Looking at Marx’s early writings from the period of 1844-1846 (the Economic and Political Manuscripts of 1844, the Theses on Feuerbach, and The German Ideology), we can see that, apart from whatever else may be pursued in them, Marx’s thought unifies around the basic task of trying to conceive of a perspective from which societies can be viewed that is not fundamentally Hegelian. That is, the general thrust of his thought centers around the task of viewing social phenomena without reference to the basic conception of reality (or what exists, existence) that was espoused by Hegel. To do this, he uses ideas from Feuerbach’s The Essence of Christianity, published in 1841, through will radicalize these ideas to the point of breaking them, and, with them, the Hegelian conception of reality—this is why so much of the work from this period deals with Feuerbach as well as with the “German Ideologists” or Left-Hegelians who were developing positions similar to Feuerbach’s. This reality in Hegel was vaguely defined as Spirit or Geist, which had, in the later works of Hegel, seemed to be something increasingly idealist in nature. This reality in Feuerbach, then, was asserted to be material, or natural, in order to salvage what Feuerbach saw as the potential of the Hegelian dialectic. Thus, in the writings of Marx in this period, we see a fine distinction being made about the nature of reality in contradistinction to these two thinkers. The result will be “historical materialism,” a type of reality that is more rigorously materialist than Feuerbach’s precisely by opening itself up to the Spiritual structure of reality (which manifests itself as history) found in Hegel. This is the reality that we find asserted in The German Ideology and allows the development of the theory of societies that we find in Communist Manifesto. Much later, it will provide the foundation for the reflections on the nature of the commodity in the early parts of Capital. Here, we will provide a brief genealogy of what exists for Marx with reference to these early writings. We should keep in mind that an answer to perhaps the most basic question about Marx will result from all this: why does Marx hold the sphere of political economy as so exceedingly determinative for the construction of society and the lives of individuals in this society? In short, we will end up showing that it is because Marx has a specific view of reality, and has developed this view out of the powerful system of Hegel, that this sphere comes to take on such vital importance for him.
The nature of reality for Hegel, as we said, was Geist—a word that we translate as “Spirit” (the translation of Geist as “Mind” is unanimously in disfavor among scholars), but which has an incredibly important and incredibly specific sense for Hegel. What is this sense; what is Geist? Well, to get a flavor for it, we can say it is a lot like what Foucault named “discourse:” a set of practices that coagulate and structure themselves to operate in a particular manner, the manner of power (i.e. they exert power upon something, form it, shape it, etc.), and in such a way that this structuring and this operating is their power itself (it includes this forming, shaping force in its being-structured in this particular way). Leaving the comparison to Foucault behind—for the language of power is a precise Nietzschian language implying many concepts that Hegel does not conceive or mean by “Geist”—we may more precisely characterize Geist—the essence of Hegelian reality—as the totality constituted by all world practices, or, expressed differently, all the actions (Tun, in German) within the world of beings that generate meaning for that world of beings.
What do we mean by meaning? Well, any action that justifies the existence of the world of beings to itself, to that world; anything that answers the question “why is there a world of beings instead of nothing?” Geist is the totality of the answers to this question manifesting themselves in actions; it is the substantive genealogy of significance, worth, value—meaningfulness itself. Now, these meaningful actions have to be actions that have occurred for Hegel: he is not talking about any mere potential to give itself meaning that the world possesses when he talks about Geist. This is a crucial distinction we will return to soon when considering Feuerbach. It is also the distinction that makes Hegel break from Kant, as well as from much of the Christian tradition: for Kant and many Christian scholars, the meaning of the world is guaranteed to exist irrespective of any actions of beings within that world of beings—namely, the world is guaranteed to exist in and by God. Because God created the world of beings, what happens there will always in a sense carry the meaning that God gave and gives it in His creation of it—the question as to why the world of beings exists instead of nothing is always already decided in advance or a priori (as Kant declares) by God, who knows or keeps in reserve (in some space outside the world of beings) the powerful and sublime activity that is the answer. For Hegel, however, there is no meaning outside the meaningful actions of beings themselves, and the accumulated mass of these meanings.
Thus, we can say that what is Geistlich or Spiritual is what we normally designate as history, actual acts that have justified the existence of the world of beings to itself over the course of time. Geist, then, is a sort of historical sediment or residue containing the various meanings (or meaningful acts) that have existed for beings, which has separated itself from the general passing-by of unmeaning events and proceeded to harden and form into layers one upon another so that it produces a structure like that in an exposed wall of rock or dirt—the crust of the earth having somehow been disturbed so that this wall juts out from it. Just as the layering of the sediment of various epochs moves upward as it piles itself upon itself and culminates in the present time, the history of meaning moves towards the meanings that the world of beings now possesses. In fact, we specify this present state and get at the nature of Geist participating in our present when we use the phrase “the spirit of our times” (from the German Zeitgeist, “time-spirit” ). This “spirit” is what we can determine at any particular moment in history as the general thrust underlying or being effectuated by all meaningful action; what underneath everything is the general essence of a period of time. Geist itself then is this general underlying thrust of the entirety of beings throughout time—it is the “spirit of the times,” the spirit of time. But Geist or Spirit is not merely a compendium or index of various moments in history built up by various “spirits of the age” come onto the scene: it is also the development of these various meanings, the meaningful actions that change how meaning is possible and bring new layers or meanings onto the scene in different ways—in fact, these are the most important events of history and the most Spiritual for Hegel. If we understand Spirit in this more precise way, then the geological illustration we just used breaks down: it is not as if meanings of particular instances in time are self-contained layers piling up upon one another, for these layers influence each other, mix—such that even the first and deepest layer can combine with the top one. The layers need to be fluid to be conceived correctly, in such a way that each top layer that gets added takes up all of the lower layers and reasserts them as themselves in its own existence there (on the top of all of them): in order to be on top, this top layer must reassert all the others as below. The meaning of any particular layer, then, is never fixed ; it can be taken up into the reality of the present day because it is that reality (it constituted it), and therefore can be changed in its ability to mean or be real based on the present reality—in fact it could just as well become meaningless or lose its reality based on the present.
In sum, then, reality for Hegel is the meaning of the world of beings that this world has for itself. This meaning is also the history of meanings that have paved the way for the present meaning or “spirit of the time.” Finally, this meaning is brought forth or comes to exist only in any meaningful action in the world of beings—the meaning of the world of beings is not guaranteed for it in some separate sphere but only comes about among beings in the world and their meaningful actions...
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