Wednesday, December 31, 2008

A question of translation regarding Marx's Theses on Feuerbach

While in Brussels in 1845 Marx jotted down some notes which he called Theses on Feuerbach. Engels described this work as “the first document in which is deposited the brilliant germ of the new world outlook”. He and Engels together would later enlarge these notes into a book, The German Ideology. Marx was persuaded by Feuerbach’s arguments that Hegel’s philosophy was rationalized religion, and that in Hegelianism humans are the self-alienation of God. Feuerbach argued that, on the contrary, God is the self-alienation of humans. Marx’s critiques of Hegelianism relied on Feuerbach’s work: Marx argued that it is not primarily abstract mental labor, but rather the natural interactions with real objects and other humans that constitute humanity. However, Marx claimed that Feuerbach forgot historical development in his criticisms of Hegel: “As far as Feuerbach is a materialist he does not deal with history, and as far as he considers history he is not a materialist”. Marx’s synthesis of Feuerbach’s materialism and Hegel’s historicism is often referred to as “historical materialism”.

But in addition, this text (Theses on Feuerbach) is where Marx's vision of human essence had been expressed most aphoristically. I mean, of course, the beginning of the sixth thesis that goes in German as: "…das menschliche Wesen ist kein dem einzelnen Individuum innewohnendes Abstraktum. In seiner Wirklichkeit ist es das Ensemble der gesellschaftlichen Verhältnisse".

In recent English translation the same text goes like: "…the essence of man is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In reality, it is the ensemble of the social relations." (Translated by Cyril Smith 2002, based on work done jointly with Don Cuckson; http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/index.htm).

I cannot comment on this translation because I cannot decide whether the meaning of the German word “Wirklichkeit” is adequately represented by the English word “reality”. Obviously, these words have quite different etymological connotations and, are also different in meaning. In my opinion, "actually" would be much closer to what Marx seems to have in his German mind; "in fact" or "in its truth" or "verity" might also be possible substitutes for "in reality". Anyway, this text used to be one of the most famous of Marx's statements in Soviet Philosophy. It is indeed telling.

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