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The Hegelians
Tradition of the Enlightenment was continued in by the
Hegelians, the best known among them being Hegel and his disciples Feuerbach,
Bauer, Proudhon, Marx. There was much written about the differences among their
philosophies, but with the passage of time, the relevance of their differences
eroded while the significance of their commonalities grew.
Friends of George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel called him Wilhelm. His schoolmates
called him the 'old-man,' as he preferred reading to bar hopping. However, as
the saying goes 'still waters run deep.' This quiet scholar managed to
impregnate his landlady who he had no means to support and no intention of
marrying and later became famous for his
'nothing great in this world has been accomplished without passion.'
 Titius-Bode-Phillips Spiral Algorithm |
In 1766, Johan Titius translated into German Contemplation de la Nature by the French natural philosopher Bonnet where Bonnet remarks that maybe there are more planets in our solar system than were known at his time. Titus added to this remark that one may notice that the distances of the planets from one another can be approximated by a sequence of numbers that can be generated by an algorithm that is known as the 'Titius Bode Law.' Hegel's dissertation (1801) De orbitis planetarum revolves around the discussion of the Titus-Bode law and likely influenced the Hegelian concept of history as a series of successive epochs from the Prehistoric through Ancient, Feudal, Industrial and post-Industrial Stages. The predictive power of the Titus-Bode Law was improved by Stephen Phillips' formulation of the Titius-Bode-Phillips Spiral Algorithm.
 Hegel's concept of history |
Philosophers of the Enlightenment hoped that the progress of science will liberate human societies from the oppression of monarchical theocracies and will be paralleled by the advancement of society toward a better milieu. Hegelians elaborated upon this concept by assuming that by liberating reason from its theological encapsulations, conflicts could be resolved not by violence, but by rational discussions following the rules of the dialectic discourse.
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The Dialectical Spiral The dialectic discourse can be visualized as an ascending spiral, where its first convolution reflects the conflict (theses vs. antitheses), the second convolution the conflict resolution (synthesis), and the third convolution its transcendence. This model assumes that by liberating ourselves from the irrational modes of thinking and reasoning encapsulated in the paleocortex, we will be able to learn how to ascend the dialectical staircase and build a better society with the liberty, justice, and prosperity for all. However, Hegel's principal contribution to philosophy is his concept of alienation that was elaborated by Karl Marx.
 Karl H. Marx (1818-1883) |
Karl Marx Alienation is a term meaning loss of personal identity, the state of being withdrawn through indifference or disaffection. In his Historisch-Kritische Gesamtausgabe Marx writes
'the less you read books, the less you go to the theatre,
the less you think,
love, theorize, sign, paint, the more you save.
The less you are, the more you
have.
The less you express yourself, the more alienated you become.'
 Guy Debord (1931-1994) |
Guy Debord Within the contemporary framework, Marx ideas about alienation were elaborated by Debord who in his La société du spectacle (1967, English translation, 1995) maintains that the feelings of alienation can be accounted for by the omnipresent forces of the mass media he calls 'the spectacle.'
To the degree the spectacle distorts reality,
it generates distorted consciousness.
Debord observes that as spectators,
'the more we watch, the less we live.'
The original editions of Debord's books were bound in sandpaper as to eradicate
the mass media materials placed next to them. Some of the Guy Debord's comments
on the Society of the Spectacle are excerpted below:
The manufacture of a present which wants to forget the past and no longer seems
to believe in a future is achieved by the ceaseless circularity of information,
always returning to the same trivialities, proclaimed as major discoveries.
Meanwhile news of what is genuinely important comes rarely.
Spectacular domination's first priority is to eradicate historical knowledge.
The more important something is, the more it is hidden.
Never before has censorship been so perfect. Never before have those who are led
to believe that they remain free citizens, been less entitled to make their
opinions heard. Never before has it been possible to lie to them so brazenly.
The spectator is simply supposed to know nothing, and deserve nothing. Those who
are always watching will never act.
