Karl Marx
The social philosopher Karl Marx (1818–1883) held a strictly materialist world view and saw economics, including class distinctions, as the determining factor of society. He saw the human mind and human consciousness as part of matter. According to Marx, the dynamics of society were fueled by economics, according to the Hegelian concept of theses, anti-theses, and synthese False consciousness is a term used by Marx' collaborator Friedrich Engels (1820–1895), not by Marx. He saw religion originating from alienation and aiding the persistence of alienation. He saw religion as supportive as the status quo, in correspondence with his famous saying that religion is opium of the people. This view is however contradicted by the existence of certain religious groups, like the liberation theology. Marx saw religion as a source of happiness, though illusory and temporary, or at least a source of comfort. Marx saw religion as an unnecessary part of human culture. These claims were limited, however, to his analysis of the historical relationship between European cultures, political institutions, and their Christian religious traditions.
Marxist views strongly influenced individuals' comprehension and conclusions about society, among others the anthropological school of cultural materialism.
Marx' explanations for all religions, always, in all forms, and everywhere have never been taken seriously by many experts in the field, though a substantial fraction accept that Marx' views possibly explain some aspects of religions.
Read more about this topic: Theories Of Religion
Famous quotes by karl marx:
“All social rules and all relations between individuals are eroded by a cash economy, avarice drags Pluto himself out of the bowels of the earth.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“While the miser is merely a capitalist gone mad, the capitalist is a rational miser.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“We know only a single science, the science of history. One can look at history from two sides and divide it into the history of nature and the history of men. However, the two sides are not to be divided off; as long as men exist the history of nature and the history of men are mutually conditioned.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)