Materialism and Critique: The Schelling and Feuerbach Responses to Hegel

Abstract

The third aspect of the critical method to be examined is its relationship to both idealism and materialism. The key issue here focuses on the ontological dimensions of Marx’ categories of political economy and the exact reality to which they refer. With this new approach to Marx’ method the simple correlation or correspondence between concepts and reality has broken down and the interrelationship between these two dimensions has become very problematic and very complex. To what do the categories used by Marx in his analysis of British political economy refer? If your answer is the reality of British capitalism, I believe you are correct. However, what is this reality? Is it the immediate material and historical reality? Is it the reality of the appearances (the mirror of nature and society) or is it the reality of the essence and logic of capitalist society? If the latter, then how are these concepts justified, if the positivist method is not longer accepted? This last question will be dealt with in Chapter Five in the section on ‘theory and praxis’. The two ontological dimensions are not always antithetically juxtaposed in Marx’ own method. The distinctions between them are in most cases much more subtle than a crude opposition to each other.