Marx’s
Philosophy as Practical Hermeneutics
Yu wujin
[Abstract] Marx’s hermeneutics has introduced the concept
of practice into the basic dimension of all understanding and interpretation, and
thus has accomplished the “Copernican revolution” in the history of hermeneutics.
This means that we can not understand and interpret human existential practical
activities from the perspective of idealistic texts, but should understand and
interpret the idealistic texts from the perspective of human existential practical
activities. In this way, Marx’s practical hermeneutics has pointed for us to
the basic direction of the development of hermeneutics.
It’s well known that the adjective word hermeneutisch (“hermeneutic”)
appeared only once in Marx’s personal works, and the noun Hermeneutik (“hermeneutics”)
never appeared. But it does not mean that Marx had no the theory of
hermeneutics. Our research will demonstrate Marx had developed a peculiar
theory of understanding and interpretation, which we may name as “hermeneutics
of practice” (die Hermeneutik der Praxis) and this theory should have an
important place in the developmental history of hermeneutics.
The posing of problem
Before we expound Marx’s practical hermeneutics, it’s
necessary that we firstly analyze the present condition
of this research and the reasons for it. If we are restricted in the
traditional horizon of the study of Marx’s philosophy, Marx’s theory of understanding
and interpretation would be a wholly strange topic for us. There are many
causes leading to this state, and to analyze it theoretically, it includes at
least a misunderstanding of Marx’s philosophy.
In Theses on
Feuerbach Marx remarks: “The philosophers have only interpreted (interpretiert)
the world in various ways; the point is to change (verönden) it.”[1]The
previous researches on Marx’s philosophy often mistake the meaning of this
saying. As if Marx would argue that all previous philosophies are to “interpret
the world”, and only Marx’s philosophy is to “change the world”. This mistake has
not only made Marx oppose sharply to all previous philosophers, but also made “
to interpret the world” oppose sharply to “ to change the world”. The true
meaning of this saying is as such: philosophers “only” (nur) limit themselves
in the interpretation of the world, while Marx’s philosophy is not “only” to
interpret it, but pay more attention to practical activities of change it.
This tells us that the relationship between Marx and
previous philosophers is, on the one hand, not a entirely negative relationship,
but a critical and successive one, at least in the side of “interpretation of
the world”; on the other hand, the understanding and interpretation of the
world is tightly interwoven with the change of the world. As a rational
intentional being, a man’s understanding and interpretation of the world conditions his way of activities. Conversely,
in order to understand and interpret the world, man must firstly live in the
world. That is to say, man understand and interpret the world only on the basis
of existential practical activities. There is a mutual dynamic relationship: On
the one hand, understanding and interpretation determines the way of practice,
on the other hand, understanding and interpretation is unfolded only on the
basis of practical activities. So seen from the perspective of logical
relationship, the practical activities are the premise of understanding and interpretation.
Because previous researchers of Marx’s philosophy dissevered the inner
relationship between the activities of understanding and interpretation and the
activities of practice, they have not thought much of Marx’s theory of
understanding and interpretation, and have not recognized that Marx had already
accomplished a epoch-making revolution in hermeneutics through introducing the
concept of practice.
Secondly, seen from the perspective of the studies in the
theory and history of western hermeneutics, how was Marx’s philosophy taken
then? Discussing the developmental history of hermeneutical theory, western
scholars paid mainly attention to Vico，Schleiermacher,
Droysen, Dilthey, Heidegger, Gadamer, Habermas, Ricoeur, and did not notice
Marx’s excellent contribution to this field at all. Is it because that Marx has
never used the word “hermeneutics”? The answer is “No”. Vico is a good example.
There are also other people who have made great contributions to the
development of hermeneutics without using the word “hermeneutics”. Furthermore,
Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, Ranke, Husserl, upon whom Gadamer ever touched
in Truth and Method (1960), also did
not use the concept of “hermeneutics”. That is to say, valuing the place of a
philosopher in the developmental history of hermeneutics is not determined by his
use of the concept of hermeneutics, but by his putting forwards a few new
essential ideas of the basic problem of hermeneutics－the problem of understanding and interpretation.
