Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
186
Speaking very broadly, Avineri argues more for the first alternative while Tucker and Lobkowicz prefer the second.
I
Avineri begins his discussion with a consideration of the importance of Hegel-in particular, of Hegel's Philosophy of Right,
because " it is from Hegel ' s political philosophy that Marx works
toward the roots of the Hegelian system-and not the other way
round . " What Marx objects to in Hegel ' s political teaching is not
its intentions ("to bridge the gap between the rational and the
actual" ), but rather its "main institutional consequences, " which
" invested empirical reality with a philosophic halo " that it did not
deserve . Hegel 's Idea, "which should have been a criterion for judging reality, turns out to be a mere rationalization " ; it " leads to a
quietistic acceptance of the socio-political situation as it is, and
elevates a contemporary phase of history arbitrarily into a philosophic criterion . " 1 As early as March, 1843, Marx had mastered a
technique, originally invented by Feuerbach and known as the
" transformative method, " whereby the seemingly objectionable empirical implications of Hegel's political views could be tackled without destroying the entire system .' The result of Marx 's Feuerbachian
transformation is the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, a careful reading of which, as Avineri shows, " can demonstrate that the
distinctive patterns in Marx' s later thought had already taken shape
when he attacked Hegel in this work . "
Hegel ' s error, according to Marx, was that he confused subject
and predicate : sovereignty, the essence of the state, was conceived
as a subject while the real subject, the " concrete man, " was conceived as a predicate of the state. Marx does not deny this to be an
accurate observation of early nineteenth century German politics,
1 Avineri, pp . 13, 9, 14 . Hegel has not lacked defenders against Marx' s charge
that he provided a rationalization of the status quo . See, for example, the
articles by Knox, Pelczynski, and Avineri himself, in W . Kaufmann, ed ., Hegel's
Political Philosophy (New York, 1970) or the essays by Pelczynski, Shklar,
Ilting, and Berki in Z . A . Pelczynski, ed ., Hegel's Political Philosophy : Problems
and Perspectives (Cambridge, 1971).
Z Compare Marx' s letter to Ruge, 20 March 1842 with his letter also to Ruge,
of 13 March 1843 . Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Werke (Berlin, 1963), vol.
XXVII, pp. 401,417.
sAvineri, p . 13
187
but he does deny Hegel ' s claim that the state is general and universal . Consequently, Marx denies the necessary mediation of civil
society between the particularity of the individual and the universality of the state . Indeed, there can be no mediation when one of
the elements is non-existent, and it is Marx 's argument that in
reality the state merely masquerades as universal ; the Sande which
Hegel saw as representing the general interest and the bureaucracy
which was to serve it are, Marx said, simply additional special interests . What Hegel attempted to do with his discussion of Stiinde
and bureaucracy was restore the classical distinction between the
public or general and the private or particular, in such a way that,
as in the Hellenic polis, the general or political determined the private or economic .' But, Marx objected, since no general interest
appears, the result is that some particular interests are sanctified
by being invested with an illusory general interest.
What does obtain is not Stande, Marx said, but classes . Unlike
the medieval reality denoted by the term and even more unlike
the classical polis, one ' s position in the household does not automatically affect one ' s position in politics . The shift from Stande to
class with the concomitant attrition of political obligations and responsibilities was initiated by the organization of nation states and
was completed, in principle, by the French Revolution which, as
expressed in its motto and battle cry, completely eliminated the
significance of social position for politics . But the formal universality of liberte, egalite, f raternite is simply a token for a thoroughly
particularist and arbitrary definition of politics as a predicate of civil
society . Now, since a man's position in civil society is a consequence
of his property, property relations as such are no longer private, as
they must be acording to both Hegel and Aristotle. But they are not
fully public either, as the universalist motto stands in contradiction
to apparent inequality in property relations . The contradiction between existing social relations and the expression given to them by
Hegel 's Philosophy of Right is a dilemma for people outside civil
society who lack property and therefore lack political visibility as
well .' These people, Marx says, are " less a class of civil society than
4 Cf . Aristotle,
Politics, 1252a1-1253a38.
