Chen Xueming: Importance Should Be Attached to Marx's Critique of Religious Teleology
According to the renowned American Marxist theorist J. B. Foster, "rational materialism as a complex worldview" generally encompasses three dimensions: first, ontological materialism, which emphasizes the unilateral dependence of social existence on physical existence; second, epistemological materialism, which emphasizes the independent existence of the objects of scientific research; and third, practical materialism, which emphasizes the essential role of human transformative power in the process of transforming social formations and their reproduction. Many believe that Marx’s materialism is primarily "practical materialism." In reality, however, Marx expounded his practical materialism within a "more general materialist conception of nature and science." That is to say, while expounding practical materialism, Marx simultaneously "accepted both 'ontological materialism' and 'epistemological materialism'."
J. B. Foster further posits that Marx’s materialism had already formed during his youth, and that Marx embarked on the materialist path primarily through a critique of religious teleology [1]. In this process, the materialist theories of Epicurus exerted a significant influence on Marx. Foster arrived at this conclusion through a study of Marx’s "doctoral dissertation." Here, we shall explore his research into Marx’s doctoral dissertation to see how he argues for this perspective.
I
In the view of J. B. Foster, as early as his youth—the period when Marx was a "Left Hegelian"—he began to contemplate the conflict between speculative philosophy [2] and materialism, striving to transcend the idealism of the "Left Hegelians." Consequently, Marx’s materialist conception of nature had actually begun to take shape during his youth, specifically manifesting in his study of the doctoral dissertation, The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature.
Among the many philosophers of ancient Greece, why did Marx have a special affinity for Epicurus, calling him "the greatest Greek enlightener"? J. B. Foster believes the reason lies in the fact that Epicurus was the greatest materialist thinker of ancient Greece. Foster resolutely opposes those who view Marx’s doctoral dissertation as merely "an account of Epicurean self-consciousness described in Hegelian terminology," thereby erasing the "connection between Epicureanism and the British and French materialism of the Enlightenment." He emphasizes that Marx’s doctoral dissertation was "not merely a curious work left over from his period of Hegelian influence," but actually transcended Hegelian views to reach "concordance with Epicurus’s materialist dialectics." Furthermore, by "drawing great inspiration from Epicurus," Marx’s dissertation constituted an "indirect effort" to "understand the problems posed to Hegelian philosophy by the British and French Enlightenment tradition of materialism."
Given Marx’s devotion to Epicurean materialism, which specific content within Epicurus’s materialist theory interested him most? J. B. Foster argues that Marx was most interested in Epicurus’s opposition to religious teleology. Marx highly affirmed Epicurus’s critique and negation of teleology.
J. B. Foster criticizes those researchers of Marx’s doctoral dissertation who overlook or even ignore Marx’s admiration for Epicurus’s opposition to religious teleology; in fact, Marx’s philosophical journey began precisely with this admiration. To understand Marx’s youthful philosophical views, one must begin by analyzing his praise for Epicurus’s opposition to religious teleology. Foster believes that, influenced by Epicurus in his doctoral dissertation, Marx proposed a critique of religion for the first time, "calling for the expulsion of all supernatural and teleological principles from nature." Marx even regarded the opposition to religious teleology as the primary characteristic of Epicurean philosophy. Drawing on Epicurus’s views, Marx pointed out that it is precisely in "fear, especially in an inextinguishable inner fear," that "man is as passive as an animal" and "man’s self-determination is completely deprived." Such fear is brought about by religion; making humans as passive as animals is the greatest sin of religion. Precisely because Epicurean philosophy stands in opposition to religion—as Marx revealed, "Epicurus made God disappear from the world"—all supporters of Christianity hated Epicurus so intensely that they cursed him as a "pig." Marx and Engels noted this in The German Ideology: "Lucretius praised Epicurus as the hero who was the first to overthrow the gods and trample religion underfoot; for this reason, from Plutarch to Luther, all Church Fathers have called Epicurus the number one atheist philosopher and a pig. It is also for this reason that Clement of Alexandria said that when Paul raged against philosophy, he was referring only to the philosophy of Epicurus."
