MARXISM

AND HEGEL
LUCK)COLLETTI

Lucio Colletti

NLB

Marxism and Hegel

Translated from the Italian by Lawrence Garner

First published as Part II of

Il Marxismo e Hegel
by Editori Laterza, Bari, 1969
Editori Laterza, 1969
This translation first published, 1973
NLB, 1973
NLB, 7 Carlisle Street, London WI
Typeset in Monotype Ehrhardt
and printed by
Western Printing Services Ltd, Bristol
Designed by Gerald Cinamon

I
I

I.
II.
III.
IV.
v.
VI.
VII.
VIII.
IX.
x.
XI.
XII.

Hegel and the 'Dialectic of Matter'

Hegel and Spinoza

28

Dialectical Materialism and Hegel

40

Hegel and the 'Theory of Reflection'

Hegel and Scepticism

52

68

Scepticism about Matter and Scepticism about Reason

Cassirer on Kant and Hegel
Kant, Hegel, and Marx
Hegel and Jacobi

106

II3

139

From Bergson to Lukacs

157

The Concept of the 'Social Relations of Production'

The Idea of 'Bourgeois-Christian' Society
Index

285

86

249

199

I.

Hegel and the

'Dialectic of Matter'

The central theme of Hegel's thought is his thesis of the identity of

idealism and philosophy. As stated in the

Logic: 'Every philosophy

is essentially an idealism or at least has idealism for its principle,

and the question then is only how far this principle is actually
carried OUt.'1 Just exactly what one is to understand by idealism is
explained by Hegel with great clarity. Idealism is the point of view
which denies that things and the finite world have true reality.
'The idealism of philosophy consists in nothing else than in recog
nizing that the finite has no veritable being.'2 Idealism ascribes
being to the infinite, the Spirit, God. The subsequent elucidation, in
which Hegel extends the identity of philosophy and idealism to the
identity of idealism and religion,

idealism and Christianity,

follows

logically and does not come as a surprise. 'This is as true of philo

sophy as of religion; for religion equally does not recognize finitude
as a veritable being, as something ultimate and absolute or as some
thing underived, uncreated, eternal. Consequently the opposition
of idealistic and realistic philosophy has no significance. A philo
sophy which ascribed veritable, ultimate, absolute being to finite
existence as such, would not deserve the name of philosophy.' 3
The intuitive world-view that lies at the basis of these propositions
is the same as that of Christianity. The finite is the limited, the
I. G. W. F. Hegel, Science of Logic, translated by A. V. Miller (London, 1969),
pp. 154-5 [hereafter referred to as L]. I have attempted to furnish the reader with the
reference to the standard English translation of the works cited by ColIetti. Where this
has not been possible, a translation of the original text - unless otherwise indicated - has
been made. It has been necessary to modify some of the standard translations, particu
larly the Wallace translation of the first volume of the Encyclopedia, the Logic. I have
indicated at the end of each note whenever modifications have been made.
2. ibid., p. 154.
3. ibid., p. ISS.

8
perishable, the ephemeral. The finite 'seems' to be, and

is not.

The

finite is that which is fated to come to an end: that which is evanes

cent and devoid of value. 'When we say of things that

they are finite,

we understand thereby that . . . non-being constitutes their nature

and being. Finite things

are,

. but the truth of this being is their

.

end. The finite not only alters, like something in general, but it
ceases to be; and its ceasing to be is not merely a possibility, so that it
could be without ceasing to be, but the being as such of finite things
is to have the germ of decease as their being-within-self: the hour of
their birth is the hour of their death.'4
Given these premisses, the problem which presents itself to
philosophy is to conceive coherently, in all its aspects, the 'principle
of idealism', the idea of Christianity. All 'true' philosophies have
the same principle; there remains, however, the question of seeing
'how far this principle is actually carried out'.'In a previous Remark
the principle of idealism was indicated and it was said that in any
philosophy the precise question was, how far has the principle
been carried through. As to the manner in which it is carried
through, a further observation may be made. . . . This carrying
through of the principle depends primarily on whether the finite
reality still retains an independent self-subsistence alongside the
being-for-self.'5
Thus the problem is to conceive idealism in a logically coherent
fashion. But note that this task is not to be carried out simply as a
logically coherent development, but rather as a development that

actualization of the principle, in other

words, the translation of idealism into reality. If in fact the principle
of philosophy is that the finite is non-being and only the infinite is,
implies at the same time the

philosophy can lay claim to logical consistency in its operations only

under one condition: that it puts an end to the finite and validates
only the infinite, thereby annihilating the world and replacing it
with 'true' reality.
Hegel's thesis, in this regard, is that no philosophy has succeeded
until now in solving this problem, in realizing the idea of Christian
ity. The principle of idealism has hitherto been contradicted and
4. ibid., p. 129.

5. ibid., pp. 160-1.

Hegel and the 'Dialectic of Matter' 9

negated everywhere in its practical execution: philosophy has
always been inconsistent with itself. The responsibility for this
is traced back by Hegel essentially to a question of

method.

Philo

sophy has adopted, Hegel states, the point of view of the 'intellect',
the principle of non-contradiction or of the mutual exclusion of
opposites. * Thinking that the problem of its 'actualization' could
be simply reduced to one of 'logical' coherence, philosophy has
embraced the 'perspective' which presumes 'that the finite is
irreconcilable with the infinite and cannot be united with it, that
the finite is utterly opposed to the infinite'. 6 This perspective seems,
at first sight, the most natural. It allows one to 'keep the infinite
pure and aloof from the finite'.7 It seems therefore the method best
suited for an affirmation of the principle of idealism in all its purity.
In reality, this very

non-contradiction

which passes for the principle

of absolute logical coherence is, in the case of philosophy, the source

of the most deep-rooted inconsistency.
The 'intellect' separates and divides, keeps opposites apart from
one another, posits on one side the finite, on the other, the infinite.
It makes their separation a rigid one, as if to underline that the
former is only dross and nothingness, and that 'being, absolute
*

Translator's note: The conventional translation of the German term Verstand by the

English 'understanding' has in most places been changed to 'intellect' in this text. This
agrees better with both the Italian rendering of Verstand as 'intelletto', and with
Colletti's general polemical position, which tends towards a revaluation of Verstand as
against Vernunft, or 'Reason'. Colletti tends to reverse the traditional valuation conveyed
(e.g.) in this passage from a standard commentary on Hegel: 'By the understanding

(Verstand) Hegel means that stage of the development of mind at which it regards
opposites as mutuaIly exclusive and absolutely cut off from each other. The Aristotelian
laws of identity, contradiction, and excluded middle are the canons of its procedure.
Distinguished from understanding is reason (Vernunft) which is that stage of the develop
ment of mind which rises to the principle of the identity of opposites. For understanding
each category remains an insulated self-existent being . . . static, fixed, and lifeless. To
the eye of reason, however, the categories are seen to be alive with movement, to be
fluid, to . . . flow into each other, as we have seen that being flows into nothing' (W. T.
Stace, The Philosophy ofHegel, London, 1955, p. 101.) Here, reason is depicted as what
is superior to 'mere understanding', the world of common sense and natural science, etc.
Colletti's defence of the latter category is best conveyed by changing from the neutral
philosophical term 'understanding' (itself an expression of the very tradition he attacks)
to

the more meaningful 'intellect'.

6. ibid., p. 130.

7. ibid. , p. 137.

IO
being' is reserved only for the infinite. However, Hegel goes on, with
'the express assertion that the finite . . . cannot be united with (the
infinite), . .. it (the finite) remains absolute on its own side'. The
possibility of 'passing over' into the 'other' is excluded. There is no

non-being of the finite is

'fixed in itself', that 'stands in abrupt

escape from its evanescence. Since the

understood here as a negation

contrast to its affirmative', the intellect does not realize that it

regards the finite as

'imperishable and absolute'. Since the transience

of things cannot cease to exist, it becomes 'their unalterable quality,

that is, their quality which does not pass over into its other, that is,
into its affirmative'. Finitude, never ceasing in its ceasing,

'is thus

eternal'. 8
The consequence is just the opposite of the philosophical project.
The finite, which ought to have disappeared, lives on. The infinite,
which ought to have been the absolute or the totality, finds itself,
on the contrary, to be just

'one ofthe two'. 'As only one of the two it is

one side; it has its limit in
it; it is thus the finite infinite. There are

itself finite, it is not the whole but only

what stands over against
present only

two finites.' 9

The method of the 'intellect', which, by safeguarding the principle

of non-contradiction, seemed thereby to assure itself a perfect
coherence, proves in fact to be incapable of expressing 'the funda
mental concept of philosophy, the true infinite', the Christian

Logos.

The intellect reifies everything that it touches. It transforms that

which is not a thing into the finite. It is not the principle of philo
sophy or idealism, but of

Unphilosophie.

It is the point of view of

materialism.
Having started from the premiss that the finite is that which is
ephemeral and devoid of value, philosophy is forced by the 'intellect'
to enunciate the opposite of what it had in mind. Its logical incon
sistency could not be clearer. 'On the one hand, it is admitted that
the finite

is not in and for itself,

that neither independent reality nor

absolute being can be ascribed to it; that it is something transitory.

The next moment, all of this is quickly forgotten, and the finite is
represented as independent and persisting on its own
8. ibid., p. I30.

9 ibid., p. I44

vis-a-vis

the

Hegel and the 'Dialectic ofMatter' II

infinite, completely separated from the latter and delivered from
annihilation. While thought thus believes that it has elevated itself
to the infinite, just the opposite happens; i.e. it attains to an infinite
that is only a finite, and it retains the finite, which was to have been
left behind, making it thus into an absolute.'l0
The intellect, in short, 'is embarrassed by the difficulty of passing
from the finite to the infinite'.11 It engenders a dualistic opposition
in which the infinite itself declines to the level of the finite. More
over, since the intellect regards the passage from one pole to the
other as a process in the course of which the finite is abstracted or
left out of account - although allowed to subsist - the infinite
manages to take shape only as 'the negative ... of determinateness in
general, as the empty beyond'. This becomes possible in so far as its
opposition to the finite is understood to mean that the latter is

real, and the infinite, on the other hand, to the

ideal, 'that is, . . . a mere "ideal" '.12 The finite belongs to the here
and now, the infinite to the beyond, the one down below, the other
up above. Both of them, Hegel states, are ' assigned a distinct place the finite as determinate being, here on this side, and the infinite ...
equivalent to the

as a beyond in the dim, inaccessible distance, outside of which the

finite is and remains'. 1 3 The consequence is that the finite, which
ought to have been the ephemeral and the perishable,

remains,

i.e.

becomes a solid reality which cannot be dissolved; whereas the

infinite, which ought to have turned out the 'absolute being',
appears merely as something abstract or mentally conceived. The
finite, which was declared

positive;

'not

par excellence,
negative, a mere ideal.

necessary', i.e. the positive

non

finite, the

a true being', becomes the real or

the infinite, which ought to have been the 'absolutely

becomes instead the

Thus there are two errors at one and the same time: the infinite as
the finite, i.e.God as object; and, in addition, God separated from the
world, confined to the 'beyond', segregated apart at an unattainable
10. G. W. F. Hegel, The Logic, translated from The Encyclopaedia ofthe Philosophical
Sciences, by William Wallace (London, 1892) , Second Revised Edition, p. 177 (transla
tion modified). Hereafter referred to as En.L.
13. ibid., p. 140.
12. L., p. 146, p. ISO.
II. ibid., p. 72.

I2
distance. The terms of the problem to be solved by idealism are
all here. Its actualization implies the elimination of these errors.
In order to comprehend the infinite in a coherent fashion, the finite
must be destroyed, the world annihilated: the infinite, in fact, cannot
have alongside itself another reality which limits it. On the other
hand, once the finite is expunged and that which thrust the infinite
into the

beyond - making it an 'empty ideal', devoid of real existence

- is suppressed, the infinite can pass over from the beyond to the

here and now,

that is, become flesh and take on earthly attire. The

difference between the old and the new philosophy is the difference
between commonplace theology and speculative theology, between
theism and philosophy, and between pre-critical metaphysics and
absolute idealism.
This is what Feuerbach saw clearly. At the beginning of the

Vorliiufige Thesen zur Reform der Philosophie

he says: 'Speculative

philosophy distinguishes itself from ordinary theology by the fact

that that divine being which the latter . . . has sent far off into the
beyond, the former transposes into the here and now, making it
present, determinate, and actual.' 14 In the Principles ofthe Philosophy

of the Future

he adds: 'It (philosophy) made God - who in theism

is only a being of fantasy, a far-removed, indeterminate, and cloudy

being - into a present and determinate being.' 1 5
The difference between these two theologies is the key, according
to Feuerbach, to understanding the difference between the two meta
physics, that is, between Hegel's metaphysics and pre-Kantian
metaphysics (above all Cartesian and Leibnizian). 'The theist con
ceives God as an existing and personal being external to reason and
in general apart from man; he, as subject, thinks about God as an
object. He conceives God as .. . a spiritual and unsensuous being';
but in so far as 'the essential characteristic of an objective being, of a
being outside thoughts or the imagination, is sensation', the theist
'distinguishes God from himself in the same way in which he
14. Ludwig A. Feuerbach, Vorliiufige Thesen zur Reform der Philosophic, in Kleine
.
Schriften (Frankfurt, 1966), p. 124.
15. Ludwig A. Feuerbach, Principles of the Philosophy of the Future, translated by
M. Vogel (Indianapolis, 1966), pp. II-12.

Hegel and the 'Dialectic ofMatter' I3

distinguishes sensuous objects and beings as existing apart from
him; in short, he conceives God from the point of view of sensation.
The speculative theologian or philosopher, on the other hand,
conceives God from the point of view of thought. He therefore does
not interject the disturbing notion of a sensuous being midway
between himself and God. He thus identifies, without any hin
drance, the objective, conceived being with the subjective, thinking
being.'1 6
This way of viewing things which characterizes theism and
'commonplace theology', and which is appreciably less noticeable in
Spinoza - 'the actual founder of modern speculative philosophy',
that philosophy which has in Schelling 'its redeemer', and in Hegel
'the thinker who perfected it' 1 7 - comes out with distinctive clarity
in the case of Descartes and Leibniz. 'The beginning of Descartes's
philosophy (represents) the abstraction from sensation and matter.'
'However, Descartes and Leibniz considered this abstraction merely
as a subjective condition in order to know the immaterial, divine
being; they conceived the immateriality of God as an objective
attribute independent of abstraction and thought; they still shared
the viewpoint of theism in conceiving the immaterial being only as
an object, but not as a subject, as the active principle.... To be sure,
God is also in Descartes and Leibniz the principle of philosophy,
but only in general and in the imagination, not in actuality and truth.
God is only the prime and general cause of matter, motion, and
activity; but particular motions and activities and specific, real, and
material objects are considered and known as independent of God.
Leibniz and Descartes are idealists only as concerns the universal,
but mere materialists as concerns the particular.'18
This is precisely the logical inconsistency which we have seen
pointed out by Hegel. The old philosophy is half idealism, half
materialism. It is idealism in its substance or
the Spirit, God. It is materialism in its

form

content

the infinite,

or method. The prin

ciple of identity and non-contradiction, which is the principle of

'common sense' and of 'everyday human understanding' prevents
16. ibid., pp. 8-9.

17. Ludwig A. Feuerbach, op. cit., p. 124.

18. Ludwig A. Feuerbach, op. cit., p. 13 (translation modified).

14
it from putting an end to the finite and destroying the world;
whence its inability to comprehend in a coherent fashion the in
finite as the 'whole' or the 'totality'; whence its powerlessness
to realize itself, i.e., to have God prevail as the one and only true
reality.
Once the problem has been seen, it then becomes a question of
examining a solution. The solution has a precise name: the means by
which Hegel makes 'philosophy' coherent and
idealism, is

the dialectic of matter

realizes

absolute

the dialectic of matter precisely

as accepted, later, by the dialectical materialism of Engels, Plekhanov

and Lenin.
Let us resume the problem from the beginning: the finite does not
have true reality.'The idealism of philosophy consists in nothing else
but the recognition that the finite has no veritable being.'19 Hegel
belongs to the Platonic-Christian tradition. He is within this tradi
tion, but develops it further. He does not stop at the mere negation
of the finite: he combines this negation with an affirmative proposi
tion; in other words, he completes the proposition that 'the finite is

ideal'. The
Logic begins like this: 'The
proposition that the finite is ideal (ideell) constitutes idealism.'2 0
The definition is repeated again in the Encyclopedia: ' ... The truth

not a true being' with the proposition that 'the finite is

definition of idealism given us by the

of the finite is ... its ideality . . . .This ideality of the finite is the
chief maxim of philosophy.'21
In practical terms, the innovation means this: one no longer says
only that the finite does not have true reality, does not have indepen
dent being; but one adds that the finite has as 'its' essence and
foundation that which is 'other' than itself, i.e. the infinite, the
immaterial, thought. The consequence that derives from this is
crucial.If, in fact, the finite has as its

essence the

'other' than itself,

it is clear that, in order to be itself as it truly, or 'essentially', is, it

can no longer be itself - i.e.the self that it is 'in appearance': finite
but must be the 'other'. The finite 'is not' when it

is

really finite;

vice versa, it 'is', when it 'is not', it is 'itself ' when it is the 'other', it
comes to birth when it dies. The finite is dialectical.
19. L., p. 155.

20. ibid., p. 154.

21. En.L., p. 178.

Hegel and the 'Dialectic ofMatter'

Once again: 'When we say of things that

they arefinite,

IS

we under

stand thereby that ... non-being constitutes their nature and being.'
The meaning of this proposition is also now deal. It means that, in
order to relate to themselves, finite things have to do so through the
'other'; or, as Hegel explains, 'Their relation to themselves is that

negatively

they are

self-related and in this very self-relation send

themselves away beyond themselves, beyond their being'22 - send

themselves away

into thought.

The mechanism could of course be simpler. Hegel could say that

he does

not

take into consideration the finite, that he puts it aside,

that he transcends it. In actual fact he does just this, but by desig
nating the procedure in another way. Instead of stating overtly that
he does not take into consideration the finite, he states that he does so
in relation to that which the finite is not, or, better put, states that the
finite has as its 'essence' its

opposite.

The advantage that derives

he abstracts from or discounts

the finite, can now be represented by Hegel as an objective movement
therefrom is evident: the act by which

carried out by the finite itself in order to go beyond itself and thus

pass over

into its essence. 'It is the very nature of the finite to

transcend itself, to negate its negation (i.e. its actual finitude or

"illusory being") and to become infinite. Thus the infinite does not
stand as something finished and complete above or superior to the
finite, as if the finite had an enduring being

to the infinite. Neither do we only,

apart from or subordinate

as subjective reason, pass beyond

the finite into the infinite; as when we say that the infinite is the
Notion of reason and that through reason we rise superior to tem
poral things, though we let this happen without prejudice to the
finite which is in no way affected by this exaltation, an exaltation
which remains external to it. But the finite itself, in being raised into
the infinite, is in no sense acted on by an alien force; on the contrary,
it is its nature to be related to itself as limitation, ... and to transcend
the same, or rather, to have negated the limitation and to be beyond
it.' 2 3 If therefore the finite shows itself to be 'dialectical', such that it
22. L., p. 129.
23. ibid., p. 138 (Colletti's parentheses). For the sake of uniformity, Miller's term, the
Notion, has been used throughout whenever the reference is to Hegel's Begriff although
-

16
'collapses (from) within', such that it is 'inwardly self-contradictory'
and therefore 'sublates itself, ceases to be', 24 all of that does not
occur through the work of an extraneous power (such as a subjective
abstraction of ours), but because the finite has as its essence and
foundation the 'other', and its being 'in itself ' is therefore, with
out the need for any mediation, a

passing over

into that other.

The finite, in short, is simply that which must. become infinite

by itself as a consequence of its very nature. 'The infinite is
its

affirmative

determination, that which it truly is in itself. Thus

the finite has vanished in the infinite and what

is,

is only the

infinite. '2 5
The 'true' finite, then, is not the finite which is

outside the infinite,

but the finite within the latter, the finite as it is in the Idea. 'Real'
are not those things external to thought, but those things penetrated
by thought ('pensate'): i.e. those things which

are no longer things

but simple 'logical objects' or ideal moments. The negation, the

'annihilation' of matter is precisely in this passage from 'outside' to
'within'.Just as it is admitted that the finite 'once identified with the
infinite, certainly cannot remain what it was out of such unity, and
will at least suffer some change in its determinations', 26 so it is 'also
commonly admitted that when thinking appropriates a given object,
this thereby suffers an alteration and is changed from something
sensuous to something thought'; but the important thing is to
understand that 'not only is the essential nature of the object not
affected by this alteration but that it is only in its Notion that it is in

truth, whereas in the immediacy in which it is given it is only

appearance and a contingency'. 2 7 And Hegel continues thus: 'The
comprehension of an object consists in nothing else than that the ego
makes it its own, pervades it and brings it into its own form, that is,
into the universality.... As intuited or even in ordinary conception,
the object is still something external and alien. When it is compre
its

hended, the being-in-and-for-self which it possesses in intuition and

Walter Kaufmann's rendering of it as Concept would appear more felicitous (see his
translation of the Preface to the Phenomenology [New York, 1966] and his comment on
p. 7 and p. 9) (Trans.)
24- ibid., p. 136.
25. ibid., p. 138.
26. En.L., p. 178 (translation modified).
27. L., p. 590.

Hegel and the 'Dialectic of Matter' IJ

pictorial thought is transformed into a
it, pervades it. But it is
truly in

only

positedness;

the I in

thinking

as it is in thought that the object is

andfor itself; in intuition or ordinary conception it is only an

Appearance.' 28

The proposition, in short, is that 'this material as it appears

from

and

prior

to the Notion has no

truth;

apart

this it has solely in its

ideality or its identity with the Notion'. Thus, just as in the old
metaphysics and, if anything, to a greater degree, the finite is
excluded and negated here also; but with the difference that - since
it has been established that 'only in its Notion does something
possess actuality and to the extent that it is distinct from its Notion
it ceases to be actual and is a non-entity' 2 9 - Hegel can now give to
the

exclusion of

matter which he carries out the form of an

inclusion

or of a positive statement. Matter is not negated: it is affirmed by

virtue of that which it is not. Hegel, then, does not exclude it, but
includes it. But, since 'in spirit . . . the content is not present as a
so-called

real existence':

rather, 'in the simplicity of the ego such

external being is present only as sublated, it is for

me,

it is

ideally

in me'; 30 it is also clear that this affirmation is in effect a negation;

that is, by declaring matter 'essential' only as it is in thought, it is

ipso facto excluded that the former has any reality as it is outside and
antecedent to the Notion. The element of continuity in relation
to the Platonic-Christian tradition is in this

negative

conception of

the sensible world. On the other hand, the element of further

development - and we will see this better below - is represented by
the transcending of Christian Eleaticism, i.e. the fact that the infinite
or the Spirit is no longer conceived as a 'being' and, therefore, as a

substance that has the negative outside itself, but is con

reason, i.e. as the logical unity or coexistence of opposites
('sameness' and 'otherness', infinite and finite in the infinite), and,
one-sided

ceived as

thus, as a tautoheterology or dialectic.

The finite has as its essence and foundation what is 'other' than
itself. The finite, then, is itself and the negative (the opposite)
of itself at one and the same time, it is internally self-contradictory,
it sublates itself and ceases to be; which means that - in order to be
28. ibid., p. 585.

29 ibid., p. 591

30. ibid., p. 50

18
'truly' itself - the finite must not be itself, but the other, that it has to
negate itself as the finite external to the infinite and

pass over into its

opposite, i.e. become the 'ideal finite', a moment within the Idea.
On the other hand, once the finite's 'illusory' independence has
been negated, once it has been recognized that the finite does not
have being in and of itself, that it is only 'illusory being

(Schein)"

and that 'its' essence lies beyond itself, the finite becomes exactly
the illusory being or

appearance of

that essence, the

beyond

of that

beyond; it becomes, in other words, the positive, through which it

becomes flesh and takes on earthly attire.
The real becomes ideal, and the ideal real. The concrete makes
itself abstract, and the abstract concrete. And just as 'individual,
sensuous things (are)

ideal

in principle, or in their Notion, (and)

still more (so) in spirit, that is, as sublated', 31 i.e. not as real deter
minations but as determinations of the Idea; so this self-negation of
the world, this self-idealization on its part counts, vice versa, as
a self-realization of the Idea or the infinite, about which Hegel states

determinate being', that 'it is and is there,

reality in a higher sense than the
was simply determinate'.32

explicitly that 'it is . . .

present before us', and that it 'is

former reality which

In so far as it is dialectical, the finite negates itself, sublates itself,

and disappears; i.e. if one wants to consider the finite, one must not
consider the finite, but rather the infinite; in order to grasp being,
one must grasp thought, the Idea; there are no things, there is only

reason;

there is no

exclusive

determinacy, a 'this right here', that

excludes its opposite, but a rational inclusion, a 'this together with

that' - i.e. the unity of 'sameness' and 'otherness', of 'being' and

in the infinite. On the other hand,

thought without need of any mediation, so thought in
its turn is, without any mediation; just as things are reason, so reason
is things; just as the finite is an illusory being that has its essence
'non-being', of finite and infinite,

just as being is

beyond itself, so that essence, which is the absolute, has in the

positive or finite its manifestation.To cite Hegel: 'The illusory being
is not

nothing, but is

relation to the absolute; or, it is

in it the absolute is reflected. This positive

a reflection, a

illusory being in so far as

31. ibid., p. 155.

32. ibid., pp. 148-9.

Hegel and the 'Dialectic ofMatter'

19

exposition thus arrests the finite before it vanishes and contemplates

it as an expression and image of the absolute. But the transparency
of the finite, which only lets the absolute be glimpsed through it,
ends by completely vanishing; for there is nothing in the finite
which could preserve for it a distinction against the absolute; it is a
medium which is absorbed by that which is reflected through it.'
And Hegel concludes thus: 'This positive exposition of the absolute
is therefore itself only an illusory activity, a reflective movement

Scheinen);

(ein

for what is truly positive in the exposition and the

expounded content, is the absolute itself.'3 3

The world has disappeared. That which

seemed

finite, in reality

is infinite. An independent material world no longer exists. On the

other hand, in so far as the finite lingers on in its process of disappear
ing, it is restored as 'other'than itself. It is not the finite, but the
positive manifestation of the Absolute. It is not, does not

signify,

'this'determinate object - bread and wine, for example - but signi

fies the Spirit. 'Hier werden

Wein und Brot mystische Objekte (Here . . .

bread and wine . . . become mystical objects . . . ).'3 4 'The spirit of

Jesus, in which his disciples are one, has become a present object, a

'die objektiv
gemachte Liebe, dies zur Sache gewordene Subjektive (the love made
objective, this subjective element become a thing)'. 'In the love
reality, for external feeling.'3 5 But this reality is only

feast . . . the corporeal vanishes and only the feeling of life is

present.'3 6
In a certain sense, as Marx says, everything 'is left, just as it is;
but now it has received the meaning of a determination of the
Idea'.3 7 A world was there before, a world is there afterwards. . . .
Only now the 'wafer' is no longer water and flour. The 'prin
ciple' of idealism has been actualized. In place of the world now
annihilated, one has substituted the 'true'reality. It is not, however,
the Revolution that has taken place, but only the Transubstantiation.
'Empirical reality is therefore taken up just as it is. It is also declared
33. ibid., p. 532
34. G. W. F. Hegel, Early Theological Writings, translated by T. M. Knox (Chicago,
1948), p. 250.
35. ibid., pp. 250-1.

36. ibid., p. 251 (translation modified).

37. Karl Marx, Werke (Berlin, 1964), Vol. 1, p. 206.

20

to be rational, although not on account of its own intrinsic rationality,

but because the empirical fact has in its empirical existence another
significance other than itself. The fact which is one's point of
departure is not apprehended as such, but only as mystical
effect.' 3 8
The dialectic of matter is all here. The finite is infinite, the Real is
Rational. In other words, the determinate or real object, the exclusive
'this right here', no longer exists ; what exists is Reason, the Idea, the
logical inclusion of opposites, the 'this together with that'. On the
other hand, once being is reduced to thought, thought, in its turn,
is ; i.e., the logical unity of opposites comes to exist and becomes
incarnate in a real object. Everything is itself and its opposite, 'it is'
and 'it is not'. This contradiction puts it in motion, in other words,
causes it to die as thing so that it may be reborn as thought or
infinity. As Hegel says : 'Everything finite has this characteristic :
that it sublates itself.'39 On the other hand, 'if', as Marx says, 'one
finds in logical categories the substance of all things, one imagines
one has found in the logical formula of movement the absolute
method, which not only explains all things, but also implies the
movement of things'. In other words, the real object is resolved into
its logical contradiction - this is the first movement ; in the second
movement the logical contradiction becomes, in its turn, objective
and real. The philosopher is by now a perfect Christian. What
distinguishes one from the other, as Marx says, is only this: that 'the
Christian, in spite of logic, has only one incarnation of the Logos',
whereas 'the philosopher has never finished with incarnations'. 40
If we open Book 2 of Hegel's Science of Logic, we will find the
'dialectic of matter' stated in plain terms. Concluding his critique
of the principle of identity and non-contradiction, Hegel emphasizes
that, contrary to this principle, one must affirm that 'everything is
inherently contradictory, and in the sense that this law in contrast to
the others expresses rather the truth and the essential nature of
things'. It is 'one of the fundamental prejudices of logic as hither39. En.L., p. 147 (translation modified).
38. ibid., pp. 207-8.
40. Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy (New York, 1963), pp. 106-'].

Hegel and the 'Dialectic ofMatter' 2I

to understood and of ordinary thinking, that contradiction is not
so characteristically essential and immanent a determination as
identity'. Nevertheless, 'if it were a question of grading the two
determinations and they had to be kept separate, then contradiction
would have to be taken as the profounder determination and more
characteristic of essence. For as against contradiction, identity
is merely the determination of the simple immediate, of dead being ;
but contradiction is the root of all movement and vitality; it is only
in so far as something has a contradiction within it that it moves,
has an urge and activity'.
On the other hand, just as every thing is contradictory, so logical
contradiction, in its turn, exists and is real. Hegel continues :
' . . . Contradiction is usually kept aloof from things, from the sphere
of being and of truth generally ; it is asserted that there is nothing that
is contradictory', as if contradictions were just 'a contingency, a kind
of abnormality and a passing paroxysm of sickness'. But, 'now as
regards the assertion that there is no contradiction, that it does not
exist, this statement need not cause us any concern ; an absolute
determination of essence must be present in every experience, in
everything actual, as in every notion . . . . Further, (the contradiction)
is not to be taken merely as an abnormality which only occurs here
and there, but is rather the negative as determined in the sphere of
essence, the principle of all self-movement, which consists solely in
an exhibition of it. External, sensuous motion itself is contradiction's
immediate existence. Something moves, not because at one moment
it is here and at another there, but because in this "here", it at once
is and is not. The ancient dialecticians must be granted the con
tradictions that they pointed out in motion ; but it does not follow
that therefore there is no motion, but on the contrary, that motion is
existent contradiction itself.'
And Hegel concludes : 'Similarly, internal self-movement proper,
instinctive urge in general, . . . is nothing else but the fact that some
thing is, in one and the same respect, self-contained and deficient,
the negative of itself Abstract self-identity is not as yet a livingness,
but the positive, being in its own self a negativity, goes outside itself
and undergoes alteration. Something is therefore alive only in so far

22
as it contains contradiction within it, and moreover is this power to
hold and endure the contradiction within it.'41
One finds all of this in the Science of Logic. However one may
choose to evaluate the two pages cited above, it is a fact that the
birthplace of dialectical materialism is to be found here. Even if one
chooses to leave open the question of what a 'dialectic of matter'
could possibly mean, it remains an incontrovertible fact that the
first 'dialectician of matter' was Hegel; the first and - let us add also the only one, since after him there has been mere mechanical
transcription.
Identity is only the determination of the mere immediate, of
dead being ; whereas contradiction is the root of movement and
vitality. This is Hegel and, at the same time, it is also Anti-Duhring.
'So long as we consider things as static and lifeless, each one by itself,
alongside of and after each other,' Engels tell us, 'it is true that we
do not run up against any contradictions in them. . . . But the
position is quite different as soon as we consider things in their
motion, their change, their life, their reciprocal influence on one
another. Then we immediately become involved in contradictions.
Motion itself is a contradiction : even simple mechanical change of
place can only come about through a body at one and the same
moment of time being both in one place and in another place, being
in one and the same place and also not in it. And the continuous
assertion and simultaneous solution of this contradiction is precisely
what motion is.'42
For the Science of Logic, something is alive only in so far as it
contains within itself contradictions, or only in so far as it is itself
and the negative of itself at one and the same time. In Anti-Duhring,
similarly, 'life consists just precisely in this - that a living thing is at
each moment itself and yet something else. Life is therefore also a
contradiction which is present in things and processes themselves,
and which constantly asserts and solves itself; and as soon as the
contradiction ceases, life too comes to an end, and death steps in.'43
41. L., pp. 439-40.
42. Frederick Engels, Herr Eugen Duhring's Revolution in Science (Anti-Duhring),
translated by Emile Burns (London, 1939), p. 132.
43. ibid., p. 133.

Hegel and the 'Dialectic of Matter' 23

Two conceptions that ought to be, it seems, totally different from
one another, two authors that we would expect to find the very
antithesis of one another - Hegel, the idealist, and Engels, the
materialist - define in the same way both reality and that which
seems to them abstract or devoid of reality.
I hope the reader will permit me the citation of another text :
'Everything that surrounds us may be viewed as an instance of
Dialectic. We are aware that everything finite, instead of being
stable and ultimate, is rather changeable and transient ; and this is
exactly what we mean by that Dialectic of the finite, by which the
finite, as that which in itself is other than itself, is forced beyond its
own immediate or natural being to turn suddenly into its oppo
site. . . . All things, we say - that is, the finite world as such - are
doomed (zu Gericht gehen) ; and in saying so, we have a vision of
Dialectic as the universal and irresistible power before which
nothing can stay however secure and stable it may deem itself.
Power, as one of God's determinations, does not, it is true, exhaust
the depth of the divine nature or the Notion of God ; but it certainly
represents an essential moment in all religious consciousness. . . .
We find traces of its (the Dialectic's) presence in each of the particu
lar provinces and phases of the natural and the spiritual world.
Take as an illustration the motion of the heavenly bodies. At this
moment the planet stands in this spot, but implicitly it is the
possibility of being in another spot; and that possibility of being
otherwise the planet brings into existence by moving. Similarly the
"physical" elements prove to be Dialectical. The process of meteoro
logical action is the exhibition of their Dialectic. It is the same
dynamic that lies at the root of every other natural process, and, as it
were, forces nature beyond itself.'4<l
This is subheading 81 of the Encyclopedia, or rather, its Zusatz
(additional remark),-[I. In fact, when Plekhanov, in his Essays in the
History of Materialism, arrives finally at the place where he has to
indicate what the 'dialectic' is for Marx, he cannot find anything
better to do than, first, to quote and transcribe extensively from this
paragraph (with the exception, of course, of the reference to God and
44. En.L., p. ISO (translation modified).

24
religion), and, then, to summarize its most important conclusion as
follows : 'The essence of everything finite lies in the fact that it
cancels itself and passes into its opposite.'45 In other words, every
thing is, once again, self-contradictory, every thing is itself and the
negative of itself, in one and the same respect.
We will conclude the presentation of texts by returning to the
page of the Logic cited above : ' . . . Identity is merely the determina
tion of the simple immediate, of dead being ; but contradiction is the
root of all movement and vitality; it is only in so far as something
has a contradiction within it that it moves, has an urge and activity.'
When Lenin arrived at this page during the course of his reading of
the Logic, he feverishly noted down, as if overcome by irresistible
sympathy for the argument : 'movement and "self-movement" . . . ,
"change", "movement and vitality", "the principle of all self
movement", "impulse (Trieb)" to "movement" and "activity" the opposite to "dead Being" who would believe that this is the
core of "Hegelianism", of abstract and abstruse . . . Hegelianism ? ?
This core had to be discovered, understood, hinuberretten (rescued),
laid bare, refined, which is precisely what Marx and Engels
did.'46
We shall leave Marx aside. It is a fact that Lenin, as well as
Engels, sees in this page of the Logic the 'kernel' worth saving from
Hegel's philosophy, the breaking through of a genuine realism in
contradiction to the system's 'shell' and to the 'mystique of the
Idea'. The firm belief that dominates him at this point is what he
elevated into a criterion for all of his readings of Hegel: 'I am in
general trying to read Hegel materialistically : Hegel is materialism
which has been stood on its head (according to Engels) - that is to
say, I cast aside for the most part God, the Absolute, the Pure Idea,
etc.'47
The page from Hegel that we are presently considering is at the
beginning of Remark 3 to Chapter 2,C of Book 2, in the Science of
-

45. George V. Plekhanov, Essays in the History of Materialism, translated by Ralph

Fox (London, 1934), p. 174.
46. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, translated by Clemens Dutt (Moscow, 1961),
Vol. 38 (Philosophical Notebooks), p. 14I.
47. ibid., p. 104.

Hegel and the 'Dialectic of Matter'

2S

Logic. Before taking leave of this passage, I should like to reproduce

the remarks with which Hegel concludes this Zusatz and which
Lenin, in accordance with his 'criterion', neglected to transcribe and
comment upon : 'Finite things, therefore, in their indifferent
multiplicity are simply this, to be contradictory and disrupted
within themselves and to return into their ground. As will be demon
strated later, the true inference from a finite and contingent being
to an absolutely necessary being does not consist in inferring the
latter from the former as from a being that is and remains the ground;
on the contrary, the inference is from a being that, as is also directly
implied in contingency, is only in a state of collapse and is inherently
self-contradictory; or rather, the true inference consists in showing
that contingent being in its own self withdraws into its ground in
which it is sublated, and further, that by this withdrawal it posits
the ground only in such a manner that it rather makes itself into a
positedness. In ordinary inference, the being of the finite appears as
ground of the absolute ; because the finite is, therefore the absolute
is. But the truth is that the absolute is, because the finite is the
inherently self-contradictory opposition, because it is not. In the
former meaning, the inference runs thus : the being of the finite is
the being of the absolute; but in the latter, thus : the non-being of
the finite is the being of the absolute.'48
The 'reading' given by Lenin of these pages rests, as one can see,
on a basic misinterpretation. He 'tried' to read Hegel 'materialisti
cally' precisely at the place where the latter was . . . negating matter.
Haunted by the famous propositions of Anti-Duhring and led astray
by the very method that he had laid down for himself - which
meant a lapse of attention wherever Hegel talks about God - Lenin
did not realize that Remark 3 to Chapter 2, which opens with the
statement that 'everything is inherently contradictory' and proceeds
in the way shown above, bears upon one precise topic : the problem
of proving the existence of God.
The question which Hegel is discussing here is the same one
which we take as our starting-point : the logical inconsistency intro
duced into philosophy by the principle of non-contradiction ; the
48. L.,

p.

443.

26
impossibility of realizing the 'principle' of idealism while employing
the method of the 'intellect' or, as stated in this case, 'ordinary
inference'. The understanding or intellect, which separates the finite
from the infinite, does not succeed, as Hegel says, in putting an end
to the finite. The consequence is the contradiction into which the
so-called cosmological proofs for the existence of God fall. The
latter, in fact, naturally take as 'their point of departure a Weltan
schauung which views the world as an aggregate of contingent facts',
and therefore as a mass of worthless things ; except that they take
this point of departure as a 'solid foundation' that has to 'remain
and be left in the purely empirical form' that it had before. 'The
relation between the beginning and the conclusion to which it
leads has a purely affirmative aspect, as if we were only reasoning
from one thing which is and continues to be, to another thing which
also is ;'49 with the consequence that the world, which is what is
created, becomes, in their syllogism, the 'major premiss', whereas
God, who is the creator and therefore foremost, becomes instead the
minor premiss. The effect becomes the cause, and the cause effect.
Thus, as Hegel states, Jacobi was able to make the 'justified criticism
that thereby one sought to establish conditions (i.e. the world) for
the unconditional (das Unbedingte) ; that the infinite (God) was in
this way represented as the dependant and derivative'. 5 0
In other words, the 'understanding' shores up the finite. Keeping
it from passing over into its opposite - if the finite, as Hegel says,
were 'touched . . . by the infinite, it would be annihilated'51 - the
understanding turns the finite into a 'fixed being' that is and remains
solidly grounded. The dialectic ofmatter, however - i.e., the dialecti
cal conception of the finite, the conception of the finite as 'ideal',
and therefore idealism (in so far as it leads the finite to destroy itself
and thus eradicates any materialistic grounding) - this dialectic of
matter realizes for the first time the 'principle' of philosophy, i.e.
God, enabling Him to prevail in a coherent fashion as the uncondi
tional and the absolute. In 'ordinary inference' and reasoning, the
being of the finite is made 'absolute' ; i.e., the finite is regarded as a
49. En.L., p. 104 (translation modified).
51. ibid., p. In

50. ibid., p. 105 (translation modified).

Hegel and the 'Dialectic of Matter'

27

reality that subsists independently or for itself. With the mode of

reasoning followed by philosophy or idealism, however, the dialecti
cal conception of matter enables one to state that, precisely 'because
the finite is the inherently self-contradictory opposition, because it is
not, . the absolute is'. The first case, in which the finite 'remains'
and is a 'fixed being', is the kingdom of death : 'fixed being', says
Hegel, is 'dead being' ; it is matter that has not been transvalued into
and as Spirit. The second case, the 'passage' or 'movement' by
which the finite negates 'itself' passing over into the 'other', is
termed living being (vitalita), precisely in the same sense that for
the Christian death is the beginning of the true life, which com
mences when one passes from the here and now over to the beyond.
The meaning and function of the 'dialectic of matter' in Hegel's
thought is that (in his own words) : 'It certainly constitutes an
essential moment of all religious consciousness.' However, the
meaning that the dialectic of matter has in Engels and Lenin is, as is
well known, quite different : it represents for them the most advanced
and developed form of materialism. One might presume at this
point that, under the common name, there must lie two different
conceptions. In reality, this hypothesis must be dismissed. The
lengthy comparison of texts which we have indulged in, and the
others that we will present below, prove, it seems to us, two things :
(a) that all the basic propositions of the 'dialectic of matter' were
originally formulated by Hegel ; (b) that dialectical materialism has
confined itself to transcribing those propositions from his texts.
Since the authors of dialectical materialism, in the process of
recopying them, have made clear that they understood these state
ments to imply a materialist stance already in Hegel's text, the con
clusion must be drawn (I believe) that they simply committed an
error of interpretation. An error which by now lies at the basis of
almost a century of theoretical Marxism.
.

II.

Hegel and Spinoza

For Hegel, the problem of the realization of idealism and, therefore,

of overcoming the logical inconsistency that has marked philosophy
until now, coincides in essence with the development and the
reformulation of Spinoza's thought. Spinoza is, for him the very
essence of philosophy. ' . . . The fact is that Spinoza is made a testing
pointing in modern philosophy, so that it may really be said : You
are either a Spinozist or not a philosopher at all' ; 1 because 'to be a
follower of Spinoza is the essential commencement of all Philo
sophy. . . . When man begins to philosophize, the soul must com
mence by bathing in this ether of the One Substance, in which all
that man has held as true has disappeared ; this negation of all that is
particular, to which every philosopher must have come, is the
liberation of the mind and its absolute foundation.' Hence, 'what
constitutes the grandeur of Spinoza's manner of thought is that he is
able to renounce all that is determinate and particular, and restrict
himself to the One, giving heed to this alone'. 2
But there is more. 'The substance of this system is one substance',
Hegel writes. 'There is no determinateness that is not contained
and dissolved in this absolute; and it is sufficiently important that
in this necessary notion, everything which to natural picture
thinking or to the understanding with its fixed distinctions, appears
and is vaguely present as something self-subsistent, is completely
reduced to a mere positedness.'3 'Spinoza,' Hegel adds, 'makes the
sublime demand of thought that it consider everything under the
form of eternity, sub specie aeterni, that is, as it is in the absolute', 4
i.e., not as it is in empirical or de facto reality, but as it is in the
Spirit or in the Idea.
I. G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the History ofPhilosophy, translated by E. S. Haldane
and Frances H. Simson (New York, 1955), vol. III, p. 283. Hereafter this work shall be
3. L., p. 536.
4. ibid., p. 538.
2. ibid., pp. 257-8.
referred to as H.P.

Hegel and Spinoza 29

But although Spinoza saw that omnis determinatio est negatio,
and, therefore, that the finite, the determinate does not have an auto
nomous existence, the fundamentally 'dualistic' (i.e., that makes
distinctions and separations) nature of the intellect has caused it to
posit the finite outside the absolute - without seeing that while it
was restoring to the finite that substantiality which had been denied
it, the absolute, in its turn, becomes circumscribed and limited.
Thus, although Spinoza understood that the real is a negative,
something non-existent and which therefore must return to the
ground of its being, he always represented the movement from the
world to God, from nothingness to the absolute, from modes and
attributes to Substance, as merely a 'drop' (caduta) into unity - i.e. as
merely a subjective movement or movement of 'external reflection'
that traces back and submerges everything in absolute identity,
rather than as a movement of that identity itself. The point of
arrival for this drop, that into which the real or the finite is to be
dissolved, is evident : it is Substance. But just exactly where this
movement begins and where the drop comes from are not known ;
for, just as the absolute is conceived as merely a motionless identity
or as something that stands beyond the finite, so the latter nonethe
less always remains as an external premiss from which the move
ment takes its beginning and by which, therefore, the absolute
itself remains limited. The result is that the circle is broken : the
way in which we come to know the absolute remains external to that
which the absolute is, with the consequence that thought and
being, thought and extension remain separated like two 'attributes
adopted empirically', and that, 'profound and correct as they are',
the Notions remain definitions, i.e. VerstandesbegrijJe (Notions of
the intellect) and not VernunftbegrijJe (Notions of Reason). 5
'The attribute,' Spinoza says, 'is that which the understanding
thinks of God.' But 'here the question is : How does it come that
besides the Deity there now appears the intellect, which applies to
absolute substance the two forms of thought and extension ? and
whence come these two forms themselves ?' These, Hegel says, are
applied to Substance from the outside, they do not come forth from
5. ibid., p. 537

30
within it. But 'thus everything proceeds inwards, and not outwards ;
the determinations are not developed from substance, it does not
resolve itself into these attributes'. 6 In short, the finite still remains,
despite everything, outside ; and the infinite, having the other
opposite itself, always remains a one-sided infinite, 'de-fined', a
motionless identity akin to the Eleatic model, a Substance that is
unable to become self-conscious subjectivity.
Furthermore, even that which proceeds from the absolute comes
forth only in an external and mechanical way. In Hegel's words :
'Consequently, the Spinozistic exposition of the absolute is complete
in so far as it starts from the absolute, then follows with the attribute,
and ends with the mode; but these three are only enumerated one
after the other, without any inner sequence of development, and the
third is not negation as negation, not the negatively self-related
negation which would be in its own self the return into the first
identity, so that this identity would then be veritable identity,'7
that is, dialectical identity, the 'identity of identity and non
identity'. Rather, there is repeated more or less what happens 'in the
oriental conception of emanation', where the emanations of the
absolute 'are distancings (Entfernungen) from its undimmed clarity',
and 'the successive productions are less perfect than the preceding
ones from which they arise'. 'The process of emanation is taken only
as a happening, the becoming only as a progressive loss. Thus being
increasingly obscures itself, and night, the negative, is the final term
of the series, which does not first return into the primal light.' 8
Of course, Spinozism is a form of idealism, of absolute im
materialism. 'Spinoza maintains that there is no such thing as what
is known as the world ; it is merely a form of God, and in and for
itself it is nothing. The world has no true reality, and all this that we
know as the world has been cast into the abyss of the one identity.
There is therefore no such thing as finite reality, it has no truth
whatever ; according to Spinoza what is, is God, and God alone.'
Those, therefore, who have accused Spinoza of atheism do not know
what they are talking about. Those 'who defame him in such a way
as this are therefore not aiming at maintaining God, but at main6. H.P., III, p. 264.

7. L., p. 538.

8. ibid., pp. 538-9.

Hegel and Spinoza JI

taining the finite and the worldly; they do not fancy their own
extinction and that of the world'. 9
Nonetheless an objection, if not of atheism, is directed at Spinoza.
It is 'objected that God is conceived only as Substance, and not as
Spirit'. 1 0 '.
In the system of Spinoza all things are merely cast
down into this abyss of annihilation. But from this abyss nothing
comes out ; and the particular of which Spinoza speaks is only
assumed and presupposed from the ordinary conception, without
being justified. Were it to be justified, Spinoza would have to
deduce it from his Substance ; but that does not open itself out, and
therefore comes to no vitality, spirituality or activity. His philosophy
has only a rigid and unyielding substance, and not yet spirit . . . '.
In it, 'God is not spirit (because) He is not the Three in One.
Substance remains rigid and petrified, without Bohme's sources or
springs' . 11
In this summary, the interpretation that Hegel gives of Spinoza,
the philosopher with whom he has the closest ties, brings out again
all the basic themes already identified in the course of our analysis :
the annihilation of the world (,there is no such thing as what is
known as the world') ; the twofold movement by which the
appearance of the Idea in the concrete, the positive exposition of the
absolute, is counterbalanced by the dissolution of the finite in the
Idea (whereas in Spinoza 'everything proceeds inwards, and not
outwards') ; the transformation of Substance into a Subject ; and
finally the problem of the principle of non-contradiction.
As the Science ofLogic says : ' . . . The Eleatic Being or Spinoza's
substance is only the abstract negation of all determinateness,
without ideality being posited in substance itself.' 1 2 And the History
ofPhilosophy : 'Taken as a whole, . . . the Idea of Spinoza . . . is just
what ()JJ was to the Eleatics. This Idea of Spinoza's we must allow to
be in the main true and well-grounded; absolute substance is the
truth, but it is not the whole truth; in order to be this it must also be
thought of as in itself active and living, and by that very means it
must determine itself as mind.'13

9. H.P., III, pp. 281-2.

12. L., p. 161.

10. ibid.,

p.

280.

I I . ibid., p. 288.
13. H.P., III, p. 257.

32

The crucial point, as one can see, is always the same : the proposi
tion that the finite is ideal. This amounts to carrying over the finite
into the infinite, being into thought. On the one hand, this enables
one to truly 'annihilate' the finite, and on the other to transform
Substance into Subject. Eleatic being, which as such is only the
abstract negation of every determination, the universal that excludes
the particular (whence its one-sided and inflexible nature as an
object), becomes thereby a unity of opposites, 'being' and 'non
being' together, a tautoheterology or dialectic. This unity is what
Hegel properly calls self-consciousness or reason. Properly so,
because what else could reason be if not an epistemological principle,
the simultaneous presence in the mind of both the alternatives from
which one has to choose in action as in thought ? Hegel's limitation
does not lie here. Rather, it consists in the notion that 'it is only as it
is in thought that the object is truly in andfor itself'; that is to say, it
consists in taking reason, not as an attribute and property of the
natural being that is man, but as God, Logos, Christian Spirit,
substance itself - since reason must serve man not just as reason but
also as reality.
Here is the really decisive point: the substantification of reason as
a consequence of the Christian posture, i.e. as a consequence of the
equation of reason with Spirit and therefore with God. That things
as they are in thought are reduced, from the sensate objects that they
were, to objects of thought - this is clear. No one doubts that. As
Marx himself says, ' . . . The concrete made up of thought, is in fact
a product of thinking. . . . ' 1 4 What is not clear however - or at least is
not so until one adopts the premiss that thought is spirit and spirit,
God - is why the 'object of thought' (ilpensato) must be immediately
equated with reality, and why, vice versa, all true existence must be
denied to the real object as it is, in itself outside and prior to the
Notion.
'The idealism of the noble Malebranche is in itself more explicit'
than that of Spinoza, Hegel states. 'It contains the following funda14. Karl Marx, Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy, in A Contribution to
the Critiques of Political Economy, translated by N. 1. Stone (Chicago, 1904), p. 294
(translation modified).

Hegel and Spinoza 33

mental thoughts : because God includes within himself all eternal
truths, the ideas and perfections of all things, so that they are his and
his alone, we see them only in him . . . . As then the eternal truths and
Ideas (essentialities) of things are in God, are ideal, so also is their
existence in God ideal, not an actual existence.' 1 5
This Christian posture is the real pivotal point of all Hegel's
thought. This enables him to open up Eleaticism, in other words,
to break out of the framework of all 'institutionalized' conceptions
of thought and to knock down the schemata of scholastic 'intellec
tualism' (that 'intellectualism' which, as we have seen, persists even
in Spinoza). This is the source of his conception of the infinite, and
of his distinction between 'reason's' infinite and that of the 'under
standing' or intellect ('the main point' of philosophy, Hegel says, 'is
to distinguish the genuine Notion of infinity from spurious infinity,
the infinite of reason from the infinite of the intellect'I6).
From this assumption too comes the recognition that real 'unity' is
totality, i.e. not merely 'being', but 'being' and 'non-being' together,
not merely identity, but the 'identity of identity and non-identity'.
Except that, along with this transformation of Substance into
Subjectivity, there is in Hegel a simultaneous, concomitant conver
sion of the latter into the former (the positive exposition of the
absolute), precisely because reason, being for him Spirit or God
must also count as the sole reality.
Marx states : 'Hegel's positive achievement in his speculative logic'
is that 'the universalfixed thought-forms' have been 'depicted . . . as a
whole, as moments in the process of abstraction'. Hegel, that is, has
no longer given us simply fixed abstractions but 'the whole process
of abstraction' or 'the self-encompassing abstraction'. 'In his Logic
Hegel has imprisoned all these spirits together', i.e. he substituted
'the fact of abstraction revolving within itself, for these fixed abstrac
tions' .17 But in so far as this negativity that is reason is not estab
lished for him on the basis of a real object, but rather stays clear of it
IS. L., p. 16r.
16. ibid., p. 137.

17. Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, in Karl Marx: Early
Writings, translated and edited by T. B. Bottomore (London and New York, 1964),
pp. 215-16 (translation modified).

34
by positing itself as existing for itself, it becomes, Marx says, 'an
abstraction which is then crystallized as such and is conceived as an
independent activity, as activity itself' .18
It is commonly said that the Hegelian totality excludes nothing.
It represents the unity of subject and object, of thought and world.
It encompasses everything and leaves nothing outside itself. That
the Hegelian concept of totality also includes the Eleatic identity
and moreover expands it into the 'identity of identity and non
identity' by incorporating the finite into itself as ideal- all this is true
and is precisely what we have attempted to point out up till now.
But although the Hegelian 'totality' is a further development of the
original Eleatic principle (identity as 'fixed abstraction' or identity
of a 'logical essence' with itself, which has dominated the entire
scholastic tradition), it remains nonetheless true that this develop
ment occurs within the framework of a well-defined continuity with
that negative conception of the sensate or finite peculiar to the
Platonic-Christian tradition. Which means that the Hegelian
'totality' is itself so one-sided and incomplete as to exclude and leave
out the principle ofmatter, i.e. that other feature of identity which
found expression, not in Parmenides, but in the Aristotelian prin
ciple of determination. The meaning of the latter is precisely that
the finite is a real finite only when it it lies outside the infinite; that
being is real being only when it is independent of thought; that
objects acquire their distinctive determinations only through the
exclusion of the negative, of its opposite, i.e. of that logical universal
which encompasses everything that the particular object itself is
not.
Hegel includes everything - the principle of dialectical totality
excludes nothing. In actual fact, since Hegel transforms the logical
inclusion of opposites that is reason into the very principle of
idealism (reason is the sole reality, there is nothing outside of it), he
excludes precisely that exclusion of opposites (the externality of
being in relation to thought) that is the very principle of materialism.
It is true enough, therefore, that Hegel incorporates being into
thought, the finite into the infinite. But since the finite as it is
18. ibid.,

p.

217 (Colletti's emphasis).

Hegel and Spinoza 3S

'within' is very different from the finite as it is 'outside' - the object
in reality (Gegenstand) is one thing and the logical object (Objekt) is
another - the Hegelian totality, in order to be truly such, would have
to be able to fuse the two principles together : dialectical contradic
tion and non-contradictory identity, the unity of opposites and their
mutual exclusion.
Reason is a totality. This is what Hegel saw clearly. But since this
'totality' is also nothing but reason, it is clear that, in addition to
being itself, this totality must also be 'intellect' ; in addition to
'totality', it must also be only 'one of the two' ; and that, in
short, thought - in addition to being the unity of thought and
being in thought - must also be a function of a reality external to
itself.
Now this is precisely what Hegel fails to see. With him, unity
dominates and cancels out all distinctions ; the 'rational' totality
obliterates the 'intellect' ; the principle of reason excludes that of
matter. The consequence is that reason, having to serve simul
taneously and in one and the same respect as thought and reality,
becomes crystallized into a thing, i.e. becomes a simple, positive
unity, incapable of opening itself up and of taking into account what
is different from itself; it acquires thereby the exclusory character
that is a property of matter.
All 'true' philosophies are a form of idealism. Materialism is
Unphilosophie, anti-philosophy, and since discussion is possible only
where there is unity of principles, the history of philosophy is only
the history of idealism, the history of the progressive realization of
the Idea or Christian Logos, the history of the realization of God, In
his early work devoted to the Relationship ofScepticism to Philosophy,
Hegel quotes Leibniz : 'I have found that most sects are right in a
good part of what they propound, but less so with regard to what
they reject.' 1 9 Hegel adds : 'The superficial view of philosophical
disputes takes account only of the differences of the systems,
whereas the ancient rule : contra negantes principia non est disputan
dum (no argument is possible where basic principles are opposed),
19. G. W. F. Hegel, Verhiiltniss der Skepticismus zur Philosophie, in Siimtliche Werke
(Glockner), I, p. 218 (from the French).

36

enables one to realize that whenever philosophical systems argue

with one another . . . there exists already agreement as to prin
ciples.' 2 0 The differences between philosophies that have existed
until now are therefore traced back solely to 'the higher or lower
degree of abstraction with which Reason has presented itself in the
various principles and systems'. And the method by which these
differences between the p hilosophies are to be overcome is the very
same one by which Hegel enlarged on Eleaticism. It is a matter of
expanding the idea that 'they propound' so that it also includes the
other ideas that 'they reject' ; i.e. it is a question of replacing the
'fixed abstractions' with the 'self-encompassing abstraction' and
therefore of integrating idea with idea. But note this : one is inte
grating idea with idea, not idea with matter, for ' anders ist es freilich,
wenn Philosophie mit Unphilosophie streitet (it is another matter when
philosophy argues with anti-philosophy). 2 1
The shortcoming of pre-critical metaphysics, even in its most
illustrious representative, Spinoza, has not therefore been that it was
a metaphysics, i.e. that it removed from its objects the supersensible
and the absolute; the content of that philosophy (God, the soul,
etc.) was indeed 'genuinely . . . speculative'. The shortcoming is
rather to be traced to the method or intellectual form which it made
use of - i.e., to the fact that it was a 'mere view on the part of the
intellect of Reason's objects (Vernunftgegenstande)'. 2 2 'This system
of metaphysics became a dogmatism,' states the Encyclopedia,
'because, in accordance with the nature of finite determinations, it
had to assume that given two mutually contrasting statements, one
had to be true and the other false'. 23
In other words, dogmatism did not come to that philosophy
through its apriorism, i.e. from the fact that it took as its starting
point a prefixed idea, an external 'given' (the very principle of
idealism), which, while denying all reality to anything that was
outside or external to the idea, arrogated directly to itself the status
of reality. On the contrary, dogmatism came to it through the
adoption of the principle of non-contradiction, the method of the
20. loco cit.

22. En.L., p. 60.

21. loco cit.
23. ibid., p. 61 (translation modified).

Hegel and Spinoza

37

'understanding', which, in so far as it makes the finite 'dead being',

i.e. a 'fixed', motionless reality (motionless precisely in the sense that
it is not obliterated by 'passing over' into the infinite or the Idea),
makes it also a solid foundation which is and remains. This, accor
ding to Hegel, is the source of that philosophy's dogmatism ; not
the fact that it presupposes as 'given' ideas and knowledge that are
purely aprioristic (,knowledge which we possess without knowing
whence it came, and entrust to principles the origin of which is
unknown', Kant would say24) ; not in taking its starting-point from
an innate or apriorist mode of knowing; but rather in taking up
'facts', the finite, the 'a posteriori' as 'given', or in other words, in
presupposing that an object which must be known is given us.
This is the contradiction or logical inconsistency which, accord
ing to Hegel, has befallen that philosophy. Although it knew
perfectly well that 'the world has no true reality', that 'there is no
such thing as finite reality' and that 'there is no such thing as . . .
the world ; it is only a form of God', it was not able to develop this
knowledge in a coherent way ; for it remained snarled in the knots
of 'ordinary human understanding' - i.e. in that point of view which
is common to the materialism of 'common sense' and to science.
Thus, while being philosophic (or idealist) in substance, those
metaphysics turned out to be scientific (or materialist)25 in form ;
claiming, like S pinoza, that absolute substance could b e an ordine
geometrico demonstrata, or following, as with Leibniz, 'the same
general plan in his philosophy as the physicists adopt when they
advance a hypothesis to explain existing data'. 26 The result has
been, as Hegel states in relation to Spinoza, that his 'notions,
profound and correct as they are, are definitions, which are
24. Immanuel Kant, Critique ofPure Reason, translated by F. Max Muller (New York,
1966), p. 5
25. G. W. F. Hegel, Science of Logic, vol. I, p. 53: 'I have said what is essential in the
preface to the Phenomenology ofSpirit about this method (of science) and, in general, the
subordinate form of scientific method which can be employed in mathematics ; but it
will also be considered in more detail in the logic itself. Spinoza, Wolff, and others have
let themselves be misled in applying it also to philosophy and in making the external
course followed by Notion-less quantity, the course of the Notion, a procedure which is
absolutely contradictory. Hitherto philosophy had not found its method.'
26. H.P., III, p. 329.

38

immediately assumed at the outset of the science', just as happens

with 'mathematics and other subordinate sciences'. 2 7
Note that this argument does not mean at all that Hegel falls into
the error, so wide-spread today, 2 8 of thinking that pre-critical meta
physics is materialism and therefore that materialism (which, in
epistemology, is then reduced to the Kantian critical thesis that
existence is not a predicate or the appendage of a concept) is of
religious origin and therefore equivalent to either Thomist 'realism'
or to the Cartesian dualism of res extensa and res cogitans. Of course
Hegel does not fall into this error. He has a profound knowledge of
the history of philosophy and is well aware that just as the two
Cartesian res are both 'substances' (i.e. universals), so 'Descartes's
sublimest thought' is 'that God is that whose notion includes within
itself its being'. 2 9 The meaning of Hegel's argument is just the
opposite : pre-Kantian metaphysics is true philosophy, it is a form of
idealism; materialism exists in it only in the scientific form, i.e. in
the way in which the principle is elucidated and developed. In a
word, it exists only formally, and precisely because the error is only
one of form, so the correction must also be only one of form, on this
crucial point Hegel could not be clearer. It was Jacobi, rather than
Kant, who pointed out the error of the old metaphysics! 'If Kant
attacked previous metaphysics rather in respect of its matter' or of
its contents (God, the soul, etc.), 'Jacobi has attacked it chiefly on
the side of its method of demonstration, and signalized most clearly
and most profoundly the essential point, namely, that a method of
demonstration such as this is fast bound within the circle of the
rigid necessity of the finite, and that freedom, that is the Notion, and
with it everything that is true, lies beyond it and is unattainable by it.
According to the Kantian result, it is the peculiar matter of meta
physics that leads it into contradictions, and the inadequacy of
cognition consists in its subjectivity ; according to Jacobi's result,
the fault lies with the method and the entire nature of cognition
27 L., p. 537.
28. As is well-known, this rather wide-spread error is found in Antonio Gramsci as
well, cf. II materialismo storico e la filosofia di Benedetto Croce, Turin, 1948, p. 138.
29. ibid., p. 705.

Hegel and Spinoza

39

itself, which only apprehends a connection of conditioned-ness and

dependence and therefore proves itself inadequate to what is in and
for itself, to what is absolutely true. In point of fact, as the principle
of philosophy is the infinite free Notion, and all its content rests on
that alone, the method proper to Notion-less finitude is inappropriate
to it.'3 0
The conclusion is unequivocal. The principle and the contents of
the old metaphysics must be preserved and developed further. It
becomes merely a matter of giving it another form, of changing the
method, i.e. of freeing metaphysics from the impediments that have
been engendered up till now by the 'intellect'. Dogmatism is not
to be found in metaphysics. Dogmatism is to be found in materialism,
in science and in common sense.
30. ibid.,

pp.

816-17.

III.

Dialectical Materialism

and Hegel

Hegel's argument, as so far reconstructed, takes us right to the core

of 'dialectical materialism'. The only point of divergence lies in
Engels's interpretation of Hegel's text. In it the meaning of the
argument is unwittingly overturned : it is no longer the old meta
physics which is dogmatic because it remains a captive of the finite
and the scientific understanding; rather, the intellect is dogmatic
because it is metaphysical. In other words, Engels takes as an element
intrinsically related to metaphysical thinking the very principle of
non-contradiction which Hegel considered an obstacle to the full
elaboration of a metaphysics per se. For Hegel the principle of non
contradiction was represented by science, the logic of the finite, to
which he counterposed a purely metaphysical logic of the infinite
(the idealist dialectic). For Engels, however, scientific non-contradic
tion is a form of metaphysics, and the idealist or metaphysical logic
is instead the logic of the new 'science'.
Engels writes : 'the old method of investigation and thought which
Hegel calls 'metaphysical', which preferred to investigate things as
given, as fixed and stable, . . . had a good deal of historical justifica
tion in its day. It was necessary first to examine things before it was
possible to examine processes. One had first to know what a particu
lar thing was before one could observe the changes going on in
connection with it. And such was the case with natural science. The
old metaphysics which accepted things as finished objects arose from
a natural science which investigated dead and living things as
finished objects.'!
Obviously, this critique is basically the same as Hegel's ; but with
an unconscious confusion that alters its entire hue and orientation.
I. Frederick Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach and the Outcome ofClassical German Philosophy
(New York, 1941), p. 45 (Colletti's emphasis).

Dialectical Materialism and Hegel 4I

For Hegel, the old metaphysics derived its dogmatism from the
'intellect', i.e. from its use of the method characteristic of science
and common sense (the principle of non-contradiction) ; which
means that in the process of opposing that particular metaphysics,
Hegel was not attempting to oppose metaphysics per se, but only the
manifestations of what he regarded as dogmatism : materialism and
science. For Engels, however - for whom the term, 'dogmatism',
was instinctively (and, moreover, rightly) associated with 'meta
physics' - the argument takes on this distorted meaning: the cause of
metaphysics is none other than science, and therefore in order to
stamp out metaphysical dogmatism, it is necessary above all to
oppose the non-contradictory thinking of science. The result of this
rather naive switch (the consequences of which, as we shall see, are
very serious) is that, in the process of repeating Hegel's argument,
Engels and 'dialectical materialism' think that they are opposing
idealism and metaphysics, whereas they end up struggling against
materialism and science.
'The analysis of Nature into its individual parts, the grouping of
the different natural processes and natural objects in definite classes,
the study of the internal anatomy of organic bodies in their manifold
forms - these were the fundamental conditions of the gigantic
strides in our knowledge of Nature which have been made during
the last four hundred years. . . . But this method of investigation has
also left us as a legacy the habit of observing natural objects and
natural processes in their isolation, detached from the whole vast
interconnection of things ; and therefore not in their motion, but in
their repose : not as essentially changing, but as fixed constants ; not
in their life, but in their death. And when, as was the case with
Bacon and Locke, this way of looking at tbings was transferred from
natural science to philosophy, it produced the specific narrow
mindedness of the last centuries, the metaphysical mode ofthought.' 2
Metaphysics has its origin, accordingly, in modern science - that
science which, despite all of its partial achievements, has grafted
onto philosophy the 'narrowness' of its own method and of its
metaphysical mental habit. In comparison with this science, Engels
2. F. Engels, Anti-Dilhring, op. cit., p. 27.

