The New Religious Dimension in Western Marxism: II

Abstract

AbstractBoth Marxists and phenomenologists have a critical attitude toward religion. For the phenomenologist critique means clarification of meaning; for the Marxist it means the emancipation of men and women from the quasi-natural forces of opaque and ossified traditions, from irrational authorities, and from the ideology which but-tresses unjustifiable dialectical contradictions in civil and socialist society. Marxists such as Georg Lukacs, Max Horkheimer, and Leszek Kolakowski apply ideology critique to the dimension of religion. Lukacs acknowledges not only reactionary, but also progressive aspects in the Catholic and Protestant form of Christianity. For Horkheimer, complete emancipation from faith in a power independent from history and at the same time determining it belongs to the most primitive intellectual clarity and veracity of modern humanity. But Horkheimer continues to read the Bible. He observes and suffers deeply from the immeasurable gap between the moral norms and values which Europeans have acknowledged since the introduction of Christianity and the behaviour of the European Christians, which is the difference between Christian theory and practice. Kolakowski finds the antagonism between the philosophy of the priest and the philosophy of the jester in all spheres of human life, including religion. The priest eternalizes and guards the absolutes acknowledged at certain times in certain societies. The jester, on the other hand, continually questions what societies consider ultimate and doubts everything “given” in any social formation. Finally Horkheimer sums up the whole Western Marxist theory of religion in his assertion that the concept of God kept alive the idea that there are other norms besides those to which the finite world considered as nature, society and history gives expression. The concept of Infinity preserves an awareness of the finality of human life and of the inalterable aloneness and abandonment of humanity. Horkheimer cannot affirm any philosophy or politics which does not also embrace a theological moment. Theology is the hope and the longing that the injustice which characterizes the world as society, state and history today may not have the last word.