5Cf . Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Tr. T . M . Knox (Oxford, 1952), para . 237245, especially Hegel' s discussion of the " rabble of paupers" created by poverty
and ressentiment (Emporung) . Para . 244, addition .
188
the basis upon which the strata of civil society rests and move ."'
That is, they are the very condition for the existence of civil society.
Avineri comments : " The circle is thus complete : since Hegel ' s theory
ignores the human subject, it must ultimately reach an institutionalization from which a whole stratum of human subjects will be
exluded . " 7 Even within civil society, classes which are politically
represented are not represented as subjects but as predicates of that
in virtue of which any social appearance at all is possible, namely
property . Furthermore, it is precisely entailed property, which Hegel
saw as providing an economic base sufficiently insulated from the
market forces of civil society to enable the nobility to devote themselves to the public bureaucracy, that Marx finds the most arbitrary of all : the absoluteness of an entailed estate makes it a kind
of absolute subject and "its" aristocratic bureaucrat is a kind of
absolute predicate .' The state per se is therefore both an epihenomenon of real social forces and a means whereby real social forces
are hidden from sight.
The discovery of real classes in real conflict, with no dialectical
ascent (Aufhebung) to the universality of the state implies that civil
society and the activity carried on in civil society rather than the
political realm and political activity are the center of concern . The
activity, of course, is economic, but Avineri is careful to point out
that the role of economics in Marx 's scheme is perhaps more subtle
than it is often made out to be : Marx does not postulate the abolition of class antagonisms because any economic mechanism points
in that direction . No economic analysis precedes his dictum about
the abolition of classes ; "they will be abolished (aufgehoben) because historical development has brought the tension between the
general and the particular to a point of no return . " The point of
no return has been achieved by capitalism, but capitalism, the essence of which is infinite accumulation, was made possible only
through the emergence of civil society as an autonomous sphere of
economic activity devoid of political or religious restraints . The
Werke, I, p . 284 . Later in the Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbiicher Marx identified the proletariat as " a class of civil society which is not a class of civil
society . " Early Writings, Tr . T. Bottomore (London, 1963), p . 58.
7 Avineri, p . 26.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, para . 305-307 ; Marx, Werke I, pp . 303-05;
Avineri, pp . 27-31.
Avineri, p. 59 .
189
190
notion of Mande obsolete and argued that his bureaucracy was just
another particularistic group within civil society, is there not more
than a grain of truth in his assertion? Assuredly, much of what Marx
said was and may be still applicable to the real situation of actual
workers, actual bureaucrats, actual capitalists and so on. But Marx
also implied that in Avineri ' s words, a " point of no return " had been
reached, that the Hegelian project of reconciling particularity with
universality had broken down, but also that Hegel ' s basic notion was
a sound one . What we would like to know, whatever the validity of
Marx's observations on economic, political and bureaucratic realities,
is what Marx thought of the significance of the facts he observed,
why he conceived them to constitute a point of no return, and what
lay " ahead . " In short, is what Marx meant also applicable to
reality, or has he constructed a speculative " reality " of his own devising, a "second reality " as it has been called . 14 Avineri 's caution in
this regard is understandable . If Marx not only told men what was
" going on under our very eyes, " 15 as he put it, but also provided
these facts with their real significance, that is one thing . One may
anticipate no extraordinary problems in textual explication . But, if
Marx is constructing a speculative system which provides a meaning
to the phenomena he describes on the basis of his own imagination,
and if he employs a philosophical or economic language in such a
way as to disguise, as well as he can, his own non-recognition of
the meaning of the historical and social existence of man, then a
formidable task of decoding arises . Avineri appears to fall between
these two fundamentally antithetical positions.
