The Perspectives of Marx and Engels Upon the Role of Religion

Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, and Max Weber were three historical sociologists. Their views have become world renown and have shaped many ways of interpreting the social structure of many modern societies. This essay will take a glimpse into the three sociologists’ ideals and expose the similarities and differences they may have.

Karl Marx was born in Prussia on May of 1818 to a middle class Jewish family. As an adult, Marx attended school in Berlin where he discovered the philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel. Hegel’s main concept was the idea of dialect, which can be explained as the process of logical argumentation and refutation. Marx was greatly influenced by Hegel, which is shown in Marx’s belief that history evolves through a series of predictable conflicts (A+E Television Networks, LLC. 2013). Marx also believed social divisions and civil unrest were due to the increase in industrialization and the widening gap between rich and poor.

Generally, Marx’s position on religion is drawn up in an entirely negative manner. In his writings, he expresses his belief that religion is a set of doctrines intended to stabilize, while at the same time bring into servitude the working class people. In addition to that, he argues that the society’s inclination towards religious excitement serves to represent a reaction to disaffection. Also, Marx contends that, since religion causes human beings to feel delusive happiness it makes an erroneous mental representation in as well as of itself. Indeed to him, it is an instrument utilized to sustain cultural systems together with ideologies that in most cases encourages oppression in the society (Parsons 38-46).

Following the Industrial Revolution in 19th century Europe, change was in full swing and religion began to have different meanings for different people. The upper-class citizens used Religion, namely Christianity, and the power that it possessed in an attempt to keep their high status in society, while the lower class turned to faith so that their lives could possibly improve. Instead of religion being the cornerstone of faith and worship amongst all people, it was being used for power and money by the upper class. Even worse, religious leaders were using the upper class people as well, gaining money and authority from their endorsement. A man by the name of Karl Marx saw

Marx’s proposition about the role of philosophers in ‘changing the world’ is one of his most oft quoted lines yet it was written early in his personal intellectual and philosophical development. It is the 11th note in his Thesis on Feuerbach (1888) and seemingly expresses Marx at his most revolutionary if by ‘revolutionary’ we mean allotting a degree of importance to the role of conscious in human action in radically transforming socio-political structures. These early notes give us an in-sight into Marx’s initial ideas that would then come to be more roundly expressed in The German Ideology (1932) and, critically, The Communist Manifesto (1848). Marx was perhaps at his most ‘revolutionary’ in his youth because, at other times, he seemingly rejects the idea that intellectual interpretations and human actions are the principle factors in transforming society. For example, in the Communist Manifesto he writes, “[…] the theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way based on ideas or principles that have been invented, or discovered, by this or that would-be universal reformer. They merely express, in general terms, actual relations springing from an existing class struggle, from a historical movement going on under our very eyes” (1848, p. 50).

Hegel was the most important philosopher in Germany. During the course of the nineteenth century, he was regarded as the greatest and most unique thinker ever since Kant. His view that history was guided by the Absolute Spirit, which discovered itself through the dialectic process, had a massive influence on nineteenth-century as a philosopher. What is the purpose of the world and rights? After he passed away, his supporters separated into two camps. The Right Hegelians encouraged evangelical orthodoxy and political traditionalism, and the Left Hegelians, encouraged atheism and liberal social equality. The most famous Left Hegelian was Marx, who took on Hegel's ideas about dialectic at the root of his beliefs of dialectical materialism, which

Karl Marx poses an argument in which religion is a manmade invention meant for their happiness and consolation in his Critique of Religious Belief. Marx details the various ways in which religion seems to be the foundation upon which humanity and all of mankind is based off of, and near the end of the passage, he criticizes mankind for drinking from the nectar of the imaginary flower of religion when they should be focusing on the reality that is man. This entire argument, consequently, begs the question of what this reality of human happiness Marx is talking about here. Marx has just completed fending off a counterargument off the necessity of religion by upholding this new standard of happiness. Yet if Marx is not able to explain this happiness

