Early Writings (Penguin Classics) by Marx Karl

Author:Marx, Karl [Marx, Karl]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780140445749
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2005-11-24T05:00:00+00:00

II

Bruno Bauer, ‘The Capacity of Present-day Jews and Christians to Become Free’, Einundzwanzig Bogen aus der Schweiz, pp. 56–71.

Bauer deals in this form with the relation between the Jewish and Christian religions, as well as their relation to criticism. Their relation to criticism is their relation ‘to the capacity to become free’.

His conclusion is:

The Christian has only one hurdle to overcome, namely, his religion, in order to dispense with religion altogether, and hence to become free. The Jew, on the other hand, does not only have to break with his Jewish nature; he also has to break with the development towards the completion of his religion, a development which has remained alien to him.28

Thus Bauer here transforms the question of Jewish emancipation into a purely religious question. The theological problem as to who has the better chance of gaining salvation – Jew or Christian – is here repeated in a more enlightened form: who is the more capable of emancipation! The question is no longer: which gives freedom, Judaism or Christianity? Rather it is the reverse: which gives more freedom, the negation of Judaism or the negation of Christianity?

If they wish to become free, the Jews should not embrace Christianity but Christianity in dissolution and more generally religion in dissolution, i.e. enlightenment, criticism and its product – free humanity.29

It is still a matter of embracing a religion for the Jew. It is no longer a question of Christianity, but of Christianity in dissolution.

Bauer demands of the Jew that he break with the essence of the Christian religion – a demand which, as he himself says, does not proceed from the development of the Jewish nature.

Since Bauer, at the end of his Jewish Question, represented Judaism as nothing more than a crude religious criticism of Christianity, and therefore gave it ‘only’ a religious significance, it was clear in advance that he would also transform the emancipation of the Jews into a philosophico-theological act.

Bauer sees the ideal and abstract essence of the Jew, his religion, as his whole essence. He is therefore right to conclude: ‘The Jew gives nothing to humanity when he lays aside his limited law,’ when he abolishes all his Judaism.30

According to this the relationship of Jews and Christians is as follows: the only interest Christians have in the emancipation of the Jews is a general human and theoretical interest. Judaism is an offensive fact for the religious eye of the Christian. As soon as his eye ceases to be religious, this fact ceases to be offensive. The emancipation of the Jews is in and for itself not the task of the Christian.

However, if the Jew wants to liberate himself, he has to complete not only his own task but also the task of the Christian – the Critique of the Evangelical History of the Synoptics and the Life of Jesus, etc.31

‘They must see to it themselves: they will determine their own destiny; but history does not allow itself to be mocked.’32

We will try to avoid looking at the problem in a theological way.

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