A closer scrutiny of one of Marx 's more potently evocative symbols may expose the difficulty . Marx argued that Hegel 's state was
an inverted reality ; the prescriptive trick therefore is obvious:
" reality must be inverted once more by the transformative method:
man must be made again into a subject ." Y8 In Marx's view, " true
society " which, like Hegel 's, reconciled the particular with the universal, could be achieved not through integration by the state of the
14E . Voegelin, Anamnesis : Zur Theorie der Geschichte and Politik (Munich,
1966), pp . 302-313 ; P. Berger, "The Problem of Multiple Realities : Alfred
Schutz and Robert Musil, " in M . Natanson, ed ., Phenomenology and Social
Reality : Essays in Memory of Alfred Schutz (The Hague, 1970).
"The quote is from the Communist Manifesto, Selected Works, pp . 46-47.
16 Avineri, p. 32 .
191
192
193
sense that man exists within nature, but in the sense that man shapes
nature . This act also shapes man and his relations to other human
beings. . . . " 24 It may be possible to give an intelligible interpretatation of Marx ' s epistemology from what Schelling has called
meontological metaphysics, but this is doubtful prima facie because
Marx confines his argument to what has been called man ' s " natural "
and "historical " situations . 26 Moreover, if we look carefully at
Marx's own explanation of the meaning of his words, we find the
difference between "nature " and "history" eroded and we are left
in a confusion of contradiction . 28 This confusion is present in Avineri 's commentary as well.
On the one hand, it would seem that " reality" is the same as
"nature " understood in a commonsense way as indicating external
things, rocks, trees and perhaps animals, in which case it makes a
kind of sense to say that man "shapes and moulds reality . " But in
order to labor upon nature, to "shape " it, man must also be " within "
nature in the sense that he shares some of the characteristics of nature-corporeity, for example . If men were without bodies there
would be no problem ; but if we are human rather than angelic, the
very condition for "shaping " nature is that we exist " within " it . At
the same time, however, if we were simply " shapers of nature " we
would be unaware of ourselves as "shapers . " If nevertheless, we are
aware of ourselves, even if it is simply an "artistic " awareness,27
then human reality is not exhaustively described by saying that man
"shapes" nature . On the other hand, it would appear that " reality"
means something quite different from " nature" as can be seen in an
analysis of Avineri's account of the relationship between "consciousness " and " reality . " Even with Hegel who attributed rather extraordinary powers to consciousness or, more exactly, to the self-consciousness of the wise man, the link to " reflective . . . cognition " was
never broken . 28 With Marx, and also with Avineri ' s explication,
there is a profound ambiguity . No one would wish to dispute the
194
195
Needs are not simply "natural" in the sense of biological requirements, they are also "social and historical " and therefore determined,
in the end, by man himself . 30 Granted that there are certain biological aprioris, what is focal in Avineri ' s analysis is the " consciousness that will see the need for these particular objects as a human
need . " This consciousness is not apriori but rather is historically contingent . In a way this can only be true trivially : Cicero could not
possibly consider an automobile to be a "human need . " But this
triviality hides a more fundamental ambiguity, masked in Avineri ' s
presentation, which may be brought to light by the following questions : is there a distinction, in reality, between needs and wants or
desires? And if so, is this distinction better to be understood in terms
of changing objects of desire (e .g . chariots versus automobiles) or
changing conceptions of need (e .g . the automobile as a necessity)?