Theory of Alienation Voltaire’s opposition to the teachings of Bible, Talmud,
and Qur’an reflected his admiration of the Hellenistic culture, as was this of
Jean-Baptiste de Mirabaud, Paul Henri d’Holbach, Montesquieu, and virtually
every major figure of the French Enlightenment, elaborated and continued by the
Hegelians. The first enduring state based on the economic theory of Karl Marx, a
Hegelian par excellence, was the Soviet Union. The most implacable enemies of
the Soviet Union were the proponents and exponents of the Christian and Jewish
monotheistic religions. The philosophy of the Enlightenment, inherent in Marx’s
theoretical reasoning, was not incorporated into the social fabric of the Soviet
Union, this being among the factors that led to its demise. However, the
implementation of Marx’s economic theories resulted in the only modern society,
where the social ills encapsulated by the “spirit of Judaism” and the “spirit of
capitalism” ceased. The cornerstone of the Marx’s social analysis is his theory
of alienation.
Alienation is inherent to the daughter religions of Judaism, as these
religions are not tied to the indigenous cultures of their adherents but were
grafted on the genuine culture of the Jewish people of which religion is an
integral part. Thus, over the centuries, the Islamic and Christian people became
alienated from the cultures of their ancestors and adapted a culture that is not
their own. In the course of this process they lost not only large segments of
their past, but also parts of their innermost self. This impoverishment accounts
for the comparative inferiority of the adherents to the daughter religions of
Judaism in their relationships with the genuine people of God. This makes the
coexistence of monotheistic religions fraught with difficulties and is among the
sources of numerous conflicts, anguish and violence of the nuclear age.
 Religion is the opium of the people (Die Religion ... ist das Opium des Volkes) |
Karl Marx on Religion
Karl Marx used the concept of alienation as one of the basic constructs of his
theory. Karl Marx expressed his views on religion in general and Judaism in
particular in the article he published in February, 1844 in the Deutsch-Französische
Jahrbücher. Marx main ideas in this respect are outlined as follows.
Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopedic compendium, its
logic in popular form, its spiritual point d'honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral
sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and
justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the
human essence has not acquired any true reality.
Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real
suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the
oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless
conditions. It is the opium of the people.
The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand
for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their
condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions.
The most rigid form of the opposition between the Jews and the Christians is the
religious opposition. How is an opposition resolved? By making it impossible.
How is religious opposition made impossible? By abolishing religion.
As soon as Jews and Christians recognize that their respective religions are no
more than different stages in the development of the human mind, their
relationship will be no longer religious but only a critical, scientific, human
relationship.
Science, then, will constitute their unity, as it is inherent to the science
that contradictions can be resolved by critical reasoning.
Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin (1983, p.180, 192) in their book Why the
Jews? the reason for anti-Semitism oppose Karl Marx and the Second International
that condemned both anti-Semitism and philo-Semitism. They conclude that the only
solution to anti-Semitism is to
| affect the values of non-Jews, to oppose secular and even humanist ideologies emanating from the Enlightenment, and to fight them through all appropriate means from political to physical. |
With the advent of President Bush II
administration and its sponsorship of wars in the Middle East, perceived to a
degree as motivated by the philo-Semitism of fundamental religious
denominations, the implementation of strategies recommended by Prager and
Telushin resulted in exponential increase of anti-Semitism throughout the world
and made the United States and Israel the most hated nations on the face of the
Earth (Morris, J. (2007)
Once the most beloved country in the world, the US is now the most hated,
Guardian, February 14). As discussed throughout this book, ideologues
of religion supplant the rational solution of conflicts with attempts to convert
the opposing views as to accommodate their own; a strategy that seldom succeeds,
typically intensifies the conflict of interests, and frequently leads to their
resolution by the 'other means,' to use Clausewitz’s euphemism for the war.
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The Dialectic Tetrad
The method of critical reasoning Marx preferred was the dialectic (from the
Greek dialektike techne, the art of discussion). Dialectics is a philosophic
form of debate. As described by Greek philosophers of antiquity and ubiquitous
in writings of secular philosophers afterwards, the rational discourse aimed at
conflict resolution subsumes theses, antitheses, synthesis, and transcendence.