42
extols the grandeur of Greek philosophy where 'dialectical thought
still appears in its pristine simplicity'. 'Among the Greeks - just
because they were not yet advanced enough to dissect, analyse
nature - nature is still viewed as a whole, in general. The universal
connection of natural phenomena is not proved in regard to particu
lars ; for the Greeks it is the result of unmediated, intuitive percep
tion.' This is what accounts for 'the inadequacy of Greek philo
sophy' ; but it also accounts for 'its superiority over all its subsequent
metaphysical opponents' - since, 'if metaphysics' (i.e., in this case
the science of nature), 'in regard to the Greeks . . . was right in
particulars, in regard to metaphysics the Greeks were right as con
cerns the whole'.3 Consequently, if science is to change over today
from a simple 'empirical science' into a theoretical 'natural science',
it 'is . . . forced to go back to the Greeks'. <l In fact, with dialectical
materialism we have 'once again returned to the point of view of the
great founders of Greek philosophy, the view that the whole of
nature, from the smallest element to the greatest, from grains of sand
to suns, from protista to men, has its existence in eternal coming
into being and passing away, in ceaseless flux, in unresting motion
and change'. 5
The entire argument is grounded in a Hegelian philosophy of
history based on three stages, but in a very popularized version. The
first stage gives us a picture of the world 'in which nothing remains
what, where and as it was, but everything moves, changes, comes into
being and passes out of existence. This primitive, naive, yet intrinsi
cally correct conception c the world was that of ancient Greek
philosophy, and was first clearly formulated by Heraclitus : every
thing is and also is not, for everything is in flux, is constantly
changing, constantly coming into being and passing away.'6 This is
the first phase, represented by Ionian philosophy, which grasps
'correctly' the overall picture of phenomena, but which lays more
emphasis on 'the movements, transitions, connections, rather than
3. F. Engels, Old preface to Anti-Duhring, in Anti-Duhring (Moscow, 1947), p .. 395
(translation modified).
4. op. cit.
5. F. Engels, Dialectics of Nature (New York, 1940), p. 13.
6. F. Engels, Anti-Duhring, op. cit., pp. 26-7.

Dialectical Materialism and Hegel 43

the things that move, combine, and are connected',7 more on the
Totality than on individual details. Engels proceeds to a second
phase, which is the exact antithesis of the first one, and which he
identifies with the modern science ofnature as it has developed 'from
the second half of the fifteenth century'. The task to be confronted
by this second phase was to rectify the shortcomings of the first;
that is, to examine more closely those details which Ionian philosophy
had overlooked to the exclusive benefit of the 'overall picture' and
the total vision. But since 'in order to understand these details, we
must detach them from their natural or historical connections, and
examine each one separately, as to its nature, its special causes and
effects, etc.', 8 thereby setting aside the question of the whole, the
result was that in the process of avoiding the shortcoming of Greek
philosophy, modern science fell into the opposite and even more
serious error of limiting itself to 'arrangement in classes, orders and
species', 9 without grasping the Totality. This, as we saw, accounts
for the metaphysical character of modern science. Finally in the
third phase, represented by Hegel's dialectical philosophy and by
the 'materialist revolution' which Engels presumes to have carried
out, the arguments of the Greeks are vindicated and revived. The
period of 'dissection' and analysis, opened up by modern science
and which represented the negation of the original Totality con
ceived by Ionian philosophy, is, in its turn, negated by the third
epoch. This phase, being the 'negation of the negation', signals the
restoration of the Totality (the 'return to the Greeks' f), although this
time not in its 'primitive naivete', but rather enriched by all the
individual determinations. In the first phase, the vision of the Whole
obscured that of the part; in the second, the vision of the part,
that of the Whole ; in the third, the individual part is finally appre
hended within the Totality.
One might object that what Engels says about science concerns
only the 'old style' of science, non-dialectical science, in opposition
7. F. Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, translated by Edward Aveling (New
York, 1935), p. 45.
8. F. Engels, Anti-Duhring, op. cit., p. 27.
9. F. Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, op. cit., p. 46.

44
to which he posits a 'new' science permeated and revitalized by the
dialectic. And one might also recall that in Feuerbach, as well as in
many other places, Engels observes that 'while natural science up to
the end of the last century was predominantly a collecting science, a
science of finished things (and, therefore, metaphysical), in our
century it is essentially a classifying science, a science of the processes,
of the origin and development of these things and of the inter
connection which binds all these natural processes into one great
whole'. 1 0
Nonetheless there are serious and well-grounded reasons for
doubting that there ever really existed any science (apart, of course,
from 'dialectical materialism' itself . . . ) other than the one criticized
by Engels. The 'old' science, merely 'accumulative' and meta
physical, which he is discussing here, is - let us not forget it - also
the science of Kepler, Galileo, and Newton. However, the 'new'
science which ought to be contrasted with this old one seems for the
most part, and notably for Engels, only a science that . . . is yet to
come. It is certainly true that he continually repeats that 'old style'
science has had its day, and that it loses more ground every day to
the 'new' science, which by its very nature is philosophical and
dialectical. But Engels also observes with some impatience that,
'although on the whole it (abstract identity) has now been abolished
in practice, theoretically it still dominates people's minds, . . . the
bulk of natural scientists are still held fast in the old metaphysical
categories and helpless when these modern facts, which so to say
prove the dialectics in nature, have to be rationally explained and
brought into relation with one another'. 11
The truth is that what Engels was asking for so insistently could
only be obtained, not from science, but from an acritical restoration
of Hegel's old 'philosophy of nature' ; and that what he wanted was
not, in the final analysis, an ever greater emancipation of science
(i.e., the only form of knowledge available to us) from any remaining
speculative bonds on it, but just the opposite : a grafting of the old
metaphysics onto science or - as one of his more ominous expressions
10. F. Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach, op. cit., pp. 45-6.
I I . F. Engels, Dialectics of Nature, op. cit., p. 183 and p. 154.

Dialectical Materialism and Hegel 4S

goes - the advent of the moment in which 'philosophy takes its
revenge posthumously on natural science'. 1 2
Science is a form of metaphysics because it is founded on the
principle of identity and non-contradiction. Identity, in its turn,
is a form of metaphysics because it is abstract; and it is abstract
because it gives us the finite outside the infinite, the individual
object outside the 'totality', the 'this 'right here' to the exclusion of
everything that it is not. Note that metaphysical abstractions are not
those cognitions which have as their object supersensible universals
(God, the soul, etc.) or, as Kant would say, 'knowledge which
transcends the world of the senses, and where experience can
neither guide nor correct us' .13 Nor are they the abstractions which
separate the logical universal from the world of experience, making it
an a priori that exists for itself. Rather, the metaphysical abstraction
is that which separates and differentiates the individual object from
the universal. Metaphysics - or, as Hegel would say, dogmatism is,
in short, the 'ordinary human intellect', common sense ; i.e. it is
prcisely that point of view to which were traced back, even tradi
tionally speaking, all materialistic approaches to reality.H
Engels writes : ' . . . Sound common sense, respectable fellow as
he is within the homely precincts of his own four walls, has most
wonderful adventures as soon as he ventures out into the wide
world of scientific research.' Here, in fact, 'the metaphysical mode of
outlook, justifiable and even necessary as it is in domains whose
extent varies according to the nature of the object under investiga
tion, . . . reaches a limit beyond which it becomes one-sided,
limited, abstract, and loses its way in insoluble contradictions. And
this is so because in considering individual things it loses sight of
their connections ; in contemplating their existence it forgets their
-

12. ibid., p. 154 (Colletti's emphasis).

Immanuel Kant, op, cit., p. 5.

14. G. W. F. Hegel, Science of Logic, p. 45 : 'In general it (reflective understanding)
stands for the understanding as abstracting, and hence as separating and remaining
fixed in its separations. Directed against reason, it behaves as ordinary common sense
and imposes its view that truth rests on sensuous reality, that thoughts are only thoughts,
meaning that it is sense perception which first gives them filling and reality and that
reason left to its own resources engenders only figments of the brain.'
13.

46
coming into being and passing away ; in looking at them at rest it
leaves their motion out of account; because it cannot see the wood
for the trees' . 1 5 The partis abstract, the whole is concrete. As usual,
Engels restates Hegel, but without even suspecting the twofold
movement - the world's self-idealization and self-negation and the
Idea's self-realization - that is implicit in these two statements.
When Hegel says that the finite - taken by itself or separately from
the other - is abstract, he can say that in complete congruence with
the principle of his philosophy, i.e. with the notion that the finite
is ideal, a moment within the Idea. As the Phenomenology says,
'Being which is per se straightway non-being we call a show, a
semblance (Schein)'. 16 And if the finite, the particular, does not
have being in itself, but has as its 'essence' or foundation the 'other',
it is clear not only that, in order to be itself, the finite has to 'pass
over' into the infinite, cancel itself out ; but it is also clear that,
taken outside this relationship of it within the Idea and therefore as
real, the finite must appear to Hegel as something 'abstract',
separated from its 'true' essence. In fact, it is not a matter of chance
that from Hegel's viewpoint materialism is only a delusion, the
deceitfulness of common sense that mistakes 'illusory being' for true
reality.
But once again, whereas this argument in Hegel is clear and self
consistent, in Engels it becomes pure nonsense. Engels, who wants
to be a materialist, regards as 'abstract' the finite outside the infinite
(the object external to thought) and as 'concrete' the totality. He does
not see: (a) that the Hegelian 'totality' is the infinite. Reason, the
Christian Logos (as the Phenomenology says, 'Beyond the sensuous
world which is the world of appearance', there opens up 'a super
sensible world . . . as the true world . . . . ) Away remote from the
changing vanishing present (Diesseits) lies the permanent beyond
(Jenseits)'I7 ; (b) that when Hegel says that the infinite 'is . . . deter
minate being', that 'it is and is there, present before us' or that the
totality is the concrete, he has in mind the passing over of the beyond
IS. F. Engels, Anti-Duhring, p. 28.
16. G. W. F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind, translated by J. B. Baillie (New
I7 . ibid., p. 191.
York, 1967), p. 190. Hereafter referred to as Phen.

Dialectical Materialism and Hegel 47

into the here and now, i.e. the incarnation or positive exposition of
the absolute.
With reference to this exposition of the absolute Hegel writes in
the Phenomenology, 'the supersensible is the established truth of the
sensible and perceptual. The truth of the sensible and the percep
tual lies, however, in being appearance. The supersensible is then
appearance qua appearance'. And immediately afterwards, almost as a
presage of the misunderstandings of dialectical materialism, Hegel
becomes more specific : 'We distort the proper meaning of this, if
we take it to mean that the supersensible is therefore the sensible
world, or the world as it is for immediate sense-certainty and per
ception. For, on the contrary, appearance is just not the world of
sense-knowledge and perception as positively being, but this world as
superseded or established in truth as an inner world.'IB
This incarnation of the supersensible marks (as shown with great
clarity in the Phenomenology) a radical overturning of the world of
common sense and materialism. What is real for materialism, here
liecomes 'illusory being' ; what for it is unreal or non-thing (the
infinite), here is the supreme reality. Hegel particularly emphasizes
how the world of philosophy - i.e., idealism 'realized', the realization
of the Idea - is the world of common sense stood on its head, the
inverted world, die verkehrte Welt. I 9 Reality is not the world, but
'immanence', the transubstantiation, the beyond that has come to
the here and now, the soul that has made itself the anima mundi.
'This bare and simple infinity, or the absolute notion, may be called
the ultimate nature of life, the souls of the world, the universal
life-blood, which courses everywhere and whose flow is neither
disturbed nor checked by any obstructing distinction, but is itself
every distinction, that arises, as well as that into which all distinctions
are dissolved ; pulsating within itself, but ever motionless, shaken to
its depths, but still at rest. It is self-identical, for the distinctions are
tautological ; they are distinctions that are none.'20
Now precisely this verkehrte Welt, this world 'stood on its head'
- which represents the substantification of reason or the 'positive
exposition of the absolute' - is what Engels also takes up as the truly
18. ibid., p. 193.

19. ibid., p. 203.

20. ibid.,

p.

208.

48
real and objective. The individual object is the abstract, the totality
the concrete. The finite is ideal, the infinite real. Once these two
essential cornerstones of Hegel's reasoning have been taken up,
more or less unconsciously, it is not surprising that Engels should
find himself unable to overturn Hegel's dialectic and therefore to
put it back 'on its feet'. The dialectic in Hegel, Marx says, stands on
its head, auf dem Kop! 'It must be turned right side up again, if
you would discover the rational kernel (den rationellen Kern) within
the mystical shell (in der mystischen Hulle).'21 The interpretation of
this text is essential for us. The 'rational kernel' is precisely the
Hegelian theory of reason itself; i.e. the discovery, arrived at by
passing through the broadening of Eleaticism, etc., that reason is
'being' and 'non-being' together, finite and infinite within the infinite,
a tautoheterology and dialectic. The 'mystical shell', on the other
hand, is the immediate translation of reason into a positive moment,
its substantification; a substantification that follows from the
proposition that reason must be, at one and the same time and
without making any distinctions, reason and reality, i.e. Christian
Logos. If this interpretation of ours is correct, the breaking of the
'mystical shell' and thus the 'overturning' of the dialectic (to make
use once again of these abused metaphors) can only consist in the
recovery of the principle of identity and non-contradiction or, what
is the same thing, the recovery of the materialist point of view.
Reason is a totality ; this is what Hegel saw clearly .. But since this
totality is only reason, i.e. thought, it must also be only 'one of the
two', i.e. a totality and, at the same time, a function or predicate of
an individual object external to it.
We have seen what the interpretative line of Engels is, on the
other hand. He does not understand the real meaning of the 'dialec
tic of the finite' - the world's self-idealization and self-negation ;
and not having understood the actual nature of this first movement,
he does not understand either, consequently, the meaning of the
second 'passage' that is complementary to it and integrates it: the
self-realization of the Idea (which is precisely what Hegel appro21. Karl Marx, Capital, translated by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling (London
and New York, 1967), vol. I, p. 20.

Dialectical Materialism and Hegel 49

priately calles Wirklichkeit as opposed to Realitat). The consequence
is that what Engels and all of 'dialectical materialism' after him
present as the highest and most developed form of materialism is
none other than absolute idealism. The 'positive exposition of the
absolute' is mistaken for a form of materialist objectivity. The
'dialectic of matter', by which the finite becomes ideal and cancels
itself out, is confused with the observation and 'scientific verification'
of processes and changes that take place under their own force and
at the level of simple matter of fact.
There is no need to describe the extent to which this 'mistake'
has affected and weighed upon the development of theoretical
Marxism. Here, we are only concerned to point out its profound
repercussions within the field of the interpretation of Hegel's
thought, and how it engendered a series of problems that - with all
due respect for the individual interpreters - we can only regard as
either imaginary or misconceived.
One can read in the Encyclopedia : 'As far as concerns the imm.e
diate consciousness of the existence of external things, this means
no more than to have sense-consciousness. Such a consciousness is
the most elementary form of knowledge. All one needs to know
about it is that this immediate knowledge of the being of external
things is illusion and error ; that in the sense-world as such there is
no truth ; and that the being of these external things is rather some
thing accidental and ephemeral, illusory being . . . .'22
This is one of the many professions of idealism that we have come
to know, from a direct study of Hegel's texts. Its meaning does not
appear to be in doubt. It implies the negation of any extralogical
existence. It implies that 'this material as it appears apart from and
prior to the notion has no truth ; this it has solely in its ideality or its
identity with the Notion'. It implies that identity of thought and
being, or the 'inseparability' of the latter from the former, which as Hegel always saw with great lucidity - is the principle common to
both Descartes and Spinoza, on the one hand, and to his own
philosophy and post-Kantian idealism in general, on the other. The
fundamental proposition of Descartes's philosophy, he reiterates, is
22. En.L., p. 140 (translation modified).

50
'the inseparability of the representation of God from his existence,
such that the latter is contained in the very representation of God
and the former cannot exist without the attribute of existence, which
is thus necessary and eternal'. With Spinoza, he adds, 'we come
upon the same statement that the essence or abstract conception of
God implies existence. The first of Spinoza's definitions, that of the
Causa Sui (or Self-Cause), explains it to be cujus essentia z'nvolvit
existentiam. . . . The inseparability of the notion from being is the
main point and fundamental hypothesis. . . .'23
On the one hand, then, we have idealism. On the other, however,
we also have in Hegel the dialectic of matter. The Science of Logic,
for example, tells us that 'qualitative nodes and leaps occur in
chemical combinations when the mixture proportions are progres
sively altered ; at certain points in the scale of mixtures, two sub
stances form products exhibiting particular qualities'. 'For example,
different oxides of nitrogen and nitric acids having essentially
different qualities are formed only when oxygen and nitrogen are
combined in certain specific proportions, and no such specific
compounds are formed by the intermediate proportions.'24 Now let
us open the Dialectics of Nature. Discussing the passage from
quantity into quality and vice versa, Engels calls to our attention that
'the sphere, however, in which the law of nature ( l ) discovered by
Hegel ( !) celebrates its most important triumphs is that of chemistry.
Chemistry can be termed the science of the qualitative changes of
bodies as a result of quantitative composition. That was already
known to Hegel himself (Logic, pp. 356-7). As in the case of oxygen :
if three atoms unite into a molecule, instead of the usual two, we get
ozone, a body which is very considerably different from ordinary
oxygen in its odour and reactions. Again, one can take the various
proportions in which oxygen combines with nitrogen or sulphur,
each of which produces a substance qualitatively different from any
of the others !'25
The 'law', as one can see, is absolutely the same; even the examples
are the same. It is a fact not only that the dialectic of matter of
23. ibid., p. 139 (translation modified).
25. F. Engels, Dialectics of Nature, op. cit., pp. 3(}-I.

Dialectical Materialism and Hegel

SI

'dialectical materialism' is the same one that we find in Hegel's

work; but also that the 'leap' from quantity into quality is here
esteemed a law of nature not unlike,. and in fact of much more
general application than the law of falling bodies or of universal
gravitation - a law of nature 'discovered' by Hegel, just as Galileo
and Newton discovered theirs.
Let the reader now adopt the point of view of 'dialectical material
ism', and let him make the experiment of thinking through together
the two aspects of Hegel's thought just cited. The conclusion can
only be that in the philosophy of Hegel - a thinker with extra
ordinary internal coherence - there exists a profound contradiction.
His idealist side is clearly visible and undeniable. On the other hand,
tlJe dialectic of matter is in all respects identical to that of'dialectical
materialism'. The necessary conclusion can only be that Hegel is
half idealist, and half materialist; that his entire philosophy is
divided and disconnected by a deep contradiction ; and that its
'method' and its 'system' are permanently in conflict with one
another. In short, the 'reading' of Hegel made by Engels, Plekhanov,
and Lenin (the second and third, it should be noted, already on the
authority of Engels) is taken up as a self-evident standard of evalua
tion which is beyond debate ; while all the time the 'contradiction'
that lies within the standard itself is being quietly projected into the
object under evaluation. This is the source of the series of 'unreal'
problems mentioned above : the question of Hegel's materialism ;
the question of the contradictoriness of his philosophy - problems,
it may be said, that do not remain confined to the area of 'dialectical
materialism', but which (as we shall see) reverberate also among the
non-Marxist or 'Western Marxist' interpreters of Hegel's thought.
And finally the relationship between the 'young Marx' and the 'old
Marx' - a problem which is, I readily admit, altogether unresolvable
wherever Marx's thought in his full maturity is regarded as identical
with that ofEngels and the entire tradition of ' dialectical materialism'.

IV.

Hegel and the

'Theory of Reflection'

In the 1812 Preface to the first edition of the Science ofLogic where
he undertakes to examine the 'complete transformation' that 'in the
last twenty-five years' had taken place in philosophic thought,
Hegel gives emphasis to the discredit and desuetude into which
metaphysics had fallen in the meanwhile. 'That which, prior to this
period, was called metaphysics has been, so to speak, extirpated root
and branch and has vanished from the ranks of the sciences. The
ontology, rational psychology, cosmology, yes even natural theology,
of former times - where is now to be heard any mention of them or
who would venture to mention them ? Inquiries, for instance, into
the immateriality of the soul, into efficient and final causes, where
should these still arouse any interest ? Even the former proofs of the
existence of God are cited only for their historical interest or for
purposes of edification and uplifting the emotions. The fact is that
there no longer exists any interest either in the form or the content
of metaphysics or in both together.'l
In calling attention to these forms and contents of the 'old meta
physics', Hegel knows full well that they represent precisely what
had been the object of the analysis and 'theoretical destruction'
carried out in the Critique of Pure Reason. (It is, moreover, likely
that the twenty-five years from which he dates the 'complete trans
formation' are calculated beginning exactly with 1787, the year of the
second edition of the Critique and of its expanded version that
included the famous 'Refutation of Idealism'.) In any case, the
reference to Kant is explicit. 'The exoteric teaching of the Kantian
philosophy - that the understanding cannot go beyond experience,'
without thereby producing anything but fantasies, 'was a justifica
tion from a philosophical quarter for the renunciation of speculative
I.

L., p. 25.

Hegel and the 'Theory ofReflection' S3

thought'. The consequence is that 'philosophy ( Wissenschaft) and
ordinary common sense thus cooperating to bring about the downfall
of metaphysics, there was seen the strange spectacle of a cultured
nation without metaphysics - like a temple richly ornamented in
other respects but without a holy of holies'. 2
The success of critical philosophy was aided and abetted by 'the
cry of modern educationists', the vulgar pragmatism of the times
that 'demanded attention to immediate requirements', and, in
general, by the belief that 'just as experience was the primary factor
for knowledge, so for skill in public and private life, theoretical
insight may even be harmful'. The result has been that 'theology,
which in former times was the guardian of the speculative mysteries
and of metaphysics (even though the latter was subordinate to it),
[has] given up this science in exchange for feelings, for what was
popularly matter-of-fact, and for historical erudition'. And so 'there
vanished from the world those solitary souls who were sacrificed
by their people and exiled from the world to the end that the eternal
should be contemplated and served by lives devoted solely thereto not for any practical gain but for the sake of blessedness', leaving
their place to the fatuity of ordinary human understanding and the
philosophy of the luminaries, i.e. of that age - previously disdain
fully termed der Dogmatismus der Aufklarerei (the dogmatism of
Enlightenment lucubrations) in the early writing on Belief and
Knowledge,3 in which, with the 'shadows' of metaphysics chased
away, Hegel sarcastically remarks that 'Outer existence seemed to be
transformed into the bright world of flowers - and there are no
black flowers, as we know'. 4
The void opened up by 'critical philosophy' - the temple richly
ornamented but without the holy of holies that Hegel now prepares
to reconsecrate by presenting the Science of Logic to the public will be filled precisely by 'the science oflogic which constitutes meta
physics proper or purely speculative philosophy'. 5
These pages of Hegel are important and meaningful, of course,
-

2. ibid., pp. 25-6.

3. G. W. F. Hegel, Glauben und Wissen, in Siimtliche Werke, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 284.
4. L., p. 26.
5. ibid., p. 27

54
and should not therefore be judged too hastily. One finds in them
as in all his work, incidentally - the stamp of a vigorous and hardy
mode of thought, full of that fascination which, at times, the great
conservatives know how to generate. There re-echoes through them
the note of an imposing 'organicism', and a concern for the division
and internal diaspora of modern 'civil society' and for the devastating
utilitarianism which the incipient capitalist mode of life bears with
it. Nevertheless, these are pages to be judged also with sobriety and
dispassionately.
The main object of their polemic is the Reflexionsphilosophie,
which arose with the Enlightenment, and - against this historical
background - from Kant. An Italian Marxist scholar, who was the
first to draw our attention to these pages, has rightly observed that,
whereas Kant 'is here called upon to represent the pars destruens' in
the divergence of modern thought from the old metaphysics (corre
sponding, moreover, 'to what was the direct and clear-cut impact of
Kantianism on the culture of the times'), it is 'significant that Hegel
does not give him a sympathetic judgment'. 'Hegel,' he concludes,
'thus openly presents himself as the most self-conscious restorer of
metaphysics' (although 'on the crest of the latest movement of
thought' and therefore 'naturally up to the level of the transforma
tion that had taken place in those years'6).
This assessment is, in our view, important. It is further backed up,
in Luporini's argument, by a reference to that famous passage of the
Holy Family in which Marx discusses the Enlightenment, its battle
against metaphysics, and the role which Hegel's philosophy assigned
to itself vis-a-vis the latter : 'Seventeenth-century metaphysics,
beaten off the field by the French Enlightenment, to be precise, by
French materialism of the eighteenth century, was given a victorious
and solid restoration in German philosophy, particularly in German
speculative philos(lphy of the nineteenth century. After Hegel linked
it in so masterly a fashion with all subsequent metaphysics and with
German idealism and founded a metaphysical universal kingdom,
the attack on speculative metaphysics and metaphysics in general
again corresponded, as in the eighteenth century, to the attack on
6.

Cesare Luporini, Spazio e materia in Kant (Florence, 1961), pp. 13-15.

Hegel and the 'Theory ofReflection' SS

theology. It will be defeated forever by materialism which has now
been perfected by the work of speculation itself and coincides with
humanism.'7
The importance of this assessment lies, on our view, in the fact
that it is one of the exceedingly rare acknowledgments of the meta
physical character of Hegel's thought that one can find today in the
camp of 'dialectical materialism'. It even seems to break, in some
places, with Engels's theory (elaborated later by Lukacs, in particu
lar), according to which 'dialectic' and 'metaphysics' are always
alternative and antithetical terms. Furthermore, in the process of
underlining the great importance of the Kantian critique of the onto
logical argument ('that critique is founded, as is known, on the
irresolvability of existence into a mere concept, a central point in
Kant's thought'), Luporini rightly observes that it is precisely 'on
the question of the rejection of this anti-idealist position of Kant's
(that) the Hegelian restoration of metaphysics, in the final analysis,
is based, (a restoration) which is thus, as has been observed many
times, a reconstruction of theology in speculative form, even though
it is no longer a theology with a transcendental and personal God'. B
Nevertheless, despite the perceptiveness of his observations, this
author as well ends up recognizing as Hegel's principal merit his
conception of 'objectivity' - which is here directly understood in
terms akin to the materialist meaning of objectivity. The superiority
of Hegel over Kant lies in the discovery of the 'essential and necessary
character of contradiction'. This recognition of the objectivity of
contradiction - which, it should be noted, 'will remain basically valid
from the point of view of dialectical materialism as well' 9 is what,
according to the author, represents the reason for that 'intellectual
continuity which, despite all their differences, the founders of
dialectical materialism established between themselves and Hegel'. 1 0
Luporini continues thus : 'Vehicle for that continuity is the
"dialectical method", passed over from idealism to materialism, and
the dynamic nucleus at work is none other than the objectivity of
-

7. K. Marx and F. Engels, The Holy Family or Critique ofCritical Critique, translated
by R. Dixon (Moscow, 1956), p. 16B.
9. ibid., p. lB.
10. loco cit.
B. Luporini, op. cit., pp. 71-2.

56
contradiction (implying the positivity of the negative). Contradiction
as a property of the "contents of categories", as a property of things
and of the "essence of the world", and therefore such that "intellec
tual determinations", in so far as they reflect [NB] or take in that
reality, posit it in the "rational" - this is the perspective, on the
basis of which an immense wealth of real contents and positive
determinations could be drawn into Hegel's system. Thus Engels
will come to write that "the idealist systems also filled themselves
more and more with a materialist content" and that "ultimately, the
Hegelian system represents merely a materialism idealistically
turned upside down in method and content".' ll
Thus, on the one hand, intellectual categories and determinations
'reflect' reality. On the other, however, Hegel rejects the Kantian
critique of the ontological argument - rejects, in other words, the
thesis that existence is not an attribute of thought, not a concept,
but something external to or different from thought itself. On the
one side, then, the Hegelian statement on the 'objectivity of contra
diction', was understood to mean that reason is then the reflection of
this objectivity. On the other, there is the opposing Hegelian affirma
tion of idealism, i.e. his negation of the existence of any empirical
reality external to thought that has to be 'reflected' by the latter and his consequent 'restoration of metaphysics'. In short, material
ism on the one side, idealism on the other, and both of them in the
same author. As Luporini writes : 'That idealism-materialism, or
materialism inverted into an idealist form, which contained the
"revolutionary method" of the dialectic, had at the same time been a
restoration of metaphysics, precisely as a consequence of its systema
tic form and the premisses and implications that followed therefrom.
It undoubtedly contained . . . explicitly in the entirety of its develop
ment and in the wealth of its contents that revolutionary element,
even if mystified in its idealist-systematic form. And nonetheless,
for all that, it was a restoration.' 12
It is a fact that the problems raised here cannot be resolved by
simply turning one's back on Hegel. Nor is the meaning of our
II. F. Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach .
IZ.

Luporini, op. cit., pp. 19-20.

. . , op. cit., p. 24.

Hegel and the 'Theory ofReflection' 57

argument intended to be that of a mere rejection. If what we have
said until now concerning the importance and meaning of the
Hegelian theory of reason makes any sense (and we will attempt to
expand on this below), it is clear that a contribution on Hegel's
part to the concept of objectivity must exist. As a matter of fact,
objectivity must, after all, be capable of being established and
recognized by someone - and the latter can be none other than
reason. Reality cannot be something that is apprehended without
any thought at all. Materialism is not a theory of faith or 'immediate
knowledge' either. Feuerbach himself, in spite of being one of those
who erred most in the direction of sensism, stated that being 'is
thinkable only through mediation ; it is thinkable only through the
predicates on which the essence of an object is based'. 1 3 Clearly,
this means that objectivity cannot be what is immediately apprehen
ded by sensation, but something which, in order to be established
and recognized, must make use (as we shall see) of rational criteria
i.e., of mediation and therefore, beyond any doubt, of deduction
itself.
But it is one thing to recognize this, i.e. the contribution of Hegel's
theory of reason as an indispensable moment in the determination of
objectivity ; it is another to think that objectivity, just as we find it in
Hegel (i.e. the 'positive exposition of the absolute') is the same
objectivity as that of materialist 'reflection'. Moreover, that there is a
contradiction here is clear from the case of Lukacs. In the camp of
'dialectical materialism', Lukacs is the major defender of an im
mediate continuity between Hegel and Marxism. While neglecting
to note even once Marx's thesis concerning the Hegelian restoration
of metaphysics, he explicitly states what Luporini seems to say only
in a veiled form : that Hegel made de facto use of the 'theory of
reflection', the Widerspiegelungstheorie, or, what amounts to the
same thing, that he was a follower of the materialist epistemology!
After having noted - in terms we need not recall here - what he
takes to be Kant's mode of conceiving the 'criterion of truth',
Lukacs proceeds thus : 'Objective idealism had to look about for
other criteria. Schelling finds them in the revival of the Platonic
I3. L. Feuerbach, Principles of the Philosophy of the Future, op. cit., p. 42.

58
theory of Ideas : agreement with the Ideas is to be the criterion of
truth, since philosophical statements, artistic creations, etc., are
indeed nothing other than reflections of these Ideas in human
consciousness. Here we are dealing with a mystical materialism, a
materialism stood on its head, with a mystification of the nature of
objective reality into Platonic Ideas.' 'The Hegelian dialectic
(however) goes much farther in this regard than its predecessors .'
It 'shows, on the one hand, that apparently motionless things are in
reality processes, and on the other hand, it grasps the objectivity of
objects (Gegenstandlichkeit der Objekte) as products of the "aliena
tion (Entausserung)" of the subject. . . . The view of objects as
"alienations" of the spirit now gives to Hegel the possibility of simply
making use of the theory of reflection with regard to the gnoseological
analysis ofreality, without acknowledging it. He can compare each and
every thought with the objective reality corresponding to it - and
the exactness of the criterion of truth as correspondence with
objective reality is not lacking in individual instances - although this
reality is not viewed as actually independent of consciousness, but
rather as the product of the "alienation" of a subject higher than the
individual consciousness. And since the process of "alienation" is a
dialectical one, Hegel goes at times farther than the old materialists
themselves in this undesired and unconscious use of materialist
criteria of right knowledge.' 1 4
The argument is a monument of logical consistency ! Schelling's
philosophy is 'mystical materialism stood on its head'. The title,
as one can see, is taken away this time from Hegel and awarded
instead to Schelling and Platonism in general (which is 'upside
down materialism' in the same sense, one might say, that material
ism is 'upside-down Platonism'). Hegel, on the other hand, who
conceives objects as products of the alienation of the subject, i.e. as
dependent objects created by thought, embraces the materialist theory
of 'reflection', precisely by virtue of this conception of his. In other
words, he embraces just that theory according to which it is thought
that depends on objects and it is judgment that strains to correspond
14. Georg Lukacs, Derjunge Hegel (Neuwied and Berlin, 1967), 3rd edition, pp. 653-4
(Colletti's emphasis).

Hegel and the 'Theory ofReflection' 59

to things. Finally, in individual instances, i.e. in the elaboration of
the details internal to the system, 'the Hegelian dialectic has there
fore an immense advantage over the other forms of gnoseology in
classical German idealism' because 'it can operate in areas of human
knowledge with an epistemology - even if it is not legitimately
arrived at - based on the reflection of reality'. On the other hand,
when it leaves behind the details in order to draw a conclusion, i.e.
to embrace the system or 'the totality of knowledge', Hegel can
resolve the qurstion of the epistemological criteria - the question :
with what the object of knowledge must correspond in order to be
recognized as true - in a way no less mystical and mystifying than his
predecessors ; 1 5 i.e. only by a recourse to the 'Platonism' of
Schelling. 16
15. ibid., p. 655.
16. This interpretation of Hegel's thought in terms of a materialist theory of 'reflec
tion' reappears also in G. Lukacs's work entitled Prolegomena to a Marxist Aesthetics (the
translation is from the Italian translation, Rome, 1957 ; the quotations also refer to that
text - translator's note). On pp. 70-1, for example, referring to the Hegelian theory of
syllogism, Lukacs writes : 'This is a matter of real links in reality, in nature, and in
society that in logic acquire their most abstract reflection, which nonetheless tends to
correspond to reality. Nor is it crucial that Hegel's theory of knowledge is not based on
the point of view of the theory of reflection. His logic, nevertheless, aims objectively at
such a reflection of objective reality.' On p. 67, the author states that 'the great advance
in logic brought about by Hegel's method' results from the 'priority of content with
respect to form'. On the other hand, Lukacs continues, one can find in Hegel 'at the
same time an inordinate idealist tendency in the question of objectivity'. 'In the process
of polemizing with the logic of the metaphysical and subjective understanding, Hegel
says, "It is not we who frame the notions. The notion is not something which is origi
nated at all." The materialist dialectic', Lukacs continues, 'in which objectivity is
guaranteed by the reflection of reality, which moves and exists independently, this
dialectic can naturally consider problems of objectivity in a much more flexible and
dialectical way than Hegel himself. The latter was often inclined to a certain rigidity,
(propping himself up in one way or another with Platonism in order to avoid a relapse
into subjective idealism, since objectivity for him is present only in the sphere of thought
,
or the "spirit" (pp. 67-8). This confusion (barely disguised by the involuted form)
between objectivity, as the objectivity of 'intelligible essences' (in terms of the Kantian
ontology), and objectivity as the empirical-material manifold is the note that distin
guishes Lukacs's entire interpretative argument. On the other hand, just what he under
stands by metaphysics can be gleaned from the above quotations. Metaphysics for
Lukacs is 'the logic of the metaphysical understanding' and above all Kant's Analytic !
In this sense the reference to subheading 163 ofthe Encyclopedia is extremely interesting.
There, Hegel is polemizing against the central problem of the Critique : the problem of

60
This is basically the same point of view that we have also found
in Lenin. Both celebrate Hegel's 'dialectic of matter', convinced
that it is a genuine materialism. They discard, however, 'God, the
Absolute, the Pure Idea, etc.', as if all of that were just a 'fas;ade'
the origin and formation of our knowledge. As is known, this is an instance of the critical
problem par excellence. It presupposes, on the one hand, the rejection of knowledge
(concepts) 'already given', innatism. On the other hand, it presupposes the distinction
between being and thought, existence and concept (since, if one were to assume instead
the identity of thought and being, the problem as to how they come together and how,
from this conjuncture, knowledge is born, obviously could not even be posed). Now,
even on this point, it is significant that, one minor reservation apart, Lukacs aligns
himself with Hegel against Kant. And to think that, as is evident from the text, Hegel is
polemizing in this passage of the Encyclopedia precisely with the element of materialism
still present, albeit embryonically, in the framework of the Critique! Hegel writes : 'It is a
mistake to imagine that the objects which form the content of our mental ideas come first
and that our subjective agency then supervenes, and by the aforesaid operation of
abstraction, and by correlating the points possessed in common by the objects, frames
notions of them. Rather the notion is the genuine first; and things are what they are
through the action of the notion, immanent in them, and revealing itself in them (des
ihnen innewohnenden und in ihnen sich offinbarenden Begrijfs). In religious language we
express this by saying that God created the world out of nothing. In other words, the
world and finite things have issued from the fullness of the divine thoughts and the
divine decrees. Thus religion recognizes thought and (more exactly) the notion to be the
infinite form, or the free creative activity, which can realize itself without the help of a
matter that exists outside it.' It is evidently in reference to these texts of Hegel's that
Lukacs can talk about Hegel's 'propping himself up with Platonism'. How he can at the
same time, however, state that Hegel gives 'priority to content with respect to form',
is, at least for me, a total mystery. Another thing to be pointed out is that in the Pro
legomena (p. 85) Lukacs refers to the processes of hypostatization, i.e. the substantifica
cation of reason or the 'positive exposition of the absolute', but only in a parenthetical
way and without drawing any conclusions therefrom. He cites a brief notation of
Lenin's with reference to Aristotle's Metaphysics, cf. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works,
Vol. 38 (Philosophical Notebooks), p. 372 : 'Primitive idealism: the universal (concept,
idea) is a particular being.' The problem is that whereas Lenin is here adopting Aristotle's
critique of the Platonic theory of the forms and extending it to Hegel, Lukacs thinks
(and this shows the offhanded character of his readings) that Lenin's critique is addressed
to Aristotle ! The extent to which Lukacs's entire text is interlaced with contradictions,
the reader can judge from the following example as well. On p. 68, Lukacs ascribes to
Hegel a conception of the 'particular' as the 'foundation' and substratum of judgment.
On p. 100, however, while discussing the dialectic of 'sense-certainty' in the first chapter
of the Phenomenology, Lukacs takes up Feuerbach's critique of this chapter, pointing out
that for Hegel 'the particular is "the non-true, the non-rational, that which is purely a
matter of belief" ', and that 'in his Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Philosophie Feuerbach
protests with good reason against this degradation of particularity' !

Hegel and the ' Theory ofReflection' 6I

without any relationship to the former and as if theology and
idealism represented little more than passing moments in Hegel's
philosophical career. When one thinks about it, the mechanism is
very simple. They hail in Hegelian idealism that which they had
' previously learned from 'dialectical materialism', surprised to
discover in Hegel exactly what they already learned from Engels
(and without ever giving due weight to the fact that Engels had only
transcribed it from Hegel in the first place). Once they have verified
this identity of views, they draw the conclusion that Hegel's philo
sophy contains certain materialist germinations that stand in con
tradiction with the system's principles. They thereby impute to
Hegel the radical inconsistency of having produced a philosophy of
'idealism-materialism'. What, on the contrary, they never consider
although, in general terms, this possibility is just as reasonable as
the first one - is the opposing hypothesis ; i.e., the hypothesis that
Hegel is an abs9lutely coherent idealist, and that 'dialectical
materialism' is simply an idealism unaware of its own nature.
One might object that this criticism is rendered in part super
fluous by the much more effective criticism that time and events
have themselves carried out in the interim. 'Dialectical materialism',
after surviving for many decades only as a 'state philosophy', is by
now so far gone in decline that every day it becomes more difficult
to recognize its adherents. Nevertheless, since nothing is ever
simple, it must be recognized that certain of its theses still hold the
field, albeit with another name and in different clothes. Philosophies
that have nothing in common with 'dialectical materialism', share
nonetheless the essentials of its judgment of Hegel. Indeed, if one
wanted to engage in a discussion of cultural politics, it could even
be held that in new hands these theses can at last carry out their
true appointed function with full effectiveness - the function, that
is, of replacing and passing itself off as Marx's thought, in what
ever way possible.
Typical in this sense are the cases of Kojeve and Marcuse. Of
course for them the 'dialectic of matter' has no importance whatever.
Nonetheless, whether because they are influenced by the authority
that always emanates from 'official' philosophies or because (as is

62
more likely) they are carried away by an irresistible taste for intellec
tual 'coquetry', not only do they at times interpret the dialectic of
things or of the finite which they find in Hegel as a form of true and
proper materialism, they even discover in it the 'theory of reflection' !
Kojeve writes that for Hegel 'Each philosophy correctly reveals or
describes a turning point or a stopping place . . . of the real dialectic,
of the Bewegung of existing Being. And that is why each philosophy
is "true" in a certain sense. But it is true only relatively or tem
porarily : it remains "true" as long as a new philosophy, also "true",
does not corne along to demonstrate its "error". However, a philo
sophy does not by itself transform itself into another philosophy or
engender that other philosophy in and by an autonomous dialectical
movement. The Real corresponding to a given philosophy itself
becomes really other . . . , and this other Real is what engenders
another adequate philosophy, which, as "true", replaces the first
philosophy which has become "false". Thus, the dialectical move
ment of the history of philosophy . . . is but a reflection, a "super
structure", of the dialectical movement of the real history of the
Real.'17 'In Hegel there is a real Dialectic' ; 'the philosophical
method is that of a pure and simple description, which is dialectical
only in the sense that it describes a dialectic of reality .'1 8
And now we corne to Marcuse. His entire argument seems to be
pervaded with a fundamental indecisiveness. Marcuse cannot make
up his mind if Hegel is to be depicted as an idealist or as a materialist.
Incapable of choosing between these alternatives, he calmly states
on the even pages the very opposite of what he tells us on the odd ones.
Hegel tends (e.g.) towards materialism. 'His "pan-Iogism",'
Marcuse claims, 'comes close to being its opposite : one could say
that he takes the principles and forms of thought from the principles
and forms of reality, so that the logical laws reproduce those gover
ning the movement of reality' .19 In this sense, 'the movement of
thought reproduces the movement of being' ; 'the interplay and
17. Alexandre Kojeve, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, edited by A. Bloom and
translated by J. H. Nichols, Jr. (New York, 1969), pp. 184-5.
18. ibid., p. 186.
19. Herbert Marcuse, Reason and Revolution (Boston, 1960), p. 25.

Hegel and the 'Theory ofReflection' 63

motility of the notions reproduces the concrete process of reality'. 2 0
The enormous difference between Hegelian Logic and traditional
logic has often been brought out, Marcuse continues, with the
statement that Hegel 'replaced the formal by a material logic' :
'the categories and modes of thought derive from the process of
reality to which they pertain. Their form is determined by the
structure of this process'. 21 'The philosophical method he elaborated
was intended to reflect the actual process of reality and to construe
it in an adequate form.'22 ' . . . The movement of categories in
Hegel's logic is but a reflection of the movement of being.'23
On the other hand, as we also know, Hegel is not a materialist, he
represents rather its most resolute antithesis. For him, as Marcuse
states, 'Everything . . . exists more or less as a "subject".'24 For
this reason, 'thought is more "real" than its objects. '25 ' . . . The
object gets its objectivity from the subject. "The real" . . . is a
universal that cannot be reduced to objective elements free of the
subject (for example, quality, thing, force, laws). In other words, the
real object is constituted by the (intellectual) activity of the subject ;
somehow, it essentially "pertains" to the subject. The latter dis
covers that it itself stands "behind" the objects, that the world
becomes real only by force of the comprehending power of con
sciousness.'2 6 'The object is not per se ; it is "because I know it" .'27
' . . . The subject itself constitutes the objectivity of the thing.'2 8
' . . . Behind the appearance of things is the subject itself, who
constitutes their very essence.'2 9 'Common sense and traditional
scientific thought take the world as a totality of things, more or less
existing per se, and seek the truth in objects that are taken to be
independent of the knowing subj ect.' 3 0 For Hegel, however, 'think
ing consists in knowing that the objective world is in reality a sub
jective world , that it is the objectification of the subject.'31 For
him, 'Notion is the "essence" and "nature" of things . . .'.32
The reason for these oscillations - which lead our author to state,
20.
23.
26.
29.

ibid., p. 64.
ibid., p. 131.
ibid., p . 94.
ibid., p. I IO.

21. ibid., p. 121.

24. ibid., p. 63.
27. ibid., p. 104.
30. ibid., p. 1 I2.
3 1 . ibid.,

p.

1I8.

22. ibid., p .
25 ibid., p.
28. ibid., p.
32. ibid., p.

122.
73.
107.
128.

64
for example on p. 1 43, that 'objective being, if comprehended in its
true form, is to be understood as . . . subjective being', and then on
p. 144 to write that 'thought is true only in so far as it remains
adapted to the concrete movement of things and closely follows its
various turns' - is doubtless to be sought in the boredom and
annoyance suffered by temperaments like Marcuse's when con
fronted with the need for coherent logical argument. However, a
further motive for his vagaries must certainly be sought in the
spell exercised by 'dialectical materialism' on him. When Marcuse
comes across that page of the Science of Logic cited above, where
Hegel states that 'non-being constitutes the being of things' and
that 'the hour of their birth is the hour of their death', it is clear that
his reading is in this instance heavily influenced by the interpretative
tradition inaugurated by Anti-Duhring. Marcuse's remark is that
'these sentences are a preliminary enunciation of the decisive pas
sages in which Marx later revolutionized Western thought. Hegel's
concept of finitude freed philosophic approaches to reality from
the powerful religious and theological influences that were operative
even upon secular forms of eighteenth-century thought. The current
idealistic interpretation of reality in that day still held the view that
the world was a finite one because it was a created world and that its
negativity referred to its sinfulness. The struggle against this inter
pretation of "negative" was therefore in large measure a conflict with
religion and the church. Hegel's idea of negativity was not moral or
religious, but purely philosophical, and the concept of finitude that
expressed it became a critical and almost materialistic principle with
him. The world, he said, is finite not because it is created by God but
because finitude is its inherent quality.'33
It is unnecessary to dwell on the point that, in order to hold up
this interpretation of his, Marcuse has to abridge (just two pages
later) the famous Hegelian definition of idealism he himself cites :
'The proposition that the finite is ideal constitutes idealism. The
idealism of philosophy consists in nothing else than in recognizing
that the finite has no veritable being.'34 He leaves out just that part
which directly disproves his fanciful reconstruction of the struggle
33 . ibid., pp. 136-7.

34- L., p. 154.

Hegel and the 'Theory ofReflection' 65

engaged in by the atheist Hegel against the superstitious and fanatical
Enlightenment : 'This is as true of philosophy as of religion ; for
religion equally does not recognize finitude as a veritable being, as
something ultimate and absolute or as something underived,
un'created, eternal.'35 What concerns us here is only to point out, as a
35. ibid., p. 155. It may be pointed out that an almost equally grievous distortion of
Hegel's attitude towards religion is to be found in Lukacs's Der junge Hegel. The line
of argumentation followed by Lukacs can, in this instance, give an idea of the kind
of forced interpretations with which the entire work is laden. Lukacs makes a point of
adopting, in various places, Feuerbach's thesis concerning the relationship theology
philosophy in Hegel (a thesis that corresponds perfectly to the relationship Hegel him
self establishes between religion and philosophy: cf., in this regard, the essay on Hegel,
full of textual references, by K. Liiwith, 'La onto-teo-logica di Hegel e il problema
della totalita del mondo', in De Homine, no. 2-3, Sept., 1962, pp. 18-66). On p. 636, for
example, Lukacs writes : 'The focal point of Feuerbach's critique, i.e. that Hegel's
philosophy dissolves Christian theology and then re-establishes it, concerns the third
part of the Phenomenology
' On p. 63 7, this assessment is emphasized in the following
terms : 'Philosophy has a critical stance towards religion also in Hegel; for him too it is a
critique of religion. This critique is not, however - as with the materialist Feuerbach designed to unmask the inner falsehood of the entire world of religious representations
and to trace back the contents of religion from their distorted form to what they really
are. Hegel's critique of religion is rather a way of preserving and making eternal all of
religion's contents, through a mere critique of the form in which it manifests itself, of
the way in which it is represented (Vorstellungscharakter). Obviously, as we shall see,
this critique also runs over into the content and thus contains a certain repudiation of
religious contents as well. Its basic orientation is, however, as rightly stressed by
Feuerbach, a restoration of religion and theology.' Previously, on p. 633, and still on
this line, Lukacs had observed, while examining the Phenomenology, that 'here the
significance of the Enlightenment is diminished and the function of religion in the
development of mankind's consciousness is forcefully given a central position'. Never
theless, all of these admissions appear to be made by Lukacs with the intention of
'digesting' them and re-establishing, malgre eux, the antithetical point of view. On p. 646,
for example, Lukacs points that 'the Hegelian form of the revival of religion and the
way in which he blends idealist philosophy into religion and theology' - the latter
being 'objectivist' - 'do not stand opposed to the knowledge of objective reality. On
the contrary, for Hegel the value of religion consists precisely in the fact that the highest
objective categories of the dialectic find expression, to be sure in an unsatisfactory form,
in it, and that it represents the penultimate stage in arriving at the proper knowledge
of objective reality.' One need hardly point out how the confusion, analysed above,
between material objectivity and the objectivity of 'ideal essences' enables Lukacs
to view the entire matter in a most positive light. On p. 648, 'the conflicting and ambi
valent nature of Hegel's philosophy of religion' - which of course is not at all ambivalent
per se but only in Lukacs's version - is imputed to . . . the Enlightenment, and, in
particular, to the German Enlightenment, as well as (one suspects) Kant. On p. 649, the
. . .

66
distance between Kant and Hegel appears, in this respect, to be re-established ('These
differences mean that in this area Hegel is more ambiguous than Kant. Kant's philo
sophy of religion is, despite all reservations one might have, the philosophy of an
Enlightenment deism'). But, as one can see right away, the position is quickly reversed.
In point of fact, having brought out the influence of Spinozist pantheism (parentheti
cally, Hegel does not regard Spinoza's philosophy as a pantheism but rather as an acos
mism), Lukacs writes : 'This pantheism gave to German idealists the possibility of
depicting objective reality, nature and society in a scientific fashion, i.e. as ruled by their
own immanent laws, and to flatly reject any notion of a beyond . . . The undeniable
ambiguity of classical German idealism and in particular that of Hegel consists in the
fact that they attempt to reconcile what is irreconcilable, that they deny that the world
was created and set in motion by God at the same time that they would philosophically
redeem the religious notions connected with Him' (pp. 649-50). Let the reader count
the number of times that the word ambiguity appears in the lines of Lukacs cited in this
note; we would ask him to consider whether it is permissible to write intellectual history
while using and abusing this category - in a way which, once introduced, renders every
operation legitimate. Whoever maintains that precisely the historico-materialist inter
pretation should be the one to make use of these 'ruthless' procedures which call into
'
question the 'particular consciousness' of the philosopher (or, more accurately, his good
faith), should read the passage from Marx's notes to his dissertation in which he dis
cusses Hegel and the left-Hegelians. (cf. Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe, Moscow, vol. I,
1/1, p. 64: 'It is a matter of pure ignorance when Hegel's students interpret this or that
characteristic of his system as the result of compromises or the like - in a word, they
interpret them in moral (moralisch) terms . . . That a philosopher is guilty of this or that
apparent logical inconsistency as a result of this or that compromise, is conceivable. He
himself may be conscious of this. But what he is not conscious of is that the possibility
of this apparent compromise has its innermost roots in some shortcoming or inadequate
grasp of his very own principle. If a philosopher has actually compromised himself,
then it is up to his students to explain that which for the philosopher himself has the form
of an exoteric consciousness, in terms of his inward, essential consciousness. In this way,
what appears as an advance in moral consciousness [Gewissen] is at the same time an
advance in knowledge [ Wissen]. The private [partikular] moral consciousness of the
philosopher is not brought under suspicion, but rather the essential form of his con
sciousness is reconstructed, raised to a determinate shape and meaning, and thereby
at the same time superseded.') Finally as far as concerns the thesis that 'German classical
idealism and Hegel in particular' have always denied 'that the world was created and set
in motion by God', it may be pointed out that the texts which can disprove Lukacs and
Marcuse are available to all those who wish to read them. Leaving aside the Lectures on
Religion, one need only open the Science of Logic in order to read there: 'This realm is
truth as it is without veil and in its own absolute nature. It can therefore be said that
this content is the exposition of God as he is in his eternal essence before the creation of
nature and a finite mind' (p. 50). Furthermore, it is characteristic, as Lowith has recalled
(art. cit., p. 20), 'that Hegel should recommend the study of his Berlin lecture of 1829
on the proofs for the existence of God in order to complement his contemporaneous
lecture on logic, and that his last course should have had as its subject the ontological
proof'.

Hegel and the 'Theory ofReflection' 67

conclusion to this chapter, how the belief that Hegel's 'dialectic of
matter' is actually a form of materialism is so strong as to win over
even those interpreters who like Marcuse, are neither materialists
nor have any leaning towards materialism. Let us now go on from
: this observation and reinforce the argument with some additional
material.

v.

Hegel and Scepticism

The Hegelian dialectic of matter is, in its critical-negative part, the

same dialectic as that of ancient scepticism. Hegel states in the
Lectures on the History of Philosophy that if there exists a mutually
exclusive opposition between the principles of Stoicism and
Epicureanism, 'the negative mean to these one-sided principles is
the Notion, which, abrogating fixed extremes of determination
such as these, moves them and sets them free from a mere state of
opposition'. 1 Precisely 'this movement of the Notion, the revival of
dialectic - directed as it is against these one-sided principles of
abstract thinking and sensation (which are respectively the principles
of the Stoa and Epicurus) - we now see in its negative aspect, both
in the New Academy and in the Sceptics'. 2
The meaning of Hegel's argument is already entirely contained in
these initial statements. The virtue of scepticism or Pyrrhonism lies
in having revived the dialectic. The importance of the dialectic
resides in the fact that, by establishing an interrelation between
those material or finite determinations which the 'intellect' separates
and distinguishes from one another, it renders them mobile, fluid,
unstable ; thus it destroys sense-certainty in the existence of external
things. Common sense and 'dogmatic' philosophy believe, according
to Hegel, in the existence of that which is. For example, they venture
to say things like, 'This is yellow'. Now scepticism, with its 'tropes'
(i.e., with its 'determinate modes of opposition'), shows that one can
ascribe equally well to any given thing two opposing qualities. And
since these tropes 'proceed against what we call common belief in
I. Concerning the equation that Hegel, in polemic with Schulze, makes between the
positions of the so-called 'New Academy' (Carneades in particular) and the Pyrrhonism
of Sextus, cf. G. Della Volpe, Logica come scienza positiva (Messina-Florence, 1956),
pp. 107-8. In this regard, see also the excellent treatment of the entire problem in N.
Merker, Le origini della logica hegeliana (Milan, 1961), pp. 185 ff.
2. H.P., p. 310.

Hegel and Scepticism 69

the immediate truth of things, and refute it', 3 one can say that even
the least polished among them, such as the tropes of antiquity, are
'quite valid . . . against the dogmatism of the common human
understanding. . . . This last says directly, "This is so because it is
so" " satisfied with the fact that it 'takes experience as authority'. 4
The importance, therefore, of ancient scepticism is that it
annihilates matter by making it dialectical. In the process of dissolving
things and the entire finite world, it annihilates, by that very act, the
determinations of the 'intellect', or in other words, all those deter
minate propositions and statements founded on the principle of
non-contradiction, to which thought remains bound as long as it
considers itself tied to and constricted by the existence of real factual
data. Of course, 'older Scepticism is indeed the subjectivity of
knowledge only, but this is founded on an elaborately thought out
annihilation of everything which is held to be true and existent, so
that everything is made transient'. 5
Thus, 'the essential nature of Scepticism consists in this' : that by
means of 'the disappearance of all that is objective, all that is held
to be true, . . . all that is definite, all that is affirmative',6 it carries out
a liberation of self-consciousness from the enslavement of material
ism, i.e. from the enslavement of admitting that consciousness is not
everything, but that there exist things outside it. When 'this security
disappears', when self-consciousness 'loses its equilibrium', which
consists in sticking closely to the things themselves, it 'becomes
driven . . . in unrest' and experiences 'fear and anguish'. But 'sceptical
self-consciousness is just this subjective liberation from all the truth
of objective Being, and from the placing of its existence in anything
of the kind ; Scepticism thus makes its end the doing away with the
unconscious servitude in which the natural self-consciousness is
confined, the returning into its simplicity, and, in so far as thought
establishes itself in a content, the curing it' and the freeing it from
this fixation. 7
The meaning and weight that this relationship with scepticism
has within the framework of Hegel's work is extremely significant
3. ibid" p. 346.
5. ibid" p. 332

4. ibid., pp. 356-'].

6. ibid" p. 341.

7. 1oc. cit.

70

- even if it has not always been noted. Lukacs, for example, in Der
Junge Hegel states, with the tone of one saying something self
evident, that although 'Schelling establishes a close relationship
between the dialectic and scepticism', 'with Hegel there is certainly
no scepticism to be found'. 8 From these remarks it would appear that
the question of any relationship between Hegel's dialectic and
scepticism could not even arise. In point of fact, the texts say just
the opposite. In addition to the fundamental early writing on the
Relationship of Scepticism to Philosophy (never discussed by Lukacs)
and the chapter in the History of Philosophy, which is basically
modelled upon the former, the argument regarding scepticism
reappears in a series of decisive places. For example, in the para
graphs of the Phenomenology dealing with philosophy, Hegel states
that with scepticism, 'thought becomes thinking which wholly
annihilates the being of the world with its manifold determinateness'.
Scepticism, he adds, is 'this polemical attitude towards the manifold
substantiality of things' ; it 'makes the objective as such disappear'. 9
In the first book of the Science of Logic, the same sophist 'elenchi'
that can be regarded as an anticipation of the 'tropes' of scepticism
(such as the elenchi of the 'bald man', the 'heap', etc.) are taken up
and highlighted as 'proofs' of the passage from quantity into quality
and vice versa. There Hegel states that these 'turnabouts' are not 'a
pointless or pedantic joke but have their own correctness ; they are
the product of a mentality which is interested in the phenomena
which occur in thinking'. l o And finally, without considering many
other examples, the relationship to scepticism has a crucial role in
the first chapter of the Phenomenology on 'sense-certainty',u The
8. G. Lukacs, Der junge Hegel, op. cit., p. 651.
9. Phen., pp. 246-8.
10. L., p. 336.
1 I . Cf. also J. Hyppolite, Genese et structure de la Phlnomenologie de I'Esprit de Hegel
(Paris, 1946), p. 84. Hyppolite points out that 'the critique that Hegel presents of this
sense-certainty is in large part inspired by Greek philosophy', and that 'one cannot help
but be struck by the resemblances between this first dialectic of the Phenomenology and
that of the ancient Greek philosophers - Parmenides and Zeno. . .'. But despite these
allusions (already broadly developed, moreover, by W. Purpus, Die Dialektik der sinn
lichen Gewissheit bei Hegel, Niirnberg, 1905), Hyppolite only dilutes his remark in a
series ofmore or less superficial notations. The best example of this lack of understanding

Hegel and Scepticism 7I

contents of this chapter are entirely drawn from ancient scepticism.
In fact, the observations made there by Hegel concerning the 'Here',
the 'Now', etc., are the same observations made by the sceptics on
temporal determinations which we find cited in the History of
Philosophy : ' " . . . This day is today, but tomorrow is also today,
etc. ; it is day now but night is also now, etc." ' 1 2
The great importance that Hegel attributes to ancient scepticism
can also be seen in his way of counterposing it to modern scepti
cism. In subheading 39 of the Encyclopedia he says : 'The scepti
cism of Hume . . . should be clearly marked off from Greek
scepticism. Hume takes as the basis of truth the empirical element,
feeling and sensation, and proceeds to challenge universal principles
and laws, because they are not justified on the basis of sense
perception. So far was ancient scepticism from making feeling
and sensation the canon of truth, that it turned against the sensate
first of all. ' 1 3
This question is taken up again in the second note to subheading
8 1 . There Hegel states that ancient scepticism has nothing to do
with its modern version. Whereas the latter - which 'partly preceded
the Critical Philosophy, and partly sprung out of it' - consists, in
fact, 'solely in denying the truth and certitude of the super-sensible,
and in pointing to the facts of sense and of immediate sensations as
what we have to keep to', ancient scepticism, contrariwise, has a
full awareness of the 'nothingness of all finite existence (der Nichtig
,
keit allef Endlichen) . 1 4
Finally, in the History ofPhilosophy the simple observation of this
difference is accompanied by explicit comment and an eloquent
judgment of value. Having postulated once again that 'the older
Scepticism must . . . be distinguished from the modern', Hegel
on Hyppolite's part of the meaning of Hegel's argument is t hat, whereas for the latter
the 'dialectic of sense-certainty' has as its objective the destruction of the finite and all
things, Hyppolite concludes that 'from now on we are no longer dealing with a "now"
or a "here" that are sui generis and undefinable, but with a "now" or a "here" which are
mediated within themselves, which are things (Colletti's emphasis) that contain within
themselves both the unity of the universal and the multiplicity of the particular' (p. 98).
12. H.P., pp. 333-4.
13 En.L., p. 82 (translation modified).
14. ibid., p. lSI.

72
specifies that only the former 'is of a true, profound nature ; the
modern more resembles Epicureanism', i.e. sensationalism, empiri
cism, or in the final analysis, materialism. Schulze and others 'make
it fundamental that we must consider sensuous Being, what is given
to us by sensuous consciousness, to be true ; all else must be
doubted . . . Modern Scepticism is only directed against thought,
against the Notion and the Idea, and thus against what is in a
higher sense philosophic; it consequently leaves the reality of things
quite unquestioned, and merely asserts that from it nothing can be
argued as regards thought. But that is not even a peasants' philo
sophy, for they know that all earthly things are transient, and that
thus their Being is as good as their non-being.' 1 5
This contraposition of the two scepticisms obviously does not
mean that Hegel has no criticisms to make of ancient scepticism. It
only means - but this difference is of enormous importance - that in
relation to modern scepticism Hegel assumes a stance of total
rejection, in the same way, moreover, that he rejects common sense,
empiricism, and materialism. In relation to the ancient version,
however, he recognizes and affirms the existence of a necessary and
organic relationship with 'true' philosophy or idealism. In contra
distinction to the modern kind, ancient scepticism does not oppose
the Idea or Philosophy, but rather is directed against Unphilosophie,
i.e. the 'dogmatism' of common sense and 'ordinary human under
standing'. In his early writing, Hegel says that the contents of its
tropes 'show just how far removed (ancient scepticism) is from any
tendency opposed to philosophy and how it is solely directed against
the dogmatism of everyday human understanding. Not one (of these
tropes) strikes at reason and its knowledge, whereas all of them strike
only at the finite and the knowledge of the finite, the under
standing.'1 6
This orientation i s sufficient, by itself, t o confer on Greek scepti
cism a specific role and function. In fact, 'however trivial and
commonplace these tropes may appear to be,' - above all the antique
ones mentioned above - 'even more trivial and commonplace is the
15. H.P. , pp. 33 1 -2.
16. Hegel, Verhiiltnis des Skepticismus zur Philosophie, op. cit., p. 242.

Hegel and Scepticism 73

reality of the so-called external objects, that is, immediate know
ledge, as when, for instance, I say "This is yellow". Men ought not
to talk about philosophy, if in this innocent way they assert the
reality of such determinations.' The merit of this scepticism is
precisely that it 'was really far from holding things of immediate
certainty to be true' ; rather, it was precisely 'against the reality of
things'17 that it directed its attacks.
This function as destroyer of matter is exactly what, according to
Hegel, establishes an organic relationship between scepticism and
philosophy. More precisely, their relationship is this : 'that the
former is the dialectic of all that is determinate. The 'finitude of all
conceptions of truth can be shown, for they contain in themselves a
negation, and consequently a contradiction. The ordinary universal
and infinite is not exalted over this, for the universal which confronts
the particular, the indeterminate which opposes the determinate,
the infinite which confronts the finite, each form only the one side,
and, as such, are only a determinate. Scepticism is similarly directed
against the thought of the ordinary understanding which makes
determinate differences appear to be ultimate and existent. But the
logical Notion is itself this dialectic of Scepticism, for this negativity
which is characteristic of Scepticism likewise belongs to the true
knowledge of the Idea.'18
In other words, what links ancient scepticism to speculative
philosophy or idealism and accounts for the fact that scepticism is at
one with every true philosophy ('mit jeder wahren Philosophie der
Skepticismus selbst auf's innigste Ein ist'1 9) or can be regarded as the
introduction to and 'the first rung' of philosophy, 2 0 is the common
presence of the dialectic of matter or the finite. 'The demonstration
of the contradiction in the finite is an essential point in the specula
tively philosophic method.'2 1
What is therefore important to understand is that every 'true'
philosophy contains within itself scepticism, for the same reason
that it 'necessarily has within itself, at the same time, a negative side,
17. H.P., p. 347

18. ibid., p. 330.

19. Hegel, Verhiiltnis des Skepticismus zur Philosophic, op. cit., p. 229.
20. ibid., p. 243.
21. H.P., p. 366.

74
which is turned against everything that is circumscribed (Be
schriinkte) . . . , against the entire foundation of finitude . . . What
more p rfect and self-sufficient document and system of genuine
scepticism could one find than the Parmenides in Platonic philo
sophy ?' - that Parmenides 'which encompasses and destroys the
entire area of knowledge founded on concepts of the understanding
(Wissens durch Verstandesbegriffe)'. And Hegel concludes thus : 'This
Platonic scepticism does not just bring into doubt [particular] truths
of the understanding . . . , but arrives at a total negation of all truth
derived from such a form of knowledge.'22
As far as scepticism true and proper is concerned, the essential
operation that it carries out and that serves as an initiation to
philosophy is easily described. Confronted with the mutual opposi
tion of the principles of Stoicism and Epicureanism and opposed to
the division into, on the one hand, the universal, i.e. abstract thought
or the infinite, and on the other, the finite or sensate being - in the
sense of an entity independent of and external to the former scepticism dialecticizes these 'fixed extremes of determination'. In
other words, it establishes a relationship between them, so as to
'revive' them and put them in motion until they finally dissolve,
having passed over from one into the other.
Common sense and 'dogmatic philosophy' believe that a given
thing is thus and is not otherwise ? Well then, scepticism takes
up that finite and conjoins it to the infinite, encompasses the indivi
dual thing and together with it everything that it is not, takes up both
the particular object and its opposite. The consequence is that,
whereas the infinite is no longer 'one of the two', but becomes a
true infinite, i.e. unity of itself and the 'other', the finite, having
been taken up with and into the infinite, disappears, i.e. loses its
'rigidity' and becomes 'unstable' - that is to say, it is no longer 'this',
but 'both this and that'. It is no longer an external or real object,
but only an object penetrated by thought (pensato) ; it is no longer
being, but thought itself.
Nevertheless, the limitation of scepticism lies in the fact that it
does not completely develop this dialectic of matter. As Hegel states,
22. Hegel, Verhiiltnis des Skepticismus zur Philosophie, op. cit., p. 230.

Hegel and Scepticism 75

'In Scepticism we now really have an abrogation of the two one
sided systems that we have hitherto dealt with ; but this negative
remains negative only, and is incapable of passing into an affirma
tive.'23 Further on he adds, 'Scepticism deduces no result, nor does
it express its negation as anything positive.'24 Its virtue, as we have
seen, is that it represents the 'subjectivity of knowledge', i.e. that it
redeems self-consciousness from all servitude to external reality.
Except that if, on the one hand, one may say with scepticism, 'the
mind has got so far as to immerse itself in itself as that which thinks ;
now it can comprehend itself in the consciousness of its infinitude as
the ultimate' ;25 on the other hand, it fails to understand that this
final stronghold into which it withdraws is no mere accidental con
sciousness of the empirical individual, but the criterion and foun
dation of all reality. As Hegel says, 'In Scepticism we now find that
reason has got so far that all that is objective . . . has disappeared for
self-consciousness. The abyss of the self-consciousness of pure
thought has swallowed up everything, and made entirely clear the
basis of thought.'26 Except that once this great work has been
achieved and the freeing of Reason from all external constriction
has been brought about, scepticism turns this unity of consciousness
into 'something that is perfectly empty, and the actual filling in is
any content that one chooses'Y It fails to see that, just as the work
of destruction and annihilation is carried out by bringing the finite
into the infinite, so the opposite of this negation is, at the same time,
the expansion of the infinite into a true infinite, its interlinking with
the 'other' and, therefore, a movement out from itself towards
earthly existence. As Hegel makes clear, 'The speculative Idea . . . is
in its nature nothing finite or determinate, it has not the one-sided
character which pertains to the proposition, for it has the absolute
negative in itself; in itself it is round, it contains this determinate
and its opposite in their ideality in itself.'2 8 But 'in so far as this
Idea, as the unity of these opposites, is itself again outwardly a
determinate, . . . it again places itself in unity with the determinates
23. H.P., pp. 310-I I .
25 ibid., pp. 371-2.
27. loco cit.