Or rather, is it not a more sound procedure to consign a "need " to
the realm of biology and examine desires, which presuppose the
satisfaction of needs, in terms of their inherent goodness and rationality? The example of Marx, cited by Avineri, of a small house
that seemed adequate until a palace was built nearby whence it was
seen as a mere " hut, " shows that " our desires and pleasures spring
from society " and thus are measured "by society and not by the
objects which serve for their satisfaction ." 31 Avineri' s gloss maintains Marx ' s original equivocation : " Since historical development
enriched human wants, they cannot be measured without being related to the modes of production which created them . " The point of
Marx and evidently of Avineri as well is not a prelude to an analysis
of base desires and wants, nor of the irrationality and uncertainty
of the measure provided by society,32 and certainly not of the significance of the tenth commandment . Rather, Avineri concludes that
since wants or "human needs" are not "naturalistic facts, . . . they
can be consciously mastered and directed . " We are blessed with an
implicit guarantee that if " human society can generate a certain
level of needs, one needs only adequate social organization to satisfy
them . If society had not reached that level of potential satisfaction,
30Cf.,
196
the level of felt needs would not reach as high ." 33 On the basis of
this guarantee all wants in principle can be satisfied because they
are all mediated through consciousness and therefore are " human . "
The nihilistic implications of Marx ' s teaching are overlooked by
Avineri and he passes on to a consideration of the necessary presuppositions : if there are no limits established independent of our
desires that can be apprehended by reason, if all wants are to be
measured by society, and yet if also and at the same time there is
a real meaning to be found in conscious activity, it necessarily follows that man both creates the world and himself. 34 What is astonishing in all this is that while Avineri writes about Marx with a
straight face, as it were, he is also aware of the reason for Marx ' s
irrational refusal to recognize reality : " Man as creator of himself
and of his world also provides a criterion for the analysis of the conditions of his contemporary historical existence . Had Marx lacked
such a criterion, he could not have liberated himself from a relativist
positivism which . would of course have created an unbridgeable
gulf between history and philosophy, between the proletariat and the
revolution as the realization of man 's potentialities as homo faber ."
That is, if man were not creator of himself and his world, if there
were an " objective datum external to man " that situated and therefore limited man qua man, then indeed history would cease to be
the story of the coming of the proletarian revolution, the final
Auf hebung, and the perfection of man ' s self-creation.
Avineri is not always so uncritical . In both the Introduction and
the Epilogue he devotes a few excellent comments to what others
have seen as the centerpiece of Marx 's speculation, " turning the possibility of human redemption into an historical phenomenon about
to be realized here and now ."" Moreover, Avineri indicates the
Hegelian origins of Marx ' s " eschatology of the present ." 37 What he
does not do, but what nevertheless ought to be done, is explain the
theoretical illegitimacy of applying symbols which pertain to a class
of experiences devoted to man's relationship to God to the realm of
mundane affairs . Indeed, properly speaking the transformation is not
36
3SAvineri, p . 80.
34Avineri, pp . 84-85 ; cf Marx, Early Writings, p . 207.
36 Avineri, p . 86.
36 Avineri, p . 250.
37 Avineri, pp . 4, 250 .
197
42 Tucker, p . 125.
"Tucker, p . 12.
44Quotes from Tucker, pp . 218, 234, 227.
45Tucker, p . 14.
198
199
200
simple matter to call into question the adequacy of Tucker's understanding of the " decisive characteristic of mythic thought " 50 but
such an exercise would hardly be worth the effort, for it turns out
that Tucker is not really interested in the phenomenology of mythic
reality so much as the metaphorical or connotative aspects of the
word . Thus, for example, he writes that " Marx's Weltanschauung
has become a political mythology, a narrative associated with the
rites of single-party politics . " s' No doubt Marx can be conceived
as a " myth " maker, his system can be conceived as " religious, " and
Soviet party politics can be conceived as a " rite . " It is plain, however, that in order to conceive the phenomena the way Tucker would
have us, we must appreciate his rhetoric and ignore his lack of conceptual control . Apart from the wholly vague counsel to accept a
" structural viewpoint, " Tucker never tells us why Marx ought be
conceived as a " religious moralist . "
In part, Tucker ' s defective concepts appear only in light of the
more adequate theorizing about the relationship between secular
change and religious enthusiasm that has appeared since the publication of his book . We now possess an extensive and precise
vocabulary to analyze the phenomena involved . Research on millenarian movements in the non-industrial world provides an indispensable background for the re-examination of European and North
American social movements . 62 Studies on the experiences and symbolism of gnosticism, magic and alchemy as well as historical accounts of the transmission of symbols, 63 studies on specific problems
201
(New York, 1971) [French ed . 1956] ; A . Koyre, Mystiques, spirituals, alchemists du XVIe siecle allemand (Paris, 1955) ; C .G. Jung, Collected Works,
vol, XII (Princeton, 1968) ; N . Cohn, The Pursuit of the Milleinium, 2nd ed.
