Materialism of Marx and Feuerbach and “Pure” Materialism (Annotation of German Ideology II)

Pure Materialism considers man as an “object of senses”, and therefore explains consciousness just as a physiological effect of stimuli on man’s nervous system. This materialism fails to explain abstract and universal concepts.

Marx states that Feuerbach’s materialism goes beyond this crude materialism but is still unable to expound the relation between empirical and abstract concepts. Feuerbach divides perception into two types: a) perception of “flatly obvious” of things, 2) perception of high philosophical and scientific things that allows perceiving “true essence”. As we see, Feuerbach here approaches the Kantian concepts of the think-in-itself and the thing-for-itself, and admitting a gap between the appearance and the true essence of things.

Marx’ materialism, in my opinion, enjoys the Hegelian method of subsuming contradictory things: the “flatly obvious” thing, even the simplest one, is the product of long historical act of man, and, on the other hand the complicated philosophical and scientific concepts may be reduced to their constituents that are products of man’s act in industry, commerce, intercourse and other earthly activities. Marx refutes the logic of either-this-or-that, and interrelates two kinds of consciousness that indeed are not two but one in the final analysis.