24 ibid., p. 37I.
26. ibid., p. 37I.
28. ibid., p. 367.

76
opposed to it', 2 9 i.e. with that finite whose enclusion within the
idea engendered the idea itself - not, however, in order to have the
finite prevail per se, but rather to make it the body and vehicle for its
(the Idea's) own incarnation or earthly 'exposition'.
In short, scepticism errs in not expressing its negation as some
thing positive. This accounts for why, having dissolved everything
in Reason and, therefore, in that 'logical Notion' which 'is itself
the dialectic of scepticism', it is then unable to translate this negative
into a positive, the logical into the ontological - i.e., it is unable to
state that Reason is, or that the infinite, the Notion 'is and is there,
present before us'. Since in scepticism this repudiation, this negation
of the world never becomes the epiphany of God, scepticism reveals
itself to be only a part or the 'first rung' of philosophy, but not the
true philosophy in its entirety. For if, as we have seen, it can be said
that philosophy, in so far as it has a negative side turned against all
that is finite, contains scepticism within itself, it is also true that it
contains scepticism only in the sense that the convex contains the
concave - since scepticism itself represents in philosophy 'the
negative side of knowledge of the absolute', i.e. that side which
'presupposes in a direct way reason as the positive side'. 3 0 Which
means that, whereas scepticism confines itself to pointing out the
contradiction in the finite, 'Platonic scepticism' and together with it
every 'true' philosophy recognize that 'the non-being of the finite is
the being of the absolute', or that precisely 'because the finite is the
inherently self-contradictory opposition, because it is not . . the
absolute is'. 3 1
The dialectic of matter or the destruction of the finite is, therefore,
the true initiation to philosophy. One cannot philosophize without
having consciousness that the world is ephemeral and devoid of
value. But in true philosophy, this scepticism towards everything
that is earthly is only preparation for the highest bliss. The one
cannot exist without the other. 'Thus although the Platonic Par
menides presents itself only from the negative side, Ficinus is quite
.

29. loco cit.

30. Hegel, Verhiiltnis des Skepticismus zur Philosophie, pp. 230-1.
31. L., p. 443.

Hegel and Scepticism 77

right in observing that whoever takes up the holy study of the
former must prepare himself in advance through a cleansing of the
mind and a freeing of the spirit before he can hope to tap the holy
secrets of the work.'32
We shall now leave Hegel and turn our attention to one of his inter
preters. What in Plato, Ficinus, and Hegel (naturally with technical
and historical differences that no one would dream of dismissing)
is a negation of the world and an affirmation of God, becomes, in
the hands of Marcuse a . . theory ofrevolution. The 'understanding',
i.e. common sense and science, which adhere to things and real
factual data, represent positivism and the safe and sound world of
the bourgeoisie ; they stand for conformism and preservation, and
that 'false' and 'self-assured' consciousness which sticks closely to
objects, knowing full well that if 'this security disappears', it will be
'driven into unrest' and will undergo 'fear and anguish' . Contrari
wise, Reason, which denies that things exist outside of thought and
states that things are truly 'real' when they are no longer things but
thoughts - this Reason represents the destruction of the established
order. The 'intellect' is positive thought, thought that recognizes
existing reality. Reason, on the other hand, which negates the
world . . . for the sake of the Idea, is negative thought. The 'Under
standing' (intellect) is Reaction - Reason is Revolution. As Marcuse
says, 'Dialectical thought thus becomes negative in itself. Its func
tion is to break down the self-assurance and self-contentment of
common sense, to undermine the sinister confidence in the power
and language of facts, to demonstrate that unfreedom is so much at
the core of things that the development of their internal contradic
tions leads necessarily to qualitative change : the explosion and
catastrophe of the established state of affairs.'33
As usual, it is the principle of non-contradiction that is the cause
of all the trouble. The facts claim to be themselves and nothing else.
They stubbornly refuse to embrace their opposite. Contrariwise,
'the liberating function of negation in philosophical thought
.

32. Hegel, Verhiiltnis des Skepticismus zur Philosophic,

33. Marcuse, op. cit., p. ix.

op.

cit.,

p.

231.

78
depends upon the recognition that the negation is a positive act :
that-which-is repels that-which-is-not and, in doing so, repels its
own real possibilities. Consequently, to express and define that
which-is on its own terms is to distort and falsify reality. Reality is
other and more than that codified in the logic and language of facts.
Here is the inner link between dialectical thought and the effort of
avant-garde literature : the effort to break the power of facts over
the word, and to speak a language which is not the language of those
who establish, enforce, and benefit from the facts.'34
Just as in Hegel matter is the great enemy, so here it is the facts,
the very data of actual experience. 'This power of facts,' Marcuse
warns, 'is an oppressive power.'35 And just as ancient scepticism
was, for Hegel, the 'first rung' of philosophy because it was the
liberation of self-consciousness from the 'servitude' of having to
acknowledge that there exist things outside of us ; similarly, for
Marcuse, 'dialectical thought starts with the experience that the
world is unfree. . . . The principle of dialectic drives thought
beyond the limits of philosophy. For to comprehend reality means to
comprehend what things really are, and this in turn means rejecting
their mere factuality. Rejection is the process of thought as well as of
action'. 36
On the other hand, the evil genius who incarnates the principle of
conservation is Hume. 'If Hume was to be accepted,' the facts had
to be accepted; and if the facts had to be accepted, 'the claim of
reason to organize reality had to be rejected', i.e. its claim to revolu
tionize the world and to destroy all things. Hegel was perfectly
right, then, in criticizing and rejecting Hume's thought. The latter's
philosophy 'confined men within the limits of "the given", within
the existing order of things and events'. 'The result was not only
scepticism but conformism.'37
As for Kant, he is a prisoner of the most antiquated kind of
empiricism. 'Kant adopted the view of the empiricists that all
human knowledge begins with and terminates in experience' ; for
him, 'experience alone provides the material for the concepts of
reason'. 'There is no stronger empiricist statement than that which
34. ibid., p. x.

35. ibid., p. xiv.

36. ibid., p. ix.

37. ibid., pp. 19-20.

Hegel and Scepticism 79

opens his Critique of Pure Reason. "All thought must, directly or
indirectly, . . . relate ultimately to intuitions, and therefore, with us,
to sensibility, because in no other way can an object be given to us." '3 8
Contrariwise, 'Hegel's concept of reason thus has a distinctly critical
and polemical character'3 9 against reality in its entirety. Hegel's
philosophy is 'a negative philosophy'. 'It is originally motivated by
the conviction that the given facts that appear to common sense as
the positive index of truth are in reality the negation of truth, so that
truth can only be established by their destruction.'4 0
All of this is an extraordinary example of the heterogenesis of
objectives. With Marcuse, spiritualistic disdain for the finite and the
terrestrial world comes to life again as the philosophy of revolution,
or, more exactly, as the philosophy of . . . revolt. One no longer
struggles against determinant socio-historical institutions - such as,
maybe, 'profit', 'income', 'monopoly', or perhaps even 'socialist
bureaucracy' ; rather one struggles against objects and things (gli
oggetti e Ie cose). We are crushed by the oppressive power of facts.
We suffocate in the 'enslavement' which forces us to acknowledge
that there are things outside of us. 'Elles sont la, grotesques, tetues,
geantes et . . . je suis au milieu des Choses, les innomables. Seul,
sans mots, sans defenses, elles m'environnent, sous moi, derriere
moi, au-dessus de moi. Elles n'exigent rien, elles ne s'imposent pas :
elles sont la.' 41 Confronted with this spectacle of things, indignation
wells up inside us and becomes Nausea. Only too easy to say glibly :
'there are the roots of a tree !' 'J'etais assis, un peu voute, la tete basse,
seul en face de cette masse noire et noueuse, entierement brute et qui me
faisait peur.' Here is the absurdity that cries out to heaven for ven
geance : 'ces masses nlOnstrueuses et molles, en dfsordre - nues, d' une
efJrayante et obscenenudite (p. 1 80).'42 The absurdity is not Roquentin,
38. ibid., p. 21.
39. ibid., p. II.
40. ibid., pp. 26-7.
41. ].-P. Sartre, La nausee (paris, 1963), p. 177. English translation, Nausea, trans
lated by Lloyd Alexander (New York, 1959), p. 169 : 'They are there, grotesque, head
strong, gigantic and . . . 1 am in the midst of things, nameless things. Alone, without
words, defenceless, they surround me, are beneath me, behind me, above me. They
demand nothing, they don't impose themselves : they are there.'
42. ibid., pp. 171-2: 'I was sitting, stooping forward, head bowed, alone in front of
this black knotty mass, entirely beastly, which frightened me. . . soft, monstrous masses,
all in disorder - naked, in a frightful, obscene nakedness.'

80
trailing his poor petit-bourgeois self-indulgence about the public
gardens, and giving consolation to Daladier or even to Laval - what
is absurd are the roots of the tree. 'L'absurdite, ce n'etait pas une idee
dans ma tete, ni un souffle de voix, mais ce long serpent mort it mes pieds,
ce serpent de bois. Serpent ou griffe ou racine ou serre de vautour, peu
importe. Et sans rien formuler nettement, je comprenais que j'avais
trouve la clef de /'Existence, la clef de mes Nausees, de ma propre
vie (p. 1 82).'43
The revolution, then, lies not in an overturning and transforma
tion of social relationships, but in the annihilation of matter and the
destruction of things. In Hegel's original conception we know what
was the meaning and function of this 'destruction' : the world was
negated in order to give way to the immanentization of God ; the
finite was 'idealized' so that the Christian Logos could incarnate itself
and so that the infinite could pass over from the beyond into the
here and now. In the case of Marcuse, however, who has quite lost
the meaning of Hegel's 'secularization of Christianity', all that
remains of the old theology is the nihilistic will to a destruction of
the world.
The Revolution represents the annihilation of things. The
Manifesto that proclaims this is in Hegel's early writings. It is the
appeal, blatantly romantic and Schellingesque, to the 'Night' and
'Nothing' contained in his early writing on the DiJferenz.4<1 In
Marcuse's words : '. . . In his first philosophical writings, Hegel
intentionally emphasizes the negative function of reason : its destruc
tion of the fixed and secure world of common sense and under
standing. The absolute is referred to as "Night" and "Nothing",
to contrast it to the clearly defined objects of everyday life. Reason
43. ibid., p. 173 : 'Absurdity was not an idea in my head, or the sound of a voice, only
this long serpent dead at my feet, this wooden serpent. Serpent or claw or root or
vulture's talon, what difference does it make. And without formulating anything clearly,
I understood that I had found the key to Existence, the key to my Nauseas, to my own
life.'
44. G. W. F. Hegel, Dijferenz des Fichteschen und Schellingschen Systems der Philoso
phie, in Samtliche Werke, op. cit., vol. I, p. 49 : 'The Absolute is the Night . . . ; Nothing, the first element from which all Being, all the manifold of the finite has come
forth.' And p. 50: 'Reflection annihilates itself, all Being and all that is circumscribed in
so far as it establishes a relationship between them and the Absolute.'

Hegel and Scepticism 81

signifies the "absolute annihilation" of the common-sense world.
For, as we have already said, the struggle against common sense is
the beginning of speculative thinking, and the loss of everyday
security is the origin of philosophy.'45
In short, the revolution is the sceptical destruction of common
sense and of its 'dogmatic' confidence in the existence of the world.
'The first criterion of reason', Marcuse states, referring explicitly to
the writing on the Relationship of Scepticism to Philosophy, 'is a dis
trust of matter-of-fact authority. Such distrust is the real scepti
cism that Hegel designates as "the free portion" of every true
philosophy'. 46
On the other hand, the reappearance of Pyrrhonism in the first
chapter of the Phenomenology ofMind (the dialectic of the 'Here' and
the 'Now') and the entire course of the following chapters are also
considered by Marcuse - in accordance with a habit of interpretation
whose origins it will be worthwhile examining later on - as an antici
pation of the very core of Marx's argument on the 'fetishism' and
'reification' connected with capitalist commodity production. 'The
first three sections of the Phenomenology are a critique of positivism
and, even more, of "reification" . . . We borrow the term "reifica
tion" from the Marxist theory, where it denotes the fact that all
relations between men in the world of capitalism appear as relations
between things', in that 'Hegel hit upon the same fact within the
dimension of philosophy'. 'Common sense and traditional scientific
thought take the world as a totality of things, more or less existing
per se, and seek the truth in objects that are taken to be independent
of the knowing subject. This is more than an epistemological
attitude ; it is as pervasive as the practice of men and leads them to
accept the feeling that they are secure only in knowing and handling
objective facts.'47
The conclusion is inescapable. 'Fetishism' and 'reification' are a
product of common sense and 'traditional' scientific thought. The
factory of these 'fetishes' does not reside in capitalism, but in the
works of Bacon and GaliIeo.
Our excursus into Marcuse is concluded. To the extent that his
45. Marcuse, op. cit., p. 48.

46. ibid., p. 46.

47. ibid., p. lIZ.

82
argument makes sense, it reintroduces us to the Hegelian antithesis
of 'intellect' and 'reason', 'dogmatism' and philosophy, materialism
and idealism. For Hegel, Marcuse writes, 'the distinction between
understanding and reason is the same as that between common
sense and speculative thinking, between undialectical reflection and
dialectical knowledge. The operations of the understanding yield
the usual type of thinking that prevails in everyday life as well as in
science.'4 8
This antithesis, as we have seen, is also the heart and nucleus of
so-called 'dialectical materialism'. The only variant, in this case, is
that, having identified dogmatism in Hegel's sense (qua the material
ist principle of non-contradiction) with metaphysics (that is, with
'dogmatism' as understood by the materialist tradition), Engels is
forced to conclude by ascribing the origin of metaphysics to science
and common sense itself, i.e. to the way of thinking of 'everyday
life'.
The chapter that deals with scepticism in the Lectures on the
History of Philosophy was jotted down and commented upon by
Lenin in his Philosophical Notebooks. Of the two notes that in this
regard are worth bringing out, the first concerns Hegel's remark
according to which 'Sceptical tropes . . . concern that which is called
a dogmatic philosophy - not in the sense of its having a positive
content, but as asserting something determinate . . . '.49
The meaning of this statement has already been amply explained
and commented. Scepticism, Hegel says, liquidates the dogmatism
of the 'intellect'. The 'intellect' is dogmatic because it makes the
finite absolute. The meaning of this term is the same as its etymology :
solutus abo . , freed from limitations, existing on its own, and there
fore unrestricted and independent. The 'rational' Notion, for
example, is termed by Hegel the absolute Notion or speculative
Idea because, as opposed to the intellect or 'understanding', 'reason'
is the Idea freed from all external limitations, the Idea 'round within
itself', independent and self-subsisting, containing the 'other' within
itself. This meaning is explicit (as in any number or other places) in
the closing to subheading 60 of the Encyclopedia : ' . . . The principle
.

48. ibid., p. 44.

49. H.P., p. 363.

Hegel and Scepticism 83

of independence of Reason, or of its absolute self-subsistence, is
made a general principle of philosophy . . . .'50
'
In the same sense and in the same way, when Hegel says that the
'intellect' makes an absolute out of the finite, he means that the
understanding takes up the finite as independent and external to the
infinite ; i.e. it conceives empirico-sense being as a positive being,
existing on its own, not created or 'posited' by thought.
Now, Lenin's note to the passage cited above, in which Hegel
is clearly polemizing with materialism, is the following : 'Hegel
against the absolute ! Here we have the germ of dialectical material
ism.' 51 It is clear that the Philosophical Notebooks are what they are :
notes and hasty notations, taken at the moment of his reading,
without second thoughts and without going back to them. Nonethe
less, for what it is worth, this first annotation indicates a singular
habit and attitude on the part of a 'dialectical materialist' : the belief
that dogmatism is thinking in a determinate mode (it pensare deter
minato). This is an attitude - it hardly needs pointing out - that rests
on the famous observation in Anti-Duhring that for the meta
physical, i.e. dogmatic, mode of thought, or 'so-called common
sense', 'a thing either exists, or it does not exist' and 'it is equally
impossible for a thing to be itself and at the same time something
else'. 52
The second annotation, which concerns Kant, is no less unsatis
factory. Lenin transcribes in the margin, with obvious agreement,
Hegel's statement that 'criticism is the most wanton dogmatism of
all' ('To the criticism which knows no implicit, nothing absolute,'
Hegel says, 'all knowledge of implicit existence as such is held to be
dogmatism, while it is the most wanton dogmatism of all . . .'53). It
is true enough that Hegel's passage goes on, after the part cited by
us, to call into question the Kantian theory of the 'thing in itself'.
But, as is the case moreover throughout the Notebooks, it seems that
Lenin is able to see only this aspect of Kant's thought, as if the
Critique did not contain anything else. It is the same position 50. En.L., pp. II 8-19.
51. Lenin, Philosophical Notebooks, op. cit., p. 301.
52. Engels, Anti-Diihring, op. cit., p. 28.

53. H.P., p. 364.

84
rudimentary, but certainly more reasonable - adopted by him several
years previously in the beginning of Chapter IV (,The criticism of
Kantianism from the Left and from the Right') of Materialism and
Empirio-Criticism : 'The principal feature of Kant's philosophy is the
reconciliation of materialism with idealism . . . . When Kant assumes
that something outside us, a thing-in-itself, corresponds to our ideas,
he is a materialist. When he declares this thing-in-itself to be
unknowable, . . . he is an idealist' ; and again 'recognizing experience,
sensations, as the only source of our knowledge, Kant is directing his
philosophy towards sensationalism, and . . . under certain conditions,
towards materialism'. 54 This very position is entirely abandoned
in the Notebooks, where Lenin is always, or almost always, in agree
ment with Hegel against Kant.
It is not necessary to cite here the views of Engels (or ofPlekhanov)
on Hume and Kant, since they are so well known. 55 For them Hume
and Kant represent, in general, the worst element - agnosticism,
scepticism, idealism, etc. Finally, in Lukacs this tendency - which
in Engels and Lenin is at least mitigated by the 'non-professional'
character of their 'philosophic' activity - assumes proportions
defying all reason, or even ordinary good sense. Kant is at the origin
of all error. Anything is better than his philosophy, even 'the attempt
at a dialectical revival of the Platonic theory of the forms' made by
Schelling. 56 Even 'this idealist objectivism represents an advance
with respect to Kant'. In fact 'this change of direction gives Schelling
the possibility of proclaiming anew the knowability of things in
themselves on the basis of an objective idealism ; thus, present in his
work are tendencies towards objectivity - despite all the irrational
mysticism - and a tendency to acknowledge the knowability of the
external world that go far beyond Kant.'57
I must state right away that the possible accusation of a 'return to
Kant' leaves me altogether indifferent. I am talking about the
54. V. I. Lenin, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism (New York, 1927), p. 200.
55- For the importance ascribed to Hume by the modern philosophy of science,
cf. L. Geymonat, Storia del pensiero filosofico (Milan, 1956), vol. III, p. 321, who
opposes Hume's concept of 'rationality' to that of traditional metaphysics, and, in
particular, to that of Spinoza and Hegel.
57. ibid., p. 55.
56. G. LuHcs, Prolegomeni a un'estetica marxista, op. cit., p. 35.

Hegel and Scepticism 8S

Critique ofPure Reason and not that of Practical Reason. In addition,
this discusion is proceeding in a situation where the entire frame
work of traditional philosophical Marxism has been shattered.
What matters to us here is that a crucial problem is at stake. What
does 'dogmatism' mean? What is 'metaphysics'? Is there any
'critique' or scepsis that is salutary?

VI.

Scepticism about Matter and

Scepticism about Reason

The alternative, in this regard, is simple : either one assumes that

the real objects to be known are given, or else it has to be that the
known object is 'already' given qua knowledge itself (as 'innate'
knowledge). With Hegel this alternative is absolutely clear : the
negation of the possibility that thought could have a premiss in
reality - which is the achievement of ancient scepticism - constitutes
the 'negative side' that every 'true' philosophy has within itself; but
this negative side 'presupposes in a direct way Reason as the positive
,
side (setzt unmittelbar die Vernunft als die positive Seite voraus) .
Reason as a positive ; i.e. as an entity existing on its own, indepen
dent, and therefore existing as an individual object - not as a cate
gory or function of another that has to be unified or thought out,
but as a self-sufficient reality that is 'round in itself'.
Reason is 'round' because it 'already' contains the other within
itself. It represents 'the identity of identity and non-identity'. It is,
therefore, the identity of thought and being. But if the negation of
premisses in reality, the negation of premisses that are external
because independent, and independent because qualitatively (in
reality) different from thought, implies the identity of thought and
being, it is also clear that that negation leads to the assumption that
knowledge is already formed 'from the beginning of time'. If
indeed knowledge must issue forth from the synthesis or union of
the two (thought and being), and these two are, however, identical
with one another, i.e. forever united, that can only mean that their
union has occurred ab aeterno, and that knowledge is already fully
realized from the beginning of time. Knowledge has been produced
before us, behind our backs. We find, at birth, that knowledge is
given to us, just as in the other case we find that the world appre
hended by our senses is given to us.

Scepticism about Matter and Scepticism about Reason 87

By whom is this knowledge given? The exoteric reply is that, on
the whole, it is given by the parish priest. In the case of particularly
unfortunate philosophers, it may even be given by their father.
'Why do you believe?' Jaspers asks himself. 'Because my father told
me. Mutatis mutandis, this answer of Kierkegaard applies also to
philosophy.' In general, however, Jaspers is right when he says : 'der
philosophische Glaube ist in Vberlieferung' (philosophical faith is in
tradition). 1
The other reply, the esoteric one, is innatism : Knowledge is God,
and the divine Logos is within us. As stated in the Encyclopedia :
'With reference to the immediate knowledge of God, of legal and
ethical principles. . , whatever form . . . we give to the original
spontaneity. . . , it is a matter of general experience that education
or development is required to bring out into consciousness what is
therein contained. It was so even with the Platonic recollection : and
the Christian rite of baptism, although a sacrament, involves the
additional obligation of a Christian upbringing. In short, religion
and morals, however much they may be faith or immediate know
ledge, are still on every side conditioned by the mediating process
which is termed development, education, culture.'2
Here, as one can see, immediate knowledge and its 'original
spontaneity' are not at all negated ; it is merely said that they
require mediation. Hegel continues thus : '. . . One empirical
objection was raised against the doctrine of Innate ideas. All men, it
was said, must have these ideas ; they must have, for example, the
principle of contradiction present in their consciousness - they
must know it ; 'but this objection', he adds, which is 'completely
valid against the theory of immediate knowledge,' i.e. against those
like Jacobi who reject the mediation, 'can be laid down to a miscon
ception ; for the determinations in question, though innate, need not
on that account have the form of ideas or conceptions of something
known'. 3
.

I. Karl Jaspers, The Perennial Scope of Philosophy, translated by Ralph Manheim

(New York, 1949), p. 20.
2. En.L., p. 130 (translation modified).
3. ibid., p. 131 (translation modified).

88
8
This is the place where innatism, i.e., the presupposition of ideas
which for Hegel, of course, are the Idea - has its truly correct
formulation : knowledge is already given ; mediation and develop
ment serve only to acquire 'consciousness (of) what is therein
contained'. In other words - and here it is best to recall Kant's
views on and against 'a priori analytic judgments' - the mediation,
i.e. culture and philosophy, has merely the task of explicating the
implicit. In fact, as Hegel states explicitly, 'the whole procedure of
philosophizing, being a methodical, i.e. necessary one, is merely
the explicit positing of what is already contained in a Notion'. 4
To suggest, however, that one should go back beyond the Notion or
knowledge itself, i.e. pose the problem of their origin, would be
absurd, since the Notion was never born (as Hegel states in a passage
from the Encyclopedia previously examined : 'It is not we who frame
the Notions. The Notion is not something which is originated at
all . . . It is a mistake to imagine that the objects which form the
content of our mental ideas come first and that our subjective
agency then supervenes, and . . . frames Notions ofthem.'5).
One or the other, therefore : either one presupposes the world, or
else one has to take as a presupposition knowledge itself. Hegel's
philosophy, which begins without (external) presuppositions,
begins, in actual fact, by presupposing itself, i.e. knowledge, the
Idea, the Logos or God. 'The philosophy,' Feuerbach says, 'that
begins with thought without reality, ends consequently mit einer
gedankenlosen Realitiit', i.e. with a reality that is not mediated or
verified by thought. It is altogether preferable, he goes on to say,
'to begin with non-philosophy (Unphilosophie) and end with philosophy
than, contrariwise, like so many of Germany's "great" philosophers
- exempla sunt odiosa - to open their careers with philosophy and to
conclude them with non-philosophy'. 6
These formulations clearly anticipate the remark made by Marx
in the last manuscript of 1844 : ' . . . Despite its thoroughly negative
and critical appearance, . . . there is already implicit in the Pheno
menology, as a germ, as a potentiality and a secret, the uncritical
4. ibid., p. 163 (translation modified).
5. ibid., pp. 293-4.
6. L. Feuerbach. Siimtliche Werke (ed. Bolin und JodI), Vol. II, p. 208.

Scepticism about Matter and Scepticism about Reason 89

positivism and uncritical idealism of Hegel's later works - the
philosophical dissolution and restoration of the existing empirical
world.'7
This is the high point attained by the materialist tradition in its
critical consciousness concerning the nature of dogmatism. To deny
the existence of premisses in reality (those premisses which are
discussed at the beginning of The German Ideology : 'The premisses
from which we begin are not arbitrary ones, not dogmas, but real
premisses from which abstraction can only be made in the imagina
tion'S), amounts to taking up the Notion or the Idea as that which is
absolute and without limiting conditions, as an independent entity
unto itself. But in order to be independent and therefore to count
not just as reason but also as reality, the Idea must present itself as an
individual object, i.e. it has to restore in an acritical fashion the sense
phenomena previously transcended ; it thereby turns the positive or
individual, which is, properly speaking, the object to be understood
and explained, into the body or 'vessel' of the absolute's exposition
(for Hegel, Marx writes, 'not the logic of the thing, but rather
logic's thing, is the philosophical moment. Logic does not serve as a
proof of the State, but rather the State serves as a proof of logic'). 9
The dilemma outlined at the beginning of this chapter is formu
lated in explicit terms by Marx. If one denies that there exist
premisses in reality for thought, then one is forced to take up
knowledge itself as a presupposed andgiven reality. In so doing, those
empirical premisses, previously negated and transcended, return
acritically (i.e., not scrutinized and not mediated by thought) as
mere predicates or incarnations of the Idea. Marx writes in The
German Ideology : 'If for a moment Sancho' - i.e. Stirner - 'abstracts
from all his rubbish about thought, . . . he has divested himself for a
moment of all dogmatic presuppositions, but now for the first time
the real presuppositions begin to exist for him. And these real
presuppositions are also the presuppositions of his dogmatic pre
suppositions which, whether he likes it or not, will reappear to him
7. K. Marx, Early Writings, op . cit., p. 20I.
8. K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology (New York, I947), pp. 6-7.
9. K. Marx, Werke, cit., Vol. I, p. 2I6.

90
together with the real ones so long as he does not obtain other real,
and with them also other dogmatic presuppositions, or so long as he
does not recognise the real presuppositions materialistically as
presuppositions of his thinking, whereupon the dogmatic ones will
disappear altogether. ' 1 0
The opposite natures of dogmatism and critical thought are here
clearly specified. Dogmatism is the presupposition of the Idea, the
assumption that knowledge is already given (as Feuerbach says,
'That philosophy which does not presuppose anything, presupposes
itself' ; it is 'that philosophy which begins directly with itself'l1).
This presupposition ofthe Idea means at the same time - obviously
the denial of premisses in reality and the affirmative statement that
the content itself of knowledge is independent of experience, i.e. the
assumption (as Kant says) of 'knowledge which transcends the
world of the senses, and where experience can neither guide nor
correct us, . . . knowledge which we possess without knowing
whence it came, and (en)trust to principles the origin of which is
unknown'. 12 Critical thought, contrariwise, is that thought which
precisely because it does not presuppose itself as a kind of 'original'
knowledge or as having its contents 'already' within itself - can
scrutinize both its own contents, preventing them from imposing
themselves surreptitiously or 'sub rosa', and also scrutinize itself at
work. That is, it can examine the way in which knowledge is pro
duced and formed - which is, precisely, the fundamental critical
problem of the formation and origin of the knowledge that we already
possess.
Dogmatism is metaphysics ; critical thought is materialism. The
antithesis, with respect to Hegel, could not be more pronounced.
Metaphysics is the identity of thought and being; its contents are
'already' within thought, they are independent of experience, i.e.
supersensible. Ergo, form and content are forever united, knowledge
is already formed, and it is impossible to pose the problem of the
origin of the knowledge that we possess. Critical thought, contrari
wise, identifies itself with the position that presupposes the hetero10. K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology (Moscow, 1964), pp. 489-90.
L. Feuerbach, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 209
12. I. Kant, op. cit., p. 5.

II.

Scepticism about Matter and Scepticism about Reason

9I

geneity, i.e. a real and not formal (or purely "logical') difference,
between being and thought. Thereby one can pose the 'critical'
problem of the origin of our knowledge, inasmuch as knowledge
itself is not already given. Which in turn presupposes that the two
elements that are to be united have not always been united - pre
supposes, in a word, that the sources of knowledge are two : the
spontaneity of the mind and whatever data are given to the receptivity
of our senses.
In the first case, the relationship of thought to being coincides
with the relationship of thought to itself. The passage from being to
thought, from empirical reality to knowledge, from the concrete to
the abstract, presents itself as a passage within knowledge : from the
cognitio inferior to the cognitio superior ; from implicit knowledge to
explicit knowledge, from the obscure and confused ideas of the
senses (remember Kant's critique of Leibniz and Wolff), to clear
and distinct ideas. All of which means that epistemology, i.e. the
theory of the relationship between the two elements of knowledge,
is reduced to logic, i.e. to the theory of thought alone. In the second
case, however, since thought is only one of the two elements, logic
comes to fall within epistemology, i.e. presents itself as one of the
two parts of that 'theory of elements' or Elementarlehre, into which
the theory of knowledge of the Critique ofPure Reason is subdivided ;
for, as Lenin once saw clearly, it is crucial from the critico-materialist
point of view 'to regard our knowledge (not) as ready-made and
unalterable, but (to) determine how knowledge emerges from
empirical reality, how incomplete, inexact knowledge becomes more
complete and more exact' . 1 3
Despite the unsolicited gift of a Widerspiegelungstheorie, which
Lukacs (as well as Kojeve and Marcuse) have tried to make him,
clearly Hegel's thought contains nothing of the kind. The pages of
his Science of Logic are, as usual, of exemplary clarity (and the
13. V. I. Lenin, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, op. cit., p. 99. The term empirical
reality has been substituted for the term used by Lenin's translator, ignorance. Lenin's
term, which is the equivalent of the German Unwissen and the Italian non-sapere (this
is the term used by Colletti in his text), does not refer to the passage from ignorance to
enlightenment - which is a pedagogic problem - but rather to the epistemological
problem ofhow one moves from non-thought (empirical reality) to thought. (Trans.)

92
polemic against Kant is more than ever in evidence) : 'Hitherto, the
Notion of logic has rested on the separation, presupposed once and
for all in the ordinary consciousness, of the content of cognition and
its form, or of truth and certainty. First, it is assumed that the
material of knowing is present on its own account as a ready-made
world apart from thought, that thinking on its own is empty and
comes as an external form to the said material, fills itself with it and
only thus acquires a content and so becomes real knowing. Further,
these two constituents - for they are supposed to be related to each
other as constituents, and cognition is compounded from them in a
mechanical or at best chemical fashion - are appraised as follows :
the object is regarded as something complete and finished on its own
account, something which can entirely dispense with thought for its
actuality, while thought on the other hand is regarded as defective
because it has to complete itself with a material and moreover, as a
pliable indeterminate form, has to adapt itself to its material. Truth
is the agreement of thought with the object, and in order to bring
about this agreement - for it does not exist on its own account thinking is supposed to adapt and accommodate itself to the
object.' 1 4
The reader has probably already grasped the point of the argu
ment. If scepsis towards matter (Pyrrhonism, ancient scepticism) is a
moment that is indispensable to philosophy qua idealism, the
critico-materialist point of view cannot help but imply, contrariwise,
a scepsis towards reason. The basis of this scepsis or 'critique of
reason' lies in the very principle of materialism : the heterogeneity of
thought and being, the extra-logical character of existence. Existence
is not a predicate, it is not a concept. The conditions as a result of
which something is given us to be known are not to be confused
with the conditions as a result of which this something is taken up
into thought ; the possibility in reality is not identical with the logical
possibility; 'logical process' is not to be confused with 'process in
reality'.
This distinction between logical object and object in reality,
between Objekt and Gegenstand, is properly termed a scepsis for it
14. L., p. 44.

Scepticism about Matter and Scepticism about Reason 93

implies that reason is per se a negative (just as, contrariwise, for
'Platonic scepticism' the finite is a negative) - i.e. devoid of reality.
Reason does not have reality 'already within itself'. Reason is a
form, or more exactly, a function of something else. It itself is not a
subject, but the predicate of a real subject. The signs of admiration
and agreement with which all 'dialectical materialists' have always
greeted the Hegelian polemic against Kant's 'formalism', only go to
show that in order to be a modern materialist it is, unfortunately,
not enough to make a simple decision of the 'will'. Hegel's claim to a
form of thought that is 'rich in content', his statement that thought
has the determinate or the 'difference' within itself, and is therefore
the concrete, is the same thing as his proposition that 'the finite is
ideal'. This explains - it may be said en passant - how Hegel's
critique of 'logical formalism' is absolutely coherent even when it
appears at first sight contradictory, due to the fact that at times it
directs against 'formalism' the criticism of absence of content and, at
other times, that of absence ofform.IS
1 5. Hegel's critique of so-called 'laws of thought' o r of ' logical formalism' follows two
lines that are apparently contradictory. The first line is that of the 'emptiness of logical
forms'. Logical forms are 'abstract' because devoid of content. 'What is purely formal
without reality is an ens intellectus, or empty abstraction without the internal diremption
(or difference) which would be nothing else but the content' (Phen., p. 329). This
criticism returns again in the Science of Logic: 'the emptiness of logical forms' derives
from the fact that they 'lack a substantial content - a matter which would be substantial
in itself' (L., p. 48). On the other hand, on the page following the one just cited of the
Phenomenology, Hegel appears to grossly contradict himself. He now makes the objection
that logical laws are devoid ofform : . . . It is not content that they lack, for they have a
specific content; they lack rather form, which is their essential nature. In point of fact
it is not for the reason that they are to be merely formal and are not to have any content,
that these laws are not the truth of thought ; it is rather for the opposite reason. It is
because in their specificity, i.e. just as a content with the form removed, they want to pass
for something absolute' (Phen., p. 330). The contradiction is only apparent. In actual
fact, Hegel's requirement that logic be a science of reality, and not a purely formal one,
coincides with his requirement that what is recognized as true, objective content should
not be a content external to thought, but within it (the ideal nature of the finite). 'When
logic is taken as the science of thinking in general, it is understood that this thinking con
stitutes the mere form of a cognition, that logic abstracts from all content and that the
so-called second constituent belonging to cognition, namely its matter, must come from
elsewhere; and that since this matter is absolutely independent of logic, this latter can
provide only the formal conditions of genuine cognition and cannot in its own self con
tain any real truth, nor even be the pathway to real truth because just that which is
'

94
Now, the two essential cornerstones of this cntlque of meta
physical or idealist dogmatism were laid down, for the first time, in
the Critique of Pure Reason. The first of these emerges, as is known,
in the claim that the sensate has a positive character (here, one need
only look at the note that concludes section 7 of Anthropologie in
pragmatischer Hinsicht with its violent polemic against Leibniz,
who, as a 'follower of the Platonic school', 'considered sense data as
merely a void', i.e. as something negative devoid of its own reality).
What this means is, that by virtue of the heterogeneous or extra
logical nature of the sensate or existent, the relationship thought
being cannot be reduced to the simple coherence of thought with
itself. The second emerges in that admirable act of theoretical
destruction - a true monument of modern scepticism - which Kant
carries out with respect to all the old metaphysics (the metaphysics
that Hegel mourns in the preface to the Science of Logic). With
respect to the 'productive use' of formal logic (formal logic treated as
an 'organ' for the production of objective knowledge), Kant criticizes
the transposition of the logical into the ontological, or the arbitrary
and dogmatic upgrading of the mental or subjective into the 'essence'
of the world, i.e. of the concept into the foundation or substratum of
reality - a critique without which the very expression 'modern
thought' would have no meaning whatsoever.
These two crucial critical propositions come together in the
admirable pages that conclude the 'Analytic of Principles' - the
pages in the 'Note to the Amphiboly of Concepts of Reflection'.
The two complementary features of dogmatism's modus operandi the idealization of the world and the transformation of logical ideas
essential in truth, its content, lies outside logic' (L., pp. 43-4). In otherwords, logic is for
Hegel a science of reality not simply because it has a content of its own, but because it is
'content alone which has absolute truth, or, ifone still wanted to employ the word matter,
it is the veritable matter - but a matter which is not external to the form, since this matter
is rather pure thought and hence the absolute form itself' (L., p. 50). The apparent
contradiction is resolved, because the inclusion of content within logic coincides with
the realization that form is itself and the 'other' at one and the same time; i.e., it coin
cides with that 'development' of form or expansion of Eleaticism (cf. the chapter on
Hegel and Spinoza), the logical formalism of which is still deficient in that it maintains
that form is only 'one of the two' and that content is external to or outside it.

Scepticism about Matter and Scepticism about Reason 9S

into the objective essence of reality - are here taken up as two proposi
tions that imply one another and are submitted to a unified critical
argument.
First, the idealization or intellectualization of the world : ' . . . The
celebrated Leibniz erected an intellectual system of the world.'
The basic considerations already examined by us return here once
again. Leibniz 'believed that he could obtain knowledge of the inner
nature of things by comparing all objects merely with the under
standing and with the separated, formal concepts of its thought. . . .
He compared all things with each other by means of concepts alone,
and naturally found no other differences save those only through
which the understanding distinguishes its pure concepts from one
another. The conditions of sensible intuition, which carry with
them their own differences, he did not regard as original, sensibility
being for him only a confused mode of (logical) representation, and
not a separate source of representations. Appearance was, on his
view, the representation of the thing in itself. Such representation is
indeed, as he recognized, different in logical form from knowledge
through the understanding, since, owing to its usual lack of analysis,
it introduces a certain admixture of accompanying representations
into the concept of the thing, an admixture which the understanding
knows how to separate from it.' 16
Second, the transposition of logic into ontology, the upgrading of
simple logical connections into connections in reality. In so far as
'Leibniz . . . compared the objects of the senses with each other
merely in regard to understanding, taking them as things in general'
and 'since he had before him only their concepts and not their
position in intuition (wherein alone the objects can be given), . . . it
inevitably followed that he should extend his principle of the identity
of indiscernibles, which is valid only of concepts of things in general,
to cover also the objects of the (mundus phaenomenon), and that he
should believe that in so doing he had advanced our knowledge of
nature in no small degree' . 17
In other words, 'if a certain distinction is not found in the concept
I6. I. Kant, Critique ofPure Reason, translated by Norman Kemp Smith (London,
I7. ibid., p. 283.
I953), p. 282.

96
of a thing in general, it is also not to be found in the things them
selves' ; i.e. the logical indiscernibility is simply transposed into an
indiscernibility in reality, that which is in thought is directly trans
formed into the substance of reality. And since 'in the mere concept
of a thing in general we abstract from the many necessary conditions
of its intuition, the conditions from which we have abstracted are,
with strange presumption, treated as not being there at all, and
nothing is allowed to the thing beyond what is contained in its
concept' . 18
Consider this conclusion for a moment ; i.e. the indication of the
error that lies in 'allowing nothing to the thing beyond what is
contained in its concept'. If it is true, Kant says, 'that whatever
universally agrees with or contradicts a concept also agrees with or
contradicts every particular which is contained under it (dictum de
omni et nullo) ;' . it would, however, be absurd 'to alter this logical
principle so as to read : - what is not contained in a universal con
cept is also not included in the particular concepts which stand under
it. For these are particular concepts just because they include in
themselves more than is thought in the universal'. 1 9 The meaning of
the argument could not be clearer ; the individual or real thing
contains more than the thing as a mere object of thought. Thought
does not, within itself, exhaust reality. Logical possibility is not real
possibility.
Now take up Hegel once again, and read those first pages of the
Science of Logic which are so violent in their polemic against Kant.
He states : 'Ancient metaphysics had in this respect a higher con
ception of thinking than is current today. For it based itself on the
fact that the knowledge of things obtained through thinking is
alone what is really true in them, that is, things not in their im
mediacy but as first raised into the form of thought, as things thought.
Thus this metaphysics believed that thinking (and its determina
tions) is not anything alien to the object, but rather is its essential
nature, or that things and the thinking of them . . . are explicitly in
full agreement, thinking in its immanent determinations and the
true nature of things forming one and the same content.'20
.

18. ibid., p . 289.

19. loco cit.

20.

ibid., p. 45.

Scepticism about Matter and Scepticism about Reason 97

This is the real basic dilemma : either the identity, or the hetero
geneity, of thought and being - the choice that separates dogmatism
from critical materialism. After having reduced being to thought by
resolving the relationships of objects among themselves into a simple
relationship of formal abstract concepts, Leibniz then carries out
the inverse operation. He claims, that is, to 'extend his principle of
the identity of indiscernibles, which is valid only of concepts of things
in general, to cover also the objects of the senses', i.e., he claims 'to
make these concepts valid for phenomena' or sense objects.21 After
reducing the relationship being-thought to a simple relationship of
thought with itself, he claims to show this logical connection is a
real and objective connection. He presents as a 'law of nature' that
which 'is only an analytic rule for the comparison of things through
mere concepts'. 2 2 His entire philosophy is founded on this twofold
confusion : the reduction of the Gegenstand to the Objekt, or the
absorption of the finite into the 'ideal' (as Kant says, he 'sought for
all representation of objects, even the empirical, in the understanding,
and left to the senses nothing but the despicable task of confus
ing and distorting the representations of the former'23) ; and
secondly, the transformation of the Objekt into the Gegenstand,
i.e. of the logical idea into the structure and substratum of reality.
Now, precisely this 'confounding' is the amphiboly, which, accord
ing to Kant's own definition, is 'a confounding of an object of pure
understanding with appearance (Verwechslung des reinen Verstandes
objekts mit der Erscheinung)'. 2 4
And once again Kant's critique shows its incisiveness : 'These
contentions would be entirely justified, if beyond the concept of a
thing in general there were no further conditions (etwas mehr) under
which alone objects of outer intuition can be given us - those from
which the pure concept has (as a matter of fact) made abstraction. . . .
But something is contained in intuition which is not to be met with
in the mere concept of a thing; and this yields the substratum,
which could never be known through mere concepts.'25
21. I. Kant, op. cit. (Muller translation), p. 21 I.
22. I. Kant, op. cit. (Kemp Smith translation), p. 284.
24. ibid., p. 282.
23. ibid., p. 286.

25. ibid., pp. 290-1.

98
It is something more, since the substratum, the existent, is not
the concept itself; the substratum is extra-logical. With Hegel it is
just the opposite : 'the demonstrated absoluteness of the Notion
relatively to the material of experience . . . consists in this, that this
material as it appears apart from and prior to the Notion has no
truth ; this it has solely in its ideality or its identity with the Notion.
The derivation of the real from it. . . . '26 The Idea is more real than
reality. 'It is not the finite which is the real, but the infinite.'27 With
Marx, it is the opposite of this opposite : 'Hegel gives an indepen
dent existence to predicates and objects (Objekte), but he does so by
detaching them from their real independency, from their subject.
Subsequently the real subject appears, but as a development out of
them, when actually one should take the real subject as one's point
of departure and examine its objectification. Thus the mystical
substance becomes the real subject, and the actual subject appears
as something else, as a moment of the mystical substance. Precisely
because Hegel takes as his point of departure the predicates of
general determination rather than real being (tnToXElfLEVOV, subject),
which must be nonetheless the vehicle of this determination, it is
the mystical idea that becomes this vehicle.'2 8
One of Kant's basic conclusions in his critique of the logical
ontological confusion perpetrated by Leibniz and all the old meta
physical school is this : that opposition in reality is something other
than logical opposition. 'If reality is represented only by the pure
understanding (realitas noumenon), no opposition can be conceived
between the realities, i.e. no relation of such a kind that, when
combined in the same subject, they cancel each other's conse
quences and take a form like 3 - 3 =0. On the other hand, the real
in appearance (realitas phaenomenon) may certainly allow of opposi
tion. When such realities are combined in the same subject, one
may wholly or partially destroy the consequences of another, as in
the case of two moving forces in the same straight line, in so far as
they either attract or impel a point in opposite directions, or again
in the case of a pleasure counterbalancing pain.'2 9
26. L., p. 591.
28. K. Marx, Werke, Vol. I, p. 224.

27. ibid., p. 149.

29. I. Kant, op. cit., p. 279.

Scepticism about Matter and Scepticism about Reason 999

Here is a further development and confirmation of this statement,
so that the reader may have the essential terms of the argument
before him : ' . . . The principle that realities (as pure assertions) never
logically conflict with each other is an entirely true proposition as
regards the relation of concepts, but has not the least meaning in
regard . . . to nature. . . . For real conflict certainly does take place;
there are cases where A -B=o, that is, where two realities com
bined in one subject cancel one another's effects. This is brought
before our eyes incessantly by all the hindering and counteracting
processes in nature, which, as depending on forces, must be called
realitates phaenomena. General mechanics can indeed give the
empirical condition of this conflict in an a priori rule, since it takes
account of the opposition in the direction of forces, a condition
totally ignored by the transcendental concept of reality.'3 0 On the
other hand, Leibniz and 'his disciples consider it not only possible,
but even natural, to combine all reality in one being, without fear of
any conflict. For the only conflict which they recognise is that of
contradiction, whereby the concept of a thing is itself removed. They
do not admit the conflict of reciprocal injury, in which each of two
real grounds destroys the effect of the other - a conflict which we
can represent to ourselves only in terms of conditions presented to us
in sensibility.' 3 1
The essential point to bear in mind in order to understand the
meaning of this argument has already been indicated : opposition in
reality is something other than logical contradiction or opposition.
Like Leibniz, Kant takes as his premiss that the rule governing
thought is the principle of (non-)contradiction. A concept that
contradicts itself negates itself. 'The object of a concept which con
tradicts itself is nothing, because the concept is nothing, is the im
possible, e.g. a two-sided rectilinear figure (nihil negativum).'3 2 In
this sense, Kant and Leibniz's positions coincide. Both are still tied
to the Eleatic principle; to both of them the revolution in logic
brought about (or carried to fulfilment) by Hegel remains foreign i.e. the expansion of Eleaticism, the recognition that reason is the
'identity of identity and non-identity', a tautoheterology or dialectic.
30. ibid., p. 284.

31. loc cit.

32. ibid., p. 295.

100

From this common basis, however, the paths of Leibniz and of

Kant proceed in opposite directions. For Leibniz, the principle of
thought is also the principle of reality : logical possibility is itself
real possibility. Consequently, that which is logically impossible
(opposition) is also impossible in reality. For Kant, contrariwise, the
principle of non-contradiction is purely a principium rationis; the
consistency of thought with itself is something other than the
coincidence of thought with reality. Hence, the non-existence of
logical contradiction must not lead to the conclusion of the non
existence of opposition in reality. ' . . . There is no conflict in the
concept of a thing unless a negative statement is combined with an
affirmative ; merely affirmative concepts cannot, when combined,
produce any cancellation. But in the sensible intuition, wherein
reality (e.g. motion) is given, there are conditions (opposite direc
tions), which have been omitted in the concept of motion in general
that make possible a conflict (though not indeed a logical one),
namely, as producing from what is entirely positive a zero ( =0).
We are not, therefore, in a position to say that since conflict is not
to be met with in the concepts of reality, all reality is in agreement
with itself.' 33
As to the difference between Leibniz and Hegel, this lies in their
divergent way of understanding the principle of logic, which, for
the former, is that of non-contradiction and, for the latter, that of
dialectical contradiction. Beyond this difference, however, there is
the continuity in metaphysics (that continuity which distinguishes
them both from Kant) : the identity of the principle of logic and the
principle of reality, the elevation and transposition of logic into
ontology. Leibniz, in denying logical contradiction, denies opposition
in reality (extending thereby the principle of indiscernibles to the
point of claiming it as a 'law of nature'). Hegel, who affirms logical
contradiction, does so by making it the substratum of opposition in
reality. Every thing is contradictory within itself, every thing 'is' and
'is not' ; that is to say, opposition in reality is resolved into logical
contradiction, i.e. into reason qua the union of sameness and other
ness, 'being' and 'non-being' together. On the other hand, just as
33. ibid., pp. 289-9.

Scepticism about Matter and Scepticism about Reason IOI

objects are only the incarnation of reason, so all objective or real
oppositions, all specific oppositions, become the 'existence' or the
'phenomenon' of rational opposition, i.e. generic opposition.
This point, enough in itself to relegate all of 'dialectical material
ism' to the museum alongside the stone axes, was seen with exem
plary clarity by Marx.34 In addition to the passage cited above from
the Poverty of Philosophy dealing with 'movement', we find in the
last of the 1 844 manuscripts : Hegel's 'real interest . . . is the opposi
tion of in itself and for itself, of consciousness and self-consciousness,
of object and subject, i.e. the opposition in thought itself (Colletti's
emphasis) between abstract thought and sensible reality or real
sensuous existence. All other contradictions and movements are
merely the appearance, the cloak, the exoteric form of these two
opposites which are alone important and which constitute the
significance of the other, profane contradictions'. 35
Moreover, that the two ways of conceiving real conflicts are
divergent is demonstrated by the fact that, whereas Kant, in the
process of pointing out a determinate opposition, thinks immediately
of the specific science that deals with it (cf. above : mechanics) for
Hegel the science of contradictions is general philosophy or idealism.
Just as for Engels it must be the always anticipated but never
realized 'new' science - philosophical and dialectical by its very
nature.
We have dwelt so long on this Kantian distinction between
'logical opposition' and 'opposition in reality' for two reasons 34. Just as for Hegel, so for Engels, 'real' or specific oppositions are nothing other than
'manifestations' of the logical contradiction of reason with itself, always the same and
thus eternal. The substratum of the finite is for him also the infinite. Consequently, he
represents all knowledge as knowledge of the eternal and the absolute. C, for example,
the Dialectics ofNature, p. 326: ' . . . All real, exhaustive knowledge consists solely in . . .
seeking and establishing the infinite in the finite, the eternal in the transitory.' And on
p. 326 again : 'All true knowledge of nature is knowledge of the eternal, the infinite,
and hence essentially absolute.' And in relation to the 'permanent' character of every
true law of nature, cf. p. 239 : 'By new discoveries we can give new examples of it, we can
give it a new and richer content. But we cannot add anything to the law itself as so
formulated. In its universality, equally universal in form and content, it is not susceptible
of further extension: it is an absolute law of nature.'
35. K. Marx, Early Writings, op. cit., p. 201.

I02

besides its obvious intrinsic importance - and we hope that the

reader will pay particular attention to the first of these. It is possible
that, having followed our critique of dialectical materialism and
seen us at the same time uphold the principle of identity or material
determination, the reader may have concluded that we wished to
deny the existence of objective or material oppositions. Obviously,
if such were the case, any claim to be reasoning with Marx (i.e. in
accordance with his approach) would be destitute a priori of any
foundation (which explains, parenthetically, why precisely this
criticism of us was made by one subtle critic36). It is, however,
precisely Kant's distinction between 'logical opposition' and 'oppo
sition in reality' that shows (I believe) the incorrectness of this con
clusion. That distinction, in fact, by implying the irreducibility of
'real' opposition to 'logical' opposition, or of existence (Kant's
'something more') to a concept, also implies the irreducibility of its
particularity or specificity to a universal or generic opposition ; i.e., it
implies the fact that existence acquires its determinacy to be what it
'is' precisely through the exclusion or negation of everything that
it is not. All of which confirms, I think - however much it may clash
with ingrained habits of thought - that it is impossible to disregard
the principle of non-contradiction precisely when one wants to
point out material oppositions or contradictions, i.e. specific ones
(for nothing is more poorly guaranteed by Hegel's dialectical logic
than the specific 'species' of a thing, in other words natural or finite
entities ; it is a matter - and here Labriola comes to mind - of leaving
'open the question of the empirical nature of each particular
formation'37). Vice versa, it also confirms that it is precisely the
rejection or 'overcoming' of non-contradiction, its replacement by
the so-called 'dialectic of matter', which implies the dilution or
negation of oppositions in reality, i.e. their peaceful resolution
within reason.
The second reason inclining us to emphasize Kant's argument is
that, although some contemporary Marxists may have correctly
grasped its importance (cf. the discussion 'On the Problems of
36. N. Badaloni, Marxismo come storicismo (Milan, 1962), pp. 201 ff.
37. Antonio Labriola, Lettere a Engels (Rome, 1949), p. 147.

Scepticism about Matter and Scepticism about Reason

I03

Logic' in the Deutsche ZeitschriJt for Philosophie, 1956, and C.

Luporini in his Spazio e materia in Kant), they still run the risk,
I believe, of throwing away its lesson when they tend to interpret
it in a 'dialectical-materialist' sense.
Luporini, for example, who correctly sees that Kant's argument
against Leibniz's 'intellectualization of phenomena' (,what resists
this intellectualization is the opposition in reality between things,
the forces which are operating one against the other and which are
not reducible to a pure "logical" contradiction'38) hinges entirely
on the antecedence and extra-logical character of existence, main
tains that the significance of Kant's argument is to be sought in the
fact that it 'is the germ, precisely, of a materialist dialectic'. 3 9 It
should now be clear why we find it difficult to accept this opinion,
given our line of reasoning. The 'materialist dialectic' is, in the strict
sense, Hegel's own dialectic of matter. The latter, just as it pre
supposes the complete and total resolution of real conflict into
logical opposition or contradiction (of being into thought), so it
also presupposes, quite consistently, the rejection of materialism i.e.
of that extra-logical 'something more' upon which Kant's entire
argument is based - as Luporini sees clearly enough.
Now the paradox is this : whereas 'dialectical materialism', in
order to be materialist, needed precisely that 'something more', it
has instead adopted Hegel's 'dialectic of matter', i.e. the proposition
that all things 'are' and 'are not', without realizing that the basis of
that dialectic was precisely the negation (or the 'destruction') of that
'something more'. The absolute and irremediable theoretical
insignificance of 'dialectical materialism' is all here : it has mimed
idealism, thinking that it was being materialist ; it has underwritten
Hegel's liquidation of the 'intellect' and the principle of non
contradiction, without comprehending that this meant liquidating
the very independence of the finite from the infinite, of being from
thought.
Engels writes : 'The mind which thinks metaphysically is abso
lutely unable to pass from the idea of rest to the idea of motion,
38. C. Luporini, Spazio e materia in Kant, op. cit., pp. 73 and I I 2 if.
39. ibid., p. 74

I04

because the contradiction pointed out above blocks its path.'40

It would be interesting to know - if the 'understanding' is meta
physical - how Engels and all the 'dialectical materialists' after him
manage to guarantee that irreducibility of being to thought, without
which the contrasts of reality fade into mere logical contradictions,
and materialism fades into mere pious intention.
The finite which does not 'pass over' into the infinite, being which
does not 'pass over' into its opposite, is 'dead being' ! In Hegel, this
argument is meaningful. 'Dead being' is being which remains as the
basis of thought, it is that 'something more' which Kant calls das
Substratum. One understands then only too well why Hegel was
concerned to get rid of all this. What one understands less well, or
more exactly, what one understands not at all, is how Engels and
Lenin could have attacked 'dead being' and claimed at the same
time to be materialists.
In order to be a form of materialism, 'dialectical materialism'
must affirm the heterogeneity of thought and being. To be able to
put into practice the dialectic of matter, it must reduce all oppositions
in reality to oppositions of 'being' and 'non-being', i.e. to logical
contradictions (consider Engels's views on motion). In the first case,
it needs the principle of non-contradiction; in the second, it needs
to show, like Hegel, that this principle is sheer dogmatism. The way
out of this impasse was to rethink in an organic fashion the meaning
of non-contradiction, or material determinacy, and that of dialectical
contradiction, or reason (precisely the path opened up by Della
Volpe with his principle of tautoheterological identity). However,
unable even to perceive the problem, 'dialectical materialism' has
simply suffered the contradiction through and through. The conse
quence has been that wherever, as in Materialism and Empirio
Criticism, there is a clear statement of materialism and therefore of
the heterogeneity of thought and being, there is lacking a theory of
reason, i.e. of concepts and scientific law (this accounts for the
metaphorical and fanciful character of the Widerspiegelungstheorie
set forth in that work, as well as the 'primitive' level of the material
ism it asserts). Vice versa, wherever there is a theory of dialectical
40. F. Engels, Anti-Diihring, op. cit., p. 133.

Scepticism about Matter and Scepticism about Reason IOS

contradiction, this exists at the expense of the heterogeneity of the
real and the logical, as in the Philosophical Notebooks and above all
in Engels's Dialectics ofNature works which are certainly rich in
'dialectic' but so poor in 'matter' as to become unconscious idealist
metaphysics.
This radical discrimination has been lived out and impersonated
in the most rigorous way - if it is possible to say such a thing - by
Lukacs. Having found in Hegel that 'dialectic of matter' and being
convinced that this was a genuine form of materialism, he attempted
at all costs to ascribe a Widerspiegelungstheorie to Hegel (being not
unaware of the fact that it is difficult to imagine a form of material
ism lacking a theory of truth as 'correspondence'). Afterwards,
having adopted Hegel's premisses, and in particular that concerning
the identity of logic and ontology (with the consequent realism of
concepts I), he dedicated himself to a struggle without quarter against
Kant, i.. against the only classical German philosopher in whom it is
possible to detect at least a grain of materialism. He was convinced
that 'idealist objectivism represents an advance in relation to Kant'
(even the objectivism of Schelling !) He was, however, altogether
forgetful or unaware of the fact that this objectivism which he so
ardently propounded had indeed been closely considered by the
old man of Konigsberg, in his appropriately titled Dreams of a
Visonary explained by the Dreams of Metaphysics.
-

VII .

Cassirer on Kant and Hegel

Let us attempt to carry the argument all the way through and push it
to its uttermost 'limit'. If the crux, the vital nucleus of the Critique
f Pure Reason (disregarding for a moment all its serious contradic
tions) lies in the argument that dogmatism is the transposition, the
direct confounding of logic with ontology (and, hence, the realism of
concepts), this means that in Kant one can find at least the begin
nings - if only just the beginnings - of a critique of the processes of
hypostatization. In a passage from the sceptic Schulze, the author
of Aenesidemus which is cited by Hegel in the Relation ofScepticism
to Philosophy and explicitly referred to there as something written in
a 'Kantian style' - this theme comes out clearly. Schulze writes thus :
'If there has ever been a beguiling attempt to link the realm of
objective reality directly to the sphere of Notions, and to pass from
the latter into the former merely with the help of a bridge which also
is made out of mere Notions, this attempt has taken place in Onto
theology. Nevertheless, the empty sophistry and deception which
was being practised have recently been completely uncovered'. 1
This passage appears on the same page in which Hegel calls
Kant's critique of the ontological argument a Witz, i.e. a witticism,
almost a sarcastic joke, and gives us an idea of what 'germs' had
been spread by Kant in the German culture of his age, which
previously had been dominated by Onto-theology and after him was
to be dominated by Hegel's Onto-theo-Iogic (cf. the essay by
L6with cited above). But - without turning our attention too far in
that direction - important evidence concerning the lessons to be
drawn from the Critique also comes to us from the milieu of Neo
Kantianism (in spite of the fact that in it the Kantian forest was
extensively pruned and often reduced almost to a French-style
garden). Exemplary, in this sense, is the chapter 'Critical Idealism
-

1. G. w. F. Hegel, Verhiiltnis des Skepticismus zur Philosophie, op. cit., p. 255.

Cassirer on Kant and Hegel

I07

and Absolute Idealism' in Das Erkenntnisproblem where Cassirer

compares the two greatest German thinkers. Here, indeed, together
with a series of accurate but (from a Neo-Kantian perspective)
relatively obvious remarks, one finds others that cannot help but
make one realize the critical effectiveness retained by Kantianism
even when one attempts to apply to it Hegel.
The 'obvious' (but nonetheless interesting) remarks alluded to
above are those which concern the thought-being relationship in
the two philosophers. Cassirer bases his argument on Kant's distinc
tion between intel/eetus arehetypus and intel/eetus eetypus, intuitive
intellect and discursive intellect. The latter, which is the intellect
dealt with in the Critique, i.e. ordinary human intellect, has 'before
itself a diverse sensate manifoldness to which it can gradually give
determinacy through the pure categories of thought, but which it
can never completely resolve into these categories'. Thus this
understanding does indeed posit the object as determinable through
thought, but it finds that being and concept are constantly separa
ting from one another. The other one, however, which is the
intuitive intellect or 'the intellect's intuition', about which Hegel
often talks as a synonym for 'reason', not just in his early writings
(which were still under the influence of Schelling's terminology),
but also in his mature works - this other mode of understanding
'knows every manifold only as an unfolding and more specific
determination of the original unity which it itself is'. Thus, 'thought
and the object of thought have become a single thing, such that
even the barrier which our empirical intellect must necessarily
set up between the real and the merely possible has ceased to exist
for it'. 2
Hegel's logic, Cassirer continues, 'is the logic of the intuitive
intellect, of an intellect that has outside itself only that which it itself
has produced. This logic is not familiar with the refraction or
blurring which the intellect would undergo if it had to avail itself
of an extraneous means, a sense-world (Sinnliehkeit) posited next to
or below itself.'3 All this is obvious enough but comes, nonetheless,
Ernst Cassirer, Storia della filosofia moderna (Turin, 1953), Vol. III, pp. 457-8.
3 ibid., p. 458.

2.

108
as a breath of good sense after Lukacs's dronings about a Wider
spiegelungstheorie in Hegel's philosophy.
We cannot explore here other interesting observations, such as the
one in which Cassirer points out that 'the form of the speculative
treatment of nature' created by Hegel, which disdains 'the path that
passes through the mathematical and empirical science of nature',
has given rise to 'a new form of penetration into the "inwardness of
nature" understood as spiritual inwardness' (he goes on to note that
'the exposition of Hegel's philosophy of nature has certainly shown
how this apparent change of direction towards a more concrete
mode of treating things leads in actual fact only to a dialectical
volatilization of the content of nature, such that the laws proper to
nature and experience are dissipated'). And we must also leave aside
his very significant allusion to the aversion felt by Goethe for Hegel's
'philosophy of nature' because it represented a 'conversion of
organic becoming into the form of logical becoming' ('The proposi
tions of Hegel's logic - in which it is stated that buds disappear
with the blossoming of flowers and that therefore one can say that
the former are contradicted by the latter, and also that the fruit
defines the flower as a "false existence of the plant" - seemed
simply grotesque to him ; they gave him the impression that one
wanted to destroy the eternal reality of nature with a bad, sophistical
joke.' } 4
We are only concerned here to point out how Cassirer, developing
his analysis from a strictly Kantian point ofview, ends up nonetheless,
almost inadvertently, by formulating his critical judgment of Hegel
in terms analogous to, or even identical with those used by Marx in
his Kritik des Hegelschen Staatsrechts or in the last of the 1844
manuscripts - a fact all the more significant when one considers that
Das Erkenntnisproblem appeared a number of decades before the
posthumous publication of these writings.
Typical in this sense is the remark that Hegel's procedure 'is
forced to elevate to an absolute that which is an individual or con
tingent element' ; and that 'here in actual fact absolute idealism
finds itself before its systematic opposite, absolute empiricism, and

4. ibid., pp. 472-3.

Cassirer on Kant and Hegel

I09

threatens to convert itself into it', because, 'with the pretext that
reason is "everything that is real", any reality that has taken shape
and determinacy is declared ipso facto rational'. The mind of the
reader cannot help but turn to Marx's formula of the coexistence in
Hegel of an 'acritical idealism and of a positivism equally devoid of
criticism'. 5 Typical also is the remark that 'a particular empirical
present is always threatening to introduce itself surreptitiously into
the present of the pure idea and its unfolding, as an appropriate
realization and expression of the latter' ; or that 'a determinate
temporal present threatens to substitute itself for the "substance
which is immanent and the eternal which is present" ' 6 Here one
can see the corrupt and surreptitious way in which the positive is
smuggled back whenever it serves to give body to the Idea, i.e. to
the realization of the 'principle of idealism' and so to the 'positive
exposition of the absolute'. All this not only vividly calls to mind
analogous remarks by Marx, but leads one to a comparison (not
without its disenchantments) with the equivocations and confusion
of many contemporary Marxists concerning the nature and meaning
of Hegelian 'objectivism'.
Finally, no less significant, there is Cassirer's notation that 'the
language of Hegelian pan-Iogism turns into the language of myth'
and that 'in this way of representing the idea . . . there re-echo, in
actual fact, ancient mythico-religious themes and descriptions of the
becoming of the world created by God's original being'. 7 Here
comparison is inevitable with the 'manipulated' statements of
Marcuse and also of Lukacs concerning the irreligiosity and atheism
of Hegel, but so is the recollection of Feuerbach's and Marx's
remarks on the 'rational mystique' or 'logical mysticism' of Hegelian
philosophy.
Although Cassirer was undoubtedly unfamiliar with Marx's
comments in writing that chapter, he may well have known Feuer
bach's or, perhaps, those of Trendelenburg. 8 However this may be,
.

5. K. Marx, Early Writings, op. cit., p. 201.

7. ibid., p. 471.
6. Cassirer, op. cit., pp. 464-5.
8. For Trendelenburg's anti-Hegelian critique, see the very important pages in M.
Rossi's Marx e la dialettica hegeliana (Rome, 1 963) , pp. 66 ff.

IIO

the one certain and incontrovertible fact is that the initial guide and
immediate stimulus to formulating his thoughts came from direct
contact with Kant's work. It was from the latter that he most keenly
felt an admonition against metaphysics qua a 'general tendency of
thought to transform the pure means of knowledge into just so many
objects of knowledge', 9 categories into 'essences' or the structures
of reality ; in short, metaphysics as an 'apparently irrepressible
tendency to transform the functions of knowledge into concepts
(i.e. into knowledge that is already formed) and (logical) pre
conditions into things'. 1 0 All of which explains Cassirer's capacity to
throw light on an often ignored aspect of the Critique i.e., how the
'thing in itself', being the mere Objekt of pure thought without a
counterpart in experience, has above all the function (together with
all the others that it certainly has in the general economy of Kant's
thought) of representing not a truer and more profound 'reality' in
relation to simple 'phenomenal' existence (as is so widely believed),
but rather the unknowable, because illusory, reality of metaphysics.
It is, in other words, that imaginary and unreal 'object' into which
'we only hypostatise the structure' of our own subjective conscious
ness. l 1 The concept of 'noumena', Cassirer writes, means 'not the
particularity of an object, but the attempt to set apart a determinate
function of knowledge' in order to turn it directly into a reality as
such. 1 2 The 'thing in itself', he adds, emerges 'as a correlative term,
i.e. as the "counterpart" of the function of synthetic unity. It comes
into effect whenever we regard the x which in actual fact is only the
unity of a connective conceptual rule as a particular objective
content, and claim to identify it as such. The "non-empirical" or
transcendental object of representations, this x in other words, cer
tainly cannot be perceived by us - not, however, due to the fact that
it is something totally unknown and self-subsisting which hides
behind the representations, but rather due to the fact that it con
stitutes only the form of their unity, ascribed to them by thought,
without possessing, however, a concrete and independent existence
apart from this.'13
-

9.

Cassirer, op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 792-3.

12. ibid., p. 808.
ibid., p. 810.

I I.

10. ibid., p. 793.

13. ibid., pp. 8IO-I I.