(New York, 1961).
"Here we need mention the work of Karl Lowith, Meaning in History
(Chicago, 1949) and From Hegel to Nietzsche (New York, 1969) [German
ed . 1941] ; Eric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics (Chicago 1952), Science,
Politics and Gnosticism (Chicago, 1968) [German ed . 1959] and " The Formation of the Marxian Revolutionary Idea," Review of Politics, 12 (1950), 275302 ; J . L . Talmon, Political Messianism (New York, 1960) ; Gerhart Niemeyer, Between Nothingness and Paradise (Baton Rouge, 1971).
"Tucker, pp . 219-220.
"Tucker, p. 240.
"Tucker, p . 144 .
202
"Tucker, pp . 1441f.
69 Tucker, p . 31 .
203
204
tation no less than the sheer bulk and richness of narrative make a
complete analysis impossible . We can only summarize Lobkowicz' s
major additions to our understanding of the genesis of Marx' s
notion.
The first section contains a collection of "materials for a prehistory " to Marx' s treatment of theory and practice . It begins with
an account of the classical distinction between philosophical and
political dimensions of existence . Neoplatonic degradation of political
praxis into a cathartic preparation for a non- " theoretical " and
strictly contemplative mystical ecstasy, subsequent alterations to
contemplation provided by Christian demands for charity, and the
" post-theoretical" practice of Duns Scotus provide the necessary
background for the characteristically modern view exemplified by
Bacon and Descartes . For politics, the important factor was the
denial of the reality of tradition and practical knowledge : ethical
and political decisions, because they depended upon contingencies,
can never be taken on the basis of knowledge . This view is quite
different from Aristotle who argued that practical, that is, political
and ethical knowledge had a smaller degree of certainty because its
object was changing and contingent : "By reducing all knowledge
to one kind Descartes commits himself to a radical irrationalism in
those areas, most significantly ethics and politics, where mathematical
knowledge is irrelevant ." 63 Such a conclusion, despite the efforts
Spinoza, Malebranch, Leibniz, and even Locke to extend mathematics to the ethical and political realm, greatly disturbed Kant
who was committed both to a genuine ethics and to Cartesian
natural philosophy.
Kant' s well known solution was to divide reality in two : nonmetaphysical appearance is mathematical and the non-appearing,
non-theoretical is metaphysical. Knowledge having to do with the
natural world was "theoretical" ; knowledge having to do with the
"truly real " suprasensible world was " practical ." The one is studied
in terms of natural scientific concepts, the other is 'apprehended
through freedom . Freedom places man in a world additional to the
world of nature, but, because he is first of all in the world of nature,
moral, that is, " practical" laws appear as "oughts . " Theoretical,
scientific laws deal with "what is . " An "ought," an ideal, is by
definition remote from actual conduct, which is precisely Kant's
B3Lobkowicz, p . 119.
205
point : the laws of the intelligible world are not implemented, but
willed . Hence Kant' s famous aphorism that the only unqualified
good is a good will is based not upon the ontological status of the
good, but upon the status of will . But the ontological law of the will
is freedom which makes a good will simply obedience to the very
nature of will . The vast inflation of the commonsense observation
that a person has some choice about the life he leads implies that
" all except strictly physical laws are imposed upon man by himself,"" since man is free in everything but physical laws to define
his own place in the world.
