Marx And Weber

16 Pages 4123 Words

bach who believed that Hegel was upside-down. Ideas, he contended, should be thought of more in the material and less in the non-physical. Ideas do not come from “geist” but rather from other humans. Feuerbach had seen language as a shared phenomenon. It is with this ability for humans to speak the same language that ideas are developed. Since ideas can only come from other ideas they are dependent on the language of society. Hence, ideas can only come from society. Feuerbach viewed history as consisting of an “epoch” of ideas. An “epoch” was a set of ideas that that defined a period in history.
The nineteenth century was also the era of Darwin who tried to answer questions using scientific reason. Darwin had also exposed his theory of evolution during this era. Looking at the philosophy of Marx one sees that he takes into account the philosophy Darwin, Hegel and Feuerbach. Marx felt that Feuerbach had focused to little on Hegel, and had lost the dialectic. Marx had seen history as consisting of both the dialectic and materialism. He called this “Dialectic Materialism.” History, in the view of Marx, was a dialectic materialism which evolved through time.
Marx’s dialectic was not based on the conflict of ideas, but rather on the dialectic of classes. This conflict results in a societies new mode of production. Each era of history consists of a mode of production. Throughout history, these modes changed through the dialectic. The dialectic would lead to a new mode of production and a new era in history. According to Marx, history would consist epochs of modes of production. Marx states that these modes of production are primitive communism, slave society, feudalism, mercantilism, capitalism, and then socialism and communism.
In studying the rise of capitalism one is concerned with the epochs of primitive communism, slave society, feudalism, mercantilism and how they led to the rise of capitalism in western society....