The End Of Speculative Philosophy And Marx's Philosophical View

Karl·Korsch is one of the representatives of early western Marxism. In the 1920s, he found a tendency not to be neglected in the field of philosophy with his penetrating perception , that is to deny Marxist Philosophy. Korsch made his comments on this tendency with his profound originality and published his most important philosophical work《Marxism and Philosophy》to set forth this question. In 21st century after 80 years, this question comes into notice of academia again, more and more scholars begin to discuss the question of relationship between Marxism and philosophy, and it is named"Korsch-Question". This article starts with Korsch′s《Marxism and Philosophy》and combines with Korsch′s view and Marx′s classical text to analyse the question in depth.Firstly, this article simply explained that Karsch put forward this problem, because when there was a tendency of philosophy that both bourgeois philosophers and Marxists had negative Marxism having its own philosophical content. This kind of speech would bring about terrible influence in the development of Marxism even Communist Movement. So, Korsch put forward his own view to this kind of speech. He thought that:"Though there are so many sentences of denying philosophy, the original form of this theory was permeated by philosophical thinking completely."With respect to Marx′s attitude towards philosophy, Korsch made an analogy with the theory of the countries′dying out, he thought ,the end of philosophy and the dying out of countries all needed complicated conditions, and it was a very long process. Philosophy could not end because of giving up the word"Philosophy". Korsch′s conclusion is:"Dialectical Materialism of Marx and Engels is a thorough philosophy in nature,……it is a revolutionary philosophy, its mission is opposed to the whole extant order in a peculiar field—Philosophy."To Marx in the 1940s later said some words about negativing philosophy and ending philosophy, Korsch thought:"It looked like that Marx and Engels critiqued philosophy later in an accidental and temporary way. In fact, they were far from their neglect this problem, they actually developed their philosophical criticism more deeply and thoroughly."Properly speaking, Marxist Philosophy is not only to the theoretical critique, but more important is critical in practice. It just like Marx said in《Outline about Feuerbahc》:"The philosophers have only used different ways to interpret the world, but the point is to change the world."His goal is to build a"Change the world for the purpose of"the new philosophy.Next, this paper discusses on the basic view of contemporary scholars about"Korsch-Question". In theoretical circle there have been two ideas all the time. The one is that it was Marx′s"Philosophy period"before 1845. During this period, Marx affirmed philosophy, praise philosophy; but it was Marx′s"Against philosophy period", during this period, Marx began to deny philosophy, critique philosophy, even to abolish philosophy, end philosophy. The other view is that Marx never left philosophy all his life. The philosophy that Marx critiqued after 1940s was traditional speculative philosophy which represented with German classical philosophy. He wanted to reform philosophy, made it not only the speculative philosophy, but also with a view to the reality of the people, to change the world. This is the very Marx′s philosophical revolution. We think that the emergence of different views about"The relationship between Marxism and Philosophy", the most important reason is that Marx had complicated attitudes towards philosophy and uncertain discussions. So, what actually is Marx′s attitude towards philosophy? The key of this problem is how to understand"Philosophy". If we only treat it as no critical speculative philosophy, then Marx did end philosophy; But if we treat it as a kind of world outlook or thinking mode, then Marx did not end philosophy, but also created a kind of brand-new philosophy, that is Practical Philosophy which aims at"change the world"with a view to"Human society or the Socialization of mankind".Finally, this paper briefly introduces its own point of view. Since Marxism is philosophy in essence, so how to position Marx′s philosophy is an unavoidable question. We base on Marx′s discussions and support the view of naming Marx′s new philosophy as"Practice Philosophy". Because"Practice"is the most basic concepts and core category of Marx′s philosophy, it was Marx who first elevated"Practice"to ontology of philosophy. It could say that leaving the practice view point we could not understand the essence of Marx′s philosophy. But, here is to point out that we could not understand"Practice"as the practice of human activity, but a"practice-view of thinking mode", namely, we should treat"practice-view"as a"thinking mode"to understand people and the relationship between human and the world. In other word, we should regard"practice-view of thinking mode"as a principle of interpretation, starting from the people′s internal contradiction to understand and explain all philosophical problem. This kind of thinking mode had humanity, criticalness, revolution and times, this is the true meaning of Marx′s philosophical revolution.In a word, this paper takes Korsch′s《Marxism and Philosophy》as breakthrough point, bases on Marx′s classical text, affirmed that Marx had ended traditional speculative philosophy and created a kind of brand-new philosophy. After that, we briefly discuss that Marxism is philosophy in essence and position Marx′s new philosophy as"Practice Philosophy"which has humanity, criticalness, revolution and times.