Hegel 's contribution, in this context, appears as a rather simple
one : he treats will as a special mode of thought, in particular, as a
desire to have reality conform to "reason ." As history unfolds, the
importance of will and activity declines as reality achieves greater
and greater reasonableness . Pragmatically, there is a good deal of
ambiguity in Hegel ' s formula : after all, all men may not describe
"reality" in terms of its reasonableness . Lobkowicz argues that, for
Hegel, the reasonableness of the present is simply not problematic;
it is a fact of history that must be recognized . 65 . The notion, so
prominent in the preface to the Philosophy of Right, that " the
future holds nothing new " is also found, as Kojeve has argued, in
the Phdnomenologie . 88 When a thinker is of the opinion that history
has come to an end certain rather obvious psychological problems
arise that are less acute if the end of history is seen as a future
occasion . In particular, historical facts whose meaning is obvious to
everybody must be " reinterpreted" so as to have them conform to
the imaginary millennial present . Hegel' s method of achiving this
task, Lobkowicz argues, is to glorify the present by arguing that in
reality man is participating in God ' s eternal life, to secularize Christian eschatalogical symbols, and to develop a "science " which
comprehends the now secularized symbolisms in terms of the transfigured empirical events of actual history . 67
64Lobkowicz, p . 135.
66 In the Phfinomenologie Hegel issues a kind of spiritual death warrant on
those " representatives " of the public who resist recognizing the reasonableness
of reality . Philnomenologie, p . 58.
66A . Kojeve, Introduction a la Lecture de Hegel, 2nd ed . (Paris, 1947), pp.
280 ff, 442 . Lobkowicz gives a brief account of the pre-history of the symbolism
of "nothing new, " pp . 166-73.
67 Lobkowicz, pp . 174-181 .
206
207
of his " science, " why not time as well? He answered by the construction of a view of universal history by means of a then current
trichotomy of historical progression. There were, he said, three ways
to know the future : by imagination, as with pre-Hegelian " seers
and prophets, " by thought, as with Hegel, and by action which was
the "direction, of the future . " The action involved was "post-theoretical, " it was the praxis of an absolute knower . " Man was now an
accomplice of the Absolute ; he could fulfill the aims of Providence
simply by acting according to reason, according to his own
reason . 7 72 Where Hegel transformed Kant ' s absolute moral will into
absolute thought, Cieszkowski succeeded in transforming absolute
thought back into absolute will, only unlike Kant, he placed it not
beyond " theory" but rather had it absorb theory on the way by . This
was important for one reason : if Rosenkranz was genuine in his
fear that the generation of philosophers which followed Hegel were
destined to be merely "gravediggers and monument builders, " 73 it
was Cieszkowski ' s great contribution to relieve the nervous anxiety
which the spectre of such occupations provoked in the young men
whose libido dominandi was equal to that of the master . For a man
such as Bruno Bauer however, even Cieszkowski would not do . True,
Cieszkowski differed with Hegel' s view that the absolute knower
akin to Minerva ' s Owl, but in his opinion that reality developed
alongside knowledge, Cieszkowski ' s " post-theoretical practice" was
not "critical ."
After having read Marx ' s sarcastic comments in the German
Ideology and The Holy Family, it is difficult to take Bauer ' s " criticism " very seriously . And yet, Bauer was simply a consistent Hegelian ; the only difference between him and Hegel was that for
Hegel the world was rational and hence to be justified while for
Bauer it was not and hence to be criticized . Bauer is comical only
because the world he critically annihilated remained untouched.
But exactly the same was true of Hegel' s "justified " world . Two
roads and two roads only were possible as the consequences of
"critical destruction " became apparent : either one could take the
road of Marx where criticism issued in political activity, or one
could remain faithful to criticism, secure in the knowledge that
72 Lobkowicz, p . 198.
"Karl Rosenkranz, Hegels Leben (Berlin, 1844), p . xix.
208
criticism alone was the way to truth . But even Marx did not take
his final path immediately ; in the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of
Right Marx is more realistic than Bauer only because he advocates
propaganda rather than an esoteric development of the truth, but
the premise, that the proper path lay in " criticism, " was not challenged . 44 Even so, Marx was the first to suggest an answer for a
problem that had bothered him even in his dissertation : if absolute
knowledge is not actualized, then it can hardly be absolute and if
criticism is necessary, then this fact is evidence that the critic 's knowledge is less than absolute . 75 Marx' s answer is that "real " or " practical" salvation may be attained in the deeds "of an extraphilosophical
humanity, or a part of it, which meets the theory half-way . " 76 If, as
Marx argued, salvation would come when humanity or its representative accepted "criticism " as its principle of action, then it
surely was possible to argue that such representatives had been destined for their salvific role by history in much the same way that
history destined Hegel to achieve absolute knowledge.