While most of the writings on the topics of preceding paragraphs is strong on
the theses - antitheses phases of this ongoing controversy, it lacks on the
synthesis and transcendence phases of the dialectic tetrad. The tertiary and
quadrennial phases of this conundrum were formulated by the philosophers of the
French Enlightenment and incorporated into the Constitution of the United States
by our founding fathers, unequivocally affirming the freedom of expression and
separation of secular and ecclesiastic powers, a sine qua non of rational
discussion and rational conflict resolutions.
There exists a vast amount of
studies, both phenomenological and quantitative, comparing multiple aspects of
relationships between monotheistic religions and characteristics of their
adherents. As these issues pertain to the basal components of core beliefs,
interpretations of these phenomena are highly emotional and seldom open to
rational discussion. The alienation theory explains many of these interrelated
findings and can provide a solid theoretical framework for their meta-analysis.
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Wife of Karl Marx Johanna "Jenny" von Westphalen (born 12 February 1814, died 2 December 1881) was
the daughter of Johann Ludwig, Baron von Westphalen,
a professor at Friedrich-Wilhelms-University in Berlin.
Jenny von Westphalen was not only a beautiful, but also an educated young woman.
She and Karl Marx dated for seven years and wrote to each other letters when
apart. To fully appreciate her letter to Karl Marx excerpted below, brush-up on
your Latin and Virgil's dactylic hexameters to listen to the sounds of
Id clamor et agmine facto
Quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum...
 Jenny von Westphalen. Enhanced reality portrait. |
Trier, August 10, 1841
My dear teddy-bear, how glad I am that you are happy, and that my letter made
you cheerful, and that you are longing for me, and that you are living in
wallpapered rooms and that there are Hegel clubs there, and that you have been
dreaming, and that, in short, you are mine. But for all that there is one thing
I miss: you could have praised me a little for my Greek, and you could have
devoted a little laudatory article to my erudition so, alas, I must be modest
and rest on my own laurels. Farewell, one and only beloved. I cannot write any
more, or my head will be all in a whirl, and quadrupedante putrem sonitu, etc.
Adieu, adieu, my sweetheart.
Jenny
Jenny and Karl were married in 1843 and had three daughters, Eleanor, Jenny, and Laura. Jenny and Karl worked together; he wrote and she edited books that helped, for a century, to build a better world. Jenny later wrote that
| "the memory of the days I spent in his little
study copying his scrawled articles is among the happiest of my life." |
At he core of philosophy of Karl Marx is his critique of religion with its roots in his critique of Judaism. His critique of capitalism is based on these foundations and the Soviet Union, where his ideas were realized, was one of few countries where Jews did not succeed in dominating the society and its economy. With the hindsight of events that transpired after the fall of the Soviet Union, it appears that the most profound analysis of Karl Marx was not his economic analysis, but his analysis of religion. Rooted in the philosophy of the Enlightenment with Voltaire warning that the particularistic religious precepts may "some day become deadly to the human race" Karl Marx, with astounding prescience, foresees the rise of Judeo-Protestantism that promotes egoism wrapped in religion.
Marx critique of Judaism was summarized in his Zur Judenfrage, published in 1844 in the Deutsch-Franzosische Jarbucher. His arguments are based on the thesis that the core of Judaism is extreme partiality, instrumental in the accumulation of wealth. Marx observes that in North America, Jews exercise immense power and the domination of Judaism over the Christian world is fait accompli.
Marx maintains that the laws of the Jews are a religious caricature of groundless morality with Talmud describing the relation of the world of self-interest to the laws governing the world, the chief art of which consists in the cunning circumvention of these laws.
As Christianity sprang from Judaism and has merged again in Judaism, this blend of religions alienated people from their inner selves, transforming the Christian egoism of heavenly bliss into the corporal egoism of the Jews, their spiritual needs into secular needs, and their subjectivism into self-interest. Marx concludes that the precepts of Pentateuch and Talmud corrupt not only Jews, but the whole society.
The ideals of Karl and Jenny were not fully appreciated until now, when many begin to see what could have been. There never was a more propitious time to start reading Karl and Jenny's books. Start now and start at the beginning.
References
Marx, K. (1844) Zur Judenfrage. Deutsch-Franzosische
Jarbucher (February, 1884)
Tucker, R. C. (2000) Philosophy and Myth in Karl
Marx. Transaction Publishers
