Philosophy essay

1. Hegel (1770-1831)

1. Hegel believed that Kant’s transcendental ideas were both mental processes and objective realities.

1. Hegel believed that it was the task of philosophy to discover the relationships of particular aspects of Reality to the whole which is a single, evolving substance known as the Absolute Spirit.

1. Hebel believed that history consisted of the all-encompassing Absolute Spirit self-actualizing to perfection.

1. To Hegel, the pattern that all consciousness follows constitutes a dialectical process.

1. As Hegel used the term, dialectic refers to a 3-step pattern.

1. In the dialectical process an original idea known as a thesis is opposed by a contrary idea known as an anti-thesis.

1. The struggle between the thesis and the anti-thesis produces a new idea that combines elements from the thesis and the anti-thesis, which is known as the synthesis.

1. Once established, the synthesis becomes the thesis for a new cycle until everything is realized in the infinite synthesis of the Absolute Spirit.

1. Each resulting level of consciousness includes its predecessors.

1. According to Hegel, the ongoing dialectic represents the actual structure of reality.

1. History is the rational development of progressively inclusive stages toward the realization of the Absolute Spirit.

1. Pervious philosophers were unaware that they were working with a particular stage of the development of Reason as it unfolds in history.

1. Marx was deeply influenced by Hegel from whom he derived the concept of alienation and the notion of historical evolution.

1. Other Influences

1. Marx obtained his doctorate in philosophy and planned to be a college professor.

1. However, the Prussian government issued a decree preventing young radical Hegelians such a Marx from being college professors.

1. Marx obtained employment editing a democratic journal.

1. Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872)

1. Feuerbach argued that material conditions and not some spirit of the age controlled how people behaved and thought.

1. Feuerbach said that different material conditions result in what we think of as different cultural eras.

1. Marx’s retained Hegel’s belief in the dialectics of history and a single reality, but concluded that reality was material, not spiritual.

1. Marx’s understanding of materialism was crystalized by a series of articles he wrote on the exploitation of wine growing peasants. The vineyard owners repressed the workers, punishing their efforts at self-improvement.

1. The Wanderer

1. After Marx wrote a series of editorial criticizing the Russian government the German government, not wanting to offend the Russian government, shut down the journal Marx was writing for.

1. Marx moved to Paris where he was influenced by the ideas of Saint-Simon who argued that economic conditions determine history and historical change is the result of class conflict.

1. St. Simon said that those who control material necessary for production are in constant conflict with those that do not.

1. The social classes that were in conflict during Marx’s time were the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.

1. The theory of class conflict was brought home to Marx by a group of exiled German workers who demanded that property held in common and were known as communists.

1. Marx was expelled from Paris and moved to Brussels where in 1847 he became the first secretary of the International Communist League.

1. Marx continued to be expelled from France and from Germany and ended up in England.

1. Marx and his family led a hand to mouth existence, moving from one shabby apartment to another.

1. Marx was so poor that two sons and a daughter died during their childhood.

1. Friedrich Engels (1820-1895)

1. In 1844 Engels published The Condition of the Working Class in England, in which he attacked the abuses the upper and middle classes heaped on the poor.

1. It was said that Marx was the deeper thinker, but Engels added breath and fire to Marx’s ideas.

1. Engels acquired the hard facts to support Marx’s arguments.

1. Engels also edited Marx’s works and made Marx’s difficult thinking easier to follow.

1. As the son of a wealthy factory owner, Engel’s also supported Marx financially.

1. Vindication

1. In 1874 Marx became involved in International Workingmen’s Association and dominated the meetings of their general council.

1. He tolerated no deviation from his views.

1. Around this time he wrote the first volume of his famous book, Das Capital.

1. Dialectical Materialism

1. Dialectical process (from Hegel) – internally governed evolutionary cycle in which progress occurs as the result of a struggle between two opposing conditions.

1. From Feuerbach Marx concluded that reality is material and consequently the material conditions of life control reality.

1. From St. Simon Marx learned to observe the relationship between the owning class and the exploited class which led to class conflict.