Cassirer on Kant and Hegel

III

All of which means that the limitation of our knowledge to the

world of 'appearances' and 'phenomena' - not the 'illusory beings'
of Hegel, but simply empirical objects themselves, i.e. phenomena
or natural events precisely in the sense in which Newton talks
about them - does not imply for Kant 'anything whatsoever of that
sceptical resignation'14 which often appears in the 'positivism' of a
d'Alembert or a Maupertuis. It represents, on the contrary, a
barrier or, more exactly, a 'limitation' imposed on the supersensible
(and hence illusory) use of our powers of knowledge. This is pre
cisely what Kant himself says - but with the admirable forcefulness
and sobriety of the Critique's language - when he writes that 'if by
the complaints that we have no insight whatsoever into the inner
(nature) of things - it be meant that we cannot conceive by pure
intellect what the things which appear to us may be in themselves,
they are entirely illegitimate and unreasonable. For what is demanded
is that we should be able to know things, and therefore to intuit
them, without senses, and therefore that we should have a faculty
of knowledge altogether different from the human, and this not
only in degree but as regards intuition likewise in kind - in other
words, that we should be not men but beings of whom we are
unable to say whether they are even possible, much less how they
are constituted' 1 5 - not men, but Gods Almighty, like the meta
physicians of that age and those of today.
Of course Kant's Critique also has other sides to it : e.g., the
distinction between denken and erkennen, between thinking and
knowing. As a consequence of this distinction a relationship of
thought to itself, which is not at the same time a relationship to
reality, does become possible. The preservation of the logical 'a
priori' is also possible. This latter, even without positing itself as
reality, nevertheless legitimates the metaphysica naturalis, as an
aspiration at least - an aspiration to the knowledge of the 'absolute
object', i.e. of the Objekt of pure thought, whereby the 'thing in
itself' becomes indeed the 'unknowable' of agnosticism, and the
-

ibid., p. 797.
15. I. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (Kemp Smith translation) op. cit., pp.
286-7
14

II2

phenomenon becomes the mere subjective 'appearance' of pheno

menalism. However, our concern here is to point out the real and
effective presence in Kant's thought of that other tendency which
(moreover) it was a merit of Hegel's to have brought out so force
fully, if only in order to oppose it. And to point out, also, how
Marxism ought to have less interest than anyone in obfuscating that
tendency or in relegating it to oblivion.
Obviously this does not exhaust the complex question of the
relationship of Marxism with Kant on the one hand and with Hegel
on the other. The argument, so far, concerns only the theory of
knowledge. And it is certain that whatever Hegel may lose in this
particular area, he regains in large measure on that plane where (in
the final analysis) Marx's thought truly and properly comes to life :
history. Nevertheless, those apparently simpler concepts of historical
materialism are in fact by far the most difficult. The most difficult of
all is that of the 'social relations of production', which calls, at this
point, for another pause and detour.

VII I .

Kant, Hegel, and Marx

As far as I know, no significant discussion of the Critique of Pure

Reason exists in the works of Marx. One finds a rapid but essential
prise de position on the Rechtslehre, the writing in which Kant traced
the basic outlines of that Rechtsstaat which was to be a major feature
of the real state with which the bourgeoisie governed in Europe
throughout the nineteenth century. But on the Critique as such, an
analysis is lacking.
In a certain sense the question is analogous to (and perhaps even
more serious than) that of Marx's relationship to Rousseau. It is
impossible to understand the Judenfrage apart from Rousseau's
critique of the rift of modern man into bourgeois and citoyen ; and
impossible to understand the critique of parliamentary representa
tion contained in the Kritik des Hegelschen Staatsrechts or even in the
Civil War in France, without reference to Rousseau's anti-parliamen
tarianism and his theory of popular sovereignty as inalienable
sovereignty. Yet on the few occasions that Marx mentions Rousseau
it is only in order to criticize his (presumed) contractualist natural
right theory.
The problem is a striking one, but it is neither uncommon nor
impossible to explain. A thinker makes certain 'discoveries' - which
in part are, as always, 'rediscoveries' - and remains nonetheless
unable to clearly account for their genealogy. His consciousness fails
to give a full account of his being. Furthermore, certain influences
acted on Marx indirectly, through the mediation of other writers.
In my view Kant's influence, for instance - especially as concerns
what Marx needed - undoubtedly reached him via the mediation of
Feuerbach. Finally, one must consider the historical climate in
which a thinker is formed (not excluding fashions and fads, which
are not an exclusive privilege of today) : the polemics among the

114
various Hegelian 'schools', for instance, the debates within the Left
itself, the imposing and august presence in the background of
Hegel's great thought itself. And - last but not least - one crucial
fact : the strong historico-political orientation and interest which
Marx displayed from the outset, and the 'indifference' which he
always showed towards epistemological problems as such. This
should not be taken to mean an epistemological nihilism or a dis
dainful 'turning of his back' on philosophy, as it has sometimes been
vulgarly misunderstood; it means, rather - and this is much harder
to grasp - that precisely because this philosophical or epistemological
problem had been settled for him, it was shifted in his mind to
another level, where everything - both categories and subject
matter - changed name and nature.
Especially in cases like these, the motto of the historian must
evidently be : zu den Sachen selbst (to the things themselves) ! To
count the number of times that Kant's name recurs in the writings of
Marx would be a pointless undertaking. All one can do is go
directly to the problems themselves and there, in the thick of the
actual question, come to terms with the historical 'give' and 'take' it
implies - whatever may have been the awareness or self-conscious
ness of the individual thinker as such.
In the case of the relationship to Kant, I think there exists a place
where the experiment can be carried out with a high degree of
precision : the first pages of subheading 3 of the 1857 Introduction
to the Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen O konomie. There, Marx
discusses and criticizes the thought of Hegel. I believe that the
passage in the Science of Logic which Marx had in mind can be
located (it does not matter whether he had the text before him or
whether it was only present to his memory). Hegel's text contains a
critique of Kant. Marx, in turn, criticizes this text of Hegel's. Thus,
there exist reasonable conditions for attempting to examine the
relationships among the three of them.
The passage is in the Science of Logic, Volume II, p. 588 : 'A
capital misunderstanding which prevails on this point', i.e. in the
theory of the Notion, 'is that the natural principle or the beginning
which forms the starting point of the natural evolution or in the

Kant, Hegel, and Marx 11

history of the developing individual, is regarded as the truth, and
thefirst in the Notion. Now in the order of nature, intuition or being
are undoubtedly first, or are the condition for the Notion, but they
are not on that account the absolutely unconditioned ; on the
contrary, their reality is sublated in the Notion and with it too, the
illusory show they possessed of being the conditioning reality.'
Consequently, even if philosophy 'assumes the stages of feeling and
intuitive perception (Anschauung), of sense-consciousness, etc. as
precedent to the understanding', one must bear in mind - Hegel
concludes - that 'they are postulated as conditions for the coming
into-being of the understanding (intellect) only in the sense that the
Notion comes forth out of their dialectic and nothingness, as the
ground of their being, and not in the sense that it (the Notion) is
conditioned by their reality'. 1
The question, it can be seen at once, is one that we have already
dealt with several times. The process of development 'according to
nature' is the process of reality; the process of development 'accor
ding to the Notion' is the logical process. The first gives us the
situation as viewed by the 'intellect' : empirical-sensate being is the
prius, it places limiting conditions on thought. The second gives us
the situation as depicted by 'reason' : thought cancels out
by
dialecticizing them - the limiting conditions or premisses in reality
upon which it appeared to depend. It includes the 'other' within
itself; and in so doing, just as it transforms itself from that which
has limiting conditions placed upon it into that which establishes
those conditions, so it also transforms the empirical being on which
it appeared to depend into one of its own effects or consequences.
The first process of development gives us the relationship that
characterizes the progress towards knowing : the passage from being
to thought, from empirical reality (non-sapere) to knowledge. The
second gives us the process of knowing. In the process of develop
ment 'according to nature', the Notion comes second and reality
first. In the logical process, it is the other way round, the Notion first
-

I. L., p. 588. Miller's translation has unaccountably left out an entire line from Hegel's
text; hence, in this instance Miller's otherwise excellent translation has had to be
altered. (Trans.)

(0
116

and reality second ; that is to say, reality is deduced and derived from
the Notion.
It is a fact that Hegel (like any other genuine thinker) cannot
simply do away with either of these two processes. Nevertheless,
when taken together they represent the cross which his theory of
mediation has to bear. The process of development 'according to
nature' is indispensable to him so that the Notion may appear as a
result, i.e. as something mediated ('For to mediate is to take some
thing as a beginning and to go onward to a second thing ; so that the
existence of this second thing depends on our having reached it
from something other than itself'2). If it were not mediated, the
Notion would be mere subjective faith, it would be precisely the
immediate knowledge of Jacobi. On the other hand, Hegel must also
free himself from this process of development 'according to nature',
in order to affirm the principle of idealism : i.e., that the Notion has
no limiting conditions or premisses outside itself, but is rather the
unconditional and the absolute. As stated in the Encyclopedia : 'If
mediation is represented as a state of conditionedness (Bedingtheit),
and this is brought out in a one-sided fashion, it may be said - not
that the remark would mean much - that philosophy owes its origin
to experience (the a posteriori). (As a matter of fact, thinking is
always the negation of what we have immediately before us.) With
as much truth however we may be said to owe eating to the means of
nourishment, since we could not eat without them. If we take this
view, eating is certainly represented as ungrateful : it devours that
to which it owes itself. Thinking, in this sense, is no less ungrateful.' 3
Torn between these opposing necessities, Hegel's solution was to
downgrade the process of development 'according to nature' into an
apparent process. The process of development 'according to the
Notion', on the other hand, is upgraded into a real process. In other
words, the process in reality or according to nature is reduced to an
'appearance' or manifestation of the logical process, the process
according to the Notion.
As was perceptively observed by A. Moni (that obscure but
2. En.L., p. 20 (translation modified).
3. ibid., pp. 20-1 (translation modified).

Kant, Hegel, and Marx

II7

remarkable Italian Hegel scholar, whose translation of the Logic

has no parallel, not even when compared with Croce's version of the
Encyclopedia), Hegel's solution is the same as Aristotle's, only in
reverse. The distinction between logical process and process in
reality, he writes, 'is the well-known Aristotelian distinction
between 7TpWTOJJ Ka8'iJluis and 7TpWTOJJ cpvaH', with the reservation,
however, 'that what Hegel states later, i.e. that perception and being
are first according to nature (der Natur nach), is to be understood
in the sense that they are first secundum generationem, whereas here
the Notion corresponds to cpvats'. 4
Now, it is precisely on these grounds that the clash between
Hegel and Kant occurs. One can in fact trace out the two processes
indicated above in the Critique ofPure Reason : the process according
to which the intellect is something on which limiting conditions are
placed, and the process (vice versa) according to which reality
appears as a product of thought. Qyite apart from the 'transcendental
schematism', wherein 'productive imagination' determines pure
perception (Anschauung) and thereby establishes the passage over
into experience, the logical process is stressed in the very theory of
the 'original synthesis of apperception' (as Hegel says, 'The connec
tion of these two is . . . one of the most attractive sides of the
Kantian philosophy', for 'pure sensuousness and pure understand
ing, which were formerly expressed as absolute opposites, are now
united', and, because 'there is thus . . . present an understanding
that perceives and a perception that understands'5). Hegel says,
again : 'Since Kant shows that thought has synthetic judgments
a priori which are not derived from perception, he shows that
thought is so to speak concrete in itself', i.e. something that already
has the other within itself. 6 As stated in the Logic : 'This original
synthesis of apperception is one of the most profound principles
for speculative development ; it contains the beginning of a true
apprehension of the nature of the Notion', because it does not
represent the Notion as something empty and one-sided, but as a
4. G. W. F. Hegel, Scienza della logica, translated by A. Moni (Bad, 1925), Vol. III,
p. 25 n.
6. ibid., p. 430.
5. H.P., Vol. III, p. 441 (translation modified).

II8
unity that has the other within itself.7 Here, Hegel emphasizes, 'the
idea which is present . . . is a great one'. But, he adds, 'on the other
hand, quite an ordinary signification is given it, for it is worked out
from points of view which are inherently rude and empirical, and a
scientific form is the last thing that can be claimed for it. In the
presentation of it there is a lack of philosophical abstraction, and it is
expressed in the most commonplace way ; to say nothing more of
the barbarous terminology, Kant remains restricted and confined by
his psychological point of view and empirical methods.'s
In other words, despite the great idea of an 'original synthesis of
apperception', 'the further development . . . does not fulfil the
promise of the beginning'. 'The very expression synthesis easily
recalls the conception of an external unity and a mere combination of
entities that are intrinsically separate. Then, again, the Kantian
philosophy has not got beyond the psychological reflex of the
Notion and has reverted once more to the assertion that the Notion
is permanently conditioned by a manifold of intuition.' 9
Let us now see more closely where the argument leads. Hegel
discovers both of the processes in Kant : the logical process as
well as the process in reality. In the former, the Notion appears as
the totality, i.e., as the 'original synthesis', or unity of self and other
together ; and here, since it already contains the particular or the
differentiated within itself, the Notion itself is the concrete. In the
latter, on the other hand, the Notion or thought appears only as 'one
of the two', having the 'other' outside itself. In the one case reality is
a product of thought ; in the other thought has limiting conditions
placed on it by empirical being. From this basis in what (broadly
speaking) constitutes a common problematic, Hegel and Kant then
proceed in opposite directions. Kant, while allowing that thought.is
an 'original synthesis', maintains the distinction between real con
ditions and logical conditions ; so that, having recognized that thought
is a totality, he considers it (precisely because this totality is only of
thought) to be only one element or one part of the process of reality.
Hegel, however, carries out the reverse operation : he absorbs the
process of reality within the logical process, he reduces the relation7. L., p . S 8g .

8. H.P., Vol. III, pp . 430-1.

g. L., p. S8g.

Kant, Hegel, and Marx 11

ship in which thought is only 'one of two' to one in which it is the
'totality'. With the consequence that, whereas the Notion is trans
formed by him from a pure logical condition or ratio cognoscendi
into a ratio essendi, i.e. into the raison d'etre or limiting condition of
reality, the latter, on the other hand, becomes a mere product or
manifestation of the Idea.
It is clear what the problem is, stirring at the root of this distinc
tion. There can be no thought unless something is previously given
to be thought ; which means that the objectivity of reality - or in
other words the condition for there being a content to knowledge - is
a condition for the existence of thought (since there can be no
thought except thought with a determinate object). On the other
hand, if in this sense reality is the cause and thought the effect, it is
also true that, in so far as what is 'thought' (pensato) is inevitably a
product of thought (pensiero), what was at first cause now becomes
effect and what was effect becomes the cause of its cause. Any
attempt to evade this twofold process, in which reality and thought
appear alternately as limiting condition and that which has limiting
conditions placed upon it, is only an illusion. Reality, in fact, is that
which is objective, and the objective - contrary to idealism - is
precisely that which is external to and independent of thinking
subjectivity. It is no less true, however - contrary to empiricism or
'primitive' materialism - that an indispensable condition for dis
criminating the objective from the subjective and, therefore, reality
from illusion, is, most assuredly, thought - in a word, subjectivity
itself. All of which means that induction and deduction here recipro
cally imply and mutually require one another ; for, just as reality is
anterior and independent, and thought in relation to it is something
on which limiting conditions are placed, so it is also true that we can
only arrive at a recognition of that reality deductively, i.e. through a
process from which reality emerges as the result of a sifting and
a selection carried out by thought.
The intertwining of receptivity and spontaneity, of causal deter
mination and subjective creativity, which previously had only been
inadequately sketched out by the different versions of Widerspiegel
ungstheorie (with the well-known argument that 'reflexion' is no

12 0
mere mirror image, but implies a project and initiative), begins here
to take on a definite shape. Reality or the concrete is first ; material
ism remains, in this sense, the point of departure. On the other
hand, in so far as we can only arrive at the recognition of what is
concrete through thought, i.e. by means of those 'abstract deter
minations' which are precisely what 'lead to the reproduction of the
concrete in the course of thinking', the concrete itself, as Marx says,
'appears in thought'.lO
Reaching the most vital part of his reply to the Science of L ogic,
Marx continues :' Hegel fell into the illusion, therefore, of conceiving
reality as the result of self-propelling, self-encompassing, and self
elaborating thought ; whereas, the method of advancing from the
abstract to the concrete is merely the way in which thought appro
priates the concrete and reproduces it as a concrete that has assumed
a mental form (geistig). This is by no means, however, the process
which generates the concrete itself. For consciousness, then - and
philosophical consciousness is such that contemplative thought is
conceived as real man and thus the contemplated world as such is
conceived as the only reality - for this consciousness the movement
of categories appears as the real act of production (which unfor
tunately receives only a stimulus from outside), the result of which is
the world. All of this is correct, in so far as - and here again we have
a tautology - the concrete totality, qua totality made up of thought
and concrete made up of thought, is in fact a product of thinking
and comprehending. In no sense, however, is this totality a product
of a concept (Begriff) which generates itself and thinks outside of
and above perception and representation ; rather, it is a product of
the elaboration of perception and representation into concepts. The
whole, as it appears in our minds in the form of a whole made up of
thought, is a product of a thinking mind, which appropriates the
world in the only way possible for it. . . '. Nevertheless, Marx con
cludes, 'the real subject still remains outside the mind, leading an
independent existence' ; so that 'even in the case of the theoretical
10. K. Marx, Introduction to the Critique ofPolitical Economy, in A Contribution to the
Critique of Political Economy, translated by N. I. Stone (Chicago, 1904), p. 293 (trans
lation modified).

Kant, Hegel, and Marx

([?r)

method', it 'must constantly be kept in mind as the premiss from

which we start'. 11
The essential argument that interests us is all contained in this
one page. Like every genuine thinker, Marx recognizes the irre
placeable role of the logico-deductive process.12 He knows full well
that the concrete, in so far as it is 'thought' (pensato) and arrived at
only through thought (pensiero), is itself a product of thinking and
knowing; that is, not a point of departure, but a point of arrival.
But, as opposed to Hegel, Marx upholds the process of reality
side-by-side with the logical process. The passage from the abstract
to the concrete is only the way in which thought appropriates
reality; it is not to be confused with the way in which the concrete
itself originates. If, therefore, in the logical process the concept is
prius and reality is only a particular deduced or derived from the
former, one must bear in mind, Marx cautions, that the concept
does not generate itself, nor exist as thinking outside and above
perception and representation. It is itself the outcome (note the
profoundly Kantian overtone of this statement) of the 'elaboration
of perception and representation into concepts (Verarbeitung von
Anschauungund Vorstellung in BegriJfe)', and precisely for this reason
one must bear in mind that implicit in the logical process is a process
of reality which works in the opposite direction : here the concept,
which in the logical process came first, now comes second, and
reality, which in the logical process was a resultant, is in actual fact
the point of departure rather than the point of arrival.
What was said above of Marx's relationship to Hegel and Kant is,
I believe, amply confirmed here. From Hegel, Marx derives above
all the theory of reason, i.e. certain lessons concerning the role and
structure of the logico-deductive process (a process which was never
I ! . ibid., pp. 293-5 (translation modified).
12. The importance of the logico-deductive process in Marx, as against any possible
misunderstanding or empiricist interpretation of his early critique of Hegel, was
properly pointed out by M. Dal Pra, La dialettica in Marx (Bari, 1965), pp. 1 I4 tr.
On the whole I share the basic orientation of this work, except for its interpretation of
the Einleitung. My reconstruction of the latter's argument also departs somewhat from
Della Volpe's essay of 1962, Sulla dialettica, published in the appendix to Liberta
communista (Milan, 1963).

12 2
fully developed in Kant). He derives, we might add (although this is
perhaps only another way of saying the same thing), a profound
sense of the unity oflogical process and real process, i.e. the principle
of that unity of thought and being which in Hegel, however, was so
imperious as to jeopardize from the very beginning their real
distinction. From Kant, on the other hand, Marx clearly derives whether he was aware of it or not, and whatever may have been the
process of mediation - the principle of real existence as something
'more' with respect to everything contained in the concept ; a prin
ciple which, while it makes the process of reality irreducible to the
logical process, also prevents us from forgetting that, if the concept
is logically first, from another angle it is itself a resultant - the result,
precisely, of the 'elaboration of perception and representation into
concepts', i.e. the point of arrival of that passage from empirical
reality to knowledge (the process of the formation of knowledge)
which has been, of course, the critical problem par excellence.
A further insight offered by these pages of the 1857 Einleitung is
that there is complete homogeneity (contrary to all the fatuous
reveries current today concerning the so-called coupure) between its
critique of Hegel and the critique which Marx launched against
Hegel in 1 843 in his Kritik des Hegelschen Staatsrechts. In both
writings, the critique hinges on the same argument. Hegel reduces
the process of reality to a simple logical process ; he turns the Idea
into the subject or substratum of reality. Subsequently, just as
empirical reality becomes for him the phenomenal appearance or
'illusory being' of the Idea, so the process by which one comes to
know reality must necessarily be transformed into the process of the
creation of reality. The logical universal, or the category, which
should be the predicate, is transformed by him into the subject; and
vice versa, the particular - which is the true subject of reality becomes the 'predicate of its predicate', i.e. the manifestation or
incarnation of the logical universal, which has thus been substantified.
It would be possible to conclude our discussion of the Einleitung
at this point. But since we sense only too well the vagueness and
uncertainty which may still surround the 'unity of deduction and
induction' in the reader's mind it may be useful, next, to examine

Kant, Hegel, and Marx I23

the concrete problem Marx adduces as an example in the initial
pages of the section on 'The Method of Political Economy'. Thus
we shall be able to show, in the particular, how the logico-deductive
process and the inductive process, or process of reality, are inter
twined and combine with one another. The focal point, which one
must start from, is what has been brought out already a number of
times : the twofold nature (let us use this phrase for the moment)
of thought, i.e. thought as 'intellect' and thought as 'reason',
thought as 'one of two' and thought as the 'totality' of relationships.
This simple distinction gives us immediate access to a fundamental
statement by Marx, contained in the section of the Einleitung
mentioned. 'The simplest economic category, say, exchange value,
implies the existence of population, population that is engaged in
production under certain conditions ; it also implies the existence of
certain types of family community, or state, etc. It can have no
other existence except as an abstract one-sided relation of a concrete
and living whole that is already given. As a category, however,
exchange value leads an antediluvian existence', 1 3 so antediluvian
that all treatises on economics begin their exposition with this
category, rather than with population, which is (nonetheless) its
premiss. This is similar to the way in which 'Hegel, for instance,
rightly starts out his Philosophy of Right with possession, as the
simplest legal relation of the subject', although, as is evident, 'there
is no such thing as possession before the family or the relations oflord
and serf, which are relations that are a great deal more concrete'. 1 4
In these lines, if one reads them closely, abstraction is discussed in
a twofold way : as totality or mental generalization, and as one
aspect or analytic feature of the particular object under considera
tion; as abstraction from the point of view of logic and as abstraction
from the point of view of reality.
Exchange value, Marx says, 'can have no other existence except as
an abstract one-sided relation of a concrete and living whole that is
already given'. What strikes us here with great clarity is undoubtedly
the second meaning. Abstraction is (or expresses) one aspect, a
one-sided feature, which has been separated (or, more precisely,
13.

Marx, op. cit., p. 294 (translation modified).

14

ibid., p. 295.

124
'abstracted') from a concrete and real object; an object which, as
always, has more than one side to it. Exchange value, for example,
presupposes a population that exchanges ; but the category, 'exchange
value', gives us only one characteristic, only one way of being (a
'one-sided relation') of this 'object', the population.
On the other hand, the other aspect according to which the cate
gory, besides being one side of the particular concrete object, is a
mental generalization or an idea, emerges clearly from the lines that
open this section. In scientific analysis or exposition, Marx says, 'it
seems to be the correct procedure to commence with the real and
concrete, with the real premiss ; in the case of political economy,
to commence with population which is the basis and the subject of
the entire social act of production. Yet, on closer consideration it
proves to be wrong. Population is an abstraction, if we leave out, for
instance, the classes of which it consists. These clases, again, are
but an empty word, unless we know what are the elements on which
they are based, such as wage-labour, capital, etc. These imply, in
their turn, exchange, division of labour, prices, etc. If we start out,
therefore, with population, we do so with a chaotic conception of the
whole. . . '. 1 5
What has to be pointed out immediately is that the presupposition
under discussion here is the opposite of the one mentioned above.
The population is the premiss in reality, it is the basis and the subject
of the entire social act of production. But in reality this premiss
presupposes, in its turn, a whole series of conditions without which
it does not mean anything, it would be a word devoid of sense, a
chaotic representation. The population has no meaning without the
classes of which it is composed ; in their turn, these classes mean
nothing, 'unless we know the elements on which they are based',
i.e. wage-labour and capital ; finally, the latter presuppose exchange
value, the division of labour and prices.
It is clear that whereas the first is a presupposition in reality, the
second is a logical presupposition. Exchange value 'presupposes the
population' ; it 'can have no other existence except as an abstract
one-sided relation of a concrete and living whole that is already
IS. ibid., p. 292.

Kant, Hegel, and Marx I2S

given'. On the other hand, this population which is the premiss and
basis in reality of everything presupposes, in its tum (from the
point of view of logic), a whole series of categories without which it
(the population) would have no meaning whence the impossibility
of beginning a scientific analysis or exposition with it. At the top of
this series of categories one finds that of exchange value. The
population, which is prius from the point of view of reality, is last
from the point of view of logic. On the other hand, exchange value,
which realiter is only a one-sided characteristic, is, from the point of
view of logic or as a mental generalization, the most comprehensive
generality, in relation to which all the other categories appear merely
as derived particularities.
The argument, as one can see, has led us back to the basic prob
lem : i.e., causa cognoscendi and causa essendi, deduction and induc
tion, process of development 'according to the Notion' and process
of development 'according to nature'. Or, to use Marx's terminology
in the Afterword to the second German edition of Capital: Darstell
ungsweise and Forschungsweise, i.e. the method of setting forth
thought and the method of researching the material (from which that
thought is formed). ' . . . The method of presentation must differ in
form from that of inquiry. The latter has to appropriate the material
in detail, to analyse its different forms of development, to trace out
their inner connexion. Only after this work is done, can the actual
movement be adequately described. If this is done successfully, if
the life of the subject-matter is ideally reflected as in a mirror, then it
may appear as if we had before us a mere a priori construction. My
dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its
direct opposite. To Hegel, the life-process of the human brain, i.e.,
the process of thinking, which, under the name of "the Idea", he
even transforms into an independent subject, is the demiurgos of the
real world, and the real world is only the external, phenomenal
form of "the Idea". With me, on the contrary the ideal is nothing
else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and
translated into forms of thought.'1 6
-

16. K. Marx, Capital, translated by S. Moore and E. Aveling (New York, 1967),
'Afterword to the Second German Edition', vol. I, p. 19.

12 6
Hence, in the case under examination - a population which
produces capitalistically - exchange value presents itself to us in two
different respects : on the one hand, as the most comprehensive and
broadest generality from which all the other categories are deduced
and from which a scientific exposition must begin ; on the other
hand, as an objective characteristic, as the last (in the inductive chain)
and therefore most superficial and abstract characteristic (the most
generic and indeterminate element, if taken by itself) of the concrete
object in question. As the latter, one cannot help but refer it back
to the more concrete, internal relations which are its basis, and from
which it is derived - a mere mode of being and articulation of those
relations.
Now, the situation delineated here is precisely the one found at
the beginning of Capital. The work begins its analysis by studying
the 'form of value', the 'commodity form' assumed by the labour
product when it is produced for exchange. Marx takes this as his
starting-point because, as he explains, 'the value form of the labour
product is the most abstract, but also the most highly generalized,
form taken by that product in the bourgeois system of production' . 1 7
It is the broadest and most comprehensive form for the simple
reason that there is nothing (or almost nothing) in bourgeois society
which does not have the form of value and does not present itself as a
commodity. The 'form of money' and the 'form of capital' itself are
only its more particularized or specified forms - derived forms which
would be absolutely unintelligible if previously one had not clarified
the value or commodity form from which they derive.
It is from this that the logico-deductive course of the work
proceeds. Beginning with the 'form of value' or commodity form,
one descends to the 'form of money' and from this to the 'form of
capital', just as, in logic, one passes from the universal to the particu
lar, and from the particular to the individual. First of all one begins
with the commodity ; then money, which is itself a commodity,
although it has a particular function ; finally capital, which is itself
money, designed for a particular use. All of the links of the deductive
17. K. Marx, Capital, translated by Eden and Cedar Paul (London, 1930), Vol. I.,
p. 55 (I have sometimes used this later translation in preference - Trans.).

Kant, Hegel, and Marx I27

chain appear to be suspended from the logical prius from which they
started, so that, as Marx says, 'it may appear that we had before us
a mere a priori construction'. In actual fact, what prevents any
a priorism is that the category, besides having its meaning as a
generality' or idea and therefore as a logical prius, is here grasped in
relation to the particular object from which it was abstracted. In
other words, it is taken as the most generic and superficial charac
teristic, the last element which has been reached in the course of the
inquiry or the analytic dissection of the object (hence the crucial
importance of the process of the formation of concepts).
All of which means that the work develops, together with the
deductive process descending from the commodity to money, and
from thelatter to capital, as an inductive process going back from the
generic or secondary features of the object in question to its specific
or primary ones, from subordinate elements to dominant ones - in
short, from the 'particular phenomenal forms' 1 8 of commodity and
money to capital itself, which is their basis and which alternately
assumes those forms in the course of its life cycle.
One must not misunderstand this argument concerning the
inverse order of the logical process and of the process of reality. It
does not mean that our knowledge gives us an upside-down image
of the world, as if we were condemned to seeing the world standing
on our heads. Rather, it means that thought by itself is not know
ledge; that knowledge is the congruence between thought and reality;
and that, if anything, it is precisely the person who does not take
account of this difference that is condemned to seeing the world
upside-down.
Commodity - money - capital : the logical order is to be viewed
in this way. Thought passes from the universal to the particular.
This is its procedure. However, in so far as the universal which one
takes as a starting-point is not a self-contained universal but is only
the simplest feature of a complex object, the expository formula,
commodity - money - capital, shows itself to be also the exposition
best-suited to the procedure by which analysis gradually penetrates
the object in question, departing from the non-essential or generic
18. ibid., p. 139.

128
aspects and going back to the fundamental or specific ones, from
effects to causes, and (in short) from the most superficial phenomena
to the real basis implicit in them.
It is clear that everything said at the beginning of Capital con
cerning commodities is valid for commodities in whatever historical
conditions they may appear. 'The wealth of societies in which the
capitalist method of production prevails, takes the form of "an
immense accumulation of commodities", wherein individual com
modities are the elementary units. Our investigation must therefore
begin with an analysis of the commodity.' 1 9 But since the commodity,
even when it is not the 'elementary unit' of bourgeois wealth, is
always made, qua commodity, in the same way (as a unity of use
value and value), the analysis given in Capital is also valid for the
commodity as it appears, e.g., in the Greek society of the Odyssey.
The same could be said for money. Furthermore, inasmuch as the
commodity appears in the logico-deductive process as the condition
for the genesis of money, and money as the condition for capital, it is
evident that that logical process itself is none other than the
synthetic-rational resume of the entire historical road that preceded
the birth of modern capital - starting from that moment, lost in the
darkness of time, in which the labour product first acquired the
'form of value' and so became a commodity. 'The circulation of
commodities is the starting-point of capital. Commodity production
and that highly developed form of commodity circulation which is
known as commerce constitute the historical premisses upon which it
rises. The modern history of capital begins in the sixteenth century
with the establishment of a worldwide commercial system and the
opening of a world market.' Similarly, 'from the historical outlook,
capital comes in the first instance to confront landed property in the
form of money; it appears as money property, merchants' (mer
cantile) capital and usurers' (moneylenders') capital'. Hence, even
if 'we have no need to look back into the origin of capital in order to
recognise that money is its first phenomenal form', because 'this
history is repeated daily under our own eyes' and because 'every
new aggregate of capital enters upon the stage, comes into the market
19 ibid., p. 3.

Kant, Hegel, and Marx I29

(the commodity market, the labour market, or the money market),
in the form of money', 2 0 it remains true that the logical deduction
from money . to capital represents the essence of the historical
movement which preceded the birth of modern capital. (In this
regard it may be noted en passant that our argument concerning
Marx's derivation from Hegel of the logico-deductive process is
also beginning to take shape, together with our argument concerning
the role played by this inheritance in the formulation of his thought
as historical thought.)
It is certainly true that the process by which, in analysing modern
capitalism, we depart from its most superficial and abstract aspects
and go back to its inward-most and essential ones, is at the same time
also a recapitulation of the historical premisses which preside over the
birth of modern capitalism; on the other hand, it is no less crucial
to grasp the differentiation of the two processes together with this
unity, and - in short - to hold fast more than ever to the idea that
deduction is not induction, nor the logical process the process of
reality itself. Once the foundations of modern production based on
capital have been laid, the cause of the entirety is to be sought, Marx
says, in the real premiss itself, i.e. in the present datum that is and
exists, and not in the historical premisses which by now no longer
exist and have disappeared. The cause, the foundation in reality, is,
in short, capital, and not the commodity or money, which appear
rather as its prerequisites from a logical point of view. The deduc
tive process which derives money from commodities and capital
from money, just because it sums up the history which preceded
the birth of modern capital, will enable us to explain (e.g.) the fact
that the money with which the first capitalist bought labour-power
could not itself have been the result of wage-labour, but had to have
as its prerequisite the simple production of commodities. However,
such logical premisses give us, in more precise terms, the 'ante
diluvian conditions of capital' ; they represent 'its historical pre
requisites (Voraussetzungen), which already as such are past, and
thus belong to the history of its development and not in any way to
20. ibid., p. 131 (translation modified).

130
its contemporary history, i.e. not to the real system of the mode of
production which it controls'. 21
Marx continues thus : 'The conditions and prerequisites of the
development, of the coming into being, of capital thus in fact imply
that it does not yet exist, but that it will ; thus they disappear as
capital becomes reality, as capital itself, proceeding from its reality,
establishes the conditions for its realisation.' These prerequisites,
'which were originally conditions of its formation - and thus could
not yet arise from its action as capital - now appear as the results of
its own realisation, its own reality, as established by it - not as the
condition of its coming into being, but as the result of its existence'.
Those who, contrariwise, mistake the logical process for the process
of reality, such as the 'bourgeois economists, who consider capital
to be an eternal, natural (and not historical) form of production, are
always seeking to justify it, in that they portray the conditions of its
formation as the conditions of its present realisation. They present
the conditions in which the capitalist (because he is still developing
into a capitalist) still has a non-capitalist mode of appropriation as the
very conditions of capitalist appropriation.'22
Let us turn aside from the main argument for a moment, and
look at some of its implications. The total lack of understanding of
this relationship between the logical process and the process of
reality - which is the crucial link that must be examined if one wants
to give a rigorous meaning to Marx's concept of history - enables us
to explain one of the most conspicuous 'oddities' which has charac
terized theoretical Marxism till now. That is, its tendency to
mistake the 'first in time' - i.e. that from which the logical process
departs as a recapitulation of the historical antecedents - with the
'first in reality' or the actual foundation of the analysis. The con
sequence has been that whereas Marx's logico-historical reflections
culminate in the formulation of the crucial problem of the contem
poraneity of history (or as Lukacs once aptly said, the 'present as
21. K. Marx, Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Oekonomie (Berlin, 1953), p. 363.
An English translation of this passage is to be found in Selections from the Grundrisse,
translated by David McLellan (London and New York, 1970), p. 106.
22. ibid., pp. 363-4- in Selections, op. cit., p. 107.

Kant, Hegel, and Marx IJI

history') traditional Marxism has always moved in the opposite
direction of a philosophy of history which derives its explanation of
the present from the 'beginning of time'. This enables us to under
stand two things : firstly, the indefatigable yearning for a universal
history which would take its starting-point in Epimenides's 'egg' and
come right down to the present day (perhaps with the aid of well
known 'general laws' ) - whence many pensive assertions that, for
there to be 'a theoretical substantiation of historical materialism', a
truly exhaustive justification of it, one must have, as Plekhanov
wrote, 'a brief manual on world history written from the materialist
viewpoint'23 (the wish was subsequently realized by Kautsky with
his Die materialistische Geschichtsauffassung). Secondly, it also helps
us to understand that thinly veiled note of presumption with which
Marxism has always judged Capital as an analysis of one particular,
historical phenomenon or as simply one 'example' of the application
of a 'general conception' whose justification, however, must remain
precarious and uncertain until steps are taken to 'found' it by
reconstructing the whole of history.
But the most significant documentary proof of this lack of under
standing is offered by writings in which Marxist authors undertook
to reconstruct Marx's line of argument in the first two parts of
Capital. In them one finds that what in Marx's work is a concise
recapitulation of logico-historical antecedents selected out as a
function of the present which is the premiss in reality to be explained
- becomes diluted into a (more or less colourful) narration or
description of mercantile relationships as such. In such descriptions,
since commodity and money are taken by themselves (rather than as
the most general and abstract form ofthe capitalist mode of produc
tion), the argument ends up not as the beginning of the analysis of
capital but as a digression upon an age with ill-defined limits in time,
when there may indeed have been commodities and money, but
there was not even a trace of capital. Typical in this sense (and all
the more so if one takes into account the incisive intelligence of the
author) is Luxemburg's Einfohrung in die Nationaljjkonomie - a
work full, moreover, of interesting insights. Or, to come to the
-

23. G. V. Plekhanov. Fundamental Problems of Marxism (New York, 1969), p. 86.

132
present day (and descending somewhat from past heights), the
second and third chapters of E. Mandel's Marxist Economic Theory
he too, of course, is a 'dialectical materialist' - with its pathetic
paragraphs on 'silent barter and ceremonial gifts' and all its irrelevant
padding about how in Papua, or among the Todas, the Karumbas,
and the Badogas exchange and money developed little by little
out
.
of barter.
It is no accident that the root of these errors lies in their mistaking
the logical process for the process of reality, or, in other words, in an
abstract dialectization of thefinite (of the concrete 0 bject in question).
Thus, the determinate relationships which constitute the object
itself - such as, e.g., the fact that commodity and money represent
the alternate modes of being of capital, which, in investments, passes
from the money form to the commodity form (means of labour, raw
materials, labour-power) and then back again through the realization
of the value produced, from the commodity form to that of money
these determinate relationships are then all turned and dissolved
into abstract rational relationships. Consequently the categories (in
this case, the commodity, money, and capital), rather than being
grasped in the relations and meaning they have within modern
bourgeois society, are instead conceived in accordance with the place
and meaning which they have in the succession of the various forms
oJsodety in other words, according to that succession which is more
or less recapitulated in the logico-deductive movement of the
'succession "in the Idea" '. 2 4
This accounts for two profoundly different ways of seeing things.
On the one hand, there is the thesis of the Anti-Duhring that
'political economy, . . . as the science of the conditions and forms
under which the various human societies have produced and
exchanged and on this basis have distributed their products political economy in this wider sense has still to be brought into
being' ; with the corollary observation that 'such economic science
as we have up to the present is almost exclusively limited to the
genesis and development of the capitalist mode of production'. 2 5
-

24. Marx, Introduction to the Critique ofPolitical Economy, op. cit., p. 304 (translation
25. Engels, Antj-Diihrjng, op . cit., p. 166.
modified).

Kant, Hegel, and Marx I33

On the other hand, there is Marx's thesis, which caps his argument
concerning the transformation of the 'historical premises' from
conditions for the rise of capital into consequences of its existence.
Here he not only states that 'therefore it is not necessary, in order to
analyse the laws of the bourgeois economy, to write the actual
history of production relationships' ; but he also adds that it is the
'deduction of them as historically developed relationships' which
'always leads us to draw comparisons (Gleichungen) based on the
past history of this system ; and that it is precisely 'these allusions'
or comparisons which, 'together with a correct grasp of the present
day, . . . also offer a key to the understanding of the past'. 26
Returning now to the main argument, let us conclude with a
restatement which takes the argument back to its epistemological
foundations. With an extreme effort of conciseness, one could
reduce the entire question of the relation between deduction and
induction, logical process and process of reality, to a single two
fold statement of Marx's : that 'every capital is a sum of commodities,
i.e., of exchange values, and, on the other hand, that 'not . . . every
sum of commodities, of exchange values, is capital'. 2 7 To paraphrase
Kant, this means simply that : (a) whatever agrees in general with a
concept - in this case, the commodity or exchange-value - also
agrees with every particular which is contained under that concept in this case, capital ; (b) that, nonetheless, it is 'absurd to alter this
logical principle so as to read : - what is not contained in a universal
concept is also not included in the particular concepts which stand
under it. For these are particular concepts just because they include
in themselves more than is thought in the universal' ; whence the
error of those for whom 'nothing is allowed to the thing beyond what
is contained in its concept'. 28
If we have understood it correctly, this means three things. First,
that the deduction, commodity-money-capital, is indispensable for
understanding capital, in that capital also is a commodity. Second,
that the deductive passage from the abstract to the concrete, which is
26. Marx, Grundrisse, op. cit., pp. 366-7. In Selections, op. cit., pp. 109-10.
27. Marx, Wage-Labour and Capital (New York, 1933), p. 29.
28. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (Kemp Smith translation), op. cit., p. 289.

134
carried out 'in the course of thinking', always remains itself within
the abstract, such that the concrete or the particular is only a
particularization of the universal, and not something heterogeneous
in relation to that universal (and, in point of fact, that passage tells
us that capital also is a commodity, but not what it is that makes any
given commodity into capital). Hence the inevitable tautology which
is the fate of whoever asserts the validity of the deductive process
alone, and hence the forced, surreptitious recourse to experience
which they are constrained to make in order to obtain that 'some
thing more' which is indispensable if one wants to break out of the
tautology - the something (experience) which thought alone can
never succeed in giving us. Third, that the actual passage from the
abstract to the concrete is not a passage 'within the abstract', but
goes from the latter to the concrete of reality (or is the conversion of
deduction into induction) ; so that here one is dealing not with the
relationship 'thought-being' within thought, but rather with the
relationship between thought and reality. Once again one confronts
the need to consider thought not only as the 'totality' of the relation
ship but also as 'one of two'.
All this means that deduction or reason - with their demonstration
that capital too is a commodity - give us that element indispensable
to historical analysis which is the continuity of the present with
regard to the past. The other point of view - no less indispensable to
historical analysis - while considering history as a continuity of
events, also sees events as always discontinuous among themselves ;
for this point of view the present has meaning precisely to the
degree that it is not reducible to the past. And this viewpoint can
only be furnished by the domain of matter, which supplies the
'something more' whereby a sum of commodities or exchange
values becomes capital.
Hence there is both continuity and differentiation. There is, for
example, inclusion of the particular present to thought, so that the
particular fact which is modern capital is connected to the logical
recapitulation of its historical antecedents and becomes a differentia
tion within the concept of commodities (Hegel would say : 'the
negative of the negative', the finite as a moment within the infinite).

Kant, Hegel, and Marx 135

On the other hand, there is also differentiation in reality, for the
particular fact, far from being reduced to a moment of the logical
universal, affirms itself in its heterogeneous nature as a thing going
beyond the universal, and therefore as the exclusion of all the pre
ceding moments summarized in thought. The basis for this is
precisely that principle of the non-contradiction of matter which is
articulated in Marx's profound remark that, whenever there exist the
historical prerequisites and premisses for capital, the latter does not
yet exist, and that, contrariwise, whenever capital exists, those
historical premisses must have disappeared.
The ultimate sense of this argument is that the principle of reason
or dialectical contradiction is insufficient not only in scientific
knowledge but also in historical knowledge - and, moreover, is so
in the latter precisely because it is itself a form of scientific know
ledge. Hence another principle, that of material identity or non
contradiction, is also necessary. In short, it is a question, in Marx's
words, of a 'dialectic whose limits are to be determined and which
does not sublate concrete differences', 2 9 those differences which are
given to us precisely from consideration of the particular, not just as
a moment within the universal, but also as the exclusion of everything
that it (the particular) is not.
It is true, then, that the commodity and money, which at first
were the prerequisites for the rise of capital, reappear later within
capital itself, so that the latter is not an unarticulated identity, but
rather a complex or multi-dimensional object. Except that, between
the initial phase and the later phase, i.e. between the commodity and
money as prerequisites for the birth of capital and as the consequences
of its existence (consequences posited by capital itself), there is a
fundamental difference, which was extremely important in the
difficult elaboration of the theory of value - not as a theory that is
valid for the 'primitive and crude state' discussed by Smith, but as a
theory valid for the particular conditions of modern capitalist
development. This is the difference that exists between simple
mercantile production and the capitalist production of commodities.
29. Marx, Introduction to the Critique ofPolitical Economy, op. cit., p. 309 (translation
modified).

I36
The former is a secondary and subordinate branch of production for
direct consumption (and in which the appropriation on the part of
the non-producers is not mediated by exchange and the market : the
levy on grain for the feudal lord, the grain of the tithe for the priest,
the direct appropriation of the product on the part of the slave
owner). The capitalist mode of production, on the other hand, is
characterized by the elimination of everything previously dominant,
and by the fact that what was once marginal and secondary has now
established itself as the basic element. Thus, value, by becoming the
'overbearing subject' of the entire productive process, is no longer
commodity value or money value, but surplus value, i.e. capital ;
and 'presents itself as a substance endowed with independent motion
of its own, a substance of which commodities and money are them
selves merely forms', such that 'instead of representing relations of
commodities, it enters, so to say, into a private relation to itself' ; and
'it differentiates itself as primary value (investment) from itself as
surplus value, much as God the Father distinguishes himself from
himself as God the Son; yet both, in fact, form only one person ;
. . . as soon as the Son, and by the Son the Father, is begotten, the
difference between the two vanishes, and both become one. . . '.3 0
If, therefore, one does not wish to repeat the error of those
economists who confuse the historical premisses of capital with its
present conditions of existence, or (what is the same thing) confuse
simple mercantile production with capitalist production, one must
clearly grasp three things. First, that the difference between these
two modes of production has its basis in that principle of the identity
of matter which enables the particular (in this case, the capitalist
mode of production) to win out to the exclusion of its opposite, the
universal, in which everything that it (the particular) is not, is
recapitulated ; in a way, then, which is diametrically opposed to the
dialectic of matter or 'dialectical materialism', for which the particu
lar or the finite must have as its essence the 'other', i.e. the infinite
or the negative. Second, that precisely this principle of the exclusion
of the opposite (the principle of non-contradiction), nonetheless has
30. Marx Capital (Eden and Cedar Paul translation), op. cit., p. 140 (translation
modified).

Kant, Hegel, and Marx I3l

need of the principle of dialectical contradiction in order to be able to
fully realize itself; for, in order to be able to gauge the difference of
one thing from other things, it is necessary to compare them with
one another (cf. Marx's remark that it is precisely these comparisons
which, 'together with a correct grasp of the present day, . . . also
offer a key to the understanding of the past'). Third and finally,
that the real oppositions or contradictions found within the concrete
datum qua multi-dimensional object (such as, e.g., the contradiction
which arises with labour-power in the passage of capital from
the money form to the commodity form, or the contradiction of the
conversion crises associated with the reconversion of capital from the
commodity form into the money form) are all contradictions which
constitute the object itself - i.e., contradictions in reality, and for
that very reason particular or historically determinate ones. In short,
they are contradictions which, precisely in so far as they establish the
specificity of the capitalist mode of production in relation to all other
socio-economic formations, contribute to defining its (capitalism's)
identity, and thus turn out to be irreducible to the terms of a simple
rational contradiction. 31
3 1 . Marx's entire critique of the method of political economy hinges on this theme of
the irreducibility of opposition in reality to logical opposition; that is, the impossibility
of taking up the unity of opposites or their inclusion within reason apart from the
exclusion of opposites or their antithesis in reality. The argument is developed particu
larly in this examination of the ways in which political economy attempts to deny crises.
We give below some of the most significant passages. 'Where the economic relation and therefore also the categories expressing it - includes contradictions, opposites, and
likewise the unity of the opposites, he [James Mill] emphasizes the aspect of the unity of
the contradictions and denies the contradictions. He transforms the unity of opposites
into the direct identity of opposites. For example, a commodity conceals the contradic
tion of use-value and exchange-value. This contradiction develops further, presents
itself and manifests itself in the duplication of the commodity into commodity and
money. This duplication appears as a process in the metamorphosis of commodities in
which selling and buying are different aspects of a single process and each act of this
process simultaneously includes its opposite. In the first part of this work, I mentioned
that Mill disposes of the contradiction by concentrating only on the unity of buying and
selling; consequently he transforms circulation into barter, then, however, smuggles
categories borrowed from circulation into his description of barter' (Theories of Surplus
Value, Part III, London, 1972, p. 88). And again on p. 101 of Part III, op. cit. : 'The logic
is always the same. If a relationship includes opposites, it comprises not only opposites
but also the unity of opposites. It is therefore a unity without opposites. This is Mill's

I38
logic, by which he eliminates the "contradictions".' And in Part II of Theories ofSurplus
Value there is this rather significant passage : 'Thus the apologetics consist in the falsifi
cation of the simplest economic relations, and particularly in clinging to the concept of
unity in the face of contradiction. If, for example, purchase and sale - or the meta
morphosis of commodities - represent the unity of two processes, or rather the move
ment of one process through two oppositl! phases, and thus essentially the unity of the
two phases, the movement is essentially just as much the separation of these two phases
and their becoming independent of each other. Since, however, they belong together,
the independence of the two correlated aspects can only show itselfforcibly, as a destruc
tive process. It is just the crisis in which they assert their unity, the unity of the different
aspects. The independence which these two linked and complimentary phases assume in
relation to each other is forcibly destroyed. Thus the crisis manifests the unity of the
two phases that have become independent of each other. There would be no crisis without
this inner unity of factors that are apparently indifferent to each other. But no, says the
apologetic economist. Because there is this unity, there can be no crises. Which in turn
means nothing but that the unity of contradictory factors excludes contradiction. In
order to prove that capitalist production cannot lead to general crises, all its conditions
and distinct forms, all its principles and specific features - in short capitalist production
itself - are denied. In fact it is demonstrated that if the capitalist mode of production
had not developed in a specific way and become a unique form of social production, but
were a mode of production dating back to the most rudimentary stages, then its peculiar
contradictions and conflicts and hence also their eruption in crises would not exist.'
(pp. 500-01) or again on p. 5 1 9 : 'The apologetic phrases used to deny crises are important
in so far as they always prove the opposite of what they are meant to prove. In order
to deny crises they assert unity where there is conflict and contradiction.' And one last
citation from the Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Oekonomie, p. 161 : 'For example,
the relationship between capital and interest is reduced to the exchange of exchange
values. Once it has been learned from empirical reality that exchange-values exist not
only in this simple determinacy, but also in an essentially different one, as capital, the lat
ter is again reduced to the simple concept of exchange-value ; and interest, which now
expresses a determinate relationship of capital as such, is also wrenched from its deter
minacy and equated with exchange-value, abstracted from the entire relationship in its
specific determinacy and carried back to the undeveloped relationship of the exchange
of one commodity for another. To the extent that I abstract from what differentiates a
concrete datum jrom its abstraction, the former is naturally that abstraction and does not at
all differentiate itselffrom it.' (Colletti's emphasis.)

IX.

Hegel and

Jacohi

The importance of this theory of Marx's of the twofold nature of

abstraction (as being at once a form, a generality, and, realiter, a
particularity of the concrete object in question) cannot be fully
appreciated (just as the element which it undeniably derived from
Kant cannot be appreciated) until the argument has been expanded.
It must be broadened to include - however briefly - that essential
moment of the history of modern and contemporary irrationalism
which is represented by the struggle to bring about the destruction of
the intellect. This struggle, which is certainly not lacking in opaque
and obscurantist aspects, is still under way today (not without the
complicity of 'dialectical materialism' itself, as we shall see). It is not
to be confused in any way with the destruction described in Lukacs's
famous Die Zerstorung der Vernunft ('The Destruction of Reason') ;
for the 'reason' adopted as the standard in his work is not the
Enlightenment's raison but, on the contrary, Hegel's 'dialectical
reason' ; and thus 'reason' itself turns out to be contaminated by
mystical elements. In Hegel's own words, in theZusatz to subheading
82 of the Encyclopedia : ' . . . There is mystery in the mystical, only
however for the understanding which is ruled by the principle of
abstract identity ; whereas the mystical, as synonymous with the
speculative, is the concrete unity of those propositions, which
understanding only accepts in their separation and opposition.' He
concludes that thus, 'the reason-world may be equally styled
mystical, - not however because thought cannot both reach and
comprehend it, but merely because it lies beyond the compass of
understanding' . 1
Now, in this as yet unwritten history of the 'destruction of the
intellect', one insight of great interest is offered us by Jacobi's
critique of Kant; that Jacobi whom (as we have seen) Hegel held in
I. En.L., p. 154.

I4 0
such high esteem and so often referred to - despite constant criti
cisms of him (criticisms harsher, moreover, in the early Glauben
und Wissen than in his mature works). Hegel even placed him before
Kant, as Croce correctly points out: 'In the preliminary remarks to
the Logic of his Encyclopedia, when he indicated the progressive
ordering of the "three positions of thought with regard to their objec
tive truth", [Hegel] placed Jacobi's theory of immediate knowledge
third and highest.' 2
The principal argument made by Jacobi's philosophy is, once
again, the critique of the 'intellect'. In his first phase, i.e. the phase
in which Ober die Lehre des Spinoza ( 1785) and the discourse on
Idealismus und Realismus (1787) were written, the 'intellect' is
identified with all of thought ; whereas later, as in Von den gottlichen
Dingen (181 1) or in the long Introduction of 1 8 1 5 to the publication
of his works, Jacobi explicitly distinguishes 'intellect' from 'reason'. 3
Now, this line of argument immediately shows an important point
of contact with Hegel. Thought, Jacobi says (the difference from
Hegel is that at this point Jacobi still does not distinguish 'intellec
tual' from 'rational' thought), is always a knowledge of thefinite. To
think, to understand, to explain is scire per causas, i.e. to adduce the
conditions for something to exist, the cause and foundation from
which the thing itself derives. But that means, Jacobi says, that 'in
so far as we think in conceptual terms, we remain within a chain of
conditioned conditions', in which everything appears to us 'as a conse
quence of mechanical connexions, i.e. as merely something which is
mediated', and, in short, as something which is dependent on and
the effect of something else (remember Hegel's definition of
'mediation' as a process of arriving at something by starting from
another). 'Everything that reason can produce through analysing,
making connexions, judging, reasoning, and reflexive knowing are
mere things of nature, and human reason itself, as a limited essence,
also belongs to these things. But all of nature, the whole of deter2. Benedetto Croce, Considerazioni sulla jilosojia del Jacobi, in 'La Critica', Vol.
XXXIX (Naples, 1941), pp. 320-L
3. F. H. Jacobi, ldealismo e Realismo, edited by Norberto Bobbio (Turin, 1948),
pp. 10 and 159 (for the original ofthis and all other Jacobi quotes, see his Werke, 5 vols,
Leipzig, 1812-20).

Hegel and Jacobi

I4I

minate beings, cannot manifest to the inquiring understanding

more than what is contained in nature, i.e. manifold existence,
changes, a play of forms - never a real beginning, never a real start of
some objective existence.'4
Now, Jacobi says, this mediated nature of our logico-intellectual
knowledge, characterized by the principle of causality, accounts for
the fact that not only can thought not conceive of 'the concept of an
absolute beginning or origin of nature' - the concept of the uncondi
tional - but also for the fact that whenever it attempts to conceive
of this, it cannot help but undermine its own meaning. For, 'if a
concept of this unconditional and unlinked - and therefore of the
extra-natural - becomes possible, it too must be subjected to certain
conditions'. This accounts, Jacobi continues, for 'the irrationality of
the claim to a proof for the existence of God'. Because no sooner do
our understanding and will ('for both of them are enmeshed in
co-existence, i.e. in dependency and finitude') venture to deal with
the 'first cause' than they change it from first to second - proof of the
deep-seated contradictoriness of the old metaphysics, which never
realized that, in its claim to prove God by logical means, 'the natural
had been posited as the basis of the supranatural, and nonetheless
the former had to be conceived as inferior to the latter'. And
Jacobi concludes thus : 'Since everything that lies outside the chain
of the causally conditioned and of that which is mediated as a natural
fact, is also outside the sphere of our clear knowledge and cannot be
understood through concepts ; the supranatural cannot be acknow
ledged by us in any way other than as it is given to us, i.e. as fact
IT IS.'5
The argument, as one can see, carried us back - and indeed it
is one of its sources - to Hegel's critique of precritical metaphysics
-

4. F. H. Jacobi, Lettere sulla dottrina di Spinoza, in op. cit., pp. 224, 226 and 222.
5. ibid., pp. 224, 225 and 227. Cf. also Idealismo e Realismo, p. 246 : 'Whenever one
has to give the proof of something, it is always necessary to have an argument on which
to base the proof. This argument encompasses the thing to be proven as something
subordinate to itself, such that the thing's truth and certitude derive therefrom, and
such that it receives its own reality from the argument . . . Similarly, if we had to prove
the existence of a living God, it would be necessary that God could be explained, deduced,
and unravelled from His beginning, from something which we could grasp as His
foundation and which would be antecedent and external to Him.'

I4 2
(in particular, Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz). The principle of
that philosophy was idealism, i.e. the proposition that the sense
world is nothingness and dross. The content of that metaphysics
was the absolute, i.e. the proposition that God and God alone is the
truth. Nevertheless, the method of 'intellectual demonstration' used
by that philosophy forced it to contradict itself in spite of itself. In
the passage from the world to God, God - who had been declared
the creator and therefore primus - became secundus; whereas the
world, which had been declared non-being and ephemerality,
became the 'fixed being' which is the foundation of things.
Hegel's reference to Jacobi on this point is unequivocal. In a very
important page of Volume II of the Science of Logic (cited above)
Hegel distinguishes between the attack waged on the old meta
physics by Kant with regard to its contents (i.e. criticizing its claim
to have removed the suprasensible and the absolute - God, the
soul, etc. - from the empirical object) and that waged by Jacobi,
who 'has attacked it chiefly on the side of its method of demonstra
tion, and has signalized most clearly and most profoundly the essen
tial point, namely, that a method of demonstration such as this is
fast bound within the circle of the rigid necessity of the finite, and
that freedom, that is the Notion, and with it everything that is true,
lies beyond it and is unattainable by it'. 6
The high esteem for this fundamental theme of Jacobi's thought
reappears in the paragraphs of the Encyclopedia devoted to him.
Hegel writes thus, explaining his thought : 'To comprehend an
object . . . can only mean . . . to grasp it under the form of something
conditioned and mediated. Consequently, if the object in question be
the True, the Infinite, the Unconditioned, it is changed into a
finite and conditioned ; whereby, instead of apprehending the truth
by thought, we have inverted it into untruth.'7
Hegel's critical reservations are never lacking, of course. Even in
this paragraph which concludes by approving Jacobi's polemic
against science and materialism, one glimpses the basic cause of
disagreement. Jacobi's critique is effective against the 'intellect' ;
but it is wrong about 'reason'. Jacobi's concepts of intuition, faith
6. L., p. 816.

7.

En.L., pp. 121-2 (translation modified).

Hegel and Jacobi I43

and 'immediate knowledge' contain major equivocations. Sometimes
that intuition shows traces of a subjectivist sensationalism, while at
other times - as when 'intuition and belief . . . are taken in a higher
sense, (as) belief in God' - intuition is none other than 'intellectual
intuition' and, therefore, thought itself. 8 Here too there are still
some of the sarcastic remarks about Jacobi's 'wild vagaries of
imagination and assertion', which abound in Hegel's early writing ;
just as there is not lacking the grave warning that 'philosophy does
not permit mere assertion, nor flights of the imagination, nor fanciful
somersaults of ratiocination'. 9 The expression 'Faith', Hegel
observes, 'brings with it the special advantage of suggesting the
faith of the Christian religion . . . '. However, 'we must not let our
selves be deceived by appearances . . . . The Christian faith comprises
in it an authority of the Church : but the faith of Jacobi's philosophy
has no other authority than that of one's own subjective revelation.'lO
For 'immediate knowledge', 'all superstition or idolatry' can very
well be 'allowed to be truth' : 'It is because he believes in them, and
not from the reasoning and syllogism of what is termed mediate
knowledge, that the Hindoo finds God in the cow, the monkey, the
Brahmin, or the Lama.' 1 1
Nevertheless, admitting all this, Croce was still correct when basing himself on Hegel's 1 8 1 7 review of the third volume of
Jacobi's Werke, as well as on these paragraphs from the Encyclo
pedia - he pointed out that Hegel, after his earlier 'lively critique' of
Jacobi, 'made amends in the maturity of his genius for that initial
judgment, and assigned him a very high place in the formation of
philosophic logic'. He also stressed that 'Hegel praised and approved
of Jacobi for having pointed out, with all possible forcefulness and
resoluteness, the capital importance of the immediacy of divine
knowledge, that He is a living God, Spirit and eternal love, and that,
by differentiating Himself within Himself, He is knowledge of
Himself' . 12 The two were allied in some academic controversies,
while Jacobi's clarification of his own philosophy - his incorporation
8. ibid., p. 124.
9. ibid., p. 141 (translation modified).
I I . ibid., p. 136.

10. ibid., p. 125 (translation modified).

12. Croce, art. cit., p. 320.

144

of the distinction between 'intellective' (Verstands-) thought and

'rational' thought (e.g.) and his final recognition that his 'intuition'
or faith was nothing other than 'speculative reason' itself - also
contributed to the change in Hegel's attitude. The latter arrived, in
fact, at a fuller understanding of the real nature of Jacobi's philo
sophy.
Without fear of exaggeration, one can say that one of the best
proofs of how Hegel still remains malgre tout the greatest historian
of philosophy is offered precisely by the extraordinary acuity with
which he grasped the place of Jacobi's philosophy in the history of
thought. Just think : Jacobi, as a critic of Spinoza ! One of the first
remarks on Jacobi in the Encyclopedia is that the arguments of his
polemic against the 'intellect' were 'borrowed from the philosophy
of Spinoza himself'. And as for Jacobi's 'realism' ( 1) that realism that
has so often given rise to ill-founded remarks about his supposed
materialism (such as those who say : if you want materialism, you
have to refer back to Jacobi and not to Kant !) - here too Hegel
shows an admirable incisiveness. 'This immediate knowledge', he
writes, 'consists in knowing that the Infinite, the Eternal, the God
which exists in our representation (Vorstellung), really is; or, that in
our consciousness there is immediately and inseparably bound up
with this representation the certainty of its actual being.' 1 3 Or again :
Jacobi's 'intuition', which has so often served to represent material
ism as an act of faith ! Hegel's reply here is that this intuition, this
'immediate knowledge' (an ecstasis towards the on-high and not
downwards to the baseness of matter) is the very intuition with
which modern idealism begins : the immediate identity of thought
and being, the Cogito ergo sum of Descartes - 'the founder of modern
philosophy', on whose proposition 'may be said to hinge the whole
interest of Modern Philosophy'. Hegel adds immedately thereafter
with delightful irony that, in fact, 'one need know little more about
the nature of syllogism than that in a syllogism the word Ergo
appears, in order to regard that proposition as a syllogism. But where
is the medius terminus supposed to be ? It is more essential to the
nature of syllogism than the word Ergo. If, however, one attempts to
13. En.L., p. 126 (translation modified).

Hegel and Jacobi 14S

justify the use of the term by calling that connexion established by
Descartes an immediate (unmittelbar) syllogism, then this superfluous
form of syllogism is nothing but a connexion of different determina
tions, mediated by nothing. But then the connexion of being with our
representations, as expressed in the maxim of immediate knowledge,
is neither more nor less than a syllogism.'14
It could not be better stated. At the basis of modern idealism lies
'immediate knowledge', innatism, or the presupposition of the idea not the syllogism, which would be a form of reasoning, but rather
an 'intellectual' intuition, or in simple terms, faith. Hegel's merit is
that he was at least aware of thisY
Hegel is not deceived as to the real stature of Jacobi : he is a
second-rank thinker (in comparison with Descartes's expressions,
'so vivid and distinct', concerning the 'inseparability of the thinking
ego from being', 'the modern statements ofJacobi and others . . . can
only pass for needless repetitions'). 16 But he correctly grasps the true
meaning of Jacobi's philosophy : the revival - so important in his
eyes - of the very 'principle' of classical metaphysics (the identity of
thought and being), as against and after the philosophy of Kant.
Whatever may be the enormous differences separating Hegel
from Jacobi, it is beyond doubt that - at least in the critico-negative
part of their thought and especially in the critique of Kant, of
materialism, of the 'scientific understanding' and the principle of
causality - there exists in their arguments a broad area of conver
gence.
In the Critique ofPure Reason, Jacobi says, 'the intellect, although
it is termed the second source of knowledge, is not in actual fact
such a source, for objects are not posited, but only thought by it'Y
'Without the data of either pure or empirical intuition, the under
standing . . . cannot develop itself, nor attain an actual existence.
Thus it is conditioned by the sense-world ; and, in the mode of
thought that is characteristic of it, the intellect relates to it (the
14. ibid., p. 127 (translation modified).
IS. cr. G. w. F. Hegel, Dijferenz des Pichteschen und Schellingschen Systems, op. cit.,
pp. 67-8 : 'Similarly, transcendental knowledge and transcendental intuition are one and
the same.'
16. ibid., p. 128.
17. Jacobi, Idealismo e Realismo, op. cit., p. 19.

I4 6
sense-world) in everything and for everything as a means.' 18 Not
only this, but since 'the intellect cannot find in nature what is not
there, i.e. its creator', it ends by 'formulating the thesis that nature
exists on its own, self-sufficient. . . , and one concludes that nature
alone exists and that outside and above it nothing exists' .19
The consequence, Jacobi continues, is a radical 'reversal'.
Intellect and science represent a view of reality which is the opposite
of that proffered by philosophy. 'Proceeding from sensory intuition'
and 'developing itself primarily within it', the intellect cannot take
as a premiss for this intuition the Notion of the true as it is formu
lated by reason', i.e. the Notion of the unconditional. On the con
trary, 'the understanding poses the question of the substratum of
this Notion - without which there is no way of verifying its (the
Notion's) reality -, and searches for it on the level of phenomena, in
which it believes that it is able to find the being-in-itself of all beings
and their manifold properties'. 2 0 The consequence is that, in Kant's
philosophy, 'objective validity' is denied 'to the idea of the un
conditional', according it only 'a merely subjective validity', such
that 'there takes place in man's cognitive faculty a total reversal as a
result of this contrived transformation of the unconditional from a
real being into a merely ideal one ; reason is degraded to the level of
mere understanding, and the philosophy of absolute nothingness has
its beginning'. 21
Here, as the reader himself can see, the link with Hegel becomes
very evident. Straining at the very limits of his own intuitionist
philosophy, Jacobi comes to the point of formulating his argument
on the process of development 'according to nature' and the process
of development 'according to the Notion'. Kant's mistake was to
have made the Notion, which should have been the unconditional,
something secondary and dependent. With him, the finite is and the
infinite is not: 'The revelation of nothingness is placed on the side of
God and of the suprasensible or supranatural ; truth and reality,
contrariwise, on the side of that which can be apprehended with the
senses, on the side of nature, which alone unfolds itself objectively.'
18.Cibid., p. zo.
zo.ibid., p. 57.

19. ibid., p. 66.

ibid., p. z69.

ZI.

Hegel and Jacobi 147

In other words, Kant's error was to have sustained the process of
'
development 'according to nature' ; whereas, Jacobi argues, 'if one
wants to leave ven a single way open for giving an objective meaning
to the ideas of pure notions of reason, one must above all deny
objective meaning to the initial notions of the understanding (i.e. the
categories), deny the reality of nature and its laws, and deny to the
'intellect the property of being in some way a faculty suited for
knowing the true'. In the Critique, however, Kant 'counterposes the
interest of science (or of the intellect) to that of reason, Epicureanism
to Platonism, and presents himself as a representative of science, of
Epicureanism against Platonism, of naturalism against theism'. 22
The project for the 'destruction of the intellect' - the Annihilation
des Verstandes which Hegel too discusses in Glauben und Wissen 2 3
is here laid down very resolutely. In order to give 'an objective
meaning to the ideas and pure Notions of reason' (the 'objectivism'
so ardently championed against Kant by 'dialectical materialism' as
well, that objectivism in the name of which Lukacs did not fear to
appeal even to Schelling) 'one must deny objective meaning to the
intellect and, therefore, one must deny the reality of nature and its
laws'.
Destruction of nature and, together with it, destruction of the
intellect and of science, this is Jacobi's project. And one can well
understand why, in spite of his reservations, Hegel should not
disapprove of it. As Jacobi writes : 'The understanding and reason
act like the flesh and the spirit, which, according to Paul's saying,
oppose one another because they desire different things. And just as
the flesh is the manifest element, . . . and the spirit is the concealed
element', so we tend to think, blinded as we are by external ap
pearances, that 'the faculty of our mediated knowledge is superior
to that of immediate knowledge, conditioned knowledge superior to
unconditional, the faint echo to the vibrant voice which announces
the spirit, the intellect to reason.'24 Whereas in fact science is only
an 'echo of an echo',25 illusory knowledge, an empty play-thing.
-

22. ibid., pp. 250, 247 and 249.

