| | Feuerbach, being only ten years senior to Marx, was not his teacher. Perhaps Tibor is referring to Hegel, who indirectly served as a teacher to both, who considered themselves 'Hegelian'.
Yet Feuerbach and Marx despised each other, as oil to water, socialist to objectivist. This is because Feuerbach's Hegel demonstrated an evolutionary progress through the dialectic of ideas, culminating with the Christianity of his time.
Marx, oth, was the materialist who hated religion as the opiate of the people, the heart of a heartless (capitalist) world. For him, Christianity just covered up the real misery. His Thesis on Feuerbach stated that the role of philosophy was not to contemplate the world, but rather to change it.
Humanism means that humans only have their own reason to serve as a means of understanding truth. Religious beliefs are not to be taken as a priori true.
To this end, religion can contain humanist truths only to the extent that their statements fall within the discursive boundaries of 'rational basis'. Feuerbach and others accepted this permise in writing that Christianity is rationally- real because it leads to better cooperation among people.
Humanism also believes in volition, or 'agency. The world that humans live in is of their own will, created by free choice. This, of course, is the legacy of The Enlightenment. By obtaining knowledge, we can use our natural reason to make better choices.
To this end, humanism began as a progressive political movement by default, around 1800. Its conservative opponents emphasized tradition for its own sake, and somewhat opposed the entire enlightnment project as such.
Therefore, humanism became inadvertantly wedded to collectivism. But as Objectivism as eloquently demonstrated, this association was ad hoc, and not necessary. We can, indeed, have a Humanism that's based upon the individual.
Now, back to Marx: pre-1848 Manifesto yes, a humanist, but for the next forty years or so, definately not.
His doctrine of 'dialectical materialism' is rather clear. Humans are shaped by real, objective forces beyond their immediate control. Proletariat and bourgeoisie --exploited and exploiter--are subject-independently real entities, hence, 'objective'.
Moreover, to suggest that the revolution to obtain a socialist order is somehow driven by garden-variey 'agency/volition misses the point. Driven by misery anger to overthrow the oppressing class, Marx's workers are hardly models of contemplative wisdom. Rather, their creation will be a naturalist outcome: the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Lastly, most socialists have always rejected Marx--a fact obscured by the advent of Soviet Communism, which adopted Marx as a father-figure. Rather, socialists--for better or worse-- have constantly endeavored to demonstrate why certain forms of collectivism are of benefit to all.
Clearly within the humanist tradition, socialism rejects Marxist violent overthrow as irrational, of ultimate benefit to no one. Tibor,therefore does no one credit by having conflated the two diverse tendencies. The issues with a humanist-based collectivism are real, and dragging Marx into the picture just muddies the waters.
EM
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