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Lecture 13. Feuerbach Philosophy and development of the
Marxist philosophy

1. Anthropologic Marxism of Feuerbach.

2. Marxism and social philosophy.

It’s very important to show foreign students the inner logic of the
philosophic development in classic European culture, which unlike the

eastern paradigm, is characterized by disagreements of opposed schools,
trends, currents and methods. Such criticism and opposition are
characteristics of German classics where anthropologic materialism,

presented by Feuerbach, changed into absolute idealism.
In the centre of Feuerbach’s philosophy there is a human being
with all his feelings, a “loving being”. From a human being, as the
abstraction, he passed to his gender essence, which was formed as a

fundamental philosophic category in one of the concepts of
metaphysical materialism. Main principles of his considerations
Feuerbach introduced in the works: “The Essence of Christianity”,

“Main Principles of the Philosophy of the Future”.
Feuerbach was the first in the historical science to apply the
concept of alienation to religious phenomena. Religious feelings are

explained by him as a result of human fear. To Feuerbach’s mind, the
main thing is the relationship between people, where the categories of
love from “ego” to “you” and vice versa are interrelated, only in this

case the abstract need of God is absent. Using the statement “Human is
the God to human”, the author finds belief in himself, hope and support
among people. Certainly, this German philosophy made a great
contribution to the general world outlook of his time and to the traditions

of European anthropologic schools.
The next question is connected with the concept of Marxism as an
integral spiritual tradition in the European culture. K. Marx (1818-1883)

and F. Engels (1820-1895) acted from the positions of the materialistic
understanding of the nature and society development. In such famous
works as “The German Ideology”, “Economic and Philosophical
Manuscripts of 1844”, “Capital” the number of problems concerning the

human being are explained apart from idealistic and speculative
considerations. Marxists formulated their philosophic knowledge
through the understanding of the main philosophic questions, through

the notion of philosophic materialism and dialectics that make up a
single study. Many progressive sites of these studies, especially,

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