What J. B. Foster intends to demonstrate is that Marx gradually formed his own materialism in the process of admiring Epicurus’s opposition to religious teleology. Here, Marx "viewed the essence of Epicurean materialism as his idea regarding the mortality of the human universe." In Foster's view, this is the "key to Marx's study of Epicurus." Epicurus’s expulsion of God from the realm of nature deeply influenced Marx, becoming the cornerstone of Marx’s conception of nature. Foster believes the following words by Marx are highly illustrative: "As long as a single drop of blood pulses in its world-conquering and absolutely free heart, philosophy will always cry out to its adversaries the words of Epicurus: 'Not the man who denies the gods worshipped by the multitude, but he who affirms of the gods what the multitude believes of them, is truly impious.'" In Foster’s view, what Marx valued was precisely the materialist light and enlightenment that Epicurus brought to humanity in the process of opposing religious teleology. He states: "For Marx, Epicurus symbolized the bringing of light or revelation; this revelation was saying 'no' to the religious view of nature; it was a form of materialism, as well as a form of naturalism and humanism. Epicurean philosophy valued the world of sensation and experience, and saw that reason has a role in explaining this world, thereby using reason to provide an explanation of the world without the need for gods living in the intermundia [3]."
J. B. Foster certainly also noticed that when Marx affirmed Epicurus’s opposition to religious teleology, he was still a member of the Young Hegelians, and the doctoral dissertation expressing this affirmation was merely a "work of a transitional period." However, in Foster's view, this does not mean that Marx’s views at the time were divorced from materialism. The entire crux lies in the fact that Marx, like other Young Hegelians, viewed Hegelianism as a revolutionary philosophy, and emphasized that the revolutionary nature of Hegelian philosophy was primarily reflected in its "anti-religious substance"—in its "incorporation of reason in its ideal state into radical Enlightenment thought." Precisely because of this, it was possible for Marx, as a Young Hegelian, to become enamored with Epicurus’s opposition to religious teleology and embark on the path of materialism. Foster points out that because the transcendence of Hegelian theory treated all previous philosophical systems as part of its own development, "it was possible for Marx to see Epicurus’s revolutionary self-consciousness and Anglo-French materialism as largely consistent." Marx’s critique of religion took the form of criticizing the philosophy of nature within German ideology while enthusiastically absorbing the naturalistic and materialist views of figures like Epicurus. Foster states with great certainty: "In fact, the contradiction between materialism and speculation was not entirely irreconcilable; Marx had resolutely embarked on the path of materialism, and he was so steadfast that although his thought was speculative (or idealistic) in terms of outer form, it became increasingly consistent with materialism in essence."
II
J. B. Foster believes there might not be much disagreement regarding the point that Marx gradually formed his materialism through affirming Epicurus’s critique of religious teleology in his doctoral dissertation. The problem lies in the fact that the theme of Marx’s dissertation was the analysis of the differences between Epicurus’s philosophy of nature and Democritus’s atomism—specifically, how Epicurus’s philosophy of nature transcended the mechanistic and deterministic tendencies of Democritus’s atomism. Democritus’s atomism represents the materialism of the ancient world, or rather, the paradigm of ancient materialism. Does Epicurus’s transcendence of this materialism mean, as many understand it, that Epicurus abandoned materialism? Correspondingly, does Marx’s affirmation of this transcendence mean, as many understand it, that the stance Marx held was not pure materialism, and therefore his affirmation of Epicurus’s critique of religious teleology cannot be understood entirely from a materialist standpoint? This is precisely what J. B. Foster aims to clarify. He emphasizes that Marx’s analysis of Epicurus’s transcendence of Democritus was a dialectical one—a transcendence of mechanistic and deterministic tendencies, not a transcendence of the materialist conception of nature as a whole. Therefore, the philosophical outlook Marx formed by analyzing the differences between Epicurus’s philosophy of nature and Democritus’s atomism was not idealism, but materialism. He emphasizes that by following Epicurus’s transcendence of mechanism and determinism, Marx gradually developed toward a dialectical materialism, which can be termed "practical materialism." However, it must be noted that because Marx followed Epicurus in transcending mechanism and determinism based on a correct understanding of that transcendence, the materialism Marx formed through this analysis, while no longer mechanistic, remained rooted in a "realist ontology"—that is, a "materialist view of nature."
