A Study On Stirner’s Influence On The Process Of Marx’s Establishment Of Materialist Conception Of History

With respect to the creation of materialist conception of history,Feuerbach is always deemed as the most crucial part for two reasons.First and foremost,Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels first expounded materialist conception of history in chapter of Feuerbach in The German Ideology;secondly,in the work Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy,Engels claimed Feuerbach as the first one ever“exploded the system” and “broke the spell”.The editors of MEGA~2 in 2017,however,put the chapter of St.Max at the core and therefore,making the “Stirner”,who had been“silent” for many years,return to the spotlight.Main reasons for such phenomenon are the following: firstly,according to the latest bibliographical findings,Marx germinated the idea of writing a chapter on Feuerbach in the midst of writing the chapter on St.Max;secondly,the main opponent of The German Ideology was Stirner rather than Feuerbach.Ensuing Hegel’s death,the Young Hegelians,who sought to improve the situation,employed the weapon of “religious criticism” to wage a bitter struggle over the question of “what is God”.And the main polemicists were Strauss and Bruno Bauer.Underpinned by Strauss’ s reduction of God to “man”,Feuerbach argued that God was “only the fantastic reflection of our own essence”.Fully aware of the “blind spot” in Feuerbach’s critique,Stirner pointed out the isomorphism of morality and religion through his critique of Feuerbach,and further revealed that both freedom and morality and state and society represented the aspirations of a particular class for a new order.In the hierarchy,Stirner,through his elaboration on the historical conception,denounced religion,morality,freedom,the state and society to “ideas”.And hence,Stirner concluded,ideas ruled the world.Despite the fact that Stirner accurately perceived that over two millennia these ideas had been recurring with changing forms,he failed to explain how they had been able to endure by changing forms.Upon his encounter with the issue of “material interests”,the young Marx embarked on his research into the economics.Soon the philosopher was struck by dual shocks following his confrontation with Stirner’s critique of ideology: firstly,he was keenly aware of the importance of Stirner’s critique of ideology,yet Stirner’s critique did not go deeper into the substance;secondly,Marx probed into the problem that Stirner had failed to address and touched the tension between social existence and social consciousness,and between productive forces and production relationships.It was on the basis of such clarification of social existence and social consciousness,the productive forces and the production relationships,that Marx sublated the humanitarian conception of history but created the materialist conception of history.