Scribd Logo
Upload

Welcome to Scribd!

  • 64 views

    Contribution To The Critique of Hegel'S Philosophy of Right

    Uploaded by

    Subhankar Basu
    This document contains Karl Marx's critique of religion from his 1844 work "Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right." Marx argues that (1) religion is a product of human society and social conditions rather than the reverse, (2) religious suffering expresses real-world suffering under oppressive conditions, and (3) abolishing religious illusions will allow humanity to address its real problems and end oppression.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Contribution To The Critique of Hegel'S Philosophy of Right

    Uploaded by

    Subhankar Basu
    64 views1 page
    This document contains Karl Marx's critique of religion from his 1844 work "Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right." Marx argues that (1) religion is a product of human society and social conditions rather than the reverse, (2) religious suffering expresses real-world suffering under oppressive conditions, and (3) abolishing religious illusions will allow humanity to address its real problems and end oppression.

    Original Description:

    Subjects and Universal Grammar a

    Original Title

    Marx-ed

    Copyright

    © © All Rights Reserved

    Available Formats

    PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Did you find this document useful?

    Is this content inappropriate?

    This document contains Karl Marx's critique of religion from his 1844 work "Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right." Marx argues that (1) religion is a product of human society and social conditions rather than the reverse, (2) religious suffering expresses real-world suffering under oppressive conditions, and (3) abolishing religious illusions will allow humanity to address its real problems and end oppression.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    64 views1 page

    Contribution To The Critique of Hegel'S Philosophy of Right

    Uploaded by

    Subhankar Basu
    This document contains Karl Marx's critique of religion from his 1844 work "Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right." Marx argues that (1) religion is a product of human society and social conditions rather than the reverse, (2) religious suffering expresses real-world suffering under oppressive conditions, and (3) abolishing religious illusions will allow humanity to address its real problems and end oppression.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 1

    From:

    CONTRIBUTION TO THE CRITIQUE OF


    HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF RIGHT

    INTRODUCTION

    The basis of irreligious criticism is this: man makes religion; religion does not make
    man. Religion is indeed man's self-consciousness and self-awareness so long as he
    has not found himself or has lost himself again. But man is not an abstract being,
    squatting outside the world. Man is the human world, the state, society. This state, this
    society, produce religion, which is an inverted world consciousness, because they are
    an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopedic
    compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point of honor, its enthusiasm, its
    moral sanction, its solemn complement, its general basis of consolation and justification.
    It is the fantastic realization of the human being inasmuch as the human being
    possesses no true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly a
    struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.

    Religious suffering is at the same time an expression of real suffering and a protest
    against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a
    heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

    The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of men, is a demand for their real
    happiness. The call to abandon their illusions is a call to abandon a condition which
    requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, the embryonic criticism of this
    vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

    Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers from the chain, not in order that man shall
    bear the chain without caprice or consolation but so that he shall cast off the chain and
    pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man so that he will think, act
    and fashion his reality as a man who has lost his illusions and regained his reason; so
    that he will revolve about himself as his own true sun. Religion is only the illusory sun
    about which man revolves so long as he does not revolve about himself.

    It is the task of history, therefore, once the other-world of truth has vanished, to
    establish the truth of this world. The immediate task of philosophy, which is in the
    service of history, is to unmask human self-alienation in its secular form now that it has
    been unmasked in its sacred form. Thus the criticism of heaven is transformed into the
    criticism of earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law, and the criticism of
    theology into the criticism of politics.

    - Karl Marx, 1844

    You might also like