Anti-Revolutionary Thinking Against Marx
In Marx’s review of Feuerbach, he argues that praxis is essentially missing. That is, contemplation of the world, of any object, the rational discourse, is deprived of subjective experience.
That should be consequential, if not important. As political theorists begrudgingly apply themselves into metaphysics and epistemology, they often skim through the portions of what can be known and how it becomes known.
We unfortunately, because Marx does a great job, almost necessarily encounter leading public intellectuals, and historical figures, by the likes of Peter Thiel, perhaps Joseph Schumpeter, and only loosely address Marx’s immediate critique of Feuerbach.
And so to address this, before we’re pulled into his own revolutionary line of thinking, and what he himself admits is practical, the position we’re attempting to bowl over, or observe being bowled over, is that where subjective experience, human experience in general, is never objective. And so it appears that before his time, we see Karl Marx revolting against the Objectivism of Ayn Rand, and this is possibly what the dialogue, or the dialectic itself, was capable of.
After all, when we do take Marx seriously, this must have been the case. We see that Objectivism, and even further-right, harder rational-psychological theories of enlightenment thinking, only evoking the necessary descrations of Jung and Freud, perhaps even distancing themselves from the idealized doubt shared by Hume and others, while clinging in reality to Edmund Burke.
And we can’t have this, at the end of the day. If we believe Karl Marx, and perhaps recreate the essential aspect of his argument, truth is something which is proved. And so where Ayn Rand goes, imagining we’re measuring the temperature drop, in a glass of water, is that the thermometer itself is always scholastic, and the act of science, of discovery, the truest act of measurement, is within the fact that someone is doing the thing, practicing and pragmatically understanding, the best way to establish a universal benchmark for a cool cup of water, on a hot summer day.
The perhaps most important lynchpin, is one of Marx’s penultimate points. Namely, Feuerbach is attempting to delineate a materialist dogma, this metaphysical position, and this moves into the secular world, creating a sharp distinction from the religious world. Marx sees this as an anti-revolutionary idea, and perhaps even greater, it’s detached.
This sinful way, is forgetting maybe more robustly, that Marx’s claim is educators themselves are educated, and the facts which are used for confirmation, are something which are apparently in reality. And yet if the only connection of these things, in absence of some omnipresent, and perfectly independent and coherent “ticking clock” which can provide a universal measurement of change, is that we’re ultimately teaching religion and secularism, side by side.
And, if we’re even more charitable, not even this may satisfy Marx. If we go back to the original form of the argument, the undermining of what experience is, and what it produces, doesn’t need an additional control. It’s settled as an a priori fact, that whatever judgements come from something, are necessarily the thing producing knowledge, even a posteriori, a form which necessarily is superior to the types of knowledge, the form of “realism” which Marx believed to be scholastic, purely academic.
There’s perhaps more than two, but at least two ways to address Marx’s criticisms. The first may focus more on the metaphysical, and if we use some modern terminology, we should see that even in the 19th century, the sciences and materialism were slightly more defined, than Marx is giving credit for.
That is to say, the secular study of objects and materials, eventually means that we can weigh a hydrogen atom, and we can measure the acidity of any chemical with great precision, and we can monitor and measure the effectiveness of antibiotics, either in petri dishes or otherwise, en vivo through experimentation. Which, may be what Marx wants us to focus on, but ultimately I believe even Feuerbach would agree, the lines of data and the reproducibility is what would be observed.
That is to say, a very eloquent medical researcher in the 19th century, would tell you about an epic which would make Dostoevsky or Tolstoy blush, it is to say, that necessarily Karl Marx isn’t even asking for a consistency about this topic, he’s not asking for the proper mining of human experience, he himself is simply undermining materialism, in order to defeat materialism. Yes, another way, the researchers can talk about lymph nodes, about immunosuppression, they can talk about immune-resistant bacteria, they can talk about dosing, they can talk about metabolizing antibiotics, and this doesn’t change, what the contemplated object of an antibiotic does, it simply kills bacteria.
Secondly, we can address the more philosophical and perhaps, significant portion of this debate, which is this….in light of the missing, thing(s) of themselves, Marx is forced to decide that the tooling and equipment used within science, is itself contradictory, as itself is capable of producing differing facts, alternate descriptions of objects, and we must assume a very kind-to-science-and-maths version of Hegelianism, which Marx himself may have agreed with adamantly, as he was an economist measuring bushels of apples in the real world.
And so, addressing this adequately, means that several degrees of discussion, are required about selves, experience, and whatever an object can mean.
I believe the nail in the coffin, for the Marxist line of thinking, is that Marx takes too directly, and too literally, too practically in his own words, the Feuerbachian notion of essence. That is, for Marx, the fact that a “religious” sense of a person can be distinct from experience, and with some difficulty, the concept that individuals to Marx, who exist as both societal, secular creatures as well as religious ones, are made homogenized.
Which, isn’t entirely the claim of materialism in the first place, but it’s more than incorrect. And apologies, if I clumsily left this out, because it was my favorite, and it is my favorite, and this line of argument found in the V-VII stanza.
This all said, I admit that it seems sort of spurious, perhaps less important than the other line of thinking, which seems direct. And yet this couldn’t be further from the truth. In all possible worlds, the fact that humans have an essence, which itself marries itself to contemplation, to categorical-functionalism as a political theorist may call this, we’re left deciphering something which is contradictory. That is,
For Marx, the experience of being human necessarily, must create these categories, and the presence of absence of a revolutionary spirit, or practical sentiment, something sensuous as he says, doesn’t actually illustrate, that those categories or this aspect of humanity must be true, that is, it’s always subservient to Marx’s own calls for a revolutionary social religion.
And, experience itself, doesn’t want that, it wanted materialism, and as Feuerbach suggests, it wanted a religious correction from the secular world, which allows the aspects of individuals to remain somehow balanced and coherent.
Said more succinctly, Marx is under indexing on the graph of human relationships with categories, objects, and material world in general. There isn’t experience without this, in the first place.
And so, it’s a good thing, I believe this is a healthy approach and healthy debate. More succinctly, perhaps finding the ways in which smaller and more tangible ideas, seem to buttress Marx’s claims as ideology, further from philosophy, or philosophical in the sense that the smaller forms of “individuals” or “human nature” must be understood, is better all around.
It’s also disconcerting, because this very idea, starts the debate cycle, all over again. That is, in the present moment there appears no dialectical content which can be renewed, and yet Marx’s own supposition seems to fit more neatly in the civilizational, or broader conception when categoricalism is wrong, incomplete, or becomes incoherent.
There’s maybe two versions of this. One is the truth that hydrogen powered trains or cars, arn’t a science fiction future, and are also not possible nor viable as a means of managing societal supply chains and energy crisis.
The other, is that an energy crisis seems to spawn the concept of praxis in the specific, without dis-alluding to the categoricalism and materialism, perhaps the scientific-religious goals of any society in general.
And so, in this case, a dis-alluding term or concept, is one in which the orders and historical context of an observer or describer of an event, must necessarily make sense of categoricalism and religion, in the sense that there can’t be discontent, and yet facts which are specific or referenced or experienced, must be placed both in terms of contemplation, or objects….while also somehow seemingly settling an aspect of practice which Marx never reaches.
Cheers.
