Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany, 1789-1848
amelia
(Amelia)
#1
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-