Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany, 1789-1848

198 } Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany

The thrust of Marx’s critique of Feuerbach’s materialism in the “Theses” is

that Feuerbach conceives of the material world chiefly as an object of percep-

tion and reflection, while continuing to understand theoretical—not practical—

activity the only essentially human activity. Aside from some passing remarks

on work as species activity, Feuerbach consistently focuses on species-being as

a form of consciousness. In contrast, Marx insists on seeing “sensuous human

activity, practice” in terms of agency, or “subjectively.” In other words, social

agency as what Marx here calls “objective activity” signals a definitive break

from an idealist conception of the subject-object binary that aligns human

agency with a semantic field including rationality, ideality, and consciousness

as opposed to materiality, reality, and practice. For all Feuerbach’s emphasis, in

Marx’s words, on “the thing, reality, sensuousness,” Feuerbach could not con-

ceive of human agency in material terms. Instead, “in Das Wesen des Christentums

he regards the theoretical attitude as the only genuinely human attitude, while

practice is conceived and fixed only in its dirty-Jewish manifestation. Hence he

does not grasp the significance of ‘revolutionary,’ of ‘practical-critical,’ activity.”^178

In light of the preceding analysis of Marx’s “Zur Judenfrage,” we can see in

Marx’s remark on Feuerbach’s arrested conception of practical material agency

also the Selbstkritik of an erstwhile Feuerbachian. Marx seems to have in mind

the opening of part 2 of Feuerbach’s Das Wesen des Christentums, which draws

a contrast between pure theoretical and vulgar practical reflection [Anschau-

ung].^179 For Feuerbach the material world is important chiefly as the object of

disinterested reflection for theoretical consciousness (of which species con-

sciousness is a form). Religion short-circuits human theoretical reflection by

providing an easy all-purpose answer. As a provider of human needs, moreover,

God transforms our drive for disinterested theoretical reflection into a merely

practical interest in egoistic needs. Whereas theoretical reflection is man’s es-

sential activity, Feuerbach argues, “practical reflection is a dirty reflection, be-

smirched by egoism [eine schmutzige, vom Egoismus befleckte Anschauung] .”^180

Feuerbach calls practical reflection that concerns itself with material needs

“schmutzig,” but not Jewish. In the chapter of Das Wesen des Christentums that

he devotes to Jews, Feuerbach sees base materialism at the heart of the antitheo-

retical Jewish conception of creation: God as the provider of the Jews’ bodily

needs. Not even in this chapter, however, does Feuerbach use the term “schmut-

zig-jüdisch.” “Jüdisch” is Marx’s addition.

What does it tell us that, in this reckoning with the theoretical limitations

of Feuerbachian materialism, Marx uses “Jewish” as shorthand for Feuerbach’s

denigrating conception of practical reflection and material existence? In trying

to move beyond Feuerbach’s dismissal of practical materiality as a realm be-