Theses on Feuerbach

1. Introduction

Theses on Feuerbach is a short, unfinished set of eleven aphoristic notes written by Karl Marx in 1845, in which he sketches a new form of materialism centered on human practice (praxis). Although only a few pages long, the text has been treated as a programmatic statement of Marx’s break with both traditional materialism (including Ludwig Feuerbach’s) and German idealism.

The theses focus on how to understand human beings, knowledge, and truth when they are seen not as static entities but as products of historically specific social activity. Marx’s formulations are deliberately compressed; they were private working notes rather than a polished treatise. As a result, interpretation strongly depends on relating them to Marx’s other writings, especially The German Ideology and later economic works.

Since their posthumous publication by Friedrich Engels in 1888, the theses—especially the final, eleventh one—have been read as encapsulating a conception of philosophy that is inseparable from revolutionary practice. Different schools of Marx interpretation have emphasized, respectively, their humanist, anti-humanist, epistemological, or political dimensions, turning this brief document into a major reference point in debates about Marx’s project.

2. Historical and Philosophical Context

2.1 German Philosophy in the Early 19th Century

Theses on Feuerbach arises against the background of classical German philosophy:

Marx had been trained in the Hegelian tradition, but by the 1840s he was distancing himself both from Hegel’s speculative idealism and from the Young Hegelians’ focus on religious criticism.

2.2 Feuerbach and Post-Hegelian Materialism

Ludwig Feuerbach’s The Essence of Christianity (1841) argued that God is a projection of human essence, thereby “bringing theology down to anthropology.” Marx initially welcomed this as a decisive move toward materialism. However, in the theses he contends that Feuerbach still understands humans mainly as individual, sensuous beings and sees critique as contemplative recognition of human essence rather than transformation of social relations.

2.3 Political and Social Milieu

The theses were written in the mid-1840s, a period of intensifying social upheaval and workers’ movements in Europe, especially in the lead‑up to the 1848 revolutions. Marx, living in exile and engaging with socialist and communist circles, was simultaneously studying political economy and developing what would become historical materialism. The text reflects an attempt to formulate a philosophy adequate to these emerging social struggles and to the analysis of capitalist society.

3. Author and Composition

3.1 Marx’s Intellectual Position in 1845

When Marx drafted the Theses on Feuerbach in Brussels (spring 1845), he was in a transitional phase:

The theses capture this moment of reorientation more than they present a fully worked‑out doctrine.

3.2 Circumstances of Composition

Most scholars agree that the theses were composed as brief working notes for Marx himself, possibly as preparatory material for The German Ideology. They are written in Marx’s hand on a single manuscript sheet, without section headings, with some crossings‑out and variants. There is no evidence that Marx sought to publish them or even circulate them widely during his lifetime.

3.3 Posthumous Transmission

After Marx’s death, Friedrich Engels found the manuscript among his papers. In 1888, Engels published an edited version—modernizing some wording and numbering the theses I–XI—as an appendix to his pamphlet Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy. Later critical editions (e.g. MEGA²) reproduce both Engels’s version and a more exact diplomatic transcription of Marx’s manuscript, allowing comparison and fueling debates about the text’s original nuances.

4. Structure and Organization of the Theses

4.1 Aphoristic Form

The Theses on Feuerbach consist of eleven very short statements, each a few sentences at most. They are not organized as a continuous argument with explicit transitions. Instead, each thesis isolates a particular problem or contrast (e.g., “old” vs. “new” materialism, individual vs. social essence) in highly condensed language.

Engels’s later numbering, now standard, gives the text an apparent progression, but the manuscript itself does not show section titles or extensive connective material.

4.2 Thematic Grouping

Commentators often discern a loose internal organization:

Not all scholars accept such neat divisions, but many use them as a heuristic for commentary.

4.3 Relation to Other Works

The theses are often read as programmatic notes whose themes are developed at greater length in The German Ideology (1845–46) and later writings. Structurally, they function less as a self‑sufficient essay than as a compressed outline for a broader rethinking of materialism, knowledge, and social practice.

