At 05:34 PM 4/13/2006, Jim Devine wrote:
here's the exact quote: "Mystico-bullshit is the sigh of the oppressed
creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of
a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people."
On 4/13/06, ravi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> At around 13/4/06 5:25 pm, Jim Devine wrote:
> > ravi asks: >do you really believe people have a need for
mystico-bullshit? <
> >
> > mystico-bullshit is the opiate of the masses! it's a home in a
heartless world.
I like it best presented in fuller quote. But, I have a question, What does
Marx mean by "demonstrates ad hominem"?
quote:
"Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and
also the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the
oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the
spirit of spiritless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
To abolish religion as the illusory happiness of the people is to demand
their real happiness. The demand to give up illusions about the existing
state of affairs is the demand to give up a state of affairs which needs
illusions. The criticism of religion is therefore in embryo the criticism
of the vale of tears, the halo of which is religion.
Criticism has torn up the imaginary flowers from the chain not so that man
shall wear the unadorned, bleak chain but so that he will shake off the
chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions
man to make him think and act and shape his reality like a man who has been
disillusioned and has come to reason, so that he will revolve round himself
and therefore round his true sun. Religion is only the illusory sun which
revolves round man as long as he does not revolve round himself.
The task of history, therefore, once the world beyond the truth has
disappeared, is to establish the truth of this world. The immediate task of
philosophy, which is at the service of history, once the holy form of human
self-estrangement has been unmasked, is to unmask self-estrangement in its
unholy forms. Thus the criticism of heaven turns into the criticism of the
earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law and the
criticism of theology into the criticism of politics.....
The weapon of criticism cannot, of course, replace criticism by weapons,
material force must be overthrown by material force; but theory also
becomes a material force as soon as it has gripped the masses. Theory is
capable of gripping the masses as soon as it demonstrates ad hominem, and
it demonstrates ad hominem as soon as it becomes radical. To be radical is
to grasp the root of the matter. But for man the root is man himself. The
evident proof of the radicalism of German theory, and hence of its
practical energy, is that it proceeds from a resolute positive abolition of
religion. The criticism of religion ends with the teaching that man is the
highest being for man, hence with the categorical imperative to overthrow
all relations in which man is a debased, enslaved forsaken, despicable
being....."
It's also quite relevant given that it feveals the deep humanism in Marx's
thought at this point, a humanism which is something folks like the author
Ravi quotes often reject -- man as center of the universe and all that.
"Scream-of-consciousness prose, peppered with
sociological observations, political ruminations, and
in-yore-face colloquial assaults."
-- Dennis Perrin, redstateson.blogspot.com
Bitch | Lab
http://blog.pulpculture.org