23. G. w. F. Hegel, Glauben und Wissen, op. cit., p. 334.
25. Ioc cit.
24. Jacobi, op. cit., p. 267.

I 48
'Our sciences, taken simply as such, are toys which the human
spirit has made for itself as a diversion. By making these toys, it has
organized its own ignorance without even coming a hair's breadth
closer to knowledge of the true. '26
Jacobi's conception of the world is not only - and it takes little
effort to grasp this - a religious conception of the world, but also (as
often happens) one in which frankly superstitious elements weigh
quite heavily. And nonetheless, despite this (or perhaps precisely
because of this) Jacobi's place in the history of thought is a signifi
cant one. Not only on account of his resolute and ferocious polemic
against science and the principle of causality, which made him the
archetypal representative of an all too flourishing family tree ; but
also (and above all) as the consequence of an argument - not
'discovered' by him, but perhaps first given full expressive force by
him - which he added onto that polemic. The argument, that is,
that science is the abstract and philosophy the concrete; every
naturalistic conception is abstract, while spiritualism is concrete.
The theme is already familiar to us. We came across it while
analysing the thesis which lies at the centre of Hegel's entire thought :
i.e., the thesis that the finite is ideal and the infinite real; abstract
the knowledge of the 'part', concrete the knowledge of the 'totality'.
Nevertheless, whereas Hegel continues in spite of this to term his
own philosophy 'idealism', with Jacobi the idea receives a con
siderably more radical formulation. This formulation derives
directly from the accusation of abstractness directed at 'finite
knowledge', qua knowledge of the particular, and from the counter
posing of 'rational' or infinite knowledge as the only concrete form of
knowledge. It consists in a turning upside-down of the meaning of
the terms idealism and realism ; whereby what, by traditional usage,
would be called naturalism or materialism, is instead termed
'idealism' ; and, vice versa, what would usually be called idealism or
spiritualism is termed 'realism'.
Idealism is science, causal determinism, naturalism, or what
Jacobi calls generically 'Spinozism' ; because, as it never leaves the
'closed circle of the conditioned', logico-intellectual knowledge can
26. ibid., pp. 183-4.

Hegel and Jacobi I49

only put us in the presence of the world of nature and its laws - a
'manifest' world, like the flesh, but 'in truth' unreal like a dream.
Realism, on the other hand, is mystical feeling, the immediate
'certainty' which lies in the spirit, the faith in the existence of God
that bursts forth from consciousness. As Croce writes : 'In the
various and contradictory Spinozist philosophers Jacobi perceived
"idealism", as he called it, in the original meaning of this word in
polemical usage : to consider as truth or as the sole truth accessible to
man, the abstractions of the physico-mathematical sciences and of
the causalist and determinist metaphysics modelled after them ; and
claiming to be a realist and only a realist, he remained on guard
against any encroachment of the intellect or any recourse to it.'27
Science, therefore, is nothingness because it implies abstraction,
and abstraction implies a honing down, almost a rarefaction of
being. Science is nothingness because it reveals to us an accidental,
contingent, and phenomenal world (and here, of course, Jacobi
attempts to make capital from Kant's phenomenalism). The full and
true reality, however, is what is presented to us by 'faith' or the
'unmediated authority of reason', whose knowledge - being 'a form
of knowledge that has no need of proofs, an original, superior
knowledge which does not depend on particular characteristics'28 escapes verification and the process of selection which is carried out
by thought. 'Reason is the consciousness of the spirit. But the spirit
can only be in so far as it derives directly from God. Thus to possess
reason and to have consciousness of God are one and the same thing,
just as it is one and the same thing not to have consciousness of God
and to be an unreasoning blute.'29
Once again : 'because the finite is not, for this reason the absolute
is' ; 'the non-being of the finite is the being of the absolute'. Once
account has been taken of all the very real differences between
Hegel and Jacobi, there remains something in common. The
philosophy which begins without (external) presuppositions begins,
in actual fact, by presupposing itself; i.e., it begins by taking up the
Idea as something that is 'already' given, knowledge as something
preconstituted 'from the beginning of time', the Logos as a fact.
27. Croce, art. cit., p. 323.

28. Jacobi, op. cit., p. 246.

29. ibid., p. 262.

150
Jacobi of course also refers to 'a form of knowledge that has no need
of proofs', to 'an original, superior knowledge which does not
depend on particular characteristics', and wherein the Notion is not
conditioned by a finite that is its substratum ; he says that 'the supra
natural cannot be acknowledged by us in any way other than as it is
given to us, i.e. as fact - IT IS'. This Jacobi is certainly not to be
confused with Hegel ; nonetheless, he has in common with him the
identity of thought and being.
He has in common this identity and (consequently) in common
also the aversion for 'causal explanation', the famous Erkliiren (see
the second chapter of the third section of Volume II of the Logic ;
this same Erkliiren, it should be noted, will later be the object of the
attack launched by the irrationalist polemic of Dilthey and Rickert).
Here what one can and must acknowledge is a single fact : the
point is not that there exists common ground, at least in a critical
negative sense, between Hegel's idealism and the mystical spiritual
ism of Jacobi, but that with the course of time all of the major
reservations which idealism - following Hegel - has maintained in
regard to Jacobi's intuitionism have been little by little lessened and
diminished. So that idealism and spiritualism, united in the 'fatal
embrace' of their common opposition to materialism and science,
have seen the barrier separating them gradually diminish and the
difference between one and the other grow more and more blurred.
Croce writes of Kant that he 'never ventured to declare the science
of the intellect non-science or non-truth, and the science of reason
the only true science and philosophy, but regarded the former one
as the sole, true science, the only one that is given to man'. - Then
this same Croce not only finds that Jacobi 'was more radical and
better inspired in that regard' ; he goes on to justify Jacobi's mysti
cism as a salutary reaction 'to the philosophic ideal of his time, i.e.
materialism, naturalism, determinism, intellectualism, and logicism,
which elevated the exact science of nature into a metaphysics and
introduced this metaphysics into the area of philosophic truths' (as
if the German Enlightenment had consisted of so many Lamettries).
He not only presents in a sympathetic light 'his (Jacobi's) critique of
the philosophizing done with the causal and determinist method of

Hegel and Jacobi

ISI

the physico-mathematical science of nature', agreeing with him that

'the principle of causality does not transcend nature, the realm of the
finite and that as a result we are coming moreover to realize that
such a realm does not exist' ; he goes on to conclude by outrightly
espousing Jacobi's cause, and even turns against Hegel himself in
the name of Jacobi. Croce writes : 'In point of fact, Hegel, although
he arrived at a thought as important and fecund as that of the
dialectic, i.e. of the logic which is intrinsic to philosophy and history,
left standing the constructs of the intellect, as a result of a sort of
compromise with the Hellenic and Scholastic philosophic traditions
as well as with Cartesian and Spinozist rationalism ; he refrained
from doing anything other than to correct these constructs and to
elevate and complete them by means of the dialectic, which, being
used in this way, necessarily became extrinsic ; as a consequence, he
retained a great deal of the framework of the old metaphysics, even
though he filled it with new thoughts, which logically should have
broken and swept away that old framework.'3o
There is no need to deal here with this somewhat hasty and sum
mary interpretation of Hegel's critique of the old metaphysics. That
critique was not simply a work of 'correction' but a much more
complex process : the process of the transformation of the Substance
into the Subject, the shifting of God from the 'beyond' into the
here and now of subjective self-consciousness and, in short, to use
Feuerbach's formula, it was the passage from theism or 'ordinary
theology' to 'speculative theology' or immanentism (a transforma
tion, as we shall see, of profound historical significance). More
important here, one can hardly fail to be struck by how even in this
philosopher of so many 'distinctions' (i distinti), the spiritualist
raptus acts with such force as to make him judge insufficient even
Hegel's 'destruction' of the finite and the intellect. Hegel did not
carry out his work thoroughly enough. The 'constructs of the
intellect', the 'framework' of determinate logical thinking, must be
still further 'broken' and 'swept away' ; so that the spirit may be
freed from all concepts that are definite, determinate, and non
'fluid', or as Bergson would call them, figes those same 'fixed'
-

30. Croce,

art.

cit., pp. 320, 317, 318 and 323.

152
concepts exorcized (above) in the introduction to the Anti-Duhring.
And since metaphysics is precisely the 'constructs' of the intellect,
Croce - who does not care for metaphysics - is in a position to
correct Hegel with Jacobi. 'As against "idealism", which is tied
against its will to the knowing process as Verstand and to naturalistic
schema, even though it strives to perfect them with the dialectic,
Jacobi affirms the innocent truth of visible or sensible things
unaltered by abstractions'31 - i.e. the innocent truth of the 'poor in
spirit' to whom the portals of heaven are open, the 'sensible things'
which Jacobi discusses in Von den gottlicher. Dingen und ihrer
Offenbarung ('On Divine Things and Their Revelation').
These lines critical of Hegel are rich in points of reference. There
recurs in them the theme, basic in Hegel and in his relationship to
Spinoza, of the transcendence of Eleaticism, i.e. of the broadening of
the principle of Parmenides into the 'identity of identity and non
identity' (here, indeed, a theme that constitutes one of the strengths
of Hegel's logic is ungenerously turned against him). There is also,
as an ongoing development of this first theme, another which is a
sort of corollary to it : the great antithesis between Christian realism
and Greek idealism, an antithesis popularized at the beginning of the
century by the Abbe Laberthonniere, a modernist and follower of
Blondel, in a book of the same title. But long before it became the
main argument of Christian spiritualism, this theme had its roots in
German romantic philosophy and in Hegel's thought itself. The
antithesis is between Greek naturalistic intellectualism and the
principle of infinite Subjectivity (which is nonetheless individual
and concrete spirit) introduced into the world by Christianity with
the idea of the God-man. As Hegel writes in his discussion of
Spinoza : 'The difference between our standpoint and that of Eleatic
philosophy is only this, that through the agency of Christianity con
crete individuality is in the modern world present throughout in
spirit.'32 However, this is precisely what is lacking in Spinoza : 'the
principle of subjectivity, individuality, personality, the moment of
self-consciousness in Being'. 33
The importance of this theme and the role that it has played in
31. ibid., p. 325.

32. H.P., Vol. III, p. 258.

33. ibid., p. 287.

Hegel and Jacobi IS3

Italian neo-idealism can hardly be discussed here. It must suffice to
point out how the antithesis between 'intellect' and 'reason', thus
developed as the antithesis between Greek naturalistic idealism and
Christian spiritualist realism, was taken up as the basic principle of
the Sistema di Logica, in Gentile's 'attualismo' (Actualism). To quote
Gentile : 'All of philosophy, which for us is encompassed in the
history of its development from Thales to our day, is divided into
two clearly distinct periods. In the first one, which can be termed
that of Greek philosophy, intelligible reality or the concept of reality
is constructed in a naIve fashion ; and for this reason philosophy is
not aware of the subjective character of this intelligibility of the real,
and therefore of the subjective character of the real itself; and it
fully develops this position out to its extreme conclusions by bol
stering, so to speak, to the highest degree possible the concept of a
reality in itself. In the second period, which must be termed the
Christian epoch because of its original and most powerful inspira
tional motif, philosophy gradually acquires a critical and reflective
awareness of the workings of the spirit in the production of reality.
Thus, it can be said that there have been two philosophies which
have been delineated in history : the first one definable as the concept
of reality ; the second one as the concept of the spirit ; or, in other
words, the first one as the concept of the spirit as reality and the
second one as the concept of reality as spirit.'34
Thus, the logic of thefinite is 'the logic of the abstract' ; while the
logic of the infinite is 'the logic of the concrete'. Naturalism is
idealism and spiritualism is realism. 'Greek philosophy, which was
naturalistic before Socrates, idealistic from Socrates to Aristotle, and
naturalistically idealistic afterwards, shows itself to be, in point of
fact, entirely naturalistic to whomever considers its unchanging
character, which consists in the fact that it always sought the spirit
in the antecedent of spirit, nature ; and as such, it was not philosophic,
but a part of the nature proper to the individual sciences.'35
Just as in Hegel then, materialism and science belong to Unphilo
sophie. The 'true' philosophy is always and only idealism the
-

34. Giovanni Gentile, Sistema di /ogica, Vol. I (Florence, 1940), p. 22.

35. ibid., p. 30

154
philosophy of the 'concrete'. To contrast idealist with realist philo
sophy is therefore meaningless. Any philosophy which ascribes true
being to finite existence as such does not deserve the title of philo
sophy. And since, as Gentile says, the method of science is 'im
plicitly committed to the principle of dogmatically presupposing its
own object'3 6 (Gentile's pathetic belief is that the greatest possible
insult to thought is to suggest that the ink-well exists outside of us I),
science is dogmatism ; whereas idealism, which asks us to accept as
data a list of much more imposing presuppositions (God, the soul,
the Idea, etc.) is critical thought. That Kant wrote his Refutation of
all this is of no account. Hence the monotonous refrain from which
no one today appears to escape : science is idealism, formalism ; the
idealist dialectic is realism ; the part is the abstract, the totality
the concrete. The principle of identity or material determination, the
principle which gives us the particular to the exclusion of its opposite,
is metaphysics. Contrariwise, idealism, the 'dialectic of matter' - i.e.
the assumption that the finite does not have reality in and of itself,
but has as its essence and foundation the infinite and, consequently,
everything that it (the finite) is not this idealism is genuine science.
What recent times have added to this is only a bit of naivete; the
extraordinary naivete of believing that the 'rational' totality which
Hegel discusses - i.e. that Idea, 'round in itself', which, as he says, is
this just as much as that, precisely because it is a Weder-Noch, i.e.
neither this nor that - is . . . simply the totality of the natural world.
'Scientific experience', Kojeve writes, 'is thus only a pseudo
experience. And it cannot be otherwise, for vulgar science is in fact
concerned not with the concrete real, but with an abstraction. To the
extent that the scientist thinks or knows his object, what really and
concretely exists is the entirety of the Object . . . The isolated
Object is but an abstraction'. That means, Kojeve continues, that,
e.g., due to its limited and one-sided character, 'the (verbal)
physical description of the Real necessarily implies contradictions :
the "physical real" is simultaneously a wave filling all of space and a
particle localized in one point, and so on. By its own admission,
Physics can never attain Truth in the strong sense of the term. - In
-

36. loco cit.

Hegel and Jacobi ISS

fact, Physics does not study and describe the concrete Realm but
only an artificially isolated aspect of the Real - that is, an abstraction
. . . there is no Truth in the domain of Physics (and of science
in general). Only philosophic Discourse can achieve Truth, for it
alone is related to the concrete Real - that is, to the totality of the
reality of Being. The various sciences are always concerned with
abstractions.' 37
And again (because it is as well for the reader to have a complete
idea of this type of argument) : 'Let us consider,' Kojeve says, 'a
real table. This is not Table "in general", not just any table, but
always this concrete table right here. Now, when "naIve" man or a
representative of some science or other speaks of this table, he
isolates it from the rest of the universe : he speaks of this table
without speaking of what is not this table. Now, this table does not
float in empty space It is on this floor, in this room, in this house, in
this place on Earth, which Earth is at a determined distance from the
Sun, which has a determined place within the galaxy, etc., etc. To
speak of this table without speaking of the rest, then, is to abstract
from this rest, which in fact is just as real and concrete as this table
itself. To speak of this table without speaking of the whole of the
Universe which implies it, . . . is therefore to speak of an abstraction
and not of a concrete reality.' 'In short,' Kojeve concludes, 'what
exists as a concrete reality is the spatial-temporal totality of the
natural world : everything that is isolated from it is by that very fact
an abstraction, which exists as isolated only in and by the thought of
the man who thinks about it.'3s
The quotation is rather long, but it deserved to be presented.
Following this line of reasoning, an Italian 'attualista' thinker stated
a number of years ago that, since the particular which is science's
object of study is incomprehensible outside of the totality, the
problem of science was identical with the theological problem. It is
legitimate to doubt whether this point of view was 'enlightened' or,
more simply, at all acceptable to scientists. There is no doubt,
however, that, in comparison with Kojeve's thesis or, in point of
A. Kojeve, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, op. cit., pp. 177-8.
38. ibid., pp. 210-I I .

37.

15 6
fact, with that expounded by Stalin at the beginning of his well
known essay On Dialectical Materialism and Historical Materialism
(and of which Kojeve's is only a rhetorical amplification),3 9 the
Italian philosopher's argument enjoyed one undeniable superiority :
the superiority of one who really knew what he was talking about.
39. The reference is to the definition of metaphysics as 'knowledge of the part' at the
beginning of Stalin's essay, On Dialectical Materialism and Historical Materialism.

x.

From Bergson to Lukacs

Examining Bergson's critique of science in his Logica come scienza

del concetto puro, Croce makes this illuminating remark : 'All of this
criticism directed against the sciences does not sound new to the
ears of those who have already heard the critiques of Jacobi,
Schelling, Novalis, and other romantics, and in particular the extra
ordinary one made by Hegel of the abstract (i.e. empirical and
mathematical) intellect and which runs through all of his books,
from the Phenomenology ofthe Mind to the Science ofLogic, enriched
by examples in his comments on the paragraphs of the Philosophy
ofNature.' I
In point of fact, Bergson is just that : the high point of the conver
gence between the modern 'idealist reaction against science'2 and
certain major themes of romantic philosophy. 'Life' is movement,
becoming, being and non-being together, continuity and reciprocal
interpenetration of opposites. The 'intellect', contrariwise, is the
abstraction which isolates the particular from its opposite, which
takes the determinate object to the exclusion of everything that it is
not. It is sufficient to hold fast to these two themes in order to arrive
directly at the heart of Bergson's thought. The intellect - 'et je dis',
Bergson specifies, 'l'intelligence, je ne dis pas la pensee, je ne dis pas
l'esprit (I say the intellect, I do not say thought, I do not say mind)' 3
- 'dislikes what i s fluid, and solidifies everything it touches'. 4 'Of
I . Benedetto Croce, Logica come scienza del concetto puro (Bari, 1942), p. 359.
2. This expression, which was originally used by Aliotta in a positive sense in a well
known book of 1912, has been adopted again, and rightly so, by F. Lombardi - although
this time in the sense of a regressive phenomenon - in II senso della storia (Rome, 1965),
pp. 137 if.
3. Henri Bergson, La Pensee et Ie Mouvant (paris, 1946), p. 102. English translation
by M. L. Andison, The Creative Mind (New York, 1946), p. 1 10 (translation modified).
4. H. Bergson, L'evolution creatrice (Paris, 1914), p. 50. English translation by Arthur
Mitchell, Creative Evolution (New York, 1944) pp. 52-3.

158
immobility alone does the intellect form a clear idea' ; it is incapable
of conceiving 'la continuite vraie, fa mobilite rielle, fa compenitration
riciproque et, pour tout dire, cette evolution qui est la vie (true con
tinuity, real mobility, reciprocal penetration - in a word, that
creative evolution which is life)'. 5 The 'insoluble difficulties' into
which the intellect falls whenever it 'speculates upon things as a
whole', derive simply from the fact that 'the intellect is especially
destined for the study of a part, . . . we nevertheless try to use it in
knowing the whole'. 6
Common sense, which concerns itself only with self-contained
objects (objets ditaches) and 'science, which considers only isolated
systems', both persist in 'treating the living like the lifeless and
think all reality, however fluid, under the form of the sharply
defined solid. We are at ease only in the discontinuous, in the
immobile, in the dead. The intellect is characterized by a natural
inability to comprehend life.'7
However, beneath 'these clear-cut crystals and this frozen surface'
which the intellect and science present to us as reality, there lies, in
actual fact, 'une continuite d'ecoulement (a continuity of flow)' : 'It is
not the "states", simple snapshots we have taken . . . along the
course of change, that are real ; on the contrary, it is flux, the
continuity of transition, it is change itself that is real.'s Philosophy
cannot grasp this profounder reality of 'becoming', except when 'it
goes beyond the concept, or at least when it frees itself of the
inflexible and ready-made concepts and creates others very different
from those we usually handle, I mean flexible, mobile, almost fluid
representations, always ready to mould themselves on the fleeting
forms of intuition'. 9 When, in short, it succeeds in raising itself to
'fluid concepts, capable of following reality in all its windings and of
adopting the very movement of the inner life of things'. 1 0 If, how
ever, we attempt to grasp the 'profound meaning of movement' with
the aid of ordinary concepts (concepts that are 'jiges, distincts,
5. ibid., pp. 169 and 175. English translation, pp. 171 and 178.
6. H. Bergson, The Creative Mind, op. cit., p. 44.
7. H. Bergson, Creative Evolution, op. cit., pp. 12 and 182.
8. H. Bergson, op. cit., p. 16.
9. ibid., pp. 192 (translation modified) and 198.

10. ibid., p. 224.

From Bergson to Lukacs 15

59
immobiles'), we get nowhere ; for 'in vain we force the living into this
or that one of our moulds. All the moulds crack. They are too nar
row, above all too rigid'. 11
We shall forgo here any comparison with Hegel, and the more
complex argument this would entail. But certain analogies with
Engels present themselves as a matter of course. Identity is inertia,
stillness, 'dead being' ; 'life', movement, are by contrast 'becoming',
unity of being and non-being together, the contradiction and
reciprocal interpenetration of opposites. And, just as for Engels,
common sense or the 'metaphysical way of viewing things' may be
'justifiable and even necessary' in the everyday practice of life, they
end by falling into 'insoluble contradictions'. This is so because in
considering individual things common sense loses sight of their
connections ; 'in contemplating their existence it forgets their
coming into being and passing away ; in looking at them at rest it
leaves their motion out of account ; because it cannot see the wood
for the trees' ; 1 2 similarly, for Bergson 'it is incontestable that in
following the usual data of our senses and consciousness we arrive
in the speculative order at insoluble contradictions' ; 13 for, whereas
'the intellect is especially destined for the study of a part, . . . we
nevertheless try to use it in knowing the whole'.
So it follows for the rest of the argument. The intellect is unable
to conceive of life. Life, Engels says, is contradiction ; life itself is the
refutation of the principle of identity. Jankelevitch, a follower of
Schelling, echoes Engels quite involuntarily in his exposition of
Bergson : 'Life jeers at the contradictions which are the despair of
the intellect. Becoming, a melange of being and non-being, is the
escape from the principle of the excluded third.'14
Or again, motion is a form of contradiction. A body in motion,
states Anti-Duhring, 'is' and 'is not', and 'the continuous assertion
and simultaneous solution of this contradiction is precisely what
motion is' . 1 5 Changing slightly the subject, which in this case is not
I I. H. Bergson, op. cit., p. xx.
12. F. Engeis, Anti-Duhring, op. cit., p. 28.
13. H. Bergson, The Creative Mind, op. cit., p. 165.
14. V. Jankeievitch, Henri Bergson (paris, 1959), p. 17.
IS. F. Engels, op. cit., p. 132.

160
motion tout court but time, Jankelevitch, who knows Bergson but
may never have read Engels, observes in practically the same words
that 'time is not simply the absence of contradiction, but is rather
contradiction overcome and endlessly resolved ; or, better stated, it
is this resolution itself, regarded from its transitive side' . 16
We shall leave aside minor but nonetheless significant similarities ;
such as, e.g., the 'dialectical' interpretation made by Bergson of
infinitesimal calculus, or his allusions to the 'law' of the transforma
tion of quantity into quality 'fa quantitl est toujours de fa qualitl a
,
/'Itat naissant (quantity is always nascent quality) . Or his exaltation
of the 'new science' which, 'the more it progresses the more it
resolves matter into actions moving through space, into movements
dashing back and forth in a constant vibration so that mobility
becomes reality itself'17 - this is also (it will be remembered) a
characteristic theme in Engels's thought ; i.e. his hope that science
will cease to be a science of things (or, as he says, a metaphysics) in
order to become at last a science of movement alone.
What we are concerned to point out here, beyond the analogous
formulae, is the paradox they conceal. It is a fact that Engels's
general philosophic programme has nothing at all to do with
Bergson's. The aim, the 'spirit' of the two philosophies is radically
different ; the two mentalities are far removed from one another
(which explains, moreover, why the similarity between their state
ments has never been noticed till now). And yet, despite the
difference in 'programme', despite Engels's materialist intention, it is
beyond doubt that the convergence of the two philosophies is more
than merely formal. The basis of the convergence is, in actual fact, a
shared theoretical nucleus: the critique of intellect, the critique of
the principle of non-contradiction. And what differentiates the two
philosophies is only that they draw opposite conclusions from this
same critique.
In Bergson's case, the critique of the scientific understanding is
the critique of materialism itself. Just as in Jacobi or Hegel, the
intellect and materialism here appear to suffer the same fate. The
concepts of the intellect and science are 'determinate' and 'distinct'
-

16. V. Jankeievitch, op. cit., p. 38.

17. H. Bergson, op. cit., pp. 225 and 175.

From Bergson to Lukdcs I6I

in relation to one another, for they are the subjective equivalent of
the assumption that objective reality is space and matter. In Berg
son's words: 'The intellect is in the line of truth so long as it
attaches itself, in its penchant for regularity and stability, to what
is stable and regular in the real, that is to say to materiality.' 18
'Thus the same movement by which the mind is brought to form
itself into intellect, that is to say, into distinct concepts, brings
matter to break itself up into objects excluding one another. The
more consciousness is intellectualized, the more is matter spatialized.'19
In Engels's case, vice versa, since he mistakenly concluded that
the intellect was metaphysical because 'dogmatic' (whereas with
Hegel it is dogmatic precisely because it is materialistic), the critique
of the understanding and the transcendence of the principle of
non-contradiction appear as the foundation of materialism.
In both cases the content is the same ; what changes is only the
way of describing it. In both cases there is at work a vitalist meta
physics with a strong irrationalist bent. Except that, whereas Bergson
knows full well what is at stake 'I'intelligence est[aite pour utiliser
la matiere' ; 'iJ, la science la matiere et iJ, la mitaphysique l'esprit (the
intellect has been made in order to utilize matter' ; 'to science let us
leave matter, and to metaphysics, mind)'20 - Engels believed instead
that the intellect was spiritualist metaphysics and that by contrast
metaphysics or dogmatism was a higher form of materialism. The
consequence is that the same vitalist biologist, De Vries, whom
Bergson used in order to give his metaphysics a 'scientific' attire,
can be cited by Plekhanov as proof and confirmation of 'dialectical
materialism'. 2 1
-

But perhaps even more significant is their evaluation of common

sense and science. Just as for Jacobi the sciences were only 'toys'
that the human spirit has made for itself as a 'diversion', similarly
for Bergson (and, needless to say, also for Croce), science has no
cognitive, but only practical value. It does not show us true reality.
18. ibid., p. 1 12.
19. H. Bergson, Creative Evolution, op. cit., p. 207.
20. H. Bergson, La Pensee et Ie Mouvant, op. cit., pp. 35 and 44. English translation,
pp. 43 and 50.
21. G. V. Plekhanov, Fundamental Problems ofMarxism, op. cit., pp. 46-7.

I62
It is only a fiction useful to us in our practical conduct. We have
access to the true reality by means of intuition, or - given that
Bergson, like Jacobi, sees intuition and speculative reason as the
same thing - by means of concepts of a 'higher order' than those we
usually handle.
Now, this same conception is present in nuce in Engels as well.
The principle of identity works all right in everyday practice ; com
mon sense is a trustworthy companion as long as it stays within the
confines of the 'four family walls' ; the 'metaphysical way of viewing
things' is justifiable and even necessary in everyday, petty usage.
The difference is that in Engels this critique is based on an error of
interpretation, on the notion that everyday practice is the realm of
metaphysics (a quite peculiar misunderstanding for a materialist
thinker). For Bergson, however, who knows very well that practice
is the realm of materialism par excellence, the critique is carried out
(as with Jacobi) on the basis of the Pauline distinction between the
world of the 'flesh' and the world of the 'spirit' - the former seems
'firm' and 'manifest', but in actual fact is fictitious and unreal like a
dream ; the latter seems impalpable and 'fluid', but is nonetheless
'true'.
Certainly, Engels did not live to experience in full the period
when Europe was swept by the great wave of the 'idealist reaction
against science'. The moment in which 'philosophy takes its revenge
posthumously on natural science'22 is, in the Dialectics f Nature,
more a matter of prophecy than of observation. Nevertheless, the
extent to which the old romantic philosophy of nature that lies at
the basis of 'dialectical materialism' was to render theoretical
Marxism a helpless witness of that 'reaction', if not an out and out
accomplice of its involution and obscurantism, is demonstrated - to
take only the most striking example - by the case of Lenin. In his
Philosophical Notebooks, Lenin uncritically adheres to and takes over
Hegel's destruction of the intellect and of the principle of non
contradiction ; to the point of reinventing for himself the very
formulae of Bergson's spiritualist irrationalism. 'We cannot imagine,
express, measure, depict movement, without interrupting con22. F. Engels, Dialectics of Nature, op. cit., p. 164.

From Bergson to Lukacs I63

tinuity, without simplifying, coarsening, dismembering, strangling
that which is living. The representation of movement by means of
thought always makes coarse, kills, - and not only by means of
thought, but also by sense-perception, and not only of movement,
but every concept.'23
Here, as so often in the Notebooks, what is set forth is, in point of
fact, a collection of all the most representative themes of vitalist
irrationalism, in the illusory belief that they are a new and higher
form of materialism. The theme of the intellect's morcelage for
instance : 'From the totality of the existent', Simmel writes, 'our
intellect cuts out individual fragments which are separated from the
restless mobility of the All' ; 'the intellect carves up the matter of life
and of things in order to turn them into instrumental means, systems,
and concepts'. 24 Or the theme of the principle of identity and of
non-contradiction as a principle of inert and dead being : 'Our
logic,' Simmel says, 'is the logic of solid bodies' ; 'it is based essen
tially on the fundamental concepts of identity and otherness, but
precisely these concepts are completely devoid of validity in relation
to states of mind (for seelische Zustiinde), in analogy to which Bergson
conceives of the world' ; 'the opposition between identity and other
ness disappears in the continuity of change'. 25 And lastly the theme
that 'Life' cannot be grasped, is unbegreiflich, by thought because it
is contradiction, unity of opposites, and therefore totality, whereas
thought, or at least the Verstandsbegriffe (intellectual concepts) are
one-sided and incomplete concepts, unable thus to 'know the pure
essence of cosmic life'. 2 6
But in Bergson's philosophy there is even more. His theory of
the merely practical, non-cognitive function of science is also the
birthplace of that particular concept of 'reification' which, subse
quently, was to leave its impression on a large part of so-called
'Western Marxism'. If reality is fluid becoming, 'life', and spiritual
duree, and the intellect gives us instead the solidified, the inert, the
lifeless - then from what does the world of things derive its origin?
23. V. I. Lenin, Philosophical Notebooks, op. cit., pp. 259-60.
24. Georg SimmeI, 'H. Bergson' (1914), in Zur Philosophie der Kunst (potsdam,
26. ibid., p. 140.
1 922), pp. 135-7.
25 ibid., p. 137.

I6 4
Things are the 'abstract', the 'one-sided' ; they have the appearance,
as has been seen, of positive and independent beings, whereas, in
actual fact, they are 'moments' that are unreal outside the totality,
fleeting glances which the intellect 'congeals' and 'solidifies' in the
very act in which it cuts them out of the 'uninterrupted flow' of life.
As Bergson says, 'tout ce qui appara# comme positif au physicien et au
geometre', is in actual fact 'un systeme de negations, l'absence plutot
que la presence d'une dalite vraie' ('All that which seems positive to
the physicist and to the geometrician is actually a system of negations,
the absence rather than the presence of a true reality')27. Who then
conjured up this world of things? Who conferred on them this
illusory existence as inflexible 'crystals' if not the intellect and
science ? Our intellect, Bergson says in Creative Evolution has a
function that is 'essentially practical, made to present to us things
and states rather than changes and acts. But things and states are
only views, taken by our mind, of becoming. There are no things,
there are only actions.' Therefore if 'the thing results from a solidifi
cation performed by our understanding', and if 'there are never any
things other than those that the understanding has thus consti
tuted',28 that means that the material world, which science presents
to us as reality, is in fact only an illusion and contrivance inspired by
science itself.
Matter is merely a creation of the intellect. 'Things' are the
crystals into which our tendency to reify coagulates and congeals,
i.e., our tendency to 'solidify' the world in order to act in it practically
and to change it. Reification is the product of science and technology.
And science and technology, in their turn, arise from the require
ments of 'everyday life', i.e. that need for 'regularity' and 'stability'
which is characteristic of common sense. They derive from our
purely 'corporeal' and outward penchant for acting under safe and
predictable conditions ; that is to say, our penchant for acting in a
solid and stable world, where the original elan and jubilation of Life
is inverted and petrified into a mass of inert 'objects' with well
defined features.
27. H. Bergson, L'evolution creatrice, op. cit., p. 228. English translation, p. 228.
28. H. Bergson, Creative Evolution, op. cit., pp. 270-1.

From Bergson to Lukacs I6S

This theme is, of course, still only in its early stages in Bergson.
(It does reappear later in his work, but only obscurely and incom
pletely, in the description of the instinctual and 'automatic' circularity
characterizing the 'closed society' of Les deux sources.) Nonetheless,
even in this first beginning it is not difficult to identify the seeds of
the future development. The reified world is the physico-natural
world presented to us by science. It is the solid yet inconsistent
reality which caters for both our propensity to 'dominate nature,
i.e. to arrange things, have them at hand, and use them as tools and
means of labour (the Zuhandenheit which Heidegger will discuss
later), and our need for the security which characterizes 'inauthentic'
existence (the Alltaglichkeit of Sein und Zeit). That is, existence that
is completely immersed and absorbed in things, adrift in the 'cares'
of the world, i.e. 'bourgeois' or civic existence.
Science is a form of positivism. And since positivism is the typical
mentality through which the need for 'bourgeois security' expresses
itself, the triumph over reification can come about only with the
destruction of that reified world which is the artificial contrivance
of science. Thus the argument goes back to the pages of Marcuse
previously examined (it is no chance that Marcuse was originally a
pupil ofHeidegger). The overcoming ofreification depends upon the
destruction of things. The dialectic of the 'Here' and the 'Now',
with which at the beginning of the Phenomenology, Hegel annihilates
all objects, and his sceptical destruction of 'sense certainty' - these
,
are actually 'a critique of positivism and, even more, of"reification" ;
for reification is nothing other than common sense and scientific
thought, which 'take the world as a totality of things, more or less
existing per se, and seek the truth in objects that are taken to be
independent of the knowing subject'. Because, in short, what alien
ates and dehumanizes men is precisely this way of seeing things
characteristic of science, which is considerably 'more than an
epistemological attitude', being 'as pervasive as the practice of men
and leading them to accept the feeling that they are secure only in
knowing and handling objective facts'. 2 9
However, the argument goes back well beyond Marcuse. It takes
29. H. Marcuse, op. cit., p.

1 12.

I66
in a complex variety of themes developed above all in Germany
during the first years of this century. These tendencies developed
partly on the crest of Bergson's original inspiration ; but in large
part they were independent of him and constituted a direct revival
of the themes of romantic philosophy (one need only, to give just
one example, think of the concept of 'nature' as versteinerte
[petrified] Intelligenz in Schelling). Gradually, these tendencies
made up the outlines of that particular theory of reification which is
our present object of attention. It is clear that to give even a vague
idea of the complex interlacing of these themes - at times developed
by quite different and contrasting theoretical orientations - would
be absolutely impossible in this context. Apart from Dilthey, the
intensity of the anti-intellectualist and irrationalist impetus that
engulfs German philosophy at the beginning of the century (form
ing the humus, the direct preface to the critique of science as
reification) is testified to, perhaps most spectacularly, by the
dissolution of even a philosophy as 'academic' as Neo-Kantianism.
One need only recall the two characteristic Antrittsreden dedicated
by Windelband in 1910 to the 'revival of Hegelianism' (Die Erneue
rung des Hegelianismus),30 and to the 'mysticism of our times' (Von
der Mystik unserer Zeit),31 - two documents without which it is
difficult to get an idea of what that particular philosophy of the 'age
of imperialism' was. In them the horror for every notion of the
world as a plural universe with manifold determinations, and the
aversion for any form of objectivity or materialist 'exteriority', are
elevated into the distinguishing feature of the entire epoch. The
character of this philosophy of the moment is described as 'the
impulse towards unity and the urge towards inwardness (Drang
,
nach Verinnerlichung) . 32 This, as Windelband says, is a question of
advancing and redeeming 'a spiritual unity to life as against its
fragmentation in the culture that deals with the outwardness of
matter'. 33 In a certain sense, he adds, 'we are living through . . . the
same revolution in modes of thought which was carried out around
1800 in all of Europe, but especially in Germany, in the passage from
30. W. Windelband, Priiludien (Ttibingen, I92I), vol. I, pp. 273-89.
33. ibid., p. 291.
32. ibid., p. 290.
31. ibid., pp. 290-9.

From Bergson to Lukacs 167

the Enlightenment to Romanticism'. Consequently, 'even now the
irrational is again proclaimed as the holy secret of all reality, as the
foundation of life that lies beyond all knowledge ; and thus even the
religious impulse, which is at work in the need for a Weltanschauung,
once again gladly takes on the form of mysticism'. 34 'Just as Romanti
cism once brought honour again to the forgotten Jacob B6hme,
similarly the father of all philosophical mysticism, the great neo
Platonic Plotinus, has again, like a new star in the sky, ascended to
a place in the history of philosophy.'35 The period, Windelband
states, hungers for a ' Weltanschauung', following the long neo
Kantian interlude. Everywhere the cry goes up for a 'philosophy of
action and the will'. And it is precisely 'this hunger for a Weltan
schauung which has taken hold of our younger generation and which
seeks satisfaction of this hunger in Hegel.'36
In addition to Windelband, some other names must be men
tioned. An important moment in the critique of the intellect was
Rickert's analysis of the 'limits of conceptualization in the natural
sciences'.37 This analysis is all the more significant if one considers
the influence that Rickert had on the young Lukacs and on Heideg
ger. Here one need only refer to the development in his Grenzen of
the critique of Erkliiren, i.e. of knowledge as 'causal explanation', as
it is produced by the naturalistic intellect; one could refer also to the
major emphasis that is given to 'intuition' and, in general, to the
need for the 'transcendence of the limits of what is conceptually
knowable (das Ueberschreiten der Grenzen des begrijjlich Erkenn
,
baren) ,3 8 in his description of that mode of knowledge which deals
with the historically specific (Verstehen). All of which leads, on the
one hand, to the revival of the openly irrationalist themes of Erleben,
Einfohlen, etc., themes which, in so far as they imply a 'sympathetic
penetration' of subject and object, presuppose the identity of the
two (whence Dilthey's explicit reference to the 'theory of the
sciences of the spirit') ; 3 9 and on the other hand, to the representation
of philosophy as a 'science of the totality'.
34 ibid., pp. 291-2.
35. ibid., p. 293.
36. ibid., p. 278.
37. H. Rickert, Die Grenzen der naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffsbildung, 4th edition
(Tiibingen, 1921).
38. ibid., pp. 265-8.
39. ibid., p. 412.

I6 8
To enter into a detailed analysis of the crucial role played by
Heidegger in developing this theory of the reifying function of
science, is impossible here. The theory is a central theme in all his
works. According to it the determinations of the world arise together
with the activities of the 'intellect' (understanding and 'judging'),
which culminate in science. Sein und Zeit insists at great length on
how the being of things means their being used by man, and how the
'judgment', in its turn, transforms what is usable into a 'corporeal
thing' (Korperding).40 The 'reifying' nature of science and its at
once 'formalist' and 'empirical' character (cf. also Croce on Hegel)
emerges with particular clarity in the last part of the book. 'The
classical example,' Heidegger writes, 'for the historical development
of a science and even for its ontological genesis, is the rise of mathe
matical physics. What is decisive for its development does not lie in
its rather high esteem for the observation of "facts", nor in its
"application" of mathematics in determining the character of
natural processes ; it lies rather in the way in which Nature herselfis
mathematically projected. In this projection something constantly
present-at-hand (matter) is uncovered beforehand. . '41 It is
therefore like the horizon, the a priori in virtue of which things come
to exist for us.
The place, however, where this particular conception of reifica
tion has one of its most important turning-points is in the extension
of its critique of the understanding into a critique of 'culture' and
'society'. Lukacs referred to this 'philosophic-bourgeois critique of
culture' in his 1967 preface to the new edition of History and Class
Consciousness. This deals with the focal position which - upon the
background of the great German-philosophical antithesis between
Kultur and Zivilisation, organicist-romantic culture and rationalist
enlightenment culture - was then assumed by the problem of the
estrangement of man in technological-industrial society, in the mass
society of modern capitalism. The question, as Lukacs recalls, was
then 'in the air'. It presented itself as the outcome and point of
.

40. Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Tiibingen, 1949), pp. 71, 84, 106, and 156.
41. ibid., p. 362. English translation, by J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson, Being and
Time (London, 1962), pp. 413-14.

From Bergson to Lukacs I69

arrival for diverse currents of thought. And this was 'recognized . . .
by both bourgeois and proletarian thinkers, by commentators on
both right and left'. 4 2 In addition to Heidegger, naturally the most
important name in this context, one should at least mention Der
Konflict der modernen Kultur by Simmel43 - a thinker, like Rickert,
whom one cannot ignore whenever the early writings of Lukacs are
under consideration. The critique of science and the related disdain
for technical-practical action - the world of work and production are here extended to a critique of modern civilization, whose con
flicts are not explained in the light of particular socio-historical
causes, but on the basis of an irrepressible antithesis between the
principle of the organic totality of 'Life' and the purely 'external'
principle of mechanical or causal connection. The conflict in modern
civilization consists, for Simmel, in the fact that the 'forms' engen
dered by 'Life' are solidified into objective institutions separated from
it, that these objective institutions acquire an autonomy of their own
and set themselves over against the becoming that generated them
originally. Thus, whereas Life continually tends to resolve and
dissolve within itself the forms in which it has momentarily objec
tified itself, these forms become solidified and rigidified into
permanent entities which oppose and impede the process of re
establishing the original unity, i.e. the recomposition of the identity
of the finite and the infinite.44 This is the source of the conflict, i.e.
the state of internal division and laceration which characterizes
modern civilization and the latter's tendency to overturn and
reverse the meaning of reality. The forms originally engendered as
forms and functions o/Life, by solidifying themselves into objective
institutions, tend to subordinate and constrain Life, their own
origin, into alienated routine and mechanical repetitiveness. The
finite, which in reality is a momentary projection of Life's infinity,
becomes the foundation of the real; whereas Life, which was the
42. George Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness, translated by Rodney Livingstone
(London, 1971), p. xxii.
43. George SimmeI, Der Konflikt der modernen Kultur (Munich and Leipzig, 1918).
44. Cf. P. Rossi, Lo storicismo tedesco contemporaneo (Turin, 1956), p. 258, in which it is
clearly seen that this identity ofthe finite and the infinite is the 'fundamental presupposi
tion of romantic philosophy'.

I 7
real beginning and the unconditional, becomes something subordi
nate and secondary.
One's mind cannot help but return here to the basic themes of
Hegel's thought and to that subversion of reality which he attributed
to the intellect. 'Ordinary human understanding' transforms that
which is first into that which is second, and vice versa. In the
'intellectual proof', the finite, which is not, becomes a 'fixed being',
the positive or the foundation; whereas the infinite, which is the
true positive and the unconditional, becomes the infinite 'made
finite', the negative, the unreal. But the juxtaposition immediately
reveals an essential difference. With Hegel, the healing of the
'split' engendered by the intellect is guaranteed. The reinstatement
of the world turned upside-down by common sense is the self
conscious and self-confident programme of his entire philosophy.
Unity has to be re-established. The principle of idealism is realized.
So that already the Phenomenology can proclaim that the new philo
sophy is the verkehrte Welt, the world 'stood on its head' in relation
to how common sense saw the world. With Simmel, however (not
to mention many other differences), the same metaphysical event
takes place under a less favourable sign of the zodiac. For him as
well life's process is the infinite's positing of itself as finite. But
whereas in Hegel this 'alienation' (besides being momentary) is
regarded as necessary to the ends of the self-explication which the
spirit must carry out in order to recapitulate itself and so enjoy itself
as self-conscious Spirit, in Simmel the need of the infinite to posit
itself as finite is described as a 'tragic fate', 45 i.e. as a 'split' which
opens a permanent crisis, putting in jeopardy the 'return' to Unity.
This different Stimmung is highly significant.
Under the guise of an analysis of 'modern society', in reality what
is put forth is once again a critique of the intellect, of materialism,
and of the principle of causality. The conflict in modern civilization
derives from the fact that the 'forms' of its life take on the nature of
'institutions'. The 'tragedy' of modern society is that it is a public
sphere, an objective world - the realm of AllgemeingiUtigkeit, i.e. of
45. ibid., p. 262. Rossi's remarks concern Simmel's Lebensanschauung, which we have
not examined.

From Bergson to Lukacs I7I

the universal and impersonal validity common both to the statements
of science and to behaviour and 'rules' of social life. 4 6
46. Bergson's L'Essai sur les donnees immCdiates de la conscience (published in Paris,
1 9 I4, but the work dates from 1888; English translation, Time and Free Will, by F. L.
Pogson, London, I9IO) already develops the relationship between the solidification or
'reification' carried out by the intellect and the requirements oflanguage and social life.
Intersubjective communication and society presuppose the translation-falsification of
dude (whether psychological or real) into terms of externality-spatiality. Two different
subjects also correspond to the two dudes, one of them 'fundamental' and the other
'superficial' and fictitious : 'Below homogeneous duration, which is the extensive symbol
of true duration, . . . a duration whose heterogeneous moments permeate one another;
. . . below the self with well-defined states, a self in which succeeding each other means
melting into one another and forming an organic whole. But we are generally content with
the first, i.e. with the shadow of the self projected into homogeneous space. Conscious
ness, goaded by an insatiable desire to separate, substitutes the symbol for the reality,
or perceives the reality only through the symbol. As the self thus refracted, and thereby
broken to pieces, is much better adapted to the requirements of social life in general and
language in particular, consciousness prefers it, and gradually loses sight of the funda
mental self . . . In other words, our perceptions, sensations, emotions and ideas occur
under two aspects : the one clear and precise, but impersonal ; the other confused, ever
changing, and inexpressible, because language cannot get hold of it without arresting its
mobility or fit it into its common-place forms without making it into public property'
(pp. I28-9). Here, as the reader can see, there is already delineated a theory of 'true'
and 'false' consciousness, of 'personal' existence and 'impersonal' existence. And the
world of society is the world of 'banality'. These antitheses are not, however, to be
directly identified with Heidegger's. For the latter - at least during the early period of
Sein und Zeit and Vom Wesen des Grundes the romantic-spiritualist premisses upon
upon which Bergson's argument is based have no validity (if to anyone, Bergson should
here be compared to Jaspers). Returning to the Donnees, the solidarity of the 'intellect'
with language and social life is confirmed throughout: 'We instinctively tend to solidify
our impressions in order to express them in language' (p. I30). The reason is 'that our
outer and, so to speak, social life is more practically important to us than our inner and
individual existence'. And again, on the connection between language, society, and
impersonality: 'the word with well-defined outlines, the rough and ready word, which
stores up the stable, common, and consequently impersonal element in the impressions
of mankind' (p. I 32). ' . . . The intuition of a homogeneous space is already a step towards
social life' (p. I38). Concerning the two subjects, of authentic-personal existence and of
social-impersonal existence - 'two different selves, one of which is, as it were, the external
projection of the other, its spatial and, so to speak, social representation' - Bergson
observes (p. 23 I) that: 'The greater part of the time we live outside ourselves, hardly
perceiving anything of ourselves but our own ghost, a colourless shadow which pure
duration projects into homogeneous space. Hence our life unfolds in space rather than
in time ; we live for the external world rather than for ourselves.' Or again, on the
socializing function performed by the intellect and the reification which it carries out:
'This intuition of a homogeneous medium . . . enables us to externalize our concepts in
-

I72
It need hardly be pointed out that this anonymous validity has its
place of origin in the objektive Gultigkeit (validity) of judgment and
technical-scientific practice. No less than the subject of science, the
protagonist of social life is man (the German impersonal pro
noun - Trans.), the impersonal 'one' of 'one says' or 'one does', i.e.
the subject of anonymous existence as the existence of every one and
no one.
In Sein und Zeit, of course, this existential analysis operates at
another level. Although the theoretical presuppositions of the work
prevent it from becoming concrete, Heidegger's argument is not
only a critique of democracy and of the advancing society of the
'great masses' ; it is also, if only secondarily and at the level of mere
phenomenological description, the perception of that much more
specific process of 'depersonalization' linked to the advent and
domination of modern monopolistic capitalism and its great 'anony
mous corporations'. Despite the difficult, philosophically technical
appearance of the book, Sein und Zeit is a work upon which are
indelibly stamped the signs of the crisis of the German society of the
period. The realm of impersonal existence which it describes - the
individual's fall under the sway of uncontrolled, 'objective' forces
appears to evoke in places that other process of 'depersonalization'
discussed by Rathenau in his analytic sketch in 1918 of the great
'joint stock companies' (though Heidegger was, of course, never
conscious of this distinction, either then or later). Here the 'deper
sonalization' of property means that property itself acquires an
autonomous existence in relation even to the very holders of
property rights. The 'enterprise' takes on an independent life, as if it
belonged to no one - the object becomes the subject, and the subject
becomes the object of its object. 47 The uncontrolled forces of society
relation to one another, reveals to us the objectivity of things, and thus, in two ways,
on the one hand by getting everything ready for language, and on the other by showing
us an external world, quite distinct from ourselves, in the perception of which all minds
have a common share, foreshadows and prepares the way for social life' (p. 236). And
finally on p. 138 : 'Our tendency to form a clear picture of this externality of things and
the homogeneity of their medium is the same as the impulse which leads us to live in
common and to speak.'
47. Walther Rathenau, Von kommenden Dingen (Berlin, 1918), pp. 129ff.

From Bergson to Lukdcs 173

exacerbate to the extreme the nature of those forces extensively
analysed by Marx, which operate 'behind men's backs' with the
peremptory necessity of natural events. Still, however generous one
tries to be, in the case of someone like Heidegger the basic theme
always remains that of the critique of the intellect. The reified world
is the physical-natural world. Estrangement is the separation of
subject and object. What alienates and dehumanizes man is science.
Regarding all this critical literature on 'culture' and 'society', the
main virtue of the books which came later, like Horkheimer and
Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment, is that - since they lacked any
real analysis, even of a purely philosophic kind, and reduced the
relevant categories to mere empty sophistry or personal bavardage
they give us a sort of Summa of all the 'horrors' and idiosyncrasies
which lie at the basis of philosophical production over many
decades, without the effort of decipherment required to read
Heidegger, or even Husserl's Krisis.
The very title of Horkheimer and Adorno's work deserves some
praise. The target of the two authors' polemical impulse is Enlighten
ment itself. This is so even if it is not taken to mean a particular
historical period (which would demand precise arguments), but an
age which is dominated in Hegelian fashion by 'ordinary human
understanding' and its fatal distinction between subject and object,
and which therefore extends not only to Homer's Odyssey but to all
historical eras. Even confining ourselves to the first eighty pages of
the work, its value as a Summa appears to be confirmed. Horror of
the scientific mind here takes on forms which (did we not fear the
strictures of youth) we would even be tempted to call grotesque.
For Horkheimer and Adorno, 'the very deductive form of science
reflects hierarchy and coercion'. 48 Common sense is 'reactionary',
science 'positivistic'. 49 The Enlightenment, then, i.e. that period
of clarity which prompted Kant to say, 'Enlightenment is man's
emergence from his self-incurred immaturity . . . Sapere Aude ! Have
courage to use your own intelligence ! is therefore the motto of the
-

48. M. Horkheimer and Th. Adorno, Dialektik der Aufkliirung (Frankfurt, 1969)
P 27

49. ibid., pp. 47 and 22.

I74
enlightenment' 5 0 this Enlightenment is for our authors little more
than a concentration camp. It 'proclaims, in a matter-of-fact
fashion, authority as a dichotomy (Entzweiung), . the rift between
subject and object . . . '.5 1 'Enlightenment is totalitarian in a way that
no previous system has been.' As far as reification is concerned, it is
clearly attributable to mathematics. With 'the Galilean mathemati
zation of nature', thought 'reifies itself into an . . . automatic
process'. And since this is what science is, one can imagine that our
authors do not hold a view of industry that is any more favourable an industry examined (of course) without specifying any particular
social relationships, i.e. in its neutral aspect as pure technology,
irrespective of whether it is capitalist industry or any other kind.
Here too we now know what to expect : 'industry reifies the souls of
men' ; 5 2 'today machinery mutilates men, even as it nourishes them',
for the machine is 'estranged reason', thought in its 'solidified form
as a material and intellectual apparatus'. 53
But Horkheimer and Adorno show an equal revulsion for society ;
and again, not in so far as it is organized in this way or that (as one
might expect from professors of social science) but simply in so far
as it is organized at all. 'Radical socialization means radical estrange
ment.' Whether before the 'bourgeois "night-watchman" State',
w hich transforms itself 'into the violence of the monopolistic
collectivity', or before 'state socialism . . . , which was the undoing of
Robespierre and Saint-Just in its initial form',54 our historians
tremble with equal indignation. They simply will not stand for
discipline.
We shall avert our eyes from their harsh judgment of Bacon,
guilty of having opened the era of 'man's domination over nature' ;
as from their reference to 'the gloomy writers of the early bour
geoisie, such as Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Mandeville'. 55 Even at the
heavy price of going beyond the first eighty pages it must be said
that the will of these 'beautiful souls' to the destruction and nihilistic
-

50. Kant's Political Writings, ed. Reiss (Cambridge, 1970), 'What is Enlightenment?',
P 54
5 1 . Horkheimer-Adorno, op. cit., p. 46.
53 ibid., p. 44.
52. ibid., pp. 31 and 34.
54. ibid., pp. 69 and 1 25.
55 ibid., p. 97

Prom Bergson to Lukacs I75

negation of the highest achievements of human thought comes out
fully only in their judgment of Kant. 'Kant intuitively anticipated
what only Hollywood was to consciously achieve.' 'With the affirma
tion of the scientific system as the form that truth takes - a conclu
sion arrived at by Kant -, thought seals its own fate as trivia, since
science is simply a technical exercise. . . .' 'Science itself has no
consciousness of itself; it is a mere instrument. Enlightenment,
however, is the philosophy which identifies truth with the scientific
system.'56
It is evident that within the line of thought which we are dealing
with here, Horkheimer and Adorno represent a limiting case.
Together with Marcuse, they are the most conspicuous example of
the extreme confusion that can be reached by mistaking the romantic
critique of intellect and science for a socio-historical critique of
capitalism. Nevertheless, the focal point of their arguments - that
is, the thesis that science is an institution of the bourgeois world would perhaps have never taken shape without a book of decisive
importance in contemporary thought : Lukacs's History and Class
Consciousness. In this book for the first time two lines of thought were
linked together which were not only antithetical, but which had
until then been devoid of any internal connection. These two lines
of thought are, on the one hand, the critique of the intellect and of
materialism, and, on the other hand, the analysis of reification (or
estrangement, or fetishism) developed by Marx in Capital with
reference to the socio-historical conditions of modern capitalist
commodity production.
As Lukacs's self-criticism has made clear on a number of occasions
in the last few years, the connection and confusing of these two
theories (in reference to which it is important to note, however, that
Lukacs never speaks of a 'critique of the intellect', but only of
materialism) was carried out by him within the framework of a still
unclear vision of the relationship (and especially of the difference)
between Hegel and Marx. The work had been written in the light
and on the basis of the Hegelian theory of the identity of subject and
object. And that did not fail to show itself in the 'crucial problem of
56. ibid., pp. 91 and 92.

176
the book, the problem of reification, in the sense that throughout the
,
basic line of argument reification (alienation, estrangement)
Verdinglichung (Entausserung, Entfremdung) was 'identified, as in
Hegel, with objectivity'. 57
In his introduction to the recent edition of the book Lukacs has
returned to this argument in even clearer terms : 'it is in Hegel that
we first encounter alienation as the fundamental problem of the
place of man in the world and vis-it-vis the world. However, in the
term alienation he includes every type of objectification. Thus
"alienation" when taken to its logical conclusion is identical with
objectification. Therefore, when the identical subject-object tran
scends alienation it must also transcend objectification at the same
time. But since, according to Hegel, the object, the thing exists
only as an alienation from self-consciousness, to take it back into the
subject would mean the end of objective reality and thus ofany reality
at all. History and Class Consciousness follows Hegel in that it too
equates alienation with objectification (Vergegenstandlichung) (to use
the term employed by Marx in the Economic-Philosophical Manu
scripts). This fundamental and crude error has certainly contributed
greatly to the success enjoyed by History and Class Consciousness.'5 8
The error of the book consisted, therefore, in confusing two ideas :
Hegel's conception in which alienation is identified with the
objectivity of nature and thus with the externality or heterogeneity of
being in relation to thought (the materialist, or 'dogmatic', point of
view of common sense and of 'ordinary human understanding',
whose alienation is to be suppressed with the realization of the
principle of idealism) ; and Marx's conception where by contrast the
object is estranged, not in that it is 'external', but in that it takes on
the (socio-historical) character of a commodity and capital, i.e. the
character of a product of wage-labour. That is, it is an 'alienated'
product precisely in the sense that it not only does not belong to the
producer, but is used in the further utilization of the producer him
self as labour-force sold by the day.
-

57. Cf. Lukacs's statement of September I962, in I. Fetscher, Der Marxismus, Vol. I
(Munich, I962).
58. G. Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness, op. cit., pp. xxiii-xxiv.

From Bergson to Lukacs

I77

This difference between his own conception and that of Hegel is

clarified by Marx himself quite unequivocally in the Manuscripts.
With Hegel, he writes, 'It is not the fact that the human being
objectifies himself inhumanly, in opposition to himself, but that he
objectifies himself by distinction from and in opposition to abstract
thought, which constitutes alienation as it exists and as it has to
be transcended' ; therefore, 'the appropriation of alienated objective
being, or the supersession of objectivity in the form of alienation . . .
signifies for Hegel also, or primarily, the supersession of objectivity,
since it is not the determinate character of the object but its objective
character which is the scandal of alienation for self-consciousness' .5 9
LuHcs himself has brought out the importance which these pages
of the Manuscripts he was able to read them in 1 930, even before
they were published - had in helping him understand the error which
was the basis of his own book of 1 923. Nor does he fail to add, and
rightly so, that the benefit which he drew from it was his alone, and
not shared with others, since 'even the publication of Marx's early
work has unfortunately not been of much help' - as it has been
'predominately interpreted in Hegelian terms, rather than as a
fundamental critique of this conception of Hegel's'. 6 0 '
I can still
remember even today the overwhelming effect produced in me by
Marx's statement that objectivity was the primary material attribute
of all things and relations.' What derived therefrom was an under
standing of the fact that 'objectification is a natural means by which
man masters the world. . . . By contrast, alienation is a special
variant of that activity that becomes operative in definite social
conditions'. And with that were 'completely shattered the theoretical
foundations of what had been the particular achievement of History
and Class Consciousness'.6l
Of course, today this self-criticism may appear even too strong.
Whatever may be its shortcomings, History and Class Consciousness
remains an important book which cannot and must not be confused
with anything that has come after it - from Karl Mannheim's
-

59. K. Marx, Early Writings, op. cit., pp. 201 and 209.
60. cr. I. Fetscher, op. cit.
6 1 . G. Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness, op. cit., p. xxxvi.

I78
Ideology and Utopia up to the writings of Horkheimer and Marcuse.
To speak seriously and disregard false modesty, History and Class
Consciousness is the first Marxist book after Marx (Labriola was too
isolated a phenomenon) which deals with Hegel and German classical
philosophy at a European level and with a thorough knowledge of
the subject; it is the first book in which philosophical Marxism ceases
to be a cosmological romance and, thus, a surrogate 'religion' for the
'lower' classes. Furthermore, in order to evaluate properly the
significance of this work and the turning-point which it represented
in the history of the interpretation of Marx, it is, certainly, revealing
to compare it with the unrefined farrago of the positivist and evolu
tionist Marxism of the Second International. But more important
still is one simple fact : its rediscovery (even with all the limitations
and equivocations mentioned above) of an entire area of Marx's
thought, in every sense essential to an understanding of Capital; i.e.,
the theory of estrangement or reification. This theory, which had
been entirely buried in the interpretative work of Engels, Plekhanov,
and Lenin (not, of course, out of bad faith, but as a consequence of a
radical inadequacy of their theoretical tools), was again buried,
immediately afterwards, in all of 'dialectical materialism' till our day.
Nevertheless, having made this acknowledgment, I too - even
though I belong to the (only too wide) circle of the admirers of
History and Class Consciousness believe that one should agree with
the self-critical severity of Lukacs's judgment. The 'fundamental and
crude error' which was the basis of this work is also - as the author
has clearly seen - what has been in large part responsible for its
success ; and not only at the beginning of the thirties, but also in the
following decades up to today. One need only think of Sartre and following another of Lukacs's allusions - the 'mixture of Marxist
and Existentialist ideas' produced 'after World War II, especially in
France'. 6 2
Goldmann's well-known thesis - implicitly confirmed by Lukacs
in his essay on Heidegger 'redivivus', written on the occasion of the
Brief uber den Humanismus - argues that the roots of History and
Class Consciousness lie in the Heidelberg School (Rickert and Lask)
-

62. ibid., p. xxiii.

From Bergson to Lukacs I79

and that it influenced Sein und Zeit. Heidegger's work is to be
understood, according to Goldmann, as in large part a polemical
response, 'perhaps even unconscious', to Lukacs's book of 1 923 .
The 'true' and 'false' consciousness discussed by Lukacs became,
presumably, the 'authentic' and 'inauthentic' existence of Heidegger ;
Lukacs's distinction between 'essence' and 'phenomenon' became
Heidegger's distinction between 'ontical' and 'ontological', etc. 63
And it is also significant - although it is not worth giving any
particular emphasis to this fact - that, in tracing out the line of
development that runs from classical philosophy through Fichte,
Schelling, and Hegel to modern and contemporary philosophy,
Goldmann does not fail to put at the head of the list in which he
locates Lask, Lukacs, Heidegger, and Sartre, the name of Bergson. 64
However, leaving aside these problems of genealogy and 'in
fluences' (in which one cannot rule out the possibility that Goldmann
made some use of his romanesque imagination), and returning to our
main argument, it remains a fact that the focal theme of History and
Class Consciousness is in the identification of capitalist reification with
the 'reification' engendered by science. Lukacs's thought in this
respect is, admittedly, not free of blurrings and oscillations. Fre
quently, for example, his polemic against science is only a polemic
against the naturalistic and deterministic conception of 'social
science' which was a feature of the Marxism of the Second Inter
national. 'When the ideal of scientific knowledge is applied to nature
it simply furthers the progress of science. But when it is applied to
society it turns out to be an ideological weapon of the bourgeoisie.'65
Indeed, Lukacs states that the method of the natural sciences 'rejects
the idea of contradiction and antagonism in its subject matter' ;
whereas, 'in the case of social reality', the contradictions (which in
the natural sciences are only an indication that 'our knowledge is as
yet imperfect') 'belong to the nature of reality itself and to the nature
of capitalism'. 66
63. Lucien Goldmann, Mensch, Gemeinschaft und Welt in der Philosophie Immanuel
Kants (Zurich, 1945), pp. 13 and 245-6. English translation by R. Black, Immanuel Kant
(London, 1971), pp. 25-6 and 127-8.
64. Goldmann, op. cit., pp. 26-7.
66. ibid., p. 10.
65. G. Lukacs, op. cit., p. 10.

180
At other times - as also in Korsch's Marxism and Philosophy - the
problem at the focus of attention is the even more complex one
(scarcely ever seen by the entire interpretative tradition either before
or after History and Class Consciousness) of the nature and actual
position occupied by 'law' and 'economy' in Marx's conception.
The formation of these two spheres, with their mutual separation
and 'purity' as objects of autonomous 'sciences' is traced back by
Marx to the division into economic or 'civil' society and 'political'
society or the State, a phenomenon specifically characteristic of
modern capitalist society. Without attempting to enter here into the
peculiar interpretative difficulties of this problem (in relation to
which the questions raised at the end of this essay may perhaps be of
some value), it is a fact that it brings two essential matters to the
fore : the question of the withering away of Law and Politics, linked
to the withering away of the State ; and the question of the withering
away of 'political economy', linked to the end of commodity produc
tion. This latter is a theme which emerges clearly from the way in
which Marx entitles his work, which is the 'Critique of Political
Economy', and not just of 'bourgeois' political economy (as a conse
quence of the explicit premiss that political economy as such must be
understood not as a science, but rather as a metaphysics).
This perspective enables one to see the positive side to Lukacs's
polemic against the false 'scientificity' of the positivist Marxism of
Cunow, Kautsky, Plekhanov, Conrad Schmidt, etc. It also - and I
almost wrote it even lets one see the value of his recourse to the
category of 'totality', whenever this serves to underline the problem
of the unity of the capitalist socio-economic formation. Totality, i.e.,
in the sense of a 'totality' of those spheres (economy, law, politics, etc.)
awkwardly hypostatized and rendered autonomous by the scholasti
cism still reigning in the area of the so-called 'moral sciences' (in
which it is as if whoever wakes up first, can found a new 'science' if
he feels like it).
Nevertheless, if we wish to consider the whole picture without
conceding anything to the 'anti-mathematical frenzy' still in vogue
today (but tomorrow, who knows
?), we must immediately add
that the real focus of Histoy and Class Consciousness is upon very
-

From Bergson to Lukacs I8I

different themes from those just indicated. At the basis of the work
there lies the distinction between the method of the socio-historical
sciences and that of the natural sciences, as elaborated by Rickert in
his Grenzen a distinction which already in Rickert is, of course (at
least in the third and fourth editions which I have seen), a good deal
more than a mere distinction of 'methods' or subjective points of
view. It is an actual duality of 'objective' spheres or areas, the duality
of 'nature' and 'history', 67 of Natur and Kultur, and extending to a
contrast (the later 'applications' of which are only too well-known)
between Kulturvolker and NaturvOlker. 68 Not only is there this
distinction at the basis of the work, but there is also, more important,
that inevitable development of it which leads to a denial of nature as
possessing true reality, and so to denying the possibility of real
knowledge to the physical-natural sciences.
The point of view of History and Class Consciousness does not
allow of any doubt on this score. The fact that the modern science of
nature has developed in and with the development of modern
capitalist society (one need only think of the 'industrial revolution')
and that it constitutes the technological basis oflarge-scale industrial
production means, according to Lukacs, that the 'idea, formulated
most lucidly by Kant but essentially unchanged since Kepler and
Galileo, of nature as the "aggregate of systems of the laws" governing
what happens', is a 'development out of the economic structures of
capitalism'. 6 9 'Nature,' he writes 'is a social category.'7 0 The vision
of reality revealed to us by the conceptual constructs of natural
science are thus a projection into the world of capitalism's ideologi
cal point of view. Significantly, Lukacs cites Tonnies here : 'scienti
fic concepts which by their ordinary origin and their real properties
are judgements by means of which complexes of feeling are given
names, behave within science like commodities in society. They
gather together within the system like commodities on the market.
The supreme scientific concept which is no longer the name of
anything real is like money. E.g. the concept of an atom, or of
energy.'71
-

67. H. Rickert, op. cit., pp. I45 and 362-3.

69. G. Lukacs, op. cit., p. I36.
70. ibid., p. I30.

68. ibid., pp. 394-5.

ibid., p. I3I.

7I.

I82
Fortunately, the radical antithesis between this argument of
Ti::innies and Lukacs and Marx's own thought can be documented
this time. In the Manuscripts of 1 844, Marx links the absolute
Notion or Logos of Hegel's Science ofLogic (this is a point which we
shall develop later) together with 'value' as it is produced in a com
modity-producing society. The relationship in Hegel between the
Notion and sense-reality is the same as the relation between the
'value' and the 'use-value' of commodities. The 'Logic', Marx says,
'is the money of the mind, the speculative thought-value of man and of
nature, their essence indifferent to any real determinate character
and thus unreal ; thought which is alienated and abstract and ignores
real nature and man'. 7 2
For Ti::innies and Lukacs it is not the hypostasis of the speculative
Notion which is the reflection of (and also one aspect of) that process
of hypostatization or substantification of the abstract found in the
production of 'value' and capital; rather, it is the scientific concept
(and the reification presumably linked to it) which are the cause and
the birthplace of capitalist reification. Reification, in other words, is
engendered by science. And since there is an absolute homogeneity
and solidarity of nature between science and capitalism - to the point
that science itself appears as an institution of the bourgeois world,
destined to be swept away with it - what also gets swept away is that
other cornerstone of Marx's entire analysis (upon which rests his
whole appraisal of capitalism as a progressive historical phenome
non). That is, his thesis of the necessary contradiction between
modern productive forces and the private mode of appropriation, or
between the development of science and industry on the one hand,
as the premisses and condition for the social emancipation of man,
and the capitalist involucrum within which this development takes
place.
Capitalist reification, in short, is the reification engendered by
science itself. It is a fact, Lukacs says, that 'capitalist society is
predisposed to harmonize with scientific method'. 73 This predis
position finds expression already in Galileo's call for ' "scientific
exactitude" " which presupposes 'that the elements remain
72.