Indeed, as J. B. Foster points out, the previously dominant interpretation of Epicurus was that he was merely an imitator of Democritus, whereas Marx’s contribution was to reveal the distinction between the two: "The dominant interpretation of Epicurus was the one within German Romanticism, which held that he was merely a poor imitator of Democritus, merely adding 'arbitrary whims' to Democritus’s theory. Marx, by contrast, believed that Epicurus’s philosophical system parted ways with Democritus’s more skeptical system by treating the empirical world as the 'objective appearance' of the atomic world, rather than merely Democritus’s 'subjective hypothesis'."
J. B. Foster further points out that "Epicurean philosophy contains the view that knowledge of both the world of atoms (which are imperceptible to the senses) and of sensory reality is evoked by the inner demands of human reason, a reason embodied in abstract individuality and freedom (i. e., self-determination)." Foster argues that Marx's discourse, beginning with the "theory of atomic declination," demonstrates that he had already identified where the primary distinction between Epicurean philosophy and Democritean atomism lay. Marx determined that Epicurus's emphasis on the "declination of the atom" [4] enabled him to "create a realm of contingency and the possibility of escaping determinism." Marx was indeed fascinated by what Epicurus called the "deviation of the atom," and by how Epicurean philosophy "deviated" from all restricted modes of existence to depict a world of freedom and self-determination. Epicurus believed that the "law of the atom" is "repulsion"—the collision between atoms—which is entirely devoid of any form of "fixity." This idea deeply attracted Marx, who asserted that Epicurus was the "first to grasp the essence of repulsion" and that Epicurus's "declination" "broke the bonds of fate."
Foster argues that because Epicurus transcended the mechanistic tendencies of Democritus's atomism, he thereby overcame a serious defect of ancient materialism; this was a major discovery by Marx. Ancient materialism always reduced thought to "passive sensation," which itself was, as Democritus said, "merely the product of an ungraspable power." Precisely because ancient materialism possessed such a defect, "idealism gained the honor of providing the 'active' side for 'dialectical sensation,'" and "it was Marx who clearly saw that this activity had already appeared as early as Epicurean materialism, emerging alongside a concept of sensation linked to change and 'passing away'." According to Marx's research, the foundation of Epicurus's entire philosophy lay in treating perception as a temporal process. Marx believed that "only in Epicurus is appearance understood as appearance, that is, as the alienation of essence, which represents itself in its reality as this alienation." Marx recognized that in Epicurus, "there was already an understanding of the existence of the self-consciousness of alienation, and an abstract understanding of knowledge involving both sensation and intellect"; one can even find the view that "our awareness of the world develops continuously with the evolution of the environment that governs existence." Marx once called this aspect of Epicurus's theory the "dialectic of sensory certainty," a phrasing for which J. B. Foster expresses high regard.
III
Admittedly, J. B. Foster spent a great deal of space explaining how Marx affirmed Epicurean philosophy's transcendence of the mechanistic and deterministic tendencies of Democritus's atomism, but this was not the primary aim of Foster’s discourse. What he wants to emphasize is that Marx’s greatness and brilliance lay in his insistence that Epicurus's transcendence was achieved while remaining grounded in materialism. In Foster's view, the importance and practical significance of explaining this latter aspect is not at all inferior to the former. From the perspective of current realities, the greatest danger is not a failure to recognize Marx's affirmation of Epicurus's transcendence of mechanism and determinism, but rather a failure to recognize Marx's affirmation of Epicurus's adherence to a materialist standpoint while carrying out that transcendence.
