Karl Marx: Existence and Social Consciousness
A paper written for Classical Sociology, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Introduction
“It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness” – Karl Marx
The above notion by Karl Marx is the base of all his succeeding works; it is Marx’s concept of Man and how he critiqued the existing dominant ideology of German thought, and relates his argument to societal change and history – specifically the relations of production. In order to explain what Marx meant by the proposed notion, I will have to explain Marx’s concept of Man, and how an activity (labour) was a primordial means for Man to gain self-realization, which laid the grounds that Marx conjured his argument on the materialist conception of history. This paper is divided into three sections: 1) Initial Influences: I will be explaining briefly how two thinkers influenced Marx’s thoughts and papers (mainly Hegel), 2) Marx’s Concept of Human Nature: Marx conceptualized Nature and Man through an activity which acts as a intermediary to fulfil Man’s necessities, 3) Conclusion: how the structure of epochs were made up of different modes of production and in turn creating different social conditions for Man that determined their form of social consciousness.
Initial Influences
In the German Ideology (Marx 1980: 164), the dominant German thought during Marx’s time, was one that “descended from heaven to earth”, was in fact embodying the school of Idealism. Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Hegel were important German idealists, and for their idealism, existence does not precede consciousness, because we can only know about existence if we are conscious about it. Grounded in the philosophical thoughts of Kant and Hegel, the ideology of morality, religion and metaphysics were verisimilitudes and depicted history as a consequence of these ideologies. Marx (1980: 164) explained, “They have neither history nor
Introduction
“It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness” – Karl Marx
The above notion by Karl Marx is the base of all his succeeding works; it is Marx’s concept of Man and how he critiqued the existing dominant ideology of German thought, and relates his argument to societal change and history – specifically the relations of production. In order to explain what Marx meant by the proposed notion, I will have to explain Marx’s concept of Man, and how an activity (labour) was a primordial means for Man to gain self-realization, which laid the grounds that Marx conjured his argument on the materialist conception of history. This paper is divided into three sections: 1) Initial Influences: I will be explaining briefly how two thinkers influenced Marx’s thoughts and papers (mainly Hegel), 2) Marx’s Concept of Human Nature: Marx conceptualized Nature and Man through an activity which acts as a intermediary to fulfil Man’s necessities, 3) Conclusion: how the structure of epochs were made up of different modes of production and in turn creating different social conditions for Man that determined their form of social consciousness.
Initial Influences
In the German Ideology (Marx 1980: 164), the dominant German thought during Marx’s time, was one that “descended from heaven to earth”, was in fact embodying the school of Idealism. Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Hegel were important German idealists, and for their idealism, existence does not precede consciousness, because we can only know about existence if we are conscious about it. Grounded in the philosophical thoughts of Kant and Hegel, the ideology of morality, religion and metaphysics were verisimilitudes and depicted history as a consequence of these ideologies. Marx (1980: 164) explained, “They have neither history nor
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