Marx’s philosophy has been distorted on this problem. When
talking about the understanding and interpretation of religious text, Gadamer
writers:” but what will Marxists say about this? Because Marxists think that
only when they regard religious doctrines as the reflection of the interests of
the ruling class, can they understand all religious doctrines. Undoubtedly,
Marxism will not accept the premise that human Dasein is dominated by the
problem of God. ”[2]With regard
to Hegel’s thought of dialectic, Gadamer also points out: “the whole theory,
which contains the Left’s critique of pure intellectual reconciliation (it can
not explain the true change of the world), and the turning philosophy into
politics, is inevitably the self-cancellation of philosophy.” He makes a note
under this saying: “this point can still be noticed in present Marxist texts.”[3]
How do we deal with Gadamer’s arguments?
1. Gadamer has not clearly distinguished Marx from so-called Marxists. In fact, when
talking about so-called French Marxists in 1980s, Marx said: “I only know that
I myself am not a Marxist.”[4]
2. Gadamer thinks wrongly that because Marx understands and
interprets the problem of religion and philosophy from the angle of politics,
he can not touch upon the fundamental problem of Being-in-the-world of Dasein. Actually,
Marx’s excellent contribution to the hermeneutical theory is that he opens a
new way for the understanding and interpretation of all texts from the
dimension of political-economy which is the basic contention of
Being-in-the-world of Dasein. We will discuss it when we expound the thought of
Heidegger.
3.
Gadamer has paid much attention to the problem of hermeneutical application,
and highly evaluates Aristotle’s the concept of “practical knowledge” (phronesis)
in one chapter (its title is the actual
meaning Aristotle’s hermeneutics) of Truth
and Method. He has also discussed the typical meaning of hermeneutics of
law at the same time of pointing out: “we have already demonstrated that the
application is not a subsequent and accidental element of phenomena of
understanding, but has totally defined the activities of understanding from the
very start.”[5] Strangely,
when tracing back to the history of hermeneutics, Gadamer puts aside Marx’s
treatise on the relationship between understanding and interpretation and practical
activities which has affected on the development of hermeneutics more profoundly
than Aristotle’s the concept of phronesis. In addition, he has also totally
overlooked the great contribution to hermeneutics of Marx’s the critique of Hegel’s philosophy of Right
and other works. In the book of The
Selected Essays of Philosophy Gadamer selected Marx’s three essays: An Introduction to Critique of Hegel’s
Philosophy of Right, Theses on
Feuerbach, and The Fetishism of
Commodities and the Secret thereof. Apparently, Gadamer affirms Max’s such
works only from the angle of the general development of philosophy, and
overlookes their important place in the developmental history of hermeneutics.
Lastly, let
we see how Heidegger and Habermas recognize the historical place and its role
of Marx’s theory of understanding and interpretation. Differing from the previous
researchers of Marx’s philosophy and those of hermeneutics and its history, Heidegger
recognizes subtly the importance of Marx’s philosophy. He has established “hermeneutics
of Dasein” (die Hermeneutik des Daseins) in
Being and Time, and so accomplished the famous “ontological turning” in the
history of hermeneutics. According to Heidegger, understanding is the basic way
of Being-in-the-world of Dasein, the task of hermeneutics of Dasein is to ask
and disclose the meaning of Being through existential activities of Dasein. Although
Heidegger later no longer used the concept of hermeneutics, he affirms fully
the important place of Marx’s in the history of the inquiring of the meaning of Being, he remarks: “No matter how
man treats the communist doctrine and its fundament, according to the history
of Being, a basic experience of something which has a world-historical meaning, has been disclosed in
communism.”[6] When he
touches upon Marx’s theory of alienation, he further remarks: “since Marx
reached a essential historical dimension through the experience of alienation,
Marx’s theory of history is superior to other theories of history. According to
me, because neither Husserl nor Satre has recognized the essence of the historical
thing in Being, so neither phenomenology nor existentialism has reached up to
the dimension of creative conversation with Marxism.”[7]
Contrary to Gadamer’s superficial attitude towards Marx, Heidegger has a deep
insight of the historical depth of Marx’s theory of understanding and
interpretation. Of course, he does not expound the place and role of Marx’s
theory in the developmental history of hermeneutics, but he inspires us to do
this work.