K. Marx, Early Writings, op. cit., p. 200.

73.

G. Lukacs, op. cit., p. 7.

Prom Bergson to Lukacs I83

"constant" ',74 i.e. that solidification of the world from which the
'so-called facts that are idolized' arise. In other words, 'the "pure"
facts of the natural sciences', facts which exist in 'an environment
where (their) laws can be inspected without outside interference',
are always to be considered in relation to the recognition that
'capitalism tends to produce a social structure that in great measure
encourages such views' and that 'it is in the nature of capitalism to
process phenomena in this way'.75
In appearance, the argument focuses on capital ; in reality, it is the
'intellect' which is being accused. The 'fetishistic forms of objecti
vity' - even before surplus value, profit, income, and interest - are
represented by 'the determinants of reflection' of the intellect, - just
that intellect which is referred to by Lukacs as the 'reified mind'. 76
And since the origin of estrangement is found to reside primarily in
the distinction between subject and object - and only secondarily in
the separation between capital and labour - the overcoming of
estrangement is entrusted to a process in which 'the duality of
subject and object (the duality of thought and being is only a special
case of this), is transcended, i.e. where subject and object coincide,
where they are identical'. 77 In fact, the zenith of fetishism is . . .
materialism, i.e., 'the dogmatic acceptance of a merely given
reality - divorced from the subject'. 7 8
Just as for Sartre-Roquentin, the scandal of alienation is that a
natural world should exist. And since this is the enslavement from
which we must free ourselves (one thinks of Hegel on ancient
scepticism here), the enslavement imposed on us by the things and
the 'facts' (Ie cose e i 'fatti'), human emancipation comes again to
coincide with that sceptical destruction of the intellect and of natural
objectivity - which can be attained, as is well-known, by merely
understanding (guided by Bergson perhaps) that 'what we are wont
to call "facts" consists of processes', and that 'the facts are nothing
but the parts, the aspects of the total process that have been broken
off, artificially isolated and ossified' . Understanding, in short, that
facts are only the 'highest fetish in both theory and practice (of) the
74. ibid., p. 25
76. ibid., pp. l4 and lOS.

75. ibid., pp. 5-6.

77. ibid., p. l23

78. ibid., p. 200.

I84
reified thought of the bourgeoisie'. Liberation, in other words, lies
in the apprehension of the 'total process, which is uncontaminated
by any trace of reification and which allows the process-like essence to
prevail in allitspurity', and 'represents the authentic, higher reality'. 7 9
Bergsonian spiritualism, as one can see, is hot upon our Marxist's
heels. And since every position has its logic, Lukacs, who goes into a
factory not with Capital but with Essai sur les donnees immidiates de
la conscience, finds that the supreme affront to Man on the assembly
line is that it has eliminated . . durle. The factory 'reduces space
and time to a common denominator', 'degrades time to the dimension
of space'. 'Thus time sheds its qualitative, variable, flowing nature ;
it freezes into an exactly delimited, quantifiable continuum filled
with quantifiable "things" ' ; 'time is transformed into abstract,
exactly measurable, physical space' in an environment in which
la duree vecue no longer exists. 8 0
The evil of the factory is thus that it is above all an objective
system, a system of machines in which the overall process is
regarded objectively as something in itself and for itself - and is
analysed into its constituent parts, and in which the problem of
performing each partial process and then linking them all together is
settled through a technical use of mechanics, chemistry, etc. This
then is the evil : mechanization, i.e. that the system of machines
presents itself as a totally objective organism of production, which
the worker finds before him as a pre-existing material condition of
production. The evil, in other words, is not the capitalist use of
machines, but the very fact of using machines at all. The problem is
not that the physical sciences, incorporated into the productive
process, appear as powers of capital over labour, but that the system
of machines has everywhere as its basis the conscious application of
the sciences and therefore also the 'mathematization' or 'quantifica
tion' of nature. Like Marx's bere noire, Dr Ure, Lukacs is unable at
times to distinguish between what is true for any and all use of
machinery on a large scale, and what characterizes its use under
capitalism. 81
.

79. ibid., p. 184.

80. ibid., pp. 89-90.
81. K. Marx, Capital, translated by Eden and CedarPaul, Vol. I, Part Four, Chapter 13.

From Bergson to Lukacs I8S

Of course, since History and Class Consciousness is a serious book,
this error is often corrected. As in few other writings, Lukacs has
here taken account of Capital and Theories of Surplus Value. Never
theless, glimmers of the romantic critique often appear ; and pre
cisely in those places (if one looks closely) where Lukacs, in pursuing
his polemic not against capital but against rationalization as such,
has just put 'the growth of mechanization, dehumanization, and
reification' on the same plane, 8 2 and feels the need to take his distance
from Carlyle, Ruskin, etc. - in short, to disassociate his critique from
the 'struggle against reification' waged by romanticism.
It would be a waste of time to point out here the extent to which
Lukacs, in these places where the analysis of capitalism is replaced
by the critique of . . . materialist fetishism, becomes a disciple of
Rickert. The polemic against experimental knowledge, to which
Lukacs ascribes a 'contemplative' ( !) posture towards nature, is
taken in large part from Rickert's Grenzen. 8 3 And the same is true
for the whole improbable conception of the structure and methods
of the 'natural sciences' 8 4 - as well as the critique of the Abbildtheorie,
the materialist theory of 'reflection'. 8 5 The principal essay in History
and Class Consciousness is on 'reification', and can be better under
stood if one bears in mind the chapter of the Grenzen where Rickert
develops the distinction between Dingbegriffe and Relationsbegriffe. 86
Leaving aside these and other secondary questions (like that of the
influence exercised by Max Weber on History and Class Conscious
ness) it nevertheless appears opportune here to take a position
concerning Lukacs's assessment of Kant and classical philosophy in
the chapter of his book entitled 'The Antinomies of Bourgeois
Thought'. The importance of this chapter, in which Lukacs's entire
argument on reification reaches its culmination, lies in the fact that
in it he brings to light a fundamental problematic parallel to the one
which we have been attempting to define - even if, as we shall see, he
does so only to arrive at a solution that is the opposite of our own.
The problem is perceived by Lukacs as being at the centre of the
82. G. Lukacs, op. cit., p. 1 36.
83. H. Rickert, op. cit., pp. 279 and 306.
85. ibid., pp. srfT.

84. ibid., pp. r64-5fT.

86. G. Lukacs, op. cit., p. I I S .

I86
Critique ofPure Reason and indeed of Kant's entire work. Kant is the
philosopher in whom 'the paradox and the tragedy of classical
German philosophy', no less than what Lukacs calls the surrender
to the fetishism and reification of bourgeois society, find their
highest expression and this problem derives from the assumption
that the real is ir-rational, i.e. that it is something external to and
heterogeneous from thought, something which cannot be derived
from thought - and then, from the repercussions which this assump
tion has on the way in which the principle of totality is viewed.
As Lukacs makes clear, what is at issue is on the one hand the
'problem of the content of the forms' of knowledge ; and on the
other hand, the 'problem of the whole', or in other words, 'of those
"ultimate" objects of knowledge which are needed to round off the
partial systems into a totality, a system of the perfectly understood
world'. 8 7 These objects - which Kant of course expresses with the
idea of 'God', the 'soul', etc., and regards as questions which,
from the point of view of knowledge, have been improperly posed are also rejected by Lukacs. But they are rejected by him only
formally (as what he considers 'mythological expressions to denote
the unified subject or, alternatively, the unified object of the totality,
qua the totality 'of the objects of knowledge') ; not, however, in
terms of their content or their substance, in which Lukacs sees, on
the contrary, an irrevocable necessity evaded by the Critique precisely
because, as he says, 'Kant is the culmination of the philosophy of
the eighteenth century', and both the development of English
empiricism 'and also the tradition of French materialism move in
this direction'. 88
Kant regards content or 'matter' in terms of the givenness of facts,
or of a basic 'irrationality' (where, it should be noted, the term
'irrationality' serves to indicate the extralogical nature of sense
phenomena and therefore their irreducibility to thought, with the
consequent negation of the identity of subject and object, thought
and being). This entails - and here is Lukacs's thesis - a crisis in the
principle of totality at the level of concepts or categories. In the
sense that since 'empirical facts . . . are to be taken as "given" in their
87. ibid., note 6 on p. ! I S, the text of which is found on p. 2II.

88. ibid., p. I I6.

From Bergson to Lukacs I87

facticity' (in which 'the existence and the mode of being of sensuous
contents remain absolutely irreducible') and since, therefore, 'the
problem of irrationality resolves itself into the impossibility of
penetrating any datum with the aid of rational concepts or of
deriving them from such concepts',8 9 or of deducing them from
thought (and in fact, for Kant, as one knows, 'matter' or existence is
not extracted from the mind), the consequence, Lukacs says, is that
the totality, i.e. the possibility of the concepts to form a 'system',
comes to be irreparably compromised. In other words - and in
simpler terms - the fact that Kant establishes a difference between
the individual concept and its particular contents, between concept
and object, produces also, Lukacs says, a difference among concepts
themselves, preventing the various fragments of knowledge from
becoming integrated into a totality or 'a system of the perfectly
understood world' ; so that 'the irrationality of the contents of the
individual concepts' generates 'the impossibility of apprehending
the whole with the aid of the conceptual framework of the rational
partial systems'. 90 Here, says Lukacs, 'we are forced to concede that
actuality, content, matter, reaches right into the form, the structures
of the forms and their interrelations and thus into the structure ofthe
system itself'. And the consequence is that 'the system must be
abandoned as a system', or that 'it will be no more than a register, an
account, as well ordered as possible, of facts which are no longer
linked rationally and so can no longer be made systematic even
though the forms of their components are themselves rational'. 91
The argument obviously strikes to the heart of the matter. The
'tragic quality' of Kant's philosophy, i.e. the impossibility of its
overcoming the 'crisis' of 'bourgeois estrangement' (a crisis which,
for Lukacs, is here of course identified with the materialist distinc
tion between subject and object, thought and being), can be traced
back to the assumption that existence is an extralogical reality.
History and Class Consciousness cites those pages in which the
Critique demonstrates 'the impossibility of an ontological proof for
the existence of God'. 92 Kant says : ' "Being" is obviously not a real
89. IDe. cit.
91. ibid., p. u8.

90. ibid., p. 120.

92. IDe. cit.

I88
predicate ; that is, it is not a concept of something which could be
added to the concept of a thing.' From the point of view of logic,
therefore, 'A hundred real thalers do not contain the least coin more
than a hundred possible thalers.' 'For as the latter signify the con
cept, and the former the object and the positing of the object,
should the former contain more than the latter, my concept would
not therefore be an adequate concept of it. As concerns my financial
position, however, there undoubtedly exists more (ist mehr) in one
hundred real dollars, than in the mere concept of them (that is, of
their possibility). For the object, as it actually exists, is not analyti
cally contained in my concept, but is added to my concept . . .
synthetically; and yet the conceived hundred thalers are not them
selves in the least increased through thus acquiring existence outside
my concept.' 9 3
Here, with this thesis that existence is not a predicate, i.e. a
concept, but is something 'more' in relation to thought (as also in the
pages devoted to the critique of Leibniz), Kant rejects any and every
acritical identification of 'logical possibility' with 'real possibility' or of the process of development 'according to nature' with the
process of development 'according to the concept'. Just as the
relationship between thought and reality cannot be reduced to a
simple relationship of concepts within thought - since existence is
not a predicate - similarly all transposing of logic into ontology is
illegitimate. Just as a comparison of things among themselves and of
thought with things is not the same as a comparison made solely
within thought, similarly the internal coherence of thought cannot
be directly equivalent to the congruence of thought with reality.
It remains a fact - which we shall shortly have occasion to refer
to again - that this argument, at the same time as it signals the
culmination of Kant's critical consciousness, is on the other hand
also the place where (perhaps more clearly than anywhere else) one
perceives his inability to fuse in an organic fashion the 'logical
process of development' and the 'process of development in reality',
ideal causes and effective causes, finalism and causality. This
93. I. Kant, Critique ofPure Reason (Kemp Smith translation), pp. 504-5 (translation
modified).

From Bergson to Lukacs I89

accounts for Kant's final failure to proceed beyond the straits and
narrows of pure epistemology to a genuine understanding of the
world of work and real historical action, to the production of things
and man's real self-reproduction. It is true that this exclusion by
Kant of the world of history certainly explains the lack of interest
and comprehension always shown by Marxism in regard to Kant's
thought. 94 However, it remains also true - and the chapter dedicated
to it in History and Class Consciousness confirms this - that what has
impeded a genuine understanding of Kant's thought has been the
prejudicial 'critique of the intellect' (and together with the intellect,
the principle of non-contradiction and, therefore, science as well)
which Marxism acritically borrowed from Hegel, whether in the
form of so-called 'Western Marxism' or in its Soviet form as 'dialecti
cal materialism'.
Lukacs's experience can be taken, in this case, as exemplary.
During the period of History and Class Consciousness, i.e. during that
phase in which he mistook 'estrangement' for 'materialism' and
confused 'alienation' with the 'intellect', Kant's thesis concerning
the extralogical nature of existence made him view the Critique of
Pure Reason as the high point of bourgeois 'reified' consciousness.
Then in the following period, when he had given up his anti
materialist bias and passed over into the camp of 'dialectical
materialism', what was to make him view the Critique as the high
point not of 'fetishism', but of 'metaphysical dualism', was Engels's
identification of the 'intellect' with 'dogmatism', and of metaphysics
with the principle of non-contradiction.
Nothing in this regard could be more significant than the self
critique in which Lukacs explained his renunciation of the positions
of 1 923 and his adherence to the principles of'dialectical materialism'.
Although the question of materialism has always been indicated by
him as the principal watershed between the two periods, there is not
a single word which ever alludes to a need for a re-examination of
Hegel's critique of Verstand. Hegel's identification of objectivity
94. This assessment is not invalidated, in my view, either by the 'ethical' socialism of
Bernstein and C. Schmidt, or by the reading in a Fichtian key of the Critique of Pure
Reason giyen by Max Adler in Kausalitiit und Teleologie and in Marxistische Probleme.

1 90
with alienation is rejected ; however, the theoretical presuppositions
from which that identification derived - i.e. the critique of the
intellect, the critique of the principle of non-contradiction - are
calmly adopted and allowed to persist.
It is clear that this deep-seated logical inconsistency on Lukacs's
part has its explanation in reasons going far beyond his person. He
in fact believed that a revival, against Hegel, of the materialist point
of view did not necessarily entail a revision of the critique of the
understanding (and thus also a revival of the principle of non
contradiction). And this depended essentially on the fact that when
he went over to 'dialectical materialism', among all the matters on
which Lukacs felt constrained to change his opinion there was
at least one - this one - in which no effort was required of
him.
What he had learned to criticize and combat from his old positions
of 1 923 - the 'distinctions' and 'divisions' introduced by the intellect
- he went on to criticize and combat, no less vehemently, from the
standpoint of 'dialectical materialism'. What changed was, at the
most, only the name; in the sense that what Lukacs had opposed as
'reification' during the period of History and Class Consciousness,
could now be opposed by him as 'metaphysics'. In both cases,
however, the substance was the same, whatever the name was under
which it was promulgated. It was always understood that the objec
tive was to eliminate 'determinate' concepts, the notorious 'empiri
cal' concepts (whether those of common sense or of 'traditional'
science) and, in short, all knowledge grounded on non-contradiction,
i.e. knowledge having as its substratum determinate objects.
Thus, in his arduous passage from one bank to the other, in his
painful transmigration from the refined 'nuances' of Western
Marxism to the rough-hewn truths of Russian 'dialectical material
ism', Lukacs found some basic comfort in the fact that, beneath
apparent differences, he continued to move within the same tradi
tion. The 'finite mode of knowledge' which had had its 'dogmatic
scabs' (in his own words) 'scratched' by Hegel with the dialectical
acids ofancient Pyrrhonism ; knowledge in terms of concepts that are
figes et distincts, against which Bergson had objected that things

From Bergson to Lukacs I9I

do not exist, but only processes and that 'facts' are nothing other than
parts, 'moments' which the intellect has artificially isolated from the
uninterrupted continuity of 'spiritual becoming' ; all the things, in
short, which he had learned to loathe from the example of Rickert
and Simmel, etc., and which are re-echoed today in the platitudes
of Kojeve and Marcuse - Lukacs found them all again, proscribed
and excluded once more by the very essence of 'dialectical material
ism'. There are no things, but only processes. Nothing is, everything
passes away. Everything subsists in the twilight of Heraclitian
becoming. The light of scientific and intellectual knowledge is but
the glare and illusion of metaphysics. Metaphysics, as the Dialectics
of Nature says, is 'the science of things - not of movements'. 95
And in Ludwig Feuerbach : 'The world is not to be comprehended
as a complex of ready-made things, but as a complex of processes, in
which the things apparently stable no less than their mind-images
in our head, the concepts, go through an uninterrupted change of
coming into being and passing away. . . .' 9 6
Materialism, then, plus the dialectic of matter. Widerspiegelungs
theorie plus the 'dialectic of the finite'. Such was the new shore
towards which Lukacs was moving after 1930 : the 'dialectical
materialism' of Engels. And since, in order to have the first thing materialism - it was indispensable to break away from the Hegelian
critique of the understanding and of non-contradiction, whereas, in
order to have the second, what was indispensable was precisely that
critique itself (i.e. the Annihilation des Verstandes and the destruction
of the finite) one can well understand the profoundly contradictory
nature of Lukacs's self-criticism.
His statement of 1 962 traces back all of the shortcomings of
History and Class Consciousness to two essential points : the failure
to recognize the 'fundamental principle of the Marxist theory of
knowledge - an objective reality existing independently of con
sciousness' ; and the denial of the dialectic of matter. 97 A literature
at times brilliant, but more often weak in analysis, has always agreed
95. F. Engels, Dialectics of Nature, op. cit., p. I SS.
96. F. Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach, op. cit., p. 44.
97. Cf. the statement of 1962 in I. Fetscher, op. cit.

19 2
with Lukacs in recognizing that these were (as is indeed true)
precisely the two main distinguishing features between 'Western
Marxism' and 'dialectical materialism' : the Widerspiegelungstheorie
and the 'dialectic of matter'. But also that both conceptions con
tributed to define the fundamentally materialist nature of Russian
Marxism, in contradistinction to the 'Western' version (one need
only think of Merleau-Ponty's Les aventures de la dialectique).
In point of fact, both the Lukacs who passed over to 'dialectical
materialism', and so-called 'Western Marxism', have always re
mained trapped within the same theoretical limits. Neither has ever
arrived at an understanding of how the 'critique of the intellect'
compelled both theories to share fate, above and beyond all of their
other differences.
Abbildtheorie plus the 'dialectic of matter'. Even the slightest
degree of critical consciousness should be enough to understand the
degree of dilettantism that is implicit in any claim to couple these
two things together. Materialism, in fact, is inconceivable without
the principle of non-contradiction ; the ' dialectic of matter', contrari
wise, is the negation of this principle. For the former, the particular
object is the substratum of judgment : the particular is external or
irreducible (one need only think of Kant) to the logical universal.
For the latter, however, just the opposite is true : in the sense that, if
the finite has as its essence and foundation the 'other' than itself, it
is 'truly' itself only when it is not itself but is the ideal finite or the
finite within thought.
A page from History and Class Consciousness confirms the syncre
tism that lies at the basis of Engels's naive combination of Abbild
theorie and 'dialectic of matter'. Lukacs cites two passages from
Ludwig Feuerbach, the first of which he rejects and the other he
accepts. Engels writes : 'We comprehend the concepts in our heads
once more materialistically - as reflections of real things instead of
regarding the real things as reflections of this or that stage of the
absolute concept.' Now, Lukacs comments, 'this leaves a question
to be asked and Engels not only asks it but also answers it on the
following page quite in agreement with us. There he says : "that the
world is not to be comprehended as a complex of ready-made

From Bergson to Luktfcs 193

things, but as a complex of processes".' 'But then,' Lukacs concludes,
'if there are no things, what is "reflected" in thought?'9 8
In this remark, which may appear little more than a joke, the
difference between Western Marxism and dialectical materialism
finds - even if only implicitly - its proper dimension. The transfor
mation of 'things' into 'processes' presupposes the overcoming not
only of the distinction between one thing and another, but also of
that between subject and object. Reality as process is, in fact, the
fluidity, the uninterrupted continuity which is established whenever
the 'material' and the 'immaterial', the subjective and the objective,
the finite and the infinite, are taken together i.e. taken up as
'moments' of a single unity. As we know, this is an essential point of
Hegel's thought. Reason, he says, is not the subjective as against the
objective : it is the unity of the one and the other; it is not the infinite
of the understanding, but the unity of the finite and infinite. Now,
to take up this dialectical view of reality as process and, at the same
time, to claim to continue to be talking about thought that 'reflects'
things, as if there still existed a mutual externality between the two
things, is patently absurd (precisely Lukacs's objection).
In my opinion it is undeniable that in this regard, i.e. in its
rejection of syncretism or eclecticism, Western Marxism demon
strates its superiority over 'dialectical materialism'. Western Marxism
recognizes, at least in the case of its principal exponent, that the
adoption of the dialectical principle as the principle (not only of
reason but also) of reality leaves no room for materialism of any kind.
And the extent to which this position, with all its limitations, is
more correct than the other one is demonstrated by simply calling
to mind the decadence of Lukacs's thought after History and Class
Consciousness, as he tried to discover in Hegel himself what in 1 923
he had rightly denounced as an eclectic contamination of Engels's :
that is to say, the adoption of the dialectic as the principle of reality
and, together with it, the possibility of introducing a 'theory of
reflection' .
The common element in these two positions, underlying their
significant differences, is their character as epigonous and 'corrupted'
-

98. G. Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness, op. cit., pp. 199-200.

I94
manifestations of Hegel's original thought. In the case of 'dialectical
materialism' this 'corruption' has been amply discussed : here,
philosophy mistakes the 'dialectic of matter' with which Hegel
realizes absolute idealism for a form of materialism. In the case of
'Western Marxism', this corruption is expressed in the tendency today quite widespread - to view Hegel's unity of the 'material' and
the 'immaterial', the subjective and the objective, as something
neutral (i.e. as something encompassing both of them, without how
ever being either one of them) - and, therefore, as something which
can be taken for granted henceforth as going beyond the 'archaic'
stage of mere epistemological inquiry. Take as an example the
'praxis' of all the philosophical works that draw their title therefrom !
That we are dealing with a kind of epigonism that is altogether
too casual about the actual meaning ascribed by Hegel to his unity
of the subjective and the objective, may be demonstrated with
reference to any number of texts. For example the second Zusatz to
subheading 24 of the Encyclopedia where it is stated that 'God alone
is the thorough harmony of Notion and reality' ;99 or the note to
subheading 389 of the same work, in which - after having called to
mind that 'in the philosophies of Descartes, Malebranche, and
Spinoza, a return was made to such unity of thought and being, of
spirit and matter, and this unity was placed in God' - Hegel observes
that by 'placing the unity of the material and the immaterial in God,
who is to be grasped essentially as spirit, these philosophers wished
to make it known that this unity must not be taken as something
neutral (ein Neutrales) in which two extremes of equal significance
and independence are united', but rather as that unity which can
encompass within itself both thought and being only in so far as it
itself is spirit or thought. 100
If this is true, then the difference between 'dialectical materialism'
and 'Western Marxism' shows itself in a novel light ; i.e. not so much
as a difference between Marxism of a materialist cast and Marxism
qua 'philosophy of praxis', but rather as the difference between two
99. En.L., p. 52.
100. G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy ofMind, being Part Three of the Encyclopaedia of the
Philosophical Sciences, translated by William Wallace (London, 1971), p. 33.

From Bergson to Lukacs 195

opposing and greatly adulterated offshoots of the same Hegelian
tradition. In Western Marxism this tradition was filtered through
the 'medium' of so-called 'contemporary German Historicism' and
its particular problems (notably that of the distinction between the
natural sciences and the socio-historical sciences) ; and also through
the entire anti-objectivist orientation peculiar to Neo-Hegelianism,
including Croce and Gentile. This accounts for the repudiation on
the part of that Marxism of the 'dialectic of matter' and, in general,
of Hegel's entire philosophy of nature.
In dialectical materialism, on the other hand, the same tradition is
taken up precisely and especially in this latter version. This is true
both as regards the belief that the 'dialectic of matter' is itself a form
of materialism - and indeed the most refined and rigorous form
thereof - and as regards the possibility that it offered - thanks to this
misinterpretation and to the nature of the period when 'dialectical
materialism' was elaborated - of being placed in relationship to and
in osmosis with the great cosmogonic 'syntheses' of evolutionist
positivism.
The extent to which both of these lines of interpretation appear
aberrant in relation to the core of Marx's thought can be seen in the
fate of what, in my view, is the unifying theme at the basis of his
entire work : the theme of 'reification' or 'estrangement' or - what is
really the same thing - the theme of the hypostatization or substanti
fication of the abstract. 1 01 This theme of Marx's is the basis of his
critique of both Hegel's speculative logic and of political economy in
general, as well as of his critique of the hypostatization in reality of
the State and capital. The former is hypostatized as the reification
(or particularization) of the general or universal interest which posits
itself as a self-contained entity, the State, divorced from the body of
all those concerned ; and the latter as the reification of a social
productive power which, in its separation from the body of workers,
becomes 'the power of a part of society, (which) preserves itself and
multiplies by exchange with direct, living labour-power' . 1 0 2
lOr. The perception of this unifying motif i n Marx's work appears i n its general
outline - even if perhaps never in fully conscious terms - in Karl Korsch's well-balanced
KarlMarx (London, 1936).
102. K. Marx, Wage-Labour and Capital, op. cit., p. 30.

19 6
Now, the fate that has befallen this essential theme of Marx's
entire work finds expression, significantly enough, in Lukacs's
own experience. History and Class Consciousness as the author has
correctly recalled - is that work in which the 'question of alienation,
. . . for the first time since Marx, is treated as central to the revolu
tionary critique of capitalism'. 1 03 After Marx and up until 1 923 the
problem had never been examined. An entire area central to Marx's
thought - developed in hundreds of pages of Capital, Theories of
Surplus Value, and the Grundrisse, etc. - had totally escaped the
horizon of his interpreters' knowledge. Engels, Kautsky, Plekhanov,
Lenin did not devote even a single line to it. They did not manage to
see the point of it. In their reconstructions of Marx's thought there
was no room for this theme.
Lukacs's book breaks for the first time with this tradition, and
discovers this unexplored ground in the corpus of Marx's writings.
Since, however, the problem of capitalist reification is then confused
by Lukacs with that of materialism and science, an explanation for
this basic impasse in the entire preceding tradition of interpretation
posed no great difficulty for him : he thought that the Engels-Lenin
tradition excluded the theme of reification as a consequence of its
materialist nature.
When his bias against materialism had disappeared after 1 930, and
he was in a position to re-examine the problem right from its roots,
the continuity existing between his old positions and his new ones (as
far as concerns the 'critique of the intellect') kept him from arriving
at a new appraisal of the question. Although much more learned
and expert than countless others, he had now become a 'dialectical
materialist' with all the trimmings. And the theme of reification
gradually loses importance and significance in his work, reappearing
only (when it does reappear) in the same manner as in 1923. The
critique of reification is the same as the critique of 'positivity'
developed by the young HegeJ. 1 0 4 Metaphysics resides in the
understanding, in the principle of non-contradiction.
-

103. G. Lukacs, op. cit., p. xxii.

104. Here one should carefully examine Chapters II and VI of Der jUtlge Hegel con
cerning Hegel's critique of 'positivity' and, in particular, concerning the critique of

From Bergson to Lukacs 1 97

'positive religion'. In general, one must note that although Lukacs points out on a
number of occasions that Hegel's critique of positive religion is 'the philosophic expres
sion of the ultra-idealist dissolution (Aufhebung) of any and all objectivity' (p. 124) and
that Hegel 'does not reject and oppose religion in general, but rather counterposes a non
positive religion to positive religion' (p. 130), his argument nonetheless tends to give
greater emphasis to those features of Hegel's argument which represent 'intimations of
those sorts of social objectivity (Gegenstiindlichkeit) which Marx subsequently designated
with the term 'fetishism' (p. 124). The reason for the continual oscillations found in
Lukacs's argument is to be sought, in my view, in his failure to carry out a thorough
analysis of Hegel's critique of the intellect. That prevented him from seeing that Hegel's
critique is a critique ofpositivity and not of religion; or, better stated, that this critique is
indeed a critique of religion, but only in so far as it is characteristic of religion - as
opposed to philosophy - to conceive of God, who is spirituality, in terms that are still
naturalistic. The critique of positive religion is in Hegel above all the critique of
Catholicism. The critique hinges on the theme of naturalistic and pagan objectivism,
which calls into question positive religion par excellence. The long Anmerkung to sub
heading 552 of the Encyclopedia (Hegel's Philosophy ofMind, translated by W. Wallace,
London, 1871) states that with Catholicism 'God is in the "host" presented to religious
adoration as an external thing. [In the Lutheran Church, on the contrary, the host as such
is not at first consecrated, but in the moment of enjoyment, i.e. in the annihilation of its
externality, and in the act of faith, i.e. in the free self-certain spirit: only then is it con
secrated and exalted to be present God' (pp. 284-5).] The critique opposes, in short, the
representation of the Spirit as a thing, re-establishing in this way a link with Hegel's
critique of pre-Kantian metaphysics. This position, which is from his period of full
maturity, is analogous - as Karl Rosenkranz saw clearly in his life of Hegel (Georg
Wilhelm Friedrich Begels Leben, Berlin, 1844) - to that adopted during his early period.
What is confirmed in both periods is that 'Hegel's philosophy, as far as concerns religion,
is essentially Protestant'. And Rosenkranz adds : 'I term Protestantism that form of
religion which bases the conciliation between God and man on the recognition that the
essence of human self-consciousness has as its contents divine self-consciousness and
thus freedom as its form.' Rosenkranz rightly makes a connection between the critique
of positive religion and Hegel's critique of the 'understanding', and in particular the
former's connection with the critique developed by Hegel of the relationship that the
intellectual understanding establishes between the finite and the infinite when it repre
sents the finite as the 'here and now', or 'worldly existence', and the infinite as the
empty 'beyond'. Lukacs, on the contrary, tends to see in Hegel's critique 'the theoretical
unmasking and annihilation of the transcendental objectivity of positivity' (p. 1 I 8), as if
the meaning of Hegel's argument were the negation of transcendence, rather than the
attempt to establish transcendence as the absolute and the sole true reality by shifting
God from the beyond to the here and now. Here again one comes across the dialectical
materialist limitation of Lukacs. In fact, the dialectic of the finite and the infinite is
conceived by him as if it were a means by which Hegel negated the suprasensible or
God - rather than a means to negate the finite. As Lukacs says (p. 302) : 'Already at
Jena he begins to find a correct dialectical formulation of this problem, and precisely by
means of this dialectic of the infinite and the finite which he has discovered he begins to
eliminate all transcendental and supranatural (jedeJenseitigkeit) traces from the infinite').

1 98
Lukacs was not only incapable of understanding the reason why
the old dialectical materialism was not able to interpret and elaborate
on Marx's analysis of reification ; he in turn became a prisoner of the
limitations of that tradition. Metaphysics is for him the differentia
tion of subject and object, the particular viewed to the exclusion of
everything that it is not; in short, it is the particular outside the
logical universal. Now, precisely this argument is what excludes
Lukacs from the mainstream of Marx's thought, just as previously it
had excluded Engels and Lenin. For Marx, in fact, metaphysics is
the realism of universals ; it is a logical totality which posits itself as
self-subsisting, transforms itself into the subject, and which (since it
must be self-subsisting) identifies and confuses itself acritically with
the particular, turning the latter - i.e. the actual subject of reality
into its own predicate or manifestation.
What we have attempted to show is how this idea of metaphysics
refers back to an entire tradition which has as its modern cornerstone
Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Marx brought a fundamental and
decisive innovation to this tradition. Just as for Hegel a fully
realized metaphysics is the realization of idealism, i.e. the Idea or
Logos that becomes reality, so for Marx metaphysics is no longer
only a particular form of knowledge, but a process that concerns the
very core of reality itself. In other words it is no longer only the
(metaphysical) representation of reality, but reality itself, which is
upside down or 'stood on its head' ; hence the world itself has to be
undermined and then set 'right way up' . The hypostatization of the
universal, its substantification or reification, does not concern only
(or even primarily) Hegel's Logic ; it concerns reality itself. In
short, what the hypostasis of Hegel's Notion refers back to is the
hypostasis of capital and of the State.
As the reader can see, Lukacs is here mistaking the immanentization of transcendence
for its elimination. As far as concerns the persistence in LuHcs of the old conception that
identifies alienation and fetishism with the 'intellect's' distinction between subject and
object, one need only point to the use he has made of Schiller's Letters, particularly the
sixth one, in Ueber die iisthetische Erziehung des Menschen (in Schillers Werke, edited by
E. Jenny, Vol. X (Basel, 1946), particularly pp. 92ff.). Schiller's critique of the distinction
between the 'sense-world' and the 'understanding' is read by LuHcs in the light of Marx's
critique of fetishismj cf. G. LuHcs, Goethe and His Age (London, 1968), pp. 101ff.

XI.

The Concept of the

'Social Relations of Production'

Marxism is not an epistemology, at least in any fundamental sense in Marx's work Widerspiegelungstheorie as such has little importance.
Nonetheless, it is important to take epistemology as one's point of
departure, in order to understand how a concept like the 'social
relations of production', so original and also so foreign to the entire
speculative tradition, could be born out of the development and
transformation of the very problems of classical philosophy. The
point which must be clearly understood is that the difficulties of
epistemology are the same difficulties that exist in the relationship
between 'intellect' and 'reason'. Since epistemology has to explain
the genesis of knowledge, the formation of concepts, it cannot take
knowledge as already given, but must go back to the conditions from
which knowledge itself is produced (sensation and intellect, thought
and being). All of which means that epistemology cannot help but
present itself as an Elementarlehre, i.e. as a 'theory of elements',
where thought is not only 'one of the two', but is conditioned by the
'other' external to it. Yet on the other hand, inasmuch as the stipu
lation of the conditions in which knowledge is produced is itself a
cognitive act, that which at first appears to place limiting conditions
on thought from the outside can subsequently reveal itself to be a
limiting condition which thought has posited for itself. Far from
being just 'one of two', thought then shows itself to be the 'totality'
of the relationship. In the first case, when epistemology purports to
be an inquiry into the genesis or formation of knowledge, it has to
view concepts as a resultant, a point of arrival that depends on extra
logical conditions. In the second case, just the reverse : since the
very attempt to explain the cognitive process implies a cognitive
act, concepts are seen in terms of an original organic unity that
is essential to them, and epistemology is reduced to logic.

200

These difficulties in the theory of knowledge are the pivotal

point from which Hegel's and Kant's thought develop. The first
paragraphs of the Encyclopedia demonstrate with exceptional cl arity
how Hegel had mastered all aspects of the problem. Unless it is to be
a form of immediate knowledge or a faith, knowledge must be able to
manifest itself at the end of a process that proceeds from empirical
reality (non-sapere) to knowledge, from being to thought ; the
Notion must, therefore, show itself to be something that is mediated
and conditioned ; hence the statement at the beginning of subheading
12 that 'the rise of philosophy (has) its point of departure (in)
Experience'. On the other hand the need for inquiry into the rise of
philosophy or knowledge clashes with the fact that such research
itself cannot come about except in the light of and on the basis of
what should be its outcome. 'A main line of argument in the Critical
Philosophy (of Kant) is that before proceeding to inquire into God
or into the true being of things, one must first of all examine the
faculty ofcognition . . Unless we wish to be deceived by words, it is
easy to see . . . that the examination of knowledge can only be carried
out by an act of knowledge. To examine this so-called instrument is
the same thing as to know it. But to seek to know before we know is as
absurd as the resolution of Scholasticus, not to venture into the water
until he had learned to swim.'! On the one hand, then, there is the
need for mediation in thepassagefrom experience to philosophy, from
being to the Notion ; for were this mediation and this conditioning
either impossible or illusory, then Jacobi's intuitionism would be
correct (and along with Jacobi, the Indian who worships the cow and
and monkey). On the other hand, however, inasmuch as the Notion
is a prius it is impossible for the Notion to be the resultant of external
conditions. 'The rise of philosophy (has) its point of departure (in)
Experience' ; but, Hegel immediately adds, 'If mediation is repre
sented as a state of conditionedness (Bedingtheit), and this is brought
out in a one-sided fashion, it may be said - not that the remark would
mean much - that philosophy owes its origin to experience (the
a posteriori).'2
.

I.

En.L., p. 17 (translation modified).

2.

ibid., p.

20

(translation modified).

The Concept of the 'Social Relations ofProduction'

20I

In other words, the difficulties of epistemology derive from the

clash of two opposing principles. The first holds that since all
explanation is a scire per causas (one need only think of Jacobi), any
theory that proposes to explain knowledge cannot do other than
stipulate the limiting conditions on thought, i.e. apply to thought the
principle of causality. This accounts for the tendency towards
materialism present in every epistemology. (Hegel, who in opposition
to Jacobi calls attention to the need for mediation, can only uphold
the sort of mediation that 'sublates' itself, i.e. that eliminates the
limiting conditions placed on thought.) The second principle holds
that since thought is 'subjectivity' and therefore spontaneous
'activity', it is irreducible to any causal explanation (thought, as
Hegel says, is ungrateful like eating which 'devours that to which it
owes itself'). This means that in so far as the theory which represents
it as an effect is itself an act of thinking, it is evident that what
epistemology presents to us is not, despite itself, the priority of real
conditions but rather the priority of the thought that articulates
them ; and therefore, the limiting conditions are not really external,
but only the limiting conditions conceived by thought, conditions
that are a product and consequence of thought itself.
Here we have the roots of Hegel's thesis, already referred to a
number of times, that philosophy is always and inevitably idealism.
Materialism is, in this view, inconceivable because a philosophy that
affirms the priority of being or matter over thought and therefore
the dependence of the latter on the former, does not realize that it is
overturning the very order which it proposes - in the very act by
which it arrives at this declaration. Matter, which was to have been
primary, actually manifests itself only as an ideal content, i.e. as a
product of thought; thought, contrariwise, which was to have been
secondary, turns out to be primary. Hegel writes : 'The principles of
ancient or modern philosophies, water, or matter, or atoms are
thoughts, universals, ideal entities, not things as they immediately
present themselves to us, that is, in their sensuous individuality not even the water of Thales. For although this is also empirical
water, it is at the same time also the in-itself or essence of all other
things, too, and these other things are not self-subsistent or grounded

202

in themselves, but are posited by, are derived from, an other, . . . that
is they are ideal entities.'3
On the other hand, even if concepts represent that original unity
beyond which it is impossible to go and which it would be absurd to
overlook - even hypothetically - it remains true nonetheless that
Hegel himself must constantly call attention to the need for media
tion. The concept cannot be just 'first' ; it must also appear as 'last',
not only as a point of departure but also as a point of arrival. For
otherwise the concept would become an unmediated presupposition
(a blind faith or an instinct), and the knowledge which is to be built
up would turn out to be already given.
The same difficulty was also experienced by Kant, although he
was proceeding in a direction very different from that of Hegel.
The Critique of Pure Reason is in a sense the only great work of
modern thought which attempts to construct epistemology as a
science. The distinction between thought and being, which for
Hegel is a regrettable necessity that must be circumvented and
avoided, is with Kant a source of strength. For him, it is not
epistemology that tends to lapse into logic, but vice versa. It is not
the relationship 'being-thought' that tends to circumscribe itself to
a mere relationship of thought with itself - if anything, the opposite
is true. In its basic construction the Critique of Pure Reason is a
'theory of elements', i.e. a theory of the distinction between the
sense element and the logical element (in which thought is not only
the second element, but is conditioned by the firs). On the basis of
this formulation, Kant constantly remarks that if one wants to have
knowledge, one must refer thought back to that which is other than
itself; an 'other' nota bene - whose heterogeneity is qualitative and
not formal, 'transcendental' and not merely logical. 'Without
sensibili no object would be given to us, without understanding
no object would be thought . . . . These two powers or capacities
(receptivity and spontaneity) cannot exchange their functions. The
understanding can intuit nothing, the senses can think nothing.
Only through their union can knowledge arise. But that is no reason
for confounding the contribution of either with that of the other ;
-

3. L., p. 170

The Concept of the 'Social Relations ofProduction'

203

rather is it a strong reason for carefully separating and distinguishing

the one from the other. We therefore distinguish the science of the
rules of sensibility in general, that is, aesthetic, from the science of
the rules of the understanding in general, that is, logic.'4
It i s symptomatic, however, that it is precisely from the heart of
this 'theory of elements' that the difficulty described above in the
case of Hegel should arise also for Kant. Inasmuch as there can be
no knowledge unless there is already given something to be thought,
thought is clearly only 'one of the two' : it is conditioned by the
'other' that lies outside itself. On the other hand, since for something
to be given to me, I must take cognizance of it as such (for the prob
lems and things of which I am not conscious do not exist for
me), the relationship is reversed ; whereas in the first case in order
for me to think something had to present or represent itself to me,
now - vice versa - in order for me to have representations, they must
appear from the very start as mine, i.e. as linked to and belonging
already to my consciousness. As Kant says : 'For the manifold
representations, which are given in an intuition, would not be one
and all my representations, if they did not all belong to one self
consciousness' ; i.e. 'only in so far as I can grasp the manifold of the
representations in one consciousness, do I call them one and all
mine'. 5
In the first case, thought is only 'one of two', and 'that representa
tion, which can be given before all thought', and which, as Kant
writes, may be termed 'intuition' (Anschauung), is the thing as it
manifests itself to me. In the second case, however, just as thought is
a 'totality', i.e. the 'original synthetic unity of apperception', so
representation is only 'an act of spontaneity'> a creation of thought,
i.e. an act by which thought objectifies itself. In the first case, there
can be no thought unless an object to be thought is already given; in
the second, there can be no consciousness of the object except by
means of and in dependence on the self-consciousness of the subject.
The 'theory of elements', with its distin-ction between the sense
element and the logical element, aims to go back to the conditions
4. I. Kant, Critique ofPure Reason (Kemp Smith translation), op. cit. , p. 93.
5 ibid., pp. 153-4.

204

antecedent to thought ; but it reveals itself also to be, on the other

hand, a mere subcategory of theory, i.e. a distinction within logic
itself, in which thought - far from appearing as the second or con
ditioned element - shows itself to be that original activity which
determines (one need only think of the 'transcendental schematism')
the entire area of the sense world.
It is not hard to recognize in these epistemological difficulties the
same problems which we have already encountered. Thought as
'one of two' and thought as the 'totality' of the relationship, or - to
use the terms that emerged above - thought as consciousness of the
object and thought as consciousness of self or self-consciousness, are
all figures of speech analogous to those which were previously
termed induction and deduction, process of development 'according
to nature' and process of development 'according to the Notion',
process in reality and logical process. In both instances, it is a
question of two causal processes. The first one is an instance of
efficient or material causality, where it is empirical or sense data
which condition and thought which is conditioned. The second one
is an instance of the inverse process, or ideal causality, where the
Notion, instead of appearing as a resultant, is prius, an a priori
condition. In short, causality versus finalism, causality versus
teleology : 'The purpose,' as Kant writes, 'is the object of a concept,
in so far as the concept is regarded as the cause of the object (the
real ground of its possibility) ; and the causality of a concept in
respect of its object is its purposiveness (forma finalis).'6
It would be senseless to waste time on those who think these
alternatives are mere metaphysical 'archaisms' from Kant and Hegel.
Myrdal has recently clearly shown that these alternatives represent,
rather, 'the logical crux of all science' ; 7 a problem which follows
from the fact that whereas the idea or theory must be, on the one
hand, always a prius in scientific inquiry, on the other hand they
must also appear as a posterius, i.e. as a theoretical 'nucleus . .
.

6. I. Kant, Critique ofJudgement, translated by J. H. Bernard (London, 1914), p. 67.

7. Cf. Gunnar Myrdal, Economic Theory and Under-Developed Regions (London,
1957), whose chapter XII is entided 'The logical crux of all science' (cf. also G. Myrdal,
Value in Social Theory [London, 1958]).

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205

which . . . can only be constructed on (empirical research) as a

basis'.8 The same may be said for the connection, referred to just
above, between deduction and finalism, hypothesis and ideology. In
every scientific analysis, Myrdal writes, there is an a priori element
which is inescapable. 'Questions must be asked before answers can
be given. The questions are an expression of our interest in the
world, they are at bottom valuations. Valuations are thus necessarily
involved already at the stage when we observe facts and carry on
theoretical analysis, and not only at the stage when we draw political
inferences from facts and valuations.' 9 Joan Robinson also expresses
herself in like terms : Ideological (or as she inappropriately calls
them, 'metaphysical') propositions, 'provide a quarry from which
hypotheses can be drawn', i.e. objectives or projects without which
we would not know what to investigate. 'They do not belong to the
realm of science and yet they are necessary to it' (which means that,
in actual fact, they really do belong to it); for 'without them we
would not know what it is that we want to know'. 1 0 This a priori
element - whether ideological or anthropomorphic - contained in the
ideal 'anticipation' or in the 'question', is certainly eliminated by the
'answer', i.e. through experimental control ; but, as Robinson
concludes, ' . .. the point is that without ideology we would never
have thought of the question'.u
Let us return to Kant and Hegel. It is now a question of seeing
not only how they resolve the difficulties of epistemology, but also
of bringing to light the conception of man which underlies their
arguments.
Hegel: his solution is already known to us. Epistemology is
8. G. Myrdal, Economic Theory and Under-Developed Regions, op. cit., p. 163.
9. G. Myrdal, The Political Element in the Development of Economic Theory (London,
1953), p. vii. The remarks that precede the text cited above are the following : 'This
implicit belief in the existence of a body of scientific knowledge acquired independently
of all valuations is, as I now see it, naive empiricism. Facts do not organize themselves
into concepts and theories just by being looked at; indeed, except within the framework
of concepts and theories, there are no scientific facts but only chaos.' And one need only
think of Marx's statement in the Introduction of 1857 [cf. above, chapter VIII]: 'If we
start out . . . with population, we do so with a chaotic conception of the whole.'
10. Joan Robinson, Economic Philosophy (London, 1962), p. 3.
II. ibid., p. 4.

206

evaded and resolved into logic. Real mediation, i.e. the relationship
being-thought (the former the conditioning element, the latter the
conditioned) lapses into and is absorbed within the relationship of
thought to itself. The distinction between empirical data and the
intellectual understanding is only 'apparent', since it exists within
that unity or original totality that is 'reason'. The Notion was never
born : it is the unconditional. The particular or the finite upon
which it appears to depend as its limiting condition, is in reality its
resultant and effect. Consequently, that from which the Notion
appears to come forth, is in actual fact that into which the Notion
itself passes over in order to make itself real. What appears to be
induction is deduction, i.e. the passage from the beyond into the
here and now. The positive is not autonomous, it is not grounded in
itself, but is only the 'positive exposition of the absolute'. The logical
process is the process of reality itself ; the process of development
'according to nature' is only the manifestation of the process of
development 'according to the Notion'. Finally, in so far as the
process of the formation of knowledge is a merely apparent one (and
mediation dissolves itself), the Idea that results therefrom - since it
was not actually derived from anything - is only a presupposition,
i.e. immediate knowledge (or mediated only formally). This accounts
for the unavoidable point of contact between Hegel and Jacobi, and
between idealism and spiritualism in general.
As concerns the conception of man that derives from this, what
must be brought out immediately is that Hegel understands the
traditional definition homo animal rationale in the sense that the
predicate (reason) is the substance while the real subject (i.e. man as
a natural or finite being) is only a predicate of his predicate. In other
words, for Hegel finite man represents no problem. The real essence
of man is spirituality, i.e. the divine Logos that dwells within him.
Setting himself off from the philosophy of the Enlightenment's
'understanding' (intellect), which represents reason as a property of
man, Hegd emphasizes that it is the spirit which alone 'makes man
man'. This phrase, which is found on the first page of the Philosophy
ofReligion, shows - as Lowith has correctly observed - that 'Hegel's
notion of the spirit is not intended anthropologically, but theologi-

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207

cally, as the Christian Logos. It is thus superhuman.' 1 2 Or as Hegel

states in the Encyclopedia, subheading 377: 'Know thyself - whether
we look at it in itself or under the historical circumstances of its first
utterance - is not to promote mere self-knowledge in respect of the
particular capacities, character, propensities, and foibles of the single
self. The knowledge it commands means that of man's genuine
reality - of what is essentially and ultimately true and real - of spirit
as the true and essential being.'1 3
The addendum to this subheading goes on to say that, just as the
point of reference with regard to man's essence (that is, with regard
to that which makes him 'man' strictly speaking) is 'the relation of
the human spirit to the Divine' (since the essence of man is God),
similarly, 'it was Christianity, by its doctrine of the Incarnation and
of the presence of the Holy Spirit in the community of believers,
that first gave to human consciousness a perfectly free relationship to
the infinite and thereby made possible the comprehensive (begrei
fende) knowledge of spirit in its absolute infinitude'. 1 4 And since
'thought, (besides being) the constitutive substance of external
things, . . . is also the universal substance of what is spiritual', thus
man's humanity, his divine spirituality, corresponds - as is made
clear in Zusatz I to subheading 24 - to man's being the organ and
vehicle of speculative Logic. The correct statement, therefore, is not
that man thinks or that thought is a property of man, but that man is
a property of thought, an organ or vehicle of the Logos. As Hegel
makes clear : when, in fact, 'it is presented in this light, thought has
a different part to play from what it has if we speak of a faculty of
thought, one among a crowd of other faculties, such as perception,
conception and will, with which it stands on the same level. When it
is seen to be the true universal of all that nature and mind contain, it
extends its scope far beyond all these and becomes the basis (die
Grundlage) of everything.' We can then say : Ich und Denken sind
dasselbe, or more exactly, Ich ist das Denken als Denkendes (the ego is
Thinking as something that thinks). And Hegel concludes thus :
12. Karl Liiwith, From Hegel to Nietzsche, translated by David E. Green (New York,
Chicago, San Francisco, 1964), p. 308.
13. G. W. H. Hegel, Philosophy of Mind, op. cit., p. 1.
14. ibid., p. 2.

20
208

'What I have in my consciousness, is for me. "I" is the vacuum or

receptacle for anything and everything : for which everything is and
which stores up everything in itself.' 1 5
In substance, it is not man who thinks about reality, but the
Spirit or the Logos which, by means of man, establishes a relation
ship to that which it itself has posited as reality, and thereby redeems
itself from alienation and attains to a full consciousness of itself. As
clearly indicated in the outline of the Phenomenology, the path by
which man ascends to the comprehension of reality is only a screen
behind which there unfolds the other process (profounder and more
essential) by which the Spirit arrives at self-consciousness. This
accounts for 'the paradoxical proposition of Hegel's : "Consciousness
of God is God's self-consciousness" ' ; this proposition, as Feuerbach
pointed out, 'means only this : that self-consciousness is an attribute
of substance or God, that God is the ego (Gott ist Ich)' . 1 6 In other
words, Hegel 'makes the ego an attribute or the form of divine
substance'; even if it later turns out that 'for Hegel the essence of
God is actually nothing other than the essence of thinking or the
thinking (of man) abstracted from the ego, from the thinking subject'
and 'represented as a being distinct from the latter' .17
Marx's assessment moves in this same direction. For. Hegel, he
writes, 'man is regarded as a non-objective, spiritual being'. 'Human
lfe, man, is equivalent to self-consciousness.' 'But it is entirely false
to say on that account, "Self-consciousness has eyes, ears, faculties."
Self-consciousness is rather a quality of human nature, of the human
eye, etc. ; human nature is not a quality of self-consciousness.' 18 Marx
continues : 'A being which does not have its nature outside itself is
not a natural being and does not share in the being of nature. A
being which has no object outside itself is not an objective being. A
being which is not itself an object for a third being has no being for
15. En.L., pp. 47-8.
16. L. Feuerbach, Vorliiufige Thesen zur Reform der Philosophic, in Kleine Schriften,

op. cit., p. 125.

17. L. Feuerbach, Grundsiitze der Philosophie der ZukunJt, in Kleine Schriften, op. cit.,

p. 179
18. K. Marx, Early Writings, op. cit., p. 204.

The Concept of the 'Social Relations ofProduction'

209

its object, i.e. it is not objectively related and its being is not
objective.'1 9
And Marx goes on to say : 'Just as the entity, the object, appears
as an entity of thought, so also the subject is always consciousness or
self-consciousness' ; which means that the outcome of the movement
is only 'the identity of self-consciousness and consciousness - abso
lute knowledge - the movement of abstract thought not directed
outwards but proceeding within itself; i.e. the dialectic of pure
thought is the result'. 20 Marx concludes : 'This movement, in its
abstract form as dialectic, is regarded therefore as truly human life,
and since it is nevertheless an abstraction, an alienation of human
life, it is regarded as a divine process and thus as the divine process
of mankind.' In other words, the subject of the process is not man
as a finite being but rather 'the subject (that) knows itself as absolute
self-consciousness, (and) is therefore God, absolute spirit, the self
knowing and self-manifesting idea'. Whereas 'real man and real nature
become mere predicates, symbols of this concealed unreal man and
unreal nature'. 21
For Hegel, therefore, Spirit is all : 'The Absolute is Mind (Spirit) this is the supreme definition of the Absolute. . . . The word
"Mind" (Spirit) - and some glimpse of its meaning - was found at
an early period : and the spirituality of God is the lesson of
Christianity'22 - this Spirit is the true essence of man. As opposed to
the Enlightenment, which refused to recognize 'God or the Absolute' ,
and whose point of reference was rather 'man and humanity', Hegel
maintains that the true understanding of man consists in conceiving
his spirit as an image or copy of the eternal Idea (den Geist als ein
Abbild der ewigen Jdee). 23
What is the result? It means that deduction or the teleological
process, i.e. the objectification of the idea or man's externalization of
his thoughts (whether in language or in real production) - and here
one need only think of Marx's famous remark on the difference
between the architect and the bee : the product of labour is the
manifestation or realization of what was posited as an objective in
20. ibid., p. 202.
19. ibid., p. 207.
22. G. w. F. Hegel, Philosophy ofMind, op. cit., p. IS.

21. ibid., p. 214.

23 ibid., p. 5.

2IO

the worker's idea this objectifying process appears to Hegel not as

the manifestation or objectification of man's thought, i.e. not as the
proof of his Diesseitigkeit or terrestriality (cf. the second Theses on
Peuerbach) ; rather, it appears to him as the passage from the
'beyond' (jenseits) into the 'here and now' (diesseits), i.e. as a kind of
epiphany, as the entry of God into the world. In other words,
whereas, as Feuerbach says, 'the passage from the ideal to the real
has a place only in practical philosophy', 24 i.e. in the study of the
various forms of human praxis (included therein is also knowledge
itself in that it too is an act oflife) ; for Hegel, on the other hand, 'the
Idea realises itself in just the same way that God externalises and
reveals himself, secularises and actualises himself'.25 So man's
production of his own life, his historico-practical action, appears to
Hegel - even if with an extraordinary richness of historico-empirical
content and a high degree of rationality - as God's self-unfolding in
the world ; just as the events of the time always appeared to the
Christian philosophy of history as Gesta Dei per Prancos.
The process of development 'according to nature' becomes, in
short, a mere moment within the process of development 'according
to the Notion'. And since the Notion, lacking a substratum in reality
(in relation to which it is rightly a predicate or function), hypostatizes
and substantifies itself, it thereby transforms itself from a Notion
that ought to be a property ofman into the spiritual 'essence' of all of
reality, i.e. into the divine Logos. Material or effective causality, in
other words, becomes a moment within ideal causality, i.e. within
finalism or teleology. This accounts for the fact that - since every
thing is governed by the goals and purposes of God - there is no
causality which would also encompass teleology (and thus no
materialism that could assume historical form : a historical material
ism with its concepts of labour and production). Rather, all there can
be is a contrived history - in short, a philosophy of history.
At this point it is easy to perceive the basic misunderstanding that
dominates the famous chapter of Der Junge Hegel on 'Work and the
Problem of Teleology', on which hinges Lukacs's entire analysis in
-

24. L. Feuerbach, Vorliiufige Thesen zur Reform der Philosophic, op. cit., p. 132.
25. L. Feuerbach, Grundsiitze der Philosophie der Zukunft, op. cit., p. 193.

The Concept of the 'Social Relations ofProduction'

2II

this work. His plan to shift the origin not only of the critical analysis
of capitalist society but even of historical materialism itself from
Marx back to Hegel (for this is what is at stake), here comes out into
the open, and enters into blatant collision with the texts. Lukacs
writes with reference to Realphilosophie: 'With Hegel the concrete
analysis of the dialectic of human labour dissolves the dichotomous
opposition between causality and teleology ; i.e. it shows the concrete
place occupied by human, conscious purpose within the overall
causal inter-relationships.'26 This means that for Hegel the founda
tion or real base is not finalism, but material causality itself, which,
just as in Marx, contains within itself also teleology. Hegel conceives
of work, Lukacs writes, in the following way : that man 'can only
use his tools or means of labour in a way that is consistent with the
objective law intrinsic to these objects or to their combination, and
that therefore the work process can never transcend the causal inter
relationships of things. . . . The specific character of purposive
action (Zwecksetzung) consists, as Hegel and Marx rightly see, simply
in the fact that the image of the objective exists prior to the mise en
marche (In-Bewegung-Setzen) of the work process and that the work
process exists in order to translate this objective into reality with the
aid of the causal inter-relationships - ever more thoroughly known of objective reality.'27
Lukacs continues thus : 'In the Logic Hegel elaborates on these
thoughts, stating that teleology, human labour, and human praxis
point to the truth of chemico-mechanical causation. This formula
tion goes beyond the Jena observations in its systematic clarity; but
here too the objective contents of its foundation are already con
tained in those Jena observations. What must be particularly
emphasized here is that Hegel treats the relationship between
teleology and chemico-mechanical causation in the same way that
chemico-mechanical technique is related to the objective reality of
nature. He therefore sees in the economic process of production that
element (Moment) by virtue of which teleology becomes the truth of
chemico-mechanical causation.'28
26. G. Lukacs, Der junge Hegel, op. cit., p. 428.
27 ibid., pp. 428-9.

28. ibid., pp. 433-4.

212

In comparison with these pages, Marx's well-known remark that

'labour as Hegel understands and recognizes it is abstract mental
labour' must seem (even if Lukacs does not openly say so) a mere
aberration of superficial youth. In actual fact, the boot is on the
other foot altogether. In fact one need only open the Logic (which
Lukacs cites, moreover), in which all of the reflections of the Jena
period come (as Lukacs admits) to a culmination, in order to read
that 'for the practical Idea, on the contrary, this actuality, which at
the same time confronts it as an insuperable limitation, ranks as
something intrinsically worthless that must first receive its true
determination and sole worth through the ends of the good'. 2 9
Equally, all one need do is scan the table of contents of Volume II,
Section 2 of the Logic in order to see that the relationship established
by Hegel between mechanism and chemism on the one hand, and
teleology on the other, is the exact opposite of what Lukacs ascribes
to him.
Mechanism and chemism come before teleology, which (as
Lukacs recalls) is regarded by Hegel as the 'truth' of the former two.
Except that, since the Logic is designed so that what comes first is the
abstract and what one arrives at by proceeding from the latter is the
concrete, this order does not mean that teleology has been encompassed
within causality (as would be the case with historical materialism)
but that mechanism and chemism are, on the contrary, 'moments'
within finalism, and that only teleology, in short, is the really
concrete!
Furthermore, consider Lukacs's statement that 'Hegel included
the dialectic of man's "active side" within his conception of objective
reality', i.e. finalism within material causality, to the point that 'the
relationship between theory and praxis acquires thereby a higher
degree of clarity than it had ever attained in the entire history of
philosophy' - 'a high point with which Marx could directly establish
a connexion and from which he could elevate the relationship of
theory and praxis to definitive heights of philosophic clarity'. 3 0
That this statement by Lukacs is to be understood less as a fruit of
methodical analysis than as an impulse of generosity on his part is
29. L., p. 821 (Colletti's emphasis).

30. G. Lukacs, op. cit., p. 437.

The Concept of the 'Social Relations of Production'

2I3

proved by what he himself admits a few pages later, concluding his

chapter on 'Work and the Problem of Teleology'. 'Since the totality
of the developmental process of nature and history is for the objective
idealist Hegel - as well as for Schelling - the work of a "Spirit" "
it is evident, Lukacs writes, that 'here the old teleological concept,
previously overcome by Hegel with regard to all historical and social
details, must again return' ; 'for if the historical process has a single
subject as its representative (Trager), if the former is the consequence
of the latter's activity', it then becomes inevitable 'for the objective
idealist Hegel to see in the historical process itself the realization of
that objective which this "Spirit" had set for itself at the beginning
of the process.' Thus, Lukacs concludes, 'the totality of the process
is transformed in Hegel (just as in Schelling) into an illusory move
ment (Scheinbewegung): it is the return back to the beginning, the
realization of something that had existed a priori from the very
beginning'. Consequently, 'Hegel is not aware that in the pro
cess of carrying out his teleological principle in an abstract and
logically consistent fashion he falls back into the old theological
teleology'. 3 1
Let us leave Hegel now and return to Kant, to his epistemology
and the conception of man that underlies it. Here the argument is
altogether different. Epistemology includes logic, instead of being
resolved into it. And this insistence on epistemology, i.e. on the
search for the limiting conditions placed on thought, just as it dis
closes the inevitable materialist bent that is a part of this point of
view, so it also reveals how it is precisely epistemology - and this
accounts for our own insistence on it - which opens the path to the
science of man as a natural, finite being. Although with Kant this
science is, of course, still only an anthropology, and therefore an
uncompleted project.
The 'Conclusion' of the Transcendental Aesthetic, in which Kant
draws the distinction between intuitus originarius and intuitus
derivatus, expresses in very clear terms (as Heidegger saw clearly in
his Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik) the real foundation of his
Elementarlehre i.e. the theory of the elements of knowledge - and is
-

3I. ibid., pp. 4.'0-I.

214

therefore the place in which epistemology as such reaches its cul

mination. Knowledge has 'two' sources, and the theory of the 'sense
world' cannot coincide with the theory of 'thought', since the subject
of knowledge - man - is a natural, finite being: 'a dependent being,
dependent in its existence as well as in its intuition, and which
through that intuition determines its existence solely in relation to
given objects'. 3 2 If man were like God, rather than the 'finite,
thinking being' that he is, the distinction between the sense-world
and the understanding receptivity and spontaneity, would no longer
exist. There would be an 'intellectual intuition' (which is exactly
what there is for Hegel); thinking and perceiving would coincide;
the representation of an object and its creation would be one and the
same act.
This argument, though barely outlined by Kant, contains in nuce
an essential turning-point. Human thought has nothing to do with
divine thought. It is not identical with the latter, nor different from it
only as a matter of degree or limitedness. It is not an Abbild der
ewigen Idee, as in Hegel (for whom, in logically consistent fashion,
anthropology must be part of theology). The fact that man thinks
implies, on the contrary, that the manifold of the sense-world, or
matter, is not a product of his making, but something that is given to
him. Thought, in other words, is the quality, the attribute of a finite
being that receives impressions from objects existing outside itself
(and which therefore is also the object of other objects). It is, in short,
the quality, the specific prerogative ofman. If thinking and creating
coincided, i.e. if man did not receive external impressions, all
knowledge would be, as Kant says, intuition 'and not thought, which
always involves limitations' and presupposes the existence of given
objects.
At first sight, there is nothing very 'transcendental' about all
this. It appears that the discovery is little more - just imagine ! than that man is born and dies. However, the meaning of Kant's
observation is not that man is also a natural, finite being, but that it
is precisely in this naturality that man's highest attribute - thought,
intelligence - finds its raison d'etre. Man's highest attribute of course,
32. I. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (Kemp Smith translation), op. cit., p. go.

The Concept of the 'Social Relations ofProduction'

215

among those which are the object of study in the Critique of Pure
Reason (since in Practical Reason the argument, as is well-known, is
quite different). Precisely because man is a natural being, man thinks :
this is the sense of Kant's reasoning. If, therefore, thought is truly
a 'miracle' (as spiritualist rhetoric would have it), it is a miracle
in which God or the Spirit have no part. In more technical terms,
Kant holds fast to the 'understanding', the 'intellect', rejecting any
claim that it should be absorbed within 'reason'. For him the
distinction between empirical data and thought is not an illusory
one, but corresponds to the 'naturality' of the human cognitive
subject. As far as the other subject is concerned, the one with the
capital 'S', and the way in which it is supposed to perceive and
think, represent and create, all at once, what is left to that Subject
and its earthly representatives is only the' logic ofillusion' : 'a sophisti
cal art of giving to ignorance, and indeed to intentional sophistries,
the appearance of truth, by the device of imitating the methodical
thoroughness (Grundlichkeit) which logic prescribes, and of using its
"topic" to conceal the emptiness of its pretensions'. 3 3
This position appears to be nothing but actually means a great
deal. It represents a judgment derived from the better part of the
Enlightenment tradition : that man is a thinking being because he is a
natural being; and that, if thought is what distinguishes man from
all the other animals, that does not mean that man himself is not an
animal (or that he has within himself the divine 'spark'), but merely
that this is his natural, specific trait.
Here one can directly see the difference between Kant and Hegel
but also the difference between Kant and Jacobi and the entire
spiritualist tradition. He focuses his interest precisely on that which
the other two leave out as unimportant : the naturalness of man, his
intellectual 'understanding'. He takes science as the only true form of
knowledge, that science which for the other two is only illusory or
'finite knowledge' (Croce's 'pseudo-concepts', Bergson's 'labels',
Lukacs's 'reified' thought of 1923, etc.). He represents as the only
valid theoretical modus operandi (one need only look at the argument
on Galilei and Torricelli at the beginning of the Critique) precisely
33 ibid., p. 99.

216

that intellectual-experimental knowledge which Jacobi rejects

because it is linked to the naturality of man, i.e. to that side of man
which, for a certain philosophy, it is a point of honour to overlook.
As Jacobi writes in his Briefe fiber die Lehre von Spinoza : 'If by
reason one means man's soul only in that it has clear notions, and
that it is with these that it judges, reasons, and forms anew other
notions; then reason is a capacity of man which he acquires little by
little, a tool which he makes use of - it belongs to him. If, however,
one means by reason the principle of knowledge in general, then it is
the spirit of which the entire living nature of man is made. It is
through this that man exists ; the latter is a form which reason has
assumed. '34
And again, as stated in the Introduction ofI8I5 to his Werke (when
Jacobi had already clarified the distinction between 'intellect' and
'reason') : 'Animals grasp only that which is sensible. Man, furnished
with reason, grasps also that which is suprasensible, and he calls
reason precisely that which enables him to grasp the suprasen
sible. . . . Animals lack the faculty necessary for apprehending the
suprasensible, and as a consequence ofthis deficiency it is not possible
to form a notion of a reason belonging exclusively to animals. Man
does, however, possess such a faculty, and it is precisely and only
with this faculty that he is a rational being.'35 On the other hand,
'the intellect, to a certain extent, is also possessed by animals; and it
must be possessed by all living beings because they cannot be
regarded as living entities unless they have an associative conscious
ness, which is at the root of all intelligence'. 36
Scientific understanding, in short, is common to both man and
beast. Man's thought is that characteristic by virtue of which man is a
part of nature. Speculative reason, contrariwise, belongs only to
man in that only the latter is a spiritual 'creature'. And since the
'critique of the intellect' like everything else has a price, 'dialectical
materialism' - which also specialized in this critique - cannot stop
short of the most obscurantist conclusions. 'Intellect and Reason'
(this is how Engels entitles a subheading of the Dialectics ofNature) :
34. F. H. Jacobi, Lettere sulla dottrina di Spinoza, op. cit., p. 223.
36. ibid., p. 35.
35. F. H. Jacobi, Idealismo e realismo, op. cit., p. 9.

