The problem of terminology in one of Marx's works

Abstract

The text we will be analysing is: A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, Introduction (the first two pages), written between the end of 1843 and January 1844. It was published in March of the same year in The French-German Annals. When Marx talks about 'man', it is generally Feuerbach that he has in mind. The same can be said with reference to the sentences: "Man makes religion" and "criticism or religion", which are upheld by the young followers of Hegel, from Strauss to Moshe Hess, and from Feuerbach to Bruno Bauer. However, in these two pages Marx deals also with his immediate past and at the same time with the theories of these young scholars. These accounts are therefore rendered simultaneously; the same applies to the statement: "Aber der Mensch das ist kein abstraktes, ausser der Welt hockendes Wesen. Der Mench, das ist die Welt des Menschen, Staat, Soziet/it" [But man is not an abstract being, hidden outside the world (who dwells hidden, squatting and kneeling outside the world). Man is Man's world, State and Society]. This is a criticism directed at Feuerbach's concept that Man is an abstract being, a concept which was used by Marx in the years immediately preceding this and which, in a discontinuous form, bring us to these first pages. The final part of paragraph 7 has a similar meaning directed this time at Bruno Bauer: "The criticism of sky thus becomes the criticism of the earth, and the criticism of religion becomes the criticism of right, the criticism of theology becomes the criticism of politics". This is the philosophical itinerary which Marx had already followed and which leaves Bruno Bauer and the young followers of Hegel behind, although it is also the beginning of the way which will allow Marx to stop being a young follower of Hegel and become a Materialist. This is the moment (from the spring of 1843 to the summer of 1844) in which Marx and Engels, who were in contact with one another, developed their ideas from idealism to materialism and evolved them individually, from positions of radical democracy to Communism. This evolution meant an 'overcoming' in the Hegelian sense of the word. From the philosophical point of view it can be expressed by omitting some of the terms from the vocabulary of the young followers of Hegel and by preserving others, or by giving a new sense to the old terms. Zvi Rosen has published an important work 1 concerning the influence of Bruno Bauer on Marx's terminology on religion. In the second chapter of the second part of his essay entitled: 'Bauer's Themes on the Marxian Conception of Religion', he convincingly shows the origin of the following words or sentences which appear in these first two pages of the Introduction: (1) Die Aufhebung der Religion als des illusorischen image]. (2) ist die Religion das Selbstbewusstsein und das Selbstgefiihl des Menschen [religion is Man's selfconsciousness and selfsensibility]. (3) die Religion, ein verkertes Weltbewusstsein [religion, an inverted consciousness of the world]. (4) eine verkerte Welt [an inverted world]. (5) die Religion ist die allgemeine Theorie dieser Welt [religion is the general theory of this world]. (6) ihre moralische Sanktion [its moral sanction]. (7) die imagin~ren Blumen an der Kette [the imaginary flowers of the chain]. The above are the seven themes of Bauer which Marx underlined, because they were in general the most distant from the radical atheism of Bauer himself. Concerning the other similarities which Rosen found, the following points must be clarified: (1) Die Auflaebung der Religion als des illusorischen Glficks des Volkes [The overcoming of religion as an illusory happiness of the people], where only the second part of the comparison is authentically Bauerian. We must point out an important terminological difference here. Rosen translates 'Aufhebung' with 'cancelled' (suppress, eliminate, abolish); but in German this term means both "to abolish' and 'to preserve' (maintain). The English translation corresponds to an 'overcoming' in the Hegelian sense of the word. (2) Sie ist das Opium des Volks [It is the opium of the