5. Central Arguments and Key Concepts

5.1 Critique of Contemplative Materialism

Marx argues that earlier materialism, including Feuerbach’s, treats the world primarily as object of contemplation rather than field of human activity. It recognizes sensuous reality but, according to Marx, fails to grasp sensuous human practice—labor, struggle, social interaction—as constitutive of both subject and object.

5.2 Praxis and the Criterion of Truth

A central claim is that practice (praxis) provides the decisive test of knowledge:

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Die Frage, ob dem menschlichen Denken gegenständliche Wahrheit zukomme, ist keine Frage der Theorie, sondern eine praktische Frage.

— Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, Thesis II

Proponents of “praxis” readings highlight this as an epistemological shift: truth is not settled by contemplation alone but by practical ability to transform reality.

5.3 Human Essence as Ensemble of Social Relations

Marx rejects an abstract, ahistorical human essence:

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Das menschliche Wesen ist kein dem einzelnen Individuum inwohnendes Abstraktum. In seiner Wirklichkeit ist es das Ensemble der gesellschaftlichen Verhältnisse.

— Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, Thesis VI

This reconceives individuals as shaped by, and intelligible through, historically specific social relations, rather than by a fixed nature.

5.4 Revolutionary Practice and Change of Circumstances

Theses VIII–X stress that social life is essentially practical, that circumstances are changed by human activity, and that “the educator must himself be educated.” These points are often taken to prefigure Marx’s later emphasis on class struggle and on the mutual transformation of agents and structures.

Different interpreters emphasize either the anthropological side (focus on human capacities and alienation) or the structural side (focus on relations and modes of production), leading to divergent readings of the text’s core argument.

6. Famous Passages and the Eleventh Thesis

6.1 Praxis as Test of Truth (Thesis II)

Thesis II, quoted above, is widely cited in discussions of Marx’s epistemology. Some commentators stress its continuity with earlier pragmatic or practice‑based notions of truth; others see it as a distinctive claim that social‑historical practice—not mere individual experiment—confirms or refutes theoretical claims.

6.2 Human Essence and Social Relations (Thesis VI)

Thesis VI’s formulation of human essence as the “ensemble of social relations” has become a key reference for social and political theory. Humanist interpreters emphasize its affirmation of human capacities realized through sociality; structuralist and Althusserian readers highlight its displacement of inner essence by relational, historical determinations.

6.3 The Eleventh Thesis

The most famous line appears in Thesis XI:

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Die Philosophen haben die Welt nur verschieden interpretiert; es kömmt drauf an, sie zu verändern.

— Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, Thesis XI

Common translations render this as:

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“The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.”

This sentence has often been taken as a slogan for activist or revolutionary philosophy. Some traditions read it as a call to abandon theory in favor of practice; others interpret it as a demand for a new kind of theory intrinsically bound up with transformative practice. Philological discussions sometimes note small variations between Marx’s manuscript and Engels’s printed version, though most agree that the basic sense remains unchanged.

7. Legacy and Historical Significance

7.1 Role in Marxist Theory

Once published in 1888, the Theses on Feuerbach quickly came to be seen as a concise statement of Marx’s practical materialism and his break with Feuerbachian humanism. Engels’s framing encouraged reading them as a bridge between classical German philosophy and historical materialism, and later Marxists often treated key formulations (especially about praxis and human essence) as foundational.

7.2 Influence on Later Currents

The theses have been important for a range of intellectual movements:

7.3 Continuing Debates

Scholars continue to debate:

• How far the theses anticipate Marx’s later economic and political analyses.
• Whether they commit Marx to a philosophical humanism or instead undermine traditional notions of essence.
• How to interpret the relationship between theory and practice implied by the Eleventh Thesis.

Despite their brevity, the theses remain a central reference point in discussions of Marx’s method, the nature of materialism, and the role of philosophy in social transformation.