A important thought of Heidegger’s “hermeneutics of Dasein”
is that he puts forwards the theory of the pre-structure of understanding from
the standpoint of historicality of understanding, and justifies “the circle of
hermeneutics”（der Zirkel der Hermeneutik）. He pointed out: “what is decisive is not to
get out of the circle but to come into it in the right way.”[8]
Gadamer introduces the concept of “tradition” (die Tradition) in Truth
and Method, and emphasizes that any understanding is unfolded in the frame
of tradition, so he led Heidegger’s thought into extreme. Evidently Gadamer
forget the deep meaning of Heidegger’s point of “to come into it in the right
way”. That is to say, an interpreter is not a passive accepter of the hermeneutical
situation in which he live, but an active reflector.
Habermas has grasped this and this has constituted the
central point of his dispute with Gadamer. According to Habermas, an
interpreter is not the passive carrier of tradition, but an active reflector
and critic of tradition. Tradition is not unchangeable, its evolution and
structural turning in some era is always caused by the reflection and critique
of the interpreters. Habermas emphasizes that the reflection and critique is
not unimportant activities, but a clarification of the hermeneutical situation,
which has been emphasized by Marx, namely, the critique of ideology. If
hermeneutics is not associated with the critique of ideology, its rightfulness
is doubtful. Similar to Heidegger’s hermeneutics of Dasein, Habermas’ “critical
hermeneutics” (die kritische Hermeneutik) also indicates the
important way to returning back to Marx and deepening the research of hermeneutics.
Marx’s theory of understanding and interpretation
The main content of the theory of understanding and
interpretation contained in Marx’s practical hermeneutics is as follow:
1. The practical activities are the basic of all
understanding and interpretation.
In the hermeneutics researches of Dilthey, who was almost
of the same time as Marx, and in the researches before his, ideas and texts are
always studied in a contemplative way. Although they also research the
relationship between ideas, texts and human actual lives, they did not understand
the actual life as the practical activities. Marx’s first contribution to
hermeneutics is that he introduces the concept of practice into hermeneutics
and regards it as the basis and the premise of all understanding and
interpretation.
Firstly, Marx points out that all understanding and interpretation
originate from practices. It’s well known that all understanding requires at
least three conditions: 1. the interpreter must live in the world; 2. the
interpreter must has sound intelligence; 3. understanding proceeds by the
medium of language. Marx tell us that the three conditions are all created in
the process of practical activities, especially the keeping-life labor of
production, hence the appearing and development of human understanding and
interpretation is tightly attached to practical activities. However, with the
development of human practical activities and the division of physical labor
and mental work, the inner relationship between the activities of understanding
and interpretation and the activities of practice becomes more and more blurry.
So a general illusion and reversal appears: man not only regards the ideas and
texts as an independent kingdom, but also tried to interpret human practical
activities according to it. The classical hermeneutics can not get rid of this
illusion. It is Marx who reverses again the general illusion and reversal
through clarifying the origin of understanding and interpretation, he remarks: “do
not to interpret according to ideas, but to interpret ideas according to
material practice.”[9]
Secondly, Marx indicates that from the perspective of the
contents of them, all understanding and interpretation point to the activities
of practice. In Theses on Feuerbach Marx
writes: “all social life is essentially practical, all mysteries which lead
theory into mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the
comprehension of this practice.”[10]
This saying contains evidently two meanings: 1. the contents of all ideas,
theories, and texts point always to practical activities. For example, in the
final analysis, the Mystic, such as natural religion, witchery and myth which
are generally believed by primitive man, originate from human practical
activities. 2. the later generations must firstly understand practical
activities in which the predecessors ever lived in order to exactly understand
predecessors’ ideas, theories and texts. Engels ever talked about an anecdote
in his book The Origin of Family, Private
ownership and State that Wagner ever wrote in the words of Nibelungenlied,
when concerning the description of the primitive society: “who ever heard that
brother regard his sister as his wife?” Obviously, Wagner understood the ideas
and customs of primitive people in the way of thinking of modern people. Marx
criticizes on this: “it is moral that sister was ever looked upon as wife in
primitive times.”[11]
This remark indicates that any exact understanding and interpretation can not
be restricted in ideas and texts themselves, but preconditions the
clarification of the inner relationship between texts and the practical
activities from which texts originate.
