A Study Of The Religion Critical Thoughts In Marx’s Doctoral Dissertation

Marx’s Doctoral Dissertation,as the first rigorous and logical research work with strong argument,has always been one of the most important documents for people to study his early thoughts.The Dissertation which was named after the Differences between Democritus’ Natural Philosophy and Epicurus’ conducted a microscope-based comparison and discussion of the two’s philosophy,breaking the historically prevalent prejudice that Epicurus plagiarized Democritus’ philosophy and also grasping the basic essence of Epicurus’ philosophy.At the same time,through deep analysis of the natural philosophy of Epicurus,Marx excavated the thoughts of rich self-consciousness and opposition to popular religion and raised his own self-consciousness.Selfconsciousness became a theoretical weapon for Marx then.With this weapon,he gradually revealed the mystery of God,clarified the essence of God,drew conclusions that philosophy and religion are irreconcilable and absolutely opposite,and finally realized to criticize religion fiercely and sharply.The formation of Marx’s scientific religious concept did not occur overnight.The Dissertation as Marx’s first important literature to clarify his thorough atheistic thought was his great attempt in the transformation process of his religious outlook.It is of great significance for studying Marx’s other religious critical thoughts.This thesis takes Marx’s Doctoral Dissertation as the research text.Through the simple elaboration and analysis of the main content of Marx’s Dissertation,this thesis tries to deeply dig its religious critical thought.This thesis concludes three parts.The first part briefly introduces and analyzes the causes of Marx’s Dissertation.By discussing the historical background of Marx writing the Doctoral Dissertation,the thesis shows why Marx chose to study Democritus and Epicurus.In this part,the thesis also briefly discusses the relationship between Marx and young Hegelians who played a significant role in Marx’s Dissertation creation.The second part systematically presents the logic evolution of religious critical thoughts in Marx’s Dissertation,which is also the research emphasis in this thesis.Marx’s atheistic religious attitude,which was not created in a vacuum,was from the enlightenment of Epicurus’ natural philosophy to heighten people’s self-consciousness and its role.And he also tried to expose the essence of God from virtue of self-consciousness.After fully understanding the heart of God,Marx showed that the philosophy and religion are absolutely opposite and pointed out that the task of philosophy is to criticize religion.The third part makes a brief comment on the liberty thought in Marx’s Dissertation.This part also displays a more objective evaluation on the innovation and inadequacies of religious critical thought in Marx’s Dissertation.The thesis’ conclusion briefly expounds Marx’s advancement in religious critical thinking after the Doctoral Dissertation.Mainly focusing on the periods of the Rheinische Zeitung and the German-French Yearbook,the thesis tries to explain that the development of Marx’s religious critical thought is a process of gradual perfection.