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Publication Details

Feuerbach’s and Marx’s Critique of Hegel’s Dialectic

(Original title: Feuerbachova a Marxova kritika Heglovej dialektiky)
Filozofia, 25 (1970), 3, 217-227.
Type of work: Papers and Discussions
Publication language: Slovak
Abstract
Feuerbach seemingly rejected Hegel’s dialectic as he considered it to be a method by which the incompatible contradictions are united and preserved, as theology with materialism, as well as a method of the negation of theology by materialism and of materialism by theology. He also saw it as a consequence of the fact that Hegel did not consider time and space in object and, thereupon, regarded the contradictions being in things side by side or in sequence as existing simultaneously and in oneness. However, Feuerbach in his „Essence of Christianity“ tacitly applied Hegel’s principle of the negation of negation in materialist sense and that in his explanation of the process of alienation. Material man alienates to himself in spirit, in God, and then negatives that standpoint by the negation of God, e. i. he returnes to himself, towards matter. In his Manuscripts Marx also proceeded from this standpoint of Feuerbach. He disclosed it too by his famous expression that he turned Hegel’s dialectic upside down. Marx, however, did not cope with Feuerbach’s critique of Hegel’s dialectic as not respecting time and space in nature. Marx too considered contradictions in one thing as existing simultaneously. It follows, according to Feuerbach’s view Marx is inconsistent as he has brought speculative elements into his materialism.
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