In fact, it is upon the basis of Marx 's "knowledge" that the
proletariat is the representative of mankind that his elaborate
speculation on alienation retains a degree of intelligibility . We begin
with the "knowledge" that the self-suppression of the proletariat as
a separate class establishes a socialist society, a society in which each
man acts as the representative of mankind . In this sense, socialist
society is simply a "goal, " a Kantian " ought . " But Marx also says
that proletarian self-suppression will be an Aufhebung of alienation,
a "negation of a negation . " One can' t have it both ways ; if indeed
human history is the laborious self-actualization of man 's speciesbeing, then Aufhebung must follow Aufhebung to its dialectical infinity, in which case socialist society must appear as an arbitrary
and premature totalization . On the other hand, the Kantian
" ought " is non-dialectical . The juxtaposition of dialectical and nondialectical elements is resolved to Marx ' s satisfaction because he can
conceive of the self-development of mankind as dialectical while the
"knowledge " of the telos of this process ensures that any merely
logical inconsistencies can be dismissed as " abstract . " Thus what
appears to be the premature totalization of an open dialectic is,
74For example,
Early Writings,
p.
52.
209
210
attack upon the entire Hegelian enterprise launched by " Stirner ' s
odd book, The Ego and Its Own . " S0 If we look upon the Hegelian
succession as a story of every-increasing profanation, from Hegel's
original reduction of the world-transcendent God to a world-immanent Geist, to the reduction of Christ by Strauss from the axis of
world history to a mythical symbol of the species divinity of mankind, to Feuerbach's transformation of God likewise into the divine
species and finally to the reduction of the divine humanity by Hess
and Marx to society, then " Stirner seems to have taken the next
logical step, and to have reduced everything from God, through
Mankind to Society, to the bare individual that each of us is ." 81
For Stirner, everything from Hegel ' s Geist to Marx's communism
was simply an "ideal" to be consumed by the insatiable individual
which alone retained reality . Such an objection had to be met . Stirner had gone too far in his eclipse of reality, for if everything were
simply a divertissement for an aggressive self, there was no point in
laboring to achieve socialism . Prior to the German Ideology, which
Lobkowicz suggests was aimed primarily at Stirner, SZ Marx had
never thought it necessary to argue why socialism was desirable;
the problem was always posed in terms of showing how socialism
was the " correct" consequence of Hegelianism . Stirner ' s attack on
Hegelianism in all its forms meant that the only reply that Marx
could make was to argue that the role of the proletariat was not
an " ideal, " and that his condemnation of the present world order
was simply a reflection of the laws of history, while everybody else's
was a reflection of the existing world-order . The answer to the
first problem was his notion of "historical materialism " ; the answer
to the second was his notion of "ideology . "
8OLobkowicz, p . 391.
81 Lobkowicz, " Karl Marx and Max Stirner, " in F . J . Adelmann, S . J ., ed.,
Demythologizing Marxism, Boston College Studies in Philosophy, Vol . II
(Chestnut Hill and the Hague, 1969), p . 75.
82His argument is inherently plausible : Marx and Engels both had more
interesting things on their minds than a return to what Engels called " this
theoretical twaddle . " After the publication of The Holy Family, there would
seem to be no reason critically to destroy " Bauer and Company" all over again.
But the publication of Stirner ' s book after The Holy Family demanded, if not
a public reply, then at least a private refutation, as indeed Marx called The
German Ideology some years later, "Preface to The Critique of Political
Economy," in Selected Works, p . 184 . Lobkowicz, Theory and Practice, pp.
403 ff ; cf . E. Voegelin, " The Eclipse of Reality" in Natanson, ed ., op . cit.,
pp . 188-89 .
211
p . 31.