Lastly, Marx points out that from the perspective of the
functions of them, all understanding and interpretation serve human practical
activities. For example, when almost every class begins to revolt, it often
explains its own interests as the general interests of the whole society. Or
else, it can not mobilizes the majority of the society to join into its
revolutionary practice. So Marx points sharply out: “individual class can
claims the general mastery only for the sake of general rights of society.”[12]
In addition, religion as a mystic interpretation of self and world, the reasons
for its appearance and great development consist in its very important
functions, especially the consolation of human suffering. The Chinese saying of
“No trouble, No coming to temple.” indicates directly the utility of religious
belief. The western’s religious belief is often regarded as ultra-utility, but
the factual state is not so. For example, the meaning of the German adjective “fromm”
is “pious”, but the noun “Fromme” is interpreted
as “interests”, the verb “frommen” is
interpreted as “be beneficial to”. We can discover from the relationship
between “pious” and “be beneficial to” that the western’s religious belief is
also conditioned by the principle of utility.[13]
Of course, what Marx emphasized is to disclose the political utility of the
ruling class’ maintaining religion. It is just in this sense that Marx says: “religion
is the opium of people.”[14]
To sum up, Marx clarifies the ontological premise of all
understanding and interpretation by introducing the concept of practice.
2. Historicality(historicity?) is the basic character of
all understanding and interpretation.
According to Marx, any practical activities are the activities
which are pursued by real man in the specific historical condition, the
historicality of these practices must result in the historicality of
understanding and interpretation. Marx writes: “This sum of productive forces,
capital funds and social forms of intercourse, which every individual and
generation finds in existence as something given, is the real basis of what the
philosophers have conceived as ‘substance’ and ‘essence of man’.”[15]Whether
or not the interpreter is wallowed in this illusion that his understanding and
interpretation is fully free, he must be factually limited in his
historicality, his understanding and interpretation is always unfolded on the
horizon which is set up by his historicality. From the standpoint of the
historicality of understanding and interpretation, Marx reaches three
conclusions:
Firstly, morality, religion, metaphysics and other
ideologies lose its own appearance of independence: “They have no history, no
development; but men, developing their material production and their material
intercourse, alter, along with this their real existence, their thinking and
the products of their thinking.”[16]Here
what is denied by Marx is not the history of various forms of consciousness,
but the illusion which thinks that these forms of consciousness have their own
independent history. According to Marx, the different contents of various forms
of consciousness in different times are conditioned by the historicality of the
practical activities at that time. This point inspires us that we can not
restrict ourselves in the surfaces of the texts when we research them, but we
must be good at discovering the imprints on the texts which are printed by the temporal
practice through understanding and interpretation.
Secondly, the thoughts and ideas of the ruling class which
dominates over the material practical activities must also dominate over the
activities of understanding and interpretation. Marx writers: “For instance, in
an age and in a country where royal power, aristocracy, and bourgeoisie are
contending for mastery and where, therefore, mastery is shared, the doctrine of
the separation of powers proves to be the dominant idea and is expressed as an
‘eternal law’.”[17]Here Marx
puts actually forwards the problem of “hermeneutics of power”[18],
that is to say, as long as we discourse not abstractly but concretely the
historicality of understanding and interpretation, we must acknowledge the
basic role of power in the activities of understanding and interpretation, in
other words, real hermeneutics is essentially hermeneutics of power. In fact,
Marx recognized the inner relation of
power and understanding and interpretation earlier than Nietzsche and Foucault,
which is just the essential historical factors hidden behind all understanding
and interpretation.
Thirdly, the labor in the modern society is the alienated labor,
which must influence profoundly all our understandings and interpretations. We
know that the most general and essential form of this influence is the
fetishism of commodity. Marx remarks: “the fetishism of commodity regards the
social economic character of things which gained in the process of social
production as a natural character originated from the nature of thing.”[19]Although
the classical economists have true knowledge and insights on some concrete
problems, when reading the capitalistic economy in totality, they can not get
rid of the influence of fetishism and consider the way of production of
capitalism as a natural eternal one. Marx discloses the origin of fetishism of
commodity from the standpoint of the most basic practical activities, namely, productive
labor. “as long as products are produced as commodities, they must gain the
character of fetishism, so fetishism is not separated from the production of
commodities.”[20]This saying
clarifies the premise of thinking for the exact understanding and
interpretation. Marx’s practical hermeneutics has rejected all abstract
attitudes and its aim is to disclose the insurmountable historical dimension of
all understanding and interpretation.
3. The critique of ideology is the right way of coming into
the circle of hermeneutics.