1. Combining elements of the influences described above with a deep concern for the conditions of the workers and an awareness of the importance of economic conditions to other aspects of life, Marx constructed the social-political-economic philosophy known as dialectical materialism.

1. According Marx’s to dialectical materialism history is the ongoing result of the constant tension between an upper class of rulers and an exploited underclass.

1. From struggles between different economic interests emerges a brand-new economic structure.

1. Marx described conflicting economic interests in terms of the bourgeoisie, or middle class, and the proletariat, or working class.

1. The bourgeoisie do not produce anything, yet they control the means of production.

1. The proletariat’s labor produces goods but they do not control the means of production.

1. Marx took Hegel’s concept of the dialectical process and applied it to historical stages, which he called the five epochs of history, they are: 1.)Primitive/communal, 2.) Slave, 3.) Feudal, 4.) Capitalist, 5.) Socialist/Communist.

1. Marx said that in the feudal stage of history the struggle was between the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie, in which the bourgeoisie emerged victorious.

1. Marx argued that as each epoch develops, its basic economic structure matures.

1. Changes in economic structures alter the conditions of people’s lives.

1. These altered material conditions eventually lead to a new social structure.

1. According to Marx, since the great injustices of capitalism result from the private ownership of property, a new socialistic economy (antithesis) will eventually emerge in which private property is abolished.

1. Society will then be able to provide decent meaningful lives to virtually everyone (synthesis).

1. Instead of having to compete for a good life, we will all live harmoniously, doing creative, satisfying work that benefit us individually at the same time in benefits us collectively.

1. There will be only one class, hence no class conflict.

1. Economic Determinism

1. Marx transformed Hegel’s dialectic by confining it to the material world.

1. Marx rejected excessively abstract philosophy, calling it mystification.

1. Marx asserted that man’s consciousness changed with every change in the conditions of his material existence, his social relations, and his social life.

1. Marxian materialism sees a reciprocal relationship between individuals and their environment.

1. Marx believed that human consciousness was very important in shaping society.

1. Marx’s emphasis was on the here and now.

1. According to Marx, the process of human history is shaped by inseparable social and economic conditions, much more so than by ideas.

1. According to Marx the economic structure of a culture creates and forms its ideas.

1. For Marx, the term economic refers to the complete array of social relationships and arrangements that constitute a particular social order.

1. The material (economic) base or substructure of society consists of 1.) the means of production (natural resources such as coal, water, land and so forth), 2.) forces of production (factories, equipment, technology, knowledge, and skill), 3.) relationships of production (who does what, who owns what, and the effects of this division on each group).

1. The material (economic) substructure determines the nature of all social relationships.

1. Because ideas and institutions emerge from the economic structure of society Marx refers to them as the superstructure of society.

1. The superstructure consists of the political structure, legal system, media, arts, religion, educational system, philosophy, etc.

1. The substructure (economic conditions) determines the superstructure (everything else).

1. Critique of Capitalism

1. Tension under capitalism increases as inequities of distribution destroy any correlation between how much an individual contributes or produces and how much he or she receives.

1. There is a fundamental contradiction at the heart of capitalism: The law of supply and demand determines prices, yet a large pool of workers keeps wages low.

1. Surplus value occurs because manufacturers keep prices higher than the actual cost of production and the workers get less and less for their effort.

1. Surplus value is invested as capital into the capitalists businesses.

1. The Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat

1. The government is a tool of the bourgeoisie.

1. The bourgeoisie reduces everything into crude calculations of self-interest and personal wealth.

1. The bourgeoisie through its exploitation of the world market compels all nations to adopt the bourgeoisie mode of production on pain of extinction.

1. Not only are the proletariat paid as little as possible in order to maximize profit, but they are also seduced by bourgeoisie-controlled education and media to consume overpriced, useless products.

1. Co-Option and Class Struggle

1. Marx and Engels were among the first modern philosophers to recognize the plight of women in modern society.

1. When physical strength became less important employment opportunities expanded from women, however, the work available and pay offered were often substandard.

1. After generations of capitalistic conditioning through schools and the media, the workers may fail to recognize their exploitation.