Foster believes that Marx profoundly recognized that transcending the mechanism and determinism of old materialism could proceed in two directions: first, through a transcendence that leads toward idealism; and second, through a transcendence that persists on a materialist foundation. What Marx sought to demonstrate was that Epicurus's transcendence generally belonged to the latter. Here, Marx put forward three primary grounds: First, in opposing mechanism and determinism, Epicurus naturally emphasized contingency. However, while emphasizing contingency, Epicurus did not negate necessity. Epicurus viewed human actions as products of human freedom, but emphasized that this freedom was not merely a matter of chance events, but also of necessity. Epicurus opposed all rigid determinism, for if one adhered to a deterministic view, life itself would become meaningless; yet, at the same time, Epicurus "defended materialism." "Epicurus never sought to fully negate necessity, but only emphasized the possibility of freedom and the breaking of the bonds of such necessity," which "meant, as he said: everything possible has a cause." Second, Epicurus proposed the "declination of the atom," emphasizing that this declination endowed the atom with freedom. If one were to further derive from the freedom of the atom that the atom possesses a soul—that is, "adding a certain degree of mental elements" to the atom—then such an addition would lead to "non-materialistic principles." Clearly, although Epicurus emphasized the declination and freedom of the atom, he did not go on to propose that the atom possesses a soul or that the atom is a spiritual entity. In Marx's view, only those who emphasize that the declination of the atom "has no cause to explain it" would consider those holding deterministic views to be "illogical" "because the atom itself is causeless," and Epicurus was not such a person. Third, while opposing mechanism and determinism, Epicurus simultaneously opposed religious teleology. One must understand his transcendence of mechanism and determinism in conjunction with his general theoretical position of criticizing religious teleology. "Marx emphasized that the distinctive feature of Epicurean philosophy is manifested to a large extent in its opposition to the determinism of Democritean physics on the one hand, and its opposition to religious teleology on the other." As long as one explores these two oppositions in connection, one can see that Epicurus's transcendence of mechanism and determinism was not intended to lead toward religious teleology and idealism, but was a transcendence achieved while upholding a materialist standpoint.
J. B. Foster focuses on explaining that the reason Marx so emphasized Epicurus's adherence to materialism while transcending mechanism and determinism was to demonstrate that Epicurus was a materialist. In the process of affirming Epicurus as a materialist, Marx formed his own materialist views. Epicurus's materialism was internalized into Marx's own materialism. Marx "had internalized Epicurus's materialism into his own thinking," just as he "internalized Hegelian dialectics into his own thinking." Foster believes that by the time Marx completed his doctoral dissertation, he already possessed the standpoint that materialism ought to have, and this standpoint was not identical to that of the 18th-century French materialists; it bore the characteristics of being non-mechanistic and non-deterministic while simultaneously being anti-teleological. Clearly, this benefited from the study of Epicurean philosophy, and particularly from the dialectical analysis of Epicurus's transcendence of mechanism and determinism. As Foster stated: "His [Marx's] encounter with Epicureanism and the British and French materialists brought him into a face-to-face relationship with what he and Engels later called the 'materialist conception of nature'."
Foster believes that Marx's materialist conception of nature originated from Epicurus's philosophy, but even then, Marx's materialist conception of nature was more thorough than Epicurus's. This is mainly reflected in Marx's criticism that in some instances, Epicurus went too far when transcending mechanism and determinism, thereby giving the impression of departing from a materialist standpoint. As mentioned previously, Epicurus generally transcended mechanism and determinism under the premise of adhering to materialism, but occasionally Epicurus exhibited slight wavering and ambiguity. Foster believes that precisely because Marx was unambiguous in his adherence to the materialist conception of nature, he would never tolerate or overlook Epicurus's slight wavering and ambiguity in this regard. He mainly refers to Marx's criticism in his doctoral dissertation that Epicurus opposed "real possibility." Marx said that Epicurus was a materialist; if he had any fault, it was mainly manifested in the abstraction of possibility. This abstract possibility exaggerated contingency and free will, thereby opposing "real possibility," which recognizes necessity. Consequently, Epicurus occasionally disparaged the positive sciences and occasionally mocked empiricism, which clearly conflicted with his materialist standpoint. In Foster's view, we can fully grasp from Marx's criticism of Epicurus just how resolutely Marx was already adhering to materialism at that time!
We believe that J. B. Foster's research on Marx's "doctoral dissertation" is of profound practical significance. In today's world, many people—including some researchers operating under the banner of Marxism—have developed doubts regarding the following two fundamental questions: first, is Marx actually a materialist? Second, is Marx's materialism opposed to religious teleology? They try by every means possible to "manufacture" a Marx who does not believe in materialism and whose theory is compatible with religious teleology. J. B. Foster's research, through irrefutable facts, clarifies these two basic questions—or rather, it performs the task of "setting things right" [5] regarding these two most fundamental issues.