The content of hermeneutical circle is very abundant, its
hard core is that any text should be objectively interpreted by an interpreter,
but any interpreter has his preconception which is caused by the historicality
of understanding and can not be obviated by any interpreter. Although Marx has
not directly discussed the problem of hermeneutical circle, he has thoroughly
discussed the historicity of understanding and this implies his affirmation of
the hermeneutical circle. Marx’s contribution is that he pays more attention to
the problem of how to reflect exactly the historicality of understanding, and
this then points to the right way of entering the hermeneutical circle.
The right way is the critique of ideology. According to
Marx, the ideology of a certain era forms the total background of the
activities of understanding and interpretation. In other words, it is the
foundation and sources of the preconception of an interpreter. Hence when the
interpreter is lack of deep reflection and critical understanding of the
ideology in which he live, he can not enter the hermeneutical circle rightly.
The young Hegelians such as Feuerbach, Stirner etc. can not put forward new
insights in understanding and interpretation of the world, because they can not
get rid of the influence of Hegel’s ideology. How can an interpreter, as Marx
said, “jump out of ideology”[21]?
The only way is to return back to the horizon of existential practical
activities and establish the world-view of historical materialism. Marx writes:
“This conception of history depends on our ability to expound the real process
of production, starting out from the material production of life itself, and to
comprehend the form of intercourse connected with this and created by this mode
of production (i.e. civil society in its various stages), as the basis of all
history; and to show it in its action as State, to explain all the different
theoretical products and forms of consciousness, religion, philosophy, ethics,
etc. etc. and trace their origins and growth from that basis.”[22]Conversely,
if the understanding and interpretation is limited in the texts or pure
thoughts and ideas, the interpreter must lose the critical reflections on his
preconception, and so can not enter the hermeneutical circle in the right
way.
4. Deconstruction of the independent kingdom of language
It’s well known that language is the medium of all
understanding and interpretation. A common mistake of classical hermeneutics
and contemporary hermeneutics (so-called “the turning of language”) is to
regard language as a independent kingdom, hence to limit all understanding and
interpretation in the independent kingdom. Marx’s excellent contribution to the
theory of hermeneutics is to
disclose the origin of language from human practical activities. In On Wagher’s Textbook of Political Economics,
Marx points out: “the linguistic name only as concept can reflects what became
something experienced through repeated activities, namely, specific external
thing is service to meet needs of people who already lived in a certain social
relationship, this assumption is necessarily deduced from being of language.”[23]However,
with the development of society and the appearance of philosophy and the
conscious or unconscious mystification of language by philosophers, language has
seemed to become an independent kingdom, and the inner relation between
language and human practical activities became blurry. As Marx said: “as long
as philosophers reduce their language into ordinary language from which
philosophic language abstract, they can recognize that their language belong to
the distorted world, and know whether thought or language can not consist of a
special kingdom alone, which is only the expression of real life.”[24]This
point deconstructs radically the general illusion which looks upon language as
a independent kingdom, and hence liberates hermeneutics from the limited mystic
world of language, and urge people to discover what language point to in the
experiential world, namely, the practical functions of language. No matter how
important language is in understanding and interpretation, it is only a
bamboo-made kite which is sent out from the hand of human practical activities.
For example, in Chinese “man” (男) means the
human who labor in the fields, “thing” (物) contains “ox” in itself. These words outline visually the
picture of agricultural society of archaic Chinese. This inspire us that making
language, idea, thought and text to be independent must lead all understanding
and interpretation to mistakes.
5. A introduction of new methods of hermeneutics
Marx’s practical hermeneutics means not only a ontological
revolution, but also a methodological renewal in the developmental history of
hermeneutics. The classical hermeneutics pay methodologically more attention to
research on the total structure of language, grammar and text, while Marx thinks
methodologically much of study on the premise of understanding and
interpretation. Marx’s hermeneutical method contains mainly two items:
The first one is the method of reduction. This method
affirms factually two texts: one is the idealistic text which needs to be understood
and interpreted; the other is the realistic text, namely, the existential
practical activities themselves to which the idealistic text intend. The later
is hidden behind the former. The method of reduction is to trace from the first
text back to the second text, namely, from the ideal world down to the real
world, and find the key to understand the ideal world through understanding of the
real world. This method regards the activities of understanding and
interpretation as unlimited and open from the very beginning. It inspires us
that only when we go out of the idealistic text, we can really understand it.