The Concept of the 'Social Relations ofProduction'

217

'This Hegelian distinction, according to which only dialectical

thinking is rational, has a definite meaning. All activity of the intelli
gence we have in common with animals : induction, deduction, and
hence also abstraction (Dido's - Engels's dog - generic concepts :
quadrupeds and bipeds), analysis of unknown objects (even the
cracking of a nut is a beginning of analysis), synthesis (in animal
tricks), and, as the union of both, experiment (in the case of new
obstacles and unfamiliar situations). In their nature all these modes
of procedure - hence all means of scientific investigation that ordi
nary logic recognizes - are absolutely the same in men and the
higher animals. They differ only in degree (of development of the
method in each case). The basic features of the method are the same
and lead to the same results in man and animals, so long as both
operate or make shift merely with these elementary methods. On the
other hand, dialectical thought - precisely because it presupposes
investigation of the nature of concepts - is only possible for man, and
for him only at a comparatively high stage of development (Buddhists
and Greeks), and it attains its full development much later still
through modern philosophy - and yet we have the colossal results
already among the Greeks (!) which go far in anticipating in
vestigation.' 37
Thoughts which, as one can see, are not only very dubious but
which as usual leave one nonplussed by the off-hand manner of their
expression : 'ordinary' logic and . . . extraordinary logic, 'elementary'
concepts and . . . sublime concepts. Behind these thoughts, of
course, there lies the old metaphysical baggage over which some
Italian Marxists still keep watch (although no longer with the
arrogance of years gone by). 'For philosophy, which has been
expelled from nature and history, there remains only the realm of
pure thought (so far as it is left) : the theory of the laws of the
thought process itself, logic and dialectics.'38 This is another famous
'heirloom' in the patrimony of 'dialectical materialism', cited a
thousand times : 'pure thought' and the 'theory of the laws of
thought' ; as if there could be 'pure' thought in place of man who
37. F. Engels, Dialectics of Nature, op. cit., pp. 203-4 (translation modified).
38. F. Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach, op. cit., p. 59.

2I8

thinks, and as if the argument on thought need not be changed into

the argument on the sociality or historicity of man (for this is pre
cisely his nature : 'man's process of genesis', Marx says, is 'history'. 3 9)
As if thought could instead have as its object thought 'in itself' thought as a sphere or autonomous object endowed with its own laws.
In short, knowledge does not appear to Engels as a function and
manifestation of man's life in his social relationship with nature.
The meaning of Marx's argument in the Theses on Feuerbach is
entirely lost. There exists a 'realm of pure thought', a movement of
things (as stated in Ludwig Feuerbach: 'Thus dialectics reduced
itself to the science of the general laws of motion - both of the
external world and of human thought - two sets of laws which are
identical in substance. . .'40) . And since the subject of knowledge is
no longer man himself but the identity or 'original unity' of thought
and being, it is true what was observed by Lukacs in History and
Class Consciousness: that Engels 'does not even mention the most
vital interaction, namely the dialectical relation between subject and
object in the historical process, let alone give it the prominence it
deserves'. 4 1
As far as concerns the profoundest lesson to be drawn from Kant's
Critique - i.e. the thesis that since thought is not a self-contained
entity epistemology must necessarily complement the sciences of
man as a natural being - what must be brought out next, of course, is
that the radical limitation of this entire undertaking from start to
finish, the thing which condemns it too to being another version of
metaphysics, is the fact that the 'science of man' Kant refers to is
nothing but an anthropology. Here all the fundamental deficiencies
of the Critique re-emerge, beginning with its uncertain and con
tradictory conception of the 'sensible' (always half way between the
real object and the subjective representation of it). According to this,
sense-data as objects related to thought are not complete and true
objectivity, but only 'phenomena' (with all the ambiguity that this
term has in Kant's argument). Similarly, concepts do not manage to
39. K. Marx, Early Writings, op. cit., p. 208.
40. F. Engels, op. cit., p. 44.
41. G. Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness, op. cit., p. 3.

The Concept of the 'Social Relations of Production'

21 9

make themselves really sensible by means of this given content, i.e. to

acquire through it an actual external reality. In other words, that
characteristic of man by virtue of which deduction implies finalism
and knowledge itself is ideology or 'praxis' (i.e. a manifestation of the
subject's life and therefore a realization or objectification of his
ideas) finds no place within the framework of the Critique of Pure
Reason. Hence, the concepts of work and productive activity remain
entirely foreign to Kant - work and productive activity not only as
man's adaptation to the world but also as the transformation and
adaptation of the world to suit him. That is to say, Kant ignores that
characteristic of man by virtue of which the object is not only
something 'in itself' but is also the objectification of the subject; and
by virtue of which the product oflabour is, as Marx says, 'something
which, when the process began, already existed in the worker's
imagination, already existed in an idealform'. 42
This accounts for the dualistic separation of the Critique of Pure
Reason from that of Practical Reason, of Mussen from Sollen, i.e. of
nature's world of mechanism - in which man is basically only a
link in the causal concatenation - from the 'realm of ends', under
stood not only as a sphere that is exclusively moral, but as the realm
of a morality circumscribed to pure 'intent'. The theme of the
objectification of the subject, i.e. of the realization of his ideas, of his
goals, and therefore of man's self-production (in the work process,
Marx says, man does not merely bring about 'a change of form in
natural objects ; at the same time, in the nature that exists apart from
himself, he realizes his own purpose, the purpose which gives the law
to his activities, the purpose to which he has to subordinate his own
will' 4 3) , remains outside Kant's horizon here, and outside the
horizon of the Critique ofJudgment as well. Thus receptivity and
spontaneity, causality and finalism never really manage to fuse with
one another, neither at the level of the first two Critiques nor within
the Critique ofPure Reason itself.
The sense element or datum, in those instances where it is actually
an extra-logical existent, tends to present itself (here is the kernel of
42. K. Marx, Capital (Eden and Cedar Paul translation), op. cit., Vol. I, p. I70'
43. loco cit.

220

truth in Lukacs's 1923 critique) in the same way that existence was
presented in the precritical period, e.g. in the Beweisgrund (where
'existence is the absolute position of a thing' which 'is distinct from
all predicates' precisely due to the fact that whereas the latter 'are
only posited in relation to another thing', 44 existence presents itself
as non-relative, as absolute, i.e. as something that cannot be predicated
nor taken up as the subject of judgment). Subjective spontaneity,
on the other hand, incapable as it is of giving rise to a real self
objectification, tends to be confined to that purely formal or internal
'modus operandi' which is the synthesis of the forms of the sense
world - so that all that Kant manages to grasp of man's creativity and
productivity is merely the act of . . . 'productive imagination'.
Work as the intermediary that socializes man, and then social
relationships as the intermediary to man's mediation with nature
through work : all of this, as stated above, remains totally outside
Kant's horizon. Thus, what he presents to us as an alternative to the
theological conception of man as a vehicle for God's unfolding in the
world is, in the end, only a conception derived from the juxtaposition
of anthropology and ethics, i.e. of man as a natural being and man as a
moral subject. The former deals with the place which 'I occupy in the
external world of sense, and it broadens the connection in which I
stand into an unbounded magnitude of worlds beyond worlds and
systems of systems'. A display 'of a countless multitude of worlds'
is revealed to me ; a display in which I appear as 'an animal creature,
which must give back to the planet (a mere speck in the universe)
the matter from which it came, the matter which is for a little time
provided with vital force, we know not how'. The latter, however,
'infinitely raises my worth as that of an intelligence by my per
sonality, in which the moral law reveals a life independent of all
animality and even of the whole world of sense - at least so far as it
may be inferred from the purposive destination assigned to my
existence by this law, a destination which is not restricted to the
conditions and limits of this life but reaches into the infinite'. 45
44. I. Kant, Scritti precritici (Bari, 1953), p. Il2.
45. I. Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, translated by Lewis W. Beck (Chicago,
1949), pp. 258--g.

The Concept of the 'Social Relations ofProduction'

22I

The basic schema here is, certainly, that of the Christian dualism
of soul and body ; but with the additional element - not developed
in the conclusion of Practical Reason but resounding distinctly
throughout the Pure Reason that that 'animal creature' which I am
is meaningless ephemerality, but is also intelligence (even as it is, i.e.
as an existence destined to waste away and die). It is an intellect that
'views itself, views and ponders the starred Heavens' and that,
despite its transitory accidentality, can always say : '1 exist as an
intellect that is conscious of its unifying power.'4 6
This is perhaps the most significant model that has taken shape in
the course of bourgeois humanism. The analysis of nature, the
world of the physico-natural sciences, is already constituted as an
autonomous world, henceforth emancipated from metaphysics, and
within which man is included since he is himself a natural being. On
the other hand, since this naturality of man's is still not grasped in
terms of its intrinsic sociality and therefore as the force productive of
history, the moral world continues to be a reserve of metaphysics.
In other words, to the extent that the natural being 'man' appears
only as a single individual whose relationship to the species represents
an internal, unspoken - and therefore aprioristic - generality, the
fashioning of man into a 'Person', i.e. into a moral subject, can be
guaranteed only by means of a spiritualistic ethics. The natural
world has already passed over to science, but the moral world still
remains tied to metaphysics (liberal, bourgeois 'humanity' has never
gone beyond this point). And since nature (even if it is not merely
the 'negative') always remains nonetheless only a 'half' reality, the
most exalted insight to which man can aspire, qua 'natural creature',
is that of a well-tempered 'critical philosophy', i.e. a 'humanism of
the intellect'.
One begins to perceive here the meaning of Hegel's thought and
the place occupied in his philosophy by the problem of the 'actuali
zation' of idealism, of the realization of the Idea. Even though he
hypostatizes Reason and finalism, and therefore suffers from the
limitation of still conceiving of man's historical process only in the
-

46. Luigi Scaravelli, Saggio sulla categoria kantiana della reaM" (Florence, 1947),
PP176-8.

222

form of a 'divine process', Hegel is the first to understand thoroughly

how man's development passes through his self-objectification and
how this process of making himself 'other' than himself is carried
out, essentially, by means of work. As Marx remarks : 'The out
standing achievement of Hegel's Phenomenology . . . is, first, that
Hegel grasps the self-creation of man as a process, objectification as
loss of the object, as alienation and transcendence of this alienation,
and that he, therefore, grasps the nature of labour, and conceives
objective man (true, because real man) as the result of his own labour.
The real, active orientation of man to himself as a generic being, or
the affirmation of himself as a real generic being (i.e. as a human
being) is only possible so far as he really brings forth all his generic
powers (which is only possible through the co-operative endeavours
of mankind and as an outcome of history) and treats these powers as
objects, which can only be done at first in the form of a1ienation.'47
The 'one-sidedness' and 'limit' of Hegel consist rather in the fact
that his 'standpoint is that of modern political economy', and that
while viewing 'labour as the essence, the self-confirming essence of
man', 'he observes only the positive side of labour, not its negative
side' ; and that, in short, for him 'labour is man's coming to be for
himself within alienation, or as an alienated man', for 'labour as
Hegel understands and recognizes it is abstract mental labour'. 48
It is the same argument, if one looks closely, as that stated by
Marx in the first of his Theses on Feuerbach : 'The chief defect of all
materialism up to now (including Feuerbach's) is, that the object,
reality, what we apprehend through our senses (Sinnlichkeit), is
understood only in the form of the object or contemplation ; but not as
sensuous human activity, as practice ; not subjectively. Hence in
opposition to materialism the active side was developed abstractly
by idealism - which of course does not know real sensuous activity
as such. Feuerbach wants sensuous objects, really distinguished from
the objects of thought : but he does not understand human activity
itself as objective activity.'49
47. K. Marx. Early Writings, cit., pp. 202-3 (translation modified).
48. ibid., p. 203.
49. K. Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, in The German Ideology (New York, 1947), p. 197.

The Concept of the 'Social Relations of Production'

223

Hegel forcefully grasped that the object is the objectification of

the subject; but for him this subject is only spirit, self-consciousness,
and not a natural, finite being that has objects outside itself and
which is therefore itself an object for others. With materialism, by
contrast, in which man's naturality is acknowledged and thought is
no longer a subject unto itself, the world of history remains for
bidden territory since there is no perception of how man, in the
process of relating to the external, sensible objects by means of
thought, at the same time objectifies himself - i,e. externalizes and
realizes his own ideas in language as well as production, entering
thereby into a relationship with other men. In the first case, material
causality is evaded or transcended to the advantage of teleology; in
the second, since causality does not manage to include within itself
the subjective moment of praxis, finalism is degraded to an illusory
or merely 'apparent' process, or else is dualistically counterpoised to
the world of nature without ever managing to mediate itself
through the latter.
Typical in this sense is what happens with Feuerbach. In his essay
of r839, Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Philosophie, he perceives the
connection between logic and language. In so far as thought is not a
subject unto itself but a function of man's being, it is inevitable that
'already in the process of thinking itself we express our thoughts,
i.e. we speak'. 5 0 The logico-deductive process or 'proof' is therefore
at the same time an exposition or objectification of my thought for
the other. In point of fact, 'the meaning of the proof cannot be
grasped without reference to the meaning of language' ; and since
'language is nothing other than the realization of the species, the
mediation of the ego with the other that reveals the unity of the
species, overcoming the separation between one individual and
another' - 'the proof is then based only on the mediatory role of
thought in relation to others'. 5 1 Every proof, therefore, 'is not a
mediation of thought in and for thought itself, but rather a mediation
of my thought and that of the other, by means of language'. 52 Which
50. L. Feuerbach, 'Zur Kritik der Hege1schen Philosophie', in Kleine Schriften, op.
cit., p. 92.
5 I . ibid., p. 89.
52. ibid., p. 90.

224

means that 'the forms of proof and syllogism are not therefore forms
ofreason in themselves, nor forms of the internal process of thinking
and knowing', but are only forms of communication, modes of
expression, expositions and representations, manifestations of
thought'. 53
This is the basis of Feuerbach's critique of the way in which Hegel
confuses the 'for us' - which is the logico-deductive process - with
the 'in itself-for itself', i.e. the process of reality. Hegel, he writes,
'transformed form into substance, the being of thought for others
into being in itself'. 54 And since with Hegel 'the Idea does not
engender nor bear witness to itself through the agency of a real
other, . . . but engenders itself out of a formal, illusory contradic
tion',55 the consequence is that having replaced causality with
finalism and the process of development 'according to nature' with
the process of development 'according to the Notion', 'absolute
philosophy . . . turns subjective, psychological processes . . . into
processes of the Absolute' ; so that 'Hegel actually grasped represen
tations which express only subjective needs as objective truth, due
to the fact that he did not go back to the source of or need for these
representations'. 56
The importance that these formulations of Feuerbach's had in the
formation of historical materialism needs no underlining here. In
Hegel the unity of thought and Language is developed in the sense
that - since the 'here' and the 'now' of speech are always universals my relationship to things invariably resolves itself into a relationship
within thought. With Feuerbach, on the contrary, it is the logico
deductive process which is resolved into intersubjective communica
tion. One need only open The German Ideology in order to under
stand what that means. Consciousness, Marx says, is never 'pure'
consciousness. 'From the start the "spirit" is afflicted with the curse
of being "burdened" with matter, which here makes its appearance
in the form of agitated layers of air, sounds, in short of language.
Language is as old as consciousness, language is practical conscious
ness, as it exists for other men, and for that reason is really beginning
53. ibid., pp. 91-2.
55. ibid., p. 102.

54 ibid., p. 94
56. ibid., pp. II4-IS.

The Concept of the 'Social Relations of Production' 225

to exist for me personally as well'. 57 Further on Marx adds, 'language

is the immediate actuality of thought' ; which means that the old
problem of philosophy - that 'of descending from the world of
thoughts to the actual world' - 'is turned into the problem of
descending from language to life' ; since 'neither thoughts nor
language in themselves form a realm of their own' - 'they are only
manifestations of actual life'. 58
After 1839, these insights of Feuerbach's, while always remaining
isolated aperfus, reappear with a certain frequency. The Essence of
Christianity contains propositions - one might almost say aphorisms
- whose echo can be easily recognized in the Economic and Philosophi
cal Manuscripts of 1 844. Man's relationship to nature is, at the same
time, a relationship of man to another man. 'The object to which a
subject essentially, necessarily relates, is nothing else than this
subject's own, but objective, nature. . . . In the object which he
contemplates, therefore, man becomes conscious of himself; con
sciousness of the objective is the self-consciousness of man. We
know man through the object, through his conception of what is
external to himself; in it his nature becomes evident ; this object is his
manifested nature, his true objective ego. And this is true not merely
of spiritual, but also of sensuous objects. Even the objects which are
the most remote from man, because they are objects to him, and to
the extent to which they are so, are revelations of human nature. . . .
That he sees them, and so sees them, is an evidence of his own
nature.'5 9 And again : 'The first object of man is man.' 'My fellow
man is the bond between me and the world. I am, and I feel myself,
dependent on the world, because I first feel myself dependent on
other men. If I did not need man, I should not need the world.' 6 0
Finally, analogous propositions - perhaps even closer to those
formulated by Marx in 1 844 - are contained in the short essay of
1 841, Ober den Anfang der Philosophie.
However, once this has been said, there is nothing more to say :
57. K. Marx, The German Ideology (Moscow edition), p. 42.
58. K. Marx, The German Ideology, pp. 503-4.
59. L. Feuerbach, The Essence o/Christianity, translated by George Eliot (New York,
1957), pp. 4-5.
60. ibid., p. 82.

22 6

in Feuerbach causality and finalism never succeed in uniting with

one another ; so that 'when occasionally we find such views with
Feuerbach, they are never more than isolated surmises and have
much too little influence on his general outlook to be considered
here as anything else than embryos capable of development'. 6 1
On the one hand, Feuerbach 'never manages to conceive the
sensuous world as the total living sensuous activity of the individuals
composing it' ; 'he does not see how the sensuous world around him
is, not a thing given direct from all eternity, ever the same, but the
product of industry and of the state of society' ; 62 he does not grasp,
in other words, that the object is also the objectification of man,
intersubjective communication and therefore a social relationship
(here Feuerbach never goes beyond language ; that other 'language of
real life' which is industry and 'material production' escapes him).
On the other hand, since he 'conceives of men not in their given
social connection, . . . but stops at the abstraction "man" " inter
human relationships appear to him to be an end in themselves, i.e.
ethical relationships ('he knows no other "human relationships" "of
man to man" than love and friendship, and even then idealized'),
instead of appearing as relationships directed at the transformation
of the objective world. Thus, as Marx rightly concludes, '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. With him materialism
and history diverge completely . . .'. 6 3
We shall close this topic here. Our main aim is to arrive at an
explanation of the concept of 'social relations of production' - a
concept which Marxists have always taken for granted, when in
point of fact it is the most difficult of all. Previously articulated in
The German Ideology, this concept has its clearest and most funda
mental formulation in Marx's essay (still an 'early writing') on
Wage-Labour and Capital. 'In the process of production, human
beings work not only upon nature, but also upon one another. They
produce only by working together in a specified manner and
reciprocally exchanging their activities. In order to produce, they
6 1 . K. Marx, The German Ideology, op. cit., p. 57.
63. ibid., pp. 59-60.
62. ibid., pp. 59 and 57.

The Concept of the 'Social Relations of Production'

227

enter into definite connections and relations to one another, and

only within these social connections and relations does their in
fluence upon nature (ihre Einwirkung auf die Natur) operate, i.e. ,
does production take place.'64
A paraphrasing of this concept gives us some of the formulae
encountered above. (a) Man's relationship to nature is at the same
time man's relationship to his fellow man ; i.e. production is inter
subjective communication, a social relationship. (b) The relationship
of man to his fellow man, on the other hand, is established for the
purpose of producing, i.e. in view of and as a function of man's
action and effect on nature. Formulated more concisely, the concept
means these two things : first, that in order for me to relate to an
object, I must also relate to other men, since the object itself is
actually a human objectification ('the sensuous world . . . is not a
thing given direct from all eternity, . . . but the product of industry
and of the state of society') ; which then means that the relationship
of the species 'man' with other species is actually a relationship
within his own species, i.e. that the generic (or inter-species) relation
ship is actually a relationship specific to man. Second, that in order to
relate to other men, I must relate to the natural object itself, taken
precisely with regard to its otherness or heterogeneity of species for man's being is nature (one need only remember Marx's remark
that 'a being which does not have its nature outside itself is not a
natural being'). In other words, man does not have a being of his
own, but has as his own being that of others ; thus the specific
relation (man's relationship to other men) implies thegeneric relation
ship of man to the other natural beings different from him.
The reader who has some familiarity with Marx's writings knows
that the propositions just mentioned are the same ones that are the
focus of the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts; and that it is
precisely these concepts which make this text by far and away the
most tortuous and obscure of Marx's works. There, work is defined
as man's self-production, not only in the sense that the product of
labour is an objectification of the worker (and therefore the result of
64. K. Marx, Wage-Labour and Capital, in Marx/Engels, Selected Works, London,
1968, p. 81.

228

a work of transformation by which nature has been adapted and

made to conform to our needs and our aims) ; but also in the opposite
sense that in the work process man adapts himself to nature, and his
idea is the means which enables him to respect the specificity of the
materials with which he is working - i:e. it enables him to deal with
the object of labour in terms of that which it truly is. In both cases,
work is man's self-reproduction (both as 'creativity' and as 'adapta
tion'), precisely for the reason stated above. In the first case, because
man's relation to objective otherness is actually a manifestation
(through objectivity) of his relationship to other men. In the second
case, because man's relation to other men and therefore to his own
species or to himself implies - since man is a being that has 'his'
nature 'outside himself' - that, in order to relate to himself, he must
relate to a being that is other than human.
All of historical materialism is here in nuce, if one looks closely.
The impossibility of separating 'economics' from 'society', 'nature'
from 'history', 'production' from 'social relationships', 'material'
production from the production 'of ideas' - if the roots of the
concept are not here, then where are they? In Marx's words : ' . . . The
identity of nature and man appears in such a way that the restricted
relation of men to nature determines their restricted relation to one
another, and their restricted relation to one another determines
men's restricted relation to nature. . .'. 6 5 On the other hand, just as
the expansion of the first relationship is also an expansion of the
second, so the opposite is true. From that follows the consequence
that 'a certain mode of production, or industrial stage, is always
combined with a certain mode of co-operation, or social stage' and
vice versa; to the point that 'this mode of co-operation is itself a
"productive force" '. 66
Historical materialism and the 'logic' of Capital itself are rooted
here. Since man, in the process of producing, produces himself
both in the sense that he produces his relationship with other men,
i.e. with his own species, and in the sense that he produces his
relationship with natural objectivity and therefore with the tools
and materials of his work - one can understand not only the inter-

65. K. Marx, The German Ideology, op. cit., p. 42.

66. ibid., p. 41.

The Concept of the 'Social Relations of Production'

229

relation that exists between all the categories of Capital, but also the
'cyclicity' or principle of self-movement which presides over the
process of capitalist accumulation. 'Capitalist production, therefore,
under its aspect of a continuous connected process, of a process of
reproduction, produces not only commodities, not only surplus
value, but it also produces and reproduces the capitalist relation ;
on the one side the capitalist, on the other the wage-labourer.'67
This is precisely what Marx discovered for the first time and
elaborated in the 1 844 Manuscripts. The manuscript on 'alienated
labour' - which is the veritable rebus of this entire work - develops
the circularity and interdependence of the following relationships :
(a) that 'the relationship of the worker to the product of labour as an
alien object which dominates him' is at the same time 'the relation
ship of the worker to his own activity as something alien' ; 6 8 (b) that
'since alienated labour : (1) alienates nature from man ; and (2)
alienates man from himself, from his own active function, his life
activity ; so it alienates him from the genus' ; (c) that this 'genus', i.e.
the 'specific essence of man', is just as much external nature ('his
own body, as well as external nature') as it is other men ; for, as
Marx says, 'what is true of man's relationship to his work, to the
product of his work and to himself, is also true of his relationship to
other men, to their labour and to the objects of their labour'. 69
Thus, he concludes, 'through alienated labour, therefore, man not
only produces his relation to the object and to the process of produc
tion as to alien and hostile men ; he also produces the relation of other
men to his production and his product, and the relation between
himself and other men'. 7 0
Let us attempt to put this in more linear terms. In positive terms
(i.e. apart from the question of alienation), the network of relation
ships referred to above is already present in the concept of work
itself. Work is both causality and finalism, material causality and
ideal causality ; it is (if we invert the actual order) man's action and
effect on nature and at the same time nature's action and effect on
67. K. Marx, Capital (Samuel Moore translation), op. cit., Vol. 1., p. 578.
68. K. Marx, Early Writings, op. cit., pp. 1 25-6.
69. ibid., pp. 127 and 129.
70. ibid., pp. 130-1.

23

man. This accounts for a twofold characteristic of the product of

labour (and of objectivity in general), which it may be useful to
bring out again. (a) The product of labour is the objectification of
my ideas, i.e. of my needs and my conscious objectives ; (b) it is a
simple changing of 'the forms of matter', so that 'in the process of
production, man can only work as nature works',71 i.e. the object
can only be handled in accordance with its particular specificity and
so with respect to and in conformity with its own particular nature
(one commands nature, Bacon would say, only by obeying her).
With reference to this twofold character of objectivity, the function
of the idea is also twofold. It is both a subjective goal that man
pursues, and therefore praxis or ideology ; and it is a function of
truth, i.e. a means for recognizing and dealing with the object in
accordance with the yardstick best-suited to it - and therefore a
means of escaping from anthropomorphism and giving an objective
dimension to human practice. Marxism is not - one should be clear
on this point - either pragmatism or a Wissensoziologie (sociology of
knowledge); it is the first theory of 'situated thought', but it is also
a theory of thought as truth.
This argument, which in Marx assumes various forms, is deve
loped (e.g.) in the second section of his Introduction of 1857 in terms
of the production-consumption relationship. (a) Consumption
creates production. It creates production in that 'consumption pro
duces production by creating the need for new production, i.e. by
providing the ideal, inward, impelling cause which constitutes the
prerequisite of production. Consumption furnishes the impulse for
production as well as its object (ideal or interior), which plays in
production the part of its guiding aim. It is clear that while produc
tion furnishes the material object of consumption, consumption
posits the object of production in an ideal form, as its inner image, its
need, its impulse and its purpose. It furnishes the object of produc
tion in its subjective form. No needs, no production. But consump
tion reproduces the need .' (b) 'In its turn, production furnishes :
first, consumption with its material, its object. Consumption
without an object is not consumption, hence production works in
71. K. Marx, Capital (Eden and Cedar Paul translation), oJ> . cit., Vol. I, p.

12.

The Concept of the 'Social Relations of Production'

231

this direction by producing consumption; but second, it is not only

the object that production creates for consumption. It gives con
sumption its determinacy, its character, its finish. For the object is
not simply an object in general, but a determinate object, which is
consumed in a determinate manner mediated in its turn by produc
tion. Hunger is hunger : but the hunger that is satisfied with cooked
meat eaten with fork and knife is a different kind of hunger from the
one that devours raw meat with the aid of hands, nails, and teeth.
Not only the object of consumption, but also the manner of con
sumption is produced by production, and not just objectively but
also subjectively. Production thus creates the consumers. Third,
production not only supplies the need with material, but supplies
the material with a need.' Consumption, in fact, 'as a moving spring
is itself mediated by its object. The need for it which consumption
experiences is created by its perception of the product. The object
of art, as well as any other product, creates a public capable of
artistic appreciation and aesthetic enjoyment. Production thus pro
duces not only an object for the subject, but also a subject for the
object'. 72
On the one hand, then, the object is the idea itself objectified;
what consumption 'posits in an ideal form', production posits in
reo On the other hand, this 'ideal, interior cause' is mediated by the
object previously consumed; i.e. the idea is determined by the per
ception of the object. In conclusion and once again : finalism and
causality.
Here is still another variation on the same theme, before we go on
to take the bull by its horns. 'Man's musical sense is only awakened
by music. The most beautiful music has no meaning for the non
musical ear, is not an object for it, because my object can only be the
confirmation of one of my own faculties. It can only be so for me in
so far as my faculty exists for itself as a subjective capacity, because
the meaning of an object for me extends only as far as the sense
extends (only makes sense for an appropriate sense). For this reason,
the senses of social man are different from those of non-social man.' 73
72. K. Marx, Introduction t o the Critique of Political Economy, op. cit., pp. 278-80.
73. K. Marx, Early Writings, op. cit., p. 161.

232

In other words, objective sensuous nature is, in reality, my own

subjective sensitivity itself. Esse est percipi. There is no conscious
ness of the object that is not self-consciousness. What I see of the
world is what my ideas predispose me to see. My relationship to
nature is conditioned by the level of socio-historical development.
'. . . Their restricted relation to one another determines men's
restricted relation to nature' (here is the point of departure for
moving in the direction of a historicization of the sciences of nature
themselves) .
On the other hand, if 'it is only when objective reality everywhere
becomes for man in society the reality of human faculties, human
reality, and thus the reality of his own faculties, that all objects be
come for him the objectification of himself, . . objects (which)
confirm and realize his individuality, . . . are his own objects, i.e.
man himself becomes the object', just how it is that these objects
'become his own depends upon the nature of the object'.74 As
Marx explains it : 'When real, corporeal man' posits objects, 'the
positing is not the subject of this act but the subjectivity of objective
faculties whose action must also, therefore, be objective'; which
means that man 'creates and establishes only objects, because (he) is
established by objects, and because (he) is fundamentally natural';
and, in short, that 'in the act of establishing (he) does not descend
from (his) "pure activity" to the creation of objects; (his) objective
product simply confirms (his) objective activity, (his) activity as an
objective, natural being'.75
The reader with a developed taste for the reasoning process will
understand that the essential outlines of historical materialism are
already here in embryo - that is under the heavy cover of this
incredible language. The further developments of the analysis, i.e. its
detailed articulation, must of course be sought in Capital. How
ever, the essential role of the 1 844 Manuscripts (that reef on which a
whole generation of French existentialist 'Marxists' foundered) is
that it is precisely in them that the original key to unlocking the
meaning of the concept of 'social relations of production' can be
found - the key to this real summa of Marx's theoretical revolution.
.

74. ibid., pp. I60-1 .

75. ibid., p. 206.

The Concept of the 'Social Relations ofProduction'

233

Marx writes : ' . . . The history of industry . . . is an open book of the

human faculties, and a human psychology which can be sensuously
apprehended. This history has not so far been conceived in relation
to human nature, but only from a superficial utilitarian point of
view, since in the condition of alienation it was only possible to
conceive real human faculties and the acts of man as a generic being
(menschliche Gattungsakte) in the form of general human existence,
as religion, or as history in its abstract, general aspect as politics,
art and literature, etc.'76 On the other hand, this pyschology, i.e. the
world of projects and ideas that lies behind industry is as little
subjective and anthropomorphic as can be imagined - precisely
because the knowledge that sustais that practice is not metaphysi
cal, i.e. not the dreams of clairvoyants, but science, i.e. the recogni
tion of the objective world. 'Of course, animals also produce. They
construct nests, dwellings, as in the case of bees, beavers, ants, etc.
But they only produce what is strictly necessary for themselves or
their young. They produce only in a single direction, while man
produces universally. They produce only under the compulsion of
direct physical needs, while man produces when he is free from
physical need and only truly produces in freedom from such need.
Animals produce only themselves, while man reproduces the whole
of nature. The products of animal production belong directly to
their physical bodies, while man is free in face of his product.
Animals construct only in accordance with the standards and needs
of the species (Marx himself uses the term 'species') to which they
belong, while man knows how to produce in accordance with the
standards of every species and knows how to apply the appropriate
standard to the object.'77
To conclude : Historical materialism reaches its point of culmina
tion in the concept of 'social relations of production'. This concept,
in turn, had its first and decisive elaboration in the 1844 Manuscripts,
76. ibid., pp. 162-3. The term Gattungsakte has been translated in this way rather
than as 'species-action' (the term adopted by Bottomore) in order to take account of
ColIetti's subsequent argument based on the distinction between 'species' and 'genus'.
Similar terms such as Gattungsleben and Gattungswesen have likewise been rendered so
that the word 'genus' or 'generic' appears in the place of Bottomore's use of 'species'
or 'specific' (Trans.).
77. ibid., p. 128.

234

in the form of the concept of man as a 'generic natural being'. What

remains is the task of attempting the analysis of this concept.
That man is a generic natural being - a generic being, be it said,
and not a specific one (in the sense of, 'of a species') - means essen
tially two things. First, that man is a 'natural being', i.e. that he is a
part of nature, and therefore that he is an objective being among
other objective natural beings upon whom he depends and by whom
he is conditioned ; in short, he has his raison d'hre (causa essendi)
outside himself ('a being which does not have its nature outside itself
is not a natural being'). Second, that man is a thinking being, i.e.
that what differentiates him from all other natural beings and con
stitutes his specific characteristic, is not a thing, i.e. a species of nature
itself, but is thought, i.e. the universal, what is general or common in all
things. This explains why man's specificity is not that of being a
species, but that of being the genus of all empirical genera, i.e. the
unity or overall totality of all natural species.
This formulation of extraordinary importance that Marx gives to
the problem of man as a 'generic natural being' makes his thought
the point of convergence and resolution for two deep-seated and
antithetical currents of cultural-historical tradition. That of material
ist determinism, in which man qua 'natural being' appears as a mere
link in the causal objective concatenation ; and that - which we shall
now briefly discuss - of the tradition of Renaissance spiritualist
humanism.
In point of fact, the notion that man's specificity is that of being a
generic being, i.e. not a natural species but the genus ofall empirical
genera, is not an invention of Marx's (in history nothing is created
out of nothing, and least of all revolution). It is a theme with a
distant and complex ancestry - a theme nurtured in the heart of a
tradition that is at first sight completely foreign to Marxism and
without which (nevertheless) the materialist conception f history
itself would never have come into existence.
The works which we must now briefly look at (and, of course,
only within the terms of the problem posed by our argument) are
Pico della Mirandola's De hominis Dignitate (the first text, as Garin
has written, that gives us 'the conscious image of man characteristic

The Concept of the 'Social Relations of Production' 235

of the modern world'78) and Bovillus's De Sapiente, which in

Cassirer's words was 'perhaps the most curious and in some respects
the most characteristic creation of Renaissance philosophy'. 79
The theme that we immediately encounter in both works is pre
cisely that of man's genericity, i.e. his non-specificity. Man, who
has no reality in that he is not a species, can nevertheless encom
pass the universe within himself because he is thought. As Bovillus
says: 'Man is not a part of the world of things. . . . Man's nature is
the very nature of a mirror. The nature of a mirror consists in being
outside everything, in standing off against everything, in not em
bracing anything, any natural image within itself . . . The place
appropriate to man and the mirror is therefore in opposition to and
in negation of all things, to be there where nothing is, where nothing
is fully actualized (actu).'80 Man is therefore Nothing : 'In man the
substance is nothing.'8 1
This theme of the 'nothingness', i.e. of the non-substantiality or
immateriality of man (in that he is thought), is expressed by Pico
(and later picked up by Bovillus) in the highly significant terms of a
myth that it is worthwhile calling attention to here. Once arrived at
the end of creation, summus Pater architectus Deus felt the desire to
shape a being that would be able to know the reason for His work
and to love it for its beauty. 'But there was not among His arche
types that from which He could fashion a new offspring, nor was
there in His treasure-houses anything which He might bestow on
His new son as an inheritance, nor was there in the seats of all the
world a place where the latter might sit to contemplate the universe.
All was now complete : all things had been assigned to the higher,
the middle, and the lower orders . . . . At last the Best of Artisans
ordained that that creature to whom He had been able to give
nothing proper to himself (cui dare nihil proprium poterat) should
7S. Eugenio Garin, Giovanni Pica della Mirandola, a lecture given on Mirandola on
February 24, I963, on the occasion of the fifth centennial of the birth of Giovanni Pico
(Parma, I963), p. 55.
79. Ernst Cassirer, The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy, translated
by Mario Domandi (New York, I964), p. SS.
So. Charles BoviIIus (de BoueIIes), Il sapiente, edited by E. Garin (Turin, I943),
S 1 . ibid., p. 75.
pp. 92-3.

236

have joint possession of whatever had been peculiar to each of the

different kinds of being (commune esset quicquid privatum singulis
fuerat). He therefore took man as a creature of indeterminate nature
(indiscretae opus imaginis) and, assigning him a place in the centre of
the universe, addressed him thus : "Neither a fixed abode nor a form
that is thine alone nor any function peculiar to thyself have we given
thee, Adam, to the end that according to thy longing and according
to thy judgment thou mayest have and possess what abode, what
form, and what functions thou thyself shalt desire. The nature of all
other beings is limited and constrained within the bounds of laws
prescribed by Us. Thou, constrained by no limits, in accordance
with thine own free will, in whose hand We have placed thee, shalt
ordain for thyself the limits of thy nature. We have set thee at the
world's center that thou mayest from thence more easily observe
whatever is in the world. We have made thee neither of heaven nor
of earth, neither mortal nor immortal, so that with freedom of
choice and with honor, as though the maker and molder of thyself,
though mayest fashion thyself in whatever shape thou shalt prefer
(in quam maluert's, tu te formam eJlingas). Thou shalt have the power
to degenerate into the lower forms of life, which are brutish. Thou
shalt have the power to be reborn into the higher forms, which are
divine." . . . Beasts as soon as they are born . . . bring with them from
their mother's womb all they will ever possess. Spiritual beings,
either from the beginning or soon thereafter, become what they are
to be for ever and ever. On:' man when he came into life the Father
conferred the seeds of all kinds and the germs of every way of life
(omnifaria semina et omnigenae vitae germina indidit) . Whatever
seeds each man cultivates will grow to maturity and bear in him
their own fruit. If they be vegetative, he will be like a plant. If
sensitive, he will become brutish. If rational, he will grow into a
heavenly being. If intellectual, he will be an angel and the son of
God.'82
The historico-culturalmotifs which converge in this oration ofPico's
82. Giovanni Pico deIla Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of Man, in The Renais
sance Philosophy ofMan, edited by Ernst Cassirer, Paul Kristeller, John H. RandaIl, Jr.

(Chicago and London, I956), pp. 224-5.

The Concept of the 'Social Relations of Production' 237

(and which afterwards were wide-spread in Renaissance thought)

are extraordinarily rich and complex. Cassirer points out in it, 'one
of the basic conceptions of Florentine Platonism' - a conception
which, as he indicates, could never be completely overwhelmed or
defeated by the drive towards 'transcendence' and asceticism,
although the latter 'gradually became stronger and stronger'. In
this sense, he also notes that 'to be sure, Pico and Ficinus are gener
ally under the influence of N eo-Platonic themes ; but in this case, the
genuine Platonic sense of the concepts chorismos and methexis is
recaptured'.83 And one need hardly point out - for those already
familiar with the structure of Cassirer's Individual and Cosmos - the
importance and significance which is reserved to the thought of
Nicholas Cusanus in his argument (and particularly to De con
jecturis).
Exactly how complex are the motifs that converge here, and what
historiographic balance must be maintained between them, has
recently been shown by Garin in his rich historical sketch, 'Le
interpretazioni del pensiero di Giovanni Pico' ('the connexion of
Pico's thought with the milieu of Ficinus undeniable even if there
existed significant differences in attitude ; the reduction of works
and thinkers that were quite different amongst themselves to an
altogether too generic Platonism; the situation of every revitalisation
of thought between the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries under
the sign of a Platonic revival : all of this,' Garin writes, 'has favoured
till our day a significant strain in the interpretation of Pico's works
a strain which situated Pico almost totally within the confines of the
Italian Platonists, or rather within the so-called "Platonic academy"
of Florence', not to mention that 'other example of reductionism'
which 'is the depiction of Pico as a cabalist').84
It is not difficult to mark out those basic themes of Pico's essay
which most directly concern us. The theme of man as a creatura
comune (a being that has something in common with all things),85
8 3 . E . Cassirer, op. cit., pp. 86-7.
84. Cf. the Acts of the International Congress on 'L' opera e if pensiero di G. Pico della
Mirandofa nella storia dell'umanesimo (Florence, 1965), Vol. I, pp. 9ff.
85. E. Garin, Giovanni Pico della Mirandofa (Vita e Dottrina) (Florence, 1937), p. 197.

238

who reunites within himself all natural determinations ; or that of

the human spirit, which - having an omnifaria (omnifarious) nature
is 'the actuality that resolves and reunites within itself the infinite
aspects of the real, incoporating all of them within its infinitude' ;8 6
or again, the theme which portrays man 'not (as) one being among
beings, but as the oculus mundi, divinity and creator, the bond and
axis of the universe'. 87 All of these themes take us right back to the
image, already emphasized a number of times, of man as the genus
ofall empirical genera, i.e. as that being which, in that he is provided
with thought, is the universal, what is general or common in all things.
The same can be said for Bovillus's De Sapiente. Bovillus was a
disciple of Faber Stapulensis, who 'grasped the focal inspiration of
Pico, organized it, linked it and fused it together with the central
themes familiar to him in Cusanus's thought'. In this work as well
the basic theme is analogous to that of De hominis Dignitate. Here,
as Garin writes, 'man is the centre of the world because it is in him
that the world comes to consciousness of itself, as an object that
becomes subject, as being that becomes knowledge. Man in his
immediacy is a thing, nature. He is one being among other beings.
But God', Bovillus states (following Pico), 'did not give man a
nature ; man is not ; his being is the fruit of his self-creation. Man is
to be a rock, a plant, an animal, an angel, or God according to his
acts. And these acts are for Bovillus the process of acquiring know
ledge. Human dignity consists in being the consciousness of the
world, in making the world a great display for oneself.'88
Inasmuch as man is thought, he is both everything and nothing ;
everything in that he is what is general and common to all things, in
all natural, living species ; nothing in that this generality which is the
universal, or thought, is none of the particular species contained
within it. As Bovillus writes : 'Nothing is peculiar to man or is
man's alone, but rather he shares in common all those things which
distinguish the others' ; 'he fulfils within himself the nature of
everything'. 'Man is not this or that determinate being, nor is his
nature this or that, but rather it is contemporaneously all things :
86. ibid., p. 198.
87. ibid., p. 200.
88. cr. Garin's introduction to C. BoviIlus, Il sapiente, op. cit., pp.

and xii.

The Concept of the 'Social Relations ofProduction'

239

a confluence and rational synthesis of everything.'89 In short, man is

Reason itself; that reason which, as we have seen, is both 'this just
as much as that' and 'neither this nor that'. He is, in other words,
that which is devoid of substance and that which is the receptacle for
everything; for, as Hegel says, ' "I" is the vacuum or receptacle for
anything and everything : for which everything is and which stores
up everything in itself.' In short, as Pico states, man is a Proteus, a
'chameleon' .
On the other hand, since what is general and common, even if not
identical with any particular species, represents nonetheless some
thing that is present in all species - then 'in every substance of the
world' (Bovillus goes on) 'there is something human, in every sub
stance there is hidden some human atom proper to man'. 9 0 Just as it
can be said that 'the world is like the human body', so it can be said
that 'man is the anima mundi'. 91
Two themes emerge here with great clarity. In the first place, that
of Prometheus - the first anticipation of Faustian Streben (striving)
(the myth of Prometheus, Cassirer notes, fuses with 'the Adam motif
[which] undergoes an inner transformation that enables it to merge
with the [formern. 92 In other words, what we have to do with is that
current of thought which sees man's being as a product of his self
.creation : 'Man is nothing,' Garin writes, 'but he can make himself
into everything, in that with his infinite might he actualises all
realities, moving from one to the next. Man is everything in that he
knows everything ; whereas in every other being "operari sequitur
esse", with man "esse sequitur operari" ; man is actually a great
miracle, for he goes beyond the barriers of the natural world to
become activity that always creates itself, a being that is a product of
its self-creation.' 93
The second theme which emerges is that of man as the point at
which the Universe acquires consciousness of itself. Man, Bovillus
writes, is the universe made 'transparent to itself' ; and 'not', nota
bene, 'because everything has a notion of everything, but because
90. ibid., p. 89.
89. C. Bovillus, II sapiente, op. cit., p. 88.
91. ibid., p. 82.
92. E. Cassirer, op. cit., p. 95.
93. E. Garin, C. Pico della Mirandola, op. cit., pp. 201-2.

24 0

one part of the universe has reason, concepts and a science of its
entire self'. 94
Cassirer puts forward a strong argument in this regard. In relation
above all to De Sapiente, Cassirer notes that this complex of thoughts
is 'of such pure speculative content and of such peculiarly new stamp
that they are immediately reminiscent of the great systems of modern
philosophical idealism - of Leibniz or of Hegel. . . . Bovillus antici
pates the Hegelian formula, according to which the meaning and aim
of the mental process of development consists in the "substance"
becoming "subject". Reason is the power in man by which "mother
nature" returns to herself, i.e., by which she completes her cycle and
is led back to herself'. 95
In the light of these two great themes of Pico and Bovillus, we can
now try to conclude our excursus and return to Marx's argument.
The first element that stands out clearly is the notion that in man esse
sequitur operari. As reason, man is everything and nothing; he is
able to concretize himself into an infinite series of forms. His
being is becoming. The motif of man's 'protean-form' ('proteiforme')
nature, of his 'active side', of the tatige Seite, here strikes us with all
the expressive force of myth. The universe is the theatre of man's
concretizations. Naturalistic materialism has never been able to open
itself up to this dimension. The only way in which it has been able to
represent real movement, historical praxis, is through the immobile
form of anacyclosis (the cyclical view of history).
In another respect, this nature of man qua becoming is sustained
by the concept of man as Nothing ; an idea not intended - obviously
- to represent a disparaging conception of the 'human' or the
spiritual, but on the contrary a negative conception of matter or the
sensate. Indeed, man 'is not' precisely because he is not a thing, i.e.
an objective, natural being - in short, because he is Unding. All of
which means - here is the second great theme demanding examina
tion - that the other characteristic of this conception is that man is
depicted 'not as one being among other beings', but only as the oculus
mundi or as a spiritual mirror ; and, in short, that whereas it grasps
the character of man as the genus of all other empirical genera, it
94- C. Bovillus, op. cit., p. 82.
95. E. Cassirer, op. cit., p. 89 .

The Concept of the 'Social Relations ofProduction'

241

dilutes (or rather, loses sight altogether of) that other characteristic
by virtue of which man remains always a natural being.
In other words, to adopt a somewhat terse formulation : the
obviousness of the fact that man's specificity is to be generic obscures
its counterpart ; i.e. that this genericity remains the specific charac
teristic of an objective being, an attribute and not the subject itself;
and therefore that if this is the characteristic that distinguishes man
from all other natural beings, it does not do away with his naturality
but is, rather, rooted in it.
The proof of this lies in the way in which Pico and Bovi11us
develop the theme of man as the point where the Universe comes to
consciousness of itself. Here the motif or idea is not that man knows
and produces himself by knowing and producing the other things,
i.e. by reproducing (both in theory and practice) the otherness of
nature, and thereby ascribing to each object the yardstick appropriate
to it. Rather it is just the opposite : that knowledge of all nature on
man's part coincides - as Pico explicitly states - with yvw8t umv,6v
because he who 'knows himself in himself knows all things . . . ' ; 9 6 or
in other words - as Garin perceptively shows in the case of Bovillus
that the wise man is a 'publica creatura' just in that moment in which
he bends inwardly to 'espy the movement of his spirit', and that he
is all the more public, i.e. turned towards the outside, 'the more he
concentrates himself upon himself'. 97
'We can also define Reason,' Bovillus writes, 'as that faculty by
virtue of which nature returns to herself, is restored to herself, and
by virtue of which the circle of nature as a whole is completed.' 98
But since 'in every substance of the world there is something human,
in every substance there is hidden some human atom proper to man'99
- and it is precisely 'this fraction (that) man is born to lay claim to for
himself'lOO - the journey by which nature returns to herself by means
of man comes to coincide with a relationship of Reason to itse(f; or
more precisely, coincides with the relationship of Reason 'in itself'
96.
97.
98.
99.

G. Pico della Mirandola, op. cit., p. 235.

Cf. Garin's introduction to C. Bovillus, op. cit., p. xiii.
C. Bovillus, op. cit., p. 28.
ibid., p. 89.
100. IDe. cit.

24 2

(or as it was immersed in the world) to Reason 'in itself and for
itself', i.e. to a mediation within consciousness. In other words, the
Substance that becomes a Subject is the very Subject which having 'posited' itself antecedently as nature - now returns to itself.
It is, as Bovillus says, the passage from 'man as substance' to 'man
as reason' ; 1 01 and in fact to such a point that what should have been
a relationship of man to nature resolves itself (as an actual prefigure
ment of what will happen with Hegel - Hegel had a deep knowledge
of Cusanus) into a simple relationship of thought to itself- following
the line of Cusanus's statement that 'non activae creationis humani
tatis alius extat finis quam humanitas. Non enim pergit extra se dum
creat neque quicquam novi ejjicit, sed cuncta, aquae explicando creat, in
ipsa fuisse comperit'. 1 02
Man's genericity (i.e. the fact that his being is thought or reason)
is not developed in the sense that consciousness is a specific attribute
of man, i.e. a function of his relationship both to the otherness of
nature and to other men, but is rather converted into a self-contained
subject. Thus, the process of self-consciousness comes to coincide
with asceticism, i.e. with the gradual emancipation on Reason's part
from all those natural or sensuous elements - including those present
in man's own naturality - by which Reason would otherwise be
adulterated or circumscribed. To use other terms, for Pico - just as
for Ficino, the interpreter of Plato's Parmenides - it is necessary that
our soul gradually shake off its impurities by means of moral asceti
cism and the dialectic (per moralem et dialecticam suas scordes
excusserit), until 'she (our soul) shall herself be made the house of
God' ;103 or until we - 'like burning Seraphim rapt from ourselves,
full of divine power' - 'shall no longer be ourselves but shall become
He Himself Who made US'.104
The culmination of self-consciousness is epopteia, 'that is to say,
the observation of things divine by the light of theology'.105 By
10I. loco cit.
102. Cf. E. Cassirer, op. cit., p. 87: 'The active creation of humanity has no other end
than humanity itself. For humanity does not proceed outside itself while it is creating,
nor does it produce anything new. Rather does it know that everything it creates by
unfolding was already within it.'
103. G. Pico della Mirandola, op. cit., p. 232.
104. ibid., p. 234105. ibid., p. 233.

The Concept of the 'Social Relations ofProduction' 243

contrast, the discursive or 'intellectual' nature of thought, the fact

that it is inherent in language (as Marx says, 'The element of thought
itself, the element of the living manifestation of thought, language, is
sensuous in character'), 1 0 6 means that it is relegated to the sphere of
illusory or inferior knowledge. We can be freed from this sphere
only by the 'expiatory sciences' of the dialectic and divine rapture,
i.e. by those 'Socratic frenzies' which, as Pico says, 'drive . . . us into
ecstasy [so] as to put our mind and ourselves in God'. 1 0 7
Here the deep mystical-religious motifs in the neo-Platonic
critique of the 'intellect' re-emerge (in this true birthplace of the
modern 'destruction of the intellect' or of the principle of non
contradiction). Hegel's loathing for propositions and the judgment,
Heidegger's childish horror for the 'fatal categories of grammar',
both appear to me to be already anticipated in the preface (as pointed
out by Garin1 0 8) with which Lefevre d'Etaples, or Faber Stan
pulensis, introduced in 1 50 1 the early work of his pupil Bovillus on
Ars oppositorum: 'Aristotle represents life within knowledge,
Pythagoras represents death, but a death higher than life. Thus,
Aristotle taught with the word, Pythagoras with silence ; but this
silence is perfection, that word is imperfection. In Paul and Diogenes
the silence is great; there i silence in Cusanus and Vittorino. In
Aristotle, however, the silence is little and the words are many.
But silence speaks and words remain silent.'
We shall now attempt to sum up our argument and draw our
conclusions with regard to Marx. The point that links Marx to
Hegel - and through Hegel, to Cusanus and the spiritualist human
ism of the Renaissance - is clearly the concept of what is Reason, as
we have had occasion to say a number of times. Reason is the genus
of all empirical genera, it is the 'totality' and comprehension of
everything. Reason is both everything and nothing : it is 'this as well
as that' and also 'neither this nor that' ; the 'receptacle' of everything
and also what is 'devoid' of substance. It is what is general and
common in all things, without being any of the particular things or
ro6. K. Marx, Early Writings, op. cit., p. 164.
107. G. Pico della Mirandola, op. cit., p. 234.
108. Introduction to C. Bovillus, op. cit., p. x.

244

natural species contained within Reason. This accounts for the

tiitige Seite and the possibility of understanding the world as the
actualization of man and of his multiformed spirit. It also accounts
for the conception that sees objects as the objectification of the sub
ject himself.
The difference is, however - by now the argument is sufficiently
evident and can be abbreviated - that Marx, instead of turning
reason into the subject itself (thereby elevating it into the divine
Logos) holds fast to man's naturality, i.e. to the nerve of the true
materialist tradition. As Marx says in opposition to Hegel : 'Self
consciousness is . . . a quality of human nature. . . ; human nature is
not a quality of self-consciousness.'
Thus we return to the concept of man as a natural, generic being.
This concept means that man's specificity is to be generic, i.e. that
man's dijJerentia from all other natural entities - (N.B.) - consists
in being the indijJerentia of all the dijJerentiae (the genus of all the
species) ; in other words, that his particularity is the totality. The
characteristic that distinguishes him from everything is just what
unites him and links him to everything. What we here find once
more is the concept of reason as a tauto-heterology or dialectical
contradiction, as the 'identity of identity and non-identity'. On the
other hand, in so far as being this indijJerentia - or unity - of all the
dijJerentiae does not do away with the fact that man is after all still a
determinate natural entity whose specific characteristic is just this
genericity, what comes to the fore here is the anti-dialectical or
materialist principle that contradiction does not eliminate non
contradiction (the principle of reason as a predicate rather than a
subject) - in short, the principle of existence as an extra-logical
element. Two principles which, if reconsidered in their organic
connection, lead us back to the central theoretical postulate of this
study : i.e. to tauto-heterological identity or 'determinate abstrac
tion'.
It would be too easy to score further polemical successes against
'dialectical materialism' and its chronic inability to solve the enigma
of the 1844 Manuscripts, i.e. to understand the concept of man as a
'natural, generic being'. But the step that we must take here is in an

The Concept of the 'Social Relations ofProduction' 245

altogether different direction. The theory of 'determinate abstrac

tion' is the theory of abstraction as a 'rational totality' (a totality of
reason) and also as fact or 'material determination' (a determination
of matter). In short, it is the theory which we came across (in
Chapter VIII) when an analysis of the initial pages of section 3 of
the 1 857 Introduction showed that abstraction is discussed there in a
twofold sense : as a mental generalization or totality and as one aspect
or analytic characteristic of the particular and multi-dimensional
object under consideration (,value', it will be remembered, as a
concept that is logically more general than and therefore precedes
that of 'population' ; and, at the same time, 'value' as 'an abstract
one-sided relation of a concrete and living whole that is already
given').
Now, the concept of man as a 'natural, generic being', while
presenting us with the same structure (tauto-heterological identity)
as the 'abstraction', shows us at the same time why this logical
epistemological theory did not give rise to a special analysis on
Marx's part - it was immediately absorbed by Marx into his theory
of social relations ofproduction. Man is a natural, generic being. He is
the genus of all empirical genera, what is general and common in all
things. In so far as what is common to all things is not any one of the
things in particular, this genericity is the specific element of man ; it is
the idea, reason, the rational totality. On the other hand, in so far as
man - being a natural entity - has 'his' nature 'outside himself', i.e.
does not have a being of his own but has only that of other entities as
his own, the generality expressed in his idea shows itself to be the
'abstract one-sided relation of a concrete that is already given'. That
is, it shows itself to be the most superficial and generic characteristic
manifested by an object or a natural determinate species, and as such
it is a characteristic which the object has in common with countless
other natural species. (It is here that the materialist overturning of
Bovillus and Hegel's point of view comes to light : it is not that 'in
every substance of the world there is something human' or that 'in
every substance there is hidden some human atom proper to man',
propositions implying that in the final analysis nature itself is idea
and that therefore the finite is ideal - anthropomorphism and abstract

246

finalism. Rather the opposite : i.e. the specific human element, logical
generality or the idea, is none other than the most superficial and
generic element of the object.)
The concept of the social relations of production shows itself, at
this point, to be nothing but the development of the two relation
ships which we have just now mentioned. In so far as genericity is a
specific prerequisite of man, man's relationship to every other species
manifests itself as a relationship within his own species ; i.e., the
generic relationship (that is, a relationship of more than one species)
appears as a specific interhuman relationship. This means that man's
process of relating to objective otherness is also a process whereby
man relates to himself; i.e. a way of communicating to other men his
needs and aims by means of objectivity. So that just as man's rela
tionship to nature turns out to be also an interhuman relation
ship, similarly production also inevitably shows itself to be a social
relationship. On the other hand, in so far as man's relationship to
himself or to his own species is also a relationship to other natural
entities (for the latter are actually 'his' nature), .the relationship is
reversed. In the sense that it is no longer objectivity that is a means
for the manifestation of the idea, i.e. of man's needs and conscious
aims, but the idea - qua 'an abstract one-sided relation of the given
object', or more exactly, its most superficial or generic characteristic
that now appears as the means by which this generic element itself is
linked and related to the object from which it was abstracted. Hence
the latter finally turns out to be just that characteristic or relation
ship which not only assists in defining the specificity of the object
under consideration, but also the characteristic and relationship by
means of which this specificity manifests and asserts itself.
Let us halt here, without complicating the analysis any further.
The essentials of what had to be said have been said. Though only
in the broadest outline, the argument has shown the difficult path
that led to the concept of 'social relations of production'. This path
seems to be marked by a profound contrast between two irrepressible
requirements which can (however) be reconciled only with great
difficulty : the requirement imposed by critical epistemology and that
imposed by philosophic logic ; the requirement that thought appear

The Concept of the 'Social Relations of Production' 247

as 'one of the two' and that it be at the same time the 'totality' of the
relationship ; the principle of a science of man as a natural, finite
being and the impossibility for this science of ever transcending the
limits of anthropology without reinstating the characteristic of man
as reason, i.e. as an ideal totality.
It would be superfluous here to insist further on the antecedents
of the concept of 'social relations of production'. It may, however, be
useful to elaborate slightly one other point implied in our argument.
If, in order to understand the 'social relations of production', it is
essential to have an idea of the difficulties through which philosophic
logic and anthropology have passed, it remains no less true that
those problems and difficulties in their turn found a solution in
Marx precisely because they were transferred on to a radically new
terrain, never previously explored by philosophic thought. The
concept of 'social relations of production' undoubtedly has very
complex antecedents ; that does not detract, however, from the fact
that what emerged at the end of this development (i.e. that concept
itself) was something completely heterogeneous with respect to the
entire speculative tradition. If, as one historian (E. H. Carr) has
called to mind not long ago, 'the tension between the opposed
principles of continuity and change is the groundwork ofhistory,' 1 0 9
one must also see to it that this tension is not arbitrarily played down
and that it is permitted to burst forth with all its force. Problems, in
a certain sense, are always the same, and yet they are also always new.
In order to understand Marx one must reconstruct in some way the
entire antecedent tradition. And yet it remains true that one cannot
understand Marx if one does not understand at the same time how it
is that the problems which once were posed at the level of Hegel's
Science ofLogic or of the Critique ofPure Reason became so different
in Marx's hands that they no longer gave rise to a treatise on logic
but to the analysis of Capital.
It is also indepensable that we insist on this point in order to
correct the orientation of one line of interpretation of Marx's
thought already referred to in this study. Della Volpe's Logica come
scienza positiva is in my opinion the most important work produced
109. E. H. Carr, Socialism in One Country (London, 1958), Vol. I, p. 3.

248

by European Marxism during this post-war era. Notwithstanding

my great indebtedness to this work, it remains a fact (although a fact
that has been greatly exaggerated by often inaccurate interpretation)
that this work - and even more so later developments based on it have signalled an unmistakable tendency towards the restoration of a
logic and epistemology (the theory of 'determinate abstraction') to
Marx's thought, rather than sustained the deeper meaning and
movement of that thought. A meaning which (by contrast) we have
attempted to show and represent here by the transposition and
resolution of the problems that were once posed at the level of logic
and epistemology (and therefore at the level of the theory of 'deter
minate abstraction' as well) into the historico-materialist theory of
the concept of 'social relations of production'. This Della Volpean
tendency accounts for the privileged position and excessive weight
accorded to the so-called logico-methodological writings within the
general economy of Marx's works - works like the first part of the
Critique ofHegel's Philosophy ofRight or the Introduction of 1857 (it
will be obvious that this bias is still felt in part in the present work).
And it also accounts for the underevaluation of the essential role that
must be accorded to the 1844 Manuscripts as that work in which
Marx succeeded for the first time in transposing the entire preceding
philosophic problematic to the new terrain of the concept and
analysis of the 'social relations of production'. This work, although
it had originally attracted Della Volpe's attention, in the end seemed
to him to be of 'philosophic interest only in the last part dedicated
to the critique of Hegel's philosophy, which is incomprehensible,
moreover, apart from the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right,
consisting as it does in a kind ofeconomic-philosophic "hodgepodge"
that is rich in places with glittering theoretical insights and modes of
reasoning which only later are fully developed'. 11 0
IIO. Galvano DeIIa Volpe, Rousseau e Marx (Rome, 1964), p. ISO.

XII.

The Idea of

' Bourgeois-Christian' Society

Hegel's thesis that man has his foundation and essence in God means
not only that man attains consciousness of self indirectly i.e. it is
through knowledge of God's nature that man arrives at knowledge
of his own - but also that this knowledge of the divine essence is the
meaning and purpose of the entire historical process. The motive
force of world history consists, according to Hegel (see, e.g., sub
heading 384 of the Encyclopedia), in the gradual progression in the
representation of God from the particular or naturalistic forms in
which He is at first represented, to His representation as Spirit;
i.e. that representation in which He is affirmed in His authentic
universality and in His complete independence from all ethnic or
national characteristics. In Hegel's words : 'The universal in its true
and comprehensive meaning is a thought which, as we know, cost
thousands of years to make it enter into the consciousness of men.
The thought did not gain its fun recognition till the days of Christian
ity. The Greeks, in other respects so advanced, knew neither God
nor even man in their true universality. The gods of the Greeks
were only particular powers of the mind ; and the universal God, the
God of all nations, was to the Athenians still a God concealed. They
believed in the same way that an absolute gulf separated themselves
from the barbarians. Man as man was not then recognized to be of
infinite worth and to have infinite rights . . . Christianity (is) the
religion of absolute freedom. Only in Christendom is man respected
as man, in his infinitude and universality.'l
-

1 . En.L., p . 293. A s confirmation ofHege1's thesis and also a s proof of his influence on
the historiography of the ancient world Gust to mention one among countless other
authors, starting with Wilamowitz), cf. Bruno Snell, The Discovery of the Mind, trans
lated by T. G. Rosenmeyer (New York, 1960), pp. 246-7 : 'It is sometimes averred that
the Greeks in their art did not portray any one man with his accidental traits, but that
they represented man himself, the idea of man, to use a Platonic expression, which is not

250

The statement that 'we are all men', the recognition of the equality
and universality of human nature, was thus achieved with the advent
of Christianity - when men recognized that they were all equally sons
of God, or in other words, when they grasped the divinity (and there
fore their own principle and essence) no longer as this or that
particular 'force' but as Spirit, in all its unconditional infinitude and
universality.
The recognition of this historic function of Christianity (which is
present in Feuerbach and Marx as well) recurs in Hegel's work
with such insistency as to represent one of its true leitmotifs. Not
only the principle of equality, but also the very idea of freedom that freedom which 'is the very essence of spirit, that is, its very
actuality' has its foundation and origin, according to Hegel, in
infrequently used to support the argument. The truth is that such a statement is neither
Platonic nor even Greek in spirit. No Greek ever seriously spoke of the idea of man . . . .'
And in the same vein, cf. also Max Pohlenz, Der hellenische Mensch (Gottingen, 1946),
p. 446 : 'The Greeks never coined a special word for this idea of "humanitas" [nor] did
they have occasion to do so, since in point of fact they only thought in terms of the closed
circle of their fellow countrymen.' As regards the theme, developed later in our analysis,
of the integration of Greek man within the polis, cf. ibid., pp. 106, 108, 125, 13Iff. ('The
polis formed a spiritual unity. . . . For this reason the entire political life as well was
permeated by religion'). In relation to how the modern concept of the 'rights of man'
was extraneous to the Greek world, cf. ibid., p. 109. And again on p. 404: 'For the
Greeks the polis was not an external legal institution, but rather a natural form of life
which the spirit of a people creates for itself.' As concerns the differences - which we
shall discuss later in our analysis - between the ancient world and Christianity, one must
always mention the classic work of Fustel de Coulanges, The Ancient City, translated by
Willard Small (Garden City, New York, n.d.). Cf. p. 390, where it is pointed out that
with Christianity 'the divine Being was placed outside and above physical nature.
Whilst previously every man had made a god for himself, and there were as many of
them as there were families and cities, God now appeared as a unique, immense, univer
sal being, alone animating the worlds.' And p. 392 : 'Christianity . . . presented to the
adoration of all men a single God, a universal God, a God who belonged to all, who had
no chosen people, and who made no distinction in races, families, or states.' And
concerning the relationship between Christianity and subjective freedom, cf. pp. 394-5 :
'Christianity taught that only a part of man belonged to society; that he was bound to it
by his body and by his material interests ; . . . this new principle was the source whence
individual liberty flowed . . . Politics and war were no longer the whole of man ; all the
virtues were no longer comprised in patriotism, for the soul no longer had a country . . .
Christianity distinguished the private from the public virtues. By giving less honor to
the latter, it elevated the former; it placed God, the family, the human individual above
country, the neighbor above the city.'

The Idea of 'Bourgeois-Christian' Society

2SI

Christianity. 'Whole continents, Africa and the East, have never had
this Idea, and are without it still. The Greeks and Romans, Plato
and Aristotle, even the Stoics, did not have it. On the contrary, they
saw that it is only by birth (as, for example, an Athenian or Spartan
citizen), or by strength of character, education, or philosophy (the
sage is free even as a slave and in chains) that the human being is
actually free. It was through Christianity that this Idea came into
the world. According to Christianity, the individual as such has an
infinite value as the object and aim of divine love, destined as mind
to live in absolute relationship with God himself, and have God's
mind dwelling in him : i.e. man in himself is destined to supreme
freedom.'2
This process of universalization by means of which God frees
Himself from all naturalistic semblance in order to appear as Spirit
and therefore as transcendent infinitude is apprehended by Hegel in
connection with another and simultaneous process, which is that of
the dissolution of the earthly community of which the individual was
originally a part. Hegel writes : 'Religion is the consciousness that a
people has of what it itself is and of the essence of supreme being. . . .
The way in which a people represents God is also the way in which it
represents its relationship to God or represents itself; (such that)
religion is also the conception that a people has of itself. A people
that takes nature for its God cannot be a free people ; only when it
regards God as a Spirit that transcends nature does it become free
and Spirit itself.'3
When God is posited outside of nature and therefore also above
and beyond the naturalistic ties of consanguinity which are the basis
of the first ethnic-tribal communities, this means both that the inner
unity of these communities is dissolved and that the immediate
natural tie of a common descent is no longer recognized as a real one.
In this case, God is situated above and beyond the earthly com
munity because man no longer looks upon this community as God.
He separates God from the community because he no longer
2 . G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy ofMind, op. cit., pp. 239-40 (translation modified).
3. G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen fiber die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte, Part I of Vol. 8
in his Siimtliche Werke, edited by Georg Lasson (Leipzig, 1920), p. 105.

