From: michael a. lebowitz (mlebowit@SFU.CA)
Date: Fri Apr 14 2006 - 11:23:16 EDT
Anyone have a good answer to this question from PEN-L? Did 'ad
hominen' mean something different then? Is there a question of translation?
cheers,
m
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>
>I like it best presented in fuller quote. But, I have a question, What does
>Marx mean by "demonstrates ad hominem"?
>
>quote:
>
>"Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and
>also the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the
>oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the
>spirit of spiritless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
>
>To abolish religion as the illusory happiness of the people is to demand
>their real happiness. The demand to give up illusions about the existing
>state of affairs is the demand to give up a state of affairs which needs
>illusions. The criticism of religion is therefore in embryo the criticism
>of the vale of tears, the halo of which is religion.
>
>Criticism has torn up the imaginary flowers from the chain not so that man
>shall wear the unadorned, bleak chain but so that he will shake off the
>chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions
>man to make him think and act and shape his reality like a man who has been
>disillusioned and has come to reason, so that he will revolve round himself
>and therefore round his true sun. Religion is only the illusory sun which
>revolves round man as long as he does not revolve round himself.
>
>The task of history, therefore, once the world beyond the truth has
>disappeared, is to establish the truth of this world. The immediate task of
>philosophy, which is at the service of history, once the holy form of human
>self-estrangement has been unmasked, is to unmask self-estrangement in its
>unholy forms. Thus the criticism of heaven turns into the criticism of the
>earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law and the
>criticism of theology into the criticism of politics.....
>
>The weapon of criticism cannot, of course, replace criticism by weapons,
>material force must be overthrown by material force; but theory also
>becomes a material force as soon as it has gripped the masses. Theory is
>capable of gripping the masses as soon as it demonstrates ad hominem, and
>it demonstrates ad hominem as soon as it becomes radical. To be radical is
>to grasp the root of the matter. But for man the root is man himself. The
>evident proof of the radicalism of German theory, and hence of its
>practical energy, is that it proceeds from a resolute positive abolition of
>religion. The criticism of religion ends with the teaching that man is the
>highest being for man, hence with the categorical imperative to overthrow
>all relations in which man is a debased, enslaved forsaken, despicable
>being....."
>
>It's also quite relevant given that it feveals the deep humanism in Marx's
>thought at this point, a humanism which is something folks like the author
>Ravi quotes often reject -- man as center of the universe and all that.
Michael A. Lebowitz
Professor Emeritus
Economics Department
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, B.C., Canada V5A 1S6
Currently based in Venezuela. Can be reached at
Residencias Anauco Suites
Departamento 601
Parque Central, Zona Postal 1010, Oficina 1
Caracas, Venezuela
(58-212) 573-4111
fax: (58-212) 573-7724
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