||XXXIX| I have already announced in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher the critique of
jurisprudence and political science in the form of a critique of the Hegelian philosophy
of law. While preparing it for publication, the intermingling of criticism directed only
against speculation with criticism of the various subjects themselves proved utterly
unsuitable, hampering the development of the argument and rendering comprehension
difficult. Moreover, the wealth and diversity of the subjects to be treated could have
been compressed into one work only in a purely aphoristic style; whilst an aphoristic
presentation of this kind, for its part, would have given the impression of arbitrary
systematism. I shall therefore publish the critique of law, ethics, politics, etc., in a
series of distinct, independent pamphlets, and afterwards try in a special work to
present them again as a connected whole showing the interrelationship of the separate
parts, and lastly attempt a critique of the speculative elaboration of that material.
For this reason it will be found that the interconnection between political economy and
the state, law, ethics, civil life, etc., is touched upon in the present work only to
the extent to which political economy itself expressly touches upon these subjects.

It is hardly necessary to assure the reader conversant with political economy that my
results have been attained by means of a wholly empirical analysis based on a
conscientious critical study of political economy.

(Whereas the uninformed reviewer who tries to hide his complete ignorance and
intellectual poverty by hurling the “utopian phrase” at the positive critic’s head, or
again such phrases as “quite pure, quite resolute, quite critical criticism,” the “not
merely legal but social – utterly social – society,” the “compact, massy mass,” the
“outspoken spokesmen of the massy mass,” [2] this reviewer has yet to furnish the first
proof that besides his theological family affairs he has anything to contribute to a
discussion of worldly matters.)

It goes without saying that besides the French and English socialists I have also used
German socialist works. The only original German works of substance in this science,
however – other than Weitling’s writings – are the essays by Hess published in
Einundzwanzig Bogen [3] and Umrisse zu einer Kritik der Nationalökonomie by Engels in
the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, where also the basic elements of this work have
been indicated by me in a very general way.

(Besides being indebted to these authors who have given critical attention to political
economy, positive criticism as a whole – and therefore also German positive criticism of
political economy – owes its true foundation to the discoveries of Feuerbach, against
whose Philosophie der Zukunft and Thesen zur Reform der Philosophie in the Anekdota,
despite the tacit use that is made of them, the petty envy of some and the veritable
wrath of others seem to have instigated a regular conspiracy of silence.

It is only with Feuerbach that positive, humanistic and naturalistic criticism begins.
The less noise they make, the more certain, profound, extensive, and enduring is the
effect of Feuerbach’s writings, the only writings since Hegel’s Phänomenologie and Logik
to contain a real theoretical revolution.

In contrast to the critical theologians of our day, I have deemed the concluding chapter
of this work – a critical discussion of Hegelian dialectic and philosophy as a whole to
be absolutely necessary, a task not yet performed. This lack of thoroughness is not
accidental, since even the critical theologian remains a theologian. Hence, either he
has to start from certain presuppositions of philosophy accepted as authoritative; or,
if in the process of criticism and as a result of other people’s discoveries doubts
about these philosophical presuppositions have arisen in him, he abandons them in a
cowardly and unwarrantable fashion, abstracts from them, thus showing his servile
dependence on these presuppositions and his resentment at this servility merely in a
negative, unconscious and sophistical manner.

(He does this either by constantly repeating assurances concerning the purity of his own
criticism, or by trying to make it seem as though all that was left for criticism to
deal with now was some other limited form of criticism outside itself – say eighteenth-
century criticism – and also the limitations of the masses, in order to divert the
observer’s attention as well as his own from the necessary task of settling accounts
between criticism and its point of origin – Hegelian dialectic and German philosophy as
a whole – that is, from this necessary raising of modern criticism above its own
limitation and crudity. Eventually, however, whenever discoveries (such as Feuerbach’s)
are made regarding the nature of his own philosophic presuppositions, the critical
theologian partly makes it appear as if he were the one who had accomplished this,
producing that appearance by taking the results of these discoveries and, without being
able to develop them, hurling them in the form of catch-phrases at writers still caught
in the confines of philosophy. He partly even manages to acquire a sense of his own
superiority to such discoveries by asserting in a mysterious way and in a veiled,
malicious and skeptical fashion elements of the Hegelian dialectic which he still finds
lacking in the criticism of that dialectic (which have not yet been critically served up
to him for his use) against such criticism – not having tried to bring such elements
into their proper relation or having been capable of doing so, asserting, say, the
category of mediating proof against the category of positive, self-originating truth,
(...) in a way peculiar to Hegelian dialectic. For to the theological critic it seems
quite natural that everything has to be done by philosophy, so that he can chatter away
about purity, resoluteness, and quite critical criticism; and he fancies himself the
true conqueror of philosophy whenever he happens to feel some element [4] in Hegel to be
lacking in Feuerbach – for however much he practises the spiritual idolatry of “self-
consciousness” and “mind” the theological critic does not get beyond feeling to
consciousness.)

On close inspection theological criticism – genuinely progressive though it was at the
inception of the movement – is seen in the final analysis to be nothing but the
culmination and consequence of the old philosophical, and especially the Hegelian,
transcendentalism, twisted into a theological caricature. This interesting example of
historical justice, which now assigns to theology, ever philosophy’s spot of infection,
the further role of portraying in itself the negative dissolution of philosophy, i.e.,
the process of its decay – this historical nemesis I shall demonstrate on another
occasion. [5]

(How far, on the other hand, Feuerbach’s discoveries about the nature of philosophy
still, for their proof at least, called for a critical discussion of philosophical
dialectic will be seen from my exposition itself.)||LX|