252

recognizes his essence in the community, or because the community

itself - and therefore men's relationships amongst themselves - are
already internally disintegrated.
The meaning of the argument, which is developed with admirable
historical insight particularly in the Philosophy of Right and the
Philosophy of History, hinges upon Hegel's well-known analysis of
the differences that separate the Greek world from the Christian
world.
In ancient Greece, God is the polis itself. Far from appearing as a
transcendent entity, the Spirit is here, as Hegel says, still in the
form of natural or 'substantive customary morality' (Sittlichkeit).
The divinity is the personified totality of the ethico-political
community ; a community that is founded in its turn on natural ties
of blood, i.e. on the natural commonality of descent. Not only is the
rift between the terrestrial world and the extra-terrestrial still not
present, but for the same reason neither does there exist any
separation between individual and community, between State and
society. Everything holds together as in a perfect cosmos. The
divinity is the very content of the spiritual life of the people, the
substance and raison d'hre of its political existence. And since 'this
spiritual content is something definite, firm, solid, completely
exempt from caprice, the particularities, the whims of individuality,
of chance', it 'then constitutes the essence of the individual as well as
that of the people'. 'It is the holy bond that ties the men, the spirits
together. It is one life in all, a grand object, a great purpose and
content', upon which the individual entirely depends. 4
The will of the individual and that o f the community - subjective
will and objective will - coincide here without any mediation to
form a single unfettered whole ; for in the polis, as Hegel states, '(the
Idea) does not yet present itself one-sidedly and abstractly for itself
but as in direct connexion with the real - just as in a beautiful work
of art the sensuous bears the mark and is the expression of the
4- G. w. F. Hegel, Reason in History, translated by Robert S. Hartman (Indianapolis,
1953), p. 52. This translation of the Introduction to the Lectures on the Philosophy of
History contains certain passages from Lasson's edition. Apart from these few insertions
there exists no English translation of the version edited by Lasson. (Trans.)

The Idea of 'Bourgeois-Christian' Society

253

spiritual'. 'It is still spontaneous customary morality ; not yet re

flective morality, but rather that morality in which the individual
will of the subject adheres to the unmediated custom and habit of the
laws and of what is just. Thus the individual is in spontaneous unity
with the universal goal' ; 5 to such an extent that 'an Athenian citizen
did what was required of him, as it were from instinct'. 6 In this
'purely substantive' freedom, 'the laws and precepts are something
sturdy in and for themselves (ein an undfur sich Festes) in relation to
which the subjects' conduct is one of utter subordination. These
laws need not then correspond at all to the subjects' own will ; and
the subjects find themselves in the same position as children, who
obey their parents - but not however out of their own will and
understanding.' 7
This condition of complete subordination of the individual with
respect to the ethnic-tribal community of which he is a part (a
community that towers over him and dominates him to the point of
taking on in his eyes the character of a divine 'natural force') is also
analysed in Marx's work, in terms not dissimilar to Hegel's. The
German Ideology deals at length a number of times with the descrip
tion of what is called the naturwuchsige Gesellschaft or the natur
wuchsige Verhiiltnisse in contrast to the conditions that arise with the
Geldverhiiltnisse. 'Consciousness is at first, of course, merely con
sciousness concerning the immediate sensuous environment and
consciousness of the limited connection with other persons and
things outside the individual who is growing self-conscious. At the
same time it is consciousness of nature, which first appears to men as
a completely alien, all-powerful and unassailable force, with which
men's relations are purely animal and by which they are overawed
like beasts ; it is thus a purely animal consciousness of nature
(natural religion). We see here immediately : this natural religion or
animal behaviour towards nature is determined by the form of
society and vice versa. . . . This beginning is as animal as social life
itself at this stage. It is mere herd-consciousness, and at this point
5. G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophie der Weltgeschichte, op. cit., p. 239.
6. G. W. F. Hegel, Reason in History, op. cit., p. 53.
7. G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophie der Weltgeschichte, op. cit., p. 233.

254

man is only distinguished from sheep by the fact that with him
consciousness takes the place of instinct or that his instinct is a
conscious one.'B In analogous terms, and again with the aim of
signalling its difference with regard to the subsequent rise and
spread of mercantile relationships, Capital refers on a number of
occasions to that condition of 'immaturity of the individual human
being (who had not yet severed the umbilical cord which, under
primitive conditions, unites all the members of the human species
one with another'). 9
It goes without saying that just as for Hegel the period of 'sub
stantive customary morality' is not limited to Greece but is extended
well beyond it to embrace much more primitive conditions of life,
so with Marx as well his propositions refer to more remote ages.
Nevertheless, allowing for necessary distinctions, that feature of his
argument that is certainly moulded to fit the conditions of ancient
Greece is the notion that here the individual is not regarded as an
autonomous entity sufficient unto himself, but rather as something
that, with respect to the polis, stands in the same relationship as the
part to the whole in a fashion not unlike the relationship of a given
organ of the body to man's body as a whole.
This way of viewing things, which was still the essence of the
Greek conception of man at the height of the classical age, emerges
forcefully in Aristotle's Politics. Here one finds an explicit affirma
tion of the intrinsically social nature of man : 'man is a being meant
for political association, in a higher degree than bees or other
gregarious animals . . .', so that one can say that 'the polis belongs to
the class of things that exist by nature, and that man is by nature an
animal intended to live in a polis. He who is without a polis, by
reason of his own nature and not of some accident, is either a poor
sort of being, or a being higher than man.' But one also finds a no
less explicit statement as to the hierarchical priority ofthe community
with regard to the individual. ' . . . The polis is prior in the order of
nature to the family and the individual. The reason for this is that
the whole is necessarily prior (in nature) to the part. If the whole
-

8. K. Marx, The German Ideology, op. cit., pp. 42-3.

9. K. Marx, Capital (Eden and Cedar Paul translation), op. cit., Vol. I, p. 53.

The Idea of 'Bourgeois-Christian' Society

255

body be destroyed, there will not be a foot or a hand . . . . We thus see

that the polis exists by nature and that it is prior to the individual. . . .
Not being self-sufficient when they are isolated, all individuals are
so many parts all equally depending on the whole. The man who is
isolated - who is unable to share in the benefits of political associa
tion, or has no need to share because he is already self-sufficient - is
no part of the polis, and must therefore be either a beast or a god.' 1 0
Hegel's judgment is in similar terms. The Greek world knows
nothing of the individual's independence from the community ; it
does not know this independence and still less can it imagine the an
teriority and priority in value of the individual with respect to the
social body as a whole. 'In the states of antiquity, the subjective end
simply coincided with the state's will. In modern times, however,
we make claims for private judgement, private willing, and private
conscience. The ancients had none of these in the modern sense ; the
ultimate thing with them was the will of the state.'ll Whereas the
'essence of the modern State', Hegel remarks, is not only 'that the
universal be bound up with the complete freedom of its particular
members', but that 'the universal end cannot be advanced without
the personal knowledge and will of its particular members, whose
own rights must be maintained' (hence the necessity that that univer
sal end be 'proven' to the individual 'in actual fact') ; in the states of
classical antiquity, however, 'particularity had not then been
released, given free scope, and brought back to universality' 1 2 The
typical example is the Platonic State, in which 'subjective freedom
does not count, because people have their occupations assigned to
them by the Guardians'.13
Under these conditions the development of individuality, i.e.
man's self-creation as autonomous subjectivity by which 'man
descends from external reality into his own spirit'.14 could not help
but act as the principle of the internal dissolution and ruin of those
.

10. Aristotle, The Politics, translated by Ernest Barker (New York, 1962), pp. 5-6.
G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy ofRight, translated by T. M. Knox (London, Oxford,
New York, 1952), p. 280.
12. ibid., p. 260.
13. ibid., p. 280.
14. G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophie der Weltgeschichte, op . cit., p. 233.
II.

256

States. Hegel states : 'The development of particularity to self

subsistence is the moment which appeared in the ancient world as an
invasion of ethical corruption and as the ultimate cause of that
world's downfall. Some of these ancient states were built on the
patriarchal and religious principle, others on the principle of an
ethical order which was more explicitly intellectual, though still
comparatively simple ; in either case they rested on primitive un
sophisticated intuition. Hence they could not withstand the disrup
tion of this state of mind when self-consciousness was infinitely
reflected into itself. . . . In his Republic, Plato displays the substance
of ethical life in its ideal beauty and truth; but he could only cope
with the principle of self-subsistent particularity, which in his day
had forced its way into Greek ethical life, by setting up in opposition
to it his purely substantial state. He absolutely excluded from his
state, even in its very beginnings in private property and the family,
as well as in its more mature form as the subjective will, the choice
of a social position, and so forth.'15 This inability in the Greek world
to interpret the new spirit that was rising signals its historical
inferiority with respect to Christianity. In fact, 'the right of the
subject's particularity, his right to be satisfied, or in other words the
right of subjective freedom, is the pivot and centre of the difference
between antiquity and modern times. This right in its infinity is given
expression in Christianity and it has become the universal effective
principle of a new form of civilization.' 16
As the reader can see, the acuteness of Hegel's historical percep
tion comes out most fully from these passages. The autonomous
development of the individual in the ancient world is linked to the
development of private property that property which Plato banned
from his State precisely as a consequence of the inability of the
Greek world to reconcile the organicist principle of the polis with
that of subjective freedom. And one certainly need not force Hegel's
text in order to comprehend all of its implicit meanings. 'Private
property' and its 'more mature form as the subjective will, the choice
of a social position', refer in transparent terms to that great historical
process (analysed subsequently by Marx on a number of occasions)
-

15. G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy ofRight, op. cit., pp. 123-4.

16. ibid., p. 84.

The Idea of 'Bourgeois-Christian' Society 257

represented by the disintegration of the compact and homogeneous

'patriarchical communities' of the ancient world as a result of the
corrosive effect of the development of commodity production and
exchange (and hence money) relationships. 'Just as all the qualitative
differences between commodities are effaced in money, so money on
its side, a radical leveller, effaces all distinctions. But money is itself a
commodity, an external object, capable of becoming the private
property of any individual. Thus social power becomes a private
power in the hands of a private person. That was why the ancients
(and here Marx cites Sophocles) denounced money as subversive of
the economic and moral order of things' ; whereas 'modern society
which, when still in its infancy, pulled Pluto by the hair of his head
out of the bowels of earth, acclaims gold, its Holy Grail, as the
glittering incarnation of its inmost vital principle' . 1 7
This analysis by Hegel and Marx, whose positions thus far largely
coincide, naturally had a prehistory of its own in the eighteenth cen
tury, particularly in Rousseau. The organicism of the ancient city,
the integration which it achieves between individual and community,
the coincidence of public life and private life - not to mention the
corrosive effect of exchange, commerce, and the circulation of money
on the solidarity and cohesiveness of the ancient 'republics' - these
are all themes which can be found already developed in the work of
the great Genevan. However, what is perhaps not so well-known is
that Rousseau conceived one of the most original formulations of
the complex problem of the relationship between Christianity and
the ancient world - and also one of the most fertile as a precursor of
future developments.
The theme that we find here has at first sight a form analogous to
the observation which Hegel uses as his point of departure. Rousseau
points out that it is precisely because man in the ancient world is
integrated organically into the particular community of his city that
he is excluded from that broader and general society which is the
community of the entire human species. 'The patriotic spirit is an
exclusive one, which makes us regard all men other than our co
citizens as strangers, and almost as enemies. Such was the spirit of
17. K. Marx, Capital, op. cit., p. II3.

258

Sparta and Rome. The spirit of Christianity, by contrast, makes us

regard all men as our brothers, as children of God. Christian charity
does not allow us to make odious distinctions between compatriots
and strangers; . . . its ardent zeal embraces all the human race
without distinction. It is true, then, that Christianity by its very
sanctity is contrary to the particularist (selfish) social spirit.' 1 s
The idea that emerges here is again that of the ancient world's
inability to raise itself to a recognition of the equality and univer
sality of human nature. And the manifestation of this principle in
the world is linked by Rousseau as well to the advent and propaga
tion of Christianity : ' . . . Ideas of natural right and the common
brotherhood of all men were spread rather late and have made such
slow progress in the world that only Christianity has generalized
them sufficiently.' 19
However, what is characteristic of Rousseau's argument is that
while interpreting the passage from ancient society to Christianity
as the passage from the particular societies of the former to the
general society of the latter, and therefore as a progressive univer
salization of man, he apprehends in this process a genuine subversion
of the principle involved. In the ancient world, the bond that ties
man to the community is particular but real; i.e., if the former does
not link man to the entire species but only to a particular ethnic
group, it nonetheless binds him to this group in a political com
munity that is terrestrial, and purely human. It is just the opposite
with Christianity : here the individual is linked to the entire human
species, but the tie that binds together this 'societe generale' turns
out to be elevated and projected outside the world - i.e., it is not a
human-terrestrial bond, but rather God. Thus the 'societe humaine en
general', 'l'institution sociale universelle' that derives therefrom is a
purely ideal, abstract society - not a political, but a transcendental
one. It is the society of all men qua 'souls' and 'sons of God' ; a
heavenly society which is counterpoised here on earth by the atomis
tic disintegration, the struggle between opposing egos, and the
unbridled competition which Rousseau believes distinguish modern
18. J.-J. Rousseau, The Political Writings, edited by C. E. Vaughan (Oxford, 1962),
Vol. II, p. 166.
19. ibid., Vol. I, p. 453.

The Idea of 'Bourgeois-Christian' Society 259

conditions from the 'virtue' of ancient republics. 'Society at large,

human society in general, is founded on humanity, on universal
benevolence ; and I say, and I always have said, that Christianity is
favourable to that society. But particular societies, political and civil
societies, have an entirely different principle. They are purely
human institutions, from which Christianity consequently detaches
us as it does from all that is merely of this earth.' 2 0
I n its essential outline the picture is analogous to Hegel's. Man's
elevation to consciousness of the universality and equality of his
nature passes through the dissolution of the natural-ethnic tie of the
particularistic communities of the ancient world. Under the impact
of money and commerce those original formations - cohesive yet
confining - dissolve; the individuals which were enclosed therein are
cast forth like free atoms ; the localistic barriers fall away together
with differences of blood and lineage. Man is no longer free as an
Athenian or as a Spartan, i.e. as a member of a determinate com
munity, but has worth as such, i.e. independent of race, religion,
nationality, etc. In broad terms, we repeat, the picture is analogous
in both Hegel and Rousseau. The new situation is identified by both
of them as one in which each man is of infinite worth because each
man - taken in his isolation and separation from the others and
therefore before and independent of any relationship with society stands in an unmediated and direct relationship with God as Spirit;
not, of course, with the God of the Athenians or of the Hebrews,
but with the universal God of all peoples. But Hegel sees in this
disintegration of relationships on earth and their formation anew
around the God of the heavens the decisive advance by which God
frees Himself from all naturalistic semblance in order to posit
Himself at last as Spirit, i.e. as free and transcendental universality
('A people that takes nature for its God cannot be a free people ; only
when it regards God as a Spirit that transcends nature does it
become free and Spirit itself). Whereas Rousseau, who in this
respect is truly a son of the ancient republics (man outside the com
munity is only an animal ; the man who has no need to share because
he is already self-sufficient is no part of the polis, and must therefore
20. ibid., Vol. II, pp. I66-7.

260

be either a beast or a god), apprehends in this new relationship a

situation completely unnatural and alienated. Consequently, where
Hegel sees the emergence of the principle of modern freedom,
Rousseau sees the formation of the conditions for servitude and
tyranny. 'Christianity is a wholly spiritual religion which detaches
men from the things of this earth. The Christian's homeland is not of
this world. He does his duty, true : but he does it with profound
indifference to the success of the effort which he makes. It matters
little to him whether all goes well or ill down here : if the state
should fall, he blesses the hand of God for punishing his people . . . .
Christianity preaches only servitude and dependence. The spirit of
Christianity is too favourable to tyranny for the latter not to profit
from it constantly. True Christians are formed for slavery. They
know this, yet hardly care; for this short life means too little to
them.' 21
It is certain that no self-respecting Marxist could ever support
these conclusions. In these later developments of his argument
Rousseau is wrong and Hegel right. Christianity is the principle of
subjective freedom (or better put, it was the way - even if alienated in which this principle came to light for the first time). Rousseau's
political thought here re-echoes the limits of the ancients' mentality :
it shows itself incapable of understanding new and modern con
ditions properly.
It is also evident (on the other hand) that Hegel's position - as we
shall soon see - is by no means identical with the Christian-liberal
point of view pure and simple, i.e. with the standpoint of natural
law contractualism that culminates in the concept of the Rechtsstaat.
He considers it an advance that the emergence of Christianity
shattered the original 'beautiful unity' of the Greek polis, freeing on
the one hand subjective consciousness as consciousness withdrawn
into itself and on the other hand elevating the divine universal above
and beyond nature, and thus also beyond the ethnic community.
But if this 'antithesis, one extreme of which is represented by God
and the divine and the other by the subject as the particular',
appears as an advance, it is no less true that Hegel's problem is
21. ibid., Vol. I, pp. 503-4.

The Idea of 'Bourgeois-Christian' Society

26I

precisely that of proceeding towards the reconciliation of the two.

'World-history is nothing other than the attempt to bring out the
relationship whereby both of these extremes stand in absolute unity
and genuine reconciliation, a reconciliation in which the free subject
is not submerged in the objective character of the Spirit, but attains
to his own autonomous status - but also a reconciliation in which the
absolute Spirit, true objective unity, has obtained its absolute
status.'22
However, the force of Rousseau's argument and its irreplaceable
historical role lie in the way Rousseau perceives as an unnatural and
alienated condition this fact : that what in the ancient world is a
worldly bond, with Christianity presents itself not only as an other
worldly bond, situated above and beyond men, but also as a cohesive
bond 'in heaven' that has its basis in the atomistic disintegration of
the individuals 'on earth'. By grasping the complementariness of
these two processes, Rousseau opens up for us the way to under
standing something without which the meaning of Marx's work
would be forever hidden from us behind seven seals : i.e. the differing
relationship between unity and multiplicity, community and indivi
dual that is implicit in the worldly solution of the ancient polis and in
the otherworldly solution of Christianity.
In the ancient world, the community or 'social tie' (to use the
term which, as we shall see, is a key one in Marx's argument) is
simply the nexus that links individuals amongst themselves. The
'whole' of the community and its 'particular' individuals are in the
same relationship amongst themselves as, so to speak, the hand to its
fingers or the totality of the body with respect to its individual
organs. Just as the individuals do not have an existence independent
of the community, a private life severed from the public one, so too
the community does not have an existence separate from theirs - i.e. the
State is a real affair of all the citizens. The worldliness of the social
tie which was emphasized above (,But particular societies, political
and civil societies, have an entirely different principle. They are
purely human institutions'), has just this meaning: that since the
community is nothing other than the relationship of the individuals
22. G. w. F. Hegel, Philosophie der Weltgeschichte, op. cit., p. 234.

262

amongst themselves, this relationship (obviously) does not exist

outside of the mutually related entities - i.e. here the unity resides in
the very interlinking of the manifold elements.
Under modern conditions it is just the reverse : the social tie
which binds men to one another has become an otherworldly one
(men are united by means of their common descent from God), the
tie itself or their unity comes to acquire a separate existence of its
own (in fact, it is God) - since it is now posited above and beyond
men. Thus one arrives at the paradox of a relationship which posits
itself for itself, independent of the entities that are mutually related.
The situation that derives therefrom is of extraordinary importance.
Here in fact the social relationship (the relationship of men amongst
themselves) appears to be preempted and replaced by the relation
ship which each individual, in his atomistic separation from the
others, is destined to establish with God as his essence and founda
tion - and therefore as the spiritual principle dwelling in the depths
of the human soul (in Christianity, Hegel reminds us, the individual
is of infinite worth because 'as the object and aim of divine love,
[man is] destined as mind to live in absolute relationship with God
himself, and [to] have God's mind dwelling in him . . .'). And since
the individual must enter into a relationship with God, even before
he enters into a relationship with other men (for he can be the
brother of his brothers only through the Father) in order to acquire
worth as 'humanity' or spirituality, the 'city' in which man changes
from beast to man presents itself as a societas in interiore homine
(cf. G. Gentile's Genesi e struttura della societa [Genesis and Structure
ofSociety] in order to have an idea of how these themes have survived
even in our own times) a societas that is established in the dialogue of
the soul with God, just as this dialogue is conducted in the inward
ness of the spirit.
What results from this - taking one back to the classical model of
Christian-liberal ethics and politics - is the concept of natural-law
contractualism. According to this conception, since each indivi
dual appears, as a consequence of his relationship to the transcen
dent, to be directly endowed with 'original' or natural-absolute
rights ('natural' precisely because they are presocial, i.e. antecedent

The Idea of 'Bourgeois-Christian' Society 263

to the historical relationship of men to one another), the earthly city,

i.e. the society established by men on the basis of contract, appears
only as a means, an expedient, to which men recur in order to have
the enjoyment of their original rights and freedoms guaranteed by
the 'law' (and therefore by the State's 'forces of public safety').
'Enter (if you cannot avoid social life) into a society with others
such that each can preserve in it what belongs to him' (suum cuique
tribue). 2 3 This formula from the first pages of Kant's Rechtslehre,
presents us in a transparent fashion with the meaning of the revolu
tion carried out by Christianity in relation to the conceptions of the
ancient world. Whereas for Aristotle man is destined to live in the
polis and whoever lives outside it is only a beast or a god, for
the Christian-liberal conception society (when it simply cannot be
avoided) is a mere means of guaranteeing and reinforcing (qua State)
those conditions of reciprocal separation and competition in which
men live in the 'state of nature'. Again, whereas in the Greek con
ception 'the polis is prior . . . to the family and the individual' just as
'the whole is necessarily prior to the part', in the Christian-liberal
conception the individual seems paradoxically greater and higher
than the community, the part greater than the whole. For if his
'rights' do not proceed from society itself but directly from God, it is
evident that their sphere may never be violated, whatever may be the
reasons - not even when such a transgression is in the interest of the
people as a whole. It is a paradox which confirms how those rights
are not the expression of popular sovereignty but, on the contrary,
the expression of the private individual over and against society - as
in Benjamin Constant's statement that 'sovereignty exists only in a
limited and relative way' and that 'at the point where individual
existence and independence begin, there the jurisdiction of this
sovereignty comes to a halt', so that 'should society go beyond this
line, it is no less guilty than the despot'. 2 4
Now we come to the essential point. In Chapter XVI of The
Essence of Christianity Feuerbach also takes into consideration 'the
Distinction between Christianity and Paganism'. '. . . The pagans
23. I. Kant, Scritti politici e difilosofia della storia e del diritto (Turin, 1956), p. 415.
24. Benjamin Constant, Principes de politique (Paris, 1815), p. 17.

264

considered man not only in connection with the universe' ; but they
also 'considered the individual man in connection with other men'.
'They rigorously distinguished the individual from the species, the
individual as a part from the race as a whole, and they subordinated
the part to the whole' ; whereas 'Christianity, on the contrary, cared
nothing for the species, and had only the individual in its eye and
mind'. 'The ancients sacrificed the individual to the species ; the
Christians sacrificed the species to the individual. Or, paganism
conceived the individual only as a part in distinction from the whole
of the species ; Christianity, on the contrary, conceived the individual
only in immediate, indistinguishable unity with the species.' 'To
Christianity the individual was the object of an immediate pro
vidence, that is, an immediate object of the Divine Being' ; but that
means that 'the Christians left out the intermediate process, and
placed themselves in immediate connection with the prescient, all
embracing, universal Being ; i.e. they identified the individual with
the universal Being without any mediation'. The conclusion was that
in order to realize his own being, the Christian need not enter into a
relationship with other men, 'for he as an individual is at the same
time not individual, but species, universal being - since he has "the
full plenitude of his perfection in God", i.e. in himself'.25
If read closely, this page from Feuerbach shows us how similar he
is to Hegel and at the same time how he already diverges from Hegel.
For The Essence of Christianity, the historical development of
religion represents a means by which man advances in consciousness
of self. Like Hegel, Feuerbach contends that man arrives at his own
self-consciousness indirectly - i.e. through the knowledge acquired
of the divine essence. In terms analogous to those in Hegel's state
ment in the Philosophy of History that 'the way in which a people
represents God is also the way in which it represents its relationship
to God or represents itself', so that 'religion is also the conception
that a people has of itself', Feuerbach writes that 'man in religion in his relation to God - is in relation to his own nature', 2 6 so that
'the antithesis of divine and human . . . is nothing else than the anti25. L. Feuerbach, The Essence ojChristianity, op. cit., pp. 151-2 (translation modified).
26. ibid., p. 25.

The Idea of 'Bourgeois-Christian' Society 265

thesis between human nature in general and the human individual'. 27

Similarly Feuerbach also regards Christianity as the religion par
excellence, i.e. as that particular religion that realizes all at once the
'essence' of all religions in so far as it does not conceive of God in this
or that particular form (i.e. in naturalistic terms), but conceives of
Him as the universal Spirit. But there is a significant difference
between the two : what Hegel presents in a positive light, for Feuer
bach has a radically different meaning. It is not man's essence that is
made up of God's, but on the contrary what man represents as God
is nothing other than man's own alienated essence - i.e. man's
essence transposed outside himself, separated from himself and
hypostatized into a self-subsisting entity. In other words, whereas
Hegel, who argues from the standpoint of Christianity, considers it
natural that man should arrive at consciousness of the equality and
universality of his own nature (and therefore at consciousness of his
relationship to his genus) by means of knowledge of God as spirit,
for Feuerbach this indirect path that man follows to self-knowledge
is the sign of man's estrangement from self. In God as Logos he sees
only 'the idea of community strangely regarded . . . as a particular
personal being' ;28 i.e. he sees the social unity posited apart from the
multiplicity of the members that it ought to link together, and in
short sees the paradox of a relationship which posits itself for itself
independent of the entities that it ought to mediate and relate to one
another. 'Participated life is alone true. . . . But religion expresses
this truth, as it does every other, in an indirect manner, i.e. inversely,
for it here makes a universal truth into a particular one, the true
subject into a predicate, when it says : God is a participated life, a
life of love and friendship.'29
Rousseau's insight begins to take shape here. In the ancient world
the tie that joins men is particularistic but real - i.e. an earthly
society; with Christianity, however, in which the 'general society' is
an otherworldly one, there is no real extension of man's relationship
to the human genus, i.e. there is no actual universalization or sociali
zation of this relationship. What there is instead is a reversal of
principles. Social unity, in that it is otherworldly (and therefore
27. ibid., pp. I3-14

28. ibid., p. 67 (translation modified).

29. loc. cit.

266

transformed into God) turns out to be posited above and beyond men ;
i.e. it presupposes their atomistic disassociation. On the other hand,
in so far as this unity or universal must acquire an existence of its
own - having been posited for itself - the divine spirit ends by
fusing itself directly with the particularity of the individual ; the
individual who, just as from one viewpoint he has his grounding in
the divine spirit, so from another viewpoint he is also its earthly
incarnation (whence the figure of Christ as a man-God and of the
Christian as a God-man, i.e. as the earthly, natural body within
which an otherworldly soul is enclosed). As Feuerbach says : 'The
most unequivocal expression, the characteristic symbol of this
immediate identity of the species and individuality in Christianity is
Christ, the real God of the Christians. Christ is the ideal of humanity
become existent, the compendium of all moral and divine perfections
to the exclusion of all that is negative; pure, heavenly, sinless man,
the universal man, . . . not regarded as the totality of the species, of
mankind, but immediately as one individual, one person.'30 Christian
man, in his turn - and especially the Christian of Protestantism,
which for Feuerbach just as for Hegel represents authentic Christian
ity i.e. as it is freed from the still partly pagan mythical-phantas
magoric involucrum in which Catholicism or medieval Christianity
is enmeshed - this Christian man appears as the union of the divine
and the worldly, i.e. as the man of bourgeois or 'civil society'. This
can be seen in Feuerbach's remark that 'Protestant morality is and
was a carnal mingling of the Christian with the man, the natural,
political, civil (burgerlich), social man, or whatever else he may be
called in distinction from the Christian'. 3 1
Consider this intuition of the connection between Christianity
and bourgeois 'civil society', beyond which Feuerbach was never
able to go. With him it is only a marginal notation ; but it is the focal
problem for Hegel and Marx. Their two great conceptions can
best be compared here. Their relationship comes, indeed, to a
climax in the comparison between Hegel's argument concerning
the 'Germanic-Christian world' and Marx's analysis of Protestant
capitalist society.
30. ibid., p. 154.

3 1 . ibid., p. 139

The Idea of 'Bourgeois-Christian' Society 267

Hegel's point of departure is already familiar to us. After the

'substantive customary morality' of the ancient world was divided
and rent asunder, there arose the antithesis between subjectivity and
objectivity and 'from this point on the worldly kingdom and the
spiritual kingdom stand opposed to one another'. The task con
fronting world-history is that of overcoming this antithesis and of
reuniting the extremes. The modern State, in other words, must
be able to reconcile the principle of the polis, i.e. organicism or
substantive universality, with the principle of individuality or
subjective freedom brought into the world by Christianity. The
standard for this reconciliation is to be sought in Christ, qua God
become man - i.e. qua the infinite Logos that has also come down to
the 'here and now'. 'This is what Christ reveals to us : his own truth,
which is the truth of man's inwardness (Gemutes), is to be placed in
connexion with the divinity. Here the reconciliation is accomplished
in and for itself; but since it is accomplished only within itself, this
phase - as a consequence of its immediacy - begins with an anti
thesis. It is true enough that the phase begins historically with the
reconciliation brought about by Christianity. Since, however, this
reconciliation is just beginning.and is accomplished for consciousness
only in theory (an sich), it manifests itself initially as the most
monstrous antithesis of all, which then appears as something unjust
that is to be overcome and superseded.'32
In other words, Christianity in itself is already the principle of
reconciliation ; except that in its immediacy Christianity is only this
principle, and not yet the reconciliation itself actually realized. In
order to bring that about the principle of Christianity must be
translated into reality ; the reconciliation of the two worlds, which
with Christ has taken place only in a single point, must pervade
reality as a whole.
It is easy to recognize here the theme which we initially took as
our starting-point for the analysis of Hegel's philosophy. The
problem of philosophy is the realization of idealism, the realization
of the Idea or the infinite, the Christian Logos. Idealism is self
consistent in actualizing itself. But this actualization implies the
32. G. w. F. Hegel, Philosophie der Weltgeschichte, op. cit., p. 244.

268

negation or idealization of the finite and the realization of the in

finite; i.e. the passage from the 'beyond' over into the 'here and now'.
This twofold transposition, in which Hegel sees a climax to the
meaning of the 'Germanic-Christian world' as the 'absolute recon
ciliation of self-subsisting subjectivity with the divinity that is in
itself and for itself, with the true and the substantive',33 is precisely
what he represents as the relationship between State and religion. 34
The foundation of the State lies in religion, in that religion is 'the
divine will' itself; which means that the foundation of the here and
now lies in the beyond. ('It is evident and apparent from what has
preceded that moral life is the State retracted into its inner heart and
substance, while the State is the organization and actualization of
moral life ; and that religion is the very substance of the moral life
itself and of the State. At this rate, the State rests on the ethical
sentiment, and that on the religious, (for) religion . . . is the con
sciousness of "absolute" truth.'35) On the other hand, the beyond
(which is the divine will contained in religion) has its here and now in
the State and in the institutions in which it articulates itself - i.e. its
existence and earthly incarnation. Thus one can say that 'the State is
the divine will, in the sense that it is spirit present on earth, unfolding
itself to be the actual shape and organization of a world'.3 6
The meaning of this broad-ranging argument emerges in clear and
simple terms, with all of its profound historical ramifications, in the
long Anmerkung appended to subheading 552 of the Encyclopedia.
Here Hegel sets off the 'sanctity' of Catholicism against Protestant
'morality' (Sittlichkeit) by pointing out the divergent conceptions of
God's spirituality that each of them has. With Catholicism God is
conceived in such a way that He figures (as also in pre-critical meta
physics) as an external object and at the same time as an infinitude
relegated to the beyond (hence the meaning of Catholic 'sanctity' as
flight and removal from the world). With Protestantism however
(identified by Hegel with philosophy itself inasmuch as it is a rational
33. loco cit.
34. This relationship can be seen clearly particularly in subheading 552 of the
Encyclopedia and in subheading 270 of the Philosophy ofRight.
35. G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy ofMind, op. cit., p. 283.
36. G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy ofRight, op. cit., p. 166 (translation modified).

The Idea of 'Bourgeois-Christian' Society 269

theology), the opposite takes place ; i.e., not God's displacement

outside the world but rather His infusion 'into actuality', not
sanctity but morality. 'Instead of the vow of chastity, marriage now
ranks as the ethical relation ; and, therefore, as the highest on this
side of humanity stands the family. Instead of the vow of poverty
(muddled up into a contradiction of assigning merit to whosoever
gives away goods to the poor, i.e. whosoever enriches them) is the
precept of action to acquire goods through one's own intelligence and
industry, - of honesty in commercial dealings, and in the use of
property - in short moral life in the socio-economic sphere. And
instead of the vow of obedience, true religion sanctions obedience to
the law and the legal arrangements of the State - an obedience which
is itself the true freedom, because the State is a self-possessed, self
realizing reason - in short, moral life in the State.' And Hegel
continues thus : 'The divine spirit must interpenetrate the entire
secular life : whereby wisdom is concrete within it, and it carries the
terms of its own justification. But that concrete indwelling is only the
aforesaid ethical organizations. It is the morality of marriage as
&.gainst the sanctity of a celibate order ; - the morality of economic
and industrial action against the sanctity ofpoverty and its indolence ;
- the morality of an obedience dedicated to the law of the State as
against the sanctity of an obedience from which law and duty are
absent and where conscience is enslaved.'37
The meaning of the argument could not be clearer : God becomes
real in the world. And this indwelling of God's in the world is
represented by His presence in the civil and political institutions of
modern bourgeois society : marriage, the family, commerce, 'action
to acquire goods through one's own intelligence and industry' (i.e.
entrepreneurial activities), and finally obedience to the laws of the
State. These institutions, which to us seem to be historical institu
tions, institutions of a determinate society that was born at one time
and is destined to pass away at another, to Hegel appear (like the
'bread' and 'wine' of the Jugendschriften) as the presence itself of God
in the world - not profane realities but 'mystical objects', not
historical institutions but sacraments.
37. G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of Mind, op. cit., pp. 286-7.

270

However strange it may seem, this is precisely the point where

Marx's work and Hegel's coincide - going so far as to accord with
one another as regards the entire exterior form of their arguments.
Those institutions of the bourgeois world which Hegel regards as the
realization of God and therefore as the sensuous incarnations of the
suprasensible (the positive exposition of the absolute) appear to
Marx in the same light. Capital discusses at length the 'mystical
character of commodities' and 'all the mystery of the world of
commodities, all the sorcery, all the fetishistic charm, which en
wraps as with a fog the labour products of a system of commodity
production'.38 Furthermore, while defining the commodity as 'a
thing that is suprasensate in a sensate manner' (ein sinnlich uber
sinnliches Ding) in A Contribution to the Critique ofPolitical Economy,
Marx goes on to specify in Capital that whereas 'at first glance, a
commodity seems a commonplace sort of thing, one easily under
stood, analysis shows, however, that it is a very queer thing indeed,
full of metaphysical subtleties and theological whimsies'. 39
One must assume that Marx's interpreters - and this is perhaps a
measure of Marxism's sorry state today - in passing over these pages
and the hundreds of others in which Marx discusses the 'fetishistic'
character of capital, are implying that such expressions were mere
literary hors d'oeuvres, rhetorical figures of speech, or even mere
stylistic flourishes. In actual fact, what is at issue is something so
important that it is difficult to imagine what meaning Marx's
thought would have without it.
Just as Hegel sees in the 'Germanic-Christian' world the realiza
tion of the verkehrte Welt previously presaged in the Phenomeno
logy ; so Marx sees in this world, which is after all bourgeois society
itself, a world 'stood on its head', starting with its most elementary
institution, the commodity - a world which, if it is to be put back on
'its feet', must therefore be overturned from its very foundations.
The difference is only that whereas Hegel sees the actualization of
God in the suprasensate's becoming sensate, Marx (who obviously
reasons in a way that goes beyond the Christian horizon) sees a
38. K. Marx, Capital (Eden and Cedar Paul translation), op. cit., Vol. I, p. 50.
39 ibid., pp. 43-4.

The Idea of 'Bourgeois-Christian' Society

27I

process whereby forces alienated and estranged from mankind

become present and real, beginning with capital and the State
themselves.
' . . . Everything in this mode of production appears to be upside
down . . .'.40 ' . . . Capitalist production . . . is as truly cosmopolitan as
Christianity. This is why Christianity is likewise the special religion
of capital. In both it is only man in the abstract who counts . . . In
the one case, all depends on whether or not he has faith, in the other,
on whether or not he has credit.'41 'The complete reification,
inversion and derangement of capital as interestbearing capital - in
which, however, the inner nature of capitalist production, (its)
derangement, merely appears in its most palpable form - is capital
which yields "compound interest".'42 'Suppose a society made up
of the producers of commodities, where the general relations of
social production are such that (since products are commodities, i.e.
values) the individual labours of the various producers are related
one to another in the concrete commodity form as embodiments of
undifferentiated human labour. For a society of this type, Christianity,
with its cult of the abstract human being, is the most suitable
religion - above all, Christianity in its bourgeois phases of develop
ment, such as Protestantism, Deism, and the like.'43 'In money itself
the totality exists as the whole, in representational form, of the
commodities. It is in gold and silver that for the first time wealth
(exchange-value both as totality and as abstraction) exists in its own
distinct form to the exclusion of other commodities, as an individual
palpable object. Money is therefore the God of commodities. As an
isolated object that can be grasped in the hand money can therefore
be solicited, found, stolen, and discovered, and the general wealth
can be tangibly possessed by a single individual. From the lowly
status which money appears to have as a mere means of circulation,
it suddenly becomes the Lord and God of the world of commodities.
It represents the heavenly existence of the commodities.'44
40. K. Marx, Theories ofSurplus-Value, translated by Jack Cohen and S. W. Ryazanskaya (Moscow, 1971), Part III, p. 476.
41. ibid., p. 448 (translation modified).
43. K. Marx, Capital, op. cit., p. 53.
42. ibid., p. 456 (translation modified).
44. K. Marx, Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Okonomie (Berlin, 1953), pp. 132-3.

272

Here is a series of brief passages, selected almost at random from

many others, which may give some idea of the extent to which the
link between capitalism and Christianity is a constant and reiterated
theme in Marx's work - and also some idea of the emphasis given to
the thesis that this is a world upside down, 'standing on its head', a
world that must be overturned and put right side up if one wants to
put it back 'on its feet'. The first elaboration of the concept of an
'equivalent', which comes to us in the 'excerpts' from James Mill
and contains an embryonic formulation of the theory of value,
develops the concept of money as a 'universal equivalent', parallel to
that of Christ as representative of 'man before God', of 'God before
man" and finally of 'man before man'.45 The theme of the link
between bourgeois society and Christianity is the leit-motif, more
over, of all his early writings. The Jewish Question, e.g., which
contains Marx's first major analysis of the liberal-democratic con
stitutions that came out of the French Revolution, hinges on the
proposition that the democracy of purely 'political' or 'abstract'
'equality' is essentially Christian democracy.
Clearly, the breadth that this basic theme takes on in Marx's
work in relation to that of all his predecessors (Hegel not excluded),
makes it difficult to deal with it in these few concluding pages. In
fact, this theme is extended to and fused into all of the economic
political analysis developed in his mature work. However the essen
tial problem which is constantly re-emerging is that of the differing
relationship between community and individual, unity and multi
plicity, which exists respectively in 'natural' or precapitalist societies
and in modern bourgeois society.
'Where labour is communal, the relations of men in their social
production do not manifest themselves as "values" of "things".
Exchange of products as commodities is a method of exchanging
labour, (it demonstrates) the dependence of the labour of each upon
the labour of the others (and corresponds to) a certain mode of social
labour or social production. In the first part of my book, I mentioned
that it is characteristic of labour based on private exchange that the
45. K. Marx, Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe (Moscow and Frankfurt, I927ff.), Vol. I,
Part III, pp. 530-47.

The Idea of 'Bourgeois-Christian' Society 273

social character of labour "manifests" itself in a perverted form - as .

the "property" of things ; that a social relation appears as a rela
tion between things (between products, values in use, commod
ities).'46
This is, in every sense, the key to everything : whether labour is in
common or whether labour is not in common. This is the basic prob
lem. Where labour is in fact in common, individual labour is, without
any mediation, an articulation and part of the overall social labour.
The relationship is that of the fingers to the hand ; neither do the
individuals exist apart from society, nor does the 'social tie' (Marx
says 'das gesellschafiliche Band') have an existence independent of
them. Just as unity is the multiplicity in its interdependency, similarly
the individuals and their activities appear as functions and articula
tions of the common social activity. Contrariwise, where labour is
not in common and individual labour is private labour, i.e. labour
in which each individual decides for himself how much and what to
produce independent of a 'plan' or programme of the community
('The only products which confront one another as commodities
are those produced by reciprocally independent enterprises'47) ; in this
case, corresponding to the reciprocal disassociation or atomization
of the producers amongst themselves there is a separation of social
unity from the individuals themselves - i.e. the paradox arises of a
relationship that posits itself for itself independent of the entities
that it ought to relate and mediate.
In the first case, 'it was the specific kind of labour performed by
each individual in its natural form, the particular and not the
universal aspect of labour, that constituted then the social tie' ;
i.e., 'it is clear that in this case labour does not acquire its social
character from the fact that the labour of the individual takes on the
abstract form of universal labour or that his product assumes the
form of a universal equivalent' ; for 'it is the community (which
exists as a presupposition ofproduction) that makes it impossible for
the labour of the individual to be private labour and his product to be
a private product ; on the contrary, it makes individual labour appear
46. K. Marx, Theories of Surplus-Value, op. cit., Part III, pp. I 29-30.
47. K. Marx, Capital (Eden and Cedar Paul translation), Vol. I, p. II.

274

as the direct function of a member of a social organism'. 48 In short,

in the first case individual labour is an integral part without any medi
ation, of the overall social labour - and it is such in its own natural
form as 'concrete' or 'useful' labour (spinning, weaving, ploughing,
etc.). That is to say, just as social labour is here the whole, the link
between the various kinds of individual labour, so too the social or
general product is nothing other than the sum of the use-values
produced - meaning by this last term that what is produced are
labour-products in their form as objective, physical or natural
objects. 49
In the second case, it is just the opposite, since there is lacking the
presupposition of a community that would distribute the overall
work that must be carried out among its individual members, and
would assign to each of them what he must produce (i.e., there is
lacking a 'plan'). Thus the labour of the individual, i.e. labour in its
natural form as useful or concrete labour, 'becomes social labor only
by taking on the form of its direct opposite, the form of abstract
universal labour',50 i.e. the form ofabstract labour ; just as its product,
in its turn, becomes a social product by taking on the form of its
opposite, i.e. value - within the body or form that it, qua use-value,
has as a natural object. And one must bear in mind that the term
'value' is to be understood in the sense of a 'coagulation' or objecti
fication of undifferentiated human labour-power, as 'crystals of this
social substance common to them all',51 and therefore as a non
sensuous, non-material objectivity - or as Marx refers to it, a 'ghost48. K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique ofPoliticalEconomy, op. cit., p. 29 (Colletti's
emphasis) (translation modified).
49. For Marx, 'use-value' is the natural object itself, whether produced by human
labour or otherwise. Cf. Capital (Eden and Cedar Paul translation), Vol. I, p. 4: 'The
utility of a thing makes it a use-value. But this utility is not a thing apart. Being deter
mined by the properties of the commodity, it does not exist without them. The (body
of the) commodity itself, such as iron, wheat, a diamond, etc., is therefore a use-value
or good.' Also cf. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, p. 20 : 'This
property of commodities to serve as use-values coincides with their natural palpable
existence.' It is useful to call to mind these simplicities because some (theoretical)
Marxists are currently passing through a period of intense mental derangement con
cerning the concept of 'use-value'.
51. K. Marx, Capital, op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 6-7.
50. ibid., pp. 29-30.

The Idea of 'Bourgeois-Christian' Society 275

like' objectivity ('not an atom of matter enters into the objectivity of

value'52), which is nothing but the social unity itself in its hypo
statized form.
In so far as individual human activities are not directly linked to
one another, they can be related to one another as integral parts of
the overall social labour only on condition that each of them is
reduced to abstract 'undifferentiated human labour', i.e. to labour as
it presents itself when it is considered apart from the concrete sub
jects who carry it out. This means that in order to count as social
labour (given the fact that it is not so without mediation), individual
labour must here negate itself and transform itself into its opposite,
i.e. represent itself not as individual labour but as the 'labour of no
single individual', as abstract labour. (,The labour-time represented
by exchange value is the labour-time of an individual, but of an
individual undistinguished from other individuals in so far as they
perform the same labour . . . . It is the labour-time of an individual,
his labour-time, but only as labour-time common to all, regardless as
to which particular individual's labour-time it is.'53) And here it is
obvious that the subject is now work in the abstract, and man is the
predicate. For, as Marx states, 'labour, thus measured by time, does
not appear in reality as the labour of different individuals, but on the
contrary, the various working individuals rather appear as mere
organs o/labour ; or, in so far as labour is represented by exchange
values, it may be defined as human labour in general. This abstraction
of human labour in general virtually exists in the average labour
which the average individual of a given society can perform.'54
Since the products of individual labour are products of private
labour, it happens that in order to acquire a social character they, in
their turn, must negate themselves as use-values in order to become
their opposite : i.e., exchange-values or values, exchangeable objects.
52. ibid., p. 17.
53. K. Marx, Critique of Political Economy, op. cit., p. 27.
54. ibid., pp. 24-5. Remarks on the theory of value which amplify those ofthis chapter
can be found in sections 7 and 8 of my introduction to Eduard Bernstein, Socialismo e
socialdemocrazia (Bari, 1968). See pp. 76-97 of 'Bernstein and the Marxism of the Second
International', in L. Colletti, From Rousseau to Lenin: Studies in Ideology and Society
(London, I972).

276

In short, they must negate themselves as this or that determinate

sensible thing, which they are, in order to figure instead as expressions
of a single, identical subjectivity, as 'expressions of one and the same
social unit' - in a word, as expended human labour-power. (' . . . The
different use-values are the products of the work of different
individuals, consequently the result of various kinds of labour
differing individually from one another. But as exchange values,
they represent the same homogeneous labour, i.e., labour from which
the individuality of the workers is eliminated.')55
The reader who has had the perseverance to follow us thus far
can now draw all the necessary conclusions himself. 'Undifferen
tiated' or 'abstract' human labour takes us back to the 'abstract man'
of Christianity. 'Value', as the objectification of social unity ('Where
labour is communal, the relations of men in their social production
do not manifest themselves as "values" of "things". '), leads us back
to the paradox (previously examined in the analysis of Rousseau and
Feuerbach) of the social relationship as a relationship that posits itself
for itself, independent of the individuals which it ought to relate
and mediate. In other words, it is the paradox of the social relation
ship which, at the same time that it posits itself outside and beyond
the individuals concerned, dominates them like a God on high, even
though it is only their own alienated social power, i.e. social power
estranged from themselves. The extent to which this estrangement of
the 'relationship', this reification of it, i.e. the fact that it creates for
itself an independent existence in a natural object or use-value (which
represents itself as the 'body' of value), is at the core of Marx's
analysis can be seen by the way in which he discusses money, and
even more so from his account of the money-capital relationship.
'Money is the community of men itself, posited as an external and
therefore adventitious thing (ihr Gemeinwesen selbst als ein iiusserliches
und darum zuJiilliges Ding). 5 6 'Das Geld ist damit unmittelbar
zugleich das reale Gemeinwesen, insofern es die allgemeine Substanz
55. Ibid., pp. 22-3. Cf. also Theories of Surplus-Value, op. cit., Vol. III, p. 128 :
. . The individual commodity as value, as the embodiment of this (social) substance, is
different from itself as use-value. . . '. And again, loco cit. : ' . . . The value of a commodity
. . . is a quality differentiating it from its own existence as a thing, a value in use.'
56. K. Marx, Grundrisse, op. cit., p. 909.
'.

The Idea of 'Bourgeois-Christian' Society

277

des Bestehns fur aile ist, und zugleich das gemeinschaftliche Produkt
aller. 1m Geld ist aber, wie wir gesehen haben, das Gemeinwesen zugleich
blosse Abstraktion, blosse ausserliche, zuJiillige Sachefor den Einzelnen,
und zugleich bloss Mittel seiner Befriedigung als eines isolierten
Einzelnen.' And so on, for a thousand pages. 57
Finally, the reader who noted carefully Feuerbach's statement
that with Christianity the individual 'is at the same time not indiv
dual' because besides being an individual he is Universal Being or
God, will not find it difficult to recognize the same process in Marx's
statement that wherever private production reigns, individual
labour 'becomes social labor only by taking on the form of its direct
opposite, the form of abstract universal labor'. Just as he will not
fail to recognize - we hope - that Christians and commodities are
made in the same way. The 'body' and 'soul' of the former corre
spond to the 'use-value' and 'exchange-value' of the latter.
Let us track our chimera down to its last place of refuge. Marx
writes : 'The objectivity ( Wertgegenstandlichkeit) of the value of
commodities thus resembles Mistress Q!lickly, of whom Falstaff
said : "A man knows not where to have her." This objectivity of the
value of commodities contrasts with the gross sensate objectivity of
these same commodities (the objectivity which is perceived by our
bodily senses) in that not an atom of matter enters into the objectivity
of value. We may twist and turn a commodity this way and that - as a
thing of value it still remains unappreciable by our bodily senses.
Let us recall, however, that commodities only possess the objectivity
of value in so far as they are expressions of one and the same social
57. ibid., p. 137. 'Money is thus, without any mediation, both the real community, in
that it represents the general substance of existence for everyone, and at the same time
the social product of everyone. With money, however, the community, as we have seen,
is both a mere abstraction, a mere external, adventitious thing for the individual, and at
the same time a mere means for his personal grtification as an isolated individual.' Cf.
also A Contribution to the Critique ofPolitical Economy, op. cit., pp. 51-2 : 'That a social
relation of production takes the form of an object existing outside of individuals, and that
the definite relations into which individuals enter in the process of production carried
on in society, assume the form of specific properties of a thing, is a perversion and by no
means imaginary, but prosaically real, mystification marking all social forms of labor
which creates exchange value. In money this mystification appears only more strikingly
than in commodities.'

278
7

unit, namely human labour, since the objectivity of their value is

purely social. . .'.58 Here Marx is saying again that the commodity is
a 'suprasensate thing in a sensate manner', a natural body (or use
value) which harbours within itself a non-material objectivity : value.
If this statement means anything, it means that the commodity,
just like the Christian, is the unity of the finite and the infinite, the
unity of opposites, being and non-being together. And in fact, Marx
says that 'a commodity is a use-value, wheat, linen, a diamond, a
machine, etc., but as a commodity it is, at the same time, not a use
value'. 59 It is and it is not the emphasis is Marx's. The notorious
'dialectic of matter', with which the Russians intend to build com
munism, is here confirmed as the logic of the bourgeois-Christian
world, the logic of this upside-down world - in accordance with
Marx's remarkable insight of 1844 that 'Hegel's Logic is the money
of the Spirit'. The old 'dialectical materialism', it seems to us, here
stands judged. And judged together with it is also the concept of
reification as developed by Lukacs in 1923 the concept that today
Marcuse is busy trading in . . . on the left.
Let us make one last effort, this time directly in the field of econo
mic theory. There exists an age-old objection to the 'theory of value'
which is repeated by Joan Robinson, Schumpeter, Myrdal, Lionel
Robbins, and by countless others ; an objection to which Marxists
have never known how to reply. This objection is the same one
raised by Samuel Bailey against Ricardo (and through which he
earned himself a place in the histories of economic thought). It is
also the objection raised by B6hm-Bawerk (,the Marx of the bour
geoisie', as he is usually called) against Capital in his Zum Abschluss
des Marxschen Systems (1896).60 This is the objection which explains
why Marx is still accused of indulging in theology and metaphysics.
It is this : that in their treatment of 'exchange-value', which is a
relationship between things exchanged, and therefore a 'relative'
value, Ricardo and after him Marx committed the 'typically
-

58. K. Marx, Capital, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 17.

59. K. Marx, Critique of Political Economy, op. cit., p. 41.
60. Eugen von Biihm-Bawerk, 'Zum Abschluss des Marxschen Systems' in Festschrift
for Karl Knies (Vienna, 1896), pp. 151-2, 157-8.

The Idea of 'Bourgeois-Christian' Society

279

scholastic' error of assuming that behind the exchange-value there

was a real (not relative but absolute) value, i.e. a value existing in the
related things themselves. In other words, Ricardo and Marx forgot
that exchange-value, being a relationship, could not have an existence
of its own or be a real value, existing in distinction from use-values
or the related 'utilities'. This accounts for the scholastic error that
they committed of hypostatizing 'value'.
We are not here concerned to point out how the crux of Marx's
entire criticism of Ricardo lies precisely in the argument that
'Ricardo is . . . to be reproached for very often losing sight of this
"real" or "absolute value" and only retaining "relative" and
"comparative values" ' ; 6 1 and that this is precisely the line of argu
ment by means of which Schumpeter salvages Ricardo from the
accusation of being a metaphysician, while leaving Marx as the sole
accused. 6 2 Nor do we now wish to show how it is precisely in this
same context that present-day economic 'revisionism' has its roots,
the 'revisionism' used by Piero Sraffa in his attack on Marx's
analysis. What, however, we are concerned to point out - apart from
the fact, already well-known, that Marxists do not read Marx - is
that Marx, horribile dictu, accepts the argument that 'value' is a
metaphysical entity and merely confines himself to noting that is the
thing, i.e. the commodity itself or value, that is a scholastic entity,
and not the concept which he, Marx, uses to describe how the
commodity is made ! ' . . . The "verbal observer" understands as
little of the value and the nature of money as Bailey, since both regard
the independent existence (Verselbstiindigung) of value as a scholastic
invention of economists. This independent existence becomes even
more evident in capital, which, in one of its aspects, can be called
value in process and since value only exists independently in money,
it can accordingly be called money in process, as it goes through a
series of processes in which it preserves itself, departs from itself,
and returns to itself increased in volume. It goes without saying that
the paradox of reality (nota bene) is also reflected in paradoxes of
speech which are at variance with common sense and with what
-

61. K. Marx, Theories of Surplus-Value, op. cit., Part II, p. 172.

62. Joseph Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis (London, 1954).

280

vulgarians mean and believe they are talking of. The contradictions
which arise from the fact that on the basis of commodity production
the labour of the individual presents itself as general social labour,
and the relations of people as relations between things and as things these contradictions are innate in the subject-matter, not in its
verbal expressions.' 6 3
This society based on capital and commodities is therefore the
metaphysics, the fetishism, the 'mystical world' - even more so than
Hegel's Logic itself! One may raise the objection that such a state
ment has no meaning, for if indeed the objectivity of value is a
non-material objectivity, then this objectivity does not exist, just as
the immortal soul of the Christian does not exist. Let us concede
as much (and all the more willingly since the author is one materialist
'who is not ashamed of being such'). 'When we speak of the com
modity as a materialization of labour - in the sense of its exchange
value - this itself is only an imaginary, that is to say, a purely social
mode of existence of the commodity which has nothing to do with
its corporeal reality.' 6 4
An imaginary, but nonetheless social, existence ! Let us attempt
to analyse this concept in a more forthright and simple manner.
When we say that the king or even the president represents national
unity or popular sovereignty, in a certain sense what we say is
laughable. One knows very well that, from this standpoint, they do
not represent anything. And yet how many persons know it? Those
who know it are - let us admit it - just a handful of 'non-constitu
tional' communists. Yet their insight does not do away with the fact
that everything functions objectively as if the aforementioned did
indeed represent something. It escapes the senses, and yet millions
of men act as if it were a real presence. This 'as if' - it needs to be
said - is in this instance an objective and real social fact.
We can now bring to a close this apparently endless argument.
The reader must realize, even from these few remarks, that the
'theory of value' or (more basically) the very analysis of the com
modity - such as it is found at the very beginning of Capital- has not
63. K. Marx, Theories of Surplus-Value, op. cit., Part III, p. 137.
64. ibid., Vol. I, p. 171.

The Idea of 'Bourgeois-Christian' Society 28I

exactly met with great success among Marxists. One cannot exactly
say that it has been understood. The proof is the silence in which the
theory of fetishism or alienation has always been enshrouded from
Engels onward. What is the reason for this ? The commodity and,
even more so of course, capital and the State, represent processes of
hypostatization in reality. Now, our thesis is that, given realities of
this nature, it is impossible to understand them fully unless one
grasps the structure of the processes of hypostatization of Hegel's
Logic. In other words, Marx's critique of Hegel's dialectic and his
analysis of capital hold together. Failing to understand the former it
is also impossible to understand the latter.
This is a matter of which we have always been persuaded, even
though it has always been difficult to prove our point. Hence the
thanks that l owe to Ranciere for having brought to my notice a text
which is the confirmation we sought : Marx's Die Wertform (even
though his own interpretation of it is quite mistaken). 6 5
Marx writes : 'Within the relationship between value and the
expression of value contained therein, the abstract universal does not
count as a property of the concrete in its sense-reality, but on the
contrary the concrete-sensate counts merely as the phenomenal or
determinate form of the abstract universal's realisation. The labour
of the tailor which one finds, e.g., in the equivalent coat, does not
incidentally have the general property of being human labour within
its value-relation as cloth. On the contrary : To be human labour is its
very essence ; to be the labour of the tailor is only the phenomenal or
determinate form taken by this its essence in its realization. This
quid pro quo is inevitable, since the labour represented in the labour
product creates value only in that it is undifferentiated human labour ;
such that the labour objectified in the value of a product is not at all
distinguishable from the labour objectified in the value of another
product.' And Marx concludes thus : 'This total reversal and over
turning, which means that the concrete-sensate counts only as the
phenomenal form of the abstract-universal, and not contrariwise the
65. Jacques Ranciere, Le concept de critique et la critique de l' economie politique des
"Manuscrits" de I844 au "Capita!", in L. Althusser et. aI., Lire Ie Capital (Paris, 1965),

Vol. I, pp. 137-8.

282

abstract-universal as a property of the concrete, characterises the

expression of value. This is what makes its understanding difficult.
If I say that Roman law and German law are both forms of law, this
is obvious. If, however, I say that the law, this abstraction, translates
itself into reality in Roman law and German law - these concrete
forms of laws - then what emerges is a mystical connexion.' 66
Die Wertform was added by Marx to the first edition of Capital
while the work was already in press. It is a fact that the page which
we have taken from it reproduces to the letter the arguments with
which Marx first criticized Hegel's dialectic in his early writing, the
Kritik des Hegelschen Staatsrechts. The abstract-universal, which
ought to be the predicate - i.e. a 'property of the concrete or the
sensate' - becomes the subject, a self-subsisting entity; 'contrariwise
the concrete-sensate counts merely as the phenomenal form of the
abstract-universal' - i.e. as the predicate of its own substantified
predicate. This overturning, this quid pro quo, this Umkehrung,
which, according to Marx, rules Hegel's Logic, rules also, long before
the Logic, the objective mechanisms of this society - beginning right
from the relation of 'equivalence' and the exchange of commodites.
This accounts for the impossibility of grasping the second critique
without having penetrated the first one ; and, in general, it also
accounts for the impotence which Marxism till now has demon
strated when it came to ' deciphering' - not to mention the problem of
the relationship between the first and the third books of Capital
even the simplest elements of the 'theory of value' as they are
developed at the beginning of the work. 'This acriticism (Unkritik),
this mysticism is both the riddle of modern constitutions as well as
the mystery of Hegelian philosophy. . .'. 6 7 'To be sure, this perspec
tive is an abstract one, but it is the "abstraction" of the political
State as Hegel himself develops it. It is also atomistic, but it is the
atomism of the society itself. The "perspective" cannot be concrete
when the object (Gegenstand) of the perspective is "abstract".' 6 8
Consequently, 'Hegel is not to be blamed because he describes the
66. K. Marx, Scritti inediti di economia politica, edited by M. Tronti (Rome, 1963),
P I44
67. K. Marx, Werke (Berlin, 1964), Vol. I, p. 287.
68. ibid., p. 283.

The Idea of 'Bourgeois-Christian' Society 283

essence of the modern State as it exists, but rather because he passes

off what exists for the essence of the State'. 69
This is clearly a new way of reasoning, a way that necessitates a
radical emendation of the old 'philosophic' mentality. It is not a
question of contraposing 'determinate' abstractions to 'indeter
minate' abstractions, a 'correct' logic to an 'incorrect' logic methodology is the science of those who have nothing. Rather, it is a
question of trying to understand that just as the problems of critical
epistemology, when fully reasoned out, place us in the totally new
dimension of the 'social relations of production' ; so too Marx's
critique of the processes of hypostatization really takes place in his
critique of the political-economic institutions of modern bourgeois
society.
The real 'indeterminate abstractions' - if they may still be termed
such - are capital, surplus value, profit, interest, etc. Unless one
takes this step forward, it is inevitable that, as concerns the theory of
'value' and that of the State, one remains on the other side. That is, if
not before and outside 'Marxism', certainly before and outside
Marx.
69. ibid., p. 266.

Index

Adler, Max, 189n

Adorno, Theodor Wiesengrund 173 and
n, 174 and n, 175
Althusser, Louis, 28m
Aristotle, 60n, II 7, 153, 243, 251, 254,
255n, 263

and n, 103, 104 and n, 159 and n, 160,

161, 162 and n, 178, 189, 191 and n,
192, 193, 196, 198, 216, 217 and n,
218 and n, 281
Epicurus, 68, 74
Epimenides, 131

Bacon, Francis, 41, 81, 174, 230

Bailey, Samuel, 278, 279
Bergson, Henri, 151, 157 and n, 159 and
n, 160 and n, 161 and n, 162, 163, 164
and n, 165, 166, 17m, 179, 183, 190, 215
Bernstein, Eduard, 189n, 275n
Bohm-Bawerk, Eugen von, 278 and n
Bohme, Jacob, 31, 167
Bovillus, Charles, 235 and n, 238, 239
and n, 240 and n, 241 and n, 242, 243
and n, 244

Fetscher, Iring, 177n, 19m,

Feuerbach, Ludwig, 12 and n, 13n, 40n,
57 and n, 60n, 65n, 88 and n, 90 and n,
109, II3, 191 and n, 208 and n, 210
and n, 222, 223 and n, 224, 225 and n,
226, 250, 263, 264 and n, 265, 266, 277
Fichte, Johann G., 179
Ficinus, Marsilio, 76-'77, 237, 242
Fustel De Coulanges, Numa-Denis, 250n

Carlyle, Thomas, 185

Carr, Edward H., 247
Cassirer, Ernst, 107 and n, 108, 109, IIO
and n, 235 and n, 237 and n, 239 and n,
240 and n, 242n
Constant, Benjamin, 263 and n
Croce, Benedetto, II7, 140 and n, 143,
149 and n, ISO, 151 and n, 152, 157
and n, 161, 168, 195, 215
Cunow, Heinrich, 180
Cusanus, Niccolo, 237, 238, 242, 243
D'Aiembert, Jean Baptiste, I I I
Della Volpe, Galvano, 68n, 104, 12m,
247, 248
Descartes, Rene, 13, 38, 49, 142, 144,
145, 194
Dietzgen, Joseph, 161
Dilthey, Wilhelm, ISO, 166, 167
Engels, Friedrich, 14, 22 and n, 23, 24,
27, 40 and n, 41 and n, 42n, 43 and n,
44 and n, 45, 46 and n, 47, 48, 49, 50
and n, 51, 55, 56, 61, 82, 83n, 84, 101

Galilei, Galileo, 44, 51, 81, 181, 182, 215

Garin, Eugenio, 234, 235n, 237 and n,
238 and n, 239 and n, 241 and n, 243
Gentile, Giovanni, 153 and n, 154, 195,
262
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 108
Goldmann, Lucien, 178, 179 and n
Gramsci, Antonio, 38n
Heidegger, Martin, 165, 167, 168 and n,
169, 17m, 172, 173, 179, 213, 243
Heraclitus, 42
Hobbes, Thomas, 174
Horkheimer, Max, 173 and n, 174 and n,
175, 178
Hume, David, 71, 78, 84 and n
Husserl, Edmund, 173
Hyppolite, Jean, 70n
Jacobi, Friedrich Heinrich, 26, 38,
139, 140 and n, 141 and n, 142,
144, 145 and n, 146, 147 and n,
ISO, 151, 152, 157, 160, 162, 200,
206, 215, 216 and n
JankeIevitch, Vladimir, 159 and n,
and n

II 6,
143,
148,
201,
160

286
Jaspers, Karl, 87 and n, 17In
Kant, Immanuel, 37, 38, 45 and n, 52, 54,
55, 57, 59n, 60n, 65n, 66n, 78, 83, 84,
87, 88, 90, 91, 93, 94, 95n, 96, 97 and n,
98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105,
106, 107, I IO, I I I and n, II2, II3, II4,
I I7, I I8, 121, 122, 133, 139, 142, 144,
145, 147, 149, 150, 1 54, 173, I 74n,
175, 181, 185, 186, 187, 188 and n,
189, 200, 202, 203 and n, 204 and n,
205, 213, 214 and n, 215, 218, 219, 220
and n, 263 and n
Kautsky, Karl, 131, 180, 196
Kepler, Johannes, 44, 181
Kierkegaard, Soren, 87
Kojeve, Alexandre, 61, 62 and n, 91, 154,
155 and n, 156, 191
Korsch, Karl, 180, 195n
Laberthonniere, Lucien, 152
Labriola, Antonio, 102 and n, 178
Lamettrie, Julien Offray de, 150
Lask, Emil, 178, 179
Lefevre d'Etaples, Jacques, 243
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 13, 35, 37,
91, 94, 95, 97, 98, 100, 103, 142,
188
Lenin, Nikolai 14, 24 and n, 25, 27, 51,
60 and n, 82, 83 and n, 84 and n, 91 and
n, 99, 104, 162, 163n, 178, 196, 198
Locke, John, 41
Lowith, Karl, 65n, 106, 206
Lukacs, Georg, 55, 57, 59n, 60n, 65n, 66n,
70 and n, 84 and n, 91, 105, 108, 109, 139,
147, 167, 168, 169 and n, 175, 176 and
n, 177 and n, li8, 179 and n, 181 and
n, 182, 183, 184, 185 and n, 186, 187,
188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193 and n,
196 and n, 197n, 198 and n, 210, 21 I and
n, 212, 213, 215, 218 and n
Luporini, Cesare, 54 and n, 55 and n,
56 and n, 57, 103 and n
Luxemburg, Rosa, 131
Machiavelli, Niccolo, 174
Malebranche, Nicolas de, 32, 194
Mandeville, Bernard de, 174
Mannheim, Karl, 177
Marcuse, Herbert, 6 1 , 62 and n, 63, 64,
66n, 77 and n, 78, 79, 80, 81 and n,

82, 91, 109, 165 and n, 175, 178, 191,

278
Maupertuis, Pierre Louis M., I I I
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 192
Mill, James, 137n, 272
Myrdal, Gunnar, 204 and n, 205 and n,
278
Newton, Isaac, 44, 51, I I I
Novalis, Friedrich, 157
Parmenides, 34, 70n, 152
Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni, 234, 236
and n, 237 and n, 238, 239, 241 and n,
242 and n, 243 and n
Plato, 77, 251, 256
Plekhanov, Georgy Valentinovich, 14,
23, 24n, 51, 84, 131 and n, 161 and n,
178, 180, 196
Plotinus, 167
Ranciere, Jacques, 281 and n
Rathenau, Walther, 172 and n
Ricardo, David, 278, 279
Rickert, Heinrich, 150, 167 and n, 169,
178, 181 and n, 1 9 1
Robespierre, Maximilien de, 174
Robbins, Lionel, 278
Robinson, Joan, 205 and n, 278
Rosenkranz, Karl, 197n
Rossi, Pietro, 1 69n, 170n
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, I I3, 257, 258
and n, 265, 276
Ruskin, John, 185
Saint-Just, Louis Antoine, 174
Sartre, Jean-Paul, 79n, 178, 179, 1 83
Schelling, Friedrich, 13, 57, 58, 59, 70,
84, 105, 147, 157, 159, 166, 179, 213
Schiller, Friedrich, 198n
Schmidt, Conrad, 180, 189n
Schulze, Hermann, 68n, 72, 106
Schumpeter, Joseph A., 278, 279 and n
Simmel, Georg, 163 and n, 169 and n,
170 and n, 191
Smith, Adam, 135
Socrates, 153
Sophocles, 257
Spinoza, Benedetto, 13, 28, 29, 30, 31,
32, 33, 36, 37 and n, 49, 50, 66n, 94n,
142, 144, 152, 194

Index 287
Sraffa, Piero, 279
Stalin, Joseph, 156 and n
Stirner, Max 89
Tonnies, Ferdinand, 181, 182
Torricelli, Evangelista, 2 I 5
Trendelenburg, Friedrich Adolf, 109
and n

Tronti, Mario, 28m

Weber, Max, 185
Wilamowitz-Mollendorff, Ulrich von,
249n
Windelband, Wilhelm, 166 and n, 167
Wolff, Christian, 37n, 91