the world.'^172 Feuerbach had shown that the Hegelian system was
merely a philosophised form of religion and equally alienating; he had
thus 'founded true materialism and real science by making the social
relationship of "man to man" the basic principle of his theory'.^173 Marx
briefly summarised Feuerbach's achievement in a letter he sent him in
August 1844 :
In your writings you have given - whether intentionally I do not know- a philosophical basis to socialism, and the communists, too, have
similarly understood these works in that sense. The unity of man with
man based on the real differences between men, the concept of human
species transferred from an abstract heaven to the real world: what is
this other than the concept of society!^174
Continuing with the third and final section of the Manuscripts, Marx
turned to look at Hegel's system. He began by copying out the table of
contents of the Phenomenology, 'the true birth place and secret of his
philosophy',^175 and accused Hegel of making all entities that in reality
belonged objectively and sensuously to man into mental entities, since for
him spirit alone was the genuine essence of man. This criticism was
tempered, however, by an analysis of Hegel's achievements that clearly
showed how much (despite his critical comments) he owed to him. For
Marx considered that, although the concept of criticism in the Phenomen-
ology was still liable to mystify and was not sufficiently self-aware, it
nevertheless went far beyond later developments; in other words, none
of the disciples had as yet been able to surpass the Master. Indeed, Marx
made the astonishing claim for the Phenomenology that:
It contains all the elements of criticism - concealed but often already
prepared and elaborated in a way that far surpasses Hegel's own point
of view. The 'unhappy consciousness', the 'honest consciousness', the