Long before our time, two prominent German philosophers emerged at the forefront of ideology and thinking. These two men were Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche who pioneered the idea of truths, religion, reality, etc. Karl Marx’s essay, “The German Ideology,” otherwise known as Marxism, focused upon the materialistic processes that brought life into our world and the abuse of the burgeouse on the proletariat. This theory later went on to found the core beliefs of communism and played a fundamental role in the world. His theory raised questions of equality, justice, and division of labor which became

The works of German philosopher’s Immanuel Kant and Karl Marx have played significant roles in the development of different sects of philosophy and religion. Immanuel Kant was born in 1724 in Konigsberg, East Prussia, now presently Kaliningrad, to a devout, poverty-stricken family of eleven children. Through his works, it is evident that Kant was raised in the religious teachings and values of pietism as his theories show a heavy influence of his religious upbringing. Kant as a young boy was accustomed to a routine of working and studying, and despite never travelling far from his hometown, he grew to be sociable and witty. Karl Marx was born almost a century later in the town of Trier, present-day Germany, in the year 1818 into a middle-class family. Marx studied a variety of disciplines, including law, philosophy and history, and became a preeminent philosopher, a revolutionary economist and a great leader. The revolutions of his time and his profound disapproval of the capitalist economic state inspired his works, particularly his concepts on authority and exploitation and his theory of history.

The Hegelian dialectic has been utilized by numerous people throughout history, this is acknowledged by Karl Marx. Marx believes that in a time of conflict between royals and townspeople, which revolved around unequal distribution of resources, the Hegelian dialectic was utilized to synthesize a new idea called capitalism. The development of capitalism resolved the conflict between the royals and townspeople. Consequently, a new contradiction arose as result for the materialistic society, which is the conflict of the capitalist versus the working class. It is predicted that, as per Hegel, the presence of these contradicting ideas will eventually result in the creation of a new one.

Marx rejected Hegel’s dialectics based on a movement of human thought and ideas, and argued that dialectics involved contradictions based on an economic system, otherwise known as dialectical materialism. Therefore, the dynamic for change eventually created by a process of dialectics lies in the conflict between two opposing factors (Lee and Newby 2000, pp. 114 - 119).

There are many of sociology's founding figures that have extremely well-built ideas, practices and studies that I could explore, but one renowned philosopher stands out amongst the crowd, and that person is named Karl Marx (1818-1883). In this essay I aim to explore and critically assess his ideas, theories, and studies in his contribution to sociology, and if his ideas, theories and studies are useful to this contribution to sociology.

The introduction of The German Ideology can be attributed to the intellectual influences Karl Marx received from the philosophy of George Friedrich Hegel (“Karl Marx”, par, 2). Hegel’s philosophical concept was based on the idea of the dialectic, which was initially used to describe the procedure of logical argumentation and refutation. While earlier philosophers had treated this signature concept as a process of generating accurate ideas, Hegel argued that these ideas develop based on a constant procedure of disagreement and resolution. He

Marx’s entire theory stated in The German Ideology borrows from his own teacher, Hegel, who he himself argued that consciousness is a continual process called the “dialectic between oppositions” (thesis and antithesis). This is familiar to us due to the “Hegelian Philosophy”. For Marx however the process is instead economic and is amid those with money and

In investigating further the basis of Marx's philosophy, one must note the shared belief of Hegel's and Marx's Dialectics. Dialectics is a philosophy at the heart of Marxism; it holds that all things exist not as what they are, but that every thing is in a transitory stage. An acorn is not simply an acorn; it is a future oak tree. A caterpillar exists as a future butterfly. By this philosophy, which can be understood and accepted rather simply (without an offhand disregard for the uniqueness and importance of each individual present stage of an object); it is Marx's later social implication of this philosophy which would meet resistance (Marx, Capital 103). As it were, Marx's Dialectics, at their heart, were simply a method whereby he claimed to understand more the essence of something, rather than its appearance. An appearance alone- the acorn, the caterpillar- fundamentally ignored the essence of something; the future oak tree, the future butterfly. Appearances were not necessarily deceiving or untrue, they simply did not- and could not- represent the whole of something's existence. A caterpillar is indeed a caterpillar, but since one knows that a