Since “consciousness only is at any time the aware Being, the being of human is
the actual process of life.”[25]
So no matter how reverse, uncanny and absurd the idealistic text is, the method
of reduction is always valid. It has very important significance for
hermeneutics of historical science, because it makes it possible for the
historians, according to the hand-on texts, to reproduce the practical ways of
life to which the idealistic text intended but already forgotten. For example,
Morgen has reproduced the structure of early human society according to the way
of appellation of relatives. etc.
The second one is the method of archaeology. Marx has ever
pointed out: “the dissection of human body is the key to the dissection of
monkey’s body. Conversely, the signs of higher animal appearing on lower animal
can be understood only after recognizing the higher animal itself.”[26] Unlike those classical hermeneutical
researchers who believes that man must eliminate the historicality of
understanding in order to understand objectively the previous texts, Marx holds
that only on the basis of critical understanding of the essence of his own
life-world in which he lives can the interpreter understand objectively the
previous texts. Just on this meaning Marx tells us: “Christianity can
understand objectively earlier myth only on the basis of its self-critique on
certain degree. Similarly, capitalism economy can understand feudal, archaic
and oriental economy only when bourgeois society begins to go on self-critique.”[27]This
method is open. The focus of its
attention is not the texts, as the objects of understanding, but the premise of
whole activities of understanding, namely, the interpreter’s critical
recognition of his own historicality. It is not possible to arrive at any objective
understanding and interpretation of the previous texts until the problem is
solved prior. To sum up, Marx’s hermeneutics has introduced the concept of
practice into the basic dimension of all understanding and interpretation, and
thus has accomplished the “Copernican revolution” in the history of
hermeneutics. That is, we can not understand and interpret human existential
practical activities from the angle of idealistic texts, but understand and
interpret the idealistic texts from the angle of human existential practical
activities. Marx clarifies actually the ontological premise of the development
of hermeneutics earlier than Heidegger. In fact, Marx’s practical hermeneutics
points for us to the basic direction of the development of hermeneutics.
The historical meaning of Marx’s practical hermeneutics
We believe that the historical meaning of Marx’s practical
hermeneutics has mainly two sides:
Firstly, Marx’s practical hermeneutics makes a epoch-making
contribution to the research on hermeneutics. From the view of the
developmental history of hermeneutics Marx lives between Schleiermacher and Dilthey,
and is contemporaneous with Droysen. In 1940s Marx has established the theory
of historical materialism, and determined the frame of reference for the study
of all thoughts, ideas and texts, namely, human existential practical
activities. Hence he has already transcended the perspective of Schleiermacher’s
classical hermeneutics, and has clarified the ontological premise for the
further development of hermeneutics. However, one of Marx’s classical text Theses on Feuerbach in which Marx
expounded his practical hermeneutics was not published until 1888, and another
classical text, The German Ideology
was not published until 1932, 5 years later than Heidegger’s Being and Time! Dilthey who died in 1911
could not deeply studied Marx’s such classical texts owing to the historical
limits, and could not transcend the horizon of the classical hermeneutics.
Heidegger has founded “hermeneutics of Dasein” on the basis of transcendental
phenomenological method, and proclaimed definitely the ontological turning of
hermeneutics. Although Heidegger’s theory of hermeneutics is different from
Marx’s so-called “the method of pure experience”, if we reduced Heidegger’s
philosophical language to ordinary language, as Marx suggested, we could find
much commonplace between their theories of hermeneutics. Generally speaking,
Marx’s basic contributions to the development of hermeneutical theory are as
follow:
The first
contribution is to disclose the practical functions of any ideas or texts,
namely, the intention to practice, and affirm that the essence of understanding
and interpretation is to grasp the inner relationship between ideas, texts and
human existential practical activities. This point is typically expressed in
his idea of hermeneutics of law: “relations of laws, just as the forms of
states, are understood according to neither themselves, nor the so-called the
general development of human mind, conversely, they root in the material
relationships of life, the sum of these material relationships of life,
according to the precedent of Frenchman and Englishman of 18th, is
named by Hegel as ‘civil society’.”[28]Civil
society is essentially practical, hence all ideas and texts will be not
understood if being detached from practices.
