This is his very best and most important quote imo
And it’s so true for most philosophers. I love learning about the history of philosophy, but the critique behind this quote is just devastating for almost the entire field.
its on his grave so theres reason to belive he would have agreed.
German philosophy prior to Marx developed materialism - the idea that there is a knowable, objective reality. However their view was that objective reality (gegenstand) “stands against” human social reality. In order to understand that reality, humans passively observed it. You want to understand a rock? You observe the rock. You note it’s color, it’s texture, it’s shape, how it feels to he touch, etc. Now you understand the nature of the rock!
Marx figured out that this wasn’t quite correct. He considered himself a materialist and agreed with the basic idea of an objective, knowable reality. He even felt it stood apart from human social reality in the sense that if no humans existed, reality would still exist. However he proposed that you can’t truly understand something unless you do something with it, you perform an objective activity. If you take that rock and do something with it, make a tool, a weapon, use it for building material, grind it up for pigment and make art with it, then you’ve truly come to understand the nature of the rock. The rock becomes part of human social reality - our culture. Not only that but the nature of rock is also changed as it’s not only the sum of its observable properties, but what humans do with it as well. Therefore you can shape the nature of reality by engaging with it!
If this sounds suspiciously like science to you then you’re on the right track. During Marx’s time natural philosophy was formalizing into science. This idea of materialism requiring more than observation was a key part of that and others figured it out too. It’s no coincidence that social science attempted to formalize as well. Marxism is scientific. It’s inductive and iterative. You read theory (passive observation) then you apply theory (practical activity). If your application of theory creates change then you know your application was correct. If it doesn’t, you figure out why, write it down along with an improvement (new theory) and then you apply it again.
I agree with the conclusion. You mentioned social reality, but just to stress it even more, because I think the example with the rock might be a bit too simplistic in isolation. Historic materialism is not just practical but also dialectic and, well, historic.
So that notion of praxis is not isolated to one individual, one point in time and one stage in development. Marx (and Engels) innovative addition to materialism was not just to put it into individual praxis, but also into historic and societal context as well as to modify Hegels dialectic for this purpose and for even boarder applications. Historic materialist is dialectic materialism applied to the development of human societies.
Engels was delighted to see another application in evolutionary biology and Marx soon shared in his enthusiasm and wrote to Darwin to thank him.
Why is he naked
Sex sells
theory should not be commodified smh
Clothes are bourgeois
I’m a little surprised you’ve never heard of Marxism-Leninism-Nudism, but we’re are all here to learn new things together.
Someone should maybe mention that the art was ripped from the youtube channel The Marxist Project
That’s they’re signature little Marx animation they use in a lot of their videos.
Thanks! It almost looked like Crash Course to me, and I was wondering.
A Soviet song in Russian, performed by the RSFSR State orchestra puts this quote into music in quite a wonderful way IMO:
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Anekdote of Philosophical History and Materialsim
In Jena , (city east to Weimar) , the University was very liberal as it had 7? landlords or something and they couldnt agree to manage the University, so it was basiclly free via “AFK- Landlord”
that lead to it beeing the place where many big names Studied , Hegel Teached there and had just published the Founddationalwork of the “Materialism” – Phänomenologie des Geistes when Big name Napoleon Strolled into Town to Beat the Prußans at “Jena-Auerstädt” . The Concept of “Phänomologie des Geistes” actually left the Town with the last Post-Carrige.
Jena beeing that liberal University , lead some 35 Years later a certain Outlaw academic Called “Karl Marx” making Contact with it and becoming
Dr. Karl Marx, Actually.
Love that anecdote!
About that doctoral certificate: very funny how they latinize all the names. Why “Carlo Henrico Marx”, though? He didn’t have a second given name. Did they just randomly write the Latin version of his father’s name “Heinrich” as a second name for some reason?
Could be a Latin naming Convention ? I dont know it either.
