The German Ideology, Stirner and Hegel: The Theory of History and the History of Theory

Abstract

In this chapter it will be argued that The German Ideology should be analysed and interpreted as an integral whole. Its various sections, which have tended to be taken as detachable in previous interpretations, share a community of purpose and character. In design and practice The German Ideology is a work devoted to the history of theory. The character of the project upon which Marx and Engels are engaged in The German Ideology is clearly conveyed in the subtitles of its two volumes, ‘Critique of Modern German Philosophy according to its representatives, Feuerbach, B. Bauer and Stirner’, and ‘Critique of German Socialism according to its various prophets’.1 The sections on Feuerbach, Bauer and Stirner, which constitute volume 1, criticise the respective philosophical positions of these Young Hegelian theorists by relating them to one another and tracing their derivation from Hegel’s absolute idealism. The second volume, dealing with German socialism, criticises the attachment of German socialists to the language and concepts of philosophers in the Hegelian tradition analysed in the first volume. The pressing concern of The German Ideology to rebut rival contemporary theories shapes its well-known statements on materialism, historical method and alienation. The work can best be understood as a polemical contribution to a debate between Young Hegelians within an Hegelian tradition of discourse.KeywordsProductive ForceOpening SectionNormative ConceptionPhilosophical ConceptionHistorical MethodThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.