The second
one is to point out the possible method for the interpreter to critically
reflect on his historicality on totality, namely, his historical situation (including
the accepted tradition), that is the critique of ideology. In this sense, practical
hermeneutics is critical hermeneutics which regards the reflection and
clarifying of the interpreter on his own historical situation as the right way
of entering the circle of hermeneutics, namely, as the basic premise of all
objective understanding and interpretation. In this aspect, a comparison of
Marx with Heidegger and Gadamer is very inspiring. Heidegger argues that we
could clarify the pre-structure of understanding from the principle of
phenomenology, namely, “to things themselves”, thereby guarantee the right way
of entering the circle of hermeneutics. From the development of his late
thought, he thinks that both phenomenology and existentialism are vastly
inferior to Marxism in the aspect of grasping the historicality and meaning of
Being. This signifies that he has acknowledged the limitation of his early
thought in the aspect. Although Gadamer points rightly out that any activities
of understanding is outspreaded in the tradition, he overlooks another side of
this problem, namely, the tradition is continuously renovated through human
creative understanding. At the same time, the tradition is always reflected out
through the ideology of a certain era, it is the critique of ideology that
affirms the dialectic relationship between the tradition created by man and the
man created by tradition, and this relationship is also radically developed on
the foundation of human practical activities. When criticizing the antinomy of
man and environment hold by materialists of 18th, Marx remarks: “the coincidence of the
changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-changing can be
conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice.”[29]Thus
it can be said that only Marx’s practical hermeneutics probes into the problem
of the circle of hermeneutics in the most profound way, and points to the right
way of entering it.
The third one
is to point to a new direction of “hermeneutics of power” and “hermeneutics of
ideology”. This is pointed out in Marx’s important statement that the thoughts
which are dominant in a historical period is just the thoughts of the ruling
class. The hermeneutics of power pays more attention to the attachment and
intention to power of ideas and texts, while the hermeneutics of ideology pays
more attention to the role and influence of the leading frame of problems and
the selection of values contained in the ideology in human factual activities
of understanding and interpretation. This probation can go deep into human
subconscious psycho field, but the importance and urgency of this probation is
not at all noticed to this day.
Secondly,
practical hermeneutics is essentially Mark’s philosophy. The research on Marx’s philosophy will be laid a new
foundation through the deep study on it. This turn is demonstrated in the
following results:
1. Material hermeneutics will be replaced by practical
hermeneutics. From the perspective of hermeneutic studies, previous researchers
of Marx’s philosophy considered usually Marx’s philosophy as material
hermeneutics, namely, interpreting the world from the standpoint of material
ontology. For example, the world is unified in matter, consciousness is a
product of the development of matter at certain degree, and so on. Evidently,
the way of understanding distorts totally the original meaning of Marx. In Theses on Feuerbach, Marx has already
pointed definitely out: “the chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism
(that of Feuerbach included) is that the thing, reality, sensuousness, is
conceived only in the form of the object or of contemplation, but not as
sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively.”[30]However,
Marx’s important point has always been overlooked, even the critics of Marx’s
philosophy have also been caught in this false understanding, so that they
simply rejected Marx’s materialism. It is Heidegger who has the deep insight of
the true meaning of Marx’s materialism: “the essence of this materialism does
not lie in the opinion that all is matter, but in a metaphysical regulation to
which all beings appear as the material of labor.”[31]This
saying shows that the true meaning of Marx’s philosophy is practical philosophy
and the point of humanized nature which is necessarily contained in it, namely,
all material beings is not abstract, contemplative objects, but the factors of
human existential practical activities. Only from the standpoint of practical
hermeneutics can we stop talking about the meaningless propositions in the
scholastic way, such as the proposition that the world unified in matter, and
practical hermeneutics leads also Marx’s idea of material into the critique of
fetishism of commodities in the practical way, so that we can discover the
essence of the relations of men from the relations of things.
2. The
abstract epistemology will be replaced by the critique of ideology. The
abstract material hermeneutics must lead to the abstract epistemology, which
assumes a cognitive subject whose social historical characters have been
removed, and assumes also that the task of epistemology is to research the
origin and essence of human abstract cognitive activities. Evidently, this
abstract epistemology does not accord with the origin meaning of Marx. When
talking about his own way of cognition and observation, Marx said: “its
premises are men, not in any fantastic isolation and rigidity, but in their
actual, empirically perceptible process of development under definite
conditions.”[32]According to
Marx, the most basic activities of real man is existential practical
activities, his all activities of cognition is unfolded on this basis and serve
to the practice. Hence, real man has already bought his historicality into any
cognition of external things, and also he understands his own historicality in
the frame of specific ideology in which he live, but “almost the whole ideology
either distort human history, or radically put aside human history.”[33]Hence,
if we could not criticize the ideology, we could not clarify our true
historicality; and if we could not clarify our historicality, all cognition,
understanding and interpretation must be totally rootless. This inspires us
that one of the basic tasks of epistemology is to explore the inner world. We should
not ask childishly: “what can I cognize?” but ask: “what do my historicality
allows me to cognize?” It is just the later question which leads to the replacement
of the abstract epistemology with the critique of ideology.
