2 the progress of society to a freer, juster condition."

As Althusser has shown, much of Marx's critique of religion is adopted directly from Feuerbach. The following is an example:

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the senti­ ment of a heartless world, 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 aban­ don their illusions about their condition is a call to aban­ don a condition which requires illusions... Thus the criti­ cism of heaven transforms itself into the criticism of earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law, gnd the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics.

Marx's implication that religion is primarily and essentially a function of social conditions does not allow for the integrity of the human need to believe. Nor can the human capacity to transform nature through practical productivity completely remove it.

If Feuerbach's writings have retained their challenge to philo­ sophy as well as to the practical implications of religion and theo­ logy (cf. below, Chapter Five), we need not be intimidated by Marx's "Theses on Feuerbach". In Thesis VIII he wrote: "All social life is essentially practical. All mysteries which lead theory to mystic­ ism find their rational solution in human practice and in the compre­ hension of this practice." As Iring Fetscher has remarked, "Das ist sicher allés ganz richtig, aber doch nicht die ganze Wahrheit."^ The dynamics of social life may yet contain some 'mysteries' that demand more creative interpretation and theory before such dynamics become comprehensible and capable of practical integration with

1. D.W.D. Shaw, The Dissuadera, SCM Press, London, 1978, p. 33 2. ibid. p. 34

3. Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right; Introduction, in Ma r x zEarly Writings, Penguin, Middlesex, 1975.

4. Iring Fetscher, "Hegel, Feuerbach, Marx", Hegelstudien, Bonn, 1963 p. 376 ("That is certainly all quite correct, but not quite the whole truth.")

modem needs. Resolution of social mysteries cannot be achieved by practice, unless practice itself contains the dynamics of theory

and interpretation. (Marx's idea of practice does indeed assume

such.)

In a sense, the perennial condemnation of Feuerbach by Marxists is a one-sided argument for the chicken at the expense of the egg. The origins of the theory-practice relation hail neither from Marx

nor Hegel, but rather from the Lycaeum in Athens. As Aristotle obser­

ved, one can hardly do without either. Whereas Feuerbach has proposed a theory which he hoped would lead to practice, Marx proposed a prac­ tice which constantly discovers new theory. If Marx's idea of pract­ ice is understood as he intended, one certainly might prefer his version over Feuerbach's. Nevertheless, we must be careful not to write Feuerbach off too quickly.

As I have already observed, Feuerbach's 'dialectic of sensib­ ility' depends upon the 'material' character of love, and upon the 'practice' which is latent in human imagination. Feeling and love constitute "the matter of the heart" by which humanity has access to its true nature.

The conception of the morally perfect being is no merely theoretical, inert conception, but a practical one, call­ ing me to action, to imitation, throwing me into strife, into disunion with myself; for while it proclaims to me what I ought to be, it also tellg me to my face, with­ out any flattery, what I am not.

There is in the religious imagination a practical tendency, which, even though it represents the alienation of humanity from itself, is nevertheless an indication of the 'practice' in the human imagina­ tion.

Adopting literally Luther's remark: "Belief is my being", Feuerbach sees belief, dependent upon religious imagination, as the potential capacity for the fulfilment of human needs in every respect.

Worship is closely associated with the primary character of belief, as a practice in embryo. Disclosed in the symbolic imagery of the sacraments and prayer, the practice in belief reveals 'infinite' capacities of human beings for utilizing and transforming their envir­ onment. The eucharist, for example, provides the link between human

creativity and dependence upon nature; "Nature gives the material,

mind gives the form." But beyond this 'materialist' interpretation, Feuerbach also recognizes in the eucharist the 'practice' which Marx fails to acknowledge. There is in human nature a profound capacity for turning evil into good, suffering into love, the ego into commun­ ity.

It is the infinite capacity of the imagination to create without recourse to matter (symbolized by prayer) which inspires human pract­ ice. Construction in the imagination is indispensable and prior to the act of making. Imagination, in fact, is the essence of making, according to Feuerbach.

This distinction between the divine and human activity is 'nothing'. God makes, - he makes something external to himself, as man does. Making is a genuine human idea. Nature gives birth to, brings forth; man makes. Making is an act which I can omit, a designed, premeditated, exter­ nal act; an act in which my inmost being is not concern­ ed, in which while active, I am not at the same time passive, carried away by an internal impulse. On the contrary, an activity which is identical with my being is not indifferent, is necessary to me, as, for example,

intellectual production, which is an inward necessity to ^ me, and for that reason lays a deep hold on me, affects

me pathologically. Intellectual works are not made, -

4

making is only the external activity applied to them; i

they arise in us. To make is an indifferent, therefore a |

free, i.e. optional activity. i

I

In the above extract, we can see that for Feuerbach, the activ- 3

J

ity of making is secondary to the activity of feeling and thinking. What happens in the imagination is more attuned to human being, as

I