1. One reason why working class and middle-class people support the capitalist system is that they believe that some day they may become rich even though in reality they have little chance of doing so.

1. Marx believed that the proletariat were co-opted, somehow convinced to further interests that were not to their advantage and do so willingly.

1. The bourgeoisie forges the instruments of its own destruction as it grows smaller but richer and more powerful.

1. The exploitation of the proletariat will not change until its members realize that they have the same class interests

1. Under capitalism it is in the bourgeoisie’s short-term interest for different ethnic, gender, age, and religious groups to distrust and despise one another.

1. For the bourgeoisie, it is good for token members of all disadvantaged groups to become publicly successful because then they can say that the system works for everyone.

1. Change will not occur until the exploited identify with one another and not with their ethnicity, religion, gender or age.

1. As capitalism becomes more efficient it produces more than it can consume. This causes economic depressions.

1. Also, capitalisms technological progress renders large numbers of workers obsolete, putting them out of work.

1. This results in an overburdened welfare system that provides barely enough for the displaced workers.

1. Marx and Engels predicted that more and more workers would suffer as the bourgeoisie acquired capital at their expense and the workers’ unhappiness would erupt in violent revolution.

1. From the revolution a new social order would emerge in which all class distinctions, private ownership of the means of production, and exploitation would disappear forever.

1. Alienation

1. Marx thought of alienation as the most destructive feature of capitalism.

1. Alienation – when the worker no longer feels at one with the product of his or her labor.

1. Alienation results from the transformation of the human being into a commodity.

1. Marx was convinced that we were not happiest when we were idle, but when we were engaged in meaningful work.

1. Meaningful work can be virtually any kind so long as the worker has control over its products. e.g. a designer whose boss has control over what brushes, colors, etc. that he uses in his job becomes alienated.

1. Anyone who takes a job solely because of what it pays becomes alienated, by reducing himself or herself into a money-making machine.

1. Alienation even extends to our relationship with nature and the environment

1. Nature provides the material basis for all work. Yet unchecked capitalism uses up nature because the capitalist does not feel as part of nature.

1. The capitalist sees money rather than the natural world.

1. Because most of us must work to live, we spend a high percentage of our time at our jobs. If we are alienated there, we are likely to be alienated elsewhere, for we cannot avoid being shaped by all those hours at work.

1. Alienation causes the worker to externalize work as something he does rather than something he is.

1. People that are alienation separate themselves from other people and lose touch with themselves.

1. Species-Life

1. Animal species are at one with what they do, whereas, humans are not at one with their work (which is what they do).

1. Species-Life – fully human life lived productively and consciously; not alienated.

1. Alienated life – unconscious, unspontaneous, and unfulfilled life; deprived of fundamental conditions necessary for self-actualization.

1. Alienation prevents us from being fully human.

1. Marx is propounding not just an economic theory, but a sophisticated philosophy of self-actualization.

1. Marx thinks that at the next stage people work to fulfill themselves, for the creative, self-actualizing joy of it.

1. What makes something work is not whether it is difficult or easy, but how we relate to it. e. g. we are not alienated when we mow the grass for our parents of help a friend move.

1. If we are involved and care about our work we are at home.

1. If we have significant say over how we do something, and it for reasons we understand and for values we hold, we may not like what we do, but we are not alienated from it.

1. Commentary

1. According to the author of the textbook, Marx seems to have confused the evils of industrialization with the evils of capitalism.

1. The author of the textbook is conflicted about the strong strain or resentment and bitterness that runs through contemporary political Marxism.

1. According to the author or the textbook, Marx did not allow for the possibility of societal self-correction.

1. According to the author of the textbook, Marx did not imagine the effects of the great technological revolution we are living through.

1. According to the author of the textbook, Marx seems to rob individuals with any significant capacity for self-determination.

1. According to the author of the textbook, Marx’s emphasis on class and class struggle does not pay enough attention to the individual.

1. According to the author of the textbook, Marx romanticized the proletariat and vilified the bourgeoisie.

1. According to the author of the textbook, Marx’s vision of a fuller, better life places him among the champions of the oppressed and exploited.

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