[1] The selected works of Marx and Engls, Vol. 1. renmin publishing company, 1972. p19.
[2] Gadamer: Truth and Method (1), translating publishing company of shanghai, 1992, pp426-427.
[3] Gadamer: Truth and Method (1), translating publishing company of shanghai, 1992, p442.
[4] The selected works of Marx and Engls, Vol. 4. renmin publishing company, 1972. p474.
[5] Gadamer: Truth and Method (1), translating publishing company of shanghai, 1992, p416.
[6] Heidegger: A Letter on Humanism, Frankfurt publishing company, 1975, p27-28.
[7] Heidegger: A Letter on Humanism, Frankfurt publishing company, 1975, p27.
[8] Heidegger: SEIN UND ZEIT, Max Niemeyer Verlag Tübingen, 1986, S153.
[9] The Collected Works of Marx and Engels, Vol.3, renmin publishing company, 1960, p43.
[10] The Collected Works of Marx and Engels, Vol.3, renmin publishing company, 1960, p5.
[11] The Selected works of Marx and Engls, Vol. 4. renmin publishing company, 1972. p32.
[12] The Collected Works of Marx and Engels, Vol.1, renmin publishing company, 1956, p464.
[13] In western language such as English, there are many words disclose for us some essential relationship. For example, interest is interpreted as “interest”, its form of plurality is usually interpreted as “interests”, this indicates that man is interested in something which is related to his own interests. The word duty can be interpreted as “responsibility”, “obligation”, also san be interpreted as “tax”, the sum of these two meanings is that ratepaying is a “responsibility”, or “obligation”. The noun “good” can be interpreted as “good”, also can be interpreted as “benefit”, “advantage”, its plurality “ goods” is interpreted as “ware”, this signifies “goods”, “good” is related to interests.
[14] The Collected Works of Marx and Engels, Vol.1, renmin publishing company, 1956, p453.
[15] The Collected Works of Marx and Engels, Vol.3, renmin publishing company, 1960, p43.
[16] The Collected Works of Marx and Engels, Vol.3, renmin publishing company, 1956, p30.
[17] The Collected Works of Marx and Engels, Vol.3, renmin publishing company, 1956, p52-53.
[18] Reference of my paper “Marx’s hermeneutics of power and its contemporary meaning”, issued in “tianjin social science”.
[19] Marx: Capital, Vol.2. renmin publishing company, 1975, p252.
[20] Marx: Capital, Vol.1. renmin publishing company, 1975, p89.
[21] The Collected Works of Marx and Engels, Vol.3, renmin publishing company, 1960, p98.
[22] The Collected Works of Marx and Engels, Vol.3, renmin publishing company, 1960, p42-43.
[23] The Collected Works of Marx and Engels, Vol.19, renmin publishing company, 1963, p405.
[24] The Collected Works of Marx and Engels, Vol.3, renmin publishing company, 1960, p525.
[25] The Collected Works of Marx and Engels, Vol.3, renmin publishing company, 1960, p29.
[26] The Collected Works of Marx and Engels, Vol.49(1), renmin publishing company, 1979, p43.
[27] The Collected Works of Marx and Engels, Vol.49(1), renmin publishing company, 1979, p44.
[28] The Selected works of Marx and Engls, Vol. 2. renmin publishing company, 1972. p82.
[29] The Collected Works of Marx and Engels, Vol.3, renmin publishing company, 1960, p4.
[30] The Collected Works of Marx and Engels, Vol.3, renmin publishing company, 1960, p3.
[31] Heidegger: A Letter on Humanism, Frankfurt publishing company, 1975, p27.
[32] The Collected Works of Marx and Engels, Vol.3, renmin publishing company, 1960, p30.
[33] The Collected Works of Marx and Engels, Vol.3, renmin publishing company, 1960, p20.