84Lobkowicz, p . 422 . This objection to the dilemma of " revolutionary praxis"
is not, it should be noted, a criticism of Marx ' s theory about practice . Indeed,
there is a good deal of truth in Marx' s observation that because of the contingencies of one ' s situation, history, in the sense of " what men do," depends
upon the conscious, rational intentions of men, but this same contingency can
subvert their intentions and provide men with consequences quite antithetical to
what they sought . Thus, for example, there is nothing but an obvious empirical
truth in the observation that " circumstances make men just as much as men
make circumstances . " The German Ideology, p . 51 . Cf . Lobkowicz, pp . 415,
417, 426.
85 Lobkowicz, pp . 408-409, 426 .
212
BLobkowicz, p . 215.
s ''Lobkowicz, p . 239 . I might add, in passing, that a recent study by William
J. Brazil], The Young Hegelians (New Haven, 1970), places the religious
question as the central concern of the Young Hegelians . This principle of selection, despite its justification, has the unfortunate consequence of excluding
Marx, Engels and even Hess.
"George Lichtheim, New York Review of Books (11 April 1968), p . 27.
"Cf. Fackenheim, op. cit ., and also his study of Hegel, The Religious Dimension in Hegel' s Thought (Bloomington, Ind ., 1967).
so Cf . Lobkowicz, p . 315 . This is not to say that Lobkowicz's treatment of
alienation as developed by Marx is deficient but only to suggest that beneath
Marx' s deficient symbolism, logical inconsistency and so on there may be a
metaphysical and not just a psychological thesis .
213
Of the three books under review, Lobkowicz ' s is clearly the best.
He substantiates with sound philosophical and theological argument
the cruder, psychologically based opinions of Tucker . Moreover, he
214
hints, on the final page, that despite its dubious origins, there may be
some insight in Marx's idea of praxis . With the argument and analysis of Avineri before us, it would be difficult to think otherwise . But
this faces us with a new problem : How to account for the two
Marxes, the historian-social scientist and the gnostic prophet? We
can do no more than give a brief suggestion.
Beneath Marx's cure for the condition of his age may be detected
a genuine diagnostic insight . But the whole problem of understanding Marx lies in the gap between diagnosis and therapy and the
dialectic which spans it . A contrast with Platonic therapeia may be
instructive, for Plato, as Marx, found his social order perverse.
Plato 's diagnosis was that his fellow citizens loved the wrong things
or, what was the same thing, that they were ignorant " in the soul"
as to what they truly loved, namely the good . What is required then,
is a mestatrophe, a " conversion" whereby the entire soul is turned
around . Such is the task of the educative regimen, paideusis, spelled
out in Book VII of The Republic . Two things distinguish Platonic
" revolutionary " paideia from Marx ' s revolutionary praxis . The first
is that the philosopher is representative because he can " measure "
the goodness of the desires of the polis . He can do so because he
desires the highest good, because the god is the measure of the
philosopher ' s psyche. 96 The Platonic teaching suggests that the interlocutor, that is, Socrates, will first of all have ordered his own psyche
in conformity with the divine measure . The physician must heal himself before he is fit to " cure " a "sick" polls . The instrument for
therapeutic conversion is, of course, dialectic, rational discussion . In
contrast, Marx prevents rational discussion from ever arising. The
condition for even speaking about " man" is the acceptance of the
by no means obvious proposition that "man is directly a natural
being ." 96 We noted above, in connection with Avineri's exegesis
of Marx's notions of " nature," that there was a profound equivocation in his use of the word . Moreover, Marx explains that if man
were not directly a natural being he would owe his being to something else and therefore would not truly be anything at all . This is
true, of course, only if the premise is true . But Marx never defends
the premise . Moreover, in a context which is surely parallel to the
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216
" false" and "imaginary" elements which, as the substance of a political movement, are so intimately linked to the bourgeois pathology
Marxism pretends to oppose . Such a treatment may expect modest
enough pragmatic consequences given present political realities ; perhaps it can contribute to a restoration of political science, which may
indeed be Plato ' s therapeia .
BARRY COOPER
York University